Category: soil

It’ll Be Someone Else

barnstormingblog3 Comments

Here’s the orchard someone else will tend to.
And the crawl space beneath the porch
of the house where someone else’s barn cat
will slumber through the summer nights
dreaming of long-tailed mice in the high grass.
Over that field, the light dips and refracts
through the broken glass of the muck pond
where a catfish will take someone else’s bait
and hook—that it might meet the refined
heat of a skillet. The ghosts of a thousand
head of cattle walk through the woods at night
in someone else’s dream while the windows,
cracked slightly, let a mild breeze pass
through the empty rooms like an appraiser.
There is no death that cannot be undone
by simply turning the compost with a pitchfork
or by scattering scratch in the dirt for chickens
who sing each time they lay, but every repair
is only a gesture against the torment of slow
winds and steady rain and heavy sun. It will be
someone else who grows too old to climb
the ladder into the barn’s cool loft or the flight
of stairs that lead to and from their own bed.
It will be their hand weighing the mortgage.
It will be their face forgetting its smile. Listen,
if the well pump kicks to life at dawn, it will be
someone else drawing a bath for the last time—
joints relaxing as their form submerges, body
recovering and failing in the same held breath.
~Travis Mossotti “Missing the Farm” from Apocryphal Genesis

Well-away and be it so,
To the stranger let them go.
Even cheerfully I yield
Pasture, orchard, mowing-field,
Yea and wish him all the gain
I required of them in vain.
Yea and I can yield him house,
Barn, and shed, with rat and mouse
To dispute possession of.
These I can unlearn to love.
Since I cannot help it? Good!
Only be it understood,
It shall be no trespassing
If I come again some spring
In the grey disguise of years,
Seeking ache of memory here.
~Robert Frost from “On the Sale of My Farm”

Someday – we fervently hope not anytime soon – someone else will be living here and managing this farm, not us.

This land, originally all forested, provided game and native berries for the inland coastal tribes who lived here. When white settlers arrived and homesteading began, it was clearcut and the land became grazing pastures for livestock. Orchard trees were planted and crops produced and sold in nearby towns. Hundreds of similar small dairy farms in this county managed to feed their families and neighbors for nearly a century.

We purchased this land from the Lawrence family after they had farmed here over 80 years and they were so sad to leave. We are now in our 34th year here. We want to stay for another decade but we’re aging and our physical limitations are becoming increasingly apparent.

On a recent hot summer evening, my husband piled a wagon high with hay bales for the winter, with the help of the sons of the teenagers who helped us buck bales a generation ago. It won’t be too many years before someone else, not us, will be putting hay in the barn.

This land is where we feel we belong, just as those others who lived here were attached to this ground – but for how long? Will our non-farming offspring feel the pull to return home back to the farm?

We don’t know what the future may hold. What we do know: there is no such beauty as this land where we have worked and loved.

Yes, we feel we belong here.

For now. Until then.

AI image created for this post

Tell me, where is the road
I can call my own
That I left, that I lost
So long ago?
All these years I have wandered
Oh, when will I know
There’s a way, there’s a road
That will lead me home

After wind, after rain
When the dark is done
As I wake from a dream
In the gold of day
Through the air there’s a calling
From far away
There’s a voice I can hear
That will lead me home

Rise up, follow me
Come away, is the call
With the love in your heart
As the only song
There is no such beauty
As where you belong
Rise up, follow me
I will lead you home
~Michael Dennis Browne

One-Time
Monthly
Yearly

Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts

Make a monthly donation

Make a yearly donation

Choose an amount

$10.00
$25.00
$40.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00

Or enter a custom amount

$

Your contribution is deeply appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

DonateDonate monthlyDonate yearly

Each Impossible Blossom

barnstormingblogLeave a comment

There are days we live
as if death were nowhere
in the background; from joy
to joy to joy, from wing to wing,
from blossom to blossom to
impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.
~Li-Young Lee from “From Blossoms”

August of another summer, and once again
I am drinking the sun…
All my life I have been able to feel happiness,
except whatever was not happiness,
which I also remember.
Each of us wears a shadow.
But just now it is summer again…

Soon now, I’ll turn and start for home.
And who knows, maybe I’ll be singing.
~Mary Oliver from “The Pond” from Felicity

…what I want in my life
is to be willing
to be dazzled-
to cast aside the weight of facts

and maybe even
to float a little
above this difficult world.
I want to believe I am looking

into the white fire of a great mystery.
I want to believe that the imperfections are nothing-
that the light is everything-that it is more than the sum
of each flawed blossom rising and fading. And I do.
~Mary Oliver from “The Ponds” from House of Light

My friend Jean is a skilled gardener who has grown and hybridized dahlias for decades. What I see growing in the soil is her artist’s palette composed of petals, leaves and roots.

