Turning Over, Overturned

It's mid-May, and I am learning that where I live, life is simultaneously waking up and bursting out with newness. Leafing out, spring bulbs, the small kernels of flower bud on lilacs, dandelions and grasses greening up a landscape that has been grey since late October. Wow. Late October.

As I wander around downtown Montpelier, or stop in at the Adamant Coop, I express an ecstasy I think I have earned. And my joy is often met in equal measure by my neighbors. Temperatures are topping out in the 70s. The once frozen streams are running high.  We've made it through, I've made it through a long winter that held on like oh god I don't even know-- like a mama bear holding her cub, encircling us in cold and quiet for many months. I've written elsewhere about this, and am now so glad that I can look back on it. It is maybe 5 months away, winter. That feels like an eternity.

I cleaned out the hearth today. I walked into the cluttered living room, and couldn't take the flakes of moss and bark anymore. I swept, vacuumed, stowed the wood stove tools. I put the vase of daffodils my family picked me for Mother's Day on the stove. It felt good, and I like that room a lot more now.

And today I threw open all the windows, put the screens on the doors, and wandered around outside with friends, imagining what this farm and life will look like. It's not like we haven't been working for it, but it's easy to forget, when surrounded by piles of sod as big as the piles of snow outside your front door 2 months ago, what all the work is for.

We've been beginning to change the landscape around us. I've been weeding in the raspberries. I've been digging out sod in preparation for the high tunnel kit we'll get next week. I've been planting seeds and repotting small plants, their numbers clearly marked, each imagined bed space counted, planned.

And tonight, the miracle of the plow came to visit. I have accepted that this season will be a slow one, and decided to go the complete route of flipping sod and watching it decompose before doing much else. Our neighbor angel came along in his orange tractor, with a good old plow to slice into and turn over sod that has been growing for maybe 100 years in that spot. He backed into the bed space-- only 3000 square feet this year-- and made his way, painting brown into this rapidly greening earth.

I felt, as he did this work, as I ran after to help flip pieces that got stuck, tromping on tubes of earth and feeling the soil settle in my toes, like the world was flipped, the script of my inadequacy, my doubt, overturned in the face of the possibility of this good soil. There is so much left to do-- chicken housing, construction, soil amendments, barn clean out that never ends, bed making, and on and on-- and getting there will seem almost impossible until it's over. But tonight, grunting as I pulled on sod in the gathering night, I felt powerful, and capable, and awake. And I knew, for a few moments, the joy of being close in to things, touching life with bare hands and strong arms.

These are the gifts I seek, and the gifts I want to share, when the time is right. Welcome the gift of this bodied life, and the work of hands and hearts. Happy spring.

Your Own Private (Kitchen) Nightmare

I've been trying to figure out why I am obsessed with watching a television show called Kitchen Nightmares. I think it's quite popular, but just to not assume that anyone reading this is as interested in this media train wreck, let me describe what I think it's about.

Kitchen Nightmares is about the externalization of our worst struggles onto people, places, and food. In this television show from the Fox network, a very dashing British chef, Gordon Ramsay-- who I will say has such a well-developed presence in USA reality cooking shows, it's quite impressive-- visits struggling kitchens around the country and helps them to shape up.

Almost all shows have the same formula. The deluded owners of the small restaurant, with debt in the thousands or more, marriage falling apart, children who are oppressed, and antiquated systems in the kitchen and dining room, try to prove to Chef Ramsay that their restaurant is the best in the world. This, of course, is not the case. The show quickly progresses to various reveals of filthy kitchens and broken families. Chef Ramsay doles out the tough love and accountability, and we witness a transformation. Couple reunites, dining room is redesigned, menu made over, and conflict resolved.

These moments of transformation are the ones I jump to when I'm watching the show. It gets pretty gross seeing rotten food, mice, screaming matches, and poor dining experiences over and over. But I never get sick of the transformative moments. They look pretty scripted to me, or if not that, then distilled into pat conversations with not a lot of process involved.

But even if I absolutely don't believe the transformation, the acceptance of responsibility gets me every time. I see families hugging, or doing something on the other side of these conflicts, and I feel full of emotion. When the owners walk into their redesigned space, I feel a thrill of joy at someone's dreams being realized. When there is the inevitable struggle at the re-launch, I am rooting for them to get over themselves and step up to do hard work and keep things together. And they do, by and large.

