Just Say Mow.

An atmosphere imperiled by fumes and an ocean poisoned by hemorrhaging oil--what can a self-proclaimed steward of Creation do?

There are options besides the "paralysis of analysis." You could reduce your own petrochemical use and collect spare hair or pantyhose for the cause. You could volunteer with the wildlife rescue teams or support locally-led reclamation programs in affected communities. If you happen to be an ArchDruid, you can guide people towards a more holistic understanding of the situation. Or, if you happen to be the Archbishop of Canterbury, you could bury your head in your mitre and obsess about something completely different.

We don't have hairdressers or pantyhose, and our budget for largesse is pretty much nonexistent, no matter the urgency of the cause. But there's one thing we can do: we can Just Say Mow.

We have a gasoline-powered lawn mower. It works well, though it's noisy to run and our uneven terrain causes the operator some unwelcome excitement with dips, bumps, scraped rocks and ejected debris. If a verdant expanse of precise and coordinated stem length was the central pride and joy of our lives, starting that machine up might be worth it. If we lived in a gated or planned suburban community, perhaps others might compel us to rev up the mower, citing terms of the Community Covenant.

But we don't live in a suburb. We live in Maine, the state where Katherine S. White wrote her great 1962 essay, "For the Recreation & Delight of the Inhabitants," on the bizarre, unnatural notion of "the lawn." Our sloping, rambling dooryard full of violets and clover may not, strictly, BE a lawn, but it is a rapidly-growing expanse that ought to be managed one way or another.

Our first thought was that the cows would take care of it. They do a decent job, though not a neat one, when we set up a temporary electric fence and turn them from their pasture into the yard, but there are some things they won't eat. They DO do a nice job, though, of fertilizing our "lawn," and the free-ranging chickens are good at distributing the fertilizer when they tear it apart in their quest for tasty grubs. When the cows are done, there is a mostly well-cropped expanse dotted with cowpats, lush tufts of unmunched grass, (where the cows peed), and tall, healthy weeds (which, for some reason known only to themselves, the cows occasionally refuse to eat).

So, what to do with the tufts--or with a whole yard--that must be mowed when the cows are engaged in their standard rotational grazing pastures? Time to requisition some equipment from our Luddite arsenal: get out the whetstone, the peening jig, and the scythe!

A scythe--how quaint. It triggers images of old-country peasants sweating in their masters' fields--poor unschooled bumpkins. Surely this tool could not be used today by those seeking improvement and innovation and a better way forward...or could it?

The fact is, a well-made scythe is a marvelous tool: beautifully crafted, exquisitely well-balanced, easy to heft, use, and maintain for decades. It requires no "inputs" other than the moderate strength and comfortable movement of the average human. How many gas-powered devices can make that set of claims?

The best thing about working with a scythe is the way it draws a person into active presence, opening rather than limiting one's ability to engage with nature. There is no engine's roar, whine, and sputter. There are no petrochemical fumes to urge one's movement away. There is just the feel of the smooth wood in your hands, the satisfying "snick" of the blade through damp grass, and the dance-like gentle movement of step-swing, step-swing. It is a simple and pleasant pursuit, particularly when accompanied by a friend with rake in hand, ready to gather and pile up the fresh cuttings for composting back into good, rich soil.

Unlike gas-powered mowers, scythes work best when the grass is wet: at daybreak and before, after, and even during a shower of rain. And so I rise in the morning, when the air is still full of birdsong and the dew is scattered like a hundred thousand jewels along the grass. I pull on my boots and my favorite work gloves, smiling at the now-faint "women's work" logo emblazoned on their backs. I take the scythe from its hook on the wall of the shed and the whetstone with its belt-clip holster. I add just enough water to the metal holster to keep the stone wet. I take a moment to admire the whetstone, another low-tech marvel. It is formed to fit two things precisely: the enfolding grasp of the human hand and the slope and curve of the scythe's long blade.

Once the stone is well-doused, I take it up and give a few ringing strokes along the blade. It's fun to make the blade sing, both of us tuning and warming up for a grand performance, preparing to step out onto the stage. When the blade is sharp, it is time to go. I survey the tall, grassy expanse around me. I swing the blade down and wrap my hands around the honey-coloured wood of the handles. I take my place at the edge, move into position, and begin the dance that is scything: step, reach-and-swing. Step, reach-and-swing. Step, reach and swing.

