Summer New Moon
Are any of you out there having trouble reading Ancient Trails? One user on a Mac finds the website totally black, not as that’s existential, dude, but as I can’t see what you’re sayin’ man.
A.T. wants to know if you find the site hard to read for any reason. Let him know.
Summer New Moon
A.T. cleaned turnips and beets, cut their greens off and prepared them for boiling. He also prepared kale and collard greens, first washing them, then cutting their rib out and storing them for Kate who will boil and freeze them.
An old folk saying suggests fire wood warms you five times: when you cut it, when you move it, when you split it, when you stack it and when you burn it. There is a parallel in the seeding, tending, harvesting, preparing and eating of vegetables and fruits. Each of these plants grew from a tiny seed placed either in soil or in soil block. They were thinned and mulched. The soil over and around them has been built up over the years. When they grew to maturity, the same hands that planted them, took them from the plant and washed them.
When Kate and I eat them, they will have nourished us five times. As we care for the seedling, we participate again in the miracle of vegetative reproduction. While we tend them, we pay attention with love to the soil in which they grow, checking them for disease and creating a nurturing place for them. When we harvest them, we enter into the oldest covenant of humankind, one that even preceded the neolithic revolution, the covenant between humans and domesticated or at least cultivated plants. When we prepare them for food, we touch not strangers, but friends, allies in the ongoing wonder of nature’s intertwined parts. As we eat them, we become the plant and the plant becomes us.
Summer New Moon
A.T. used the chainsaw this morning. He cut out a mulberry tree growing in an unwanted (eastern) location. A.T. feels manly after he uses the chainsaw.
Kate and A.T. harvested peas, greens, beets and turnips, too. A.T. planted beans as a cover crop among the onions, where the garlic came out. A.T. plans a much larger garlic crop for next year. He has 9 or so large bulbs set aside for planting and set in an order for several new varieties. At the SSE (Seed Saver’s Exchange) conference over the weekend a speaker suggested planting the garlic earlier, even in August. A.T. asked SSE if he could get his garlic earlier than the September 7-9 ship date. Nope. Not to worry, he’ll plant his own in mid-August and check the crops against each other next June.
This whole gardening process now begins to blur the line between horticulture and agriculture. With crops meant for immediate consumption, but others for storage: potatoes, turnips, carrots, squash, beans, garlic, onions, greens and peas, plus the eventual fruit yields, our garden has become a substantial part of our lives. Substantial in the transubstantiation notion loved by Catholics. We eat of the body of our garden and our orchard and in our bodies it becomes use, transfigured from plant to human. A sacred event. Substantial in the way it requires the use of our bodies to realize its harvest. Substantial in the political sense since it cuts down trips by car, makes our place better than we found it and keeps us close to our mother.
The bees have added another dimension. An interdependent, co-creative collaborative effort.
Summer New Summer Moon
Bees. Netaphim. Trencher. Chain saw. Plant cover crops. Harvest. Life runs full speed in the next three month, perhaps even a bit more. A lot better than slow.
Gotta get outside and get to work. Bye.
Summer New Moon
A.T. noticed that the new moon came the day after the fortieth anniversary of the first moon landing. A new moon, a dark spot in the sky where the moon normally transits, has an appropriate feel since after the last moon landing in 1972 we have gone dark as the new moon as far as manned space exploration. A.T. listened to a Science Friday conversation with astronauts who landed on the moon. They did not want to look backward to the past, but forward to the moon as a training spot, a transit station, a research laboratory, perhaps even a manufactory center for ships designed for Mars and beyond.
Space exploration by humans gets short shrift from many scientists who claim a greater range of information can be gathered at greatly reduced price by robots and other mechanical surveyors. A.T. reported this observation by Andrew Chaikin, space journalist on July 11th:
“If any real scandal attaches to Project Apollo, it’s the extent to which hard science was allowed to dominate the astronauts’ hours on the moon.”
In A.T.’s mind this quote displays the value of the humanities and the sciences working together, in tandem, as ways of knowing. While science alone may inspire some, science with a human face, with human responses makes the work come alive. Archimedes in the bathtub. Galileo and the Catholic Church. Madam Curie and the exploration of radium. Lewis and Clark. Newton’s apple. Albert Einstein’s luminous hair and cherubic cheeks alongside E=MC2. Even Oppenheimer and the Trinity mushroom cloud. The list could go on. Schrodinger’s cat. Rachel Carson. John Muir. Of course not all science, not even most science, has a photogenic star or a great back story, but we need the match up between person and science to become excited, enthusiastic.