I just came outside and am sitting on our front porch while Kali and Alida decorate the walk with colored chalk. The evening air is cool, the birds are singing and the bugs are making their various evening sounds. The sky is clear, the mountain beautiful, the sunflowers making a splash of color on the landscape. We do live in a beautiful place!
We were happy to have many join with us this past Sunday to celebrate all that the last ten years have held for our family here on Fruit Farm Lane, as well as to celebrate the gifts of land, home, and community (which can be found in many ways and in many places).
On this post you will find the reflection that Jason and I pulled together to share at the morning service. The process of pulling together pictures and thoughts was a good one - and one we would not have engaged in had their not been an event to prepare for. So we were grateful for a chance to set aside time for reflection, rather that have August fly by in the made rush to fill jars, dehydrators, freezers, and bellies.
Here's to the next ten years!!
Sharing for service August 16, 2015
Janelle: As Jason and I talked about
what we might like to share with this gathering of people regarding the last
decade spent here on Fruit Farm Lane, it became apparent to us almost
immediately that any attempt to be comprehensive or offer a succinct sermon
with wisdom embedded throughout was going to be nothing short of
impossible. If we’ve learned anything
from this last decade it is that life is full of paradox: successes and
failures, joys and sorrows, times of challenge and times of relative ease;
lessons learned and re-learned and un-learned; seasons of discontent and times
of deep peace; hard work and pure bliss; agonizing grief and celebrations in
abundance; moments of questioning what in the world we are doing here and then
in contrast feelings of being exactly where we need to be in the world, doing
exactly what we need to be doing for our greatest joy to meet the world’s
greatest need. So instead of trying to preach or summarize, we will give you a few
brief glimpses into and a feel for some of what we’ve been up to this past ten
years through the sharing of a handful of written memories interspersed with
some of Jason’s poetry. We’ll start with a poem Jason wrote about 3 years
before we moved here.
Homeland
Breaking open the soil
I know I will cry my tears into it
I know I will think often
of hurting, forgotten people
of
the gaping mouth of pain
of
horror and suffering.
As on my knees I plunge my hands
into it
grasp
the root of a weed
--the
moist and living gritty flesh—
my
heart will know
of the many things that cannot be
uprooted
before
being felt
and
understood by caring hands.
And when I stick a spade in deep
and
strike a deep shoulder of rock
hear
it ring in my spirit
an
echo from the center of the earth
I’ll understand that though I
searched to find this land,
it
is I who have been found.
Janelle: The restlessness that especially Jason felt during our two
years on East Wolfe street compelled us to keep looking for a place in the
country, and very importantly one that allowed chickens! The actual process of procuring this piece of
property is like no other real estate transaction I’ve heard of. Jason worked
next door for Samuel and Margaret Johnson at the time and we got wind that
maybe the owner would be open to selling, as she had been managing it as a
rental for a dozen plus years from out of state. We wrote her, but then after a while gave up
hope of hearing anything. About that time we got word that she had interest in
selling and wanted to meet and talk with us.
The renters at the time, now good friends Rachel and Mike Herr, had been
given first option to buy and decided it was too much work. How right they were! I came to look at the house for the first
time with Jason and my parents. After
walking around and through the house, I sat down in the then dining room and
cried. I cried because I knew we were
going to buy it and it was so ugly and there were few places in sight that
didn’t need work. But we hadn’t found
anything else in the country even close to our price range. This was right next door to wonderful friends
and Jason was already talking about the vast potential of the place. What stands out most to me, though, was
sitting with Pam (the owner and builder) and talking about what we could afford
to pay for the place and what she needed to get for it and then, with tears added
to the mix, deciding that we would take the plunge and she would entrust this
precious piece of land to us.
A Mirror in the Woods
I have stepped out the back
door and am about to breathe
the autumn air
when
I hear it: Dink,
dink, dink,
Cheep!, dink, (flutter)
dink, etc.
There is a mirror leaning
against the wood pile, and
the cardinal is there, once again,
attacking
his persistent opponent.
This pains me. Oh,
the futility! Oh, the piteous bravado! My
air is spoiled. I move on to my next task
and sigh as I go, for
it is I who have placed the mirror
there!
I could remove it, but
then we would just have
cardinal poop streaks all down the
car door again.
Janelle: Jason noted the
following in reflecting on that poem. “Part of the reason some of us choose to
live close to wild things is to in some way escape the reality of constantly
being reminded of ourselves…it’s refreshing to also be reminded of what lies
beyond the realm of human activity. But
one of the ironies of this lifestyle is that you can’t live in a wild place
without making it less wild, or at least without introducing human disturbance
to the rhythms of the place. The effects
this has on me are multiple:
disappointment, angst, alarm, claustrophobia, wonder, comfort, anger,
acceptance, and lots of amusement.”
