Fifty Acres and a Fool: Weeds

Weeds have become my mortal enemy.

This comes as a complete surprise to me. For decades I have been able to gaze upon a field of weeds with absolutely no compunction to do anything about them. Of course, that was before they were my fields and my weeds.

In my pre-weed days, the only weeds I really paid any attention to were dandelions in my suburban lawn. And even then I was far from the herbicidal maniac that the Lawn Nazis around me were.

But times have changed. They began changing when I began my (til now) eight year war with Bush Honeysuckle. Bush Honeysuckle is not technically a weed – it’s an invasive bush. But something that’s growing where I don’t want it growing is – in my agricultural book – a weed. And Bush Honeysuckle fits that description.

For years now I’ve been going into the woods and chainsawing it down, pushing it over with the front loader on the tractor, wrapping chain around it and pulling it out by roots, and, finally, as a last resort, spraying it with herbicide. I am finally turning the tide and now, where there was once nothing but an infestation of Bush Honeysuckle, there are now tree seedlings pushing their way skyward and wildflowers sprouting. Yay! There’s still massive amounts of Bush Honeysuckle to get rid of, but progress is being made.

I hate the stuff. It’s evil. You know it’s evil because it’s soooo pretty at first glance. Broad green leaves, pretty white flowers, yummy looking red berries. The birds and bees and other critters love it. And help it take over.

It always makes me think of what pretty things I let into my life – which then take over. Well, let’s not go there!!

The Bush Honeysuckle is getting a little bit of break right now while I tackle the things most people think of when they think of weeds – dandelion, Canadian thistle, and so forth. I’m battling them now because we just planted 8 acres or so of prairie – warm season grasses (WSG) and wildflowers (forbs – don’t you love the lingo?). And the WSG and forbs will not stand a chance again thistle and burdock and common purslane and hairy nightshade (sounds like a baddie in a cheap detective thriller!) and turf grasses and …

It seems that, as hearty as the prairie once was around here, until we burned it down, plowed it under, and cropped over it, it’s just as hard to reestablish it. I should know, I’ve been trying for six years and have a pretty thin stand of big bluestem and little blue stem for my efforts. The weeds, despite mowing and spraying with prairie stock friendly herbicide, are persistent. They just keep coming back, despite my efforts to eradicate them.

So this year, after doing the planned prairie burn, I decided to replant the whole prairie. I mowed everything level. Then I used a selective herbicide (avoiding the stands of WSG that I wanted keep). Then Dan “Woody” Wood, from Pheasants Forever, came out and helped me replant (actually he did much of the work – I just rode on the back of the seeder and kept the seed stirred and coming out the seeder).

Then I “hit it” (farmer talk) again with a prairie friendly herbicide. Then, after the herbicide did its work, I mowed the few struggling weed-y survivors.

But walking the freshly planted prairie last evening, I noticed a whole “crop” of pokeberry. So tonight, I’ll be walking the prairie in an effort get rid of it.

Field weeds seem to always be popping up in my soul’s field, too. I plant good seed but then, when the seed sprouts, forget to cultivate the seedlings, weed around them, and soon the pretty field is a huge weed patch.

Hmmm, seems Jesus once told a story about sowing seeds and weeds.

Fortunately, as regards the field weeds, a little spot herbicide (and a long walk) and they will be gone and the WSG and forbs will have access to the sunlight and soil nutrients they need. Unfortunately, for my soul, there is no herbicide … it needs constant cultivation by hand.

I need to get to it.

-- Brent

PS Here's Woody planting one of the hillsides. Just slightly dangerous!

Fifty Acres and a Fool: Dressed for Farming Success

While I don’t usually feel much like Oliver Wendell Douglas of “Green Acres” (“Farm livin' ain’t necessarily the life for me…”), I did relate to him the other day. You remember how Douglass exchanged his New York City life as a high-powered attorney to farm down by Hooterville (that town’s name is a whole ‘nother blogpost!) yet kept his wardrobe? You always see him in a suit and tie – driving the tractor, haggling with Mr. Haney, chatting with Arnold Ziffle (the pig).

