Work Shirt: Washed & Pressed

View From the Pasture: Sand Hill Crane

2010-04-25T16:10:00.000-07:00

The Sun is Shining

2010-03-28T17:51:00.000-07:00

and the weather is sweet

Makes you wanna move
your dancing feet
To the rescue here I am
to the rescue here I stand

-Bob Marley

The sun is setting and the only comfortable spot I can seem to find is inside the greenhouse. It's a balmy 80 degrees in here so I can't complain. Aside from being in the spot where I spent about half of my days last week working, it's the spot to be. Eliot Coleman warns in his book, "New Organic Grower" to be careful about working too much; "You soon get stale and lose the sense of joy and pleasure that made farming seem so desirable in the first place" (49). I don't think I'm gonig to fool myself into thinking I'm working if I'm just merely here reading, writing, and absorbing the setting sun.
It has been a nice weekend with plenty of opportunities to reflect and relax. Though a little lonely the kids and Uma make this bearable until the rest of the interns arrive. It is a little sexually frustrating when the body only gets attention from the prudent scan for ticks, showers, and getting dressed. My dreams tend to save me from turning this frustration into something else, and a daily yoga practice does wonders for balancing the energy flow. I also got the chance to visit with a friend of the farm who taps maple syrup trees in his backyard. We hauled sap for an hour or so and then sat and watched a fire steam off gallons of moisture for the next couple of hours. It helped me work on my 'bullshitting', which I think is a necessary component of life, especially, I've read and experience somewhat, if I want to get into farming.
I have also found company with the voices of Audiobooks. Studs Terkel's "Coming of Age" has brought much wisdom and historical reflection while Zora Neal Hurston's "Every Tongue Got To Confess" colors the mental environment in profound folktale that is sometimes funny and always a tickle to the ear. With the internet, too, I have found smiles in reading, well catching up with all the Yehuda Moon's Kickstand Cyclery comics that I've missed since I started working with Sudan Farm. That commute really took a lot of time and I found it hard to read with any gumption since I was only biking here and there. Once the other interns arrive I may have to sneak off lest I be heard snickering and knitting along to the recorded voice. Perhaps we'll all have crafts that allow some story to be floating along in the background.
Well I haven't written in so long that it seems like you don't know where I'm at. Who cares, somewhere amidst the emerging spring sprouts and bird calls, the frosty mornings and blustery north wind bickering with the southern gale and calm standstill. Is it enough that I'm outside most of the time, happy to know I'm alive, eating real good food to survive? The skin on my face feels that good sunned warmth, my hands rough and dirty underneath the fingernails, breath healthy and in good working order. Eligh and I went with Sitka to Mill Pond and explored for an hour and saw a part of the creek we all haven't seen before. That does something to you, to your spirit, lets you go free, and would be an incredible image to dream. We hope to go camping there sometime and cook freshly caught fish over a fire. I'm at a place that is the farthest from between a rock and a hard place.

[the sound of a birdcall interrupts my focus]

It's incredible what a birdcall will make you do. I just stop and stare, but my ears play with each note and I imagine a part of me trying to imitate and remake each chortle, each tone, matching length with brevity. Here is where lost things come back to you, where the silence in the night will change your mood from the evening before without your permission, and your dreams will be magical, mythical, mystical...I have awoken from these after seeing my lover tell off another who threatened her claim, after seeing my lover abandon me to another while disappearing into the dark wearing loosely adorned flowing grey saaris printed with big black leaves all over. The images and symbolism are baffling, but they are the visuals of my day and I puzzle over their meaning inbetween work.
I take a walk at night and the landscape quivers in the stillness. If you look just right the lights of far off farmsteads look like stars in their distance and you can imagine yourself on the edge of the universe again. The wind blows across the road from the cornfield and all of a sudden I hear what Greg Brown may have been singing about in his song, "Hole in the Sky" The hole sound reaches up into my head as far as my brain will allow it to go. I look for it here and there, from where I think the sound is coming from and all I see is sky, but I know it's there. I hear it and imagine the wind spiraling off into the distance, sucking at the emptiness bordered by rustling corn stalks.

My feet were draggin': "Party for the Fight to Write*"

2009-10-18T21:09:00.000-07:00

You hounded on me for some
reason when rational
explanations fail to exist for
why they torture those who
resist. Why they rape,
murder, and devastate,
yet retain themselves
religious. It's all a
spiral of violence and
you've begun with me
only to see the helix
you're headed down won't
end with me

Catholic Social Teaching gave me this perspective of seeing violence as spiral, a, sort of, black hole, or double helix as more understanding of violence is gained. This kind of perspective allowed me to see violence as a process, so I could see it objectively and try to identify how the violence 'in my life' merely existed by my 'perpetuation' of it. That's what this poem is about. It was for, who some might say is the little 'devil' on our shoulder that harps on us all, how I felt like I was harping on myself all the time when really, there are 'much bigger fish to fry'. The mistakes that I make and/or problems I have are really little when you think about it. It showed me where violence begins in my life, how I knew it wouldn't end, but how it didn't end with me.

It's also a little bit about how the pen is mightier than the sword, which made me think twice about the phrase "Party For Your Right To Fight" made popular by Public Enemy followed up by the Beasty Boys with their song, "Party, For Your Right, To Pa-a-arty", and finally with Atmosphere's "Party for the Fight to Write":

*

2009-10-17T16:55:00.000-07:00

Monster on the
outside, temptress
on the in. Who's
on the up and up
and What's goin'
down? Frown like
jester and clown
like a fool that gets
beat after school
droolin' all the blood
on the festerin' wound

The Heart is a Window to Your Soul - unknown

2009-10-15T20:33:00.000-07:00

A view of the composter, fence, and garden outside our window. The little white box is our beehive that we are going to need to add another level to soon.

Perplexed to make
checks I come
flex to go and
figure - the sinew
in my right leg and itchy
left foot come together
to make a mute point
in my swollen and
inflamed sinuses and
right nostril that is
slowly squelching oxygen
from reaching the
right side of my
head -THAT I CAN
FEEL is something left
to be said.

