Farming with a Trowel

I was about six years old when I started tending my first garden. Even then, I loved pulling away the chaotic weeds to make room for orderly groups of flowers and herbs, relishing that satisfying accomplishment of checking in later and seeing them flourishing.

Over the years, the gardens I've tended have gotten larger and more complex, to eventually include ponds, fruit trees, wide assortments of bulbs, roses, trellised vines, lush ground covers and, of course, vegetables. Does everyone enjoy the taste of home-grown tomatoes or strawberries warm from the sun?

Despite the increased sizes and complexities, I've consistently had the problem of running out of dirt. It's too hard to choose between a rose bush with vibrant yellow blossoms blending into deep orange edges and one with rich, purplish pink blossoms. Just get both. Find room somehow.

And then we moved to Oregon.

I remember our first spring, exploring the friendly, neighborhood nursery, with greenhouse after greenhouse burgeoning with plants of every size, shape, scent, and color. Oh, Lordy. Thank goodness for the cargo van waiting for me out in the parking lot.

One variety that I brought home that was new to me was artichokes. I bought three, 4" pots and carried them up to the empty patch of soil that I thought would make the perfect home for them. THAT'S when I read the label advice. "Plant 5 feet apart." What!!!! That's ridiculous. How could they possibly fit? And then I looked around at the empty patch of soil and realized, no problem.

I'd also picked up some bare root strawberries, which I'd never heard of before. They were on sale for $2/bundle, so of course I bought 3 bundles. As I untied the first bundle, I again read the label advice. "Plant 1 foot apart." It also said, "25 plants." What!!!! I had 75 plants that needed to be planted 1 foot apart? I looked around at the still-waiting patch of soil stretched out next to the new artichokes. Actually, no problem.

Ahimsa on the front lawn

Our farm is 2-1/2 acres. Of course, a healthy chunk of it is taken up by buildings and driveways, and most of it is in pasture, but there is so! much! room!

So we're migrating over from gardening into something larger: Farming. The thing is, I've spent 50-some years gardening with a trowel. And hand clippers, loppers, and rakes. I love the heft and power of a grub hoe, but that's as big and powerful as it ever got.

But you know what? It still works.

Our first summer, we tackled the overgrown blackberry briars, intertwined with hundreds of thistles and tall grasses that engulfed the upper third of our hillside. Our tools? A lopper and an electric hedge trimmer. Foot by foot, our little tools chipped away at the chaotic, waist-high thicket, and the contour of the hillside slowly emerged.

That was how we discovered that we had a pond. Who knew? But there it was, a full-fledged pond at the top of our property.

Dambara discussing calmness with the ducklings

It was an entire summer of discovery. The pond has a dam. The formerly inaccessible pluot tree is actually peacefully poised on it's own little plateau. Another plateau overlooks the pond and is a perfect place to linger, with an expansive view of our beautiful valley. We uncovered lemon verbena and an entire, miniature stream, gurgling along the lower edge of our pasture.

Our tools? Every one of them was easily held in our hands.

Now, if we were trained as farmers, we probably would have borrowed a tractor and powered our way across the gentle contours of our hillside, wiping out everything in our path, tossing about new pasture seed, and getting the job done!

Big shovel Little shovel

We have borrowed a tractor from time to time, for jobs that are mightier than our four hands. But for the most part, we wield scythe, lopper, rake, and yes, trowel to tame the chaos and nurture the beauty inherent in every inch of our hillside. By working with our hands, by using our own muscles and breath, surrounded by shining sun or drizzling grey, we feel a connection to the hillside that holds us on its flank. We become a part of all that is. We join the Whole.

Fear!

This is a post I wrote seven years ago, about a beautiful place where we used to live.

We've started on our fall to-do list, and one of the major projects that had sifted its way to the top of the list was our pond. The cattails had migrated out into the center of the pond, threatening a silent take over of the open water. The surrounding grasses had towered and toppled, shrinking the perimeter by about 5 feet, all the way around the circumference. Our pond was disappearing back into the wilderness.

