Rhythm

Two months is a remarkably long time in farming. Many things have come and gone since I wrote in April. Things have been planted, harvested, sold at markets. 200 meat birds were slaughtered on a sunny May day. And the next round of birds will reach the halfway mark of their short lives this week.

Spring scampered by. Or perhaps I mean we scampered through spring. Or maybe both. To scamper: Run with quick light steps, especially through fear or excitement.

As we enter into the week around the solstice when the ‘sun stands still’ as we make our almost ninety degree turn the farm and my mind are finding their growing season rhythm. Winter was a season of rhythm. Spring was a season of rush. As we harvested lettuce for the weekend markets I realized that we were back to rhythm. We harvested the same way we have for several weeks now, and I felt comforted by knowing how to accomplish the task without much instruction. As a team we know how to harvest, wash, pack, and weigh with the smooth efficiency that comes from repetition. While new and fresh activities are a highly coveted aspect of most work environments, the scamper pace is hard to maintain. And as the workers awaiting instructions each morning at 8am it’s hard to feel connected to the feeling of fear or excitement that is propelling our pace. But all the fields are now close to being fully planted. And though 200 feet of plastic is not generally what comes to mind as a beautiful farm image, to me finally having the hoop houses up confirms for me that the growing season is here. Their undulating walls look like gigantic caterpillars and in their bellies are our 200 tomato plants. They are safe, healthy, warm, and growing in their cocoons and soon they will be dripping with red, yellow, purple, orange, green, striped, and spotted juicy and sweet fruits.

The lack of rhythm over the spring weeks caused me to forget my chicken chores more than once. And the rapidly growing grass erased our dirt paths worn over the winter. But despite the chaotic feeling, we kept at our tasks. And though the grass is now above my waist, the paths have reemerged. Our pace will not slow in the coming summer months. But rhythm is a key component to keeping up with the demand of farm life. I anticipate fall having a similar feeling to spring. This time I’ll know the importance of maintaining the sense of rhythm. And I’ll remember to keep walking along and soon the paths will be clear again.

Every Place Sucks the Same

Last week was the first week since I came to the farm that I did not sit down to write. I can’t blame my tardiness on the busy week, because one of the best things about the farm is that the pace is consistent, constant. This morning Jeff and I planted about 600 tiny beet starts and seeded several hundred more. After lunch, we finished roofing the addition to the barn. Before evening chicken chores I did some photography in the orchard for the cidery business. My days here are filled with tasks that are comfortable without being mundane. They are new and exciting without being obstacles to overcome. Contentment dulls my urge to write. I have no need to escape my surroundings. I have no emotional build up that needs releasing. So if I can find enough time in the resolute pace I hope to focus in my writing on a few main explorations:

Returning Home: Metaphors, Community, Elders
The Land: Back To, Taking Back, Growing things
Young Farmers: Finding Home, Clarity, Friendship

While I often write about the pure joys of the life I currently have, weeks roll by like a rollercoaster. I’m constantly fretting about what will happen for us after this farming season ends. I rocket sky high and freefall back down as I rapidly ride between the stress of communicating with friends as bosses and feeling that I could stay here forever with these people I love.

Some friends in Port Townsend recently went through a search to find a new place to farm and make home. They ended up staying and in expressing why they didn’t move said, “Every place sucks the same.” While it was likely a light-hearted, sarcastic comment, those words have really stuck with me. I’m constantly trying to calculate our next move to be the best choice possible. And now each time I start to flip-flop and fret that comment pops into my head. The lesson that is sticking with me is not that everywhere is bad. But rather everywhere has the same challenges. Every job has the same obstacles. So it really doesn’t matter if we find the perfect place, because it will be just as good and as bad as any other place we might choose.