I hardly notice the reach. It is not an awkward extension but rather a subtle adjustment of eye and hand that has become, with practice, nearly automatic. (I'm still new at this, but I'm getting there.) If my arms begin to tire, I remind myself to use the rest of my body more, to let the scythe balance and skim along as I plant my foot and pivot my waist. The grass and clover fall in soft arcs before me. Looking back, I can see the cleared swath that is proud evidence of a working blade--all of this accomplished with barely a sound.

Around me, the birds have not faltered in their singing. The chirp of crickets goes on. I can hear our rooster proclaiming his place in the scheme of things, and the neighbor's sheep in their distant pasture offering a response. If a yellow admiral flutters by on bright wings, no hazardous, loud-motored machine keeps me from noticing and admiring it. Even the blade of my scythe tells me things about the world: the juiciness of grass stems, the playful sprawl of clover...and if a honeybee should land on a clover blossom near my blade, it is no trouble at all to turn and mow elsewhere until it has gathered its fill.

Even with all these things to admire, the work gets done. There is a slight variance in the newly-mowed expanse--after all, I'm still learning and perfecting my techniques--but, while this yard may not make the cover of "Cosmopolitan Home," it makes us happy and proud. I feel good about my work, at home in my body, in love with this land. I need extract no oil nor pay any corporation to tend this beautiful green place.

Huzzah for the scythe!

Common Ground 2009: All's Fair in Love and Chore, Part Two

Here, as promised, is the second installment in our "film strip" from Common Ground Fair. Rose Freedman and Justin Lander of Modern Times Theater (an outgrowth of Vermont's venerable Bread & Puppet Theater) teach us about the word "Chore", the art of farming, and how to strike a blow for freedom.






"Chore lives high on the hog, low on the hog, and makes soup from the rest of the hog."

(I regret that the details of their hand-painted posters don't show up as well as I'd hoped due to the low resolution at which I was filming. You'll still have a pretty good sense of the images they're indicating, however.) If you ever get the chance to see these two brilliant buskers in person, I highly recommend it!

Ev'ry Gal Needs a Sowin' Machine!

Today, we present another low-tech marvel: the sowing machine. Most folks, when they think of farm machinery, tend to think on a grand scale: giant combines and harvesters grinding their way across the acres, mowing down miles and miles of "amber waves of grain." As we've mentioned before, we own no such monsters. Our farm has a different economy of scale.

There are no amber waves here. The rocky, acidic soils of Maine make grain-growing difficult. The rocks can foul up even heavy-duty tines and blades. Our own farmscape offers the additional challenge of steep slopes and ravines. Although an old picture shows this entire parcel cleared and pastured, the second- and third-growth forests have reclaimed our "back thirty". Decades of poor management prior to our arrival resulted in nutrient depletion and serious erosion, a combination that has rendered that acreage suitable only for wildlife habitat.

The only land flat enough for pastures now rests between the woods and the road. For the past three years, we've been working with our local Conservation District to better manage this land. We've done soil tests to determine the soil's acidity level and nutrient needs. We've stabilized fragile hillsides by planting a "conservation mix" of erosion-controlling plants, and we've removed diseased and invasive plants to make way for healthy natives. With help and advice from conservation district technicians, we drafted a rotational grazing plan and set about reclaiming two old, overgrown fields.

There was a bit of a hiccup in the plan last year when a 30-ton load of wood ash (a natural liming agent used to "sweeten" acidic soils) got delivered on the wrong side of the property when we weren't home. Over forty calls to landscape companies and tractor owners were made during Spring/Summer 2008, but no-one seemed willing or able to relocate and spread that mountain of ash. So much for the Usefulness of Big Equipment! This year, though, we happened to share our tale of woe during an Easter breakfast at church. Turns out our breakfast companion just happened to have a small tractor and some extra time on his hands. Providence!

Earlier this week, Mr. Tractor Hero moved the ash into the two new cleared fields and spread it around. What next, we pondered: fence the fields in, or sow them with clover and pasture grass? With the ground freshly worked and rain on the way, we opted to get the seed sown right away. Considering that we've been putting the cows out on our yard to let the permanent pasture recover, it's best to get some new grass growing sooner rather than later!

