springtime

I was walking from Pastor Toni's birthday celebration back to the garden with Jeremy today. He stopped to tie his shoe and I waited, and still waited after he told me I could go on ahead. He thanked me for my patience and I wondered out loud if there were scissors at the garden for cutting lettuce for the salad we wanted to make for the party. Jeremy knew that there were, and I said that I like that he always knows where things are and he returned that he likes that I am patient. I've been hearing that a lot lately, about patience--from children and adults. And that is rarely how I feel. There is so much to do, but there is so little good that comes from rushing, particularly in gardening.

Today I rushed to wash off a glass gallon jar of fresh milk and I broke it in my porcelain sink. That was all of Myrtle and Flair's milk from this evening. Yesterday I left a roll of chicken wire in the new coop, and today when I stopped home for lunch I heard a chicken ruckus. A biddie was stuck head and wing in the wire and was getting a nearly fatal lesson in the pecking order from the big girls. The little one is recovering in her box on the book shelf, looking like a vulture with her defeathered, scabby neck, and now the remaining two have a properly fenced area of their own, safe from those from whom they cannot protect themselves yet.

Life requires attention, and attention requires patience.

It has been a busy spring, as usual. We've been working on building a pizza oven in the garden out of found materials. Another exercise in patience. Hauling concrete rubble from neighboring yards; sand and clay from a construction site down the street; more sand from the banks of Sugar Creek where it crosses under Arkwright. And then sifting the clay and sand, and making mortar out of it, mixing to the perfect consistency with bare feet. And placing the stones and concrete just so around the rubble-filled tires to build the foundation. And leveling the brick for the oven floor. In the book it says you can build one in a couple of days. We're not going by the book anymore.

In the midst of oven building the redbuds bloomed like pink popcorn. I mentioned to fellow builders that the flowers are edible, and tasty. Some concurred and some did not, and one became a redbud aficionado, who tasted flowers from every redbud we passed in our forays for materials. He noticed that each tree has a different flavor, and decided that the one in the garden tastes best. That tree was stripped clean of all flowers within reach, which he nibbled directly from the pulled-down branches. We ordered pizza for lunch as the oven was still in progress, and he topdressed his slice with a layer of redbud flowers.

Just beyond the redbud tree, the rye grass and clover that got seeded out in January is a few inches high now, struggling along in the heavy clay, and now where ever I dig there are worms. Sometimes people tell me they think the garden is abandoned because they never see people working there, and I feel like I haven't done my job well enough. But it has taken 4 months for the grass to grow a few inches. Reclaiming this site will require even more patience than I have yet doled out. And I am hopeful.

Last weekend at the neighborhood potluck in the garden, a woman came who grew up down the block. Her granddaddy farmed the land that is now the garden and the middle school, and she remembers being on his farm. The land will remember what it once used to do, and as we patiently call it back to its past purpose, it will pull us in the right direction toward the future we are beginning to allow ourselves to imagine.

soil prep

P1180042
Originally uploaded by Southeastern Horticultural Society

I've been looking at the huge patch of woodchips since we reorganized the garden this fall, moving all the blueberries and perennials to create some more usable space, dreading the thought of tilling the soil. Or, rather, clay with an icing of woodchips.

So last Monday, to celebrate MLK day, about 30 volunteers showed up at the garden to build new compost bins and do some tidying up. And instead of renting a tiller, we just dug up the clay, turning the woodchips into the red earth in hopes of attracting lots of big fat worms to break down the chips and build up the soil. No noisy, stinky, dangerous machine, and everyone could help. A two year old boy wielding a shovel half his size happily dug a little section while older boys swung their shovels seriously.

We turned the whole area, about 30'x30', in a little more than an hour, then seeded it with rye and red clover. The boys moved on to hammering in nails to finish off the compost bins afterwards.

At the end of the day, after working pretty hard for a few hours, the oldest boy who had been helping, a middle schooler, asked if I'd be there on Saturdays so he could come back and help some more. This on the heels of an Atlantic Monthly editorial eschoriating school gardens for putting kids to stoop-backed work in the hot sun, when perhaps their parents or recent ancestors had worked hard to avoid this very fate (http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/201001/school-yard-garden). Hmm. The school garden as a tool of oppression. Something rings false about that, but the accusation deserves some thought.

Agricultural labor is historically and currently poorly paid and brutal. Farm workers held as slaves in Florida last summer, locked in sheds after long days of work. Itinerant workers travelling across the country, following harvests, living in unsanitary conditions and getting exposed to agricultural chemicals. So do I support this oppression by extending the opportunity to dig up a patch of soil, preparing the ground for cover crops and eventually vegetables, to some young boys on a January morning? Should I rather be inside teaching them something on a computer?

There is a huge disconnect here. First of all, the oppressive nature of agricultural labor is a symptom of the larger problems of agribusiness and immigration policies, and really, free market capitalism. But it does not mean that agricultural labor is innately demeaning work. And most importantly, most kids who have the opportunity to work in a garden fight to maintain that opportunity.

What is the purpose of this garden? My goals with it are not to prepare children for a future in itinerant agricultural labor. No, we are working on imagining a new way of feeding ourselves. This garden is an opportunity to discover the natural world, a place to learn how to work together toward common goals, to share the resulting harvests, to test ideas, to create art, to make good dirt.

And good dirt starts with feeding the soil--digging in the woodchips and planting cover crops is the first step toward the rich tilth that will bear fruit. It's a slow process, as will be the creation of truly sustainable and fair agricutural systems. It's where we start. The worms will show us the way.

cold snap

We are cold in Atlanta, and plants have stopped growing. The lettuce unhappily defrosts every morning, and succumbs again each night to ice. If you touch it when it is frozen it will die. If you let the sun thaw the leaves, the cells become elastic again and live one more day.

The fava beans look like they won't be as tolerant as the lettuce. Only last week they were blooming. It was taking a chance to plant them so late--I think they went in late September--but the flowers, unexpectedly small for such a robust looking plant, were a hopeful sight in January. We'll replant in a month or so for an early summer crop, or perhaps just as a cover crop to feed the soil.

The board over the window of the slowly-imploding house next door has been removed. Someone may be sleeping inside on these freezing nights, and it can't be much warmer in than out.

In this garden rest time, the seed catalogues are pouring in, full of bright colors and tantalizing new varieties. Also, a mural wall has sprouted in the garden. We went shopping for paints just before the holidays, and picked out colors to rival any seed catalogue. With a blank canvas, a palette of fancy spray paint, and an artist to lead the project, we will create a vision of the garden in full bloom before the first season's seed gets tucked into the earth.

This and other projects will easily fill the time before planting begins. Farmers in colder climates get a little longer break than in the South, but we'll take what we can get and hopefully use it wisely.