Agricultural Alchemy

Forget lead-into-gold. We have succeeded in an alchemy far more precious: sunlight into earth, earth into bacon, and bacon magically transformed into...fresh shrimp!

Okay, so maybe we had a bit of help with the first part. The Great Golden Orb's radiant energy was captured and held in earth, solar energy coursing through each element of the ecosystem. Next, we brought piglets into the mix: greedy little earth-gobblers, leftover-lovers, four-footed fertilizers. They rooted for us, and we rooted for them.

Then, one day, the pigs came home in little white packages. That was another kind of magic, to which we shall merely make allusion. You could say it was an act of slice...er, slight...of hand. Six roisterous, boisterous hogs had been divvied up, cooled down and gift-wrapped.

Next, six little piggies went to market. Our farmshare customers bought most of the meat, ordering animals by quarters, halves and wholes. (Two other pigs were otherwise processed into traditionally-cured products we'll have to wait months to taste. We trust it will be worth the wait!) We ended up with about one pig's worth of meat for our own freezer, plus lard to be saved for cookery and soap.

Well, that freezer was stuffed mighty full, so yesterday I took a few extra white packages with me when I went to the Winter Farmers' Market. There, in the cooler, underneath all our beautiful farm-fresh eggs, sat a pound or two of nitrate-free bacon, some ground pork and some chops: the original countryside currency.

Standing at a table across from me, the Live Lobster Lady lilted a lament. "Meat!" She cried, "My family's so hungry for meat!" I listened with ill-disguised delight. Too much seafood on their table? How fortuitous! In our house, it just so happens that we're tired of pork and eggs! I took out a pack of bacon and sallied forth across the aisle. That's when the alchemy happened. One hand to another, a shared smile and a few magic words, and the bacon disappeared, to be replaced by two packets of fresh-caught hand-picked shrimp meat.

The shrimp meat was transported home with much fanfare. A little lime juice, some garlic and peanut butter and olive oil, a bit of egg and some rice noodles, and more magic happened: Pad Thai! (I would have taken a picture, but we "disappeared" it too fast.)




I'm enjoying our experiments with agricultural alchemy. Maybe next week, I'll go looking for that other transformative substance: the fabled Philosopher's Scone.

Pay It Forward!

Over a year ago, MamaPea hooked me in to the fun. Now it's my turn.

RESOLUTION

Despair comes all too easy--grim and goth and oh-so-hip--
Cynicism is the fashion of the day.
Pollyannas make folks queasy: "Darken up, Girl! Get a grip!"
But I declare: I'm going out to play.

Hope is harder. How it stretches the weak muscles of the mind.
How we ache with angst as spirits reach and grow!
How we wonder, wander, bend as our fashioned fears unwind,
Giving grace the shape of all the seeds we sow.

Now's the season for beginnings. Life's returning with the sun.
Time to laugh in fear's false face; be a creator!
To receive a handmade gift, post a comment! Join the fun!
The first three will win, and Pay It Forward later!

In Like Flynn!

It's the new year, and we're feeling bullish about the farm. You see, today is the twelfth day of Christmas, and a farmer from Northern Maine delivered a very special present to Iona and Maisie, our two Scottish Highland cows. His name--and I am NOT making this up--is Errol Flynn. This two-year-old blonde beauty has already been a hit with the heifers in his hometown, and we're hoping he'll help our cows produce some fine calves of their own. We intend to keep him around for a couple of years as a herdsire, then sell him on to someone else who needs a fine new bull for their cattlefold.

Welcome home, Errol! We hope you like our farm...and we hope Iona and Maisie like YOU. Here's a little glimpse into their getting-acquainted session, filmed about five minutes after he stepped out of the trailer and was led peaceably down into the pasture wearing a halter. (We're thrilled that he's halter-broke, in addition to his other good qualities. His breeder did some excellent work with him and we can tell he's been handled regularly and well.) She slipped the halter off him once he was inside the pasture gate, then we all stepped back to watch. Want to share in the fun?

Here you go:

Corners!

