Redemption
Last week, the lap top was essentially put to bed for the week as we weren't taking retail orders, our little old Toyota truck was busier than ever carting us to and from the field, and Rich and I both woke up each morning looking a little more like Jack Nicholson with each passing day of a massive project. We cleared our schedule to tuck 200 trees into the soil on the eastern edge of our field.
I can't remember an April in southern Ohio when we were granted a week of mild weather and no wild winds. After dropping May at school in the morning Jack and I would come home to find Rich loading the truck with the day's compost, bags of saplings from our cooler and water for the babes to drink up once nestled in the soil. The neighborhoods surrounding May's school were buzzing with mowers, waking up from their winter slumbers, wheelbarrows toting mulch to garden beds, and so many Brookvillians starting to condition themselves for summertime. I love the comradery of kicking into the springtime gear.
I also adore what projects on the farm do for my mind. Not dissimilar from sitting down to play the guitar or to paint, the cathartic work it takes to keep this place chugging offers a welcome distraction for my brain. One morning over the course of the week we read about the Richmond, Indiana fire at a recycling facility just about 35 miles down the road from us. We realized that a large plume we had seen in the sky as we planted trees at dusk the evening before was indeed the Richmond fire. Stepping out to fill the truck with supplies, you could catch the industrial whiff of burning plastic in the air. We stepped back into the house and commiserated over the abundance of environmental calamities that have accrued recently, especially since certain environmental protections were rolled back during the last administration's reign. We daydreamed aloud about a place where priorities might be straigher...Sweden?
When it comes down to it, we are Americans and don't want to abandon ship. We would rather see this time through, to see a better time emerge. And so Jack and I hopped into the bed of the truck alongside elderberries, black walnuts, persimmons, paw-paws, and American plum trees and Rich drove us out beyond the grazing sheep to add another dimension to our southern field. There is a sacred feeling that comes while planting rows upon rows of native trees, to top dress them with compost made from fallen old growth trees and their leaves and manure from the happy cows that rotate around the pastures of our friends farm, and to know that if we can get them on their feet, they could outlive us to look over this piece of land once our day has come.
They'll sequester carbon, they'll offer a wind buffer and a welcome sight to eyes sore from looking out over acres of agricultural land cleared of almost all the trees that once defined this area as a tree laden upland and wetland haven. They'll offer habitat for a complex web of species and eventually fruits and nuts.
Today we slipped the last of the tree shelters in place as the first storm in a week began to roll in. And now we are relishing a good sit with the kids who always find a million ways to enjoy an indoor day. Finally having a minute to sit and settle into the cool, old leather couch, I'm bathing in the gratification of the work we have just done. As I see it, it's an act of redemption after the decimation of an old growth wetland which housed two endangered bat species committed by fellow humans (corporate as they may be) next door who found a loophole in the system and paid enough into a habitat trust to do so. The Earth feels the effects of our actions through lost species, faster paced atmospheric shifts, etc. Our footprint is small here on the farm, but we feel so compelled to encourage life to spring from the ground and to proliferate on this little speck of land. I already look forward to the opportunity to continue what we started this spring, planting another 300 trees directly on the edge of the property closest to General Motors this fall or first thing in the spring.
One day, maybe in May and Jack's lifetime, or that of their children, we as a human race, will observe the undeniable fact that we are earthlings who thrive when we harmonize with the Earth. When a place is inhabited by a society which exists in a narrow-minded and short-sighted structure hyper-focused on production, there is a deafening disjointed discord. If we inhabitants can realize that in order to make the most beautiful music we need to play with the Earth, each complimenting the other, we are bound to rediscover the healing harmony of our symbiosis with this Earth.