Growing a culture as well as crops

The amaryllis bulbs, which were tucked away in a cool dark place at Christmas last year, are now repotted and showing signs of life. Maybe we’ll enjoy Easter amaryllis blooms this year?

There’s now more than half a dozen jonquils blooming on the downstairs bookcase in the west-facing window. The hyacinths and tulips in the planter are emerging and getting ready to flower.

The Better Half is baking one of my favorite kinds of cookies. That, and coffee, and good books, may help me make it until spring moves from inside to out. Would that snow season were as brief as lilac season.

local lilac season: mid-May

Photo by J. Harrington

I’ve, once again, knocked down icicles growing over the front stoop steps and thrown more chunks of ice melt salt onto the roof over the stoop. I think part of the issue is that the downspout gets blocked with ice so melt water also fills the gutter and overflows and refreezes.

Last night’s celebration of the Land Stewardship Project’s 40th anniversary, with Robin Wall Kimmerer as keynoter, was heartening. I’d like to see US phase out industrial agriculture and CAFOs. Meat raised for food is a significant source of greenhouse gases. This morning I finished reading Arwen Donahue’s Landings, a Crooked Creek Farm Year. I enjoyed reading the words and looking at the drawings. Donahue flagged one concern that troubles me deeply. As a society, how do we enhance the opportunities available to rural residents so they don’t feel compelled to move away to urban centers for what are perceived to be better opportunities? Industrializing agriculture to produce field corn (ethanol) and soy beans (biodiesel) is not feeding the world and it is contributing to automation of agriculture and consolidation of farms, reducing rural populations.

The Farm

By Joyce Sutphen

My father’s farm is an apple blossomer.

He keeps his hills in dandelion carpet

and weaves a lane of lilacs between the rose

and the jack-in-the-pulpits.

His sleek cows ripple in the pastures.

The dog and purple iris

keep watch at the garden’s end.

His farm is rolling thunder,

a lightning bolt on the horizon.

His crops suck rain from the sky

and swallow the smoldering sun.

His fields are oceans of heat,

where waves of gold

beat the burning shore.

A red fox

pauses under the birch trees,

a shadow is in the river’s bend.

When the hawk circles the land,

my father’s grainfields whirl beneath it.

Owls gather together to sing in his woods,

and the deer run his golden meadow.

My father’s farm is an icicle,

a hillside of white powder.

He parts the snowy sea,

and smooths away the valleys.

He cultivates his rows of starlight

and drags the crescent moon

through dark unfurrowed fields.

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