To Holidays

Holidays are usually filled with chaos at our home...one of those times when everyone has very different ideas about what will make christmas, Christmas.  But this year, despite my grinch like spirits...Christmas was a time of joy.  And I am grateful.

There was time together

There was much cooking of good food.  

There were moments of silence

and laughter.

I take joy in the time spent together.  And am so thankful for my family.  The good souls who surround me.

advent writings

Kara, a good friend and inspiring soul, has summoned friends and loved ones to create meditations for advent.  For two weeks I have thought and wrote and nothing seems to come.  This season feels full of busyness.  I feel I am trying desperately to make this time of waiting to mean something.  To recognize Emmanuel, God with us, in some profound way.  But sometimes life is just life.  I have had moments where the mystery and magic has descended again, and yet I feel like most days here, back in the city, I am just trying to keep my head above water.  I teeter between great joy at being surrounded by good souls and deep discontent as I can't figure out how to "BE"  here, amongst concrete and busyness.  Christmas feels artificial amongst the carols and lights that fill the streets.  I continue to meet with friends and feel that most of the people I love are in hard places, without a sense of place, single, in a job they don't love, surrounded by people and yet not experiencing intimacy.  I know this is a time of waiting...waiting for the sun to come up again, for a baby to be born.  This is a time of expectation and hope.  And yet I feel right now I must search for hope.  Cities hold great joy around each corner...as good souls are encountered, as I walk down the street, and they hold darkness...a sense of hopelessness that I feel is at times hard to penetrate.  May I be taken hold by the mystery of this season and to take joy in the coming light.  

Magic

This is the snowy wonderland we encountered on a city christmas tree adventure.  What possibilities this season holds.  Even Baltimore becomes beautiful amongst snow and lights!

Leaving

I have left the farm...and am now home with my parents...deciding it is best to slowly come back into the real world...rather then plunging myself back into city life. I now wake up in a warm house...and wander down to the kitchen...to drink coffee...and there are couches to sit on and lamps to easily turn on...but as I drove between farm life and "real" life...I encountered the noise of the world again...the busyness on the highways...the fast food at the rest stops...the tension which is so palpable in our world...I will miss my little cabin...the candles I read by...the simplicity of waking up and walking up a hill...milking a cow...interacting with the earth...and yet this is where the people I love reside...outside the calm of farm life...and so everywhere I am there is something to miss and something to love...I left the farm with these words...given to us....

"All that I service will die, all my delights,
the flesh kindled from my flesh, garden and field,
the silent lilies standing in the woods,
the woods, the hill, the whole earth, all
will burn in man's evil, or dwindle
in its own age. Let the world bring on me
the sleep of darkness without stars, so I may know
my little light from me into the seed
of the beginning and the end, so I may bow
to my story, and take my stand on the earth
like a tree in a field, passing without haste
or regret toward what will be, my life
a patient willing descent into the grass."

The Wish to be Generous
-Wendell Berry-

How Does the Land View You?

This was the question asked of us today. We were told to go take a walk for the last hour of work and reflect...do not think of what the land needs, or how it is doing...allow the land to see you.

Snow in October...

Laying straw on Garlic and Strawberries
to keep them toasty warm this winter

Good-Bye good people

The end of a season

A View from the Apple Tree

A visit from my parents, perfect timing with the leaves and energizing me for the last few weeks

How lucky I am to be surrounded by such love

And Annie who came too...filled my spirit

The frost settles, many mornings lately are in the low 20's...I am learning the joys of hot water bottles and warm blankets...and time spent by the steamy compost:)


Collards, getting sweeter with each heavy frost...how can you not love a plant that thrives so well in the bitter cold


And then just beauty...exquisite beauty...

A tree I found on a hike...and felt very endeared by...

A

Our cows...in a communal moment

And snow capped hills...

As I enter into my final week here ...I am taking in each moment, realizing that I am surrounded by great beauty...I wonder how I will transition back to city life...if it will welcome me or if it will feel strange and foreign...I long for the people I love in Baltimore...and yet as I live this life...I milk the cow...I struggle with pulling up overgrown strawberries and throwing rotting peppers in the compost...I feel like I have found the life I have always desired. For the first time in my life I feel like I know, this is right...I am exactly where I want to be. Nostalgia is of course playing out. I will return to this lovely farm. I will try to go deeper in the world of vegetables, I will try my hand on the orchard here. I will see where this path will take me. And I thank you all for journeying with me as I explored yet another path for myself in life...I do not know what I would do without such a foundation of love...and without such incredible support. What magnificent people I have in my life. Thank you.

Signs of Fall

Inspiration!

