resistance

It's sunny, almost 35 degrees, and they say it will be climbing into the upper 50s later this week.  Yesterday I saw nearly 20 Robin Redbreasts in the kitchen garden, flitting about, apparently finding food on the surface of the snow. And this morning, while driving the backroads, I heard on the radio a warning about bears in the region, who reportedly are waking early and searching for food--take in your birdfeeders, people.

Last week we got about a foot of snow, which remains blindingly white, and hard-crusted.  Even though it disrupted some of my plans, I was deeply grateful for the snowfall.  Not only because it promised much-needed eventual moisture for the gardens, but also because it meant that it was winter, still.  At least for a few more days...

I do not remember ever wanting the winter to linger as I have this year.  I paced through the unsettling warmth of January and February, wishing for snow, snarling at the brown dead grass, and fretting about the unseasonable temperatures.  After the giant snowfall (maybe 18"?) in late October (and the devastating hurricane of August), the absence of snow this winter seems to confirm that our seasons are all twisted up, and that I should be prepared for another blizzard in May.  Wouldn't surprise me now.

It's distressing, this tumultuousness, this inability to count on dividing lines between seasons.  I worry about our being able to reliably produce food in an increasingly uncertain climate.  Bad timing to have a new passion for growing food, as it appears to be headed for an even more challenging future. 

In the face of this reality, I am chagrined to find myself resisting the calendar, trying to deny the fact that it's March already.  Wishing that somehow it was still January, that we had 8 more weeks of winter ahead.  I should be excited to start celery, parsley, and onion seeds, but I'm dragging my feet.  I'd rather sit by the woodstove and read a book.

I know that part of this longing arises from the sheer busy-ness of this winter--I want to hibernate still.  It's been an incredibly busy couple of months--December was consumed by a big vacation (learning to ski!), and the holidays.  January was also intense--I joined a writing group and began a new health regimen, and Anne was in the throes of deciding whether to take a new job and to leave NYC.  And then in the first three weeks of February, her decision was made, and we had to find a moving company and a new storage unit, pack, and vacate our apartment.  In the midst of all this, there were seeds to order, beans and corn to shell, and dried peppers to grind.  The winter went too fast.  And people wonder what farmers do all winter...

But, in the end, no amount of resistance or desire for rest changes today's date, or the fact that it takes a long time to germinate celery and parsley seeds, and even longer to get those little plants sturdy enough to be planted outside.  I've got to start now, even if I'm not ready to go.  At least it's bright outside, clear blue and shimmering white...

"what doesn't bend breaks"

We said goodbye this weekend to Long Island City, the neighborhood in New York where we've lived for 15 years.  We walked down to the piers (remember when they first started building this park?), and looked across at the city skyline (remember when we came down here and cried as the towers smoldered?), and looked back at the neighborhood (remember when there were no luxury condos down here?).  In the last few days we've been flooded with memories of friends who've long moved away, overwhelmed with gratitude for our wonderful neighbors, and delighted with the last of those little everyday interactions with the laundromat owner, Dulal, the young restauranteur, Elia, and all the folks on the street.

I remember now: New York City is a heartbreakingly beautiful place to live.

I am so grateful to remember this.  When I started going to the sisters' farm, back in the spring of 2009, I was so tired of the city--of the packaging, the garbage, the pollution, the noise, the incessant concrete.  I was tired, bone-tired, and feeling so unhealthy.  Getting my hands in the dirt, and breathing deep under an wide-open sky, I began to revive.  And now, three years later, I'm revived enough to appreciate the beauty of NYC again.  There is so much to love about NYC: the amazing density of so many life stories, the limitless ability of people to live alongside and to befriend those who are unfamiliar, the skillful street art of countless hands, the unfathomably deep human drive to build and build and create.  I love New York.

But it's no longer home.  Something shifted in me some years ago, when I felt called to get close to the land, to get close to food, to simplify.  And over the last few years, Anne and I have learned so much--about growing, harvesting, preserving, and preparing food, about the Transition movement, about the New Cosmology, about permaculture, about natural building, about prayer and meditation and being deep-down quiet.  About being creatures of this world.  And as we learned, our center of gravity kept shifting, slowly, slowly, but inevitably away from the city.

Sometime during the last year, Anne began to feel called to work on environmental issues once more, as she had done many years ago, with me.  The Universe works in wonderful ways:  In April, Anne will begin as the national staff development director for the Public Interest Network (TPIN), and will be based here in Amherst, MA.  TPIN is the umbrella organization of all the state public interest research groups (PIRGs) and related organizations; Anne and I met each other nearly 20 years ago, working as campus organizers for the Massachusetts PIRG.  In the last 14 years, Anne has been blessed to have truly enjoyed her work with the Episcopal Church Foundation and she will miss her great colleagues there.  But we are both thrilled that her work will now focus on staff development, one of her true talents, and that she'll be based in Western Mass.  We'll be able to live together full time, again.