I wrote this some time ago when I was feeling these symptoms, attempting to understand what was happening to me, and trying to highlight what, of these symptoms, I was glad to have. That I could feel them was a great comfort because, atleast, I wasn't unaware as I'm so afraid of being when I get older. I'm not sure if that means that the older I get, the less I will feel, but I can see that awareness is connected to feeling. I can also see that connection being interrupted by all sorts of possible causes.

What has been unfolding, both before and after writing this, was a great lesson. It showed me what fruits are good for respiratory problems, what's good for itchy feet, what is helpful for sinews under a lot of stress and tension, and finally how to keep that blood pumping to my brain. In short-cantalopue, pears, sumac & birch leaves, coffee is not something 'for intake', and, for God's sake, the tobacco road is a driveway that you don't ever have to take before the great walk down the spirit road.

Kept in Touch

2009-10-12T17:13:00.000-07:00

It's strange when
your in other dimensions
tryin' to write to
your brother
And just when your about
to share something the
mind erupts because it
wanted you to pay for
something that you could
get for free
-just to save a little
money-
and your mind sees the
situation and justifies the
eruption...

I wrote this when I was trying to write my brother a birthday email and share a music video I'd seen earlier that year. I was just going to share the link and talk a little bit about how it'd be neat if he could do a music video, he had studied computer animation, but the group I was trying to share the video with had changed their website around so you had to pay to own and watch it. Well, I was bamboozled, but I found the video elsewhere.

Here's the video:

http://www.definitivejux.net/store/catalog-product/US-A4T-04-27-10-vid.html

For free:

Lunch

2009-10-06T22:58:00.000-07:00

I look forward
to Lunch.
I yearn for Lunch
especially when it's
right around ten
o'clock
-coffee break time
for those that can
stand it.
For now I wait,
bite my tongue
and meditate on how
much better I'll enjoy
Lunch if I bide my
moments, seconds, minu-
tes, hours til
Lunch, oh how
I enjoy it.

Views From The Pasture

2009-10-02T21:59:00.001-07:00

This Is Earl...

2009-10-02T15:23:00.000-07:00

We all have secret patches, the berry pickers among us, Earl and Daryl are pseudo-personalities of the author and a dear friend who frequently, quite frankly, indulge in a little bit of 'CB back and forth' on cell phones or in person, fuzz and static included, about supposed patches and their 'readiness'. We have never, however, 'radioed' from the patch, but, instead, do so during the off season when were bored and feel like pretending that one of us is in, on the way to the patch, or coming back, enjoying the fruits of our labor, and open to imagining that we're not alone in this endeavor. I would like to credit my dear friend's uncle, to the best of my knowledge, for sparking this ongoing skit, as we were audience to his proud return from a secret raspberry patch during the summer of '07 and props to the spirit of a long hike in the woods around a particular park near Duluth. See "Take A Hike", but don't expect to find any patches.

The following poem is of Earl lamenting in his solitude. It was written during my first weekend taking care of the farm.

From the top of the world
feeling the sway of the wind
blowing against heavily laden
branches

Daryl?

You There?

Gotta reach for those red ones
in a cherry tree almost sixty
feet tall*

Who's here to share this with me?
I stretch and feel the wind help
me reach

The setting sun is idyllic against
my bronzed arm reaching,
stretching, teaching me new forms
of the ski trick, "cherry picker"
grasping the branch, I wrap my
arm to stabilize my perilous monkey-
like instincts and pluck the succulent
fresh tree ripened cherry berry

*Author's Note: Normally a Cherry Tree wouldn't be allowed to reach this height, due to the problems of picking cherries so far from the ground. I can not imagine the amount of fruit trees around the world that are in this state. Portland Fruit Tree Project is just one of many gleaners that work to put fruit that would normally end up on the ground, in people's stomachs. Dan, my boss, who used to manage an apple orchard, tells me that "trees are pruned to make ease of picking and a tree's productivity come together in the most valuable way."

MOV(i)E

2009-09-26T21:37:00.000-07:00

pay to see a movie
when they show movies
in the park for free
after a little bit of
music to the sunset!
No, when they could've
used that energy for
uses outside of enter-
tainment, like edubrainm-
ent, or edutainment with
where my brain went,
it's time to get busy,
no time to waste, to
spare, or bide at a
crippling pace-every
moment's crucial when
your trying to prepare
for a little love in life

Recently a friend called to invite me to a movie at the end of the week. Now normally I would've been down, but I'm feeling my pace pick up a little bit, craving that personal action that gets things done and money saved; having my own fun. It was hard to say no so I sat down and wrote about it, figured out why, in an underlying sense, I just couldn't go.

a little time

2009-09-17T21:43:00.000-07:00

Sometimes it just
takes a little
time

I'm having one of
those moments

Y'know, where could
it be...
the bracelet my
mom made me,
outta sweet grass
with that pretty
shell
and the brush to
clean those boots
I use
It shouldn't matter
but I'd still care...

Fight!

2009-09-17T21:33:00.000-07:00

I didn't expect
this,
outta nowhere with a
closed fist.

It made more sense
when you and I
were friends,
and when we got mad
we could see an end.

Now we just trust ourselves
to make love,
and inbetween our tempers
flare up,
like we forgot there is
this language,
this behavior,
this way of acting,
this being,
of holding hands and
together seeing;
how the world works
between us
between lovers
between friends
Do you remember?
Because I need to show
you or I can't.

Conversations With God

2009-09-04T21:27:00.000-07:00

I did not write your
words down right away
because I did not have a
pen and the one over there
was theirs and I wanted
to move from the dining
car to the lounge car
so I couldn't take their
pen with me. Servers do
not like their pens taken
though it happens.

So I took what you said,
what I thought, and
remembered it. Just so you
and I didn't forget, we
picked out clues along the
way and made jokes out of
them like, 'Does the fact
that John Kerry's wife, Mrs.
Heinz, who owns Heinz foods,
or whatever it's called, selling Amtrak
Heinz syrup and serving it with
my breakfast of French Toast
make me a Democrat, or just
a contributor to a-

-a business that just so
happens to be one of the largest
food corporations on the planet and
is connected to the Democratic
Party through Marriage. God
forbid that business interests
be connected by values, principles
and ethics. But what do I
know about marriage? I know
there is a bitter taste in
my mouth. Corn syrup is
no satisfying replacement for
Maple Syrup, but then again
John Kerry didn't win and
Bush was no substitute for
what could've been or is?
Obama's wife planted an
organic garden on the White
House lawn, now that's what
I'm talkin' 'bout.

