Every blade of grass has …

Every blade of grass has an Angel that bends over it and whispers, “Grow! Grow!”
-The Talmud
‘

new website!

Hello everyone!

I’ve been absentee here because I’ve been busy making a website for our CSA. This new site has information that reflects more the business-end of the farm operation and details about how you can support us through buying a share!

I am hoping this blog now has the freedom to be a bit more informal and personal, kind of like the right-brain imaginarium, footloose and fancy free. I will also begin to post more information here about how our summer learning program develops, and keep updating about the events we host, what we learn from mentors in our community, and other group creative and learning processes.

So keep checking here, but also give a click to commonhandscsa.com for more information about how you can become more involved in our farm. We are hoping to have upwards of 60+ members, in our local Columbia County as well as in NYC. If you want to become a more involved CSA member, inquire about becoming part of the core-group of volunteers…Discounts on the share are available in these situations.

Take care and love y’all,

Tess

we can’t help but say “y’all”

It’s been awhile, big changes are underway and Dan and I have flown the coop for the winter months. Out migration has lead us from northern pastures for the arid horizons down south, in Manor, TX just 20 miles east of Austin. We have entered a fascinating microcosm of people, plants and animals. Everywhere else to look is gray, brown, dry and more dry (though the garden is marvelously green). I like to sense the subtle (and not so subtle) differences in the landscape, north and south, to examine the different rocks and minerals around us, and the slightly altered flora and fauna. 

There are 400 ducks here, to say the least, plus geese, quail, guinea hen, chickens and babies of all kinds. Even met a turken the other day! Rounding out the animal farm are cows, horses, donkeys, boarish pigs and of course, scarce cats and a pack of dogs. A goose, “gooseman” who has taken it upon himself to father and protect (sometimes violently nipping at heels) all the baby ducklings. Jaja, the pig, whose best friend is a black lab Charlie. A “crazy duck” recovering from some bad medicine. Together, they all compose a kingdom. A permaculture kingdom, where extra effort is taken to use the abundance of what’s around us, through innovation and resourcefulness, to rely less and less on outside sources. 

Though there are many differing, and sometimes clashing, personalities in one place…there is a beautiful energy created by all the living furs and feathers, in all their cackling and quacking, hissing and snorting, mooing and cooing. And in their differences, they are all kind, looking out for one another. Around every turn of the corner, I feel blessed to enter the world of some meandering, meditating creature. Perhaps I’ll be allowed to enter a narrative or dialogue, some fact or fiction imagined, for how can we truly know what’s spoken in the radiating spheres of existence surrounding. Or perhaps its the “tuning in” that we’ve lost somewhere along the way.

As it works out, we’ve come to the right place. Folding right away into the family and daily rhythm, we’re getting a good idea of what it feels like to be “wwoofers” ourselves, and what kinds of qualities, communication and leadership might be needed for volunteers arriving at the farm to feel comfortable, confident, and encouraged to take initiative. It is always a good exercise to practice awareness and attention to detail when entering a new system, be it a farm or any organization. It is a process of refining first impressions, building upon transmitted information with one’s own opinions and input, and not letting any perception harden, become stale or singular. An alchemy; the farm is truly comprised of the contributing workers, those who make it unique, and constantly changing.

As always, there is a tension between the present needs and circumstances of my immediate environment and the pull of outside news and information. I could literally become absorbed in the needs of the creatures around, the possibility in every interaction, all thats to learn and to accomplish. But there are other realities. Not speaking personally, per se, but of the bizarre politics spinning plates around us. Last year was characterized by riots, protests, upheaval, and unrest; not just in whole populations, but also tectonically… as with the tsunamis and earthquakes. The earth and it’s people are all shook up! And now, it seems that a new fear is sweeping those in power, a fear that people are beginning to think and do for themselves, that control of these forces is no longer so easy…As we begin 2012, I am eager to see how that energy is utilized and dispersed.

