There is something about the quality of time in spring that is almost dizzying. Perhaps it is only noticeable to those of us who spend most of our days outside in nature. After a winter of relative quiet and hibernation, suddenly, everything seems to come alive all at once. The palette of mud and grey transforms into green and yellow. The songbirds return, the trees bud, flower, and leaf out, the grass grows by inches, and the weeds grow by feet. Okay, maybe I am exaggerating ever so slightly, but that is certainly the feeling spring evokes in all her cascading wonders here in my tiny corner of Virginia.
This past week ushered in the first hot and humid days along with the start of our CSA, our first market of the year, the first calf and piglets born this year, and the first major strawberry harvest, which means harvesting strawberries every day, twice a day, until further notice. There were so many firsts and surprises, that I kept having to edit this essay to keep up to date with it all. Springtime is a time of inundation. In between all the harvesting, we were also able to get our first tomatoes, zucchini and cucumbers in the ground. It was a whirlwind of days, mostly spent outside. This time of year I actually tend to feel uninspired and have trouble writing or even reading much of anything but I think that's because all of my creative energy is bound up in the garden I am painting. Though I wouldn't call it a masterpiece, each year is different, each year I attempt to create something at once unique, but also the same. All of my energy and motion are constantly spiraling outward into the garden, soil, plants, and animals. By the end of the day, I don't have much left in me. This is not a bad thing. It simply is what the garden and my farm demand each spring: my whole heart and soul must be laid on the altar of the farming gods, and with just a bit of luck, lots of effort, hard work, and sweat with some tears and blood mingled in, it just might be my best year ever.
Hopefully I've taken notes on mistakes and failures from last year (I have!) and have a plan on how to correct them. In many ways, I feel like I have more energy to devote to the farm this year, but at the same time, I feel tapped out, exhausted, and unsure how much more I can give to this land. There's a heaviness to this year that's weighing me down. The balance between work and life is difficult for farmers because we often live where we work, making everything entwined. I'm not saying this is a bad thing or that I dislike it, just that it sometimes makes life and the choices I make more difficult, more prescient, more visceral to my Virgo sun that places such importance on my work and the quality of what I do. Learning to strike a balance between work and life is important, vital to maintaining my energy and stamina throughout the entire season, so right now at this moment when I feel like I can't stop running, I try to temper myself and my workload. The farm will be okay if I take an evening off to have an earlier-than-usual dinner. The farm will be okay if I don't get to all the hoeing right now. The farm will be okay if my tomatoes are planted a week later than I intended. These are the mantras I repeat again and again in an attempt to temper myself.
All shall be well, and
All manner of thing shall be well.1
Last year was a banner tomato year for me and I am determined for this year to be even better with more planting successions of tomato varieties. I'm also excited to be growing a sacred blue Pueblo flint corn that we were gifted while out in New Mexico this past winter. Just a couple weeks ago I discussed with you why we weren't doing as many markets this year:
In many ways, farmers markets are absolutely exhausting and there is just no way for a farmer to be adequately compensated, let alone make a profit from selling vegetables, fruit or meat at a market. Standing for hours outdoors hawking your products really isn't a viable business model for most farmers, especially when the society you reside in relies so heavily on supermarkets where you can get anything, in and out of season. Farmers are required to be growers, marketers, sellers, and business people all at once! And if you can't or won't, you simply won't succeed because that's what the market and consumers demand. At a farmers market, you must first spend hours harvesting, washing, and packing your product before you drive to the actual market, often in a city, because the population density makes sales more profitable. Between set up, selling, driving, breaking down, and unpacking, you've easily spent a twelve-hour day away from what you want to do in the first place: farm. The problems of farmers markets are for another essay, but let's just say I'm looking forward to fewer markets this year and more time simply farming. More time preserving and experimenting with the food I grow. More time feeding my community. Perhaps even a bit more time growing herbs and vegetables that I love and find interesting, but aren't necessarily marketable or profitable.
For the past few weeks, perhaps closer to a month now, a pair of killdeers have visited me, sometimes first thing in the morning or right around dusk. They circle around me, calling out their high-pitched, two-syllable kill-deer song before landing right on the tarp, the same tarp every single time. From the beginning, my suspicion was that they have a nest nearby. Killdeer, a species of large plover, lay their nests in the ground, and my suspicion was proved correct just the other day when one landed right by me, and I got to witness the special broken wing dance they do when trying to distract and ward off predators from their nest. Here's a video of this fascinating moment; turn the sound up if you want to hear their high-pitched cry.
