every day is a good day
It’s mid August, the coolness of Fall is in the morning air, the stacks of firewood have dried, dry leaves are gathering on the grass, baby melons are swelling, champagne grapes are turning purple.
So much happens outdoors every day, it’s hard to spend time indoors. What am I missing when I’m standing at my desk doing bookwork? What are the chickens up to when I’m in the kitchen cooking? What color are the corn tassels now? Outdoors is where it all happens.
It was Wednesday afternoon, a warm, sunny day. I don’t know who was needing a nap more, Hazel or her chicks. Snoozing next to or inside their mother’s feathers is what little chicks are meant to do. One day, some of her chicks will be doing the same with their own. This is what gentle farming is about. Not rushing things. Letting plants and animals grow at their own pace, do their own thing, and enjoy their lives.
For the first time in their lives, baby kohlrabi are getting a soft shower of rain drops. What do they think of the rain? Does it taste better than the well water I use to water them? A few more weeks, and the baby kohlrabi will grow up and be ready for market. Isn’t odd that you never hear about humanely grown vegetables? You can get someone to certify that you have raised your chicken, pigs, and cows humanely, though those certification standards are abysmally low. How about humanely grown produce? What would that mean to a kohlrabi? Having soil free of pesticides, herbicides, fungicides? A biologically rich environment? Rich soil full of earthworms wriggling around your roots to keep them aerated and fertilized? No heavy tractors rolling through the fields, compacting the soil and terrorizing the inhabitants? A quiet field so you can hear the songbirds? Clean air flowing through your leaves?
A number of years ago, a dead cottonwood fell over in a windstorm. It’s now home to a thick bed of moss and brilliant yellow something. They have years and years of food in that cottonwood trunk. No worries for them. As long as there is enough moisture, they won’t go hungry.
I’m outdoors much of the day, and it seems that most things in nature never work. I saw Hazel taking her chicks around the pond, through the woods, and out by the compost bin. No matter where she took the chicks, there was something for her and the chicks to eat. I never once saw her working, earning money, and paying someone for the food she found for her chicks.
It’s the same with the trees and bushes and grass. None of them are working. They lift their leaves toward the sun, and at no cost to them, absorb the energy they need that is streamed, free of charge, to them from 93 million miles away. They don’t pay anyone for the rain or the wind that blows through their leaves. How many trees and plants and animals would exist if they had to live in an economy where they had to work and pay for everything they needed?
We’ve been here more than ten years now so I’ve looked at this circle of beech trees many times. This morning I saw a cedar had sprouted between two of the trees. Trying to take a photo of the cedar sapling, I looked inside the circle of beech trees for the first time. Ten years here and I’d never done that before. Wow! Instant art. Wonderful, delightful things are everywhere. All you have to do is look.