Gordon Ramsay is the closest thing to a modern day messianic figure that I have encountered. He is the latest and greatest great white hope. He is sometimes rude, and often swearing, but he has a mission-- to save the poor under dwellers of local cuisine, and he is good at his chosen task. Or at least the show is produced well enough to catch me in the constant cycle of desperation and salvation it offers.

I am certain that it's drama manufactured and canned for viewers. It's reality tv, yes? And I've only gotten roped into reality tv with cooking shows. But it doesn't matter, somehow. I'm right there with the families, and I'm moved.

At some point during watching a show, I had the thought-- I want Gordon Ramsay to come and do a Kitchen Nightmare intervention to my family. I want him to come in and share hard truths, and then I want it to be fixed.

I want a remodeled house for my parents, complete with all the things they need to be happy for the rest of their lives. I want a level of calm and togetherness that I remember from my childhood, from road trips around the country, my father smoking a cigar, the sweet smell wafting over the bright red carseats to my face, as I leaned agains the window, looking out, counting cars. I want the difference between the front of house and kitchen to be clear, and each of us to have our roles, each integral to the running of our flagship restaurant-- family.

I want a messiah to come and make the years of confusion, angst, and conflict away. Just away.

It's no accident that this is so compelling, given the complex and painful history I have with my family of origin. And it's no accident that I skip the conflicts-- because I know them well. I think some folks must watch the show for the spectacle, like the Jerry Springer of restauranting. But I want the resolve, the beauty and order of the finish. And I know it doesn't happen like that.

There is no messianic truth-teller. We don't resolve and move on as if we were following a script. We struggle, we backslide, we hurt and heal and hurt again. And we stick with it.

Things with my father have been going really well. I helped move he and my mom home yesterday. After a couple of weeks of holding our breaths to see how his open heart surgery would fair, he is back where he wants to be. He has bird feeders full of seed, millions of photographs from a life of observation to sort through, and quiet that he needs to rest deeply into his healing. My mother is back in her element, comfortable with her home, and with a long list of numbers to call in her community for support, attention, care.

I have left them in their un-remodeled home, with the same baggage and history that we started with at the beginning of the weekend. But this return feels better, even without Gordon Ramsay knocking down our doors. It's not easy, or clear. But it's real and honest, and it suffices. We don't do it right, but we do it, make family, choose family with each conversation and aid we offer each other. Without it, there would be nothing to heal, and we are all worthy of healing.

We just have to heal ourselves, and each other.

Acts of Faith

Welcome to April in Vermont, where temperatures wildly shift and there's about a foot of snow still on the ground. Welcome to the farmer whose most recent experience is in Pennsylvania, where even with a snowy winter, crops grew through the coldest times in the high tunnel and harvests started in February or March and continued through the summer. Soil turning would happen anywhere from now to within 2-3 weeks.

Now, I am looking at getting into the ground in May. Another month. Even with glorious sun and one day with temps in the 50s, it's hard to believe that this day will come, when the earth is visible, and the seeds I have purchased can be put to good use.

It is the job of every farmer, I think, to plan and envision the future. For me, as a newer farmer on new land, the vision feels more like a dream, more like something that might or might not happen in the face of so much uncertainty. Having land does not mean anything will grow on it. Having time and seeds doesn't mean that there will be harvest. Getting from seed packet to harvest, though I've done it 8 or more years now, is a long and uncertain process. I can plan and envision. I can do my best. I can try to listen closely to the land, and respond appropriately. There are no guarantees. The science of farming is powerful, needed, and all the knowledge in the world cannot control the outcomes of planting and growing food.

My father is having surgery to replace a valve in his heart. He called to tell me last week that it will be a cow valve that will replace the one that currently is so covered in plaque that it has a hard time opening.  As the time for the surgery gets closer, I am having the desire to know more about it, and the subsequent desire to know nothing about it. I want to be with my father during this time in the most authentic way I know how, and I'm not so sure understanding all the science behind it will help me with that.

Because I believe that science can explain itself as much as it can, and there is still a vast uncertainty to this surgery. Because the faith I need to believe in my father's chances for success is not based in science. Because I believe in the requirement that we engage in acts of faith-- wild leaps of possibility into a great uncertainty, with the hopes for the best possible outcome-- in order to live our most full and meaningful lives.

I know my father continues to move, willing or no, into the acts of faith that will define these years for him. I know I am embracing faithful leaps with this risky, and well planned, farm venture. These acts of faith are powerful and humbling, and leave us both leaping into the stream of life that will carry us where it will. Where it wills, and where we will find ourselves, on the other side.