So here’s the the new year (more appropriately, the Chinese New Year)! Updates about our CSA and a new website with information, COMING SOON

tmrrw is 11/11/11

Today is the full moon. The sioux tribe calls this moon ” moon when horns are broken off”, and our friend last night pointed out that she has heard it called “the hunger moon”. Both, haunting and beautiful names, suggest a sense of scaling back, of needing less, of waning, of shedding. Personally, I have been feeling ambiguous sicknesses that don’t last longer than a couple days. At first, I feel a sense of contraction, of sinus pressure, of intense blockage, and then after awhile, it passes and I have a sense of shedding something old and outworn. This must be seasonal appropriate. I have always been interested in the turning moons, in the changing seasons, in astrological shifts, and new energies arising, in all that enables and inhibits, highlights and cloaks, lending us to greater insights and deeper understanding. My body must know the rhythm of the year more than my conscious mind can fathom, as much as it wants to logic itself into a pickle. November, a most sacred month, darker and more exposed; made of baring and of breaking.

 

In terms of our farm project, I do feel a sense that we must break off our horns to make anew. Leaping ahead without knowing, the age-old test that gets us time and time again. How to plan around uncertainty? How to bat away fear and doubt and move forward confidently? Right now, we are breaking off our horns, picking up the pieces, and getting our hands on a good drawing board.  Hungering for a greater plan, a smoother operation, desiring to put our lessons from this year into a practical vision that we can nurture into existence.

In terms of this blog, I am hoping to shed some layers and begin writing in new directions, going deeper into what’s actually happening beyond the surface of a start-up farm operation and the kinds of physical, mental, emotional struggles we face, and often overcome. To become more transparent about these things, and to present ourselves as the real people we are.

Along these lines, it seems that there is greater communication happening, on both a personal and societal level. People are requiring “occupations” everywhere, both actual and metaphorical. This lends itself to an overal demand for greater presence and awareness, to show up in the places that matter, and to not let the dirt be swept under the rug. No matter if its the dirt of a relationship, a small farm, or an office building on wall street.

In this movement, what can we, as small start-up organic farmers ask for? We can only hope that people continue to occupy their local communities and economies, and that together, we can continue to go deeper to the source of existence as it is happening all around us. That we come to understand our own bodies and our essential needs as living organisms, and as breathing spirits. That we can begin to understand our local food, who grows it and how, where our meat is raised and slaughtered, where our eggs come from and the names of all the caretakers that make our existence possible.

 

In other recent news, the snow was pretty devastating, despite its pristine beauty. We harvested a HUGE order just as it was falling. We were soaked to the bone, with bare frozen fingers, sweeping the wet snow off our radishes so we could harvest them before they were lost under a foot of snow. It was crazy! The next day, thinking we were saving our young plants, we shoveled (and also rolled) the snow off of the remaining beds. This turned out to be a mistake, as the snow was acutally insulating them, and the frost got most of our beets and greens and other roots.  In other concerns, we are also wondering if our black lab Raleigh is having puppies? and wondering if either of us have the subtle and dreaded Lyme disease. Still writing grants and making budgets and editing business plans. Still researching greenhouses, and compost-powered heating systems. Still pickling things: beets and radishes. And making delicious husk-cherry jam. We are busy and productive and it feels good to write it down here, or else I might not get to feel this sense of accomplishment!  Will include snow-photos and other miscellany soon! For now, enjoy your own journey into winter and we’ll see you around here again.  

 

Sometimes, I Am Startled Out of Myself,

like this morning, when the wild geese came squawking,
flapping their rusty hinges, and something about their trek
across the sky made me think about my life, the places
of brokenness, the places of sorrow, the places where grief
has strung me out to dry. And then the geese come calling,
the leader falling back when tired, another taking her place.
Hope is borne on wings. Look at the trees. They turn to gold
for a brief while, then lose it all each November.
Through the cold months, they stand, take the worst
weather has to offer. And still, they put out shy green leaves
come April, come May. The geese glide over the cornfields,
land on the pond with its sedges and reeds.
You do not have to be wise. Even a goose knows how to find
shelter, where the corn still lies in the stubble and dried stalks.
All we do is pass through here, the best way we can.
They stitch up the sky, and it is whole again.