The pond returning to its wild state

We opened the outflow valve and gave it a couple of days for the water to drain onto the pasture, and then we were ready to go. It was pretty mucky work. I started about 30 minutes before Dambara returned home, and had pulled up about 20 cattails before he got there. In the process, I had managed to smear muck across my teeshirt and all up and down my work pants. My gloves were coated, and my boots weighed about 10 pounds each. Muck was in my hair, and I was wearing randomly applied, muck war-paint.

Dambara strolled up to the pond, all dressed up in his town clothes, best leather shoes, crisp white shirt and assessed the situation. He grinned and said, "I'll go change and give you a hand." I grinned back and said, "Actually, I'm finding that it's a surprisingly tidy job. I don't think you'll need to change."

"Ha, ha, ha," said my wise husband, and he turned around to go change.

The shape of the pond starts to emerge

So we worked together a couple of hours, and then went back the next day for another round. We made good progress.

We perched on the bank, carefully choosing solid footing so as not to slide the muddy soil down into the pond, deteriorating the structure of the bank. Neither of us wanted to wade out into the muck, though. I had made a brief excursion, sank about 6 inches into the black goo, then gingerly squelched back to safety.

So from our sloped perches, we reached out as far as we could, sweeping the next cattail into grasping range, and pulled, with occasional success. But we certainly weren't getting them all. We knew that if we just let them go, next year they'd march out even further, taunting us from the safety of deep water, quickly engulfing the entire pond.

Why were we so tentative about venturing out into the water? Why didn't we just tromp out there and dig them up? Two reasons: Dambara is a very tidy person. He remained a crisp, clean contrast to my muck-smeared facade, even though he was working just as hard and being just as efficient as me. But he wasn't predisposed to wade, possibly disappear, into the seemingly bottomless muck.

And me? Me, I'm afraid of water.

I can swim. I love to jump into pools. I camp along streams and walk along wave-tossed beaches. But murky, uncharted, mysterious bodies of water? They are foreboding and threatening. A tail-twitching panther starts pacing around inside my ribcage, snarling, and I have to back off.

And so we called it a day and tromped back to our safe, dry, cozy house, took showers, and made dinner. Ahhh.....

The next day, I was on my own. Dambara was out of town and would actually be gone for the next six weeks. I had to either get those cattails out by myself, or leave them for next fall when we could drain the pond again. Not much choice, really. I reluctantly threaded my way back up to the pond, gravel rake in hand. Maybe I could snare the roots with this long tool and pull the cattails, one by one, over to the bank. I squished my way around the perimeter, inching my way to the defiant cattails, boots sinking, the muck grabbing my heels, threatening to swallow me whole.

Clasping overhanging grasses, I was able to keep upright all the way to the far side of the pond, where the cliff face plunged directly into the water, making further progress impossible. Impossible for me, at least. I faced the center of the pond and the jeering cattails and reached out with my gravel rake.

It worked like a charm! The cattails were rooted in the muck, so with only a jiggle or two of the rake, the roots pulled easily out of the water. I reached, jiggled, and pulled about 20 cattails over to the bank, then grasping them stoically to my once again muck-smeared chest, hauled them out of the pond onto the top of the bank. Ha! With fresh determination I squelched my way back to tackle the next batch, concentrically further out of reach.

I reached . . . . and could just barely snag the far away root. I jiggled the rake. It barely moved. I reached a little further and jiggled. I could not loosen it. And my back was starting to hurt, dramatically cantilevered as I was. Not enough jiggling and not firm enough of a stance for effective pulling. Sigh. This would be so much easier if I would just step out there and stand right over each remaining cattail.

And so I did.

The panther inside my ribcage had curled up and gone to sleep. Squelching along the bank and jiggling all those roots had helped some deep part of me realize that this wasn't so threatening after all. The pond wasn't bottomless. Not even the muck was bottomless. I had waded into my fear far enough to discover that the reality wasn't nearly as perilous as my imagination had led me to believe.