A few hours later, we were back home. The same wagon that carried eight piglets now cradled a few hundred pounds of seed mix: annual and perennial ryegrasses, Kentucky bluegrass, fescue, timothy, red clover and alsike clover. (Note that orchardgrass and reed canarygrass were our preferred choices for the purposes of rotational grazing, but they were almost twice as expensive as the mix we cobbled together.)

We emptied the bags into the farm cart, then raked and turned the seeds with our fingers: elongated, smooth-husked grass seeds in pale gold and greyish-green, mixed with tiny round black and red seed-beads of clover. We marveled at the gathered mass of tiny pastoral possibilities, but a gust of wind reminded us not to marvel too long. The rain was coming. It was time to bring out...the sowing machine.

Nobody's certain just how we acquired it--probably at some yard sale back in the eighties, when few cared about such stuff. The cloth top has been repaired multiple times with various weights and colours of thread and string. Printed in bold black ink on the stained, weakened canvas is the following inscription:
PEARCE'S IMPROVED
CAHOON
BROADCAST
SEED SOWER
MADE BY
GOODELL COMPANY
ANTRIM, N.H.U.S.A.

With the double Irish reference, I imagine the device being made in a factory full of recent immigrants--words of Gaelic mixing with the harsher words of English, scraping and tumbling like so many metal filings onto the dirty shop floor. Did they dream of better fields and healthier crops than the rotten praties of Home, or did they curse the work of farming and embrace the noise and heat of industrial labour?

Whoever made it, they made it to last. The metal backplate is riveted solidly to the hopper. The wooden crank-handle is well-turned and nicely varnished. The seedplate adjusts without fuss for different rates of flow. The gears rotate smoothly with a cheery wee clankety-clackety-hum. The hopper-sack and neckstrap show the most wear, but they still perform in spite of haphazard repairs. All in all, this is a wonderful device, well-crafted and a genuine pleasure to use.

I tuck my head through the neckstrap, and improvise side-straps from some camping gear, as this is the only original part that is missing. I tighten the straps so that the backplate rests comfortably against my middle and my neck doesn't bear all the weight. After making sure that the seedplate is down, I use a grain scoop to pour seed into the hopper-sack until it bulges and the old-fashioned lettering stands out. Ready, set, sow!

With my first step forward, I nudge the seedplate up and begin slowly turning the hand-crank. The gears start clattering and the wheel starts spinning. As the seeds tumble down into the wheel, they are sent spinning and tumbling out, some in the middle and some spraying out to either side. I stride the field and I sow the field, the seed landing in evenly distributed bands, all under my own human power. The whirr of the gears is not so loud that I cannot hear a cricket's chirp or a bird's song.

I could turn the gears even faster. I could get the job done in half the time, but truly the work is so pleasant, and the weather so kind, that I find myself slowing my stride. I move slowly enough to monitor my work, to be sure that the seeds fall thickly and evenly. As I walk, I imagine these fields full of lush green blades, full of clover blossoms, full of bumblebees and earthworms and countless other crucial, delicate living things. I envision the sweet contrast of shaggy red-brown kye ambling through the vibrant green, pulling up tender mouthfuls with slow-motion bovine enthusiasm.

This is what it means to steward the earth, to engage both soul and soil, to walk slowly enough to see. When we work on this blessedly human scale, we rediscover the truth that there is little need, on this small farm, for petrochemical-belching behemoths--and if the wood-ash had been dropped at the field's edge, as we intended, we could have spread even that with a shovel, a rake, and a cart.

To be a Luddite, one need not abandon all industry and innovation. What is required, instead, is a careful reflection on sources and benefits, a thoughtful deliberation on tasks best shared and tasks best managed alone. Walking the new fields with my old-fashioned sowing machine, I stitch myself back into the fabric of creation. I move with a natural rhythm and contribute to an older, deeper song.

Home On The Plain?

"You're always saying that." It was The Bagpiper's younger son, invoking his youthful right to hold his elders accountable for words and actions, and I had to admit he nailed it.