On the train ride back to PDX, I had breakfast in the dining car, a treat to myself that I tried to avoid on the way to MSP, but, alas, I did not pack the right food and it went bad on me. So on my way back I decided I would moderate my apples and bread that I packed along with a nice diner breakfast on the plains of Montana. Being alone I tried the best I could to get along with my thoughts. Looking back I can't help but try and deny a certain level of schizophrenia, however, denial being the first stage of something worse, you might say that I was being a little schizophrenic. Being as old as I am though warrants a certain level of freedom; and I took it. So 'you' in the receipt poem is the constantly evolving factor upon myself. Most of the time, I assure you, it is real people, but on this train ride it was just me, myself, and I.

I had a good talkin' to myself today...

2009-08-31T19:53:00.000-07:00

A good friend told me this (the title) after I asked what happened today. I got such a kick out of it. It's amazing how we can just be so curt with ourselves and get a way with it. So at work, as prior conversations so often do, this phrase came up again...

I had a good
talkin' to
myself today-
seems as though
I don't like
to respond to
questions with
anything but
guttural
answers!

Peace and War Grease

2009-08-31T19:19:00.000-07:00

Why, this warring
between us - it
only wants us to
leave our peaceful
play and grow angry
like the sun that
recedes the day-
a balance between
what's at stake

I think hateful
thoughts yet I
do not follow through
with their hateful
intentions. They only
want the love of
my listening, the
attention of my response
and the cause of my
reaction to learn from.

A Lazy Weekend Afternoon

2009-08-31T17:21:00.000-07:00

I kind of think this is inappropriate to put out here. It gets at something I think is hard for us all to look at. It's not like I'm trying to show you what happens on the butcher floor, but sometimes I feel this is the best stuff to write about. It gives what we are having a hard time understanding a place to get grounded, to find solace in, and that someone else hears these words, can see them as they get written on the page, brings peace in a way that I cannot imagine any other way to replace. It also gets at how generalizing 'everybody' doesn't mean anything close to the world's population of 6+ billion people, when it's really just one, or two, maybe three people. Also, I think this description is a little international/intercultural reasoning. Sorry for the confusion, but hopefully you get the gist.

Why is everybody so
mad at me?

Why is everybody giving
me those looks?

Those looks have [italics for cursive]
nothing to do with
anger, their looks do
not state how people
feel about you, and
besides, everybody is not
two or three people.

YA, BUT THERE'S AN UNDER-
LYING CURRENT THAT WEA-
VES IT'S WAY AROUND
AND, UNBOUNDED, FINDS
IT'S WAY TOWARDS YOUR
TOWN OF SURROUND SOUND
PROVOKING FEAR AS YOU
STAND ON THE GROUND.

Why is everybody mad at
me, why is everybody
giving me those looks?

THE DISHES AIN'T GOING
TO DO THEMSELVES...

Mason Jennings' dialect is in my head

2009-08-27T18:02:00.000-07:00

This is a poem I wrote after coming back from surprising my mom for mother's day. I was sitting in my room and, yea, feelin' it, heavy. If you know the Mason Jenning's song, you'll know what I mean

Ode to Minnesota like
Mason Jennings sings
California, miss ya
like the deepest
yearning burning through
my heart like an
Oregon winter - wimperin'
because my deep
cold crisp is amiss
and I can't crunch
home on the snow
that's been there for
long enough but not too
long.

Nick

2009-08-09T13:28:00.000-07:00

I have a new roommate, well, kind of new, his name is Nick and he likes taking photos. He took these beautiful pictures of me picking big pieces of unwanted material from the wool of a Romney Cross that we sheared earlier this summer. It is wonderful to begin involving myself in the process of activities that compliment my work on the farm. I wish there was more of me, however, or at least an infinite amount of time in a day so I could keep up with all there is to do. Does that feeling seem familiar?

Under the table is "Uma", the dog I'm taking care of.

Eggs

2009-07-12T18:21:00.000-07:00

Okay, so I've been wanting to write about this for a while, and, as is it most often is, it becomes very hard to write about something you want to write about. Eggs. They perked my interest when a friend was reading a book about them and started talking to me about souffles and other wonderful ways to prepare eggs. She was someone who wouldn't think twice about too many eggs. I agree, as long as I'm comfortable with where they are coming from. Check out the audio below if you can and hear about a jaunt out to the pasture-bound egg-house on wheels where I gather eggs once, sometimes twice a day.

Now I've been interested in eggs for my whole life, don't get me wrong. I am not a stranger to French Toast, and for the past few years I have been perfecting the pancake recipe to the first letter of my name. I just gotta say here, "Sonja, I am glad you kept your recipe from me, it challenged me to make the best pancakes ever". Eggs are an important part, however, and reading the part in Omnivore's Dilemma, when he is whipping up a chocolate souffle for friends he is staying with is an important part of my burgeoning fascination with what Joel Salatine's wife calls, 'henberries'. The very season the egg is produced has an effect on what an egg is good for. I found it amazing when I whipped some duck egg whites for a blackberry parfait a couple weeks ago, and am not too sure I could replicate it in the winter. And then it's gotta be asked, "Why would you want to?" Soon after I'd read Pollan's book, I heard on National Public Radio, a report from some fella who'd ran into a local foods diner and found that they were serving something different in the winter than the other seasons. Instead of fresh tomato they were serving pickled beet on top of a grilled patty. Their eggs tended to be treated differently too, though I don't remember what for, but an egg in the summer is going to have a greenish tint, because of the addition of lusher plant material in their diet.
Distinguishing the seasons in a supermarket egg, however, is going to be difficult. My boss says it can be up to six months before that egg gets to your table, not to mention how it even got into your hands. Generally those eggs ain't going to be too seasonal anyway, but I think y'all know the factory farm story. I have to admit, the eggs we sell at the farmer's market are sometimes in the walk-in cooler for a month. Whoa, before I run off on a tangent and spout a bunch of pro-this and anti-that, eating is an agricultural act, put your money where your mouth is country turned city turned country bull-ish, lemme finish.

