The Odor of Hog Manure

My mother took this picture about one year before she died.
    The odor of hog manure remindes me of my father. 

I remember once, very young, before my mother died, of sitting with my younger sisters on the porch swing and hearing a frightful noise in our garage. 

“What’s that?” one sister asks. 

“Daddy.” I say. “I can smell him.” 

Dad laughed, giving himself away. 

He really had meant to spook us kids, and was surprised himself, that his occupational scent had betrayed him. 

Dad is a neat dresser. 

If you know me then understand that my father is not like me. The garden mud and dirt I carry on shoes and clothes, into public places, I consider a sort of public  reminder of the physical human work required to grow food that people eat, a fertile growing medium into which culturally disconnected lives can find root to substance and meaning, my body serves as more than a walking educational billboard and odorama for what I faithfully sell in the shape of fruits and vegetables as honest labor. I consider  my appearance and smell, a deliberate, easy, “in your face”  type of public awareness service.

But then I raise fruits and vegetables. My dad raised hogs and cattle.

And my Dad is neat. As a younger man,  dashing, today: still handsome - in my view. 

As I grew up, Dad and his older brother, Uncle John, were partners in a cattle and hog farm operation in the slightly eastern center of Kansas. About half the land they farm is native pastures, the rest farmed in wheat and milo. Though the partnership was dissolved and land divided between them after I left home, the land is still farmed by them, plus two cousins, my sister and  and their families. 

All of us third generation Americans were raised within 2 miles of the original farmstead my Great Grandfather bought shortly after immigrating from Germany at the age of 20. 

Great Grandpa Roth was a German draft dodger.  He began partying a week before his report date. He was in such bad shape by the time he got to the induction center they sent him home for a week to recover. 

He and his girlfriend and future wife took the opportunity to get on a boat instead, and follow the 10 year old trail of his older sister to the very heartland of America, Clay Center, Kansas - to be exact. 

Canes were popular weapons then, and cane fights common. When the two young people finally stepped off the train in Clay Center in August of 1883 Great Grandpa Roth clutched his cane, ready to fight off  wild indians, so I am told. 

I see my Great Grandparents standing there, cane in hand,  strangers in a very strange land. Though the hills  deceptively resembled those they had grown up in, the country was different. They would not have known about the great wars to come against their motherland, could not have forseen Prohibition, the Dust Bowl or the Great Depression. Probably did not know they stood near the very center of this new nation, in the center of what would be called the Bible Belt, in the center of what would be learned to be the tornado belt. The country's lessons would be often harsh and involve generations. 

Trying to figure out who I am I have found myself trying to figure out who they were, expecially this man , and how came this distance of me from him. 

Looking back, it seems to me, Great Grandpa John Roth was a deliberate, hardworking man who liked wine. He liked smoke. He was a strict disiplinarian, sometimes subject to temper and  foul German language. 

He ruled his household more by fear than by affection, and judged the success of his life by the land he came to own and farm, the force and habit of his religious practice,  and the seven children he raised. More or less in that order. 

And as his children tell it, he softened in his old age, maybe I think reversing that order. 

My Great Grandfather's fine children  embraced his religion as resolutely as they rejected his personal habits and pleasures. 

He died at the age of  84, 4 years and 15 days before I was born. 

I was born into a world surrounded by his youngest son's children, my father and my aunt and two uncles, who all (including Grandpa) grew up, married, settled down and raised us children; me - my 4 sisters - and a slew of cousins, within 3 miles of the origional home/farmstead he bought 5 miles from the small town of Green, Kansas. Land about 12 miles from where Great Grandpa and Grandma first stepped off that train. 

In the years of my growing up I never heard any of their children or grand children utter a foul word, saw any of  them sip a taste of alcohol, or smoke. As a child I came to understand that for me to do so would be for me to personally insult God. 

Though it would be a sin to think I was not damned already, to curse, drink or smoke would make it so, even in their minds' eyes. (Like perhaps they see the unspeakable faults of my Great Grandpa Roth.)    Though today, generally, I have grown grateful for the distance such ingrained education  places between me, and drink and smoke, I was in my early 20's, in psycho-scream therapy  and 1500 miles away from that home place when I finally came to experience the power of saying the unspeakable names of God. 

They came out of my mouth as sacred revelation, four letter words as divine lightning. Words preceded, preordained, and dwarfed by the locomotive power of personal release, deep, heart wrenching truth. 

