What happened to 2020!?

 I was prepared (and even inspired) to write a post with the lyrics to Sara's "Song Like a Seed" about the garden tucking in tight for winter when I logged on and...(screeching halt) that is exactly what I posted the last time I was on here, one year ago! SO...where did Nammah 2020 go? Well children, hold onto your hats!! Once upon a time...

...there was a year called 2020. SO many difficult things happened that there were jokes and memes about "when will it end?!" It also happened to be the year that Paula retired from her 30 year career at the University of Minnesota-Duluth! Coincidence? Nah.

2020 was the year of a virus called COVID-19 (and no, it wasn't the 19th virus, it started in 2019). 

This virus caused a world "shelter in place" just a week or so after the most amazing retirement party - 

followed by the best (and last) spring break trip to Red River Gorge in Kentucky! 

A cancelled flight and a COVID quarantine road trip home via rental car, and that was that! 

Almost 9 months later - we are still in the same place. With COVID19 and the timing of this blog post!

There is a garden that grows at night

Then in the winter it tucks in tight

Drifts off in dreams about birds in flight

Who carry the seeds of this garden’s life

~Sara Thomsen, from Song Like a Seed

  

SO...instead of planting songs like a seed (as Sara would do). Paula planted seeds like a song! A Sarah Greer style songtaneous improv jazz song!! 

Thanks to Paula's retired pandemic existence (and overall way of being), more than birds carried the seeds for Nammah's 2020 life! Neither Seed Savers nor Johnney's had seeds to sell (unless you were a commercial grower) so EVERY tomato seed in our saved seed stash was germination tested and planted. The result was over 120 tomato plants (though many more that did NOT grow.) Over half of these went out to friends and neighbors. Some seeds were exchanged. It was a great year to make do what what we had and collaborate!

The end result was a greenhouse filled with 48 tomato plants and 14 hot pepper plants with basil in between. The greenhouse was packed! 

And dear Sara spent days tying up determinates! SHE was the determined one. 

Still, it was more than we could keep up with so the air flow wasn't very good and the middle section of blossoms did not get pollinated (we did get some early lower vine tomatoes for eating.) I was feeling like a failure when late season, we hacked the tops and run away suckers, put a fan in for a couple of days and a late season boom turning into a banner tomato crop. 

Salsas, spaghetti sauce, chutneys, relish, sauce, paste, ketchup, BBQ sauce, everything tomato! Sara claims that it's a good think we lost the middle crop or she might have needed to build an entire new room instead of just the extra shelves she made for the pantry! 

The hot peppers had a good year too resulting in pickled jalapenos and habanero hot sauce.

More lessons were learned as we (hind sight) neglected the soil in our outside garden. We did spent an inordinate amount of time on the greenhouse. 

New raised beds, compost soil, replacing hole-y plastic...all to say that some of the raised beds outside didn't fare as well. I am guessing it was the soil and am determined to do better next year! Though baby beets are cute, they are not what I was going for!

SO despite the difficulties that 2020 brought, and continue to bring to the world, Nammah continued to sustain, and humble, us. More is not necessarily more! IF I can remember that lesson, I vow to plant fewer seeds/plants, and give them more space and nutrition. I'll let you know (a year from now) if less is, in deed, more! 

And still...the pantry is full!

Song Like a Seed

There is a garden that grows at night

Then in the winter it tucks in tight

Drifts off in dreams about birds in flight

Who carry the seeds of this garden’s life

~Sara Thomsen, from Song Like a Seed, 2020

Regardless of when the snow finally comes, it always seems that fall garden clean up and pre winter prep take up until the last moment! 

• Garden beds cleared and mulched with chopped leaves, pots dumped and stored
• Move chicken run for access to greenhouse (but only after greenhouse is cleared out)
• Wood split and stacked (this years' inside, next years' outside and covered)
• Remove mower deck and install snow blower on Greta (thanks to youtube videos!)
• Tuck bees in for winter; cozy cover, insulated quilt box, ventilation, fondant...
• Move hoses, blow out water lines, all furniture in, storm windows on house, ETC...

 

And every year I articulate the desire to "get it done earlier so we are not scrambling!" The reality is that it takes as long as we have...we always wish for just one more weekend...and it works out just fine - every year.

After that first thick blanket of snow, there is a feeling of deep exhale, as though I have been holding my breath the entire growing season. There is nothing more that can be done, so a deep letting go enters in that doesn't seem within reach during any other season of the year. There is a feeling of relief, of gratitude, of scarcity in the abundance, of loss and melancholy. "Did we remember to (insert task)?" "Is there enough (insert food item) for the year?" Now what!?