-Barbara Crooker

(similiar to Mary Oliver’s “Wild Geese”?)

skeleton crew

Well the season proper is ending! Our final wwoofer said Bon Voyage, and we are beginning to plan for next year. Because we are not growing at Philmont next year, we have little to do but continue harvesting, and focus our attention on our next piece of land.

We are currently applying for grant funding and hoping that our project can come to fruition with greater ease the second time around. Or is it the third time that’s a charm? In any case,  I certainly feel that I absorbed a great deal of valuable and practical information through this first-year experience; fall and winter will hold great opportunities to reflect.

There is a lot of planning to do, and it is testing our patience. Very difficult to make plans with an abundance of unknown factors.  Endings can be confusing, and clarity often comes with a bit of space and time. Right now, our inclination is to rest, eat good food and get out and see those friends we were hibernating from.

More news soon about our program next year. In terms of Solaqua….our soil sample results came back very positive, and the land behind SunDog Solar looks free and clean to prepare for next season. Upon guidance from the Cornell Nutrient Analysis Lab (part of the Cooperative Extension) we were instructed to choose the test for heavy metals. This test is most conclusive in our case because any other waste materials associated with the paper mill (if they had dumped anything there) would have biodegraded safely by now.  The test analyzed for metals such as Lead, Barium, Arsenic, Copper, and Chromium, and all levels were far below toxic amounts.

The end of the season also means Cutting Your Losses. Having lost a few chickens to those trickster coyotes, we feel that it may be time to give them to a nice, winterized home. What sweet hens they have been! Half-feral, roosting in our farm-truck sitting next to the coop. We wanted to give them their free range of the place, but it seems they had some extra hungry eyes looking out for them too.

Likewise, the deer have not been friendly, in the final stretch. They ate nearly all our pea green tendrils, a tender micro-green that was our little pet-crop this year, not cheap to grow or to eat….unless you get the free deer-ride. We did try a rotten egg/cayenne pepper repellent, but it did not seem to do the trick. I just ended up with runny eyes and sneezing fits.

So looking towards winter, the kitchen is full of winter squash, kimchee, dilly beans, pickles, mead, salsa verde (tomatillo salsa) and all sorts of other delicious preservatives. Before all this canning went down, it was one big Stink-Fest. I nearly lost my mind with all the rotten tomatoes/juice pooling all over the counters and floor at one point. Things rot year round but Autumn feels particularly pungent. N’est-ce pas? Other exciting endeavors: Dan has started inoculating mushroom bags for some oyster and shitake flushes in the months ahead.

We are looking forward to what will unfold in the next few months…what a difference a day can make! Updates soon.

The Book of Life

To transform the world, we must begin with ourselves; and what is important in beginning with ourselves is the intention. The intention must be to understand ourselves and not to leave it to others to transform themselves or to bring about a modified change through revolution, either of the left or of the right. It is important to understand that this is our responsibility, yours and mine; because, however small may be the world we live in, if we can transform ourselves, bring about a radically different point of view in our daily existence, then perhaps we shall affect the world at large, the extended relationship with others.
- J. Krishnamurti

autumnal hums, drums, and the humdrum

The start of September brought hurricanes and high hopes. There was a small lull in productivity; rainy-day movie marathons balanced with fruitful mushroom walks in the damp forest. Luckily we didn’t lose any assets or vegetables to the storms and  felt grateful for the pause, enablign us to prepare for the harvest season. This month we’ve been clarifying plans to greet the coming cold, fine-tuning our areas of research and interest, welcoming end-of-season wwoofers and selling bushels and bushels of beans (…among other beautiful crops).

At the start of the month, we hosted a team of sweetheart herbalists, two women traveling with their workshop on the use of herbal medicine as a radical act of subversion, throughout history and in our current day, to oppressive institutions. We thought about the innate healing and intuitive wisdom of plants and how this knowledge can be used to re-empower what we’ve lost by way of healthcare in our country. For me, the conversation also invigorated community alliances, the actual space to gather and share. We swapped stories of how different native plants become allies and how enriching it is to come to understand our minds and bodies more intimately. We also talked about the importance of connecting to the source of sickness and truly understanding that the earth directly and abundantly provides for wellness…these plants are dwelling just around the borders of our homes and yards. Anyway, here is their blog, if you want to know more!