She has passionately cared for these plants; they reflect that love in every spiral and swirl, hue and gradient of color, showing stark symmetry and delightful variegation.

From homely and knobby look-alike tubers grow these luxurious beauties of infinite variety. I stand captivated before each one, realizing that same Creator makes sure I too impossibly bloom from mere dust.

Then He sets me to work in His garden, singing.

AI image created for this post
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly

Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts

Make a monthly donation

Make a yearly donation

Choose an amount

$10.00
$25.00
$50.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00

Or enter a custom amount

$

Your contribution is deeply appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

DonateDonate monthlyDonate yearly

Only an Inch Beneath the Grass

barnstormingblog1 Comment

He’s not so absorbed in the life around him
That he never looks up on clear nights
To admire the starry face of the sky.
But he’s awed even more by the earth he lives on,
By how much, for instance, its fertility
Depends on the unseen toil of earthworms.
Who would believe that over decades
Every inch of the field behind his house
Passes through their bodies again and again
As they feed on the dirt they tunnel through?
So much tireless turning over of loam,
So much natural harrowing, shredding, and leveling.
Yes, their work has undermined the stone wall
That marks the edge of his garden. But that’s a small price
For soil that nurtures the berries and grains
He enjoys at breakfast. Why turn from the table
To write a lament on the power of time
To undermine human effort when he can describe
How the work of worms helps sustain us?
Not to bother with them because they aren’t aware
Of his existence—how small-minded
That would seem to him in a species that prides itself
On understanding its place in the scheme of things,
As small-minded as thinking less of the stars
Because they aren’t twinkling for his benefit.
But the stars aren’t likely to go unnoticed
By a species quick to admire what’s distant,
Serene, and glittering, as opposed to what’s near,
Busy, and inconspicuous,
Working an inch beneath the grass.
~Carl Dennis “Near Darwin”

Aren’t you glad at least that the earthworms
Under the grass are ignorant, as they eat the earth,
Of the good they confer on us, that their silence
Isn’t a silent reproof for our bad manners,
Our never casting earthward a crumb of thanks
For their keeping the soil from packing so tight
That no root, however determined, could pierce it?

Imagine if they suspected how much we owe them,
How the weight of our debt would crush us
Even if they enjoyed keeping the grass alive,
The garden flowers and vegetables, the clover,
And wanted nothing that we could give them,
Not even the merest nod of acknowledgment.

A debt to angels would be easy in comparison,
Bright, weightless creatures of cloud, who serve
An even brighter and lighter master.

Lucky for us they don’t know what they’re doing,
These puny anonymous creatures of dark and damp
Who eat simply to live, with no more sense of mission
Than nature feels in providing for our survival.
…the tunneling earthworms, tireless, silent,
As they persist, oblivious, in their service.
~Carl Dennis from “Worms”

We’ve been composting horse manure for several decades behind the barn, and we dig in to the tall pile to spread on our garden plots. As Dan pushes the tractor’s front loader into the pile, steam rises from its compost innards. As the rich soil is scooped, thousands of newly exposed red wiggler worms immediately dive for cover. Within seconds, thousands of naked little creatures have, well, …wormed their way back into the security of warm dirt, being rudely interrupted from their routine. I can’t say I blame them.

Hundreds of thousands of wigglers end up being forced in the spring to adapt to new quarters, leaving the security of the manure mountain behind. As we smooth the topping of compost over the garden plot, the worms–gracious creatures that they are–tolerate being rolled and raked and lifted and turned over, waving their little bodies expectantly in the cool air before slipping back down into the dark. There they begin their work of digesting, aerating and renewing the soil of the garden, reproducing in their unique hermaphroditic way, leaving voluminous castings behind to further feed future seedlings to be planted.

Worms are unjustly denigrated by humans primarily because we don’t like to be surprised by them. We don’t like to see one in our food, especially only part of one, and are particularly distressed to see them after we’ve digested our food. Once we get past that bit of squeamishness, we can greatly appreciate their role as the ultimate recyclers, leaving the earth under our feet a lot better off once they are finished with their work.