So today, as I squatted between the garlic bed and the newly planted beet bed, and firmly placed both hands down in front of me to compact the soil against the tiny beet seeds, I realized, I just want to farm. And I can. And as I cut rafter beams on the table saw in the barnyard, I realized, I just want to build things. And I can. And I just want to wear my brown corduroys and brown wool sweater everyday. And I can feel alive and surrounded by beauty everyday. Maybe not necessarily here, but anywhere.

Nettle Mead

After a long sleepy Sunday morning in bed, Joe and I walked down to the bridge over the creek before breakfast. The bridge was built this fall to allow us to farm on both sides of the creek and preserve the nine-acre restoration zone surrounding the portion of the creek that runs through our farm. I remarked at all the nettles that were along the bank. Joe reminded me that those were the nettles I had to contend with after I fell into the creek last September. It was the day Joe proposed to me, the bridge had not yet been built, and we were harvesting winter squash from the fields across the creek. A fallen log was used to cross the creek then, and my foot slipped as I tried to make the long step out onto the log. The deep water swallowed me up to my shoulders and as I struggled to hoist myself up onto the bank, I dragged my body through the nettles.

Today we harvested nettles (with gloves on) and made nettle mead. We always wild ferment our brews. Meaning we mix some sort of juice with lots of honey and let the natural yeasts in the air find the sweet mixture and get to work converting the sugars into alcohol. We can’t say it always works out well, but when it does it’s been great. Nettle mead was an idea we had last year and have been waiting until prime nettle season (right now) to brew up a batch. As we’ve read up on it, turns out it’s not our brilliant idea. But we now have five gallons of sweet nettle tea sitting in our kitchen, waiting.

In the next few months, we’ll dine regularly on nettle pesto, nettle tea, and nettle lasagna.

Hospice

“What’s new?” a friend asked me on the phone today. “Oh, you know. We fertilized the garlic, one of our chickens died,” I answered.

A week ago, we noticed one of the hens was limping a bit. We didn’t think too much of it. The next day while Joe and I were doing the evening chicken chore, we found her hiding in a laying box unable to walk. Because chickens love to pick on their weaker peers, the next morning we moved her out of the orchard. We thought she’d likely have to be killed since we can’t do much with a hen that can’t walk. So we called the quiet pen we set up for her ‘hospice’. She had fresh minors lettuce to feast on and I put a bowl of grain and one of water so close to her that she could reach them without moving. The next day as we weeded the strawberry field we took all the grubs we found in the dirt to her.

Probably just because I was the one to initially get her food and water set up, I took to caring for her. But maybe the reason I was so drawn to her was because she was the first chicken I’ve ever held. We started calling her Hospice. Everyone asked about her throughout the day. I talked to her each time I walked down the path past her pen. Janet kept the positive attitude that maybe just some rest would let her foot heal and she’d be fine. Since I don’t know much about chicken health, I adopted Janet’s attitude. The following day we delivered more grubs to her as we prepped the new beds for apple trees.

Over the three days, she only moved herself twice. The first time was in freight of me, but after that she seemed to recognize me was comfortable with me tending to her. The second time she moved herself was just before dusk on the second night, and I thought that must be a sign of improving health. I excitedly texted Janet and Jeff, “Lil’ hospi hen moved herself a bit to settle in for the night, she may pull out of it yet!”

Each morning I moved her to a fresh bed of hay since without walking she pooped right where she lay. Each evening, I notice her energy decreasing, and her poop looking more and more sickly. We read up on chicken diseases and found no matching symptoms. On Saturday morning, she barely was holding her head up, she hadn’t moved herself since Wednesday night, and her poop had become bizarre. I walked to Janet and Jeff’s cabin to deliver the news. It was time to slaughter her.

Janet asked if I wanted to help. I said no. Apparently it didn’t go too smoothly. But the next time I walked down the path the pen was empty. Her carcass was composted and she will continue to be part of creating life here on the farm. It’s still sad to walk past her empty pen. But caring for her allowed me to overcome my aversion to chickens and to realize how soft their bodies and feathers are and how smooth and tender their creepy looking feet actually feel.

