Wormies and Chicks

Today I got to spend a part of my morning watching Laurel and Ruby, two year old twin daughters of the farmers. We spent a full 30 minutes playing in a dirt pile. I kid you not. We were looking for earthworms or as Laurel and Ruby call them, "wormies". We would dig with our hands and the girls would yell, "Wormies!!" whenever we'd find one. They of course had to hold them. Then we'd continue digging looking for more. Laurel announced that she wanted no fewer than seven wormies. Ruby was content to find as many as she could. Sometimes we would take breaks from digging and the girls would run up to the top of the dirt pile (about 4 ft high), scream and giggle, then run back down. Then it was back to searching for those wonderful wormies. Who would have thought that a dirt pile was such a great toy? I loved every minute of searching for wormies with the girls.
After work I stopped by tto see the new chicks that had come in the mail. Believe it or not you can order chicks through the mail. They are shipped over night and must be picked up at the post office! They made it safe and sound through the postal system. There were also some fertilized eggs someone was incubating. These came from a local hobby farm, not through the mail. A few had just hatched so we watched them try to figure out how to use their legs. New life is amazing. I strolled home smiling and chuckling over the day's events. What a unique place I am in and what a wonder-full life is farming!

A busy week

Hoop House 2 getting greener
One thing I love about working on a farm is that so much gets packed into one day. I feel very productive after a day spent weeding garlic and sweet turnips, seeding tomatoes, moving trays of broccoli and kale outside to harden off and laying out row cover to stop marauding rabbits. There’s also the pleasure of simple things; the joy of seeing the corn that was seeded 6 days ago starting to pop up, feeling the sun on your face after a long dreary week of cold rain, and meeting the newest members of the farm, our two piglets!


The pink one is a Tamworth and the black and white one is a Poland China. They are cute now but pretty soon they’ll be big porkers. Which is good because they aren’t pets. One day they’ll be food.

In other exciting news, I got to participate in my first prairie burn! A few years ago people began to figure out that native prairie grasses had adapted to an occasional fire sweeping through. In fact some species need fire in order to drop their seeds (some trees are the same way). Thus was born the practice of prescribed burns. We have quite a bit of prairie grasses around the farm (and in the subdivision which the farm is located). This spring there have been quite a few burns (all organized of course!).

(I helped burn that!)
Tuesday afternoon we strapped on backpacks filled with water and followed our fearless leader to the designated area. He started the fire and we somewhat herded the fire where we wanted it to go with our backpacks and hoses. It was great. I definitely felt like I had a proton pack from Ghostbusters! There was one quite uncomfortable moment when another farmhand and I were waiting on the other side of a berm to make sure the fire didn’t get into some piles of equipment. The wind was blowing towards us and the smoke became so thick that if you could actually get your eye open you couldn’t see 2 feet in front of you. Naturally, it was hard to breathe. It got to the point where I was about to stumble off to a less smoky area so I could take a breath, but then the wind began to clear out the smoke. It was just enough that I could breathe and not choke. Other than that it was a great experience.

Just all in a days work at a farm!

Life Lessons

This week I’ve really been enjoying my daily prayer readings. They are from Charles de Foucauld. I don’t know anything about him, but he writes beautifully. The readings have been about God’s beauty, love and infinite goodness and how incredibly close God is to us;
“ . . .You, who are perfection, beauty, truth, infinite and essential love, You are in me and around me. You fill me altogether . . . there is no particle of my body that You do not fill, and around me You are nearer than the air in which I move, . .My God, You who are in me, in whom I am, let me know my happiness.”
It got me thinking today about how I view God. Do I believe deep in my gut that God is close? When I pray for God to give me strength do I expect God to move my arms and legs as if He were a puppeteer and I the puppet or do I believe that God fills me with strength?
Though I know in my head that God is near, that God is within me, I often do not believe it in my heart or deep in my soul. I hear myself saying, “I believe, help my unbelief,” or as Charles de Foucauld put it, “let me know my happiness.” What funny creatures we are; that we know something yet not know it, and that we believe and yet not believe.
I then started thinking about my years at HoneyRock, a camp I worked and studied at for two years in Wisconsin. There are lessons I learned through my experiences about God that were so tangible, so real. They were the kind of experiences that jump up and bite you in order to get your full attention and reveal God. I treasure them so dearly. I have to share two. I promise to keep them short.
God will give direction when the time is right:
On a backpacking trip we were hiking along a trail designated by blue diamonds nailed to trees. Our leader wanted us to walk down spread out, one by one, in order to allow for a meditative time. As I was hiking along by myself (I couldn’t see the person infront of me) I came to a point where I could only see one blue diamond at a time. Usually the only time I could find the next blue diamond was when I had reached the previous one. Only then would my next step be clear and sometimes I had to wait until the next blue diamond would just suddenly appear. That was the only way I got through that part of the trail. So often God works in the same way. We may only know a step or two and only once we take those steps will God show us the next ones.
God will provide:
A canoe trip in the Boundary Waters of Minnesota took a turn for the worse. We were on a large lake on a very windy day. The waves were treacherous but we made it to one side, but we could go no further. We couldn’t paddle against the wind, nor could we paddle with the wind. It was a miracle we made it across the lake in the first place. But we had to move on and find a campsite for the night. We were stuck on the docks of a lodge on the lake. I watched helplessly as even motorboats had a hard time with the waves. We could not go anywhere. I never felt so helpless or incompetant in my life. I shut down. I gave up. I would’ve cried if I hadn’t been one of the leaders on the trip. I had nothing to give.
As soon as that happened my co-leader came walking up with an angel dressed in hipboots and camouflage. The angel and his friend filled their motorboats with us stranded canoeists and pulled our canoes to a campsite. I did a dance of joy right there. I had had nothing. God provided everything. Praise be to God!