You know, we have this idea in our culture that time progresses in a linear fashion, that we move along, inexorably, in one direction.  But I'm learning that perhaps our lifelines can be more curved, that they can circle back, arc and bend.  Perhaps more like a spiral, than a line.

While packing up all our stuff the last couple weeks, I've been listening to a lot (and I mean A LOT) of Ani DiFranco.  She's been my long-time favorite musician--scrappy, earnest, huge-hearted, and fierce.  Listening to her music these past few weeks was a kind of retrospective on my life, and I enjoyed remembering all her different phases.  Seeing her the first time in '93, alone on the stage in Somerville, tiny with a huge guitar and black duct tape securing her guitar-pick press-on nails.  Driving the back roads of Massachusetts with my friend Shannon, blasting Ani on the tape-deck.  Buying "Dilate" and playing it for Anne in our apartment at Union Seminary, saying "Wait, wait, you have to listen to this song..."  Waiting in line for hours for her open-admission concert at SummerStage, with Jeni and Ryan.  Seeing her at Irving Plaza, with Vince and David.  Driving to her concert in New Haven with Brian and Jim riding the whole way in the back of the truck.  Her band growing from one drummer, to drummer and bass player, to having Maceo Parker on the trumpet.  Her sound evolving, changing all the time.  And then going to her concert this summer, with just Ani on the stage again, alone, tiny, with a big-ass guitar.

The circle loops back on itself, but is not the same.  The empty room is not so empty after all.  I feel as if I am in love with the past and the present; I can hold them both in my heart.

While we were packing, Ani's song "Buildings and Bridges" came on the queue, and Anne remarked about how this song captures her love for the city, and for life:

buildings and bridges
are made to bend in the wind
to withstand the world,
that's what it takes
all that steel and stone
are no match for the air, my friend
what doesn't bend breaks
what doesn't bend breaks

Tasting summer during dreamtime

A few months later….

Coming back from a long break, and it feels like I owe an explanation.  I don’t have one.  Somehow I just stopped writing, and I don’t really know why.  Lots of things happened to distract me: a giant garden, feeling lousy and then getting better, settling into a new farm and home.  I could have been writing all the way through, but didn’t.  Maybe I needed to nourish my introvert.  Maybe I was feeling “off my game” and didn’t know what to say.  Maybe I took on too much, and I was just pushing through.  Maybe it was a bit of all of these things.  And I don’t know why I suddenly felt like writing this morning.  Maybe it’s because I’ve had a month of down-time.  Maybe it’s because I just started participating in a fabulous writing group.  Maybe it’s because I recently quit Facebook, and I want to stay in contact with you all.  So many "maybes."  Here's what I  know:  I’m happy to be back.

I am enjoying the fruits of the summer, with snow now outside my window.  I love this about farming—the opportunity to preserve and enjoy the harvest the whole year through.  Right now I have a big bag of tomatoes defrosting on my counter, which I’ll turn into sauce or soup.  Most every day I have a bit of homemade sauerkraut from this summer’s bumper crop of cabbage.  Yesterday, I added some roasted sweet peppers to my eggs for breakfast, and then had some green beans with my dinner.  And I’m eyeing that container of Baingan Bhartha (Indian-spiced eggplant), prepared back in September, for tomorrow’s lunch.  Those summer flavors just stretch on and on.

About those frozen tomatoes:  Most people blanch their tomatoes and can them.  Canning is smart, because you can keep that food on your shelf, and use it even when the power goes out.  But canning also destroys about 50% of the nutrients of the vegetable.  Canning also takes up precious time during the height of harvest, and uses a good deal of energy.

When I was bringing in wheelbarrows full of tomatoes this summer, there was no way for me to process them all (i.e. dry them, can them, or make sauce and freeze it).  The garden demanded all my time, and so, after some research, I decided just to freeze them whole. Frozen whole, tomatoes keep their wonderful flavor.  But freezing them whole only works if you’re going to turn them into sauce or soup; freezing ruins their texture, and after thawing they are like canned tomatoes. 

Like everything, there’s pros and cons to freezing tomatoes whole—pro: you don’t have to process them during the great deluge known as “harvest season.”  Pro: once defrosted, you need only use a little energy to cook them.  Con: you have to think ahead when you want sauce, and let the tomatoes defrost overnight. Con: you have to hope and pray that the electricity doesn’t go down, and spoil the contents of your freezer!  But in this very mild winter, we’ve not even lost the electricity once, and all our goods are still happily preserved.