So, yesterday Hospice died. Today I tended to the garlic. Tomorrow we’ll plant raspberries. Such is what’s new on the farm.

Equal

The equinox passed without much notice on the farm today. The clouds were emotional all day – coming and going, lowering and rising. Just before sunset I happily stood in a brief shower and watched the heavy rain as it fell before of a backdrop of green hills and slanting sunlight.

Janet and I spent the later afternoon seeding trays of flowers in preparation for Joe and my July wedding. It was wonderfully warm inside the greenhouse as we worked and chatted, and it’s opaque arching roof made me feel distant from the world outside. Like being teenagers sleeping in together under Janet’s big down comforter. Placing the last of the six seed trays on the table, I noticed how lovely it felt to be anticipating the bouquets that would arise from the black compost. What a different experience from picking out flowers in a floral shop refrigerator. This was the first piece of our vision for the wedding to be materialized. Everything else for the wedding – from the clothes, to the food, to the decorations – will all be made by hand, and therefore likely very close to the July deadline. But I will get to watch and water these seeds everyday for the next 17 weeks. Perhaps they will offer me a daily reminder to keep it (both the wedding and life in general I suppose) simple and eager for growth and change.

It was actually a perfect spring equinox. And the vision of the sunlit-rain, green fields, warm greenhouse, and Janet and my palms full of tiny seeds as we stand side by side will likely dwell in my memory.

Land

Today we tilled new rows in a hillside to become a 1/3 acre raspberry bed. It was an oddly lovely feeling to be participating with the land this way. Not just planting and growing in already established areas, but rather watching the growing space expand down the hill. At first it was strange to be tilling up open space, but as we moved down the hill with each new row, it felt right to be using this farm land for food production. It felt like the right thing to do.



In the morning before we tilled the new beds, we went to a neighbors farm to help plant trees in his stream restoration project.

An honored mentor of ours once told us that one of the great challenges of our generation will be to rekindle the difference between land and property. As I approach my 25th birthday, I feel swept up in the tide of my peers looking to buy houses. As Joe and I consider when in the not so many years we might have a child we dream of a yard that we can dig up and grow things in. But as I live on a piece of land that supports 5+ households and is the stomping ground of 4+ lovely young children (and 10+ lovely less-young folks) I feel even more compelled to find a way to nestle ourselves into this community for more time. To be part of this land. To raise a child as part of this land.

Being on this land reminds me that our sense of place is not about ownership. It's about how we relate to the space around and beneath us. Whether it's prepping space for growing, or planting trees to protect salmon habitat.

Compost

Cleaning up from brunch this morning, I stepped outside to toss the compost over the fence into the chickens in the orchard. As I crushed up the eggshells in my bare hand, I thought about whether all farmers compost.

While it is hard to imagine any person who relies on the soil and the strength of tiny plants for their livelihood tossing their potato peels in the trash, people farm for many different reasons. In reality ¬there is probably no safe assumption about organic versus conventional or small versus large-scale farmers and their composting values. But to me, composting is one of my favorite parts of growing things.

One of the first lessons I learned when we began volunteering on farms was that crops that never made it out of the field – for lack of labor or time to harvest them or unfavorable weather getting to them first – are not waste to be lamented over. It is just part of the nature of farming. Part of the annual cycle.

There are many choices we can make on a farm to keep the cycle close to home. Yesterday Janet drove down the road to a horse farm to get a truck-load of aged horse manure. After burning the prunings from the raspberries, we put the ash into the compost pile. The pigs we get in June will dine on apple pulp all fall while we press cider. The chickens are an important part of tilling and fertilizing the soil as they are rotated around the farm.



