What's a March Farmer to Do?

Just like the weather, we farmers never quite know what to do in March.

If it's a snowy, cold March day, shouldn't we go out to the nice warm propane-heated greenhouse, and tend to our tender little green seedlings? Or, since it's a snowy, cold day, shouldn't we stay inside, and work on all our unfinished winter house projects?

Then again, if it's a sunny, warm March day, shouldn't we groom our draft horses, who are starting to shed like crazy? Or, since it's a sunny, warm day, shouldn't we stay inside, and work on all our unfinished winter house projects?

But maybe it's a wet, muddy March day, and we should clean out the tool area, in preparation for the garden season? Or, since it's a wet, muddy day, shouldn't we stay inside, and work on all our unfinished winter house projects?

If you were one type of farmer, say the enthusiastic, optimistic, loves new projects and getting things started type, as in my fellow, you would say “Yes! Yes! Yes!” to all the first options in the pairs of questions.

If you were another type of farmer, say the steady, let's pull over and think about it, loves to finish things up and put them tidily away, as in me, you would say “Yes,” very calmly and quietly, and somewhat doggedly, to all the second options.

So what's the perfect solution to March? Well, my fellow farmer could go out to the tender green seedlings and the nice hairy horses and the disheveled tool shed, and I could stay inside and finish all the winter house projects.

But heck, why does he get to have all the fun? What I really want is for both of us to stay inside and finish all the winter projects, and then have fun together with the very beginning of the season. But in March, my fun-loving farmer fellow doesn't think it sounds all that interesting to stay inside and sort papers, or make garden improvement lists, or organize cupboards, or make sewing repairs.

March is time for action! Time to fire up the heated greenhouse! Time to sow the first seeds! Time to groom the horses! Time to clean up the tool area! Time to start getting the horses and farmers in shape for the season, by harnessing and taking little jaunts down the road with the forecart! Now that sounds like fun!

Gee, somehow I can't make all those unfinished winter house projects seem all that interesting either.

Then I have a brilliant idea: what if we do both things at once?

We could water the seedlings in the greenhouse at the same time as we discuss last season, and what went well, and what didn't. Our leeks were great; our tomatoes were not as abundant as usual; the soybeans were fantastic; some varieties of winter squash rotted in the field. We can solve all these problems as we admire our pretty onions and tomatoes and cabbage and bok choy and basil poking their little green heads out of the soil in the flats.

Then too, we could groom the horses at the same time as we think about what projects we still want to finish in the house. Do we really need to go through all our books and clear out some? Or is that kind of a silly idea, we love books, let's let them stay! Likewise, do we really need to go through twenty years of paper tax records, keeping only what is necessary, and tossing the millions of gasoline receipts from 2003? Heck, no, we've still got room in the cupboard; we can stuff a few more years of receipts in there. Meanwhile, look at the pleasure we're giving the horses, as they lean blissfully into the currycombs and brushes.

Plus, when we go outside to get that tool area in shape, we could pretend we're really cleaning out the closets. Now that is brilliant. And when we're taking a little jaunt with the horses, we could pretend we were making sewing repairs. Yes! The possibilities are endless!

Of course, we might not actually, as in tangibly and visibly, get anything accomplished in the house during March. But all that thinking and talking and pretending could well lead to some house project action . . . next winter, for example.

Originally published in the Monadnock Shopper News, March 10 -March 16, 2021

Boss Hoss : The Dash, the Dance, and the Draft Horse

The snow is falling peacefully this morning on our fields and our woodshed and our house and our garden and our barn, and on our four draft horses in their winter paddock.

The snowflakes are like stars on the horses' winter coats, two red-brown-gold, one black, and our new horse, Clyde, bringing the herd together with his red-brown coat and black points. Of course, our black horse, Ben, may beg to differ on this peaceful bringing together point.

Back in the old days, as in last winter, when we had just three horses, Ben was the “boss hoss,” and that suited him swell. He was the first to the water, first to the feed, and the one who always started the game of ring around the hay piles, as he shuffled the other two horses from one hay pile to the next, sampling them all, and declaring his preference, or at least declaring his ability to shuffle the other horses around.

Now Clyde is the boss hoss, and he is a much less bossy boss. Yes, he's the one that stands at the barn door now, waiting for the first load of hay to come out. But even when he is all riled up, it's never with Benny's fire and pinned ears and mad dashes at other horses.

Clyde is more of a dancing boss, shaking his head and body all over in a lively trot, while the others slide out of the way. It's as if he's just expanding his presence, saying “Hey, here I am, don't forget,” rather than giving out orders. The dancing has the same effect as the dashes, but it's a lot more peaceful, in our view.

Whether fiery or peaceful, the horse relationships are more complex than we farmers think, as we hover at the edges of the horse world, and at the edges of our own understanding of the horse world. We know that the hierarchy in horses isn't a strict one, and that it depends on many factors, including scarcity and abundance of food and water and space, and various combinations of mares and geldings, and on which horses are related and which horses are pals.

