Stop in at our farmstand for veggie, herb, and flower packs!
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| In the Greenhouse, May 2022 |
Available:
early market cabbage.........Peppers........lettuces....
bunching onions.......parsley.......basil.......tomatoes
red and yellow onions..........broccoli.....cauliflower
kale.......zinnias......rudbeckia......rhubarb
PLANT. IN. DIRT. BE. HAPPY. TO. BE. ALIVE. AHHHHHHH SPRING!
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| Girls, Goats, and Giggles |
Bordering the Western edge of our farm there’s a line of track that cuts through the ghost town ruins of old Copas. The snow melts quickest along the rails, and sticks down the sides of the hilled spine that snakes its way with crowds of thicket and ephemeral water bogs cheering it along. In April, a walk along that line rewards the wanderer with view of marsh marigolds by the plenty. One year there were so many they seemed to give off a glow like a pot of gold hidden in a tuck and roll of the earth. This is the railway which, 130 years ago, used to send spuds off to the city by the car-load. Now it’s largely used for hauling rock quarried up in Dresser, WI, and the weekend tourists riding the historic train from Osceola into the state park. Last year the faster (and louder) rock train didn’t come by at all, prompting us to wonder if trains were yet another random pandemic casualty.
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| photo by Ben de la Cruz, NPR |
In Kroscienko, Poland there’s a similar all-but abandoned
rusty line of rail skimming through a thickety countryside near the
Southeastern border with Ukraine. The pictures of this particular set of parallel
lines, grimacing with its rotting planks and patches of stubborn snow, like
shaving cream on the face of the hill, are remarkable because they look exactly
like the ones in our backyard-which is to say, they are not remarkable at all.
There the trees are also bare, the recently sawed-off ends of the encroaching
junk saplings by the work crews, marking the abrupt imaginary line where the
wild tangle of overgrown weeds and grass and shrubs were deemed suddenly
unwelcome, after nearly 100 years of having it their own way. Poland is sending
several crews along the line to rebuild it, and bring it back into use to help
with the refugee crisis. I wonder how many old things, old ways our tech-savvy
world has abandoned, only to frantically return to them when faced with
something like war. Why not live with it in place, in use, always?Fran in Winter
Over the years we’ve met people randomly who recognize our
farm slowly by remembering their first view of it from the back, waving at us
from the train as we planted out the pumpkin crop or harvested cabbages. To
them, it seemed like the train was a magicked thing, which took them back 100
years as soon as they stepped upon it, and it chugged its way across the St.
Croix, through the woods, and suddenly happened upon a clearing where Buttercup
and Fran were grazing and gazing at them placidly with their big Jersey Cow
eyes, and little girls in calico dresses were running barefoot to catch a
glimpse of the engine.
When the train starts running again, and the picnickers wave
from the historic cars and stand at the back for a better view of things, it
will be hard not to think of that sister train in Kroscienko, hauling women and
children away from the shelling and gunfire. I hope it too will be a magicked train,
breaking the evil spell that made them into hunted creatures, giving them a
chance to enjoy a better view of things again.
In late February the sunlight grows stronger and the seed of the new growing season seems to soften a crack and germinate in the hibernating heart of the farmer. Like a small animal that rolls over in a deep burrow lined with musty leaves and twigs, stretching itself and blinking with a yawn and a sigh before it remembers what it is in this old world, and what it is like to be up and doing, I find myself lining up the seed packets and marking up calendars with dates to start to Celosia and the Sage…
I can always tell that spring is on its way when the
children get restless and wild to be outside… the increasing daylight is coaxing
them out like the Pied Piper of Hamlin, and we greet peeks of real (squishy)
dirt revealed in the medians of the gravel driveways around these parts with
almost savage enthusiasm. Bits of green moss and watercress bravely waving in
the streams that vein their way through the watershed district that surrounds
our farm receive rhapsodies of admiration. It’s almost incredible to us now, to
think these little growing things will go un-noticed when their cousins begin
their vigorous vying for our attention and exclamation! They are yet another beauty
that only the magic wand of privation grants us the privilege of enjoying.