Finnriver produces a lovely list of food that keeps our meals delicious and close to home:











Eggs
Chicken
Pork (soon!)
Potatoes
Beets
Rutabegas
Parsnips
Carrots
Leeks
Onions
Garlic
Blueberries
Raspberries
Strawberries
Marion Berries
Blackberries
Currants
Logan Berries
Apples
Tomatoes
Tomatillos
Peppers
Eggplant
Melons
Zucchini
Beans – fresh and dry
Cucumbers
Cabbage
Kale
Chard
Radish
Lettuce
Spinach
Squash
Wheat
Oats
Hard Cider
Hops
Honey






















And it all comes from and goes back to this



Compost.

The Great Chicken Escape

For three days this past week Joe and I were in charge of what we jokingly call the Finnriver Chicken Farm. Janet and Jeff were out of town, and we were to see to the two, and then three, groups of chickens. There are the two-year old laying hens in the upper orchard. And the two-month old pullets, which will start laying in June, that live on the hill above the blueberry field. And on the morning of the third day, we rose at 6:30am with a phone call from the Chimacum Post Office informing us that our shipment of 250 chicks had arrived.



We worked quickly in the morning light to unpack the noisy boxes. Janet and Jeff had left their shelter all set up and ready for them. All we had to do was settle them in with food and water and turn on their heat lamp. After just a few delays of keys to the grain room, resetting the electrical outlet, double checking what color the written instructions said the feed label was, and fixing one heat lamp bulb, we were happy to welcome these adorable little peepers to their new home. It almost made me reconsider eating them in 12 weeks.



But before I had the pleasure of holding the little fuzz balls, we had two days of wild chicken escapes.

Bright and early on our first morning as chicken keepers I stumbled into one of the laying hens at the barn. It was one of the types that are known for sneaking their way into fenced off areas of the orchard. But this little lady was quite a ways away from the orchard. Now, until the day before, I had never in my memory picked up a chicken. In recent years I’ve even developed a bit of a phobia of chickens. But here I was, keeper of the chickens. Running into one in the driveway. Luckily, this expert escapist knew the route back to the orchard and all I had to do was follow her and help her find a hole in the fence to squeeze back through. No touching required, phew.

That same morning when we arrived to feed the pullets we were greeted with young birds that had learned they had wings. As we threw one back over the fence, another took flight at our heads. It was quite a battle to get them all back on the right side of the fence. And the rest of the morning was spent rebuilding a taller fence.

On the second morning I was once again greeted at the barn by a chicken. My frustration level with the chickens was running high and I actually chased this one at a run back to the orchard. I thought maybe I could scare it enough to discourage it from exploring too far again.

I must admit, after these past four weeks, I’m no longer afraid of chickens. I happily feed and collect eggs each evening. And over the course of our first month here, I’ve even begun to develop my sense of protection for them. You see, as a chicken farmer, your enemies become red tailed haws, bald eagles and coyotes. When we take pause from pruning blueberries to admire the soaring juvenile eagle, we have to balance our awe with reality. Farming is one of the best ways to connect with land and nature. But it is a very different connection than you are provided on a day hike. In the past several years I’ve been working to develop my eye to spot hawks, eagles, vultures to know which birds to pull the car over for as the passenger dives for the binoculars. Now I must learn to use my knowledge of the wild to protect the domesticated. This even requires encouraging the farm dog to bark at hawks overhead or coyotes by the creek.

So while the chickens and I will continue to learn to work together, I will also continue to find the balance of a farming nestled among wild woods.

Farmer Kid

We’ve been farming with Janet and Jeff now for three weeks. Three exceptional weeks. Not only because we’ve had the most beautiful February weather imaginable (We haven’t worked outside in the rain once. And just this week we’ve had a few frosty mornings, but that has come along as a result of glorious warm and sunny days.) But mostly because we are blessed with working alongside people we love and respect deeply. And have a tremendous amount of fun with.

During our one hundred eighty hours of work, almost all of it has been in the blueberry field with our pruners. Repeating the same task again, and again, and again. The most challenging part of this work being to stay alert and accurate with each bush, and not become sloppy as they begin to blur together. We have seven rows (of 37) to go!

