We are surrounded by acres of farmland, blessed by neighbors hard at work cherishing the land and buildings and animals they own. They don’t take anything for granted and strive to preserve a heritage of good stewardship. Even so, they know when to sit back to appreciate the rhythms of the seasons.
There is joy in simply watching time pass by.
The land continues to teach us all, through the sweet springs, the sweaty summers, the colorful autumns and harsh winter winds. We need each other when the snow drifts high on our driveways, the power goes out, the well runs dry, or the garden produces far more than we can just use ourselves.
And when the sun sets — well, we watch it with awe.
Another day of letting it go, grateful for what our gentle neighbors share with us – those who are next door, those just down the road, and the I’m daily reminded of the generosity of those of you who take the time to stop by to read these words and say howdy.
To live in this world
you must be able to do three things: to love what is mortal; to hold it
against your bones knowing your own life depends on it; and, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go. ~Mary Oliver, āIn Blackwater Woodsā
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Tonight his airplane comes in from the West, and he rises from his seat, a suitcoat slung over his arm. The flight attendant smiles and says, “Have a nice visit,” and he nods as if he has done this all before, as if his entire life hasn’t been 170 acres of corn and oats, as if a plow isn’t dragging behind him through the sand and clay, as if his head isn’t nestling in the warm flank of a Holstein cow.
Only his hands tell the truth: fingers thick as ropes, nails flat and broken in the trough of endless chores. He steps into the city warily, breathing metal and exhaust, bewildered by the stampede of humanity circling around him. I want to ask him something familiar, something about tractors and wagons, but he is taken by the neon night, crossing carefully against the light. ~Joyce Sutphen “My Father Comes to the City” from Straight Out of View.
Photo by Abby Mobley
Iāve lived a mostly quiet farm life over the last four years – minimized air travel and avoided big cities, as I was never fond of either even before COVID. Flying recently to visit family reminded me how challenging it is for me to get used to large crowds again, navigating unfamiliar urban highways and sitting with a hundred people in a winged metal tube 35,000 feet in the air.
But even farmers have to leave home once in a while. We shake the mud off our boots and brush the hayseeds from our hair, and try to act and be presentable in civilized society.
But my nervousness remains, knowing Iām out of my comfort zone, continually yearning for the wide open spaces of home.
Travel will take some getting used to again, but there is a world to be explored out there. Itās time to see how the cityās neon night compares with one illuminating barn light on the farm.
I look for the spade I used when I was young, when my grandfather said dig and I dug holes the depth Iād been taught so the posts would stand, hold the miles of barbed and hog wire dividing our groundā¦Ā Dig, he would say, and all morning, afternoon, until it rained, until dark, until I couldnāt lift the spade and grub and he said enough, I dug through dry brown until it turned yellow clay or black earth caked to the tip of the steel. He taught me to measure strength by depth, narrow the hole around the oiled post, and sturdy the line heād laid before I was old enough to blister from work, acquire the knowledge of straight, of strength, cool soil, rusted staples and splintered wood, the knowledge of bending spikes new, splicing wire, swinging a hammer down hard, the ache from hours of digging, calloused hands and sunburn. He trained me to rake, tamp, stomp, pack dirt and clay, the weight of the earth around the post, its strength into the line. Now the hammers, pliers and cutters are gone. No rolls of wire hang from the beams. No boxes of staples and spikes jam the shelves. The tamping stick is broken. Someone has wrapped duct tape around the spade handle; the steel has rusted brown and rough; a crack climbs from the tip to the mud-caked neck. He would say it is useless, that things are not like they were… ~Curtis BauerĀ from āA Fence Line Running Through Itā
The old farmers in our county are dying off, the ones who remember when horse and human muscle provided the power instead of diesel engines. They have climbed down off their tractors and into their beds for a good nightās sleep.
Their machine sheds are cleared in an auction, their animals trucked away for butcher, their fence lines leaning yet the corner posts, set solid and sure in the hard ground, keep standing when the old farmer no longer does.
These old farmers knew hard work. knew there were no days off, no shirking duty, knew if anyone was going to do what needed doing it was them, no one else. Things are not like they were yet the strong posts remain, ready to hold up another fence line, showing us few remaining farmers what hard work yields.
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Praise be to the not-nearly-a-girl anymore clerking at our local grocery outlet since junior high. Single mom, moved up after a decade of customer service to manage four well-ordered aisles of hairsprays, lipsticks, and youthful glow in glittering squeeze tubes. Familiar red-headed, brown-eyed, gap-toothed smile. Willing to put aside her boxes of chores to chat with each of us she names by heart.