In the midst of one of those teasing thaws that tickle us into daydreaming about barefoot afternoons on the beach, plucking cherry tomatoes, and gathering big bouquets of Queen Lime zinnias, we are suddenly singing our hearts out: it’s an impromptu aria, conjuring the earth, calling her up off her winter couch, even as the sun rolls back the heavy white down comforter from off her shapely shoulders…
It’s practically pagan, and silly, with no one but the trees
to hear us, and yet it feels as if we were created for no other purpose than
this , to wander a tree-lined path, treading smiling mosses in the median of a
graveled drive, participating with all our anticipating hearts in the thaw, as
if we were given a voice only for this audience-less concert, as if the
desire of the heart to rejoice in the birth of a new year of growth must have
some means of accompanying the finches and chickadees in the canopy above,
throbbing with new sap running, humming with new buds forming, and hence: the stream-of-conscious
opera in the all but forgotten out of the way places that surround our sleeping
fields. I sing like a wild creature, but I find my mind straying to those cultivated
patches of garden that wait for their manuring and their tilling, and the love
of farmer’s hand, clutching dirt covered crumpled-up plans for the rows and
widths of vegetables and flowers and herbs, like a man who remembers how he
loves his homely wife in her kitchen after catching sight of a siren selling
figs in some foreign bazaar ripe with spices and the scent of hookahs, because
of some motion of her arm, reaching up to her basket, very like his rounded
love, reaching for a tea cup swinging on its hook.
One particular day the wind had the whole woods stirring, and our tame little walk transformed into an adventure as whole limbs crashed down in our path before us, and twigs were tossed to the forest floor with a brazen impatience for anything dry and old. My 2-year-old gripped my hand and said: “Mama! The trees are saying “Wake up! Wake up!” That was the first day we felt that winter was being blown away, and the spring was being ushered in like Mary Poppins, all spit and polish, ready to play “tidy up the nursery”.
On the 25th we will celebrate the feast of The
Annunciation. “The Holy Spirit will overshadow you.” In the Song of Songs, the
love poetry refers to a “wind upon the mountains” and a “wind that will blow
upon my garden”. It is hard not to imagine the Blessed Virgin as that garden,
and the wind as the Holy Spirit. The seed that flowers into the new tree of
life is the Christ Child…every spring, the earth seems itself like another song
of songs in honor of the Queen of Heaven. These are the thoughts that cloy as clods
of earth clunk up the muck boots and get tracked through the kitchen and
utility room…
Now accepting Sign-Ups for our 2022 Growing Season
Your check reserves your Little Flower Farm Share!
Check out the sidebar pages for more info!
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| 2021 CSA bouquets ready for delivery |
GOAT CHEESE SHARES!
Support our wee herd of Nubians with your $25 investment, and get a dividend of 4 weeks of cheese!
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| Hello Gorgeous! LuLu, ready for her close up |
In Winter the “littles” play at garden with the bath mat.
While the morning shower washes the residue of sleepy dreams
from my stretching, yawning frame, they are busy with combs and brushes
“cultivating” the shaggy strands that stand in for the soil of imaginary fields
awaiting precipitation.
“You’re the rain Mama! Come rain on our garden!” they cry as I step out and reach for a towel.
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| Harvest Day |
Later, in February, the light begins to strengthen and the
children gaze out the window suddenly disdainful of the recent pleasures of ice
skating and sledding, positively nostalgic for summer.
“Remember the green grass we had last year Mama! We had all
the green we wanted in all the world!”
Like bears coming out of hibernation we put in our seed
orders in January, send out our farm-share ads in February, and now, as March
approaches, I find my mind tracking the goats at the back of all the day to day
thoughts of Algebra, Laundry, Dinner, and the dusting I plan to do sometime in
the near future.
Next week we’ll begin regular barn checks to see if any of
the does are kidding. This time of year can be difficult for young kids,
especially smaller siblings born after a stronger kid has already managed to
get up on its feet nursing. The cold and the competition can prove too steep a
challenge for some of them without some timely assistance. (Or so we tell
ourselves, eager to lend a hand and get back into the intimate game of husbandry,
tired of our woodstoves, and quite evenings, ready to begin again.)
Farm-Share checks are beginning to come in. It feels like
the assembling of old friends.
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| Swiss Chard and Summer Cover Crop 2021 |
A few years ago we had a booth at a CSA fair in Minneapolis.
Almost every farmer we met there was anxious about the future of Community
Supported Agriculture. Most of them were taking every opportunity to chat with
each other and ask the dreaded question of how many members they were retaining
each year, and how they had evolved to meet the ever -changing desires of their
members. With very few exceptions most of them had begun to offer “Pick and
Choose” options at their farmer’s market stands each week, for members to come
and fill a box with the veggies they preferred and leave the ones they didn’t.
Many had online marketplaces, and were harvesting individual weekly orders.