I figured that I could always retrieve my boot if the muck grabbed it too resolutely. The water was only twelve, eighteen inches deep. It would flood my boots, but what the heck. The water was surprisingly clean. Muddy, yes, but not decayed, rotting, odiferous goo. I realized that I probably wouldn't die.

I pulled one booted foot out of the muck along the bank, stepped out into the water, and let that foot sink. Water poured over the top of my boot, and then the sole hit solid ground. Huh. I pulled my other foot out of the bank's muck, lowered it, let the boot flood, then set it down, also on solid ground. Ha! The muck was only along the bank! The bottom of the pond was solid clay, and my boots sank maybe not at all. The panther in my ribcage started laughing and turned back into my heart.

I victoriously moved from cattail to cattail, used my rake to jiggle their roots, and easily pulled out every single one. There were criss-crossed runners, and it was easy to reach down and use both hands to jiggle and pull, feel which runner was under which, sort them out, and bring up every rootball. I threw the uprooted cattails up onto the bank, moved onto the next, even cleared out the roots we had precariously trimmed from the bank, and mounded the whole mucky mess up onto the bank.

I pulled up a couple of poorly placed reeds, scooped out encroaching grass roots, unearthed, or unmucked actually, an ancient, disintegrating, reel-to-reel tape, smoothed out a ragged outcropping, and then clambered back onto the grassy bank. My heart was singing, the cattails lay chastened, scattered along the bank, and our pond was ready to go for another three years.

Almost full after one rain storm

And my fear? Well, I know the panther will be there again, pacing, the next time I'm cornered, but I also know that when I finally figure out a way to step into the fear, the reality will be easier than remaining stuck in the muck of my imagination.

It's okay to be afraid. I simply have to avoid being afraid of being afraid. That's where the panther prowls, and where I'll be victorious the next time, and the time after that.

Seasons

This is a blog post I wrote seven years ago, when we lived on Llamas and Niyamas Farm outside Portland, Oregon. Even though we're spending this October on Camano Island, the essence of the season is the same.

Seasons

It's mid-October and the world is changing. Greens are blending to golds on the trees outside my window. The sun is lower in the sky, sending softer light onto our hillside. The days are shorter, the nights longer. Rain falls regularly on our summer-parched pastures, soaking the llamas backs, and sending the chickens to hunker closely under their overarching tree. The season is changing.

I spend most of my days outside, working on this project or that, and I find that I'm more aware of the season's change than ever before. For one, it's more pronounced than in the Bay Area, so there's more difference to note. But more, I'm blending with my surroundings now, watching the sky and birds, the trees and wind. I'm learning about our hillside, the pond, the new orchard, our llamas and chickens.

The fruit trees are bringing life, an energy of their own to the pasture above our house. I'm taller than them still, but their aura is bigger, richer, softer. They've learned the sun's pattern, and have built their leaves to match, drinking in sunlight to fuel their hard work of growing up. Their roots have taken hold and explored their underground neighborhood. They've discovered water pockets and mineral caches, sending massive supplies of materials upward to the leaf factories breathing in and out, in and out. I spread wood chips and llama droppings in a lake at their feet, gifts to help them thrive.

The chickens murmur softly as they wander about their chores, checking this, pecking that. They scurry to meet me, as I open the gate, running, flying, calling out; I'm an exciting event in their day. I might bring treats or fresh water or mounds of grain. They follow along around me, remarking busily, ready to be a part of whatever I might have in mind.

The llamas watch intently and gather close in, sizing me up, looking for apples or pears. After a leisurely greeting, they turn to graze alongside while I dig or lop or rake. They clomp gracefully along, with an occasional cavort, gleefully snorting.