We humans actually suffer by comparison: to be called “a worm” is really not as bad as it sounds at first. It is possible the worm may be offended by the association.

I hope to prove a worthy innkeeper for these new tenants.
May they live long and prosper only an inch beneath the grass,
so much more accessible than the infinite stars in the sky.
May each worm forgive the disruption
perpetrated by our rake and shovel.
May I smile appreciatively the next time
someone calls me a mere worm.

a cross section of 30 months of composted manure
AI image created for this post
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly

Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts

Make a monthly donation

Make a yearly donation

Choose an amount

$10.00
$25.00
$50.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00

Or enter a custom amount

$

Your contribution is deeply appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

DonateDonate monthlyDonate yearly

Keep Reaching Out

barnstormingblogLeave a comment

Under a sky the color of pea soup
she is looking at her work growing away there
actively, thickly like grapevines or pole beans
as things grow in the real world, slowly enough.
If you tend them properly, if you mulch, if you water,
if you provide birds that eat insects a home and winter food,
if the sun shines and you pick off caterpillars,
if the praying mantis comes and the ladybugs and the bees,
then the plants flourish, but at their own internal clock.

Connections are made slowly, sometimes they grow underground.
You cannot tell always by looking what is happening.
More than half the tree is spread out in the soil under your feet.
Penetrate quietly as the earthworm that blows no trumpet.
Fight persistently as the creeper that brings down the tree.
Spread like the squash plant that overruns the garden.
Gnaw in the dark and use the sun to make sugar.

Weave real connections, create real nodes, build real houses.
Live a life you can endure: Make love that is loving.
Keep tangling and interweaving and taking more in,
a thicket and bramble wilderness to the outside but to us
interconnected with rabbit runs and burrows and lairs.

Live as if you liked yourself, and it may happen:
reach out, keep reaching out, keep bringing in.
This is how we are going to live for a long time: not always,
for every gardener knows that after the digging, after the planting,
after the long season of tending and growth, the harvest comes.
~Marge Piercy “The Seven of Pentacles”

Our garden teaches us all kinds of life lessons, thanks to my husband’s hours of hard work preparing the soil, planting carefully and nurturing the emerging seedlings.

No garden tends itself – the growing plants reach out for connection to one another, for stability and companionship. The gardener nurtures, defends and harvests with an eye to preparing for the next growing season.

We who have been planted here need one another, interwoven and linked, both visibly and invisibly. I am woven around you and you around me; together we grow and thrive when tended, and as intended.

But more than anything else, we need our Gardener…

AI image created for this post
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly

Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts

Make a monthly donation

Make a yearly donation

Choose an amount

$10.00
$25.00
$50.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00

Or enter a custom amount

$

Your contribution is deeply appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

DonateDonate monthlyDonate yearly

When I Had the Chance…

barnstormingblog2 Comments

“Hold on,” she said, “I’ll just run out and get him.
The weather here’s so good, he took the chance
To do a bit of weeding.”

So I saw him
Down on his hands and knees beside the leek rig,
Touching, inspecting, separating one
Stalk from the other, gently pulling up
Everything not tapered, frail and leafless,
Pleased to feel each little weed-root break,
But rueful also . . . 

Then found myself listening to
The amplified grave ticking of hall clocks
Where the phone lay unattended in a calm
Of mirror glass and sunstruck pendulums . . . 

And found myself then thinking: if it were nowadays,
This is how Death would summon
Everyman.

Next thing he spoke and I nearly said I loved him.
~Seamus Heaney “A Call” from ‘Poems That Make Grown Men Cry’

My father was a complex man. I understand better now where my own complicated nature comes from.

As inscrutable as he could be, there were things I absolutely understood about him:

he was a man of action
– he never just sat, never took a nap, never wasted a day of his life without accomplishing something tangible.

he was a man of the soil
– he plowed and harrowed and sowed and fertilized and weeded and cut brush and harvested

he was a man of inventiveness
– he figured out a better way, he transformed tools and buildings, he started from scratch and built the impossible

he didn’t explain himself
– and never felt the need to.

Time keeps ticking on without him here, now 29 years since he took his last breath as the clock pendulum swung back and forth in his bedroom. He was taken too young for all the projects he still had in mind.

He handed off a few to me.
Some I have done.
Some still wait, I’m not sure why.