One of the important and difficult
lessons I am continually faced with in our life here is the need to get in
touch with my impact on the world around me.
For me, the little girl who stubbornly said she would never eat meat
again when her father and sister were boiling crabs on a beach trip, this
happens most keenly in my interactions with wild and domesticated animals. I won’t quickly forget the day I was hauling
wheelbarrow loads of old composted chicken litter to spread around when I came
across a nest of baby mice. I had accidently destroyed their home with my shovel
and the squirming helpless little pink things were strewn about waiting for the
next predator to come along. I struggled
with what to do and eventually made the hard decision to feed them to the
chickens (rather than leave them to die on their own or wait for whatever
animal would come along and consume them).
And then there’s butchering days.
We raise ducks and chickens. We can’t possibly keep all that hatch –
there’s already plenty of crowing around here.
We enjoy eating them and consider them a good source of nutrition for
our family. For me it feels important to
be part of the process of raising and butchering animals if I’m going to have
any sense of integrity within myself in eating them. But I wonder if I will
ever become comfortable with the power we have to choose when an animal’s last
meal of fresh grass will be. I kind of
hope not.
Brush
The old stone pile (which has
outlived by far the farmers
who
--sweating, sweating--
heaved the noxious cherty chunks
into
a heap to be rid of them) was hard
to get to.
Requiring stones, I got my tools
and wheeled them
down, down the slope and through
the
[trees grass rabbits soil wire
birds ants vegetables berries rock water] we
call our land.
This is me now moving brisk among
the trees, this is me now
staring for a moment, once
deciding, next destroying
limb after limb, and
branch upon branch
the pile grows:
space after space
the way opens.
As evening falls I lift with
aching arms
the tools, return them
to their places
on the wall.
So here’s the honor granted me
today: Though I am not, all told,
the artist, for this time I was
privileged
to handle the brush; marks
by each of us (farmers family
cardinal body trees)
may be found here, all our pulls
and pushes, dents and bulges making us
a space
the land remembers ever fainter,
the form (color texture shape)
ever changing, never forgetting.
This to me is love, and this is
peace: to know
this stretch of earth, my home; to
feel
my family’s needs compel me; to
find
a cardinal’s nest and leave it be;
to move
my body there, now here; to make
a difference to this place—a work
of
art.
Janelle: The summer after our daughter Nora died, we began
constructing our parking space. The
brush clearing Jason refers to was required to make the old stone pile in the
woods accessible by car and trailer for this project. This was both a community and family project,
as initially we had some help with the large rock hauling, for which we were
grateful. But the times that stick out
in my mind were the many evenings we deemed Family Work Nights where we hauled
load after load of stones from the woods to the future parking space site. Sometimes we talked, sometimes we were
silent. For me it was about the best
grief work I could do – being with those closest to me who experienced the same
loss, working outside on a project that was more or less straightforward and
predictable, and, well, it felt really good to throw some rocks around! As a
continuation of our “grief work”, the following poem describes the preparation
of the garden we created in memory of Nora.
Reiterations
A father’s love ignores the border
death presents. I worked for you in every way I knew, now
what to do with this: my aimless drive to help, my hoeing the abyss?
There’s nothing you could need from me; I’ll turn my hoe toward earth
and let the rocks and soil absorb my effort, and I'll wait for birth among the
blooming celebrations. I can work on these reiterations.
And so we put together what we can: we scrape
the weeds aside and mark a place where, when it needs to huddle
with the memories, a heart may hide. We’ve caught a hold on changes
in the calendar and seasons, have made spaces full of time: ad hoc
creations. We’ve established these reiterations.
I think it helps a little. Do I need to see reflections of my baby
girl out there exposed to wild, swirling air to keep me from forgetting? Maybe
not, but there is satisfaction in the knowledge that in moments when I need to
whittle down into the quick of loss, or glory in parental, proud elation, I can
turn to these reiterations.
Thank you, child! You never read the clock to know the shame
of dallying too long. Your fingers never curled around a cent. When it was time
for you to go, you didn’t worry, you just went. Your heart and mind and palms
were full of room; your presence was a balm for wounds we couldn’t feel. How
many repetitions of your memory will be required for me to heal? What is my
hurry? If I sit awhile in a place, perhaps an insect sipping from a bloom will
show the way to freedom from the hectic expectations. I’ll depend on these
reiterations.
I didn’t know I feared a fading of your presence, but I found that when I
cleared
the soil space I knew relief, anticipating sprouting seeds. Your memory’s
alive, and here is how I know: I’ve seen it grow! How can this be: while
thinking of the years ahead, a smile? I’m eager to be watching all you were to
us becoming what it is, what it will be, and relishing your place within our
family. Our love is strong, so time will find us living out a leafy
incarnation, still repeating these reiterations.