Washing eggs: I was suprised that eggs needed to be washed, who knew? According to the Joy of Cooking, they don't. But I'll let you read into that. According to state law we, I'm told, have to wash 'em. This, I'm told, isn't done in Europe, however, and I'm sure a lot of other places around the world are similar. So why are we washing them. Look, I told you I don't want to get all "pro-this and anti-that". But I do want to encourage you to keep your own chickens that lay their own eggs, so you can see for yourself why a law like that might hit the table and get in the books.

It is something akin to the moon that an egg is laid. One morning when I was out I saw a few duck eggs out in the grass and thought, "Look some stars from above have come to earth to shine in the morning dew", well, not exactly that thought, but...I imagined those duck eggs reflecting where some stars are in the sky, yet unseen during the day, as they lay on the ground. It is amazing that an egg can speak so to the imagination. Akin to the moon because the moon comes around almost every night, and those that it doesn't makes it that much better when it comes back.

An egg, I'm told, was the topic of much philosophy during Socrate's time. I think some intellectuals were stating that this is just when the egg began to be included in culinary culture, atleast for the Greeks and Romans. Later perfected by the French, depending on your opinion, in so far as what is the best metal bowl to whisk an egg in and so on and so on. Well now we are in a time where we are discovering how not to raise our food, because it is affecting our health, and, yes, our taste. The difference, I can't emphasize enough, is overwhelming.

After cleaning eggs I get to take the cracked ones home and have even found that I prefer an egg that I can't get. We feed with non-organic feed, as do many family farmers, because its cheaper and contains an important defense against 'coxy', I'm told. While I'm comfortable now, because I feed the darn feed that goes into these eggs, I cannot help but remember those local, family farmed, organic eggs that I would get back home in Minneapolis. There was a level of care that hasn't quite circumvented the farm where I work, but I'm hoping consumer awareness will build. There's just something here that I can't quite put my finger on, which has consumers going somewhere else.

So where's my spine? Why don't I have a backbone to say something? Well, lemme tell ya, if I had the broadened perspective I need to talk to my boss about something like that, then I wouldn't be worried about not getting paid. Fact is, I should be so lucky to work for a family farm, lucky that his daughters moved on and didn't stay on the farm, lucky that I get this perspective while I can stand it. After a year I might say something, but, in the end, I know it's the consumers who'll have the final say.

2009-05-03T16:48:00.000-07:00

The Last Fence of the West

I put in the last fence of The West
An angry white man told me to do it
I hope he never reads this
He may not like it, but I think he'd say, "That's fine."

His anger is the source of my strength to tamp
It breathes into my fibrous sinews that stretch where wings shouldn've grown from deep within my shoulder blades
My muscles scream as I pull another shovelful of mother nature from her pores with the post hole digger

I'm not sure they'll do it, but they keep talking about building a fence between Mexico and the U.S.
just like Israel and Palestine,
East and West Germany,
and China and Mongolia

The last fence of The West is for chickens now
It runs the property line, but bows a little bit to compensate for a tall, huggable cherry tree.
Allowed to stand
I dream of a Wild West,
So does the angry white man
but even then it does not help as I wince from the blisters that come from using the long iron bar to tap, chop, and remove some roots from the depths of a post-hole that cannot go anywhere else.

I built the last fence of The West, but it may have to come out in twenty years when the posts, made of cedar, are too old,
or if someone who comes to own the farm wants it to be Organic.
They don't allow treated posts if you want to be organically certified

For good reason...
splinters from those posts are arsenic laced,
made my hands swell, gave me a headache,
before I read the advisory to don gloves before handling
and a mask if you cut them.

There's no telling what they'd do to animals.
They see infared.

Farming: the hardest part

2009-05-01T21:53:00.000-07:00

The hardest part about farming is my boss, It's not the heavy lifting, the insatiable hunger, the grotesqueness of the dead hole, or the bloodiness of the home butchering. It's not the smell of the poultry brooder, the long commute, or the stink from a cooler that didn't get washed after delivering fresh meat. It's not the meat, even though I have experienced vegetarianism. It's not even cleaning up the $#!@ from the chicken brooder or the lamb jugs; thankfully I have a hanky!

From the moment I set eyes on him I've been wary. He looks and is different than he sounds on the phone, and that might be the biggest indicator. I'd like to think that it's all just under the guise, as of yet unexplored, "natural therapy". The thought being: that its just a form of being, like my good friend, 'Felix', who slips into playing "Devil's Advocate" once in a while to challenge our convictions anmd principles. It might even just go to show me that I shouldn't be so judgmental or prejudiced. I am, after all, finding renewed strength in my ability to stay calm, relax, and grow nonviolently. Nonviolence has found a new challenge in my life. I relish in this freshness.

This is the abattoir, or home butchering area in the pig barn. The sun is setting and we've just finished for the day. It was a long
day as we slaughtered at least six, maybe
nine lamb for Greek Easter orders. I took
this picture because I wanted to try and
capture the stillness of this space that still
vibrates after so much happening. It is, also,
I think, a good photo-metaphor for my boss
who can fill a space without even being there

Dead Hole Diddy

2009-05-01T21:41:00.000-07:00

On my way to the deadhole the other day, I was disgusted by my cartload, and decided to sing a song along the way. The song went something like this on that grey-skied morning that allowed the dew to hang on to the blades of rye, fescue, and johnson grass and leaves of clover.

~sung with an Irish lilt

Oh, the grass is heavy laden
with the load I carry
the dead have a hole full of their offal
though it disgusts me I try and parry
the smell wafting along the morning breeze

Farm Report

2009-04-03T06:22:00.000-07:00

Ok, so I'm going to call this the 'farm report' and let you know, from the front lines, everything about the goings on regarding farming for this twenty-seven year old apprentice. I think its fitting, given that we all have our own perspectives to offer and intertwine with others, for me to write about my experience and elaborate on what I see, hear, feel, smell, and taste, among other things, which develop my perspective here. There is so much I want to share with you. I am learning beyond my expectations and I want to stop worrying about a context though I will try and make the stories interesting. Hopefully their ingredients will come together to make sense.