My regret is not understanding how much he needed to hear how loved he was. He seemed fine without it being said.

But he wasn’t fine. And neither was I.

I wish I had said it when I had the chance.

One-Time
Monthly
Yearly

Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts

Make a monthly donation

Make a yearly donation

Choose an amount

$10.00
$25.00
$50.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00

Or enter a custom amount

$

Your contribution is deeply appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

DonateDonate monthlyDonate yearly

A Yearning for Solace

barnstormingblogLeave a comment

At once whatever happened starts receding.
—Philip Larkin

Last night I walked the woods
lit by the final moon of the month.

Days don’t count here
beneath the centuries-old pines

where my grandmother took her solace
on hard farm days, passing up

the washboard or jam-making
for the eternal whooshing

of the forest as much serenity
as yearning.
~Dave Malone “Walk in the Woods” from Tornado Drill

Over my seventy years, I’ve had the opportunity to walk through woods in different parts of the world –
from my childhood home near Puget Sound,
to the Bay Area in California,
from central Africa above Lake Tanganyika
to the forests of Northern Ireland
and the coastline of Vancouver Island.

Here on the farm, we have some dense woods that our grandson has designated “the haunted forest” because of its many downed trees from windstorms. He is convinced BigFoot lives somewhere in the dense underbrush, and he may well be right.

During a walk in the woods, no matter where it may be, I find solace in a world where there is teeming life thriving under the ground, at eye level, and overhead. I feel a palpable vibrance with each step I take, while experiencing sounds and smells I find nowhere else.

So, I too leave behind the work of the day – the laundry, the cleaning and cooking – if only for an hour or so. And once again, I sync my own heartbeat to the pulse of the mysterious life I find, ongoing and eternal, in the woods.

AI image created for this post

One-Time
Monthly
Yearly

Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts

Make a monthly donation

Make a yearly donation

Choose an amount

$10.00
$25.00
$50.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00

Or enter a custom amount

$

Your contribution is deeply appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

DonateDonate monthlyDonate yearly

A Seed of Belief

barnstormingblog1 Comment

When the time’s toxins
have seeped into every cell

and like a salted plot
from which all rain, all green, are gone

I and life are leached
of meaning

somehow a seed
of belief

sprouts the instant
I acknowledge it:

little weedy hardy would-be
greenness

tugged upward
by light

while deep within
roots like talons

are taking hold again
of this our only earth.
~Christian Wiman “When the Time’s Toxins”

True gardeners cannot bear a glove
Between the sure touch and the tender root,
Must let their hands grow knotted as they move
With a rough sensitivity about
Under the earth, between the rock and shoot,
Never to bruise or wound the hidden fruit.
And so I watched my mother’s hands grow scarred,
She who could heal the wounded plant or friend
With the same vulnerable yet rigorous love;
I minded once to see her beauty gnarled,
But now her truth is given me to live,
As I learn for myself we must be hard
To move among the tender with an open hand,
And to stay sensitive up to the end
Pay with some toughness for a gentle world.
~May Sarton “An Observation”

I’m reminded every spring, as my husband’s hands prepare the soil in the garden for that season’s planting, how challenging is the job of the gardener. His hands must fight the chaos of weeds and rocks to prepare a gentle bed for each seed.

A seed is a plain, unadorned and ordinary thing, a little boring even, practically forgotten once it is placed in the ground. Yet the ordinariness is only the outer dress; the extraordinary is contained inside, and within days a tender shoot braves all to come to the surface, bowed and humble. It establishes a tenacious root that ensures survival, grabbing hold in even the most inhospitable ground.

So it is with Jesus whose ordinary origins belied his holiness and majesty. Both hardy root and tender shoot, he reaches up to the heavens while his feet tread the soil,  both at once. His toughness paid for our chance at a more gentle world.

And thanks to Him, we are fed.

