Doing It Right

 I just got back from visiting my daughter's family in Asheville. It was a wonderful re-entry into a world that is interconnecting again. I got to see my family in person, eat with them, play games with them, even hug them. What a relief that felt to my psyche! The unconscious part of myself that has protected me through these last 15 months, made sure I was wearing a mask, not getting too close to anyone, keeping a safe distance in all respects, that part of me has relaxed. Whew! It is such a relief. I went grocery shopping for the first time in 15 months in person today. It was really exciting! I rolled my cart down the isles and wanted to grab everything. It felt like an intoxicating freedom to be able to see all those shelves packed with choices and know that I could reach out and take anything. I probably did buy 2 or 3 times as much as the old usual. But it was so freeing, so exciting. And now I have a very, very full larder.

One of the things we did while I was with my family in Asheville was to watch the movie "The Biggest Little Farm". It is a film that I've been urged to view for the last year or two, and yet it didn't ever sound all that interesting. I finally checked it out from our library so that I could use it in my nature studies class here at Prairie Hill. When I finally watched it, I kept thinking that it was the best film I'd ever seen. I couldn't stop smiling. I brought it to Asheville and we watched it there too. I told my grandsons that they could leave after the first 5 minutes, but I wanted them to at least try to watch it. And the truth is that we were enthralled, all of us. It is such a true and inspiring portrait of what can happen when you're trying to do the right thing, plan your life and work according to your beliefs. It often means choosing to do things the hard way, directly opposite the norm. The best way is not always the easiest.

In the film, a California young couple and their dog made the courageous decision to buy a farm in CA. They wanted to do it right, to take care of the soil, of the plants and animals, the environment. And they hired an expert to help them do this. The film is about all the stages that they went through. Some were inspiring and beautiful, and then they'd encounter a new problem. With each problem, it probably felt like "Why did we ever think we could do this?!" And yet they kept going, didn't give up, and used their creativity and their growing understanding of nature's rhythms and interconnections to solve the problems and create a balance again. The problems were dramatic: birds eating all their fruit crop, coyotes eating their chickens and ducks, snails taking over their orchard, a drought drying up their pastures, wild fires coming at them from the valley below. It was not easy, and they were probably tempted again and again to give up and move back to the city. Fortunately for their film audience, they persisted, learned, created, and gradually came to a more consistent phase in their farm's life.

That part is what has inspired me, and given me some perspective on forging new paths in accepted practices. The "normal" way to deal with many of their problems would have been to use methods that didn't feel right or healthy: using poison on the snails, shooting the coyotes. But their advisor kept repeating to them that nature eventually balances itself. If they could just stick it out and be open to unconventional fixes, nature would show them that their dream of an environmentally healthy and wholesome farm was possible.

I thought of this lesson today as I tried to figure out how to introduce some nitrogen into my garden. My mistake a couple years ago in this new garden was to accept a trailer-load of wood chips to spread out on the poor soil. And then, the worst part, I tilled the garden the next spring, so all those nitrogen-robbing wood chips were mixed up in the ground. The part of the garden that didn't get the wood chips is doing pretty well. The part that has wood chips mixed up in the soil is not doing well at all. So I thought I'd spread some blood meal around the plants in the poor soil part of the garden. But woops. That would attract dogs and deer and who knows what else. So though the soil would have more nitrogen, these animals would eat the plants. So I kept thinking. Maybe if I got some well composted manure from our family farm and spread it around the plants, it might not really attract anyone. It would still have nitrogen to share, but no smell to attract. 

Now, if I were a conventional gardener, I would just buy some commercial chemical fertilizer and use that. I have to say I was tempted this morning! It would be so easy! No lugging heavy buckets of manure from the horse barn to the car, and from the car to the garden. Convenient! Cheap. But I don't really want to use chemicals. I want to take care of the soil, of the animals, of the place. So now I have six full buckets of manure sitting alongside my Prairie Hill garden, and a sore back! My back will be better by tomorrow, and then I'll be glad to use this nitrogen-rich addition to nourish my ailing plants. It will feel good.