I forget if sheās Mary or Alice or Jane. Fine, I answer after she asks,Ā Howās your day?Ā And driving my sacks of next weekās meals home, I wonder why she rises from her labors to greet me, why she straightens her smock where itās pulled up a bit and rides her hips. Tucks in place a loose wisp of curl. When I walk by, what does she want to know, when she asks,Ā Howās your day? I wonder why so seldom Iāve asked it back. ~Lowell Jaeger “Praise Be” fromĀ Or Maybe I Drift Off Alone.
Did you find everything you were looking for?Julie, the magenta-haired
checkout girl, asks, and no, I think, I didnāt find inner peace, or answers to
several questions Iāve been mulling, like are we headed for nuclear war and
does the rest of the world think America has gone bonkers and also, by the way,
I could not find the tofu bacon, and the chocolate sorbet shelf was empty
(I did find canned pumpkin in aisle four) but I am silent and smile at Julie who
seems to know what Iām thinking anyway so I hold back and muse on the view
of the bay this morning when we walked the dog and the parsnip soup weāll
make for dinner and realize that total fulfillment probably jades the senses and
the bagger asks if Iād like help today carrying my groceries out to the car. ~Thomas R. Moore, āFinding Everythingā fromRed Stone Fragments
He was a new old man behind the counter, skinny, brown and eager. He greeted me like a long-lost daughter, as if we both came from the same world, someplace warmer and more graciousā¦
ā¦his face lit up as if I were his prodigal daughter returning, coming back to the freezer bins in front of the register which were still and always filled with the same old Cable Car ice cream sandwiches and cheap frozen greens. Back to the knobs of beef and packages of hotdogs, these familiar shelves strung with potato chips and corn chipsā¦
I lumbered to the case and bought my precious bottled water and he returned my change, beaming as if I were the bright new buds on the just-bursting-open cherry trees, as if I were everything beautiful struggling to grow, and he was blessing me as he handed me my dime over the counter and the plastic tub of red licorice whips. This old man who didnāt speak English beamed out love to me in the iron week after my motherās death so that when I emerged from his store my whole cock-eyed life ā what a beautiful failure ! ā glowed gold like a sunset after rain. ~Alison Luterman from āAt the Corner Storeā
This week as I shopped in one of our local grocery stores, I witnessed a particularly poignant scene. As I waited in the check out line, the older man ahead of me was greeted by the young cashier with the standard āDid you find everything you were looking for?ā He responded with: āI looked for world peace on your shelves, but it must have been sold outā¦ā
She stopped scanning and looked directly at him for the first time, trying to discern if she misunderstood him or if he was mocking her or what. āDid you try Aisle 4?ā she replied and they both laughed. They continued in light-hearted conversation as she continued scanning and once he had paid for his order and packed up his cart, he looked at her again.
āThank for so much for coming to work today ā I am so grateful for what you do.ā He wheeled away his groceries and she stood, stunned, watching him go.
As I came up next, I looked at her watering eyes as she tried to compose herself and I said to her: āIāll bet you donāt hear that often enough, do you?ā She pulled herself together and shook her head, trying to make sense of the gift of words he had bestowed on her.
āNo ā like never,ā she said as she scanned my groceries. āHow could he possibly have known that I almost didnāt come to work today because it has been so stressful to be here? People are usually polite, but lately more and more have been so demanding. No one seems to care about how others are feeling any more.ā
She brushed away a tear and I paid for my groceries, and told her:
āI hope the rest of your work day is as great as that last customer. Youāve given me everything I was looking for todayā¦ā
And I emerged from the store feeling blessed, like I had scored a pot of gold like a sunset after rain.
