Pea tendrils grasp birch branches in the morning after the rain. Soon will come the reward for these seeds put in weeks ago.

A poem for your weekend, by Robert Frost:

Putting In the Seed

You come to fetch me from my work tonight

When supper’s on the table, and we’ll see

If I can leave off burying the white

Soft petals fallen from the apple tree

(Soft petals, yes, but not so barren quite,

Mingled with these, smooth bean and wrinkled pea;

And go along with you ere you lose sight

Of what you came for and become like me,

Slave to a springtime passion for the earth.

How Love burns through the Putting in the Seed

On through the watching for that early birth

When, just as the soil tarnishes with weed,

The sturdy seedling with arched body comes

Shouldering its way and shedding the earth crumbs.

Garden, Poems gardening, poetry, Robert Frost

Chansonetta and Joshua explore the dewy morn

In honor of the season and the wakening farm, I’ve been reading Janet Lembke’s beautiful translation of the Roman poet Virgil’s Georgics. Written between 37 and 30 BC, the poem is both a celebration of the natural world and a treatise on farming. It’s lovely and lyrical, and has been bringing a thoughtful quiet to the end of my day. Surprisingly, much of its practical advice is also relevant (though I have no idea what arbutus leaves are…).

Some instructions on goat keeping from Book Three:

Agriculture, Goats, Poems Agriculture, Farming, Goats, poetry, Virgil

A poem, by Robert Herrick:

The Argument of His Book

Poems, cute kids blossoms, poetry, Robert Herrick

Karl and Flyrod during the morning milking

As we prepare to plunge into busy spring, a poem by Marge Piercy.

To be of use

Poems Poems, poetry, work

A sleepy Margaret shows off our Thanksgiving turkey (23 lbs!) before popping it in the oven first thing in the morning.

We have so much to be thankful for:

• Our beautiful healthy children
• The farm and our animals
• Jobs and health insurance
• A supportive family
• Friends who inspire and entertain

And now we have the wonderful Thanksgiving we shared with Margaret’s dad, the Knight-Chamberlain family, and the entire extended family of our friends, Nicole Chaison and Craig Lapine. There were 23 of us (a pound of turkey per guest) and we kicked off the meal with a communal goat milking. Some of the Chaison-Lapine clan introduced us to the custom of a “gratitude basket,” Nicole said a beautiful grace, and we ended the evening with song. Margaret closed out the meal with the poem by Mary Oliver that her mom (who couldn’t be with us, but is very much alive) likes to say for grace.

When Death Comes

When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn;
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle-pox;

when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth,
tending, as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.

When it’s over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.

I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.

Read more…

Events, Family, Food, Poems Food, Holidays, Thanksgiving, Turkey

Cha Cha kicks back in a pile of leaves

To Autumn

Seasons of mists and mellow fruitfulness,

Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;

Conspiring with him how to load and bless

With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;

To bend with apples the mossed cottage-trees,

And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;

To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells

With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,

And still more, later flowers for the bees,

Until they think warm days will never cease,

For Summer has o’er-brimmed their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?

Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find

Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,

Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;

Or on a half-reaped furrow sound asleep,

Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook

Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:

And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep

Steady thy laden head across a brook;

Or by a cider-press, with patient look,

Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

Where are the songs of Spring? Aye, where are they?

Think not of them, thou hast thy music too–

While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,

And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;

Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn

Among the river sallows, borne aloft

Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;

And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;

Hedge crickets sing; and now with treble soft

The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft;

And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

Beatrice and Charlotte hang out in one of our apple trees

Poems Autumn, John Keats, poem, poetry

To see a World in a Grain of Sand

And a Heaven in a Wild Flower

Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand

And Eternity in an hour….

–from William Blake’s “Auguries of Innocence”

Poems poetry, summer

The trouble with a suburban homestead, on chicken slaughter day, is the self-consciousness. Not that our neighbors have ever said an unkind word to us, or even voiced a gentle complaint, about the dawn chorus of crowing roosters these past few weeks. But since the boys hit maturity, in late July, I have woken to their racket at 4:15 every morning with a mixture of irritation (at the birds) and embarrassment (about them). When the neighbors drove past on their way to weekend errands and saw me next to the wood pile, spattered with blood and wielding a knife, the self-consciousness was acute.

We processed 32 birds on Saturday, a mixture of jumbo Cornish cross broilers and heritage roasters. The basement chest freezer is packed with whole chickens, jointed parts, bags of livers, hearts, gizzards, and feet. The heads and viscera went to our friends’ pigs at Broadturn Farm (thanks for the electric plucker!). The empty chicken tractor has already been pushed to the corner of the yard; the lawn mower sprays stray feathers at the kids’ swing set.

A poem, by Jack Gilbert, for the neighbors:

The Rooster

They have killed the rooster, thank God,
but it’s strange to have my half
of the valley unreported. Without the rooster
it’s like my place by the Chinese elm is not here
each day. As though I’m gone. I touch my face
and get up to make tea, feeling my heart claim
no territory. Like the colorless weeds which fail,
but don’t give in. Silent in the world’s clamor.
They killed the rooster because he could feel
nothing for the six frumpy hens. Now there is only
the youngster to announce and cover. They are only
aunts to him. Mostly he works on his crowing. And for
a long time the roosters on the other farms would not
answer. But yesterday they started laying
full-throated performances on him. He would come
back, but couldn’t get the hang of it. The scorn
and the failing went on until finally one day,
from the other end of the valley, came a deep
voice saying, “For Christ’s sake, kid, like this.”
And it began. Not bothering to declare parts
of the landscape, but announcing the glory,
the greatness of the sun and moon.
Told of the heavenly hosts, the mysteries
and the joy. Which were the Huns and which not.
Describing the dominions of wind and song. What was
noble in all things. It was very quiet after that.

Events, Farming, Poems chicken, poem, poetry, rooster, slaughter