Towards the end of June we came home from our family vacation to see our blueberry bushes bursting with gorgeous blue fruit. While we were gone it rained considerably (we definitely needed it) so the berries were plump. We harvested them by the cup full.
The basil still looked happy and I took some leaves for dinner’s pizza sauce and got a few orange Roma tomatoes to put in the windowsill to finish ripening before the bugs eat them. The potatoes we planted seemed to be holding steady.
As I walked around the yard, I was thankful for the small amount of produce we are able to grow in so much shade. The weeds barely grow, but most of the plants do only slightly better. This is unlike what I have been describing all year at the farm where the weeds outpace the plants but both grow abundantly with such rich soil and direct sunlight.
But I know my house is not a farm and so we do what we can with what we’ve got. Our blueberry bushes were given to us by some church friends as a housewarming present almost 16 years ago. Unless a late frost or drought nips them, they produce wonderfully all summer long. The other items (minus the potatoes) I buy as tiny seedlings every year from a local produce stand and plant in a raised bed.
Honestly, it’s nice to take a break from a lot of heavy, hot work that the farm requires. Long experience with my dreadful yard soil tells me that it is impossible to recreate the farm magic at my house anyway, so I have learned to be faithful with what does work and enjoy it. Having a small amount of things you can tend faithfully is a blessing in its own right — it helps remind you of your finitude.
And yet I acknowledge I struggle with that concept. I want to taste it all which means I can take on too much too quickly. It means my husband and kids have to put up with my always having a full plate to care for our family and community. But I truly believe that learning to live with limitations is the first step toward true contentment. I am not meant to do and be it all, but my community can also help encourage me to be faithful with little.
If you’ve never been exposed to the verb bushhoggin’ (which spellcheck says is not actually a verb), it’s a great one, useful as a metaphor for so many scenarios in life.
The word actually came from two words “brush” and “hog” because of the nature of the machine — a tractor attachment that whacks big or stubborn plants like small trees and bushes down by sheer force of a dull rotary blade. To be clear, it’s not a tiller which has sharp blades to disrupt the soil and dig it all up. It is said that a farmer noted the machine worked like a “hog eating brush” and the rest is history.
Jill, the farm manager, has had her neighbor come bushhog our garden area twice before and we got to see it in full action for the spring. She said it’s about time for a summer cleanse against all the pigweed that is growing way too fast. I tell her it’s hard to see the crops get demolished.
The backstory… When I got to the farm this week, I was so overwhelmed by how bad the weeds had gotten in just 3 weeks since we left school. With no one to really help me, I just did what I could, but it still seemed like it was just a jungle of mess — a cluttered room of grass, pigweed, clover, random flowers, fire ant hills. This was the exact opposite of what I experienced in the fall with virtually no weeds to contend with. Ultimately, it seemed that the only logical option was to knock it all down so the plants could decompose (i.e. self-compost) on the land to be ready to plant in August.
But truthfully, I didn’t want it to be bushhogged. I just wanted the monstrous weeds to go away so I could hold on to all the hours of work we put into the kale crops. There are still so many greens that are viable in including some basil near the potatoes and various lettuces scattered about. The okra also has sort of popped up in between the strawberries. I just want to keep bits and pieces of the garden going, but that’s not how a bushhogger works. It’s a HUGE attachment, so it’s more like an all or nothing proposition. If I want a better crop in fall, I have to let go of the work that has been done that is not as fresh or organized as it once was.
Part of this “letting go” work meant relocating the fruiting strawberry plants we cared for so meticulously during the year. I salvaged what ripe berries I could to eat and had to say goodbye to the rest of the small white ones. My daughter and I dug them up after we located each plant in the middle of all the weeds. We then snipped all the runners and replanted them safely in a raised bed Jill donated to us. It took about 2 exhausting hours from wedging the plants out of the garden to watering them generously in their bed at the end. Now, even if they can’t produce anymore fruit this season, they can safely grow next year for my students to eat and tend and perhaps for nature journaling for the students at Ingleside (who use the farm before we get there in the afternoon).
