April-We're Still Here

After a lot of sleepless nights over the past week, I was awoken by a most welcome sound...a great horned owl calling into the night. There is a thrill that excites my whole body anytime I am awake to tune into an owl's late night charades. It's the storybook essence of an owl, his characteristic call which we all mimic as kids...maybe it's even the enchanting idea of such a peculiar-looking and wide-eyed bird living for the night and perched in one of our trees which gives me the urge to wake the house up to hear for themselves and imagine him. About a month ago we happened to hear the same little steam engine hoo-h'Hoo-hoo-hoo at the start of the twilight hours on our farm. Jack's favorite book of late follows a 'brave and clever' owl as he enters the knighthood, at some point in the epic picture book asking a dragon hooooo he is as he searches to figure out hooo he himself is. I ran Jack outside to listen in to the real deal tucked into our stand of woods beyond his playset; and to see the quiet that washed over his tirelessly active little body as he took it in, I could tell he was also falling under the owl's spell.
Last night I slipped back into the land of nod with a sense of ease, thinking 'we are still here': the owls and us, the nesting spring birds, the field mice and the rabbits which the owl is hunting for, and even an elusive fox who lives at the far end of the field. This little haven we are fond of, which we feel priveleged to call home and which we have encouraged to grow lush and perennial after years of being managed as a corn and soybean farm, it's still home to this bustling network of species, despite the story which unfolded last week and which kept us from finding peaceful sleep as we toiled with its reality.
The tail end of March was a heavy hitter in our universe. The sudden loss of the protected wetlands east of the farm was a sucker punch that knocked us quite off of our feet. Nightly I'd finally manage to fall asleep later than the cool kid days of my youth only to wake to the unwelcome disruption of my busy mind. I'd find I wasn't alone as Rich was also up and examining a local water flow map or working out a draft of our concerns for the town council meeting next week. Midday I found myself remembering I hadn't eaten when the kids sat for their lunch, having used the time to field a phone call from the news on this story or to respond to the newly-born neighbor group text with the latest information I had tracked down on the General Motors project next door.
The various emotional waves of this sneak attack rippled through in quick succession. Shock ran into fear which stuck around through a stubborn sense of anger and a refusal to accept that this was possible or even legal. Then came the dogged determination and mania of gathering all of the information from all responsible parties and to notify the public of this seemingly covert expansion of industry into a protected habitat which encroaches on our waterway. And finally here we are, under the owl's watch, settling into the one-day-at-a-time approach and the acceptance of where we lie. On what would have been my second full night of sleep in a week, I smiled feeling rather comforted by the return of the owl to these prime hunting grounds where life abounds. I remember what I told myself midweek, which is that life desires to survive and is built with adaptation wired into its system. The habitat loss is devastating, particularly for the endangered Indiana Bat, which is struggling so because of deforestation and development. My anger has calmed, but it has not fully subsided, as is evident each time I allow myself to think about the unnecessary choice to develop wetlands which are strung throughout acres of cleared, developable space safely out of the path of our waterway.
But now that we have pounded serious pavement to inform our community of this project and of the fact that we are all allowed the chance to weigh in on the plan for next door, we are not so alone in our knowledge and our feelings of concern...and in our anger. Maybe there are even a few people who would describe their feelings about this as heartache, which is what I felt watching with the kids and actually feeling the need to hold my heart to keep it from breaking or beating out of my chest as the industrial cutting crew sent birds flying and set the ground shaking, rolling around on wetlands saturated from spring rain, just destroying the decades of intricate relationships of an intact ecosystem in that little forest. We are energized as a community who understands that we are responsible for looking after our place here on earth. And that is a heck of a lot more energy in the right direction than the two of us and our neighbor who were the only ones to know about this project last Monday.
It's one day at a time. Today we get to put all else aside and celebrate May's 6th birthday with homemade vanilla bean cheesecake and piñata shenanigans. Tomorrow we prepare for planting hundreds of trees along our eastern border line. Tuesday we take our concerns to the town council meeting. Wednesday we seed trays upon trays of food for the people of Dayton, whom we love. And any one of those nights, the owl is still here somewhere, hooting and watching with his amazingly yellow eyes, our keeper of the stillness of the night.
April Updates:
-Online orders: We continue to take online orders weekly through April. We have a special Easter menu for this week if you'd like to snag a pie, pillowy rolls, a brunch scone kit with cream and jelly :).
-Getting into the field: This is the month when we wait and see. Sometime by the end of April we have our potatoes in the ground and have prepared beds for planting in between windows of rain.
-Spring Plant Sale Pop Ups: We are popping up with our local partners three different times with our spring plants for your garden (veggies, herbs and flowers). Save the dates:
Saturday May 13th 12-2pm at Eudora Brewing Company in Kettering
Saturday May 20th 10-12 in the Oakwood Lot at 22 Orchard Drive in Oakwood (where we offer our Saturday pick ups throughout the year)
Sunday May 21st 10-12 in the lot at Rinse Cycle/Ghostlight Coffee on Patterson downtown
-Public Comments to the Ohio EPA: If you haven't already and feel compelled to speak up to the Ohio EPA who is responsible for permitting the General Motors Project on the wetlands and on the Wolf Creek Watershed leading to the Great Miami, you can email a letter with your concerns for the safety of our water to epa.dswcomments@epa.ohio.gov with reference to GM Project #238487W
-City of Brookville Meetings: If you are a local and would like to be present to voice concerns for this project there are two upcoming town meetings during which the public is allowed to present any concern. These meetings take place at the city offices located at 301 Sycamore Street.
Tuesday, April 4th at 7:30 pm
Thursday April 20th at 7:30 pm