Other mishaps were bound to follow us into this month…more episodes of “Broke Down Trucks in Irritating but Fortunate Places”. Otherwise, we’ve been selling lots, and paying back people who have helped bring our organization to life (Thank You Field Goods!) Here at the end, we feel successful, and by now there is little maintenance and lot of bounty. We are hoping to get going on other infrastructure projects that we had to put on hold, such as getting the yurt up and getting the chickens ready for the cold. Not only building and clearing projects but also creative such as collecting herbs for salves and tinctures and also processing/canning surplus produce (our pickles are…AMAZING).

We recently fieldtrip’d to the Shaker Mountain Cannery in New Lebanon, and also visited the Galiana Retreat Center. We are getting to know our neighbors and the wonderful initiatives they are putting into motion. We also took a fieldtrip up to Vermont to the Roots School for a celebratory skill-share weekend. The workshops covered topics such as stone tools, weaving, tracking, pottery, bows, naturalist studies, and ninjutsu for example. The weekend was ”grounded in the idea that we as people can become more conscious, stronger, effective and capable stewards of the land that supports us” (from website). This time of year is perfect for getting out of the farm-bubble and meeting and sharing with neighbors, establishing heartier relationships with people of mindsets and ambitions aligned with the qualities multi-faceted project.
Finally I just wanted to share this article I recently wrote for the North American Youth Section. Perhaps it will give a little more background on our project, our goals and aspirations, and, of course, how they both brilliantly and haphazardly manifest.

That’s all folks! Be equipped for the equinox–but not foiled by the foliage! Love, peace, and apple cider

Over-yielding Polycultures//Dynamic Accumulators

We’ve been feeling the tides of change at Common Hands, recognizing the innate impulse of creative projects to wax, wane, to weather both roadblocks and breakthroughs. Following a spiral that leads from birth to chaos, to the fertile void and leading back to the new normal. No longer as busy as we once were, we are reaching a meaningful ripeness that is replacing the busy-bodiness of the earlier season.

In this openness we’ve begun to implement our ideal of organically-grown education, the spontaneous learning that comes when one discovers the contours of their own knowledge-base and experience and are thus empowered to share with those around them. We have done more forestry walks and “sit-spots”, time we spend meditating in various spaces throughout the surrounding land, deciphering the patterns and possibilities of our surroundings, asking how we can best listen to all the elements; to be guided by these natural evidences. We want to do more group embodiment activities that help us to awaken our sensual perceptions of the world around us.

At Maiden Lane we were doing some hands-on learning about the permaculture design process, and came up with a group vision for the space, considering all the aspects and creatures that live off the land, from the humans quartered in the house to the guinea fowl that live across the street. We felt like pioneers as we blazed trails with scythes and machetes and unceremoniously brought our lumber to the gargantuan wood-chipper, primarily crunching up honey locust trees to be transformed into luscious mulch for our spiral garden. We hope that the fairies and gnomes agree with our plans and start to inhabit the space more freely. If not, then we’ll accept all bees, bats and butterflies to the new scene.

With all of these plans we really hope to employ a more holistic understanding of building, and to come to realize that architecture is an extension of the mind that creates it. That to “be truly mindful in architecture and planning…you need to see all the forces coming together—‘the land, the environment all around, all the people affected. And then your work can be sensitive and connected to the elements” (Kat Vlahos, professor of architecture U of Colorado). To understand that to build in a natural way, we must view structures as their own organisms, that mirror the creatures that inhabit them, as the interface between the inside and outside.

