First Weekly Update -

June 3, 2009

Howdy Members,

Here’s your first weekly update from the farm. The kickoff of our first “official” frost free date, June 1—brings with it long days of plantings, transplantings, potting-up seedlings, hoeing, irrigation, installation of floating row covers on the most tender crops, and week-old chicks who have already more than tripled in size. All good things. But hold up, one second there… June! It’s June! In two short months the farm has gotten off to a running start, thanks in many parts, to you. I can’t stress enough the value of knowing there is a community backing the work, and the harvests to come, and my commitment to the garden and the season. Thank you.

Gratitude is a dynamic thing, and one part about farming that I love often seems to come as a disclaimer to farm work: hours of repetitive, sometimes “boring” labor. But it’s often only in these times that I can turn down the volume of my brain cranking out infinitely long To-Do lists, let my body run by muscle memory, and take in my natural surroundings—which always brings me back to gratitude.

Today it’s the bobolinks. When we were laying out the placement of the garden, Thomas and I drove stakes into the four corners of the field, and one in the dead center for perspective. These wooden stakes have turned into ideal perches for the birds, who seem to embrace the limelight like naturals, singing all through the day. Sometimes it feels like they’re surrounding me on all sides with song, and when I look up from my squash hill planting, I realize they are—even singing as they’re curlicue diving through the sky, driving out the red-winged blackbirds and maintaining their nesting territory. They blow up their chests and even their comical, colorblindedly-coordinated, sandy feather toupees stand on end and expand to call out their song for the day. To double one’s volume for song—if that’s not virtue, I don’t know what is!

Here’s a poem by Jane Kenyon.

Song

An oriole sings from the hedge
and in the hotel kitchen
the chef sweetens cream for pastries.
Far off, lightning and thunder agree
to join us for a few days
here in the valley. How lucky we are
to be holding hands on a porch
in the country. But even this
is not the joy that trembles
under every leaf and tongue.


Stay tuned for information about a weekly pickup ultimate frisbee game in Dorset and a member/community potluck!

Thank you for your support,

Mego