Promises, Promises

Today is the first day of spring, according to the cycles of the sun, the tilt of the planet, the turning of the wheel. Equinox-- when all things are equal, and the dial is switched, wherever you are, marking the turning of the season.

It snowed here in Vermont today, large heavy snow flakes that looked more like mini-snowballs, or maybe instant icicles as the snow landed on already slick packed snow. We have about 2 feet all tolled on the ground, and this snow today felt like a big f-you to the promise of spring.

Promises, promises. I imagine some jilted girlfriend in my reckoning of the unfulfilled promise. Too many disappointed lovers taught me long ago to hold back on the promise. Instead, I opt for a range of possibilities, and a healthy dose of hope.

playing with Forrest, 2011

It's a season of promises foiled. My father got a kidney transplant in November, and had been quickly adapting to a new-found freedom from dialysis and all its effects. For a full 2 months he was looking towards life after quarantine more mobile, more energetic, more. The promise of this incredible risk paying off, this incredible gift being accepted by his body, was palpable in his speech, his glowing face. Health was within reach.

And then came the stenosis, and the specter of lost energy moved in for the duration. He's looking at a valve replacement, and holding onto the daily gift of his life in the face of a lot of uncertainty. Is there a promise on the other side of this risk? Is there some imagined guarantee for this next step on the medical tilt-a-whirl? No, not this time.

Something's changed with my father, with all of us, since the transplant. In another post, I wrote about transformation and resurrection. There is a palpable sense that this level of risk has been entirely worth every single day of the life my father has now. The ability to be present has presented itself. Suddenly, there is now. Before the transplant, I think we were all waiting, and the waiting meant we weren't really aware of what was happening. The discomfort of dialysis, the abbreviated visits, the risks of it, felt entirely wrong. And I am also grateful for the dialysis that kept my father alive for a year before this miracle kidney came along.

And it happened. A kidney did come, and that wasn't a promise, at all. When he was offered this kidney, he jumped, and I mean truly jumped at the opportunity. There wasn't anything that was going to stop him-- not just completing dialysis, not night driving, not anything that was challenging to him. He got there, he took the risk. He saw the risk as a promise, and it paid off. His new kidney is well, so well in fact it's as if he never had kidney function issues at all.

What does this wellness mean in the face of a heart stuck and slowed by plaque accrued through dialysis and age? It's not an easy one to figure out. I've been walking around angry, sad, confused. And then I talk to my father on the phone, and am reminded of the life so earnestly lived, now that the space has opened up for him to live it.

My father talks to me about his music, his art. He talks to me about the moving of the seasons out his window, the frozen lake, the birds, the photographs he is taking. He talks about how he has a quality of life in these months since his transplant that he never thought he would have again.

When I was little, like 8 or 9, my father and I would go running together along the road by Narragansett Bay. The first mile was a glorious down hill skip, while looking at suburban houses and yacht club boat races. We reached Gaspee Rock and had a flat run for the second mile, down through more expensive and tree lined streets, by the entrance to the club, and out to the point. And then we turned around. I would do well until we reached the hill. And though I tried, my father, more often than not, would carry me up that hill on his shoulders.

I'm not going to make some metaphoric leap to my father carrying me, even now, as he lives these different days. It's not like that, we're all adults now, and I don't think I need to be ashamed of my sadness and frustration.  I will say, however, that this journey is a long jog with a lot of hills going up. We reach a plateau, and then the next step is shown to us. No certainty, no promises. Just one step at a time, and often those steps are laborious. I realize now that there are no promises of this time, and to have them, would be as bad a plan as a promise of flowers in Vermont on March 20.

So let go of the promise, the expectation. See what is. We will see, if we are lucky, what is next.

On Knowing It's a Leading

So I just got home from a long day at Woolman Hill, a Quaker retreat center in Deerfield, Massachusetts. I attended one day of a weekend gathering of Friends who hold a concern for climate change and environmental issues. I made the compromise with my partner to go only for one day, and managed to do it. I drove 2 1/2 hours each way, and spent a full day in worship and discussion sessions with 30+ Quakers from around the New England Yearly Meeting-- the regional association that connects individual meetings to each other.

That's an 18 hour day. But I'm wired now, or maybe filled with the Spirit of the day. Sometimes it's hard to tell.