"You're always saying the place ALMOST feels ready, ALMOST could be called a real home." He was impatient with me, which was fair enough. I'm already pretty impatient with myself. Our construction project has played out like most budget-restricted ventures, slowly, with much frustration along the way. When WILL we be ready to say, for certain, that this site of our intellectual and physical labours is more than just another worksite? When WILL we step into this space, breathe deeply, relax into the peace of it, and say to ourselves and each other, "We're home"?

The Bagpiper and I have been taking turns, the past few weeks, reading aloud from a small book called "The Plain Reader: Essays on Making a Simple Life." (Ed. Scott Savage, ISBN 0-345-41434-9). It is a collection of speeches and essays from Amish and Quaker perspectives. The work grew out of The Center for Plain Living and their 1996 event, "The Second Luddite Congress." (I may draw some ire for mentioning this event on the internet, which they do not believe to be an appropriate forum for discussion of such ideas, but I'll take the risk because I think the ideas matter.)

The book features many of the Thinkers of Big Thoughts that led us to this farm, the spiritual guides and on-location reporters of The Settled, Rooted, Intentional Life: Wendell Berry, Jerry Mander, and Gene Logsdon are featured alongside essays on draft horses and washing clothes by hand. I don't agree with all their reasons and perspectives, but I do agree with the premise offered by Bill McKibben in the book's foreword:

"This book is...a manual for subverting your own life. And after that, perhaps, the lives of those around you. In an odd sense, when every taboo has fallen, then the only way to be subversive is to have more fun than other people--to fill your heart and your home with more joy and warmth and pleasure than the frantic, slightly pathetic, ersatz happiness offered by Disney and the mall and the chat room. This is a book, finally, about joy. You may despair when you read it, and then you may do something magnificent." --pg. xiii, The Plain Reader, c.1998 Center for Plain Living.

That last sentence sounds a lot like the season of Lent. There is something mightily compelling about that movement from despair to magnificent action. As we've read through the essays and discussed them together, we've tried to reflect on the sources of our own despair--and the seeds we struggle to plant and tend, the seeds of what we hope will be our contribution to that nebulous, longed-for magnificence.

We read about people who willingly chose to live without television, as we have chosen ourselves. We read about a pastor who wrestled with appropriate technology and compromised with the use of a laptop for sermon-writing, as hours were freed up for more human interactions. We read about people who gave up their cars for horses and buggies, people who willingly live without running water, in order to honour the needs of the rest of Creation.

This is a thought that has prodded at the edges of my mind for many weeks--that our petty suffering and sense of inconvenience SHOULD move us away from selfish conceits towards solidarity with the greater human condition, where clean, running, heated water is a rarity. It would be more radical, more faithful, to freely and actively give up plumbing for Lent. (The hard part, for us, was not having the choice.) It would be even more radical to give it up for longer, perhaps for life. Think of the bills saved, the water unwasted. Think of the effort and care required to give one's wastes back to the earth in a way that ensures health and sustainability. Would this be a retreat to something more primitive, or would it be an advance?

I try to imagine Jesus and his closest friends on a farm. Judas would be the guy stressing about the composting toilet, worrying about livestock feed consumption and the daily accounting of eggs laid. Those things are important, but there must also be room for Mary of Bethany who broke open her precious jar, anointed Jesus, and earned a place in Christian history for her bold, fragrant, prophetic act. This is the central challenge of Lent, I believe, and the reason we felt moved to revisit "The Plain Reader." In a time when resources seem scarce and human kindness scarcer, we are called to push the edges of generosity. In a time of destructive patterns and impulses, we are called to greater creativity. In a time when pundits declare "it's all over" and "the sky is falling", we are called--as stewards of the earth--to boldly feed the soil, plant and tend seeds, shore up and mend the sheltering power of the earth, and joyfully declare that abundance shall reign again.

It's still Lent. We are oh, so broken and the times are oh, so dark. But, as the seed must break open in the dark earth, so we must turn our efforts towards dreaming of New Creation in all the tumbling glory of its myriad, colourful forms. We must beat the swords into plowshares and till our despair under. We must turn the graves into furrows. We must reclaim joy and laughter as we play in the dirt, and proclaim the promise in the rhythms of our work-songs.