I was telling a close college friend about having to say goodbye to the garden and we started discussing how bushhogging can be like the writing process. You have to be willing to knock down the labor you have already put in if it no longer serves your purpose or it’s got too many weeds. You may have to move your words to a new bed. It’s painful to see the words and imagery get deleted, moved, rearranged, saved for another piece in the future. Bushhogging your words means you will have to do some hard aspects of writing and revising all again.
However, there is a silver lining for both the garden and writing: having the plants decompose doesn’t meant they just die. Rather, through the plants you’re actually enriching the soil for the next go round. As I mentioned in a previous post, the garden already has magic dirt so the plants, through decomposition, are giving back the nitrogen and all the other goodness the soil already provided the plant. When you understand that bushhogging is not a zero sum game, but rather part of the process of enrichment and discipline it’s less heartbreaking and more like a tool to help increase your ability to write better.
But…next year, I also plan to be more proactive in staying on top of the weeds with some new strategies and more help. Learn as you are going, I say!
One thing that hobby gardeners don’t like to talk about is the cost. Sometimes it truly feels like your efforts outweigh your yield. That was us for so many years that we just stopped gardening all together when our kids were little. I really regret that I didn’t know to pursue some easier, realistic, cost effective projects during those years.
Now, our kids are little older and able to help and it’s been such a joy to start back up being a little wiser and lot cheaper. For instance, today our third daughter ate the first sugar snap pea out of the plants that our fourth daughter sowed along the chain link fence in our backyard thanks to some internet research. We probably have a 90% germination rate and the crop is about to roll in. It cost us around $2 for the pea packet. And maybe a $1 worth of water. The compost we mixed in was from the bin in the backyard.
The sugar snap peas success got me thinking, “What else could we do cheaply with “ingredients” we already have or are cheap to obtain?” Enter hugelkultur pots. Our college friends from Pennsylvania showed us their raised beds when we were visiting a few years ago and they had an incredible yield! We were wondering if the internet or their Amish neighbors showed them the wisdom of permaculture. Either way, we took the idea to heart and when we built our raised bed in the front, we put in the rotting log pieces from a dead tree we had cut down a few years ago. Following that we put in homemade compost, then soil.
So, since we already knew how to do that with a bed, watching videos on growing potatoes in pots showed me that I could take a similar approach. I had a leftover 10 gallon pot from when my mother in law had brought a hydrangea down one year. I had been using it to store compost, but I used so much of the contents it felt time to repurpose it. See the pictures below: rotting wood, compost, soil, potatoes, more soil, and hardwood mulch. The total outlay was probably $5 between the potting soil and mulch because I already had the rotting wood, compost, and sprouting potatoes. Also, I can use the filled pot again and again after the potatoes are done.
I have NO idea if this potato crop will turn out, but “gardening within your means” is a new challenge I have been pursuing. At the farm for the program we have done all direct sowing and aside from a metal trellis I can keep using year after year and a little bit of mulch for a path, no purchased additives of any kind. It’s literally soil and manure that was already there, watering, and some seed purchasing. I actually considered using cardboard for paths instead of mulch, but was afraid they’d blow away while we’re not there and I hear it kills the soil life underneath, so if I choose to do any, I will try some thin metal anchors to help me use that cheaper method next year.
If you’re looking for a YouTube Gardening channel that is relaxing and helpful, I recommend Huw Richards. He focuses on things like “planting from your pantry” or how to consider many options you have on hand for free compost. His passion for gardening is evident in how he has learned so much from being faithful to do the work and experiment. And he’s Welsh, so a fantastic accent and idyllic scenery as a bonus.
One of the books we read each year is called Turning of Days by Hannah Anderson. She has 7 short essays for each season. Her stories are very accessible because they are taken from everyday happenings on her property or in her community. In the very back of her book she has a “Field Guide” section where she discusses some skills to sharpen the reader’s connection to the outdoors. One thing she mentions is seasonal observation. When are things blooming? What’s going on when they bloom early or late or don’t bloom at all?
Our family regularly checks our front and backyard. We have a quarter acre lot, so while a limited area keeps the management of plants easy, it also means perennials can eat up that space. However, I love having plants that I can count on year after year*. My family and I can stroll by the beds and because we know where to look, we can know the plant names and watch the seasons unfold together year after year.