The gathering was well ordered-- which is Friendspeak for well organized and responsive to the needs of those gathered. For me it was an introduction to New England Quakers. Though I was raised in Rhode Island, and have spent most of my life in New England, I have never been a Quaker in New England until now. There is a whole new layer of this region that is opening up to me. I am intrigued, and interested in learning more over time, at gatherings like this one, at the annual gathering of Quakers in the summer that happens somewhere in New England. This year it is in Vermont. I am feeling lucky about that.

Discussion was lively, and I'm glad I stuck around for the evening session, even with the resulting return to my living room by 12:30 (now 1:30, with the leap forward). A moment struck me so sweetly, so powerfully, from this last session that I would have hated to miss.

One of the participants stood, as we were discussing paying attention to where our hearts lead us in responding to the needs of the world, wondering about if we can get a 'leading'-- again, Friendspeak for  the pull of ministry in our lives-- from another person. She shared that a loved one was struggling with a life threatening illness, and she felt led to be with her and help her. She was asking if this leading was possible, and if it was enough. As she asked this last part, she began to express emotion, and the rawness of her concern for her loved one.

The drop in the room was palpable. In another post I have written about leveling down, where a member of a group surfaces a conflict, issue, struggle, truth that brings the group to a deeper level of understanding about what is happening. This was a level down that I could feel with my body.

The response of other participants, and one of the facilitators, brought us deeper and through. The immediate attention to her, the outpouring of compassion, and the naming of what was going on with her in the context of our work together, was genius, was very well ordered indeed.

I think it is pretty clear that on a rational level, a human level, the care for those we love is so crucial to our wellness, our wholeness in the world. But the guilt and powerlessness of feeling like this care is not enough, is somehow not noble enough in the face of the largeness of something like climate change,  can be paralyzing. This Friend who shared her concern and story was surfacing something for all of us-- a fear that no matter what we do, no matter how natural and right that doing is, it will not be enough. And this fear blocks our knowing-ness of the authentic leadings that are calling to us.

In this gathered group, contradiction to this paralysis, as well as loving understanding, brought us all to a place of compassion for ourselves in our lives, and made the connections we needed to hear in order to feel like we would not have to abandon ourselves to this work. In fact, we are a part of this work, and our loved ones, our home meetings, our families, are a part of this great turning work we are building in our own ways.

Something else that was shared over and over again during the day was that we need to build love, we need to say yes to it, and by loving more completely, we will see a way through. I have a lot of resistance to this, because it sounds pat to me. Demon cynicism raises his head.

But in the context of this leveling down, I am seeing love differently. If I love more completely, see loved ones all around me, both human and non-human loved ones, what then will my leading be? To respond with love to the illness of loved ones is natural, right, and true. And if that loved one is a pasture? And if that loved one is an ancestor wronged, seeking reconciliation? Or a stream, blocked by ill use?

The call of an authentic love, leading us to care and bold response, is powerful, and there for us, when we listen and open to its working in the world. I am grateful for the teachers who showed me this today, and this discipline is one I hope to live into, as this phase of life takes root on this land and in the community.

Spring, despite itself

Today the temperature is hovering in the mid-teens, and with the wind, it feels closer to zero. There have been intermittent snow showers, a hazy sun obscured and finally gone for the day as steel gray clamped on the skyline. The mountains are obscured by slow moving clouds and fog. We have been running the wood stove on sticks Norman has cut from dead trees in our yard, as we ran out of our bought wood almost a month ago.

It's cold. It's winter. In Pennsylvania (though I know this winter has been different) I would have planted onion seeds with seventh graders in the greenhouse by this time, been harvesting from the high tunnel with morning work crews, and had delivery of my season of seeds and potting mix from Vermont Compost (another irony being that I now live within 5 miles of this fine living growing medium selling establishment). This is a very different season.

I had a revelation of this difference on the thaw last week. For three days temperatures soared into the 40s. I went for a mid-morning run in only leggings and fleece. I closed my eyes into the sun, running down the hill on the road. I got to see mud and the erosion of these unpaved back roads. I got a taste of the fifth season in Vermont called mud season. I have the wrong shoes.

And though the light and warmth was a blessing and surprise, it did not, on the whole, make me happy. I felt robbed of time, like I should have been planting onions already. Like I was making a mistake, in fact I still was in Pennsylvania. I also felt scared, scared of being one step closer to getting into soil, starting seed in the basement, making a go of this farm. It was a lot to get from a day in the sun, but I took it.

