Towards the end of January, I set out to visit my friend SuiSui, over in our horse pasture. SuiSui, our long-time friend and CSA member, honored us by asking if she could have her ashes on our farm someday. Someday came too soon, and that January morning was the anniversary of SuiSui’s death. We loved her, and she loved us, and she loved our farm, and we love our farm, too, mostly.

That morning I felt a little annoyed at our farm, because it was requiring me to gather financial records for our taxes, which is not my favorite thing to do. A nice walk in the snowy fields would do me good, I thought.

But the nice walk turned into a hard slog, as I went knee-deep into snow after breaking through the icy crust at every step. I had to stop three times in a hundred yards just to catch my breath. SuiSui kept waiting patiently for me, and I finally made it, and had a long talk with her about how things were going.

I was getting chilly, but I wasn’t looking forward to struggling again through the drifts. SuiSui gave me an idea: “Snowshoes!” she and the wind whispered around me, and I perked up, and trekked back.

The snowshoes are an old wooden pair, discovered when we were sorting through the piles of useful farm junk that the previous owners left. The buckles are stiff and contrary, but they work. The last time I used those buckles was when my now-22-year-old daughter was in the second grade, and she had a little pair of orange plastic snowshoes, and there was a two-hour snow delay for school. That snowshoeing was the nicest use of a two-hour delay we ever had.

This is all to say that I am not an expert on snowshoes, and the first time I fell down was when I was trying to get up from the ground after the buckling. Since the streams were still running, I didn’t want to get the snowshoes wet and attract big globs of snow or ice. I decided on the route up to the big-oak field, thinking there would be a narrow stream to cross, rather than tackling the wide stream that led up to SuiSui.

The narrow stream wasn’t as narrow as I thought, and I hugged the snowy shrubs on the bank, leaning over the water, as the shrubs poked me in the eye, and my snowshoes slithered around at an angle. But I didn’t fall in, and I made my slow snowshoe way up the big hill, with side excursions to see a nest full of snow in the bushes, and other nice things. I was happy that I wasn’t breaking through the crust. I got so warm in the sunshine that I unzipped my jacket. I went swaying and clomping along, pleased with my big adventure.

Next I went across the lane to the hayfield, which is the sunniest spot on the farm, but the snow was too soft for snowshoeing there. I had my second fall when I tried to heave me and my big feet over the stone wall. I ended up fall-crawling over the wall into the pine woods, where the snow was perfect, and I heard the chickadees, and where I zipped my coat back up. By then, I was getting a little tired, and fell some more on the rough terrain, when my snowshoes got tangled up with each other.

Then, in a perfectly satisfying conclusion to my adventure, I circled back around from the other side to visit SuiSui again. I cleverly turned my next fall into a roll under the wire fence. SuiSui was very glad to hear about my enjoyable afternoon. She said, Life’s too short for taxes. She said, Well, hurry up and get them done, and then come out again into this beautiful world.

Originally published in the Monadnock Shopper News, March 8 -
March 14, 2023

I've been reading a lot of poems this winter.

Lest you think that this farming and sustainability column is going to veer irretrievably off into poetry and other such wifty realms, let me reassure you that, in fact, I read poetry all the time, and still function as a farmer. But this winter I discovered a poem, by Thomas Merton, that pretty much sums up how I feel as a New Hampshire vegetable farmer in the winter.

There are some lovely lines in the poem, such as “O covered stones/ Hide the house of growth!” and “Fire, turn inward,” but my favorite is both the title and the last line of the poem: “Love winter when the plant says nothing.”

Oh, I do love winter, when the plant says nothing. I also love summer, spring, and fall, when the plant says a lot. But winter allows me a period of quiet contemplation that is not worried by the quantity and quality of the harvest, or the quantity and the quality of the weeds, or the quantity and the quality of the farmwork I am accomplishing.

No, winter lets me be. Winter lets me root around in a box so long neglected that I find all kinds of things I'd thoroughly forgotten. You might wonder, in this context, if I am writing of a metaphorical box, but this is an actual box, and I actually found in it, just yesterday: a book of poetry! by Jane Hirshfield!

Hirshfield is another poet I love, and apparently this book had been in a bunch of stuff my sister was trying to rid her house of (oh, get that poetry away from me!), and somehow I missed it. But here is this lovely new book, right in my lap, and now I can think about both Thomas Merton, the Trappist monk/writer, and Jane Hirshfield, the Buddhist poet, at the same time.

Also, if you're still with me in this sort-of-farming column thus far, now I can say as well:

I've been reading a lot of theology, or religion or spiritual kind of stuff, this winter. (I repeat: lest you think that this farming and sustainability column is going to veer irretrievably off into those wifty realms, let me reassure you that, in fact, I read theology/religion/spirituality books all the time, and still function as a farmer.)

And if you're still reading this column, I will also admit to recently reading a 555 page book titled The Life You Save May Be Your Own: An American Pilgrimage, by Paul Elie, which is about the four Catholic writers Thomas Merton, Flannery O'Connor, Walker Percy, and Dorothy Day, and their explorations of religious faith through writing.

It was a long book, even for someone interested in writing and spiritual matters, and it's possible I might not have read it at all if the library hadn't been closed because of the pandemic, but there it was in my house and I picked it up. It took me a number of months to finish, especially since I started it in the high season of farming.

But finish it I did, and I particularly liked reading about Merton and his monk-life. Merton inspired many people to turn towards a more contemplative life though his writings, and, in his later years, he also found himself with a lively interest in Buddhism, and in the resonances between Christian and Buddhist contemplation.

In his fifties, Merton visited Asia and many of the spiritual luminaries of his day, including Vietnamese monk Thich Nhat Hanh and the Dalai Lama of Tibetan Buddhism. As Merton wrote, while in Asia, “There is no puzzle, no problem, and really no 'mystery.' All is clear. The rock, all matter, all life, is charged with dharmakaya – everything is emptiness and everything is compassion” (Elie 420).

Yes! Wow! and now I get to go from that beautiful understanding of the world to Jane Hirshfield, and one of her early books called Of Gravity and Angels, which is the book I just discovered in my box, and then maybe I'll go on to Hirshfield's translations of poems written by women of the ancient court of Japan, or her essays on poetry, or her thoughts on Zen Buddhism, or her ideas on science, nature, and environmental issues, all of which are directly related to sustainable farming in my mind, and probably in yours now too.

And what better place to end a farmingish column in winter then with another bit from Merton's poem: “Oh peace, bless this mad place. / Silence, love this growth.”

Originally published in the Monadnock Shopper News, Jan 13 - Jan 19, 2021

Farm Talk

Kim Peavey