I live in a beautiful place. When the trees are leafing out and each cluster of new leaves is perfect and tender and there are millions of these clusters in the forest, it is overwhelming how much beauty there is. All of the wild plum and apple trees are blooming right now and the smell is intoxicating. The forest floor is a carpet of spring wildflowers and the lawn is riot of dandelions. The birds who were gone for the winter are back and singing all the time, but somehow even more at dawn. At dusk, the frogs in the ponds take over and sing and peep and grunt to announce themselves. And the spring mushrooms invite me to tromp the woods and brave the ticks.
Of course, being a farmer is not always appreciating beauty and sometimes it can be downright awful. A deer was hit and killed by a car right next to our garden. It must have been a couple of weeks ago because it was really smelly when I went to get a garden bed ready to plant asparagus with students yesterday — like so smelly that we would not have been able to plant at all and it would have been possibly traumatizing being forced to work near that smell. I didn’t want children hating me and vomiting all over the place, so I had to move the carcass before they came. I rolled up burdock leaves and plugged my nose and then wrapped a chain around the head and dragged it down the road. In the end, when the kids heard what I had done, they actually wanted to see the carcass, which was fine, but I doubt they would have wanted to be forced to work next to it.
Our school has three 5-acre plots of native grasses and flowers that were established 22 years ago. This prairie planting benefits from occasional fires. The native grasses survive and thrive with fire, while some of the most common non-native grasses are suppressed. Fire also kills most trees that would otherwise colonize prairie plantings in this region.
The group that installed our plots put us on the schedule last year but they didn’t get to us so we were pleased they could come this week before too much green grass made a good burn impossible.
Our students worked with a local artist to install a mosaic on our pizza oven. This is the work in progress. It is thrilling to see the dream of a beautiful oven become a reality and even more special that students got to learn new skills while doing it.
This weekend we are hosting a group of people to come look for morels. My partner and I scouted and found a bunch last Sunday. Morels are some of the most sought-after wild mushrooms and they only come up this time of year.
Our school has a plant sale every May and we grow about half the plants for the sale. Seeding, potting up, and labeling the plants has been good work for students for the last two months. On Monday, the Junior High came out and helped load a 26-foot UHaul truck four layers high with plants. There were about five thousand units prepped for the sale, although some were four-packs, so probably closer to ten to twelve thousand plants.
It is always a little scary for me to drive the truck into the city campus when it is full of two months of my work and my students’ work. I should feel more celebration when the plants are finally dropped off, but, from years of experience, it is mostly just relief. I have just come to expect that it is done well and I end up focusing on things like the three trays of lemon basil that were not thriving.
Mama Hen and her eight chicks were very popular with the various student groups who came to the farm this week!
In writing news, I am working on reworking my peasant story that was published in our local paper for my genealogy column. Mostly the reworking is happening in my head, but that work is important too.