Perhaps a slightly more challenging aspect of this work is finding a balanced relationship to our work and our friends. Our friends are our bosses. Our friends are our teachers. Our friends are our community. Our work is new to us, even if we’ve pruned over 400 bushes.

The traditional job market has shown us that if we can demonstrate or simply profess rapid mastery of any task set before us we are a more desirable employee. It seems to me that resume building has destroyed our humility. I came to farm because I wanted to experience a more slow paced relationship to mastery. I want to move away from thinking my ideas are the best, and to redevelop my skills as the student. Karate Kid style.

So while I’m looking at my teachers for guidance, they are also my peers. And I also came to farm for community. I want to experience collaboration and camaraderie. But not at the expense of respect for my masters. (My masters being ‘a person skilled in a particular trade and able to teach others’ not ‘a person who has dominance or control over something.’) So I approach each day, question, and task aiming for the balance of humility, support, and friendship.

Opening the Gate

When I was young, getting out of the car to open the gate was a dreaded chore. At night, it was a momentous feat to climb my mountain of fear to get out of the car alone in the dark, let alone stand nervously as the headlights passed me by and left me running to catch up without looking back at whatever was most certainly chasing me.

After spending the past twenty-four hours visiting my family in the next town over, as we pulled up to the Finnriver gate tonight I stepped out of the car with the same dread I’ve been carrying for decades and got back into the car with a shocking breath of fresh air. Earlier this evening while lying on my parent’s leather couches and watching various sporting events in High Definition (the NBA all-star events and opening games of the Winter Olympics were both featured this weekend) I began to sense the slightest twinge of discontentment at what awaited me back on the farm. I had to hold myself back from describing my cabin to my sister as ‘small’ and ‘cluttered.’ One day of soft wall-to-wall carpeting and endless ginger ales had felt so good.

As Joe and I drove home tonight our chatter was like a freight train. Heading towards an out of sight destination and in the mean time noisy. As I stepped out to open the gate, my mental prattle was slapped silent by the amazing clamor of the quiet night. All at once I was struck by the loud sky of stars and the burgeoning calls of crickets and toads. And just as instantly I was awakened to how wrong I was to lust over the warm house we had just left. The sense of home soaked deep into my skin so quickly that I didn’t even notice the car lights move beyond me. And the cabin even felt amply perfect when I entered.

Joe and I recently found two metaphors to guide aspects of our partnership. From storyteller Utah Phillips we gathered the idea that time is a river and we are standing in it and our ancestors are the tributaries and we can bend down and touch the water and the stones anytime to stay connected. And recently we were taught of the native mythology of the salmon representing a return to home and origin, as they are creatures that travel far and yet always find their way back.

In addition to working on being comfortable in the dark, our time on the farm (however short or long it may ultimately be) is precious for its potential to guide us through relearning the mythologies that shaped us or our ancestors. It is a time when life is lived with all senses engaged. Our comforts have been exchanged for awareness and our indulgences for curiosity. In this state I hope to become more familiar with the meaning of home and the importance of return. What is it that we should be returning to? Is it best to return rather than advance? Before long it will be my job to pass along these lessons. I cannot approach this responsibility without preparation.

Not long ago my dad told me that when he first moved to live in the darkness of the mountains he was afraid at first. I asked him how he managed all those years. He told me that he forced himself to simply stand in the dark and witness that nothing frightening would happen. I cannot teach the children of my life not to be afraid of the dark until I myself am not. I cannot partake in a revival of mythology until I have searched for meanings with my own hands. I believe the best place to do that is here, where I can walk down the field to see the salmon returning up our creek. Where I can be most intimate with the life cycle of the plants and animals around me – both domesticated and wild. And where I am required to use my body each day in a way that is constructive to both the day’s work and my own physical health. There is no other place to explore the meanings of continuation and return than the place that, for the first time in my life, I wanted to stand in a dark solitary moment just a little longer.