Today sitting in a coffee shop I heard music...and as I turned a corner I saw this motley crew playing music with an eastern european sound. And signs up for Obama, a violin case opened taking donations for his campaign. There is hope...it was so good to see these young people on a corner saying vote for this man. If only all of us could use our gifts to create change in our own small ways.

The Debates at 9:00

I am waiting for 9:oo pm. It will be a late night tonight. I have sworn I would watch the debates taking place this evening. So instead of wandering down to my cabin on this rainy evening I am sitting here, waiting for 9. We have been invited to Don and Bridget's for popcorn and cable so the debates will be more accessible. They are so good to us. It has been one of those really wonderful weeks. Yesterday I was climbing up apple trees pulling down perfect red apples, with such exquisite tastes. I am overwhelmed by the realization that this is my life. The trees turning colors, the sweet smell of decomposing earth...the green of the newly laid cover crops, the shareholder who brings us cake and pears...and good words. And the open honesty that is present here...the desire to be in true community, where problems are addressed and disagreements are encouraged. Oh there are moments when life here is hard...when I don't want to talk to the same 5 people anymore. When I don't want to listen. But this week as we begin to slowly dismantle the farm I can only think what a wonderful place I find myself. November comes quickly. There is only a month left here and then I return to "The Greatest City in America". And I am ready, ready to be with those I really love. And yet right now I couldn't ask to be anywhere else then right here...and what a wonderful feeling that is.

Celebrating Five

This was a big week. Gabriela turned 5 and yesterday and today were full of festivities. The best part being the family gathering down at our campfire last night for dinner and smores. There was music and laughter and in true Gabriela fashion she brought all of us gifts for her birthday. Five is such a wonderful age. It was good to celebrate.

In other news, the farm is lovely, becoming more bare with the coming fall. We have harvested winter squash and pumpkins and are clearing our fields and laying cover crops which will add nutrients back to the soil, winter rye in one field oats in the other. The tomatoes are starting to come down and the days have been full of great blue skies and clear crisp days. The apples in the orchard and the wild ones all around are producing and filling in the air with the fragrance of decomposing swetness.

Apples everywhere!

We are canning and preserving and weeding in preparation for next year.

tomatillo salsa

This is a time of closing doors. The work of the season is over. If frost comes we allow them to take what it will. Now are the days for Kale and Collards and those beautiful greens that only get better once the frost has come. The leaves here are begining to turn, fall comes quickly here in New England...our calf has been given a name...Moses...somewhat appropriate due to his foster child state...though we all think maybe naming a calf after a person who has liberated people from captivity is not the best idea. He is still sweet but as we move him in every evening away from his mother, so we can have some milk...he's begun to kick up his legs and try out himself as liberator. So from Swissy to Moses...really I think it was safer calling him swissy...

moses being brought in for the nights

our other cows have come back from being with the bull and their calves with them...it is good to have the farm full and alive with their mooing. There is a month and a half left. It is strange to think the season has gone so fast. Tonight the moon is full again as it has been the past few nights filling the farm with moonlight.

The night walkers

Calves, Friends and Canning

This is Swissy, well he has not yet been officially named...but he is a brown swiss calf and since Don is a bit slow when it comes to naming the creatures on our farm we have taken to calling him swissy. And I think he is a wonderful cow. He came to us last thursday...just a day old and larger then charlie was. This is a big calf. he stumbled into the barn while I milked Chloe. Her head swung around and her eyes fixed on this wobbling babe coming into the barn. She did nothing but stare. She Don manuvered him into the cow pen and Chole stared as he tried out his legs, confused by his new surroundings. She stayed still...allowing me to finish milking, and then we brought him out. She took to him immediately. Welcoming him in as if he was her own. Her depression seemed to lift, she had a calf again and all was well. Swissy, is a foster calf from the dairy up the road. At the dairy the calves are removed from their mothers before they get a chance to latch on for the first time. They are bottle fed...and so teaching Swissy to go to Chloe for milk was a challenge...as he thought I would be feeding him. But he is a gentle, sweet calf...he comes when he's called...and loves to be pet....I think he has won my heart. So again there is new life here...and we are all glad for it.

This weekend I had the joy of having Jeannie and Dan come for a visit...it was so good to be with good people....to Laugh...to tour about...to be reminded of the wonderful people in my life...

A roadside stop to see the view:)

Jeannie and Dan

Our Roaring Fire...a bit tricky to start due to some damp wood...

Jeannie checking out the view!

Resting in the sun after a hike

It was a good weekend! Thanks guys for coming.


