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We are "dreaming" in Winter around the farm. The first seed order is in and most of it arrived weeks ago save the live asparagus crowns which will arrive closer to planting time in March. Thirty six cardoon plants and twenty artichoke plants are inching their way out of dirt-filled peat pots and reaching toward the light of an artificial sun; hopefully they will be big enough when it is time to put them out into the chill to harden them off. We doubled the size of the vegetable garden which you can see at the end of this posting. And we are clearing away all the plants growing around the farmhouse to make room for the heavy equipment to roll in any day now and start reworking the home into our dream.
Through all this land clearing and tilling, and all the pruning that needed to happen in and around the orchard we built up quite the burn pile. Our original plan was to have a solstice pyre welcoming back the light, but it snowed so hard then we would have needed at least a gallon of accelerant to melt off the icy frosting alone. So, we continued to add to the pile, and we continued to wait for a better day to burn. Finally, as we turned the corner into preparing to remodel the farmhouse and preparing the gardens for Spring the burn pile grew to inexorable size and we agreed to split the job of burning over a couple of days to purge us and make room for what is to come.
Last Thursday I had a full day on the farm while Toby was in town working and the kids were in school. This was the perfect day for burning, partly sunny, very little wind, and it had not rained in several days. Even with these great conditions it took all the fuel in one lighter, a good two or three cups of diesel, and a whole lot of crouching on all fours and blowing like I was back in school on the bassoon playing the Marriage of Figaro to finally light the first pile on fire. And once it was burning I realized that my plans of working in the garden while every once in a while adding an armful of pruned branches was a pipe dream. I needed to stay and feed the flames pretty much all day, and at first I was frustrated by this realization, but after I found the rhythm of the fire I transcended the pull of earthen tasks like weeds and seeds and turned my eyes and mind to the heavens.
I watched as hydrangea branches, pruned away to make room for our eminent house remodel, bloomed in the fire unfurling perfect bright green leaves seconds before completely burning up. I watched our Christmas tree, that we cut on the island, start on the pile as a pillar of smoke and sizzle and then suddenly explode like a firework with the crack and pop I heard the week before in Chinatown. Apple wood, branches pruned from the orchard, burned clean and smelled a little sweet. Blackberry vines smoked for a while before finally catching on fire and disappearing a second later. And a broken fence post provided slow burning fuel to light up old wrapping paper from a pair of new sleds received at Christmas.
By the time I needed to leave the farm and pick up the kids from school I smelled smokey, my cheeks were rosy, and my heart was warm and a little lighter. Tending the burn pile was a secondary observation, forcing me to look at things again even after I thought I was done with them. When we still lived in Seattle these items that found their way into the burn pile would have been carted off on a regular schedule by the trash men. I would have never stopped, months later to rethink my actions in my backyard and where I was going to next. It is here, farming, that things are slowed down and we are forced to be deliberate in our actions, because we are the ones making the mess, and the only ones to clean it up. We are being nudged by this land to live more simply, more stripped down, more connected, and I love it.