~ . /

Lambing season is over. Sorry you missed it. Apparently I did too. I wasn't even present to one birth! I did have my share, more than fair, of cleaning out 'jugs' once the mothers and their young were ready to move back out with the other mothers on pasture. Dan and Susie planned it to coincide with the return to pasture and it was wonderful to see these fiber sheep in their fresh natural environs with their young. I'm glad its over, however, my boss is less grumpy and Susie has gotten more sleep.

We are scheduled to slaughter 12, maybe more, sheep for Greek Easter the week after next and I am both nervous and excited. Its nice knowing whats coming, but hard because, well, you know I don't like taking life that much. I don't let my boss' toothy grin fool me, I know he doesn't either. It is income for the farm, however, and I feel relieved; that worry can ease a little. I am a little surprised that financial matters concern me enough to feel that close, but my boss insisted, from the start, that I concern and know about these things since this job was about knowing how to do what needed to be done so that it could continue if he wasn't there...

Chickens! We have 'em. One hundred pullets, give or take a few. We got 'em through the P.O. And set 'em up in an industrial brooder, one of the few industrial implements on the farm. It houses chicks on five levels, skyscraper fashion, with feed trays on two sides and water trays and sliding doors on the others. It's an old brooder, gotten cheap through my bosses scavenging ways, and does its job of warming chics during these cold months well. If anything its a far cry from my far-flung dreams for chicks, but those come with their own problems as well... These chicks will be poultry, not egg laying, and will soon be pastured with turkeys, coming May 25^th, once their feathers grow enough to keep themselves warm. Out in field they will follow the sheep somewhat in a controlled grazing succession, fertilizing the pasture with the nitrogen rich excrement and keeping the bugs down with their appetite.

All those changes mean a change from winter to spring and a change from feeling like a construction worker to a farmworker. What's been needing fixing has been fixed and now its just one farm job after another until we're in full rotation come summer, when all the kinks are worked out and things can run smoothly. I like this feeling and have found more independence from my boss. I now know how things're generally done, which frees up some time so my boss can attend to selling the 30+ cases of racks taking up space in his freezer.

I cannot wait to share with you what I'm learning about food as Susie is a wealth of knowledge and has lent me a stack of Wise Traditions to read and learn from. I also want to share with you my thoughts regarding 'Five Years From Now', 'History', 'Mark's Meat', 'Home Butchering', 'Delivering; or the other fifty-percent of my job', 'On the Road', 'Permaculture', 'The General' and 'Chickens and Ducks'. These are topics for next time, however, as it is getting late and as my little sister, Jaia, says, “I'm Seepy”

~ . ~

Piles, Pasture, and What the Farm Looks Like

2009-02-08T17:10:00.000-08:00

I've thought a little about what to write next. It feels rather self-indulgent writing about my work everyday on the farm and there's no way I'd be able to report ever'thing that happens. I'd like to be able to frame this in a perspective that is unique like a news story, but I can't help but fall a little short determining what's even newsworthy. I'd like to write about what I do everyday but there are times when I can't remember that, or I'm just too darn tired to think about enjoying writing what I just done did, y'know?

What does the farm look like?

That seems like an intriguing question a lot of y'all might have and it may lead to an interesting answer.

View Larger Map

"The farm is seventeen acres and eleven are devoted to pasture" answered my boss, Dan, when I relayed a question my roommate had asked me regarding the size of the farm. The other six acres are devoted to buildings (house, shop, old barn, barn, greenhouse barn, office), a driveway, lawn, creek, and piles of junk. The farm is little more than a place where junk piles are easily accessed use in repairs, maintenance, or upkeep of various farm implements.

There is the fence-post pile, the scrapwood pile, and the sawdust pile (something used with chickens and their pasture shelters). Piles of palettes, scrap metal, poultry and small animal cages, and about four cast iron bathtubs (for washing and dying wool) also lay about in the barnyard. The "old barn", as I've come to refer to it, has its own piles within it, most notably the neatly stacked hay in the loft that has a particularly sweet smell. Since this is a sheep farm there are piles of sheep pelts ready to be shipped to a tanner (The tanner had a fire in his facility and has since moved from Sheboygan Falls to Milwaukie, which is why the pelts are piled up), and those take up most of the room in the bottom of the barn.

The "old barn" is being eaten from the bottom timbers up by termites. It was built in 1917, or so, and, in my boss's mind, its time has come.

I remain hopeful and envision a barn elevating, like during the renovation of the house I grew up in, where the barn would be raised from the ground and all necessary wood would be replaced and a foundation would be put in. There is a barn, called the Gribble Barn up the road which has a sign "Save the Gribble Barn" that has inspired me to imagine a similar fate. If only to save timbers upstairs are beautiful and when you walk up the stairs to the hayloft the sounds underfoot echo and evoke a beautiful feeling that walking on wood only has.

The pasture is also something to take in. On the south and western sides it is bordered by a creek and forest thick with blackberry bushes.

The slope going down is gentle and amounts to a nice view from the bottom where all you can see back towards the barn is grass and the outermost greenhouse barn.

Groundhogs also inhabit the pasture, bringing up soil from below and slowly turning it over in their own time. I remember Ralph, a SW MN grass farmer, stating how these small dirt piles are just as important as cowpies in their bringing up of nutrients otherwise not easily accessible to the pasture ecosystem and their slow shifting of root systems that grow with the constantly changing tunnels. With each little pile is fresh soil for pasture plant species to grow on and offer succulent food for grazing animals. These vole hills also off set the steady timeline of linear growth and breakup the pasture with a diversity of growth. I found out today that the neighbor kid, who helps rebed the greenhouse barn and feed the chickens with his brother, once trapped forty groundhogs one summer. So far he hasn't caught any this year.

The pasture also has irrigation apparatus set up to deal with the dry summers. Perennial ryegrass and clover are the main foraging grasses planted in this pasture and, the perennial ryegrass especially, doesn't do well during the dry spells. I've asked about alternatives and, due to my boss's background in Agricultural Engineering in higher education that focuses on irrigation, past management of irrigation districts, and being a irrigation system sales representative, I was hardpressed to hear a clear response. Annual ryegrass, purportedly, handles the drier conditions well but the cost may be just the same as running a water pump during those months of the year. Sudan grass, part of the Sudan farm's namesake, grown in the southern climates of California, and other arid regions, does very well, yet even better with irrigation. Even so, I'd like to see a diversity that would sustain the pasture through the changing weather like the grasses of the prairie (Interestingly there is a whole species that grows fast enough to seed before the dryness hits and then another grows to take advantage of its space and seed by the end of late summer relaying on its far-reaching roots, sometimes as much as thirty feet! This extensive root system allows the later grass to endure through the driest time spans.) A diverse succession of grass species is far batter, in my mind, than wasting electricity to pull up water a deep rooted grass would get at anyway.