A Choice

Sunday evening dusk has descended. I’m watching from the window in my loft, looking out over the hop and strawberry field. I see movement of farmers tidying up the barnyard. For the farmers weekends are not days off, they are the days set aside each week to catch up on the other aspects of farm life that didn’t fit into the ‘work week.’ Farming is not a job for them, it is their lifestyle. Like being an activist. Except they are the most extreme of activists because they are in the ‘street’ everyday, with pitch forks in hand. And like the activists worldwide they remain unheard and taken for granted.

I am not a fighter. My place is not in the streets of the cities. At twenty-four I am not ready to give into pessimism as my fuel for positive social change. In fact, since I believe that a more peaceful society cannot come from a violent revolution, than I must also believe that an optimistic society will not be born from cynicism. So here I am. On a farm. In what I, and many others, believe to be one of the most beautiful places in this country. Each day I rise with my life partner and we meet two of our most beautiful friends in the field to begin the day’s work. I have never laughed so much during a day of work at any previous job.

But I am not here as a form of activism. I’m not here to be a more extreme ‘locavore.’ I’m here because I really love growing things. The happiness that comes from eating food I grew is of another realm from the satisfaction I got from eating an entirely local diet. To me it is the difference between living from optimism and living from pessimism. Activists must have optimism that things will change, or surly they would give up. But the lifestyle also relies on the existence of imbalance and seeing the world in terms of its negative aspects. Being a (small, organic) farmer requires believing that there is balance and having optimism that you can work within it successfully. As an activist locavore, each food action I made was one of protest. While I came to love rutabagas, my choice to consume them stemmed more from the fact that they were not bell peppers from Mexico than the fact that they were grown in the next county over. Here each food action I make is one of optimism. Optimism that it will grow healthy, and excitement that before long I will sit around a table with people I love and enjoy the deliciousness of our labor.

I don’t know anyone who would describe me as an optimist. And I didn’t pair this concept with farming until I was already here. So in this time that I will be learning to farm, I hope to learn how to let this form of optimism permeate my future.

Now to Farming

One year ago this past December, Joe and I decided we wanted to move to FinnRiver for the 2010 growing season. We didn’t come to this decision by spinning our antique globe that hangs upside down from our ceiling and happening to place our finger on Chimacum, Washington. No, it’s not quite that exotic.

To trace the path that lead us to FinnRiver, I’ll begin with the day after Thanksgiving 2005. Joe and I had met in July of that year, and began our partnership in October. While camping and fasting in the Olympics of Washington we celebrated Buy Nothing Day (the day after Thanksgiving) with a sunny hike along the Ozette coast. We decided to a fun challenge of seeing how many days in the month of December we could ‘Buy Nothing.’ After the December challenge, we had a January of no packaging. And in March while we were on a bus traveling through Mexico, I suggested that when we returned to the US we try a year of eating locally. In March of 2006, the only folks we had ever heard of doing this was the couple in British Columbia, Canada. We soon learned we were among many trying out this challenge.

Our two plus years of eating within a day’s drive led us to working on farms in exchange for our CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) shares. In 2007 when we moved from Colorado to Washington, FinnRiver was our third work-trade farm.

While we transitioned away from a 100% local diet, we dug ourselves deeper into growing food. We became quite fond of FinnRiver and the folks that farm it. And while we lived in Seattle for the past two years, we visited quite frequently. Joe and I discussed wanting to farm with our friends here, and each time we decided it didn’t make sense. But finally we decided it actually did make sense and it was truly what we wanted to do. So, our public health and community education careers can wait. And in the meantime our connections to the meanings of health, community, and education will be nourished.

So this week we started pruning the blueberry field. We will do this for 3-4 weeks, all day everyday, until each of the 2,000+ bushes has been given our attention.

I’ve been thinking constantly about the words to describe why I’m here, and I hope to continue sharing those with you each week while I discover them. I hope to have something new here each Monday by lunchtime.

What’s brewing in my mind this week: new mythology and optimism.