Here are some of the lovely things in bloom for April in my Tennessee neck of the woods.
*I know the sugar snap peas among these pictures aren’t perennials, but I will definitely keep planting them in this spot each year, so close enough!
Saying “we’re going to learn together” can be a scary thing for an adult to say. We are so conditioned to be arbiters of knowledge. I think it’s a double scary thing for teachers to say. Unless you’ve been trained by programs that have a child-centered focus, people expect you have the answers, show up, and deliver the product. Maybe that’s why I have enjoyed teaching writing more and more — there are so many ways to get to the finish line* and the work doesn’t come exclusively from me.
I’m discovering that teaching gardening is rather similar.
This year we are tinkering with plants I have never tried to garden: sugar snap peas. I remember helping plant them on the farm with Jill and a handful of farm enrichment students last year. However, it was more like supervising. She had already started the plants in the greenhouse and had the trellis ready for staking. The plants grew well and the Maple Key girls harvested a ton of them on the last day of our program in May.
So on the same plot we are trying to grow sugar snaps once again, but we chose to directly sow them and are using a red collapsible trellis.
I was so inspired by this opportunity my daughter and I even planted some along the corner of the back corner of our chain link fence (natural trellis!) at home.
As I mentioned, I have never grown sugar snaps peas, so I did some research and am hoping for the best. Depending on what website or YouTube channel you look at you get SO many different ways to have a successful crop. One person swore by pre-planting indoors and transplanting to the garden. Another person said the exact opposite — sowing directly was better for the roots than transplanting. Some suggest pre-soaking the beans before you plant them (chose to do this) and adding an inoculant to the beans as a microbial additive to help nitrogen processing (chose not to do this).
At first all this conflicting advice was aggravating, but then I was reminded about all the conflicting advice we received about our winter garden and it miraculously survived and thrived. Gardening is a chance to explain to the girls that we can do our research, but ultimately we just experiment, make the best decision we can with what we’ve got, and see what happens. The opportunity to be surprised or fail is much better than thinking you’re going to nail it because you know so much. Gardening helps brings into view a more humbling, realistic view of ourselves and the rhythms of life!
Another thing I learned about this year was “seed tape”. You can purchase it pre-made or you can get a roll of toilet paper and seeds to try it yourself. It helps keep the plants in a straight line, avoids thinning, and prevents using a ton of seeds. When I asked the girls about seed tape, no one knew what I was talking about, so we made some at Maple Key for them to try at home. I did also buy some at Ace Hardware and planted it now in February to see how that will turn out in 60 days. We’re in zone 7, so it’s a gamble but an inexpensive one.
Here’s to experimenting!
*To be clear, I don’t know that I believe there is a “finish line” when you write, but there is often a point where you have to turn in the paper or manuscript and stop tinkering.
If you haven’t had the chance to meet Jill, you should. She’s the property manager for her family’s farm (High Point Farms) where Maple Key is located. She is by far and away one of the most generous people I have ever met. Hers is the kind of generosity that is rooted in interdependence, a true and mutual joy in sharing life and resources together.
Jill has been the incubator for countless other people like me including Morgan at Creekside Flowers, who got her business started at High Point. As a side note: Before starting Maple Key, I worked for the tutorial that meets at the farm on M- Th and driving in each morning my girls and I would see Morgan working hard on maintaining the health of her plants. I know she learned a lot from Jill, who also raises flowers for weddings and for individual sale. Hearing Morgan’s story (delivered impeccably, I might add) was inspiring and reminded me a lot of getting Maple Key off the ground. You play, tinker, research, and experiment when you don’t know how to do something.
Such has been the case with our late fall garden this year.
Jill suggested that we start a garden this year and I told her I would need help. My vague cries for direction were met with her voluntarily having a portion of land tilled by the tractor and two big piles of manure from the animals on the farm waiting for us. She even called her neighbor, Joel, who lives a mile up the road from her to come get us started with the garden. I laughed when she said she told him we needed a lot of help because we didn’t know anything 🙂
He came out to the farm as promised and skeptical though he was, worked with us for 3 hours (barefoot!) with no breaks talking to us about soil health and the basics of working with minimal tools and dirt since we clearly didn’t have a plan. After we marked off our lines, we used the seeder to ensure a straight row of plants. We watered it heavily and Joel prayed over the land.