Let Me "Tell" You

2009-01-12T21:20:00.000-08:00

Let me tell you about life on the farm, behind the wheel, and inbetween the minds of an old farmer and a young apprentice.

Here are a few pictures to accompany this telling. The llama [midground] is a guard llama, kept to stall coyotes and other predators from a hunted meal. The second or third day Dan, my boss, and I both turned our ears to the piercing cry of a hawk. Its wingspan spread out to eight, maybe nine feet, as it soared close over the ground above us toward the herd of about fifty ewes. "Looking for lamb!" my boss exclaimed. The farm neighboring us has a few lamb milling about their herd. I can see why, by the size of them, a hawk would even think of flying away with one. That herd has a guard llama too, but I wouldn't doubt the audacity of a hungry hawk.

Driving through the Willamette valley yesterday morning I saw Mt Hood rising up out of the morning mist and frost. With hands on the wheel I flipped out my image capturer and held it to give you some sense of this awesome picture. The lens, however, couldn't reach anything beyond a hundred yards. You can see that I need a nice photographer to follow me along and improve the quality of my cell phone pictures. I took what I thought would be a nice shot of an overhead canadian geese "v" that turned out to be a faint dark brown line against an even more muddled grey sky.

These are the two dogs that have become my loving companions on the farm. Bridgette is the corgy who has a kind of "what did I do?" stare, though in this picture you can see she's looking proud to be in her fifteenth year! Magical is the brown/blue eyed dog of many colors that came from near the ocean. "Maggie", as my boss calls him, warmed up to me right away and I love the forthrightness of his look. I can never really tell what's going on with him and when I try and figure it out he jumps and romps playfully. Dan wanted to train him to help herd sheep, but he is not too obedient and Dan's discipline didn't quite work right. He shows interest when we are herding the sheep, but his wild at heart and sometimes indifference to Dan was too hard to work with. This is why there are plans for a new sheep dog...

Who knew eggs had to be washed? Don't they come out as clean as you see them in the carton? When I came in the other day to a list of tasks my boss had left me--I found this to be the most notable of all. The processes that are hidden from us, as consumers! There are no packages, that I recall, which claim their eggs to be hand washed! I didn't know what I was paying for! Though I would definitely prefer cleaning these eggs raised in a chicken tractor pasture to those raised in a factory like setting. Washing the grass and grit from these beautifully crafted shells was one of those experiences that brought me into partnership with the ages of farmers who had done this before and are still doing it today. Their hands taking a break from the rough work of the day. Drawing the warm water and carefully scrubbing with a hand-knit rag. Egg after egg in meditative succession. Listening to President Barack Obama's speech today was especially powerful and meaningful beyond a thousand television images as the radio bounced and bounded with President Obama's words behind me. The large white ones you see are duck eggs. The ducks are always cavorting around the pasture, quacking to their hearts content, reminding me of my little roommates, Asher and Jaia, and washing themselves in the little kiddie pool. Their behavior is very fun to watch.

Watching is something I take very much to heart here. I don't like the idea of getting paid for watching, but observation can be your best teacher. Even the book I picked up from my boss' office emphasizes this point and I will never forget Mark Shepard's* words that echo through me to this day. "No farmer spends enough time looking, observing, and watching their farm. Every day, for two hours, I romp through my land to see everything I possibly can about what is working and what is not. I do this so that I know what my farm is telling me instead of from some well-meaning extension agent, sales person, or anyone else who pretends to know what is best about my farm.
Especially for someone like me, who is new to the farm. I have noticed that ewes do, indeed, ram each other, a behavior I thought was only observable in rams. You should see these ewes crowd each other on the way to feed! I was advised to be wary of them and make sure the gate was closed before putting their hay and food pellets down. Upon opening the gate they rush the feeders and force others out of the way if they can, especially the grain which they are crazy for. The grain supplies most of their protein during these winter months, protein that they would be normally getting from grass.

You can see, in the picture to the right, the effect sheep have on grass that cannot quite grow as well as during the warmer months. Some of this is due to their being on it since they were moved to winter pasture. It probably wouldn't look quite as bad and I would be interested in knowing what effect the sheep would have if given access to paddocks under a technique I've been reading about called, "controlled grazing". My boss practices this during the warmer months and has used it to increase his grazing time during the year. Who knows, as years progress, the 'grazier' becomes more comfortable with the process he/she may refine his/er technique.

*Mark Shepard raises hazelnuts and black walnuts from a permacultural perspective in Southern Wisconsin. Two fellow Cornercopia farmer's, Courtney Tchida and Eric Vagsnes, and I went to piggyback a Land Stewardship Farm Beginnings tour of his place. He was known for not having a web page and yet being just as well known by name and reputation. He is truly an inspiration and was working on a cider mill when we went to visit in the summer of 2005.

Receipt Poem Too

2008-12-18T17:00:00.000-08:00

It's not enough

excitement for you,

huh? You want the

lightness of another

life within your

concious so you can

freely and anonymously

trip? So I'm yours

to toy with like the

dream you wish for?

Try appreciating life

by each individual

footstep, breath, and

Receipt Poems

2008-12-15T17:24:00.000-08:00

Maybe someday

you'll understand but

for now you'll just

have to be complacent

with what it is,

how it's done, and
why I choose to

move on with this

sun. The moon

shines so bright, I'm

up at it's apex

and up before the

sun's. Two celestial

orbits is almost

too much for luck.