Now we have, for the first time, one mare and three geldings, only two of which are related, which has led to this: Clyde, who can push Ben and Moon away; Ben, who can push Molly and Moon away; and Molly, who can push Clyde and Moon away. If you're following all that, you will see how strange it appears to us: Clyde over Ben, and Ben over Molly, and Molly over Clyde. Plus there's Moon, who mostly gets to eat with everybody, even if he doesn't get to push anyone else away.

With all this relationship shifting, we have had to figure out the best way to feed our horses little treats, which can sometimes cause a big uproar in the barnyard. We've tried various techniques, and sometimes it is all a little too close for comfort, with two or more big horses squealing or threatening each other, and the puny human in the middle with the apple core.

Of course, the humans have to function as boss hoses all the time, in order to even work safely with such big animals. But we are boss hosses more like Clyde, just expanding our presences if necessary, or, if we can, figuring out less contentious ways to bring treats without getting accidentally run over.

Our latest experiment was when we brought the horses holiday apples and carrots. I had two apples for each horse, plus a little pile of carrots divided up. I planned it all out. There were three people, and four horses, two of which always eat happily together. Thus one farmer went straight to Clyde, one went straight to Ben, and the third to Molly and Moon, with no treat rumors spreading ahead of time.

Oh, how peaceful it was! No racing, no squealing, no threats of hooves or teeth. It also helped considerably that it was one of those quiet mornings like today, since a windy high-pressure day or a storm will cause the herd to whirl and kick and squeal and feint and race just for the whoop of it all.

Sometimes a whoop is fun and exciting. Sometimes it's not. Sometimes it's nice to have a rest from whooping, to watch the snow fall on the fields, to feel a horse's soft lips on your palm, to savor the connection between the apple, grown here on the farm, the horses, living and working here on the farm, and the farmers, right in the middle, and held up by it all. Given, of course, that we're not being run over by it all.

Originally published in the Monadnock Shopper News, Feb 10 - Feb 16, 2021

Farming's Wifty Realms

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

From Frantic to Pleasant: December on the Farm

It's fun to be a vegetable farmer in December, when the work goes from frantic to pleasant. Moving from a high of 14 to 16 hours of outside work a day in July to the lovely four or five hours a day in December is a very welcome change.

This is when, if it's not raining or snowing, we roll up irrigation and pull the dead stalks out of the garden beds and fix machinery: that broken foot board on the spreader, for example, which has given me fits all summer, when I saw my fellow farmer teetering his way up to the seat, using the tire and the thin metal edge of the support that should be holding an intact foot board in place.

“We have to fix this before we need the spreader again,” I would say, with great determination, but once the loads of compost were spread, we were sucked into the next whirlpool of transplanting or watering or weeding, and there we would be, the very next time with the spreader: my fellow teetering, and me worrying.

Of course, when the horses decided to go ahead just a little sooner than they should, this only compounded the problem, as the spreader lurched forward and my fellow pretty much fell on to the seat. This is much better than falling off the seat, and then falling under the spreader, which, I am very glad to report, has not happened. But it could, and I am very pleased when December comes, and we have enough time to take on this repair project.

We are also busy (well, sort of busy, four or five hours a day busy) this time of year repairing our greenhouses, replacing the hipboards and baseboards. This is in hopes that we won't have the experience of a few years ago when a big windstorm nearly took away my greenhouse and my fellow farmer, who was trying to hold the greenhouse down in the big wind. The combination of rotting hip and baseboards, a rip in the plastic, and a big wind was not a good one. Then, as hard as it is to believe, this all happened again, the next year, with the next greenhouse in the line. Perhaps we finally learned something, because this year, in spacious December, we are replacing the boards in the third and fourth greenhouses before an emergency, instead of in the middle of an emergency.

This time of year is also when, if it is raining or snowing (oh December joy! we don't have to work outside in the rain or cold whether we feel like it or not, as we must in July), we also work on the insides of the greenhouses. We unhook all those millions of little clips that held the tomatoes upright on their strings. We cut down the strings. We pull out the rows of dead plants, and pile them up to compost. We dig the beds, pull any weeds, and then add finished compost to the soil. It's a good amount of work, but it is all delightfully non-urgent this time of year, and there is the wonderful feeling that anything we do now will only help us next spring.

Anything we do now will only help us in the spring! I like that. A lot. Especially when “anything” includes paying our bills on time, and catching up on farm paperwork, and planning for next year. It includes setting our farm kitchen back to rights, and making leisurely meals, and eating those leisurely meals. It includes getting enough sleep, and taking a moonlit walk in the fields, which happens as early as 5:30 or 6 p.m. in this season, giving us plenty of time for the meal and the sleep, and the meal and the sleep are even more restful because of the walk and the moonlight in the fields.

Of course, we love that sun, that strong sun that shone on us and our vegetables and our hayfields in July, for so many hours, that in combination with rain and soil and air make our farming and all our lives possible. We love that sun all year long, warming us up in December too.

But we also love that that moon, rising over the trees, that subtler, softer light, a radiance that reminds us that night and darkness and quietness and stillness and rest and repairs are essential too, a part of the rhythm that sustains us all.

Originally published in the Monadnock Shopper News, Dec 16 – Dec 22, 2020