Kings in Spring

 

 Little Flower Farm's Barn 

I read somewhere that Johanna Spyri, famed authoress of “Heidi” and many other beloved children’s books, would even as a small child pause in her most rambunctious play to listen to the wind in the tops of the tall pines that dotted the hillside in the tidy Swiss village seven miles from Zurich where she grew up. Summer suns smiled upon her brothers and sisters enjoying potatoes roasted in open fires; feasts so fit for kings that the happy memory of them was immortalized in one of her books:

Germinating Flats in the living room

“Renz sat down next to her and then both watched the wind for a while as it blew merrily over the potatoes, lying there to cool, and carried away the gray steam rising from them…..with a potato in one hand, a piece of cheese in the other, the two children sat there on their wall and took a good bite first of one, then of the other. Above them in the alder-tree, the birds were singing, the sun sparkled over the pasture, and on the ground in front of them the bright bluebells nodded gaily to and fro in the wind.”

                   Renz and Margritli by Johanna Spyri, 1931

Living near to a piece of land and daily keeping an eye on it- brings you into kinship with people not just across the world, who are, especially in springtime, doing precisely the same thing, but across time as well. You find yourself understanding exactly someone who lived hundreds-perhaps thousands of years ago. Stumbling across a passage in a book written in a different country, in a foreign language, in a previous century, and yet it could have been taken word for word by dictation from your own lips speaking your own heart, for you have been there too, seen those things as well, and rejoiced deeply in them.

Seedlings awaiting transplanting

“Margritli,” then said Renz, biting off a piece here and another there, “would you rather be a king on his throne and have a golden crown on your head, or would you rather by sitting on the wall, in the shade of the alder, and eating roasted potatoes and hearing the birds sing?”

Yesterday we were coming back from the round pen where our resident 7 year old cow-girl and I had spent a leisurely chunk of the day messing around with the Fjords and grooming every square inch of their hairy shedding bodies. All this beneath the shade of a fanning Chinese Elm and the sound of it budding in the breeze and the birds embroidering the theme.

First came the metal toothed shedding tool with its three concentric rings, clawing soft tufts of their dun coat and littering the ground with a generous gifts for the birds to build their new nests with. It’s a delight to imagine how this must feel to a large hairy beast that has been neglected for years…indeed their lip flapping exhalations were all the proof we needed to be encouraged to rummage through the grooming tools’ box and soldier on.

 Next came the rubber nubby curry in the left hand, in small circles, and the firmer bristle brush to follow. Pausing to pick a burr or two or three from the forelock and the tail, and  those ones that are stubbornly twisted in the feathering around their feet, we grab the small super soft brush for the dirt caked on their cheekbones, and a larger supple soft brush for the final sheen all over. 

Freddie and Erling respond in kind by lifting each of their feet for us without much coaxing so that we can pick out all the caked manure and dirt impacted there. Throughout all this the birds continue to sing spring in and we keep a running commentary that is 1 part human speech, 1 part baby prattle to the horses with the doughy eyes, and 1 part horse language, non-verbal body signaling. It is amusing to see Rosie tell Fredrik to back up or get over, when, as a very drafty, nearly 15 hand obese horse, he outweighs her easily by at least 1200 lbs. He lowers his massive neck to breath in her ear as she bear hugs him and her braids disappear into the soft shaggy chest. On the way back to the barn she tells me:

Newly transplanted onions

“You don’t need much at all to be rich. All you need is to have is a farm like this. Don’t you think, Mama?” She is walking with the jaunty stride of a girl who has a future in barrel racing and is in love with a solid wall of a horse. We are walking side by side and my right ear is inclined toward her. A 45 year old brown head and a 7 year old golden one tilted to one side in a gentle revery as I murmur assent. I am thinking that wealth is having someone as small as her around to look up to. I’m remembering  “Hanni” Spyri’s childhood again.

Manuring the Garden

“Do you know,” she said, after some reflection, “a king can have whatever he wants, and so he can besides everything else, sit on the wall and eat roasted potatoes, if he wants to.”

“No he cannot. That would not be proper for him; he has to stay sitting on his throne,” asserted Renz. “But you see”- and in his eagerness Renz raised his fist high in the air and the brought it down on his knee-“ I would a thousand, thousand times rather be sitting here than be a king on his throne, for he has nothing at all more beautiful than what we have here.”

Spring has a way of making a farm look like a shining jewel. The grass is tremendously rich and a vibrant light green that is more accurately called emerald rather than “green.” The animals all rejoice in it like kids entering an amply stocked candy store because in spring, that is quite literally what a pasture is; the grass being high in sugar content. 

We have to strictly ration Freddie and Erling given their histories with laminitic incidents, so it is a special treat for them and a delight to watch them enjoy and hour or two in the afternoon vacuum up grass like octogenarians stuffing bread rolls and cookies into their purses at a buffet. Freddie and Erling are also entering their twilight years, and unabashedness is the privilege of age. The goats watch them from the paddock alongside, and imitate the fjords in their rolling antics. After watching  the horses and filling their bellies, they plop down into warm hairy wedges and a drowsy wave of little legs hoofing the air ensues. Even the pug dog and children revel in the spring grass with rolling. It’s so soft and succulent, and right now, dotted with tender little wild violets. The girls run bare-feet over it, spread quilts and cavort in the best the dress-up chest has to offer, while the pug dives neck first into the sward and rubs the length of his sausaged body all over the bluegrass and wildflowers.

 In Spyri’s story, the two children end their potato feast wondering if their farm is even more beautiful than heaven. They at first suspect it might be, since they have never seen anything lovelier, but end in frank humility, reasoning they can’t speak to it since they have yet to see heaven. It’s a fair wondering to stumble into, especially on the eve of the first of May on the farm. The yellow-bellied warblers are singing amongst new leaves, the wild rabbits dart behind winter’s wood pile. The ground chuck begins to make bold forays into the field and jiggles with her unique eloquence when surprised out from under her cover. This is the best thing about a small farm. It brings you into full experience of

Freddie's First Bath

something so analogous to beatitude. You begin to feel yourself tuned like strings on a violin, making ready to be the sort of creature that can sing a higher harmony…or at least, plant out the cabbages and kale with a grin.