----------

Watch out bloody

gory damsel, the day's

half done and the

moon shows no more

like the sun. The

clouds are regulated to

sentences and the

rhythym is undone but

up in it the wordsmith

is still on the run

debatin' stanzas with

the poet union

----------

the insense is out

more good smell

not as good as

fresh baked bread

or pine needle tea

but those fade as

well

until time brings them

for all to
tell

----------

You hounded on me for some

reason when rational

explanations fail to exist for

why they torture those who

resist. Why they rape,

murder, and devastate,

yet retain themselves

religious. It's all a

spiral of violence and

you've begun with me

only to see the helix

you're headed down won't

end with me

--------

Monster on the

outside, temptress

on the in. Who's

on the up and up

and What's goin'

down? Frown like

a jester and clown

like a fool that gets

beat up after school

droolin' all the blood

on the festerin' wound

Choose the best template for a sticker!

2008-11-28T17:34:00.000-08:00

Not too long ago my handlebars were stolen. There was really nothing I could do about it (there is no way to lock up handlebars). But I am doing something about it, outrageous as it is. I want to design a sticker to alert people to the place where the theif struck so that they can be a little more aware of crime in that area and, in hopes of eventually catching the theif. I did a drawing and took a bunch of photos at different angles in different light and want some comments regarding which one I should use. It might be obvious, it might not. But in the spirit of building community awareness so this kind of thing eventually stops:

So just go to http://picasaweb.google.com/trhuggins/WorkShirt?authkey=oJdCYxkDVG8#5273144096495888898 and post your comments for now.

Receipt Poem

2008-11-18T15:54:00.000-08:00

held down by the pen
tip, grouded by
the pencil, I fell
ill from the computer
screen and sought
healing in the form
of handwritten wit
to be played like
a piano when I
finally got to typing
it.
Read like listening
to a song you wanted
to make a nation
out of it and scan
my wrtiing as the
National Language. I
staged a coup until
you didn't know what
to do.

An Interview Worth Dying For

2008-11-17T14:23:00.000-08:00

I'm so sad. And angry. I'm mad at myself for picking apart a puzzle. Sauvie Island Organics is a farm that I applied to work for and today, during the interview, I was asked to leave. I was asked to leave because I was making one of the interviewers "uncomfortable" and therefore "not a good fit" for the position I applied for. The discomfort may be because I was asked to start the interview by asking any questions I had for them. I had written them down and asked if it would be okay for me to read what I'd wrote. By the third question the interview stopped and I left thanking them for their time.

The questions I'd come up with were meant to be asked at the end of being questioned myself and perhaps that may have led to the discomfort. I wanted the questions to go in depth because I knew, from looking at their website and other observations, that's what I was curious about. But asking them first made them seem interrogative and maybe a little provocative. I didn't mean to offend or intrude but that's the feeling I got and I sit here cursing my ability to come up with other questions on the spot.

I don't want to blame my interviewers, call them names, or even go to the extent of supposing their reasoning for them. Because I'm not them, never will be, no way-no how. Here are the questions I got to ask:

What are talking points you find yourself using when talking about local food and SIO? Is it contextually driven or is there a meaty message you'd like people to walk away with? (Maybe I should've waited for an answer for the first one before moving on to the second part of this question, because it made it a judgement call I guess.)
From looking at your service to restaurants and your CSA I can see you occupy a positive niche in Portland and the local food shed, but could you describe Sauvie Island Center (an educational partner of the farm) and how your farm/center benefits the environment surrounding it?
Online SIO has a mission to grow a wide array of high quality seasonal produce for local markets, provide the community with a connection to their food source, educate people about sustainable food production, and create a high quality workplace for its employees. What, in terms of high quality, does this mean regarding seasonal produce for local markets and workplace for its employees?

Now this was an interview, not a class discussion or a session on proper interviewing techniques. Why did I ask them? Why wasn't I more polite? Why couldn't I have asked them simply, in versions that made sense or were more understandable?

The answers to these are lessons I have to learn for the next time because in order to survive I have to be an adaptable person and able to fit any position I apply for.

Since it rained...

2008-04-07T09:22:00.000-07:00

It rained from big clouds interspersed with sunshine. A warm sunny rain. The kind that hits you and you don't know if you should be pleased or cursing because you don't have the proper covering. Spotty rain that is uncalled for after a day of sunshine. Because all of your plans for the day are scuffed.

But it was a sight, nonetheless, a sight above the buildings, the landscape, the urbaneness of what you see everyday. The weather is the one great anomaly that is new. No day of rain is the same as the last, lest you offend the lunar bodies and their effect on this gaseous planet.

And it starts and stops. Those breaks are something to wait for, indeed a new place is discovered while waiting for the rain. Either in it or out of it, the air is so fresh. Breathing becomes an economical act (taken from, "Eating is an agricultural act" - Wendell Berry) and the conductivity is dampened, the electricity of the air. People are chilled out by drabness.

I think experiencing this extreme in a greenhouse has heightened my senses to it. The automatic effect felt after watering a dry greenhouse alerts me to the result of turning on the hose and watering the seedlings. Afterwards is a light evaporative buzz or "hush", I would call it. Something that you kind of hear while next to the waterfall if you tune out the rumbling pounding rush of water on water. It's this lightness that the rain reminds me of. The thing that I don't want to pay attention to is muted out by the peace of something that I find it hard to remind myself I want to pay attention to.

It snowed this morning but the sight of these bright beautiful flakes was drowned out by the groan of another snowfall. The land was too warm to let it accumulate. My eyes were too busy to take in and gape at its myriad of falling and swirling. It slowly changed to rain. The sound welcomed despite its wetness and potential to soak. The soft warmness of the air left alone the cold harsh air in my winter memory. Both I love. In their due time.

The Air Out There

2008-04-04T07:56:00.000-07:00

From inside the confines of the library I'm remembering my bike ride. This morning I got three quarters of the way to where I was going and I wanted to keep riding. The sun was at a level with the rest of the world that made everything shine a glowing golden. The air was brisk and chilled, but like a cold drink on a hot day, it felt wonderful. All of the stoplights turned at the right moment and the traffic seemed to like that I was there, "a surmountable challenge to the drive", I'd like to believe they thought.

I didn't think this morning would be this way. My head ached too much from yesterday. Yesterday I slept in way too late, the kind of sleep-in that leaves your head exhausted and sore, and I believe that's what gave me a headache throughout the rest of the day. Oh, it was stemmed by that three o'clock in the afternoon coffee, but I've read that even that won't take care of it. This morning I highly encouraged myself to get up and keep moving, since this is what did me in yesterday. And so far it's been working. My headache is seemingly gone. But my body is incredibly sore.