And this week I got to embark upon the adventures of canning. Monday I spent all day in the kitchen canning peaches(Em, i chose this so i could share with you) It was wonderful to be canning the taste of summer for the winter. It is good to learn how to put food away, and more and more I am thinking of staying at this farm for another year. I shall see where life leads, but as september falls, the leaves are beginning to tinge red and the nights and mornings are colder and there is time again for living. The farm is not as busy anymore...it is just good.


And these are the plums...the plum tree that unexpectedly produced. With gorgeous plums. Not a mark on them. It is strange how nature allows some things to survive. No disease, no insects...it was a lucky tree. But Yesterday as the sun was rising I found myself in this tree, harvesting plums and I thought, this is how my life should be.

When life gives you milk...

Our calf has died and has been buried deep in the compost pile...his body too will give back to this land...when we found him we called the dairy up the road...and they came over and checked him...not a thing wrong with him from the outside...amy said he looked like a healthy calf...but he was dead...and so we all knew something was wrong...maybe a poisonous weed...Saturday...he was healthy..bouncing around...it is strange to see life born and die so rapidly...he would have been slaughtered in the fall...but the suddenness of this was shocking...and Chloe let out such distressed moos...I don't know what she comprehends...but this week there is a sadness about her...she seems calmer...weathered by life a bit...I suppose death does that...

Without a calf, Chloe now needs to be milked twice a day...we are averaging 2.5 gallons of milk a day...and right now there are 4 of us here...cheese, ice cream, and butter are being made constantly...at the end of the work day...the goal is to empty some of those milk jars...and it is happening...but I think they are filling faster then we can empty them...

So the farm feels alittle darker now...I will look forward to when our other calves come home...they are off with their mothers, who are with a bull for the next two months...new life is needed as the nights get colder and the smell of rotting melons begins to fill the air...but there are raspberries...and ice cream...and visits from good friends and with 2 whole days of sun we are hoping the tomatoes will turn red...

A visit from my dear friend Lesle...sporting her farmer gear:)

Thank you all for your kind words...I read this the other day and thought it appropriate...

Enriching the Earth

To enrich the earth I have sowed clover and grass
to grow and die. I have plowed seed
of winter grains and of various legumes,
their growth to be plowed in to enrich the earth.
I have stirred into the ground the offal
and the decay of the growth of past seasons
and so mended the eath and made its yield increase.
All this serves the dark. I am slowly falling
into the fund of things. And yet to serve the earth,
not knowing what i serve, gives a wideness
and a delight to the air, and my days
do not wholly pass. It is the mind's service,
for when the will fails so do the hands
and one lives at the expense of life.
After death, willing or not, the body serves,
entering the earth. And so what was heaviest
and most mute is at last raised up into song.

~Wendell Berry~

Monday-Don is gone

Our Jersey Calf, Charlie, died today.

Back on the Farm

After a week of wonderful vacation, a wedding in boston...witnessing to beautiful souls be united in marriage, and time on lake Cayuga in upstate NY, celebrating my mothers 60th birthday...eating good food and spending time with people I love...it was good to be away and good to be back here...back to the land...as I went to boston on the train...I had stepped off the farm for the first solid piece of time since I had been here...and all I could think is what a wonderful life I am leading. And it is good to be back...the plants are all a little higher...melons have come in. And we are beginning to harvest our winter storage crops, the seasons seem to go so quickly. Today our hands were sunk deep into the soil, gathering up the first of our red potatoes, radiant nuggets popping up through the soil...the nights are getting cooler the light a little softer, and I feel summer leaving us...and the questions of what comes next fills my mind...there is a possibility to stay here for another season...a possibility to go and intern somewhere else...a possibility to dive in and work as an assistant farm manager...I feel excited and overwhlemned...and just wishing that this path could lend to more stability now...though I know it will in the future...it is hard to be rooted in places that keep changing...so the winter onions are up out of the ground, 7/200ft beds harvested yesterday....the greenhouse is teaming with this sweet crop

...and right now the sun is shining...a rare occurance as of late on the farm...drying out the rain soaked earth...and I have come back here to find a great blue heron making it's home amongst the strawberries and in the cow pasture. This is a very good place.

Garlic Harvest

This happened about a week ago...the amazing harvesting of garlic...that plant we all seem to love which does not fit in the vegetable or fruit category. No one seems to know what to call this great, flavorful species, a part of the allium family....but it is good...and how wonderful to pull it up from the earth...sending it's fragrant aroma everywhere...

The harvest begins with share holders coming out to help pull the garlic up out of its home in the soil
young and old are put to work...gabriella is as good a harvester as any...

the tracor is loaded up with lugs, to be taken to the barn for curing
the harvest done it is time to begin the hanging

the barn is full of garlic

We begin to hang it from the rafters...creating a ceiling of garlic

The work is done....one month until it is dried and ready to be consumed!