But what I love about freezing them whole is that when they defrost, they lose most of their water, which reduces cooking time immeasurably and conserves energy.  I let them thaw overnight, and when they are completely thawed, they’ll be sitting in a big pool of water.  When I’m making sauce, I toss that water, and then sauté up some onions in butter.  While the onions are turning translucent, I quickly peel the skin off the tomatoes and pinch the stem core out. When the onions are done, I throw the tomatoes in with some salt and ground black pepper, and simmer for about 10 minutes.  This quick sauce tastes heavenly: fresh, light, sweet and just acidic enough.  A bit of summer, in January.  A bit of perspective on the whole year.

And now during these quieter days, I’m thinking again about garden design, crop varieties, seed quantities.  Part of me wants to turn back the clock a month or so, and rest up all over again.  But the part of me that is relishing those summer flavors is also dreaming up next year’s palate…

The challenge will be to dream up a smaller garden, one that’s more manageable for one intern and me.  I took on too much last year—it was doable, but just.  This year I want to integrate more perennial plants into the garden, and use more permacultural techniques for building soil, improving water retention, and controlling pests.  I have a lot of ideas…

But I also have just a few weeks of “dreamtime” left; we begin starting seeds at the end of February.  Then it will be time to prune trees, set up the greenhouse, start sheet mulching.  So while there is still time for napping and sleeping late, and time for reading books in the bath, let me get to it. 

Don't Fence Me In: Writing, Reluctance, and Faith

Last June, I was invited to submit a couple of pieces of short, reflective writing for inclusion in an edited collection focused on women's life experiences and faith.  A colleague of Anne's had read this blog, and liked my writing, and contacted me about participating in the project.  I was delighted to be asked, though my inner critic assured me that the invitation wasn't really that big of a deal, since it came through personal connections.  Oh, that lovely inner critic.  Just can't let no joy be.

Anyway, the book came out in April, and I've been strangely reluctant to tell people about it.  At first I pretended to myself that I didn't want to spoil the surprise, as I planned on giving a copy to my mom for Mother's Day.  So I kept it hush hush until then.  But now it's been another couple of weeks, and I have to face the fact that I've been avoiding the topic.  Thinking a bit about about it, I suppose it's because the book is about faith, and I'm still so uncomfortable, even nervous about being constrained within a religious framework.  "But I'm not like that," I want to protest...

What is this about?  I've long known that I dread being perceived as belonging to any one group.  I can trace this back to high school, at least, when I would worry a great deal about which hallway I would choose my locker from, because location=identity, and I didn't want to be trapped.  There was "jock hall," and "rat hall" (for the metal-heads), and "band hall," and "honors hall," and "theater hall," and so many others.  I didn't want to be any one thing.  I wanted to be many, many things.  I never wanted to be nailed down, fixed in one place, defined by one group.  This driving desire affected my relationships, as I jumped from social group to social group each year, and even each semester, throughout college.

And now I see this drive again, in this moment, as I uncomfortably announce that some of my writing is in this book.  That should be a cause for celebration, right?!  And yet I watch myself trying to hold back a flood of caveats.  

How about some context, rather than a caveat?  

What I'll say is this:  I have found it difficult to write about my spirituality.  I am hyper-conscious of not wanting to offend people with all my gripes about religion.  I am reluctant to use overtly religious language, but I want to be honest about how such language has moved me.  I am sensitive about the risk of pushing people away by talking about my spirituality, a subject that exposes me as earnest and quiveringly full of hope (there go my witty, ironic friends).

And once I get started talking about my spirituality, which is mostly about being in love with the universe and in awe of life, I betray the fact that I'm not really in line with the vast majority of mainstream religious thought (there go my church-going friends).  My writing in this book was an attempt to speak honestly about my experience of faith, without alienating anyone.  

Today, an old friend posted a link to an essay that finally motivated me to write this blogpost.  The essay was written by a young man, paralyzed from the neck down, whose mother fiercely fought for him to survive his illness and to have every opportunity to achieve success.  The young man wrote that writers need to fight for their ideas in the same way, to bring them fully into being, to breathe life into their words.  I suppose I'm guilty of abandoning my ideas, too afraid to talk much about my conception and experience of faith, fearful of upsetting others, of being simplified and categorized, of being alone.  But it's time to claim the terrain that I'm traveling.

So there you go.  My first published non-academic writing is in a book called Wisdom Found: Stories of Women Transfigured by Faith.  You can take a look at samples of the book here (one of my pieces is the fourth sample down the page), and buy a copy of it online here.  (PLEASE NOTE: I don't receive any money from the sale of the book, FYI.) 

I hope someday to be less discomfited by the whole identity thing.  To care less if people mis-recognize me, to keep my caveats to myself.  Maybe it gets easier in the second forty years?  If I can get quiet enough to feel the thrum of creation, if I can slow down enough to marvel at the unfolding of a fern, I know it doesn't matter in the least.