What is it with the balance and routines of our lives. They seemed inextricably placed amongst the pull of the tide, the drag of the current. How do we know what moment to move, to get up, to find our selves full and whole at the end of another day. What instinct is this?

My breath was drawn relatively easy this morning. It tasted so wonderful. Air cooked by the rays of the rising sun. If I could have it every morning I would, wouldn't I? Even oatmeal gets old after a while, after having it everyday. But its good for mornings like these, when even a bowl of oatmeal can be so simple and enjoyable compared to the pounding of yesterday's melee.

It's the simple miracles that make me so glad to be free, so grateful to read, and so difficult to keep.

That ole frame just needs a wheel set

2008-04-03T15:17:00.000-07:00

My neighbor let me know about a bike frame that he's been keeping for me out behind the house next door. I did a double take because I had just hauled a mountain bike frame out of the garbage the night before, but his words, "Blue" and a company name that rhymes with "shh" and "wind" had me. Two days later I wondered back there after locking my bike up this morning and there it was. Beautiful, shiny, blue. Its shape seemed to suggest congruence with the way things were.

It needs a wheel set, some handlebars, and other fixin's. But, as my neighbor said to me today, you could fix it up and sell it. I'm thinkin' I could use the money, but that's almost more trouble than just fixing it and putting it out there. When you're fixing a bike I like to think it wants you to approach with a specific attitude. It always seems to be asking, "What am I going to do for you?" and "How am I going to affect your life?" Like it exists on a higher level than money and greed. It enables efficiency at an amazing cost. The willingness to give up something that, more or less, would cost the world a whole lot more. When you step on to a bike, though you may be using it to get around or provide exercise, you're not causing more harm. It's that fine line the wheels follow that seem like the middle of the yin and yang.

Up through the rain I'd bear the pain to grab the handle bars and take you away. To show you the world at 12 miles per hour, just so you could see it just so, and we could be back in an hour, for a trip that usually takes thirty minutes, I'd rather take the thrill and the extra moments, to breathe hard and feel slow, bored by rest of ya'lls complaints about the "takin' too long" I'd dream a dream for you and find comfort that it was me you took.

Moth

2008-03-21T14:49:00.000-07:00

Not too long ago I found a moth resting on a dried rosebud in my place. It was still snowy outside and the cold did not encourage my hopes that it would survive if I let it outside. I also did not want the moth to have free reign of my place. So I did what I thought I should do, put it in a jar with some green stuff and hope that it survives my absence while I learn what it needs in so that it could survive. I clipped some leaves from my plants and put it in the jar. I left hopeful because I saw its antenna feeling along the edges of the leaves instead of its frantic flight against the unyielding glass.

I was not comforted by what I saw upon my return. My place usually gets really dry and the leaves in the jar had wilted. On top of that I had not had time to look up what the moth needed in order to survive. So there was nothing I could do anyway when I looked at the moth in its still form, extensions frozen, wings together. I thought about what my friend who had found a caterpillar earlier last year had said about moths living only about as long as it took to procreate (about a day) then falling to earth as its offspring caterpillar lives until spinning a cocoon and birthing the following spring. I can not help but feel that my doings had inadvertently brought in a cocoon that housed this moth in warmth all winter and, expecting to find spring, had shed its wrappings only to find itself in a glass enclosed shelter barring it from the elements.

Though I am concerned about the the extinction of species, it is one thing to be implicated in their extinction rather than be concerned and actively working to stem the extinction from happening. Moths are no lovable being as contrasted with the disillusioned portrayal of the polar bear. These Arctic quadrupeds have been lovingly depicted all across the globe, yet, I would argue they are hard to love when their life threatens yours. The moth, though a being that might eat my clothes, is food for the birds and a possible pollinator, poses no threat to my health and well being. Indeed it made me smile upon my discovery of life in my place. Yet I cannot help but feel that I have taken the food from a bird's young, while denying my 'human effect' on nature.

While cars are taking on a predator's role in the level of the deer population in the place where I grew up (monitors consider vehicle collisions with deer a predator/prey relationship) I wonder if we truly think that we are as much apart of nature as we are natural. The bouquet of dried flowers that I had brought home from the garden which probably allowed this caterpillar moth into my home was as much as an effort to introduce beauty and smell to my place, But at what cost? I wonder just how that moth may have made it if that bouquet had never been gathered.

Turning to the global volatility/climate change/global warming/whatever you want to call it issue. We are at a level of CO2 in the atmosphere that is two to three years away from dire (according to NASA scientists). How can we imply that humans have no effect? But what am I, "just a global grunt in a world of lyricists", no that's Sep Seven's*, a bicyclist in a world of gas-powered vehicles, that's ours. And if the moth is just minute in the scheme of things, think of me pedaling along on that scale. If you could do without the moth, could you do without me?

Sep Seven of Dynospectrum

Winter Beard

2008-03-10T10:02:00.000-07:00

Friday, March 7, 2008. 7:48am.It was cold, my pants and daily application of longjohns weren't going to cut it. But I was almost late and, as I gauged the cold, I decided to go without going back to put on my wind/rain pants. Bicycling to work was going to be tough this morning. On top of that I'd forgot my scarf at work two days ago.

The south side of the street going east provided a chilling shade by the building lined streets. Each time I hit the darkened area I gritted my teeth. This cold deserved swear words in my mind and I was cursing all the way because it was a perfect adjective for the cold. But I biked faster through these shadowy stretches and rolled into the sun-filled spaces in happy greeting. The good things about these days is that they are usually accompanied by a bright blue sky and the striking winter sun. These brisk days help build appreciation for the sun's rays. These crisp days build muscles that help you keep warm when the summer chill rolls around evenin' time.

Those who hate winter
spite-filled and bittersweet
I know you too well
Your swear-words fill my mental environment
But stare in wonder at those
who throw themselves
for a personal winter feat
stomping in success
into the warm room
and that warmth
is better each time
I go to embrace the cold
and it leaves when our
love is affirmed;
bold.

Youth Farm and Market Project (YFMP) West Side All Star Marketers (WSASM) "Seven Days"

2008-01-08T12:46:00.000-08:00

To see a larger version click here .