Just put your shovel in the dirt

John, Maggie and I went to the Wayne Yacht Club today.  It sounds like that should be a joke, but its not.  Wayne has the oldest lake based yacht club in the country....maybe just the state, I don't remember, but Maine is big, so either way you should be impressed.  It's actually a brilliant place, tucked away in a wooded cove; its a beautiful old house with a wrap around screen porch that overlooks the beach and the lake where there are many boats on moorings, floating in the waves, just in front of the setting sun, waiting patiently for their next ride. 

We walked there (because the beach is just down a dead end road out of the center of town...this town is so cool.) after getting afternoon ice cream to celebrate the amazing weather and our moderate amount of productivity today.  You see, for the last few weeks we have done an impeccable job of accomplishing very close to nothing.  First it was still too cold to plant, then it rained for a week, then I went to Colorado for a week, then it rained for a few more days, and then all of a sudden we were a few weeks late to planting.  John and I have, in fact, had a lot going on, but there has also been, at least from my end, a vague sense that this whole thing is quite daunting and if I just drag my feet for one more day then surely I'll gain enough clarity to plunge in full steam ahead. Right?  Let me expand...

Maggie's latest catch phrase is "I'll do it".  She says it for everything, whether I say "Do you want me to put your socks on?' or 'I'm going to build a to-scale replica of The Gaudi Cathedral using individual grains of sand' (I've never uttered those words....that's a dramatization), the response is always "No, I'll do it."   But she doesn't say it in an empowering 'We Can Do It' feminist power kind of tone, she says it in this really elongated whine, as if shes already annoyed at the task that she's volunteering for.  It's as if she is so excited about her recently acquired ability to do things on her own that she wants to continue to be industrious, and at the same time is already exhausted by how difficult she knows its going to be.  And I totally get that.  I have somehow gotten stuck in this rather dampened reality where I still have the desire to do all of these really wonderful and important things but can't seem to find the will to make it happen.

We are also at a precipice, right now, where we can either hold steady and nurture the few things we have started and probably maintain some semblance of calm in our lives, or we can step into the next step of adding the full fledged garden that I had envisioned.  If we do the latter, it will likely be surrounded by that very exciting but exhausting hurricane of tasks that leaves you invigorated with meaningful activities but not a free moment in sight to sit and breathe.  Do we want that? Absolutely. Are we ready for that? Hard to say.  For those of you garden friendly folk out there reading this and thinking 'What is wrong with you people, its June 9th, and you don't know what you're doing with your garden??'  My response to you is....'We live in Maine, so yes, that is correct.'

So during one of Maggie's nap times (my greatest time of conflict as it is literally the only time of day to do something efficiently and also the only time of day to sit down) I was feeling particularly bad about my lack of accomplishment.  So I walked out to the yard and looked at the garden....there it was.  And I looked at the fruit trees, yup those were there too.  And I looked at the barn, and I'll be damned that was there too.  But I wasn't inspired by any of them to do all of the things they were begging me to do.  But I needed to heed their desperate pleas for attention so I grabbed a shovel.  I figured I could dig up a couple of sod patches that had reestablished themselves in the garden.  It took me a good five minutes of leaning on my shovel, making a plan (procrastinating), and lamenting the task, before I actually put my shovel in the dirt.  But then I did.  And I immediately felt tired.  But then I picked it up and dug it in a few more times, enough to make some dust fly and I felt it settle on my hands and forearms as I worked.  I love that feeling.  And so I began digging with more and more vigor until I was feverishly digging and turning over the dirt feeling like I had to do 3 weeks worth of farm work in the next hour while Maggie was asleep.  Since then we have retilled and weeded both gardens, cleaned out the chicken coop and refilled it with clean shavings, built chicken wire cages for the remaining fruit trees, built a shade hut for the chickens, spread hay around all the fruit trees and berries, planted squash, cucumbers and tomatoes, built a trellis for the squash and cukes, and harvested enough rhubarb for everyone in Wayne to have a rhubarb pie (thats only a slight exaggeration).

Point is....when you are feeling lazy, just put the shovel in the dirt...the rest will follow.

That being said, however, as I was putting the chickens to bed the other night (sometimes they are not smart enough to go inside before it gets dark and then they can't find the ramp and end up huddled in a mass outside), I was walking back from the barn and I saw my first firefly of the season.  I'm not sure which is more magical, a field full of them or the first, single firefly blinking defiantly against the still chilly nights.  When I was down in the druthers this winter, a friend of mine said so beautifully, 'hang on my dear, you'll have fireflies soon'.  She, of course, didn't know how much of an emotional connection I have to fireflies and how I truly feel that they are a tiny slice of magic remaining in this crazy world.  So I stood and watched the firefly with total wonder, and I thought to myself....'You know what? Who cares if I don't have rows and rows of exotic vegetable varieties growing in an adorable and sustainably built garden. Just who cares.  That's what they have CSA's for.  And if I'm too busy watching my daughter pick flowers or roll down the hill, or watching this firefly blink around the yard, then so be it.'  So I'm trying to simply be with what is, nurture all that we have, continue to pick up the shovel and dig it in, but also to put it down if what truly feeds the soul in a given moment is to stare at all this beauty around me.

I felt that more than ever tonight as I was driving home, alone in my car, through the back roads from my parents' house to our house.  I was blasting the song 'Emmylou' by First Aid Kit (if you haven't heard it you must stop reading immediately and go play it), watching the sun slip slowly down behind the rolling hills, and feeling so much life and love in my body that it almost physically hurt.  There is a pulse out here, you can't help but be more connected to the world around you, the dirt beneath your feet.  For years I have found refuge and strength in the mountains, but today I felt that same soul filling energy just by existing in the place that I live.  And for that I will always consider myself beyond lucky.

 One eighth of the harvested rhubarb...

 Experimenting with training the squash plants and cukes up over the trellis tunnel while planting lettuce underneath to sit in the shade of the other plants....we'll see.

Guess whose a rooster....These guys are about 10 and 11 weeks old now and they have been pretty easy to sex for a couple weeks now.  We have 4 roosters, not a bad ratio! We did have one casualty, chicken dug its way out of the run straight into the jaws of our canine beast :(  That event was followed by tears and some serious fence reinforcements.

 Rhubarb pie! Stay tuned for the recipe (I'm writing this in bed and can't be bothered to get up and get it).  And what is this baked log looking thing???  Don't you worry about that, recipe coming for that too, but just know that the main ingredient is butter...get excited.