Root of the Root

on the birth of our farm

Reina and Pierre, my two favorites of our Pineywoods Cattle.

The root at the root of everything was the soil, just below, unseen. When you fertilize the soil, growth becomes easier, inevitable even. In the end, it was the growth that mattered most. We each of us relying and thriving together, connected in so many ways, feeding and nourishing the other in that age old cycle of eternal return. Soil work is soul work, didn't you know?

Let me tell you of a new fairytale, one that blossoms beneath our feet, across the horizon, encapsulated in a field of wildflowers or a starry night sky in the dead of winter. Myths so elemental, stories so close that though we breathe them in daily, too often we miss them dancing right before our eyes. Whether these stories are distinctly modern or echo something far more ancient than we could imagine, I will leave that part of the story up to you.

There were years I spent looking, searching when all along, they were right in front of me. Angels guiding my steps, trolls guarding bridges, kami inhabiting the forests, secrets strolling carefree, fairies orchestrating sunsets, gods making rain. When you farm and live in nature, the question is never whether you believe, but what exactly you believe in. When your garden is planted and the spring rains refuse to come, then you believe in something. When your lambs are stolen in the night by coyotes or a chicken is sacrificed to an owl, it is then that you cast your curses toward something, anything that will receive your pain. How long before it hits you? How long will your hubris last? How little do we know, how feeble our grip on this plane is. It is then that the feeling occurs to you: the gods are certainly laughing now.

As the years go by and your hands begin to resemble the good earth you dig and grow in, you start to wonder just who your ancestors are. Who you are.

At dusk as the barn swallows playfully dip and dive in front of you, leading the way, you lean in, hoping to glean more. What magic is that woodpecker enacting day after day? What kodama inhabits that old oak tree on the edge of your woods? Who is to say that the herbs we consume aren't consciously adapting to our needs? What exactly is happening just beneath our feet, in the soft warm earth below? How did our ancestors know which mushrooms to eat and the poisonous ones to leave behind?

A twig snaps sharply off in the distance but before you can turn, a blue jay loudly distracts you from overhead. Only then does it hit you: shapeshifters hide among us. Be kind to them, be kind to each other. Tread carefully, or have you forgotten already? Gods walk amongst us: tree and mushroom, plant and flower, birdsong and sunset, mud and shit, animal and human. Each guest a possible angel in disguise.

Are we really the authors of our stories or simply a performer?

To tell the story of our farm is to weave a tale of growth and an astonishing awakening. How long I lived life with my eyes half closed, seeing yet somehow not, listening with half my senses, ready with answers that were not my own.

Nature, my mentor, teaching me how to see. The work is a daily meditation on the importance of slowly building toward something more. Temples are not erected overnight, they take time, effort, work, patience. My companions along the way opened my eyes, sharing secrets of the universe at once mundane and extraordinary. Oh, the tales I could tell you of wizard mantids, kitchen scraps transformed to black gold, piglets just born, cow dung writhing with magical beetles, that first cosmo of spring, the moon and sun, trees whispering in the wind and the ever-dancing light weaving her way through it all.

Harmony exists in chaos and this is in full view when you have an animal and vegetable farm. Each is a chaotic vortex of energy spiraling into a symbiotic working whole. I have learned more from simply observing than from any book on farming that I've ever read. Put down your books, do the work, dig your hands deep into the good earth and with a little luck, a lot of learning and more work and failure than you think you'll be able to endure, the rest will follow.

Each season is different but familiar, like a long-lost friend whose face you recognize in spite of all the changes.

Weeds abound. They are your navigators, informing you what the soil needs. Tomatoes, herbs, flowers, and vegetables are abundant, too, as long as you learn to listen. Growth takes tending, attention, and care. The animals feed and nourish the soil, giving life to the worms and microbial life just out of sight but always on my mind. In a world so focused on the rugged individual, our cultivated connections voice a revolutionary cry.

Through my work with this land I've come to believe that everything cycles back to the health of the soil, nature is often more brutal than kind, alchemical magic occurs when you put hands to good earth, stubbornness is a virtue, the occasional animal sacrifice to the fox and owl gods is unfortunate but necessary, hard work is more important than good vibes and that access to healthy food shouldn't be a mere privilege but a right.

Every day we try to do something that might not quite compute with our modern world and each day through sweat, blood, tears, hard work and many lessons learned, we come just a bit closer to realizing our goals. Miracles to set your watch by, season by season, with each rise of the sun, another day, another opportunity to participate in the here.

The root at the root of everything is the soil, just below, unseen. When you fertilize the soil, growth becomes easier, inevitable even. That's when the real magic begins. In the end, it was the growth that mattered most. We, each of us, thriving together, connected in so many ways, feeding and nourishing the other in that age old cycle of eternal return. Soil work is soul work, didn't you know?

xxxxx Natalie