The time will come when we live into something creative, something magnificent. The time will come when jars will break open, when blossoms will burst forth, when bowls will brim and overspill with berries.

In the dreaming of it, in the waking of it, and in the making of it,
We are almost home.

Knitted Knockers

Everybody's Going Pink. The local grocery is festooned with pink ribbons, pink spatulas, pink cast-iron skillets, pink m&ms... and if they didn't trigger my deep-seated Barbie aversion, I might be lured in. The cause itself is laudable enough: Breast Cancer Awareness. But something seems terribly wrong about the grocery store's attempt at Corporate Philanthropic Activism. Maybe it has something to do with selling cancer-causing plastics to raise money for The Cure. Maybe it's just the visual clash between battling displays of Breast Cancer Pink and Halloween Black and Orange. The only pink thing I'm willing to purchase is a bit of deli ham, and even that triggers a mind-stomach tussle: the pretty pink meat would be greyish, if not for the addition of hazardous nitrates. Today, the stomach wins, but I walk past the teflon-coated pink skillets and plastic pink spatulas, ruefully shaking my head.

Elsewhere in Maine, however, there's a better movement afoot...or perhaps I should say abreast.

Chesley Flotten, owner of a knitting shop in Brunswick, Maine, has created an affordable prosthetic breast called the "knitted knocker." What began with a small local knitting circle has now spread worldwide, with groups of volunteers gleefully clicking their needles for a truly splendid cause. The devices are easy to make, comfortable to wear, (depending on the knitter's choice of fibers!) and much cheaper than the typical $500 post-surgery prosthetic. I'm not a skilled knitter myself, my lifetime output thus far being limited to two lumpy scarves and half a vest, but these folks inspire me to keep trying and learning. Knitting, like scything, is an example of low-tech brilliance I'd like to embrace--just as I'd like the chance to embrace all the fine, wise, funny, wonderful women whose lives have been cut short by cancer.

Want to learn more about Knitted Knockers? Try this! May your knitting be added to the great healing tapestry of all who work for justice and peace!

And, by the way, not all the pinkness is bad. Please take the time to check out Matthew Oliphant's "Pink for October" project. Another good thing to do in the name of The Cause? Re-read Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring." I miss her.

Failte! Welcome to the Tir na nOg Farm blog!

Strange it is for a Luddite like myself to go a-blogging, but here we are, and here we go!

Like many women farmers, we are "undercapitalized." We are careful to manage our debts and strenuously avoid taking on any more. We own few pieces of farm equipment other than a gloriously inadequate assortment of hand tools. Our lack of a tractor, in particular, provokes much eye-rolling and head-scratching from the non-female farmers hereabouts. (Admittedly, it provokes some occasional hand-wringing from us, too, but we delight in the related lack of payment books and fuel bills!) Without a tractor, we are forced to use other tools: the telephone, our wits, and our computer. These tools allow us to banter & barter for the services of others in our local agricultural economy.

Poverty and isolation have always dogged those who choose the farming life. Celts have always struggled to balance a love for the land with a hunger for exploration and innovation. We look forward to flexing some new "connective tissues" as we test this particular tool. A computer may not be able to harrow a field, but it can help us plow through possibilities. A blog may not scatter or secure a crop's worth of seeds, but it may scatter a few useful ideas and help them grow... (I hear it's pretty effective as a manure-spreader, too.)

The original Luddites did not reject technology altogether. Rather, they resisted those technologies which would harm, rather than contribute to, a healthy & well-lived life. Now, I'm not sure how the "carbon footprints" of computers and tractors compare. I'm also not sure we'd resist the purchase of a tractor if an affordable, easy-to-maintain model showed up. In the meantime, the computer is the one piece of serious farm equipment we have, so we aim to use it as best we can.

With that, my friends, we welcome you to Tir na nOg Farm and our farm blog. Bear with us! Enjoy the adventure along with us and all our lovely Celtic creatures. Watch for pictures and see how the farm takes shape, the gardens expand, and the animals grow. Step out into the field and dig your own roots alongside us as we explore Celtic cultures, traditions, and ideas. You never know what might turnip...

P.S. Our Scottish Highland cattle would have preferred a presence on MooTube, but they found videography didn't really behoove them.