Did you ever play that game? On long car trips with my family--and church youth group trips as I got older--us back-seaters would watch for tight curves in the road, then call out "Corners!" and lean hard into the turn, giggling as we squished together towards one side or the other. If you were the unfortunate person to bear the brunt of the squish, you could always squish back on the next opposing curve. The best place to be was in the middle, cozily sandwiched between the two squish-initiators. There you could feel both of them leaning into you, all of you laughing together. There you could participate equally in every round, protected from the game's rough edges by the bolstering presence of siblings or friends.

Last week, on the eve of the winter solstice, a friend posted the following on Facebook: "Everyone in the northern hemisphere: We're headed into the turn, so lean to the inside and let's get this marble headed back toward yon star!" It was a delightful image: a game of corners on a cosmic scale.

There have been plenty of hard turns on our wild ride. A few months back, we found a wide spot in the road, pulled over to consider the view, and then invited two other pilgrims to share our ride. To clarify: we found ourselves two fine young farmhands, a young couple of hopeful farmers who need a place to test their agricultural aptitude. They moved in to our "spare" room (who needs an office, anyway?) shortly before Christmas. Within a few days they'd rolled up their sleeves and demonstrated their commitment by taking over afternoon chores and splitting a winter's worth of firewood. One of them headed into our woods to inventory local flora & fauna while the other lent a hand with pig-butchering.

Weary from the intensely public jobs they'd just escaped, they begged off the chance to help at the farmers' market, but made up for it by tending house, animals, and woodstove each time I trundled out. They also found some beautiful mushrooms in our woods and turned them into jewelry so we'd have additional goods to sell at the winter market. In a few days, we look forward to sitting down around the table together so we can plan a host of permaculture projects. They'll be able to draw on our hard-won wisdom and experience, and we'll be able to draw on their fresh ideas and energy. Now, my overall enthusiasm is a bit rusty--we've had a rough run, as I said--but I think I can safely say we're rather pleased, both by their presence and the accompanying possibilities!

After years of white-knuckled wheel-turning, it's a challenge to relax, but they're ready to help with the driving...so, laughing and leaning, around the corners we go!

Housewarming, continued...

We had a ceilidh--a house-party--last week. It was an effort to hold ourselves accountable to joy: the joy we want to feel, the joy we know we should feel, the joy we can't always figure out how to feel. We decided we'd have a handful of friends come over for a potluck, followed by some shared tunes, songs, and stories to celebrate our farm ownership and usher in the Celtic New Year. We figured the presence of friends, feasting and merrymaking, would help us reconnect with the vast array of Goodness that has touched and warmed our lives. Besides, parties are always a lovely excuse to neaten up the house!

We'd had a housewarming party once before-- our friends Bruce & Sue joined us more than a year ago to help us celebrate our official inhabitation of this woodshop-turned-farmhouse. Sawdust was still on the floor and wallboard joints were still waiting to be plastered. We ate at the folding table I use for the Farmers' Market, but we had a wonderful time and together christened the place, "home." Their surprise gift that night, a basket of domestic goodies that included kitchen goods, two wineglasses, and a toy for our dog, proved immediately and continually useful. The memory is bittersweet because Bruce died later that year, a dear friend lost to cancer far too soon.

This year's We-Bought-The-Farm party fell on October 30th, almost exactly a year after Bruce's memorial service. The greatest gifts this time around? The songs, tunes and stories shared in the post-potluck glow, including many recollections of Folks Gone Before. Yet we were surprised with some more tangible treats, as well-- a jar of home-canned dilly beans from one friend, jars of rhubarb jam and chutney from another friend, and a beautifully turned salad bowl of local alderwood cleverly disguised by...well, a bowlful of salad. Oh, and then there was the bottle of champagne handed off with a conspiratorial grin--we were told to tuck it away in the fridge and save it for a "private celebration" of our own!

But there was one person who didn't make it to the party--didn't even know it was happening, in fact--and sent something anyway: my Fairy Blogmother, MamaPea. MamaPea is a homesteader and gardener extraordinaire who has been a sustaining source of wisdom, kindness, good humour and understanding. Her gifts were a very sweet surprise and could not have come at a better time. They were actually part of a "pay it forward" scheme among some craftsperson bloggers, but that deserves a future post of its own. For now, I want to share the tremendously thoughtful work bestowed upon me by MamaPea, who is a professional quilter of obvious talent, wit and skill!