Doing all this work in mid October (instead of August like the internet suggested we should have), we had no idea if the 2 month drought and coming cold snap would ruin our crop, but lo and behold we kept coming back to a new surprise of growth each week.
We only used one-third of the area Jill gave us to grow plants because Joel told us not to bite off more than we could chew. He was right in that trying to weed and harvest that much would have taken more time than we have in our 4 and a half hours each week. We did add some strawberries donated by one of our families though.
The time finally came when we had our last day at the farm for December. We decided to harvest some radishes, kale, and stray turnips greens that ended up in the other rows. It was more than a complete success. We have more food than we know what to do with, so this year we’re using it in our homes and giving it away to friends. Perhaps in the future we can still enjoy it for ourselves and friends while also selling it to give the proceeds to charitable organizations the girls research or fundraise for a special project.
Either way, there is such profound gratitude in seeing the Lord’s provision and work of your hands.
When it comes to risk, I like to think of myself as being a cautious personality. However, the constructive criticism I hear from other people is that I tend to underestimate what yield could come from faithfulness. I can definitely be like the servant in Matthew 25 that buries his talent and convinces himself he’s being a good steward. My faith in many areas of life is lacking because I hedge my bets to avoid the pain of embarrassment or loss. Modest success is better than no success, right? Reading one of my favorite naturalist authors, Robin Wall Kimmerer, helps me to see a path forward in demonstrating responsibility to something other than just keeping my ego safe. She says in her book, Braiding Sweetgrass:
“Being naturalized to place means to live as if this is the land that feeds you, as if these are the streams from which you drink, that build your body and fill your spirit. To become naturalized is to know that your ancestors lie in this ground. Here you will give your gifts and meet your responsibilities. To become naturalized is to live as if your children’s future matters, to take care of the land as if our lives and the lives of all our relatives depend on it. Because they do.”
When I showed my husband the pictures each week, he kept saying, “That dirt must be magic!” Though I know he was kidding, the truth is the dirt has been cared for for decades. They don’t use pesticides. Their compost is fresh. They make sure the pH balances. It is also reasonable to assume that the land was cared for by the Cherokee, a vital part of the history of this land.
The garden has reminded me how much part of “becoming placed” as essayist Wendell Berry says, means growing to love an area through being fully present and acting in faith and commitment to its history of care.
When you homeschool and do sports, your field options are limited. My middle daughters are both running cross country this fall, so public spaces are our friends. We have been at three different locations for team practice and they have all been verdant, humid, and somewhat muddy because well, Chattanooga is like that sometimes. This year we had a very dry season followed by an incredibly rainy season and when the rains come down the mushrooms come up!
In the bolete family
Thinking it’s a hygrophorus milkcap (edible, if so, but not going to try it!)
So while patrolling the trail the students run on, I snapped a lot of pictures of those mushrooms because I want to get to know them at least a little better. I have an app called iNaturalist that I upload them to in order to attempt to identify them (but it’s still hard!). Of course, I have no intentions of being a mycologist or forager, but I do want to always be an observer and discoverer.
In the book Atomic Habits, the author explains that if you want to become something you have to have the habits of someone who is that. For instance, if you say to yourself, “I am someone who observes things closely.” Guess what you have to start doing? Act like someone who observes things more closely. You might start noticing what color your co-workers are wearing. You might count how many stairs you have to climb to get to your bedroom. You might start looking for mushrooms on your nature walks when it’s soggy.
Hmm.. Gray bolete?
For me, my default can be inattentiveness. I have tons of exciting ideas visions swirling around in my head, so taking time to notice what’s been showing up in creation year after year is often a big effort on my part. However, as I have been developing this habit (and encouraging it in others) a whole new world of wonder has opened up to me. Something breathtaking finds me when I least expect it.
Learning even the tiniest bit about mushrooms in one local spot means I will also learn to call them by name around my house and that’s exciting news. I can start asking more questions about them. I can paint them. I can enjoy them with my kids. I can understand my region better. The possibilities are endless when you’re curious!