For he grew up before him like a young plant,
and like a root out of dry ground;
Isaiah 53:2a

AI image created for this post
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly

Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts

Make a monthly donation

Make a yearly donation

Choose an amount

$10.00
$25.00
$50.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00

Or enter a custom amount

$

Your contribution is deeply appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

DonateDonate monthlyDonate yearly

Laid Aside His Crown: Help Me Push Myself Aside

barnstormingblogLeave a comment

I have seen the sun break through
to illuminate a small field
for a while, and gone my way
and forgotten it. But that was the
pearl of great price, the one field that had
treasure in it. I realize now
that I must give all that I have
to possess it. Life is not hurrying
on to a receding future, nor hankering after
an imagined past. It is the turning
aside like Moses to the miracle
of the lit bush, to a brightness
that seemed as transitory as your youth
once, but is the eternity that awaits you.
~R.S. Thomas “A Bright Field”

The secret of seeing is, then the pearl of great price. 
If I thought he could teach me to find it and keep it forever 
I would stagger barefoot across a hundred deserts
after any lunatic at all. 

But although the pearl may be found, it may not be sought.

The literature of illumination reveals this above all: 
although it comes to those who wait for it, 
it is always, even to the most practiced and adept, 
a gift and a total surprise.

I return from one walk knowing where
the killdeer nests in the field by the creek
and the hour the laurel blooms. 
I return from the same walk a day later
scarcely knowing my own name.

Litanies hum in my ears; 
my tongue flaps in my mouth. 
Ailinon, alleluia!
~Annie Dillard from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

Dear God, I cannot love Thee the way I want to.
You are the slim crescent of a moon that I see
and my self is the earth’s shadow
that keeps me from seeing all the moon.
The crescent is very beautiful
and perhaps that is all one like I am should or could see;
but what I am afraid of, dear God,
is that my self shadow will grow so large
that it blocks the whole moon,
and that I will judge myself by the shadow that is nothing.

I do not know You God
because I am in the way.
Please help me to push myself aside.
~Flannery O’Connor from A Prayer Journal

Earth’s crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God…
~Elizabeth Barrett Browning

I am learning to step aside so my own shadow stops obscuring God’s gift of illumination. I can be so blinded by discouragement, busyness and distraction that I lose sight of God Himself.

I stand in the way and need a push to let the Light shine forth.

Surprise me, dear Lord. Cram this common bush with heaven. 

Though I regularly lament in the shadows, help me lift my voice in praise and gratitude for your gift: the pearl of great price you generously hold for me to find each day.

The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field.
Matthew 13: 44

This Lenten season I reflect on the words of the 19th century southern spiritual hymn “What Wondrous Love is This”

One-Time
Monthly
Yearly

Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts

Make a monthly donation

Make a yearly donation

Choose an amount

$10.00
$25.00
$50.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00

Or enter a custom amount

$

Your contribution is deeply appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

DonateDonate monthlyDonate yearly

From Death We’re Free: Opening Wide to the Light

barnstormingblog5 Comments

I saw that a yellow crocus bud had pierced
a dead oak leaf, then opened wide. How strong
its appetite for the luxury of the sun!
~Jane Kenyon from Otherwise: New and Selected Poems

Beyond my window in the night
Is but a drab inglorious street,
Yet there the frost and clean starlight
As over Warwick woods are sweet.

Under the grey drift of the town
The crocus works among the mould
As eagerly as those that crown
The Warwick spring in flame and gold.

And when the tramway down the hill
Across the cobbles moans and rings,
There is about my window-sill
The tumult of a thousand wings.
~John Drinkwater “A Town Window”

This is why I believe that God really has dived down into the bottom of creation, and has come up bringing the whole redeemed nature on His shoulders. The miracles that have already happened are, of course, as Scripture so often says, the first fruits of that cosmic summer which is presently coming on.

Christ has risen, and so we shall rise.

…To be sure, it feels wintry enough still: but often in the very early spring it feels like that.  Two thousand years are only a day or two by this scale.  A man really ought to say, ‘The Resurrection happened two thousand years ago’  in the same spirit in which he says ‘I saw a crocus yesterday.’

Because we know what is coming behind the crocus.

The spring comes slowly down the way, but the great thing is that the corner has been turned.  There is, of course, this difference that in the natural spring the crocus cannot choose whether it will respond or not.

We can. 

We have the power either of withstanding the spring, and sinking back into the cosmic winter, or of going on…to which He is calling us.

It remains with us whether to follow or not, to die in this winter, or to go on into that spring and that summer.
~C. S. Lewis from “God in the Dock”

Our appetite is strong for light and warmth, leaving winter behind.
Our desire is to defeat death, piercing through the decay
and flourishing among the living, opening wide our faces
to the luxury of luminous grace freely given.

We have turned the corner and have the power to choose Light.
We need only follow the pathway out of darkness. 
We need only follow the Son as he leads the way.