I want to ride to the ridge where the west commences
Gaze at the moon until I lose my senses...

"Don't Fence Me In," lyrics by Cole Porter 

the garden as mirror

Freshly prepped garden bedI'm learning more and more about myself as life continues to unfold.  I suppose that's good news.  I mean, isn't that what folks mean by "life-long learning"?!  

I'm especially discovering some of my less attractive qualities.  Did you know that I can be surprisingly stubborn?  Well, I can be.  And did you know that I really don't like asking for help?  Well, apparently I don't.  And that I have a hard time letting go of a plan, once it's put in motion?  

If I'm not careful, I can work myself to exhaustion.  

Let me tell you about this past week.

After a few weeks of intermittent rain and cool weather, we finally had a long stretch of sunny, warm days.  I was determined to make the most of it.  Six full days of outdoor work.  That's a lot, after a pretty quiet, sedentary winter, and only a few days really working in the garden since April 1.  I bought and spread amendments, learned how to use a push tractor, tilled up two big patches, hauled many, many wheelbarrows-full of compost around, dug out about 400 row feet of mounded beds, planted 150 brassicas and 72 lettuces, and sheet mulched a 15x15 area around an apple tree.  I had a lot of help, thank goodness!  But for most of the time, it was me and the garden.

What I learned over the course of this week is that I like to set goals--over and over again, I created a benchmark, and then once I reached it, I set a new one.  As each day wore on, the benchmarks grew smaller and smaller, as I ran out of energy, like a top spinning down, slower and slower.  I'd start out by saying, "Ok.  Let's dig out four lettuce beds, plant the lettuces, and then till the onion bed and amend it, and then plant the onions."  By the end of the day, I could be heard to mutter, "Just one more load of compost.  Just get the compost, and spread it on the bed."  

I'm sure I made quite a sight, grunting and growling as I struggled to push an over-full wheelbarrow (it's one of those deep, heavy duty, super-big kinds) up a slight incline through tall grass.  It just didn't want to budge.  And I didn't have any more arm strength to pull it.  So with sheer teeth-gritting determination and a lot of noise, using my hips and my whole body weight like a force of nature, I eventually made it up over the "hill." When Suzi, a friend of the farm, offered to push the tiller out of the garden for me, I was surprised to find just how resistant I was.  Even though I barely had enough energy to direct the tiller, I couldn't let go and let someone else do it for me. 

The downside of this kind of determination and stubbornness is that I wore myself out.  The next day I went to farm down at my friend Leslie's.  I'm spending one day a week working in her garden, gleaning as much as I can from her farming experience.  And I could barely lift a shovel for more than a few minutes before I'd need to rest.  And each time I bent down to plant, my back and my knees creaked.  And my hands were stiff and sore...  I was disappointed that I didn't ration my energy better, so that I could put in a good day's work with Leslie; toward the end of the day, I went off to the greenhouse to do transplanting, where I could sit and still be productive.

It reminds me of an experience I had on an Outward Bound trip, when I was about 20.  I spent three weeks hiking in Colorado mountains with a group of about 10 other young people, and it was hard work, but amazing.  About half-way through the trip, I developed an uncomfortable twinge in my knee, and when we stopped to re-stock our (60lb!) backpacks with food and supplies, the doctor there cautioned me to take it easy.  I wanted so much to participate in all the activities, and I didn't want to be seen as weak . . . so I kept pushing myself, asserting that I could do more, willing it to be so.  Well, the trip guides asked me the night before we made our ascent up to the highest peak of the trip if I was really prepared to go all the way, and I should have backed out.  But I didn't, stubbornly refusing to listen to my body and wanting to be just as strong as everyone else.  The morning of our ascent, we woke at 4, packed up and began moving at first light, but after just an hour or so, I could see that the terrain was going to be too difficult.  And so I had to turn around, and someone, I can't remember who, had to accompany me back to base camp, forfeiting their own climb.  Not being satisfied with good enough, I overstepped, and that had repercussions for the people surrounding me.

Good enough.  This is the key phrase I need to remember.  I have to learn to be satisfied, when I know I've done as much as I can do.  Maybe it's the case that I'd like to be stronger, more fit, able to do more, be more experienced and able to plan my time better.  (I didn't account for having to weed out quack-grass for 2 hours, and that threw EVERYTHING off!)  But given all those wishes, I have to learn to be satisfied with the results when I know that I honestly have done my best.  I couldn't have done any more.  And so it must be good enough.

I have to remember that farming, like many things, is really about the long haul.  It doesn't do me any good to work myself so hard one day that I can't get out of bed the next.  The garden is teaching me to recognize my less-attractive tendencies: bullheadedness, compulsive overwork, not recognizing limits, lack of groundedness in my own body's wisdom.  

It's been a huge week for the garden, and a pretty big week for me, too.