Lucky for me, it froze up again on Sunday and we haven't looked back. I get to have my Vermont winter. I get to plan and take the time needed to learn what I need to learn. I've written a survey for folks on their farm loving habits. I've begun to clean out the basement, plan for seedlings, chicks, workspace for building a hive. We've opened our business bank account, and I am pricing supplies.

But that's not the whole story. In the past days and weeks, as day length increases, there has been an interesting and much forgotten experience from my youth-- indoor spring. A proliferation of ladybugs have attached to our bathroom window. Spiders we brought in with the wood are getting fat on our fly population. There was a large assassin bug in our pantry. The grapevine given to us by a beloved family member and friend is sprouting new leaves in our downstairs south facing bathroom.

These are all promises of a spring that I know is waiting under all this snow, past the zero temperatures and 20 mile an hour winds. At lunch with the men who came to prune our orchard of plums, pears, apple, apricot, and cherry, the joke was when Norman asked, We do get spring here, right? And the reply--Yes, around the 4th of July. But that's only a story we tell ourselves. What's true is life is waking up, even in this cold, and we have to pay attention to its awakening, and welcome whatever it brings.

Happy spring.

Open Way Farm: The Plan

From the wilds of a north-central Vermont winter, we are dreaming of peas. Dreaming of chickens, high tunnels, functional barns and farm stands. Dreaming of bright air and seasons long growth. We are dreaming, and we are planning.

I just completed round one of a business plan, projecting out three years for the farm, and projecting further in visioning the long terms potential for this land and community. Lucky for me, I have nine folks out there in the world who are looking at it and critiquing it in the next few weeks. I did ask them, but they could have said no, so I am lucky, and grateful.

What's in this plan? The biggest aspect of the plan is to begin the financial engine of our homestead and small market farm, and to ground that engine in this good earth and space. These first years will be full of log jams, confusions, failures, and unexpected turns in the road. And each turn will be towards a long term sustainability, or at least that's the plan.

But I know that plans are meant to be thwarted and thrown in the trash heap, along with all the will and certainty of vision, in the face of the following that is required of me. I have decided very specifically that I am following God(ess) and the impulses and leadings within me, if meeting my joy and the world's need, are part of that plan.

This is a hard won belief and decision. To listen to my self, my self in relief, in reflection, in impulse and push, is not an easy thing, and not something I have always, or mostly trusted. But I'm here, working it out. I refuse to mock my desire, the movement within myself. I refuse to be suspicious of myself any longer.

This does not mean I do not plan, however! In some early board work, I remember being introduced to the article The Tyranny of Structurelessness. This article drove home what I had been experiencing in many small community based groups of which I was a part. The resistance to structure within groups leads to impotence and solipsism. It also leads to a lack of accountability and a sense of disconnection to a greater context or work. It also means you don't get anything done.

So I attempt to put a structure on what can feel like a structureless call to the wilds of the broken world, my heart reaching out to express a desire for connection with the earth, with broken and hard working movement builders, with sustainability and self-sufficiency as teacher and muse. I put numbers on start up costs, though they feel like a lot of conjecture. I made a list of goals and plans. I wrote a 25 year visioning statement.

I was surprised at just how specific I could get. Residencies for burnt out activists. Community gatherings and events around the cycles of farm and season. Connections with urban organizations needing space to send leaders and workers for respite. Niche markets or CSA membership, or value added products, or, or…..

There's a lot of possibility when we vision. It's powerful, and potentially paralyzing. And it needs to be tested, I need to test my vision, against the good minds of folks I respect and care for. I also need to take my vision to the feet of the woodlands, to the feet of God(ess), to the space where I am both powerful and vulnerable, and where I must listen.

I am sometimes good at this, and sometimes too caught up in my own self-importance to stop and do this important work. The good news, I find in this inconsistency, is that no matter what I do lessons and shifting happens. I cannot control what will happen, despite any expertise or best efforts. In fact, trying to do that leads to a lot of pain. And so I act, I plan, I build, and I know it is just as much an inchoate cry as the unformed vision welling up in me. And yet, it suffices, and things progress.

So again I find myself holding possibility and uncertainty, but this time looking at cash-flow numbers and risk analysis. Is it any different from holding these two headed hydra without the numbers? No, in fact, it is not. I am glad for the numbers, as an anchor to what will be happening in the next weeks and months. I am also glad for the years of work to get here, and the listening I make space for, or that is forced upon me, by the closeness I seek with the world, with the land, and with God(ess).

Bring it on, world. I am ready.