The desert and the parched land will be glad;
    the wilderness will rejoice and blossom.
Like the crocus,  it will burst into bloom;
    it will rejoice greatly and shout for joy.
Isaiah 35: 1-2

One-Time
Monthly
Yearly

Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts

Make a monthly donation

Make a yearly donation

Choose an amount

$10.00
$25.00
$50.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00

Or enter a custom amount

$

Your contribution is deeply appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

DonateDonate monthlyDonate yearly

The Cellar’s Portion

barnstormingblogLeave a comment

In October of the year,
he counts potatoes dug from the brown field, counting the seed, counting the cellar’s portion out,   
and bags the rest on the cart’s floor.

He packs wool sheared in April, honey
in combs, linen, leather   
tanned from deerhide,   
and vinegar in a barrel
hooped by hand at the forge’s fire.

He walks by his ox’s head, ten days
to Portsmouth Market, and sells potatoes,   
and the bag that carried potatoes, flaxseed, birch brooms, maple sugar, goose feathers, yarn.

When the cart is empty he sells the cart.   
When the cart is sold he sells the ox,   
harness and yoke, and walks
home, his pockets heavy
with the year’s coin for salt and taxes,

and at home by fire’s light in November cold   
stitches new harness for next year’s ox in the barn,
and he carved a new yoke and sawed
planks for a new cart and split shingles all
winter, while his wife made flax into linen all
winter, and his daughter embroidered linen all
winter, and his son carved Indian brooms from
birch all winter, and everybody made candles,

and in March they tapped the sugar maple trees
and boiled the sap down, and in April they
sheared the sheep, spun yarn, and wove and
knitted, and in May they planted potatoes,
turnips, and cabbages, while apple blossoms
bloomed and fell, while bees woke up, starting to
make new honey, and geese squawked in the
barnyard, dropping feathers as soft as clouds.
~Donald Hall “The Oxcart Man”

Come inside now.
Stand beside the warming stove.
Watch out through the windows as
a cold rain tears down
the last leaves.

The larder full of dried herbs,
hot peppers, chutneys,
jellies, jams, dill pickles,
pickled relishes,
pickled beets.

The freezer full of frozen greens—
chard and spinach, collards, kale—
green beans, basil, red sauces,
applesauce, and
smoked meats.

The woodshed dry and full of wood,
winter squashes stashed away.
Down cellar: potatoes, carrots,
crock of sauerkraut.

Come inside now.
Stand beside the warming stove.
Listen. Wait.
~David Budbill “Come Inside Now” from Happy Life

Nothing would sleep in that cellar, dank as a ditch,
Bulbs broke out of boxes hunting for chinks in the dark,
Shoots dangled and drooped,
Lolling obscenely from mildewed crates,
Hung down long yellow evil necks, like tropical snakes.
And what a congress of stinks!
Roots ripe as old bait,
Pulpy stems, rank, silo-rich,
Leaf-mold, manure, lime, piled against slippery planks.
Nothing would give up life:
Even the dirt kept breathing a small breath.
~Theodore Roetke “Root Cellar” from The Collected Poems

Even in the cold wet chill of November, our garden continues breathing, guarded by the furry fellow on a stalk below until a heavy windstorm topples him over.

When I descend the steps into our root cellar, I find a still life of empty jars, no longer in use for produce to be preserved until spring. I no longer preserve produce through canning, as I used to. Instead we dry and freeze fruits and vegetables for storage. The cellar, though not as full as in years past, remains a place of quiet fecundity with its rich and earthy smells – a reminder of how things were done before the conveniences of today. We still keep apples, potatoes and onions in safe-keeping below ground – some of this farm’s orchard and garden harvest has been stored fresh in the cellar, year after year, for decades.

Until the last century, all of a farm family’s energy and effort was to preserve and store what was necessary to survive another year. Today, in too many places in the world, simple survival remains a family’s necessary and noble goal.

Surrounded by the relative comfort and privilege of a bountiful garden, orchard and woodpile, I never want to forget that.

Come inside. Warm up by the fire. Listen. Wait. Pray for lasting peace.

My artichoke “pup”

One-Time
Monthly
Yearly

Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts

Make a monthly donation

Make a yearly donation

Choose an amount

$10.00
$25.00
$50.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00

Or enter a custom amount

$

Your contribution is deeply appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

DonateDonate monthlyDonate yearly