a man and his hoe

every day is a good day

Month: October 2017

  • Leaves of Peace


    Raking leaves is so peaceful. Nothing says peace like a pile of fall leaves. We saw two swans flying over the fields today. Perhaps they arrived this morning. Perhaps they had just flown in off the sea and were looking for their first place to rest their feet. After flying so many days, does it take swans a few days to get their land legs again? I remember as a child crossing the ocean in a boat, and feeling the boat swaying back and forth for days after we got off it. Tomorrow is the first of November, the day I often see our first swans. Seeing the swans reappear was comforting. Not everything has gone completely kaput.


    The peaceful pile of leaves is destined for the garlic and shallot beds. In a week, all the beds will be bedded down under a thick blanket of leaves. Underneath the leaves, tiny creatures and earthworms will slowly devour the leaves, taking bits of leaves deeper and deeper into the earth until the leaves become one with the earth. Perhaps by using wheelbarrows of maple leaves, I can flavor the garlic and shallots with a hint of maple. As they say, it’s all about terroir.

  • First Frost


    Frost left a light touch this morning, fringing leaves on the ground with a delicate white fleece. It was winter’s first soft walk through the garden. All the garlic is planted. Some tulips and shallots remain for me to safely bury in the earth before we get a real freeze.


  • Slurpling and Mooffling


    On a misty morning, I hear the snow geese flying overhead. When I’m lucky, the mist parts, and the snow geese flutter across the blue sky.




    A generous gift of pine needles from friends makes for nice, soft foot paths between the garlic beds. They make a pleasant place to rest my knees when I plant garlic cloves. Happiness are friends with a gigantic pine tree who don’t know what to do with all the pine needles and pine cones that fall from the tree.

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    The ducks are slurpling through water-soaked grass. Their feeding sounds like a babbling brook. In dry brush and grass they moofle along, filling the air with soft moofles. They chirp, whistle, and grunt too.

  • Art In Every Slice


    Slice a colossal chioggia beet vertically and you get a piece of art in every slice. These slices are destined for a pot of borscht. With chioggia beets, you don’t get a deep red borscht, but it tastes just as good.



    An onion I found hiding among the weeds, revealed four developing buds inside. Grow your own food, and you are freed from the tyranny of standards. Grocers and produce buyers demand that the produce they buy adhere to rigid standards of size, color, shape, and weight, which means that any onion you buy in a supermarket has been stripped of any personality. Only the ones which conform to a rigid standard of what an onion is supposed to look like make it onto the store shelves. But grow a row of onions and you get to pick them at all stages of growth, and enjoy an endless variety of sizes, colors, and shapes.

  • A Study in White and Black


    While prepping another bed for garlic, I dug up some garlic I missed pulling up this year. It had already sprouted, sending magical white roots deep into the cool earth. There is more root than bulb. You have to admire a plant that can grow robustly when the earth has chilled.



    Back into the cool earth the garlic will go, row upon row. Underneath the surface, their magical roots will spread and intertwine, making a network more intricate and complicated than you can imagine. The next time you walk past a bed of garlic, picture those magical white roots spread far and wide underneath the surface.