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| Harvest and Delivery Day on Little Flower Farm |
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| 2021 LFF Floral Designer |
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| Winter Squash Harvest for Box #16 |
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| Onion Quality Controller |
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| Will, our intern from Los Angeles, CA |
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| Having fun with "Tomato Tumors" |
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| Melon Crew. Clothes Optional. |
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| Thanks for a Great 2021 Season Everybody! |
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| Queenie and the girls count sheep on a Driftless farm circa 2013 |
The best dog that ever lived is buried beneath our old
apple tree-the one with the hollow hiding hole in its trunk. 7 years ago, we had a team of hot Belgian
mares that needed a job to do. We loaned them to an Amish neighbor with 30
acres of corn to cultivate. While helping the mares settle in the barn at his
farm, our girls became enamored of a thick little Blue Heeler cross.
She was old, her “motherness” hanging low beneath her
belly and swinging side to side. Though she was too old to keep up with the
other dogs, and though the new pups on the block made her life one of nips and
annoyance, the farmer kept her on because of her faithful loyalty. “She was with
my father in the field the day he died in the accident. I can’t hitch up
without her watching over things.” Seeing how taken the girls were with her, he
lifted the dog into our truck. “She’s yours if you’ll take her. I figure she’ll
have more peace with your girls than with our pups.” That’s how Queenie came to
stay.
Every time Shane hitched up our Norwegian Fjords to
make hay or bring a tank of water down to the lower 20 to the sheep, she’d give
a little bark of bossiness and sit in front of the team mesmerizing them,
daring them to move even one inch while leather and clasps and snaps and pins
were put into service and all was made ready for the chore of the day. When he’d
take the reins in hand, she’d leap up onto the fore-cart to ride shotgun all
afternoon.
Haymaking, summer of 2013
When we moved to our current farm, Queenie spent the
winter asleep by the woodstove, sniffling and wheezing while she dreamed and
sighed over her younger days as a dog in the Driftless region of Southwestern
Wisconsin.
That summer she fell off the fore cart while Shane was
raking hay 2 miles away. She got caught up in the windrow tumbling as Shane
pulled the team up and looked down at her in fear. She was fine, but he had to
deny her the pleasure of accompanying him to the hay field from then on. He
would lock her in the barn and whisper “I know, I know, girl, but it’s for your
own good!” One day she broke out, and ran the 2 miles across HI way 95 to the
hay field she had only visited once by truck. When Shane saw her, he shouted “great
heart cannot be denied!” and lifted her up into his lap as he finished the
season’s hay-making.
Cider Making Day 2021
She had all the feel of a great lady with a wealth of
experience unknown to us. One day there was a commotion in the barnyard, and
the girls came running in to tell us they had spotted what they thought was a
Racoon under the woodpile. On our farm the coons are grain thieves and chicken
snatchers, and so this news was met with the pull of a trigger. When Queenie
heard the shot, she rocketed around the corner, out of nowhere, like a bullet,
and dove under the wood-pile snout first. Out she came, backing out with an
impressive display of feigned savagery shaking a woodchuck from side to side as
it thumped, lifeless, against her solid body. It was like watching your great grandmother
leap into the air and karate chop a shop lifter before stabbing him with a knitting
needle. “Whoa Queenie! You have some pretty impressive hidden talents!” we
exclaimed.
The day we were told by the vet that she had sepsis and
was actively dying, we took her home top out her down ourselves. As Shane went
in for his .22, Queenie died in my arms. She was too good a dog to make him
waste a bullet on her. We were humbled by the seeming perfection of her life,
the example of her quiet loyalty, the charm of her presence on our farm. Soon
after, Maj, our older mare, passed away of old age. No doubt she felt, with
Queenie her taskmaster gone, she now had permission to do so. It was the end of
an era for us.
When we buried her beneath the apple tree we said, “Every
autumn, when the apples are ripe, when the season draws to a close, we’ll
remember her. Some things are too good to last on this poor earth.”
At last
harvest day arrived, and with it we received a primer on rural life
partnerships. Watching the custom slaughter team at work, I had the impression
that if companies, law-makers, and heads of state attended such slaughter
appointments (as seminars) like the one that transpired on our farm last week,
they’d find themselves better equipped at their jobs after witnessing such ha
master class in cooperation and team work.
Gerald
arrived with a posse. He’s 63 and has been doing this since he was 10 years old
on his parents’ farm, when his dad called to him and said: “Grab Grandpa’s gun.
You’re doing your first steer today.” Back then they processed 350 hogs each year,
stem to stern. Now he does the same number of hogs per year, and 7,000-9,000
steers when he’s not busy manufacturing the machines that make the 1090 masks
for 3M.
Just as
the 1st is hooked between the tendons at the hock, and ratcheted up
in the air using the tripod, a 3rd truck rolls up with a plastic
sheet in the back. This fellow will load the steers and take them to the
butchers immediately to hang in a cool room for 1-2 weeks. Gerald pauses to
share his recipe for Ox-Tail stew. He presses the tail meat upon us insisting
it is the best part of the animal. Also, the heart, cut pup, pan-fried and combined
in a casserole w/ potatoes and cream of mushroom soup. “Bake it in the oven
until it’s tender.” He groans with gastronomical delight. “We grew up on that
stuff. Nothing better.”