It’s amazing how clearly I saw and deeply I felt these lessons in my treks in the wilderness. May God continue to give us all such real, slap-you-in-the-face lessons about His goodness, love, and mercy.

of Greenhouses and Kitchen Mishaps

Our Greenhouse
The past week has been cold and wet. This means we've been spending our time on the farm among our greenhouse and two hoophouses. What's a hoop house you ask? Let me explain. A hoop house is a structure made of plastic pulled over hooped metal rods, hence the name hoop house. Usually it is only heated by the sun. We transplant our seedlings from the greenhouse directly into the ground of the hoop house. It is warm enough there for our early crops to grow well, things like beets, swiss chard, lettuce, and napa cabbage. The rabbits have already helped themselves to our spring garden and so we have retaliated with covering some of our crops with row cover. It's a white, gauzy type thing that reminds me of a burial shroud.

Hoop House #2
Our time in the greenhouse has been split between seeding thousands of tomatoes (I'm not exaggerating. We'll be growing 2 acres worth of tomatoes!) and transplanting celery,celeriac (celery root) and parsley from smaller trays to larger ones. It's been tedious at times but enjoyable. I can't wait to see all the different colored tomatoes out in the field. We'll even have purple ones!

Transplanting Celery
As for the kitchen mishaps, let's just say it's always an adventure when I enter the culinary domain. Today's adventure involved a bread machine, a sweet bread recipe that was too big for the machine, and a just washed kitchen floor. Oh, and me as well. The dough was floury and dry on top and quite gooey on the bottom when I pulled it out of the machine. I made quite a mess. Thankfully my mom was napping through the whole event and so is oblivious to the small disaster. All is well now, the dough was remixed in a bowl large enough to handle it and is peacefully rising in the oven. I should have learned by now that baking takes twice as long as usually expect. Ah well. Another kitchen story to archive. :)

Next Chapter

well, it's been a while since my last entry. whoops! i'll sum up- worked two jobs, learned about setting up a farm business, went to an organic farming conference, was hired by a farm in northeast illinois, began farming april 1st.
consider yourself caught up.

i'm really enjoying my new job at this new farm. it's in grayslake, illinois and it's called Sandhill Organics. the farm is situated in a subdivision called Prairie Crossing. it's a really neat subdivision. there are native plants in the landscaping as well as prairie plots throughout the subdivision. there are two small schools within the grounds as well. besides Sandhill there is another farm that rents land and equipment to beginning farmers. they call it an incubator program. it helps new farmers start out without having the big expense of buying lots of equipment and building things like greenhouses. i'll have some photos soon. it's a great place.

i'm enjoying the people i'm working with as well. i think this farm will be a great fit. there are a lot of new things to learn here as well. we'll be selling to farmer's markets beginning in june and that is new for me. we have structures called hoophouses where we grow some of our crops. a hoophouse is similar to a greenhouse except there isn't a heater in it and you plant your seeds or plants directly in the ground. again, i'll provide pictures so you can see what i'm talking about.

this week has been a great encouragement for me as well, because i have felt confirmed in my trek towards becoming a farmer. i definitely feel this is where God is leading me. you know those moments where you feel as though your soul comes alive? there's a rush of joy, a refreshing ahhhhh feeling, and an urge to throw your arms open and embrace the world and say yes! this is what i'm made to do! this small, sustainable farming is like that for me. there is also the reality of those low days where the sun is beating, the humidity is oppressive, and i am sick to death of reaching into the scratchy plants and harvesting yet another load of zucchini. in spite of those days farming still awakens new life in me. perhaps i should say it is God that awakens my soul through farming. through farming a new facet of myself is revealed. and may it all be to the glory of God.

so prepare yourself for another season of growing! let the new adventure begin!