I have wondered since of the power of words, imagining the terror, awe and wonder of the first humanoids to contemplate SAYING. It is divine and dangerous work. 
 
When God brought the animals to Adam to be named, Adam must have shaken with terror, for he must have felt that to call out the wrong name tugs the very plug of Creation and  saws the thread of his own existence.

He has to understand that all SAYING, all words, are names for different aspects of God. To SAY incorrectly calls out the wrong aspect of God, causing  cosmic short circuit  and meltdown. To SAY incorrectly is sin.

Somehow I make the connection that classic tragedy is always dependent on an unspoken, unacknowledged truth. 

Redemption depends on speaking and acknowledging truth, doing what is forbidden, what puts you most at risk, before it is too late. I had looked deep into the mirror and examined my Methusulah's face and survived my unspeakable truths.

And because I did this think, I believed there was a wall between me and my family. 

When I was 43 years old I found out that my Grandmother, mother of my father, died in a mental institution, "Kansas State Hospital." 

Unlike the revelations that came in therapy, this one came easy, and the insight it gave to my past was just as powerful. I understood my family more than I had. 

I know nothing of the causes particular: biological, psychological,  medical, social, etc., that contributed to her illness, nor the circumstances surrounding her illness or death - though I have tried to imagine them and hope to learn more someday.

I had thought that my open mental angst and psycho-bleating (and healing) was a fault that put a distance between me and all of them, a distance I did not want. But to discover my Grand Mother's anguish, and her children's - at last - was a gift.  I saw that what I thought kept me apart - placed me to the heart of my family. 

This was the gift my Grandmother gave me with her suffering, and I claim it gladly, for it places me where I want and chose to be. 

The smell of hog manure reminds me of my father. And so, is a pleasant reminder.

"What Do You Do About Gophers?" or "Waiting for Grizzlies"

One of the most commonly asked questions I get from backyard gardeners is "What do you do to control gophers?" Contrary to what seems to be a common belief, garlic does not repel  gophers. Gophers LOVE garlic. 

Because I grow garlic, onions, carrots, beets, melons, and squash, (all suitable to the gopherian palate) and because I am therefore out in the garden a lot, I  witness the results of this rodent's tastes and appetites. It is not unusual  to catch sight and sound of a plant making helpless rustling whimpers as the unseen varmit tugs it under the ground's surface, a helpless victim to the "Jaws" of the garden. 

Though you may often catch them in the act of pushing up the fine texture earth, it is unusual to actually see the creatures out and about on the surface.  So it was a little unusual when a gopher came out of his burrow and foraged in the grass next to my garden one sunny summer day. I walked up to him. He was unconcerned, and continued about his business. 

I was afraid and figured he must be diseased - maybe rabid. As I stood over this near-sighted and stub-tailed rodent his charactor seemed to me a little bit like a grumpy old man. Unafraid of anything, or at least not of me.  Or perhaps he was just old and ready to die, and so doing this foolish thing, offering his body to the dangers of open ground on a sunny day. 

I could have pounded him flat with my shovel. Instead, I bent, broke off a stem of grass, and cautiously tickled his whiskers. 

He immediatedly rolled his fat body back on his haunches, closed his eyes, shook his head and rubbed furiously at his whiskers. He seemed quite irritated. nothing short of disgusted. 

When he had re-arranged his whiskers to his satisfaction he turned busily back to foraging. So I mercilessly tickled his whiskers again. 

Again he sat back on his haunches, rubbing his face, adjusting his whiskers. He now seemed disgusted. We repeated this little dance three or four more times. Finally, not going to take it any more,  he lumbered over to another gopher hole and disappeared underground, completely fed up, ready this day perhaps to face his death by cat, dog, or hawk, but not prepared to be insulted by having his whiskers repeatedly mussed. 

I was tickled myself, a later day, another season, when I came across the following passage in Gary Paul Nabhan's book, Enduring Seeds, of a conversation he had with a Native American friend. 
 
Once I discovered some gopher holes in a friend's field, near one of his melon vines, which appeared damaged. I wondered if he controlled these burrowing animals. 
 "I thought about it, now that my wife is old, but I still leave those gophers alone." 
 "Now that your wife is old?" 
 "They say that if you mess with the gophers it will disrupt the ladies' monthly sickness when they are young. You aren't supposed to kill those gophers or even touch the plants they've been chewing on. You just let them be." Then he smiled. "Now that she's too old for that, I've been thinking about getting some of that . . . what do you call it? Gopher-Go? But I just don't know."

