May Days

Spuds and Spunk in Spring

The tradition of growing potatoes in this area is one that reaches back to the very founding of the Swedish settlement of Vasa, which became later known as the village of Otisville. On the Northern edge of William O'Brien State park there are ruins of what was once the railroad stop where farmers would ship their potatoes out from.

I think of those early settlers, farmers and loggers, who cleared acreages of oaks and pines and planted spuds in the ground hoping for new beginning, pinning dreams on dirt covered tubers, calloused hands and a prayer. Did they also have to pause in their work to teach a baby Jane not to come along behind them and pick up the potato pieces and put them back in the crates? What does all this look like through an 18 month year old's eyes? Taking perfectly good food and burying it in trenches in the dirt...how can we explain the transcendentals of "hope" and "promise" and "patience" to someone still in diapers? The best way, the only way I think, is to bear them in our own hearts and minds and bodies, till their little frames are capable of shouldering such precious cargo themselves.

The Little Flower Farm House 100 years ago. Still stock-piling wood a century later.

planting out onions

the brassica transplanting crew at work

consulting with our on- farm mechanic