Mad Farmers

Two of my favorite people showed up together this week: Mark Bittman, food writer for The New York Times, interviewed Wendell Berry, hmmm…how to describe him?  Farmer, writer, philosopher: the Times calls him an American hero and that sounds good to me. At one point in the recent past, I declared I wanted to be the 21st century Wendell Berry.  For Poem in Your Pocket day, I couldn’t decide between The Peace of Wild Things or Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front.  It is the latter that we seem to be practicing in this place:

When they want you to buy something
they will call you. When they want you
to die for profit they will let you know.
So, friends, every day do something
that won’t compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.

And, if by practice, you mean work really hard, then that’s what we’re doing.  It is SPRING and every week brings new crops to plant along with some early harvesting. We’ve been eating peas, wild asparagus and radishes. Bob does the heavy lifting and when we took a walking tour last evening, I was impressed with the extent of his work.  There are neat rows of lettuce, almost ready for the salad bowl.  The early variety corn is up with its promise of golden ears just in time for 4th of July.  The tomato plants have graduated to bigger pots and are moving into their long rows along side peppers.  Eggplants, cucumbers, squash, and beans…all showing signs of life and point to an abundant summer.

We worked like fiends this morning, trying to get things into the ground before the rain arrived.  I am working on the flower garden: 200 feet of road front that I’m filling with an organized perennial garden on one end and a wildflower garden on the other.  My seedlings of Chinese Lantern, Four O’Clocks, Black Eyed Susan Vine, and Straw Flowers are in the ground and seem to be settling in nicely.   My morning job was spreading seeds:  I have boxes of mixes and then bags, bottles and jars of seeds we have collected over the years.  I had just spread the last of the sunflower seeds when the sprinkles began.  We got a good soaking rain and with sunny weather predicted later this week, I’m imagining lots of little plants popping up by next weekend.