Today a while it rained I washed the jars And then I lit a flame set the water to start And at the end of the day lined up to cool and seal Twelve pints of spiced peach jam twenty jars of dill beans canned From an old recipe that my mother gave to me Because it’s good to put a little bit by For when the late snows fly All that love so neatly kept By the work of our hands
Lay hands on boards and bricks and loud machines With shovels and rakes and buckets of soup they clean And I believe that we should bless evŠµry shirt ironed and pressed SalutŠµ the crews out on the roads Those who stock shelves and carry loads Whisper thanks to the brooms and saws the dirty boots and coveralls And bow my head to the waitress and nurse Tip my hat to the farmer and clerk All those saints with skillets and pans And the work of their hands Work of their hands
Laid out on the counter pull up out of hot water The work of our hands so faithful and true I make something barely there music is a little more than air So now every year I’ll put by tomatoes and pears Boil the lids and wipe the lip with a calloused fingertip And I swear by the winter ground We’ll open one and pass the thing around Let the light catch the jar amber gold as a falling star It’s humble and physical it’s only love made visible Yeah now I understand it’s the work of our hands
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Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what Godās will isāhis good, pleasing and perfect will. Romans 12:2
We live in an imperfect world, with imperfect characters to match. Our imperfections should not keep us from dreaming of better things, or even from trying, within our limits, to be better stewards of the soil, and more ardent strivers after beauty and a responsible serenity. ~Jane Kenyon from āA Garden of My Dreamsā
Holy is right outside my back door, whether it is growing in the soil, unfurling in a misty dawn moment or settling beneath an early twilight rainbow serenade.
As a steward for serenity, I want to find beauty in all things and people, aiding its growth and helping it flourish.
Iām not giving up the search.
Even when things get ugly, I’m determined to keep trying, searching out holiness wherever I look and in whoever I meet.
Perhaps that might change my little part of this world.
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He (the professor) asked what I made of the other students (at Oxford) so I told him. They were okay, but they were all very similarā¦ theyād never failed at anything or been nobodies, and they thought they would always win. But this isnāt most peopleās experience of life.
He asked me what could be done about it. I told him the answer was to send them all out for a year to do some dead-end job like working in a chicken processing plant or spreading muck with a tractor. It would do more good than a gap year in Peru.Ā
He laughed and thought this was tremendously witty. It wasnāt meant to be funny. ~James Rebanks fromĀ The Shepherdās Life (how a sheep farmer succeeds at Oxford and then goes back to the farm)
In our barn we have a very beat up old AM/FM radio that sits on a shelf next to the horse stalls and serves as company to the horses during the rainy stormy days they stay inside, and serves as distraction to me as I clean stalls of manure and wet spots morning and evening.Ā We live about 10 miles south of the Canadian border, so most stations that come in well on this radioās broken antenna are from the lower mainland of British Columbia.Ā This includes a panoply of stations spoken in every imaginable languageā a Babel of sorts that I can tune into: Spanish, Japanese, Chinese, Hindi, Russian, French and of course, proper British accent English.Ā But standard issue American melting pot genetic mix that I am, I prefer to tune into the āOldiesā Station and reminisce.
There is a strange comfort in listening to songs that I enjoyed 50+ years ago, and Iām somewhat miffed and perplexed that they should be called āoldiesā.Ā Ā OldiesĀ used to refer to music from the 20ās, 30ās and 40ās, not the 50ās, 60ās, and 70ās and (heavens to Betsy) the 80’s and 90’s!Ā Ā I listen and sing along with a mixture of feeling ancient and yet transported back to my teens.Ā I can remember faces and names I havenāt thought of in decades, recall special summer days picking berries and hear long lost voices from school days. I can smell and taste and feel things all because of the trigger of a familiar song.Ā Ā There is something primordial ādeep in my synapsesā that is stirred by this music. In fact, I shoveled manure to these same songs 55 years ago, and somehow, it seems not much as changed.Ā
Or has it? OneĀ (very quick) glance in the mirror tells me it has, and I have.
Yesterday –Ā I Got You, BabeĀ and you were aĀ Bridge Over Troubled WatersĀ for thisĀ Natural WomanĀ who just wants to beĀ Close to YouĀ soĀ Youāve Got a Friend.Ā ThereāsĀ SomethingĀ in the way IĀ Cherish The Way We WereĀ and of courseĀ Love Will Keep Us Together.Ā If You Leave Me Now,Ā Youāre So Vain.Ā Iāve always wanted itĀ My WayĀ butĀ How Sweet It IsĀ whenĀ I Want To Hold Your Hand.Ā Ā Come Saturday Morning, Here Comes the Sun asĀ weāreĀ Born to Be Wild
Help!Ā Do You Know Where Youāre Going To?Ā Ā Me and You and A Dog Named BooĀ will travelĀ Country RoadsĀ andĀ Rock Around the ClockĀ even thoughĀ God Didnāt Make the Little Green Apples to grow in a Moonshadow.Ā Ā Fire and RainĀ will make thingsĀ All Right NowĀ onceĀ Morning is Broken,Ā Iāll Say a Little Prayer For You so just Let It Be.