The pastures are turning green after the summer drought while the trees are turning golden in preparation for the cold; a changing of the guard, trading dormancy for robust vitality and vice versa, a biannual handoff amongst hillside companions.

I wade through this rich tapestry, watching the sky, the clouds, the sunset, and I say to myself, what a wonderful world.

Global Connections

I’m a scientist by temperament and by training. For many years, I worked as a biologist in a pharmaceutical company. Our research department had a sister department located in Japan. Because of this partnership, our lab had a series of visiting scientists from Japan. They were always young people, with a spouse and perhaps with a fledgling family, trying to fit into this foreign place. Since science is internationally interwoven, we had visiting scientists from other countries as well: Australia, Brazil, England, France, Spain, Switzerland, Sweden. They would stay here for perhaps two years, and then return to their own labs in their own countries.

Halloween is a traditional American holiday. It can easily appear silly to people from other cultures. They just don’t quite get it. So every Halloween, my housemate and I would invite the visiting scientists and their families to our home to carve pumpkins. We’d also invite a couple of Americans and their children, to create a balance of experience and bafflement. We’d all sit on the floor throughout the house, newspapers spread in front of us, fresh pumpkins at hand with more on the lawn outside, and tea candles ready next to the front door. We’d start to carve our first pumpkin.

You know, if you’ve ever carved a pumpkin, that it can be a gooey mess. If you’re from another culture, like Japan’s, where food and body are kept very clean and very separate from each other, pumpkin carving could appear completely puzzling, intimidating even. But all of our guests politely started, regardless of inner turmoil, watching nearby friends for clues. The experienced carvers would offer witty advice wherever necessary, and generous encouragement to cautious skeptics.

Imagine the surprise and dismay of opening your first pumpkin and looking down into all that pale orange mess, the strings, the seeds, the oddity of it, the slippery randomness of it. Imagine reaching your hand in and feeling the slime and the endlessness of those inner curves. But looking around, others are doing the same thing, talking and laughing, so you bravely move forward, scooping out the seeds, scraping out the strings, cleaning out your hollow. Okay, now what?  Draw a face??  A scary face???

The first set of jack o’ lanterns are simple and a bit awkward. Two eyes, a mouth, sometimes with teeth, maybe a nose. As each person finishes his pumpkin, he stands up, carries it to the front door, inserts a tea candle, sets the pumpkin in the garden outside, and lights the candle.

Night is falling, and slowly the garden fills with jack o’ lanterns. The candles softly glow, brightly, then even more brightly against the darkening backdrop. The Japanese eyes fill with delight.  The French man grins and scurries off to get his next pumpkin. The Australian scrutinizes the others’ handiwork and tackles his next globe with blooming creativity. The carved faces become haunted, or lecherous, or jeering. Carved flames leap from mouth corners; carved eyes glower. The jack o’ lanterns are no longer consigned to the lawn; now they’re lurking behind rocks, gaping up from under a bush, cackling down from a tree branch.

The transformation is complete, for pumpkins and humans alike. We gather with hot apple cider and wander around the garden, delighted. My Finnish friend puts her arm around my shoulder and says delightedly, “Now I understand Halloween. Now I get it.”

So here I am on the spiritual path.  I have arrived at the party and understand portions of what I’m encouraged to do.  I look around at people I trust and admire, and pay attention to the example they set.  I’m learning that the way to learn is to do.  I’m delving into my pumpkins, each and every one of them, creating the most magnificent jack o’ lanterns that I can.  And I trust that by the time I’m standing in the garden, sipping hot apple cider, watching the glowing faces around me, I will understand why God is expending so much energy to create us, waiting for us to search for Him, and then helping us to find Him.

Irrigation for Camano Summers

I've always thought that the Pacific Northwest had rain all year round. Maybe rain used to fall during the summer season; it doesn't seem to now. Global warming is inching its way up our coast, parching our little farm on Camano Island, a hop, skip, and a jump south of the Canadian border.