Many had diversified their share sizes, offering various sizes to meet the
different needs of families, couples, and individuals. All of them were larger
programs than ours, and I grew dizzy at the logistical nightmares they were
describing: trying to fulfill such a vast array of desires, and chasing down
multiple orders, marketing them multiple ways, and the man-power such daily
efforts required.
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| Grazing Goats in the Kale Bed after CSA season |
“Maybe so,” he replied, “but you’ll lose some folks. These
days we can’t afford to lose anybody. We’re trying to retain as many as we can,
even as they seem to grow bored of the CSA model.”
As if to prove his point a woman interrupted us with a
barrage of questions and demands.
She had a long list of things she wanted, things she didn’t,
and wanted a pro-rated share for the weeks she’d be out of town.
Our answers were simple, but not satisfying to her. She left
in a huff, shaking her head.
“See what I mean?” my fellow farmer finished. But I was more
glad that she left, than I was worried that we didn’t have enough to offer.
“You can’t build a farm with members like that” I said.
Big words, I thought, but you can’t eat ideals!
That’s when the man in the Carhart vest to the right of our
booth stepped over to introduce himself. He didn’t need to. I already knew who he
was. I’d read several articles featuring his farm, a venture he and his
brothers had begun in the Driftless region of Southwest WI on a shoestring.
They were now a 400 member CSA farm and were making organic oils out of their
sunflower crops, developing quite a name for themselves as one of the very few
local producers.
“I miss the days out in the field.” He told me. “We got so
big, I don’t even do the farming anymore. I think you’re right to stay small.
It will keep you remembering why you’re doing it in the first place.”
He was wistful, and I was heartened.
Since then, we’ve found that there is an ever- growing group
of people out there who are willing to sign themselves up to the adventure of
supporting and eating from a farm. These people understand the “choice” the
grocery store touts is largely mythological. Fewer varieties are available to
the shopper in the store, due to the limited varieties that are conducive to
shipping, and growing on a massive scale.
One choice you will never be given in a large grocery store
is the choice of “fresh”. Our farm harvests the bulk of the vegetables in our
shares hours before delivery, or at the most, a day in advance. There is no
transit time across state lines in a semi-truck, waiting on pallets in the back
of a distribution warehouse cooler.
Though the CSA model, is in my opinion, not as ideal as the
European markets, which are open every day, largely unregulated, and are part
of the daily habit of people in those walkable, live-able, closer-knit regions,
it remains a vivifying way to connect to the land, eat well, and promote local
stewardship of precious resources.
The ideal CSA member is one who is willing to give up the
tired habit of getting what they want when they want it (at any cost), and is
open to the surprise and responsibility of gift.
In this way, they are very like the farmers who grow their
food.
J.S. Marcus’ Jan.21st article on Beatrix Potter in the Wall
Street journal states that “at the height of her fame, she began to wind down
her career to devote herself to sheep farming in England’s Lake District.”
In reality, she chose to devote herself to her husband and
become Mrs. Heelis. Mrs. Heelis, as Mrs. Heelis, would of course be “a country
woman” and involved in animal husbandry and care of the farm and gardens. Why
should this fact be less accessible to the current readers of newspapers than
the fact that she became a “woman farmer”?
The article continues and finishes in similar fashion:
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| The curmudgeonly Mrs. Heelis with muddy clogs |
“…but according to a BBC radio documentary about the writer,
she developed a curmudgeonly streak and, eventually a reputation for not liking
children all that much. By the 1920s, Potter, now known as Mrs. Heelis, was
shouting down misbehaving Lake District children…. this final incarnation of
Beatrix Potter is evoked in the (new exhibition at London’s Victoria and Albert
Museum) by a pair of her crude farmer’s clogs.”
Oh dear. Married, miffed by miscreants ruining her
shrubberies, AND possessed of muddy farmer’s clogs. How far she managed
to fall from the accolades and fame she earned for pictures of bunnies in
waistcoats and hedgehogs in ruffled aprons!
When will the world realize that the measure of a person is in how small and insignificant, they’ve managed to become in some forgotten part of the world, and whether they have found someone to love, and love well?
Furbelow
1: A pleated or gathered piece of material: ruffle; specif: a flounce on woman’s clothing. 2: something that suggests a furbelow esp. in being showy or superfluous
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| Important Historical illustration of a Furbelow |
On our farm we embrace technological poverty.
It’s part of our commitment to invest in each other and to
be content to be attentive stewards on our scrap of land.