Meanwhile, indoors, the house is still littered with the remnants and shrapnel from the scramble.A box of squash here, green tomatoes, pole beans and ears of corn lined up on the kitchen table to dry before storing. Bags of apples and turnips lined up, waiting their turn for processing. 

The covered spaces will not be freed of their harvest until the new year approaches - or company comes and then another scramble. Each year a new "system" for some of it, perpetual experimenting on what will ease the burden of abundance. 

The reality is that this dance between outdoor and indoor tending has been going on for months. Harvest - cook some, can some. Harvest, harvest - freeze some, eat some. Repeat. The garden might be tucked in dreaming about seeds and winter, but the fruits of last year's dreaming are on the table rotting if we don't tend to it. (I am always the reality check to Sara's poetic lyrics.) 

This years WIN is the Excaliber Dehydrator! Agnus (named after my great grandmother). The only memories of her I have include her sitting at the kitchen table picking at the chicken carcass or shelling peas. Im sure she was other places and did other things but that is what my memory has marked of her.

 

SO...Agnus worked overnight while we slept, sometimes a double shift while I was at work, drying! My new obsession is filling jars with beautiful dehydrated food and sealing meals for next years camping trips. I call them Boundary Waters packets. The older (and cheap) version of a dehydrator we had almost started a fire! the hot coil was at an angle and burned right through the plastic trays AND into the wood table below. A perfect excuse to invest in a proper dehydrator. I LOVE Agnus!

And as though the timing was planned...just as the first blanket of snow tucks Nammah and the Homestead in for winter, Sara's new CD, Song Like a Seed is released. Something to sing about, for sure. 

So for now...Good night Nammah and sweet dreams!

Introducing Greta (new farm hand!)

Once upon a time there were two women on a Homestead called Nammah's Place. The women worked hard. Wheelbarrows, hoes, broad forks. It takes a lot of time and muscle to keep Nammah's Place sustainable and beautiful.

P.J., The oldest of the women, was getting tired. "I'm in my mid 50's now. My back is sore and tired." Then a friend came along with an idea. He had always wanted a tractor to use - but had no place to keep it. "Let's get a tractor together!;" he said. He researched. They shopped. Both fell in love with Greta, a Kubota BX semi compact tractor. She blows snow, she mows grass and trails, she hauls wood. She has the potential for even more with the right attachments!

Winter...

Spring...
Summer...

Fall...

And of course Greta needed a place to sleep at night away from the elements. She stays there at night with her other orange implements on the homestead with the two women.

P.J. loves doing chores With Greta. Her back is less tired. Doozie, the younger of the women, still uses the broad fork. They live happily ever ever, respecting each others differences.

Good night Greta
We are grateful for your presence at Nammah's Place!

After Apple Picking

After Apple Picking by Robert Frost

My long two-pointed ladder's sticking through a tree 

Toward heaven still, 

And there's a barrel that I didn't fill 

Beside it, and there may be two or three 

Apples I didn't pick upon some bough.

But I am done with apple-picking now.

Essence of winter sleep is on the night,

The scent of apples: I am drowsing off. 

I cannot rub the strangeness from my sight 

I got from looking through a pane of glass 

I skimmed this morning from the drinking trough 

And held against the world of hoary grass. 

It melted, and I let it fall and break. 

But I was well

Upon my way to sleep before it fell, 

And I could tell 

What form my dreaming was about to take. 

Magnified apples appear and disappear, 

Stem end and blossom end, 

And every fleck of russet showing clear. 

My instep arch not only keeps the ache, 

It keeps the pressure of a ladder-round. 

I feel the ladder sway as the boughs bend. 

And I keep hearing from the cellar bin 

The rumbling sound 

Of load on load of apples coming in. 

For I have had too much 

Of apple-picking: I am overtired 

Of the great harvest I myself desired. 

There were ten thousand thousand fruit to touch, 

Cherish in hand, lift down, and not let fall. 

For all 

That struck the earth, 

No matter if not bruised or spiked with stubble, 

Went surely to the cider-apple heap 

As of no worth. 

One can see what will trouble 

This sleep of mine, whatever sleep it is. 

Were he not gone, 

The woodchuck could say whether it's like his 

Long sleep, as I describe its coming on, 

Or just some human sleep.