The mythology of an ancient and enduring agri-culture held open a place for gophers in the life of the garden. 

So I now confess - no gophers are trapped, poisoned, or otherwise actively pursued by human beings on the 4 and a half acres I farm. What that says about me as a farmer remains (I faithfully believe) still not completely resolved against me. 

The cost of leaving the little critters alone seems fairly evident in the loss of garlic and onions and summer vines. Some years I have lost better     than 1/3 of my garlic plants to gophers. But 1/3 of the plants doesn't represent 1/3 of a harvest. It may be a good deal less. How their presence may affect my other crops remains unknown. Some evidence to their defence  exists. 

For starters, the soil they clean out of their burrows is fine and crumbly,  good enough for scooping  up and mixing in potting mix for starting spring tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant. It mixes easily with compost and ashes. 

Another clue came during  garlic harvest several years ago, before I had stopped trapping them. I was digging garlic with a shovel when I  brought up a spade of earth with the cross section of an abandoned gopher tunnel running through the center of it. I knew it was abandoned because delicate white root hairs were growing through the airy center. 

These fine root hairs were there, evidently, to condense and suck up the moisture in the air, as well as "breath" the air itself. It was my first hint at understanding how a healthy soil "respires".  And I soon began to imagine other ways a gopher and tunnel might deepen the  soil's microfloral breath. 

For example, as they move down their tunnels their bodies serve as a little piston, pushing the air ahead of them, pulling it along behind, freshening the soil with every little move and fidget. The tunnel vents themselves draw fresh air, and the moisture in the gopher's breath adds humidity to the air. "Gopher Breath." 

Last fall I was chopping into a weedy mound of earth, to fill a hole I had dug in the spring, when I spied a sleepy, short-winged, black, bumblebee tumbling and buzzing on the fresh turned earth. Another chop with my hoe brought up another one. I then spied the gopher hole I had been chopping into. 

Tunnels, made and abandoned by the gophers, now housed these big clumsy bees. Seeing them allowed me to imagine that there are other species that benefit from these tunnels too.                         
Every life in the garden is the point of a vortex  that expands outward and who's tangled threads confound our reason. I have but just begun to wonder. 

The new science of chaos theory states that it is possible for a butterfly to flap its wings in our back yard and trigger a violent hurricane on the other side of the planet. Who can say what action leads to good end? Maybe butterflies trigger cyclones, and maybe disturbing gophers messes with the woman's cycle. 

What I do know is that by letting the gophers be, I am happily tossing my qualifications as a farmer into that chaos. All I ask, and blindly trust, is that the Mystery will allow me to remain standing firmly, for awhile, on this wonderful farmable ground. 

So when people ask "What do you do to control gophers?" I half jokingly respond, "Nothing! I'm too busy worrying about how  I'm going to farm when the Grizzlies come back!"

For more gopher stuff go here.

Up from Within: Portrait of an Artist as a Young Woman

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No one  anticipated the release of Karisha Longaker's debut cd “Up from Within” more impatiently than I. Her collection of songs in this cd is a coming of age celebration and ritual announcing the presence of a new young artist. Though intensely personal, it is also upliftingly mythological and practically rooted on solid earth.

Understand first,  “Up from Within” is a piece of Folk Art.

Second, her guitar and vocals were captured live by two mikes and burnt onto cd disk.

That’s it.

No layered harmonies or instrumentation. She has stripped everything down. There is no fluff, and her voice, rhythm and guitar plucking are delivered all relaxed and raw at the same time.

For at least the last 7 years previous to the release of Up from Within Karisha crafted her art as a welcomed contributor with other local performers adding her layers of harmonies and flourishes to collaborative work. Since release of this personal first CD she has moved on, joined forces to form MaMuse "One Voice Divided". with Sarah Nutting. But here she offers herself up - alone.

Karisha  digested those collaborative experiences, taken much that is recognizable from them, and here - made them elementary her own. 

Here is one example.

In the second song:

Breeze blows in on off the water

Lift me up!

I am your HOLY daughter!