I still find it an endless source of amusement to hear how
portions of the rest of the world fare
in the whole- hearted embrace of tech as the new messiah of our lives, which
will make all things new, and make our yokes easy and burdens light.
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| The new L.F.F. Nubian herd sampling Fall kale beds |
According to Fortune.com, last year a bored teenager named Jaiden Stipp made a piece of digital artwork.
He listed it online. It sold for 20 Ethereum. At first his
father was incredulous. Then the $30,000 hit his son’s bank account.
Today he employs a few artists. His mother has quit her job
to work as his manager. His art sales are now valued at over 1 million dollars.
His dad no longer scoffs.
I listened to this story on the radio, trying to grasp what
exactly a NFT was. To no real avail.
A google search at the library revealed crummy electronic
images of dogs with sun glasses, pictures of grinning excited millennials, and
a Ven diagram of the properties of NFTs (indivisible, unique, and provably
scarce.) Sounds like the traditional family, I thought cheekily, as I scrolled
down to find the other things that people who searched for NFTS were also
interested in. One of them caught my eye:
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| 2021 Hogs on Harvest Day |
HYDROPONICS.
Ah. The ever-present attraction of the almighty machine
which does work for us while we avoid getting our cuffed sweatpants dirty.
NFT stands for Non-Fungible Tokens. Non exchangeable.
Tokens. That make millions.
The word Fungible takes up its space in the dictionary just
after “funeral” and is closely followed by fungicide and fun house. As I tried
to wrap my mind around what fungibility is and how non fungibility could
possibly result in something agreed upon to have value, and be bought and paid
for with an electronic currency which is then converted into the very fungible
heap-big-pile-o-cash, I found my eyes and mind wandering to the next page of
the dictionary where the equally interesting word “furbelow” resides…and the
story I remember loving as a child: “The Emperor Has No Clothes.”
In her book “On Pilgrimage” Dorothy Day tells of a Jewish
law she had heard of, in which, if a Father does not teach his son a trade, the
son’s obligation to take care of his father in old age is waived.
It is chilling to realize that even as we sit our children
down in front of television sets as baby sitters, and give them the hand held
screens of our smartphones to occupy them during any kind of wait in the
Doctor’s office, or dining out during a family dinner, instead of teaching them
the superpowers of patience, industry, and human connection and conversation,
we are building for our generation the future we will inhabit in the nursing
homes of the next generation: completely machine managed, in which medications
are dispensed by robots, families say goodbye to dying loved ones via zoom, and
the tasks which bring people in direct contact with bodies and their bodily
fluids are managed by low-paid over worked vulnerable immigrants and teenagers.
Oh wait. The future is now.
“Yes, we will have more time with modern conveniences,
but we will not have more love”
-Dorothy Day
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| Dorothy Day with her grandchildren (cjd.org) |
A fellow I know who works in H.R. and
“knows a lot about farming because of all his connections with farmers through
his work” told me that I wouldn’t believe how high-tech dairy farming has
gotten. He said to me: “It’s amazing! Gone are the old days of the dumb hick
farmer figuring out a ration for his cows. Now they’ve got these computers
hooked up to the feed troughs. They can ascertain all the right vitamins and
minerals for each individual cow, and send the feed needed without the farmer.
Hundreds and Hundreds of cows kept track of like that!”
I tried to scale the lofty heights of his splendorous awe,
but kept getting hung up on the image of hundreds and hundreds of grain-fed
dairy cows in stanchions on cement-looking out over lagoons of manure pit
slurry.
Would it have been any use to mention that the “dumb hick
farmers of the old days” knew that the cow is a ruminant, and as such, thrives
on grass and not on grain? Funny how “dumb” is really dog whistling for “content
with a financial situation which is now deemed socially unfashionable, foolish,
and unacceptable.”
“Cold and hunger and hard lodging, humble offices and
mean appearance are considered serious evils. All things harsh and austere are
carefully put aside. We shrink from the rude lap of earth and embrace of the
elements, and we build ourselves houses in which the flesh may enjoy its lust
and the eye its pride”
John Cardinal Henry Newman’s Lenten sermons
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| Resident Goatherd#2 |
But his bank account will likely not suddenly swell with the
likes of 30K.
His constant and quixotic investments in invisible realties
like soil health and family unity and the souls of his children will be scoffed
at.
Perhaps worst of all, and the most unpardonable: he will
have dirt on his furbelows.
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| Resident Goatherd #1 |
“Don’t worry Papa. I know what to do.”
