I’m spending a lot of time sending out baby photos. Baby tomato photos documenting the growth from seedling to the true-leaves phase. I’m as proud as any new parent.
Our kitchen has an eerie grow-light-glow that colors everyone’s face pale green. We began with about fifty seedlings. This afternoon I stood at the kitchen counter, which I had covered with old newspapers, hefted a big bag of soil up, like a dirty Santa Claus, and began filling compostable coffee cups. I separated the two plants I had in each small rubber square into a cup: a room with a view. The smaller plants went back under lights to cook a little more. The rest I placed on trays and carried out into the afternoon sunshine where they joined the broccoli, peppers and round pots of lemon-yellow Tuberous Begonias to bask in the warmth and harden. This begins the in-and-out season. If the mornings are above forty, we drag pots outside, scraping along the wood garage floor. At night when I make the trip to the barn and hen houses, I will reverse the order and tuck in plants as well as animals for the night.
Paul and Jeff hefted the hog panels of our new greenhouse into place in our lower pasture. We create gardens by following the path of the sun any way we can. The plastic stretched over the archway will be home for the tomatoes and peppers this growing season. As I stand looking at all of the tiny tomatoes I’m slightly afraid that in being zealous for the possibility of tomato sauce from September through April, we may have overdone it. Parked beside the greenhouse, like a giant station wagon, is the wood cart we have traditionally used for planting tomatoes. This year we plan to fill it with cucumbers for sweet pickles and basil for pesto. To keep our sheep from taste-testing the Nightshade plants, we run a ring of fence around both the greenhouse and the mobile garden. The theory is that if in the same paddock, the sheep will stand and look quizzically at the paraphernalia before shrugging and heading off to graze.
Spring is the time when the farm comes back to life. Paul stands by the bin and forks chicken manure into the wagon to drop into the designated compost pile below. We’ll use it between beds. The shavings will act to deter weeds while the poop nutrients will leech into the plants.
Today I stand in the garden and count pointed green garlic spikes, likes hands coming up from a grave. Garlic is planted in the fall and we plan on a quarter of our summer crop of Music garlic to return as seeds for next year’s plot. The rest will be harvested, dried and brushed clean before packing into a wooden crate that Paul made for winter storage in our basement where it is cool and dry.
In Vermont we don’t get the all-clear for frost until Memorial Day weekend, making our growing season relatively short. Crops that can tolerate cold soil go in as soon as possible. I carry a mesh bag of yellow onion starts with me, and rake our leaf mulch off the bed. Kneeling, planting and praying to the earth, I push in swollen little onions, tip up, and cover them with dirt/manure. When finished I stand and scratch my hands, the soil irritating my skin. I look down at my dirty fingernails and hear my mother’s voice berating me, again, for not wearing garden gloves. When I put my hands into the cool earth, I need to feel it. Gloves are a barrier between me and the connection I am searching for.
I spend the rest of the afternoon using a mattock to open two holes wide enough to plant large clumps of daffodils someone has split and given to me, and then pulling the storm door off the face of the music studio and replacing it with the old green screen door. I bring out two kombuchas and we sit, drinking, listening to the Phoebes call as they flit in and out of their new spring apartments.
As dark begins to fall I head out to do a final check on all animals. The sheep greet me at the door, sniffing my hands looking for cracked corn. I take the pitchfork from the wall and fluff their bedding, make sure they have water and give a few bum-scratches. I open the door to the back chicken coop and there is an odd quiet. I look at the roost where nine hens sit and notice one has blood running down her face and comb. There is bright red splattered on the wall and a few peck at droplets in the clean shavings. The chicken is uneasy yet resigned. I lift her and swat another hen reaching out for a final peck.
I hold her carefully, tucked under my right arm while Paul helps me use warm water to wash off the fresh blood. I put a blob of Neosprin on the open wound as she bobs and ducks, clucking softly. Paul heads out to put our hospital box in place. A wounded chicken is invitation for bad behavior from the rest. She cannot be put back into the flock until fully recovered. If she fully recovers. After I have put her into the box with clean straw, food and water, I stand and look at the blood on my hands that has now mixed with dirt from planting.
When a cello is in tune, a note played with correct intonation will excite the harmonic overtone series on most, if not all,the remaining strings. As I get older I find myself paying more attention to what it means for me to vibrate sympathetically. What people, places, animals excite my overtone series, and who and what does not.
Standing on our small farm, in the eerie glow of the grow lights, a bloodied chicken cradled in my still itching hands, Paul next to me with Neosporin, I fully vibrate.