Another edge we are working with is how to live and be with others harmoniously, how to work through conflict from a higher perspective, without the pitfalls of the ego. It is difficult to always maintain this integrity when daily stresses become huge (i.e. when the engine fries and dies on the only farm vehicle we’ve been using to transport around). This really requires a great deal of patience, communication and also a bit of self-knowledge, a sense of knowing personal boundaries but also respecting that these are in a dialogue with other people and their boundaries. After all, we do operate as a group and we do have to be aware of others, how they are feeling, how they are contributing and evolving  as individuals and as part of the group, how we can help each other to become more expressed, heard and loved. Perhaps this is a larger topic to be discussed, but this is just a quick description of how I see some of our community work progressing.

Oh sigh, I wrote this entry so long ago and it’s taken about two weeks to post! I wish the theme of these posts wasn’t always about the rapid quicksand of life but so it goes. Until next time y’all. LOVE and so much love.

pesto, kimchee and chihuahuas

The air has been hot and thick and we are tending to a constant task of hydrating; gallons of lemon water and diluted Gatorade, while sprinkler-feeding our crops just in time for it to evaporate within minutes. These July days are tough. At one point we were up to 10 members, now we are more like 7, (plus three dogs, a gecko and tarantula) but we are expecting to welcome more wwoofers in August and September.

We’ve been working through struggles as a core group to welcome in a whole new group of wwoofers, wondering how to maintain the original intention of the farm as we knew it, while still fostering a sense of collectivity and democracy, transformation and flexibility. It is interesting to be a revolving, shuffling community. We definitely do not want top-down hierarchy but there is a need for order and stability that comes with clear leadership. Thus, we have worked towards crafting a project that enables the intention of the farm to strongly support both permanent and temporary workers. We want be open to the influence of each individual who is taking part in the project at any given moment, to allow each person to claim space and contribute freely while also maintaining a sense of order and structure that people can fill into.

We’ve been making time recently to incorporate our peer-lead learning model more and more formally, and this morning we took a mushroom walk in the woods and had a presentation about permaculture and how it relates to all realms of life, not just agricultural but social, political, economic as well as personal. While we haven’t had a lot of time to implement our educational model while the season was in full swing, we realize that learning is not always obvious, that true learning is in every interaction, observation and response to the most daily of occurrences. The field and living room are classrooms as well!

We want a structure that encompasses all directions, like a compass. Some people will gravitate towards embodying different directions of the compass, but ideally every community member has a comprehension of the whole. The vertical axis is idea and action oriented. On this axis the north has an eye on the horizon, sees the territory that must be crossed, understanding the larger purpose and vision, while on the opposite end, the south is able to comprehend the details and tasks that help to fulfill the vision of the North. The horizontal axis moves on the level of people and community. The east direction brings energy to community outreach, sales and marketing. The west is attuned to the needs and desires of the farm workers and the energy and harmony of the group as a whole. Together, everyone has an awareness of all axis points, while understanding their own particular focus and unique way of interacting with the project.

We’ve also been hosting mentors at the field to consult us on certain crops and methods, accommodating different styles that each farmer promotes, and finding what works best for us. We’ve also done quite a few work exchanges with other small farms, for example at New Leaf Farm where we helped harvest in exchange for roto-tilling multiple beds at Philmont. This kind of outreach instills faith in the art of community and asserts more strongly that private ownership is no longer feasible, we must share resources, equipment, tools and knowledge, seek and share resources instead of blindly acquiring and taking from invisible sources. Plus, it’s more fun.

After working diligently these past few weeks, we have gotten our garden under control and are planting for fall, trying to beat the germination clock. Cutting our losses on certain beds that didn’t yield enough and turning over some new leaves. Also in the midst of this is taking care of ourselves and having fun as a group, preparing to welcome more people to the community while unfortunately seeing others go (ah! Such is the sting of impermanence…always), and trying to conceive of how our project will look next year and what we can do in the meantime to prepare. Much to be done, always! But I truly can’t imagine spending this energy any other way…. It does seem limitless when a project comes along that ignites passion and inspiration. Hopefully I’ll update more sooner not later…I did seem to lose track of blog-time this past month. Oh well, who keeps track of blog time anyway? There are not sun or moon cycles on the internet…it’s always surf o’clock.