Janelle: As the first anniversary of Nora’s death was approaching,
Jason and I wanted to invite family and friends to join us in the creation of
Nora’s garden (which I’m standing by here), since so many people had been part
of supporting and sustaining us during Nora’s life and following her death. Many brought divisions of plants from their
own garden beds and together we created something beautiful. It was the kind of evening that is so fulfilling
for me. We, a community gathered of all
ages, worked together, remembered together, ate together, and played
together. The aspects of that evening
are the very things that have defined many of the highlights of the last ten
years for me. We’ve enjoyed hosting
house concerts, neighborhood potlucks, Tangly Woods community meals, baby
showers, butchering days, work days and digging parties and demolition weekends,
work events, food processing parties and, as of today, a church service! All of these events, and more, contribute
towards making our home feel like the kind of gathering space we dream of it
being. And now, referring back to
paradox, the next poem, which is the last poem for the morning, represents a
change of tone:
Animated Me
If someone had been watching me
this evening, seen me tracking
down
the slope to shut the chickens in,
they
might have also seen the tawny
form dividing
weedstalks, nearing me.
They might have seen akimbo me—my
chore
accomplished—in the dimness turn
my head
to face the sound of gentle
hoofsteps. They might have
seen, through pulsing galaxies of
firefly swoops, the velvet
buck along the treeline edge,
pacing up the slope towards the
garden.
They might have seen me lift a
foot, have seen him turn
to stare at me and then, deducing
my ignorability,
move on. They might have seen me smile, stoop and
stalk him.
They might have seen him take
deliberate steps up to
the brick walk, might have seen
him turn and move
between the house and me. They would have seen
the furtive me
bolt into motion, giving chase to
the extent my silly
slip-on rubber garden shoes
allowed; the wheezing
snorts, the thudding hooves, the
flying leaps could not
have been ignored. Would they have seen the few surprising
others, haired and breathing,
which joined him in pounding up the
hill? The woods that rang their fading snorts was
dark:
it’s doubtful.
But if they peer into this lighted
kitchen now, they
will have seen me enter, stop, and
speak.
They will have seen my child’s
eyes
go wide, her smile wider. They will have seen my grinning
lover at the sink, her glancing at
our faces. They will have seen
an animated me, my flailing arms,
my leaps, my pointing
finger. They will have heard reverberating waves
of laughter.
Janelle: Not only has our
home here provided us with ample hard work and good exercise, it has been the
source of many humorous moments. In a conversation Jason had with a friend, it
came up that we don’t have a TV or a personal computer. In a state of trying to
absorb this information, the friend asked what we do for entertainment. Sometimes we feel overwhelmed by the amount
of entertainment available to us on this mere 6 acres of land. We work here, we play here, we eat and sleep
here, we love here and grieve here, we take part in the rhythms of the year and
the natural cycles of birth, life and death. Over the past few years when we
have gotten to the end of the year, I’ve had this amazing realization that we
get to do this all over again! Of course
eating the last sweet potato of the year comes with some measure of sadness.
But it is hard to stay sad when the next thing is coming ripe and we get to
look forward to the first sweet potato harvested just months down the road. We
are so grateful for the gift this land has been to us, providing us with a
space that feels real and in which we feel so alive and connected to life
processes and forces much bigger than us alone. As we look to the next decade,
we hope to continue to explore ways of more fully and deeply engaging the
broader community in which we find ourselves.
The thrill of what we are doing quickly feels hollow if it is done in
isolation from those around us, so we welcome your engagement with us as we
seek to live authentically in this time and place.
Thanks to the summer reading program, we get into the fair free. But the armbands for rides are $20 each and so it easily becomes about the most expensive family outing of the year. It was not a hard decision for me to watch others get shaken up this year (even if most rides hadn't noted that they weren't recommended for pregnant women - we were chuckling while envisioning what our midwife would say at our next appointment if I had done some of the rides and Spark was in a very odd position upon her examination). I actually think I got the better end of the deal, as it was more than a little entertaining to watch Jason ride around in tea cups and bananas and a caterpillar train, usually the only adult on the ride. I didn't have to pay anything and was quite entertained.
We were joined for dinner by the Tangly Woods crew and Jason got to have some adult company on rides for the post-dinner fun. I had a brief renewal of energy after filling up on picnic foods, but that energy tanked around 11 and we finally were able to pull the girls away. Alida fell asleep on the last leg home and we all tried to join here as soon thereafter as possible.
As I watched teenage couples walking around hand in hand, I felt so glad that those kinds of events weren't a part of Jason and I's courtship. I'd hate to feel the need to frequent fairs and win crappy stuffed animals to rekindle the early spark we felt around each other! We named the area that you have to walk through full of games you play to win prizes "harassment hollow" this year. That is definitely up there with my least favorite aspect of the fair. I really can't imagine how much money some families spend for an evening out, and where they go with the large stuffed crocodiles and plastic blow up bats when they get home!