So next time you’re out at Enterprise South for a run, say hello to the runners, bikers, walkers, and fungi you meet! Trust me, with as many varieties as there are out there, it will keep you busy for a lifetime…
Possibly a ruby bolete?
Some kind of turkey tail?
This could be lots of things in the coral fungus family?
Perhaps some kind of amanita? (if so, poisonous!)
Red Chantrelle? (edible, if so!)
On that note, here’s a poem to encourage you on your way to more observing!
Our neighborhood is very walkable — gridlike in its layout. Over the years we have burned up the pavement with our tennis shoes, wagons, scooters, and strollers. We walk to the library. We walk to the cemetery cattycorner to our backyard. We walk to church. We walk to restaurants. We walk to playgrounds. We walk to Wal-Mart.
Toward the end of the month I am moving our time away from the farm and over to my town so we can walk on asphalt instead of lush grass. We will first pick up a lot of trash, as it’s one of the things you notice right away when you pass by all the ditches and little creeks. I’m excited to see how much we collect as we discuss all the signs of spring!
I also hope that we come across something like this:
I don’t know the story behind this, but it brought me a great sense of joy as I passed by it in a neighbor’s yard last night. Getting an opportunity to witness someone’s childhood is no small thing.
In the Baptist church I grew up in, there weren’t too many songs we could make a ruckus with. An occasional holiday song like “Up From the Grave” on Easter or “Go Tell It on the Mountain” at Christmas raised our volume, but otherwise we sang solid hymns each week. Our minister of music was a man of robed choirs and tradition during the years when vapid praise songs were invading the churches in the early to mid 90’s. However, there was one song, based off of Isaiah 55, that I could always count on to get us moving — The Trees of the Fields by Bill and Gloria Gaither. We got to clap our hands because the lyrics implied that you were supposed to mimic the praise of the trees. Generally it was only pulled out on Sunday night church, further implying that it could never make the big time on Sunday morning. As a child, that always saddened me. That song’s odd status led me to believe that joyful, embodied worship in church was an anomaly.
When I sang that song as a child, I always pictured the trees like something out of a Disney cartoon. Lush and vibrant maples rustling their green leaves loudly together. I never thought about the trees being barren and cooperating with the wind like this:
As I walked through the winter woods in eastern North Carolina, I saw the naked trees clapping their hands and wondered if I was seeing Scripture. Could it be that these trees were worshiping the Lord with their creaks, squeaks, and groans, no leaves to muffle their noises’ ascent to heaven? Watching the black birches sway on the side of the mountain was nothing short of mesmerizing. Being a small person engulfed in the middle of a forest of dancing trees took me back to the song:
You shall go out with joy And be led forth with peace The mountains and the hills Will break forth before you There’ll be shouts of joy And all the trees of the field Will clap, will clap their hands
I believe there are shouts of joy even in winter, but it requires a different kind of listening and expectation. The acclamation is not showy, but rather raw with creaky echoes and no wilderness voices to add to the sound. As we await the New Jerusalem, our own creaks, squeaks, and groans are no less important than the smiling praises we might sing in a different season. Both are testifying that the Lord reigns.
One way I encourage families to keep a family culture of being outdoors is through a “hack” we learned about several years ago — reciprocal memberships. Where we are in Chattanooga, we have access to a place called Reflection Riding which is a member of the American Horticultural Society. This association allows its members access to any other affiliated gardens on their list for a discounted price or usually FREE. Financially speaking, it’s a no brainer to join. Here’s some math:
Visit Atlanta Botanical Gardens once = $126 for our family of 6
Family membership to Reflection Riding = $70 AND we can go to any of the 330+ gardens for discount or free.
If you have access to gardens that offers these benefits, take advantage of them for you and your family, especially in the winter season when you might be less encouraged to be outdoors. Sometimes you get a surprise like we did yesterday, having a beautiful day in the upper 50’s. In addition, some places have greenhouses year round. Seeing how they will decorate the poinsettia tree (see below) is one of the highlights of the winter break for us. Actually, it might be the largest reason we created the tradition of going every year right before Christmas!
Displays at the Atlanta Botanical greenhouse never get old!
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