I had to stop by Tractor Supply Company (as their commercials say, they sell most everything except tractors) for an assortment of parts on the way home from work the other day. I wandered as I wondered where the parts I needed were and felt as if the folks there were all staring at me. Even the guy from TSC helped me locate parts that would work looked at me funny. As did the woman at checkout and the people in line.

As I walked out to my car, I caught a glimpse of myself in the store glass. Ah – I’ll bet I was the only man in TSC wearing wing-tip shoes, a glen plaid suit, and lavender shirt with matching tie. That explained the stares.

And it reminded me of the day I went to buy my tractor. As with the visit to TSC, I did that on my way home from work. My tractor guy had called and said he had a used John Deere and if I wanted a really good used one, then I’d better move fast to get it. So I stopped by. He gave me a walk-around, showed me the controls, gave me the keys and invited me to take a test spin around the lot. As I drove by him, I heard him singing the “Green Acres” song. Sure enough, I was driving the tractor replete with suit and tie. I did threaten to not buy the tractor if he didn’t knock it off.

Both incidents did give me a sense of uneasiness. I was obviously the guy who was not in his element and how I dressed showed it.

It also made me think about how I judge others based on how they’re dressed. I’m as judgmental I fear as the TSC and John Deere crowd. And I need to remember that the next time I encounter someone at the grocery, art museum, or worship that may be dressed differently than me. I need to rejoice, instead, in the need/desire that brought them there and pray that their time will be blessed.

So the next time you’re at the implement dealer and see some lost looking guy in a suit and tie* trying to find the right couplings for a front loader’s hydraulic lines, be nice. Just walk over and ask, “Is there anything I can help you with Brent?”

-- Brent

*Truth be told, I have that same look when I'm wearing my Carharts and old John Deere cap!

Fifty Acres and a Fool: West of Eden (Not Quite Paradise)

How did I get here? That’s what I wondered nine years ago, wading through waist-high weeds and the moist summer Indiana air that swarmed with mosquitoes. I knew what I was doing there: I was meeting with our builder and talking about the house we were building. But how I got there was completely beside me.

I looked through the tall grasses and weeds and spotted my bobble-headed wife. Her head bounced up through the weeds, down into the tall grass. She stepped back onto the sort-of farm lane above the creek, a huge smile stretched across her face. “Isn’t this gorgeous?” she asked. “Aren’t you just so excited? This is paradise.” Excited and paradise were words that had not occurred to me. Hot. Sweaty. Itchy. Debt-laden. Those words occurred to me, but not excited and paradise.

Nancy’s a farm girl, and this land was part of her family’s farm. I grew up a city boy. I like the city. I work in the city. Now, here I was, miles away from my downtown office and over fifteen hundred feet away from the closest road with no blacktop in sight. How did I get here?

I wonder if Adam wondered the same thing upon finding himself waking in Eden. “And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul. And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed.” Yes, the Bible says, “And out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food,” which must have made for a lovely sight, but I still keep wondering if Adam asked himself, How did I get HERE?

Since that day – and all the chain-sawing, stump-pulling, poison ivy-treating, tree seedling-planting, prairie-seeding, bush honeysuckle battling, et al --what I’ve discovered is that this is not entirely the right question. It’s not the right question because “How did I get here” implies that my being where I am is all about me. It’s not. It is about me, but not all about me. It’s also about:

· Nancy

· our families

· wildlife crawling across the land

· the home we open up to others in hospitality

· and all the other connections I have

I knew this truth intellectually, but it’s only as I begin being “the man not born to farming,” that I’ve struggled to come to grips with it. I’m not the center of even my universe. As Nancy reminds me, it’s only one–six billionth about me.

My tending the land reminds me of the communal nature of my life. Moving to this piece of land and building a house on it allowed Nancy could to be close to her father and some of her literal roots. It also gave me a literal space in which to follow my leading to form a worship-sharing group. It also forced me to slow my life by spending hours in a tractor seat or walking in the woods rooting out invasive plants and learning to watch good things grow.

This farming stuff invites me to live in harmony with a sentiment by Gordon Matthews:

We must learn to put our trust in God and the leadings of the Spirit. I am only slowly learning to dwell in the place where leadings come from. That is a place of love and joy and peace, even in the midst of pain. The more I dwell in that place, the easier it is to smile, because I am no longer afraid.