I never found the nest, despite the fact that I walk my garden and fields at least twice a day every single day. I stopped looking when my farm dog, Juniper, also joined me in the hunt because if I set her to the task, she'd find them, which is something I definitely don't want. What I did discover just the other day, were three wee baby killdeers spastically scurrying around while both parents were trying to distract my husband and I from the very noticeable killdeer babies. The fact that killdeer babies exit their shells running has always struck me as delightful and comical, but it is because of this, that despite my very best attempts, I was not able to get a picture of the actual killdeer rascals scurrying about and all of my videos of them are spazzy and unwatchable because they move so damn fast, but will I share this small five second clip with you below. If you turn the volume up you can hear their high pitched calls.
My life has been quite glamorous of late: manicures of good earth, dirty knees, a constant ache. Mornings you can find me in the garden weeding, afternoons are much the same, hat on head, hands and knees on the ground, pulling goosefoot. Evenings are more exciting: body sore and bent over, thinning and weeding the carrot beds. Have I ever complained to you about carrots and how much I dislike weeding them? I'm quite a lazy farmer, you see and will do practically anything to forgo hours spent weeding tiny, finicky starts. Against my better judgment, I'm also growing parsnips this year, which are even worse than carrots when it comes to weeding and maintenance. What can I say? I'm a glutton for punishment, for weeding, to be precise. I'm sure it builds character or some other such tosh, but please don't tell me that unless you, too, spend hours each day hoe in hand, squatting and bending back and forth.
We are currently at the precipice, awaiting free fall. That particular time of year when I feel like I can almost keep up with all the weeding if I put in the extra effort. If you're a farmer, then you know what I mean. This will be the year that we solve world hunger, and Natalie keeps a perfect weed-free garden. This will be THE year in all her glory, I tell myself. Even still, I know, my bones remember that soon the garden will be a tangle of weeds and plants alike, but that's okay. Some lost causes are still worth the effort. I have strawberries to satiate me and, soon enough, carrots along with a garden and her weeds that will swallow me whole. But could it ever truly be spring otherwise?
Spring is a time of hope, smelling of fresh pasture, that scent of wet earth right after a rain, wisteria, and locust. Spring is the way a particular birdsong just grips at your heart.
Once again, we have arrived. To farm in May is to be fearless, to boldly throw ourselves headlong into the weather, soil and all the lovely particulars that you and I have absolutely no control over. Why do we do it? Not that we have much choice in the matter. Something compels us from deep within. Some primal urge commands us to put our hands into this good earth. Growth propels us, despite our best efforts to slow down. Seeds are started and tended, then sprouts emerge until the growth outpaces our grand imaginations. Suddenly, we are a part of something so much bigger, impossible to try to stop, dangerous to attempt to hold up. In vain we try to keep up, but it is too much. What we are trying to keep pace with, attempting to contain, is far beyond our meek understanding.
We did it to ourselves, you see. Our dreams were so outsized that we had to let go, let the elements and nature gods take over, let the worms and plants work their magic. What a terrifying thought. And yet, somehow, the sun rises and sets each day while I attempt to keep the weeds at bay. The rain comes, and I am grateful. Occasionally, I yell and curse and question: why do I farm? It is then I realize how foolish that question is. Could I ever be anything else? Could it ever be otherwise? And if I live to be 100, that means I'll only have 65 more odd chances of getting tomatoes right. It's never enough. I am never enough, and yet, somehow, each day, the garden reminds me that I am.
We are past May first now, past the midpoint between the spring equinox and summer solstice, closer to summer than not. Each year I ask myself, how did I get here? Spring is a time of hope, smelling of fresh pasture, that scent of wet earth right after a rain, wisteria, and locust. Spring is the way a particular birdsong just grips at your heart. She is the time of killdeers and swallows and so much possibility that will carry us through all the hard work of right now. We've taken on more than we can handle, but isn't that the point? Later on, there'll be disappointments, frustrations, and cursing, but right now we're carried on the winds of that cool springtime air, and our hopes and dreams live in all the seeds we have sown. It is spring when we return to the inner child that resides deep within each of us, abundant with hope and promise. We find ourselves and are reminded not simply of who we are, but that we belong here, on earth, the only home we have, the only home we have ever known. All of the heaviness, grief, pain, and weightiness of life is still there but is carried above us on the springtime winds, just like the dandelion seeds we blow afar in all directions. And for now, it is enough.
xxxx Natalie
T.S. Eliot, “Little Gidding”
"We are currently at the precipice, awaiting free fall." Ah, that. Yes! And what the hell did I do with that parachute? Oh, that's right? I thought I was learning to fly!
Loved this, Natalie, and the 5 seconds of killdeer babies made me grin widely. Thank you!