Our old college friend John towers over most folks at 6.5
feet. Born and bred in Montana, he is now a newly ordained Dominican priest for
the Western Province. We told the little ones that giants still do exist here
and there, though over time their size has shrunk to under 9 ft in most cases…and
when he arrived, he did not disappoint!
He told us how one time he was mistaken for a member of the Illuminati.
But the observer called out “Oh wait! No! He can’t be Illuminati! He’s too
happy!”
Dominicans have O.P. after their name- for “Order of
Preachers”. Their work is to preach- and to diligently study in preparation for
doing so….hence, the absence of a work habit.
One day one we had him harvesting zuchinni with us in the
field. Shane and the older girls had been up in the BWCA the week before, and
we missed a day of harvesting the summer squash. In the interim some of them
had expanded to the size of small dogs. “Just go and throw those monstrosities
to the pigs!” I told him. It had rained in the night and the hogs were enjoying
sunbathing in their little mushes of mud and muck. I looked over to see Father
John lobbing squashes to the happy and salivating porcine torpedoes eagerly
awaiting their mid-day feast. Each one landed with a delicious THUD and THWUCK,
hitting the ground with truly impressive power.
Father turned back to us grinning, his duty discharged, but his snow white habit looking as if he was riddled with holes.
“Don’t worry! This is why we carry Tide pens!” He assured us.
Farming has a way of changing people. It can transform some
folks in the matter of one afternoon. Still. I’d hate for him to be mistaken
for a Holstein. “There’s no way he’s a Holstein!” they’d shout, “He’s too happy!”
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| 2021 Onion Harvest |
“ We had a mad friend once, a Jewish worker from the East Side,
who wore a rosary around his neck and came to us reciting the Psalms in Hebrew.
He stayed with us for weeks at a time, for although mad, he had the gentleness
of St. Francis. He helped in our garden on Staten Island, and he liked to walk
around in his bare feet. “I can feel things growing,” he said. “I look at the
little plants, and I draw them up out of the earth with the power of love in my
eyes.””
Dorothy Day,The Long Loneliness
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| Weekly Farm-Share bouquets |
In order to keep up with the harvest and keep the plants healthy and productive, we harvest green beans on Mondays and Fridays and sometimes in between for our own freezer’s supply and farm-stand surplus sales.) This past Friday we had spent the morning harvesting zucs and cucs and beans when the lunch hour arrived and the heat became oppressive.
Haymaking is one of the most
enjoyable chores. Yes it’s hot, sticky, dusty, pieces of grass stuck to your
face, down your shirt….yet I’ve seen men wilted from a morning’s labor in the
field suddenly revive with whip-like joy fresh as daisies when a man with a
tractor shows up and says the hay’s ready.
First there’s the pure joy of riding in an open field of grass, the smell of the curing windrows wafting up as you pass, the baler combing the rows up into itself, a blue sky above. The unhurried tractor’s pace as it secures free food from the rolling landscape. Another hay crop in means another year of meat and milk, thousands of dollars secured from the gracious sun itself, and at the courtesy of rain and the good Lord above.
It’s a draught year, so the field that gave 110 bales last year only yields 61 this year. Still. We had dry weather to make it in. The red clover in it cured well. It holds its shape when squeezed and doesn’t shatter into dust. Wally’s done a good job. But then, he’s had practice!
I trudge out to the middle of the field with
the 4 year old and 2 year old who are in awe of the whole process. We’re
carrying a giant jug of cold water for the man in the wagon, stacking bales,
with his shirt over his head Arab-style to keep the sun off his neck.
“Want some water, Wally?” we ask. He shakes his head no.
“How old are you Wally?” I’m leaning on the giant deeply
treaded tractor wheel. The word comes out long and exaggerated.
“Eighty-Threeeeee, so I am.”
“And you’re still at it!” I grin with admiration.
“We—ll, I figure the
day you stop, you ight as well drive yourself to the mortuary!” He smiles.
It’s 3:00 in the afternoon and 96 degrees outside.I take one more look up at the brown and crinkled face with the stubborn chin and faded ball cap. I am not made of the same stuff as he, and head back from the shade of the trees on the edge of the field as he starts up his tractor again, but I know the feeling he described.
Every spring and summer the very smell of the earth thawing pulls me into planting again. I’ve become aware that the day I don’t mark a new season with seeding will be the day I die- or might as well do. Though some days this existence seems like a fight for survival, we all know deep down it’s more like a dance. We head back to the house for some lemonade before we load our 61 bales into the barn.
Wally is off to help another farmer get his crop in late
into the evening before the midnight thunderstorm arrives. It’s still 96
degrees, he’s still 83 with lung cancer, but the hay is ready to bale, and hay
making is a beautiful thing.