I Canāt Get No SatisfactionĀ from theĀ Sounds of SilenceĀ āĀ IfāĀ Those Raindrops Keep Fallinā on My Head.Ā Ā Stand By MeĀ asĀ Itās Just My ImaginationĀ thatĀ I am a Rock, when really I only wantĀ Time in a BottleĀ and to justĀ Sing, Sing a Song.
They just donāt write songs like they used to.Ā I seem to remember my parents saying that about the songs I loved so well in the 60’s and 70’s.Ā Somehow in the midst of decades of change, there are some constants.Ā Music still touches our souls, no matter how young or old we are.
And every day there will always be manure that needs shoveling.
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My father climbs into the silo. He has come, rung by rung, up the wooden trail that scales that tall belly of cement.
Itās winter, twenty below zero, He can hear the wind overhead. The silage beneath his boots is so frozen it has no smell.
My father takes up a pick-ax and chops away a layer of silage. He works neatly, counter-clockwise under a yellow light,
then lifts the chunks with a pitchfork and throws them down the chute. They break as they fall and rattle far below.
His breath comes out in clouds, his fingers begin to ache, but he skims off another layer where the frost is forming
and begins to sing, āYou are my sunshine, my only sunshine.ā ~Joyce Sutphen, āSilo Soloā fromĀ First Words
Farmers gotta be tough. There is no taking a day off from chores. The critters need to eat and their beds cleaned even during the coldest and hottest days. Farmers rise before the sun and return to the house long after the sun sets. They need a positive outlook to keep going – knowing there is sunshine somewhere even when the skies are gray, their fingers are aching from the cold, and their back hurts.
I come from a long line of farmers on both sides ā my mother was the daughter of wheat farmers and my father was the son of subsistence stump farmers who had to supplement their income with outside jobs as a cook and in lumber mills. Both my parents went to college; their parents wanted something better for them than they had. Both my parents had professions but still chose to live on a farm ā daily milkings, crops in the garden and fields, raising animals for meat.
My husbandās story is similar, with both parents working on and off the farm. Dan milked cows with his dad and as a before-school job in the mornings.
We still chose to live on a farm to raise our children and commit to the daily work, no matter the weather, on sunlit days and blowing snow days and gray muddy days. And now, when our grandchildren visit, we introduce them to the routine and rhythms of farm life, the good and the bad, the joys and the sorrows, and through it all, we are grateful for the values that follow through the generations of farming people.
I have been trying to think of the word to say to you that would never fail to lift you up when you are too tired or too sad not [to] be downcast. When you are so sad that you ācannot workā there is always a danger fear will enter in and begin withering around.
A good way to remain on guard is to go to the window and watch the birds for an hour or two or three. It is very comforting to see their beaks opening and shutting. ~Maeve Brennan in a letter to writer Tillie Olsen
My window is a book of birds. I draw back the curtains and there they all are, scribbling their lives in the trees.
Bird in the holly tree, invisible mentor, your cheerful philosophy is a glittering chain of light slung between us, drawing me ever closer to the source of your joy.
The silver thread of your song guides me through the dark as surely as the night I first heard you, improvising on a theme of beauty and truth in the holly tree out there. ~Hugo Williams from “Birdwatching”
I hope you love birds too. It is economical. It saves going to heaven. ~Emily Dickinson in an 1885 letter to Miss Eugenia Hall
The windows are dressed in feathers where the birds have flown against them, then fallen below into the flowers where their bodies lie grounded, still, slowly disappearing each day until all that is left are their narrow, prehensile bones.
I have sat at my window now for years and watched a hundred birds mistake the glass for air and break their necks, wondering what to do, how else to live among them and keep my view. Not to mention the sight of them at the feeder in the morning, especially the cardinal in snow.
What sign to post on the sill that says, “Warning, large glass window. Fatal if struck. Fly around or above but not away. There are seeds in the feeder and water in the bath. I need you, which is to say, I’m sorry for my genius as the creature inside who attracts you with seeds and watches you die against the window I’ve built with the knowledge of its danger to you.Ā With a heart that rejects its reasons in favor of keeping what it wants: the sight of you, the sight of you.” ~Chard deNiord, “Confession of a Bird Watcher” fromĀ Interstate
I made the terrible faux pas of running out of suet and bird seed this week. My little feathered buddies fly up to the feeders by our kitchen window and poke around the empty trays, glance disparagingly in my direction, then fly away disheartened. There is no free lunch today.