Here's one view of the four quilted potholders MamaPea made for me. By the way, they match our kitchen's colour-scheme perfectly. I have NO idea how she managed that, since she's never seen our kitchen! How clever of her to work in so many salient motifs: alphabet fabric for my love of words and writing, images of old-fashioned farmsteads interspersed with a print of tiny quilts to commemorate our friendship and our homesteading foremothers, tiny gold stars and all those trees and branches and leaves...

Here's a second view, showing the potholders flipped so you can see (gasp!) their backsides. Such perfect colour-coordination! Such splendid designs! I feel so blessed and delighted to be the recipient of such gifts! (Trivia item: the potholders were photographed while resting on the tile runner of our dining table, one of the last items made in our house when it was still a working woodshop. The house is just small enough, and the table just big enough, that it dictated the placement of the stairwell and, by extension, the dimensions of all other rooms in the house.)

MamaPea didn't just treat me to a sampler of her own talents--she also sent a packet of beautiful photo-cards made by her daughter, an off-the-grid homesteader and artist/designer who blogs as ChickenMama. Most of the images come from Swamp River Ridge, the site of her Northland homestead. They betray the keen eye and deep appreciation for nature that you'd expect from a serious homesteader. Not only are the photographs themselves strikingly beautiful, they're also nicely mounted and elegantly packaged. I'm sure there's a wonderful story behind every image, and if I could just lure ChickenMama and MamaPea over to Maine, I'd love to sit down with them and hear every single one!

So, here we are: surrounded by friends and stories and gifts from many hands, our hearts full of gratitude, in a small farmhouse well-stocked with warmth and love.


P.S. Happy Birthday, Piper. I think this year's going to be a good one!

Autumn Thaw

The frost has come. The last late raspberries have been hoarded like a handful of rubies into the freezer. The pigs snuggle close in a nest of old hay, the cows lumber across the pasture in a quest for the year's last green tidbits, and the chickens scramble no longer for fresh worms and juicy bugs, their morning treat limited to scatterings of old bread. In the lower garden, all that remains are a few stalwart cabbages. In the upper garden the beets wear purple leaves in mourning for the black skeletons of tomato plants, recently uprooted and laid to rest on the damp branchy base of this winter's burn pile.

The land's production has ground nearly to a halt. We move slower too, weighed down by feedbags and slopbuckets, gathering firewood in the frosty air. But something strange is taking place, just as the cold weather sets in: we are starting to thaw.

When you live for years under the ax, waiting for that dull blade to fall, you becomes well-acquainted with fear, despair, and depression. The threat--in our case, the threat that our farm would be lost--becomes a familiar, if not friendly, presence, and you forget what life was like before the sky was marred with that great hanging wedge of cold metal above you. You forget how to walk outside without bowing and wincing and wondering when it will finally fall...

And then, one day, the ax disappears--life changes, new possibilities appear, the loan comes through and we finally buy the farm--but we're not sure how to stop bowing and wincing every time we step outside. We experiment with lifting our heads. We flicker an experimental gaze now and then at the sky. We say to ourselves, "We're safe. This farm belongs to us. We belong to this farm." We try to say it like we believe it...once in a while, we succeed. We flash each other a grin--but the next minute we're ducking our heads and wincing again, returning to the movements and rhythms we know.

Call it a crisis of faith. We have forgotten that hope is a free gift, not an exclusive commodity. We are enduring the long-awaited thaw of frozen dreams, and our movements are still stiff and unsure.

Bear with us. Samhain, the Celtic New Year, has come at last, carrying the promise of warm fires and songs in the deepening night. Our spirits drape themselves near the woodstove, gradually unfreezing like a pair of trapper's mittens. We are stirring, humming, and warming to life's possibilities.

We Bought the Farm!!!

It seemed right to save the 100th post for something special. Does the act of becoming full and rightful owners of our property (albeit with a 40-year mortgage) count as special enough?

We think so.

More news later... right now we're too exhausted from signing papers. Also, we're waiting for the full reality of this great news to sink in after some very long, hard years.

WE BOUGHT THE FARM!!!