09-05-10
"Promises? Farmer? You do not, I think, believe in promises...."
There is, ahead of us, the promise of a new season. 09-02-10 "Autumn (almost)" The sunlight is different.
This is not the autumn of my New England, not the coming of Eliot's "zero winter," not the dying of the earth.
In coastal Georgia, autumn is the promise of beginning again.
We plant the farm.
Potatoes, green beans, arugula, lettuce, kale, turnips, carrots, beets, broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, bok choy....
I've been reading the promises of other farms recently:
"Fresh produce 24 weeks a year!"
"Healthy, good eating for your family!"
"150 varieties of vegetables!"
150? Really!? Then again...In the coming months we hope to see such bounty.
The weather, the slanting sun, the farm is making promises for the future.
"I know you," a friend tells me, "you do not believe in promises."
There is truth to this but not the lack of faith such words insinuate.
I do believe in the promise of something more to come. Not, perhaps, in the promise of 150 varieties (there will, most certainly, be failures) but in the promise of the new.
"What," everyone asks, from chefs to CSA members to friends who live states away, "What are you growing new this year?"
New, always new.
New this year is the promise of a purple carrot, a dark, bruise purple carrot. Beautiful in its difference.
Also, a red iceberg lettuce, a sweet red onion (that holds "promise"), a larger, sweeter tatsoi, a beautiful new golden beet.
Mostly, though, there are the promises of tradition, the promises of crops we've tested and loved.
Green Magic is our broccoli of choice; Mokum the best carrot we have ever grown; TenderSweet an amazing cabbage that I never want to be without.
We have tested the past and found it not lacking (at least not all of it).
In the pastures, the nanny goats hold promise too.
Abby, Little Girl and Bucket all swagger around the fields, nibbling tender new grass shoots, their sides heavy and beginning to sag with the promise of the kids they carry.
By late October, their will be kids; now there is only the promise.
My colt is learning to balance on the lung line, learning to carry a saddle and bridle, learning to be a grown-up.
("His color has changed," says a friend who had not seen him in some time.
"Yes," I say, "he's going to be totally gray next year."
"And he's grown," A says.
"Yes," I say.
"He's not a kid anymore," A says.
"No," I say, "no, but he still has a way to go, he's still just a promise.")
Autumn comes, and with it the promise of new seasons, new adventures, new successes and new failures.
I am, I admit, skeptical of promises, but that is not to say that I do not believe.
In the mornings, the dog wakes me, poking her nose at me again and again until I roll over and rub her ears, but even she is not as quick as she was when the sunlight caused the roosters to stir at 5:45am.
These days we are lucky to roll over by 6:15am. (Lazy farmer!)
The light slants differently too.
Beside the potting shed, the trays of started seedlings have to be moved from the protective shade of the fig trees and muscadine vines, "Too much shade," they say as they stretch towards the light, "more sun, please. Just a little more."
In the gardens, our cover crops are plowed under one by one, green manure to feed healthy soils, one crop gone to make space and birth for the next.
We are beginning to seed.
The first round of pastured beef has been slaughtered, only two steers remain on the farm, and the cows are gleeful in their freedom.
This week, a week of hay baling, we give the cows the end of a 600lb round bale of hay.
They take pride in unrolling the entire bale all of the way across the pasture, pushing and butting at it until there is nothing left but a trail of hay, scattered about.
Then they stand under the live oak, pleased with themselves and their accomplishments.
They look like old washer women, trading stories and banter, content with themselves and their lot in life.
The white cattle egrets gather then, sit on the cows backs and pick flies, congregate in the trees and squawk and chatter in a language all of their own.
Papa B calls to say that the queen raising is done. I am not entirely sure that he is pleased with my efforts but he is pleased with the efforts of my largest hive. Valhalla has given birth to many, many new queen bees.
I have doubled my hives from three to six.
Papa B has tripled his hives but I am afraid to ask how many, knowing the work ahead to check and recheck each new hive, to feed them all winter long, to care for them like new babies until spring when we will move them all back to the blueberry fields to pollinate and make honey again.
It is almost autumn. My colt is no longer an awkward baby but a strong, big horse.
I lunge him in the evenings, teaching him lessons that he will need later in life.
Whoa. Walk. Trot. Good boy.
And then the dog and I have a swim in the lake as the sun sinks low.
The water is lovely, cool and refreshing.
Bingo is insistent after her ball; ten, fifteen times, while the Blue Heron sits atop the cypress tree and eyes us warily.
A new season is ahead of us now, quietly full of promise.