I am no birder; I don’t go out looking for birds like the serious people of the birding community who keep a careful list of all they seen or hear. I don’t even track every species that comes to visit my humble offerings here on the farm nor do I recognize the frequent visitors as individuals. I just enjoy watching so many diverse sizes, colors and types coming together in one place to feast in relative peace and cooperation and I’m the hostess.
Birds are my visual and tangible reminder that the good Lord provides, buoyed by the help of hospitable humans who set out irresistible treats next to big windows. These delightful creatures have such autonomy and genuine glee in their daily existence until they forget their boundaries and slam headlong into invisible glass, too often falling to the ground for good. Then the farm cats are gleeful.
I know all about the warnings to stop doing communal bird feeding: spreading bird diseases too easily among multiple species who come together to feast, attracting vermin and assisting their burgeoning population growth, assisting predators like my aforementioned farm cats in their decimation of the wild bird population, encouraging wild birds to ignore their usual migration urge to seek better feeding/breeding climates so they often die prematurely.
As a trained scientist in animal behavior, I understand it all. As a human observer seeking to enjoy feathered friends during long gray winter days, I ignore it all.
Pardon me now, as I better head to the farm store to replenish my bird feasting stash. See you all later.
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The songs of small birds fade away into the bushes after sundown, the air dry, sweet with goldenrod. Beside the path, suddenly, bright asters flare in the dusk. The aged voices of a few crickets thread the silence. It is a quiet I love, though my life too often drives me through it deaf. Busy with costs and losses, I waste the time I have to be hereāa time blessed beyond my deserts, as I know, if only I would keep aware. The leaves rest in the air, perfectly still. I would like them to rest in my mind as still, as simply spaced. As I approach, the sorrel filly looks up from her grazing, poised there, light on the slope as a young apple tree. A week ago I took her away to sell, and failed to get my price, and brought her home again. Now in the quiet I stand and look at her a long time, glad to have recovered what is lost in the exchange of something for money. ~Wendell Berry āThe Sorrel Fillyā
I am reminded at the end of a week of dark and wet and cold with chores not done yet, and horses waiting to be fed, of the value of decades of moments spent with long-lashed eyes, wind-swept manes, and velvet muzzles.
True, it appears to others to be time and money wasted. But for a farmer like me, sometimes deaf and blind to what is in front of me every day, not all valuables are preserved in a lock box.
Golden treasure can have four hooves, a tail, with a rumbling greeting asking if Iād somehow gotten lost since Iām a little later than usual and they were a bit concerned Iād forgotten them.
Only then I remember where my home is and how easy it is to wander from the path that somehow always leads meĀ back here.
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When I work outdoors all day, every day, as I do now, in the fall, getting ready for winter, tearing up the garden, digging potatoes, gathering the squash, cutting firewood, making kindling, repairing bridges over the brook, clearing trails in the woods, doing the last of the fall mowing, pruning apple trees, taking down the screens, putting up the storm windows, banking the houseāall these things, as preparation for the coming coldā¦ when I am every day all day all body and no mind, when I am physically, wholly and completely, in this world with the birds, the deer, the sky, the wind, the treesā¦ when day after day I think of nothing but what the next chore is, when I go from clearing woods roads, to sharpening a chain saw, to changing the oil in a mower, to stacking wood, when I am all body and no mindā¦
when I am only here and now and nowhere elseā then, and only then, do I see the crippling power of mind, the curse of thought, and I pause and wonder why I so seldom find this shining moment in the now. ~David Budbill āThis Shining Moment in the Nowā fromĀ While Weāve Still Got Feet.
I spend only a small part of my day doing physical work compared to my husband’s faithful daily labor in the garden and elsewhere on the farm. We both celebrate the good and wonderful gifts from the Lord, His sun, rain and soil. Although these weeks are a busy harvest time preserving as much as we can from the orchard and the garden, too much of my own waking time is spent almost entirely within the confines of my skull.
I know that isn’t healthy. My body needs to lift and push and pull and dig and toss, so I head outside to do farm and garden chores.Ā This physical activity gives me the opportunity to be āin the momentā and not crushed under āwhat was, what is, what needs to be and what possibly could beā — all the processing that happens mostly in my head.
Iām grateful for this tenuous balance in my life,Ā knowing as I do that I was never cut out to be a good full time farmer. I sometimes feel that shining glow in the moments of āliving it nowā rather than dwelling endlessly in my mind about the past or the future.
Thank the Lord, oh thank the Lord. I am learning to let those harvest moments shine.
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