Beltane Solstice Moon
In 12 days we will have the summer solstice and it is now 56 degrees and rainy. A peek at 
80’s may come, but until then June will remain like May.
My enthusiasm for various aspects of my life seem to ebb and flow, not so much on tides of the fabled ocean, Inspiration, but more on inner rhythms I do not fully understand. When I began reading the e-mails from Jon Frank of International Agriculture Labs, he reminded me, again, of the reason I cut down the black locust so we could have space for gardens in the back. And, again, of the various moments in time when raised beds seemed like something we should have, and which Jon (Olson) built so well. Then the permaculture river began to run and it turned the water wheel of my energy for a while.
Each one of these impulses has come from deeper roots, seeds sown in the 1960’s back to the land movement, then expressed by the purchase of a farm outside Nevis, Minnesota in northern central Hubbard County. They have also been nourished by work of an intellectual mentor, Scott Nearing and his wife Helen, who wrote Living the Good Life.
Kate has been there at each of those rhythmic changes, helpful and supportive. Each one has added a bit to the whole and now I believe we are poised for an optimal garden and orchard, one nurtured by years of steady effort though from episodic sources. Next year I plan to focus on the orchard in the way I’m focusing this year on vegetables with the High Brix Garden. My goal is a good quantity of high nutrient food grown in a sustainable way right here at Artemis Gardens and Hives.
My hope is that this is the last piece to the puzzle of vegetable and fruit growing for us. Then, with the help of Javier and his crew for the heavy lifting and skilled landscaping work, we should be able to stay here and thrive here as long as possible. Our flower gardens, extensive, we have gradually moved toward very low maintenance and I feel that part of our grounds we understand, have a good to excellent handle on.
With Javier’s removal of the ash tree from our garden area and the addition of the High Brix nutrient program, plus the narrowing of the types of vegetables we will grow and the bagging of our apples, I feel we’re within a growing season or two of being able to say the same for our food crops.
Enriching the Earth
by Wendell Berry
To enrich the earth I have sowed clover and grass
to grow and die. I have plowed in the seeds
of winter grains and of various legumes,
their growth to be plowed in to enrich the earth.
I have stirred into the ground the offal
and the decay of the growth of past seasons
and so mended the earth and made its yield increase.
All this serves the dark. I am slowly falling
into the fund of things. And yet to serve the earth,
not knowing what I serve, gives a wideness
and a delight to the air, and my days
do not wholly pass. It is the mind’s service,
for when the will fails so do the hands
and one lives at the expense of life.
After death, willing or not, the body serves,
entering the earth. And so what was heaviest
and most mute is at last raised up into song.