If we dwell in the presence of God, we shall be led by the spirit. We do well to remember that being led by the spirit depends not so much upon God, who is always there to lead us, as upon our willingness to be led. We need to be willing to be led into the dark as well as through green pastures and by still waters. We do not need to be afraid of the dark, because God is there. Let us walk with a smile into the dark.

Now, walking with a smile into the dark—the unexpected place of the farm for me—is not something that comes easily to me. Even after nine years of getting ready to move here and seven years of actually turning the land into a wildlife preserve. I’m the sorta guy who still looks over my shoulder to see who’s following me up the stairs when I shut off the basement light.

Yet, walking (or driving a tractor) into the metaphoric dark with a smile reminds me that life is not all about us. Life is about me and God and. . .

-- Brent

Fifty Acres and a Fool: The Man NOT Born to Farming

Wendell Berry, the erudite farmer, novelist, poet, and essayist of rural Kentucky, has written one of my favorite poems.  It's titled "The Man Born to Farming" --

The Grower of Trees, the gardener, the man born to farming,

whose hands reach into the ground and sprout

to him the soil is a divine drug. He enters into death

yearly, and comes back rejoicing. He has seen the light lie down

in the dung heap, and rise again in the corn.

His thought passes along the row ends like a mole.

What miraculous seed has he swallowed

That the unending sentence of his love flows out of his mouth

Like a vine clinging in the sunlight, and like water

Descending in the dark?

I admire that poem (and Berry) mightily.  But alas, even though I live on fifty acres of farmland that my wife Nancy and I (along with the help of various family, foresters, and occasional volunteers over the past eight years) have been turning from pastureland and production agriculture into forest and prairie, I am not "The Man Born to Farming."

Quite the opposite, it seems.  Until 8 years ago, I had never lived on a farm.  I grew up in the city and love it.  I still work in the city.  And love it.

But, for reasons that mostly God only knows, I have found myself entrusted with the care of this particular parcel of land.  And so many of my hours are spent on a John Deere or fixing some implement or battling invasive species -- in other words, acting like a farmer. 

I, and others, have been slow to recognize that role.  Even Nancy, recently, when I said that I was not a man born to farming, said, "You're not a farmer.  You don't raise anything that feeds anyone."  

Count on a farm girl to humble a city boy.

But I disagree.  I do grow something that feeds someone.  The 10,000 plus trees we've planted feed the atmosphere with good oxygen, the berries and nut trees feed all kinds of wild life, the prairie grasses and wildflowers feed the bees and butterflies and other of God's creatures.

And, and the end of day when what I call farming comes to an end and nothing has broken (including my glasses or nose), the work of my uncalloused hands feeds me, too.

This latter point has come as a major surprise.

Because, as I said, I am NOT the man born to farming.  And yet, a-farming I am.  

It sets me to musing.  Sometimes to grumbling.  Sometimes to prayer.  Sometimes to question.  

Today it has set me to resting.  The past few weeks have been filled with planting prairie, splitting wood, spraying thistle and brush honeysuckle, repairing equipment (why does it always break right in the middle of a job?!), mowing, and ...   But not today.  If I have learned anything from my life of faith, if not from farming, it is that even the first Farmer took a break occasionally.  "Thus the heavens and the earth were completed in all their vast array. By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work. Then God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done." (Genesis 2:1-3)

So I'm taking a sabbath.  A light drizzle, and the fact that it is First-day (as we Quakes call Sunday) reminded me of my need for rest and God's setting that example.  So now, in the early afternoon after Meeting for Worship, I find myself sitting with my feet up, a John Deere blanket around my old legs, and watching a red-headed woodpecker make trips to the bird feeder attached to the picture window across the room from my chair.  Even Mr. Woodpecker is taking a day off.  Instead of knocking his head against a tree, he's eating out today.  Taking it easy.

Sweet rest.  Time to cease from my "not farming" and relax.  Pour another ginger ale, maybe read a book, maybe nap.

Ah, there is that pump on the sprayer that needs fixing.  It'll wait until tomorrow. Thanks be to God.

-- Brent