Planting with the Glow Worms

This week I realized that our hive is buzzing with an energy that won't decelerate until we turn our calendar to October. On Tuesday I spent my first night of the year in shorts and a tshirt until the sun was well below the horizon with the plants. Twilight is the magic hour...an ideal time to work with plants as they are shutting down photosynthesis for the day, and are focused on respiration. Everything you do with a plant causes a little bit of stress...transplanting from a pot to the field to set root in the soil and acclimate to the new growing conditions...pruning leaves or branches which need to heal over, harvesting fruit or leaves which causes a plant to redirect its energy toward growing more fruit or leaves...even weeding which lightly disturbs the soil and sometimes impacts the plant which needs some space from you to recover. These stressful events, growing pains for our crops, are best experienced during the milder conditions of the evening with plenty of time overnight to rebound before another day of sun and heat.
And I have to say...after the kids have gone to sleep and I have at least an hour before total darkness falls, I savor the time in the field with the barn cats getting cuddly and affectionate as the sun goes down and their night of patrolling the farm lies ahead. There is always something interesting to see as the day passes the torch to night. And as I was getting the first half of our ginger transplanted into the hoop house soil, my diurnal eyes straining harder to see my work as darkness was descending...flourescent pulses of yellow light started to show in the soil around me. Like a little constellation scattered in the soil, these mysterious glow grubs transformed the hoop into a setting fit for a rave.
It's endlessly alluring...working with this living system. There is always something new to discover. Can you imagine if we just sat down in the adirondack chairs and watched the same spot for 24 hours? I bet we would find so much newness and that surprises would surface in the landscape that we never noticed before. It never gets old.

Just like the bees in a buzzing summer hive we tend to hit a wall in the heat of the day and drowsily slow our roll. Rich, who is out managing the field and the pastures from morning coffee to the storytime with the kids at night, takes a reprieve from the sun and his task list to recharge. It is when his eyes are free to peruse our surroundings that he noticed a foxhole in the corner of our pasture. Cue the magic wand audio...the namesake of our farm is based on a metaphor: our foxhole...our little cozy nook away from the world. How sublime it is just to know that such a majestic animal found this land fit for its den...It feels like this 30 acre ecosystem is finding its way to balance.
I never did identify the glowworms in the hoop...but I hope to spend the night with them again this week when I get the rest of the ginger tucked in.