June: The Stability of Summer

Thank God for our busy season. This is the season we are essentially maintenance man and woman...sustaining the plants we've brought to life in the garden, making sure everyone has their basic needs met, and fixing what breaks. The domesticated living souls on the farm, be it vegetable or hen or sheep, depend on us in this system that radiates energy. The energy of growth, fruit bearing, seed dispersion, and life cycles. While the sun warms our environment, triggering the earth to leap to action, all the moving parts add their own heat from an abundance of activity. We're warming up now.
It's become so apparent to me that our responsibility to this land is not a burden as some may think...it'd be easy enough to use it as conversational fodder when our small town bank teller asks how we are: "ohhh...busy as all get out...looking forward to our slow winter already!". But that couldn't be further from the truth. Our wild experience of rising and shining bright until daylight gives way to night...it has been a refuge...offering a rhythm that is inaccessible in the world around us lately. The discord of this time we are living in is palpable. We really we are some of the luckiest in the bunch, with an inflated cost of living and the sadness of the latest violence weighing heavily on us, we are relatively unscathed. We have our home, our kids, and our means to make a living. Don't doubt we are cherishing it so much. If scores of resources were at our disposal, I'd lend some to help others move onto a piece of land, which they could care for and which would in turn care for them. It is curative to lose yourself in the catharsis of this work.
It'd be short-sighted to believe that it's simply our life isolated on the farm which anchors us amongst a turbulent tide. The other night my sister wished us a good season, knowing we were on the cusp. In wishing us well she also surmised that we seem to have a strong customer base. She's right, there's a steadfast group of people who we have begun to intertwine our lives with. These are people who I never understood on the outlook would act as stabilizers for us. There's the obvious transactional relationship that we have with these folks. But like the roots hidden in the soil which steady a plant to grow tall, there exists the unseen and more profound kinship that has developed with this community of people who we see on Saturdays or hear from over email. It has offered us reassurance that while the world seems to be cycling through a time of strife, there exists an abundance of love and good, grounded hearts and minds.
I thought about it on my drive down to market yesterday: strong customer base. Really it's this base of people who help to make US stronger. Our growth toward the sun depends on that strong foundation of roots feeding us below. I've always felt my tap root is my family...but who knew that having these lateral community roots would feed my soul and right my mind. It's such nourishment in a time when after learning of the latest sadness, I'm tempted to believe that holing up in our fox den and waiting until the dust settles would be best. But it is the fear mongerer's falsehood that we are best on our own. Instead, I want to ride it out surrounded by you good people, immersing myself in the farm and the kids' alternate universe, while offering the good that we can to the world as it continues to spin and see us through another year in the life.
What's Happening?
-Lambing has begun: Two ewes lambed this past week...a set of twins and a single. May named the twins Airey and Cher. Jack named the single girl Cars :). The mothers, one of them being a first timer, are incredible: doting, nursing well, and back on their feet. We allow our sheep to run as a pack, choosing not to separate our two rams out from the group. That means they breed at their will instead of ours. We do our best to keep an eye on when that may happen, but this year the lambs started to come later than expected. We much prefer spring lambs to winter lambs as there is an abundance of green pasture for the ewes to eat during the tail end of pregnancy and while nursing. Also the conditions are much kinder to newborn lambs...milder weather and no Jack frost.
-Market Season: Our market season begins this Saturday, June 4th! We will be at the Oakwood Farmers Market at 22 Orchard Drive from 9-1 every Saturday until mid-October. We continue with online ordering during market season, but you can also come shop from our booth onsite!
-OEFFA Pandemic Relief Microgrant Update: We completed our electric installation for the hoop house and need to find a day this week to place our massive shade cloth over the hoop house in preparation for the hot summer sun. The mission is nearly complete. I am hoping to get a video of Rich and I attempting to shade cloth the 72 by 30 foot house ourselves... a fun process in which we will use tennis balls tied into the shade cloth and launch them over the house to affix them to the structure. Can you imagine it? We owe a humongous thank you to OEFFA for this assistance.
-Spring to Summer: All in all it has been a good spring so far. We have not had any notable damaging spring weather which has allowed our field plantings to get off to a rather stress-free start! Fingers crossed that we ease into summertime on this note :).