We started transplanting all of our flower and veggie seedlings in April, right after our last-frost date, starting with our cold-hardy varieties of onions, lettuces, and cresses. We plowed right along on our transplanting schedule, populating more and more beds with their tiny populace.

And then, the rains stopped early. With thousands of fragile seedlings taking their first breaths in their new beds, we spent hours each week hand-watering those beds. With the beds stretching long, the seedlings raising skinny arms to the sun, and hoses thick and heavy, we teamed waterers with hose managers to navigate the delicate edges of each planting bed.

We had calculated another month before the rains stopped, and so found ourselves suddenly behind on our irrigation-building plan. We shifted gears and, in between hand-watering and transplanting, we built our irrigation systems.

Wobbler warriors.

They were twofold. We needed overhead watering for the tiny seedlings to supplement the main system of drip tapes. Once the seedlings grew large enough, we could abandon overhead watering for the more efficient drip watering. We used wobblers for overhead systems, four wobblers to cover each planting section. We set them up for manual management, since we wouldn't use them for long. 

Connecting drip tape.

Happy seedings. Happy plants.

Separately, we stretched drip tape along the extent of each bed, four tapes for the wider beds, three or even two tapes for the narrower beds. 

Wobblers and drip tape, both.

All of the drip systems are on timers, five timers in all. It's too easy to forget to turn off a sprinkler, or even to turn it on in the first place. With summer drought on our horizon, timers ensured that everyone would have enough water to thrive. Sun, water, good soil, healthy seedlings; a successful formula.

Each timer gets its own post. Prashama is a strong post-pounder.

Then our water pump gave out. We noticed lower and lower water pressure whenever we were hand watering. Drips were smaller and less frequent, all along every drip tape. Our showers dribbled; our washing machine stalled; our water bottles filled languidly.

Then it all stopped. We had no water.

Upon consultation with our cooperative-farm directors, we stretched four, long hoses from the neighboring pump house and hooked it into our water-supply line. Upon consultation with several well-professionals, we eventually replaced our 18-month-old water pump with a new pump. The well-wizzard also hauled an impressive pile of metal debris out of our well, clearing the space for the new pump.

The flower beds under the summer sun.

Thriving.

We continued borrowing our neighbors' water for a few more weeks for the gardens, while our well supplied our household water. We were finally able to switch to our well exclusively, and fingers crossed, we've made it through the drought summer. We still need to install a pressure tank to protect our water pump from all those dripping tapes come next summer, but that's another story for another day.

Planting Seedlings Early, Late, and Just in Time

There are times when two people cannot contribute enough hands to get the job done. We were extraordinarily blessed in the spring of 2021, when our friend, Dora, offered to come and help us get our planting beds up and running.

Dora at the prana table.

There were a few preliminary projects. We had to remove the bird netting, roll it up, tying each bundle securely, and stashing them away. Ditto for the landscape fabric, the twine, the fabric staples, the rocks, the branches.

Our hard work paid off.

As we unzipped each bed, it seemed clear that our over-wintering strategy had worked. The beds were pretty much weed-free. We scattered some soil supplements and tilthed the top layer of compost, mixing everything together easily and neatly.

We had two types of seedling trays. We had set our sights on using a paperpot transplanter that we had inherited from a friend. In theory, we could transplant 256 seedlings in less than a minute. I had used it successfully in another garden and was enthusiastic about our success in getting all of our transplants into their beds.

Unfortunately, the straw underlayment had not broken down completely. It caught in the furrower of the transplanter, and hiccuped our progress into frustration and despair. Luckily, Dora and Dambara were able to persevere, and they got all of the paperpot seedlings into the ground.

We also had 50-cell tray seedings. Each seedling went into the ground as we scooted our way down the beds. With three of us scooting, we were able to get all of these seedlings into the ground as well.

We up-potted many of the seedlings, to allow them to gain size and resiliency before going into the ground. Especially the sprawlers, the squashes and cucumbers, would benefit by being older when they went into the ground, when the days and nights were warmer.

The veggie beds, a month into transplanting.

The three of us got it all done. But we had adversaries: one pint-sized and a trillion pea-sized.

The robin who owned our veggie meadow delighted in pulling up our fragile seedlings. He didn't eat them; he merely pulled and dropped them, gasping, at the cusp of their former lodging. He did this over and over, and we determinedly followed after him, replanting the gasping youngsters.

It was the trillions that worked faster than we could. Pill bugs. Trillions of them. They had overwintered, snug as a bug in a rug, under our brilliant solution of landscape fabric, feasting our our brilliant solutions of straw, compost, and wood chips.

We lost 90% of our onions, shallots, and leeks, and most of our spinach and lettuces. There were trillions of them. They didn't care for cilantro or arugula, asparagus or carrots, so we had many successes, too.

Flourishing flower beds.

Researching strategies for combatting pill bugs: Eliminate all decaying straw, wood, and compost. Well. Then we'd be back to native soil, so those strategies won't help. Spraying: Not part of our farming strategy. The one that would work: Transplanting older seedlings so they can outgrow the munch rate of the pillbug hordes. I'm thinking it will also help if we eliminate the winter covering of landscape fabric. That's a happy thought, since keeping the fabric in place was a huge pain last winter.

Transplanting older seedlings also eliminates the paperpot transplanter. That's actually okay, too, since that allows us to use straw again this winter to help further build our soil.

So. We learned a lot. We accomplished a lot. We conquered a lot. And if it hadn't been for Dora, it wouldn't have happened. Dora saved our spring and our farming year. Thank you, thank you, Dora. You are a jewel.

A jewel of a friend.

Tranquility.

Sowing Seeds to Build Our Farm

We were lucky enough to order our seeds in November, 2020. We had moved through the fearful covid year, with hope dawning in the new year. It was easy to think expansively.

I've grown plenty of veggies in my tenure as gardener, so those seeds were easy. And fun. I've not grown flowers, not many anyway, and only landscape flowers; never cut flowers.

Our main source of inspiration came from Floret Farm. They are only about 45 minutes from our farm, so what worked for them would surely grow on our farm as well. We downloaded their recommendations for the best cut flowers: Focals, spikes, disks, fillers, and airs. We ordered almost all of our seeds from Johnny's and some from Osborne. They all arrived promptly, and I promptly entered overwhelm.

So many seeds! So many varieties! So many colors, heights, support needs, germination times, dates-to-maturity times. I couldn't wrap my mind around it all.

Luckily, I'm a whiz with excel spreadsheets. I painstakingly entered all the relevant information about germination times, transplant-before-last-frost times, heights, and quantities. I let excel do all of the date calculations for me, and then I transferred the varieties onto another spreadsheet organized by weekly, calendar dates.

Everything fell into place. On the biggest sowing week at the end of February, I would have to sow 15 varieties. Other weeks would demand sowing of 5 or 6 varieties. With 7 days in a week, we would have to sow 2 varieties per day during that big week. Most weeks would need only 1 or 2 sowing days. This plan was completely feasible.

Every variety was new to me.

It was feasible in theory, and low and behold, it was also feasible in reality. Joyfully feasible. With our new greenhouse sheltering the growing expanse of seedling trays, my heart grew and expanded. As the seeds germinated, and the tiny seedlings lifted their faces to the warm sun filtering through the greenhouse panels, my heart quite simply exploded.

We opened the greenhouse doors every morning, helping the air stay cool under the spring sun. We closed it every night, helping the air stay still and safe under the spring moon. We watered the trays, seedlings dancing and jostling under the gentle spray. We pinched off stray weed seedlings. We started succession sowings of the seasonal powerhouses, both veggie and flower.

The window vents open and close automatically, according to air temperature.

Our plan was working. Our greenhouse was working. The sun was working. The seedlings were working. Our farm was beginning.

Our self portrait.