Her hero’s assumed claim “ I am your HOLY  daughter” slips by almost unnoticed. Karisha slices the first syllable of “holy” into about 7 odd descending pieces with rhythmic and fluted vocals. So, we are carried into a hero’s journey in the arms of a breeze. Listen to the guitar intro and vocal clip here. 

Taken together, these songs present a personal inventory of a hero's journey, what a sense of self is based on, who is owed, the nature of the gifts to be conjured, and where Karisha herself intends to go. The songs lead us through an interlocking series of assessments, thanksgivings, purification rituals, prayers, battles and battle cries, rallies, and ends with a benediction.

The journey she takes us on is intimately personal and evokes mythos appealing to deep commitments and sacrifice, with character enough both worldly, earthy & self-aware enough to be immediately useful.

Author and teacher, Joseph Campbell, lamented toward the end of his life that:

We are living in a period I regard as a period of the terminal moraine of mythology. It is a lot of mythologic rubbish all around. Mythologies that have built civilizations are no longer working that way (and) just in ruble all around us.

But Karisha, with her lyrics is pulling those pieces of rubble back together, refashoning them. The very first song begins exactly where it should: “Still, perfectly still/ and open”. Then we listen as the voice inside her hero coaxes;

You’re unraveling your stories

You are moving back inside

You are gathering these bones and this body

Weaving them into present time. 

Taken individually there are a couple great songs, like the ode to friendship “Miss Avalanche” and the passionate “Living Love”. But the great strength of this cd is the collection of songs, songs that together take us on this mythic hero’s journey, for the whole is more than a simple sum of the parts.

Essential to this journey is the song “Up from Within” which takes us into battle, and taking the offensive, repeatedly asks the same question over and over again, “Aren’t you glad to be living?” Our unspoken answer flips the great abyss from “No!” to “Yes!”

But this divide between “No” and “Yes” is both this work’s center focus and greatest weakness. It is a span too great to be crossed by any artist or person. It is the great question of the album – and of the human culture it informs. We live on a planet finite and mortal, and perhaps humans are to answer that question on behalf of the planet - in this generation.

In her own way, Karisha is actively assembling for us, from old mythic ruble and her generous and meticulously personal accounting, a little holy gold-winged scarab-beetle  - that flies in todays world.  Accounting the cost and knowing the risks, all her songs bravely beg the question,"Aren't you glad to be living?"

In so asking she demonstrates herself a gifted musician, composer, poet, songwriter, singer and story teller; perhaps like Bob Dylan, a working American singer and dancer . Whatever surprises she prepares for us during the coming years as a performing artist it should not come to us a shock, for she has recorded here, for those of us going that way, an informed demonstration of personal talents, and available resources, and delivers us both inspiration and a useful and practical beacon for sustained effort, direction and intent.

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Still . . . I've been wrong before . . . 

The cd “Up from Within” can be ordered on line at www.karisha.info.
MaMuse’s debut album All The Way and BRAND NEW Release Strange and Wonderful are available for purchase locally in Chico California at: Lyon’s Books, Made in Chico, The Chico Peace and Justice Center and Bustolini’s Deli, or ordered on line from their website,
or from cdbaby by clicking below.

 All The Way

 Strange and Wonderful

Small Farm Accounting and Fairie Tales

When the rFarm CSA was up and running, one of the young daughters of one of my rfarm CSA subscribers dictated a fairie tale to her father to type. When it was finished the whole family came and gave me a copy of it. Because in it, the first place the children go, once the magic begins, is to my farm. 

In her story, after riding the animals wild about the place, two of the Children give me a present. 

Clare and Alex even gave Richard a strong knife which could cut any strong weed which was on his farm bothering him.  The handle was mother-of-pearl and the blade was real gold. 
 
In return I give the children fresh organic food for the rest of their journey "into the hole". 

"Fair trade!" I say. 

I often pause to think of this gift of imagination, this "gold knife with mother of pearl handle", and the idea that the first place a child naturally goes when begining some great and  imaginary journey would be something like a small farm, to stock up on the supplies necessary for the rest of the journey: organic nourishing fresh fruits and vegetables, seeds and nuts.

I have made an effort to make account of that mother of pearl gold knife as true "income" to the farm. So when I get to the discouraging part of farming (my years of it anyway - the book keeping) I take heart! 

Go forth with renewed vigor! 

Hack away the weeds and briars of discouragement! 

Strong, bothersome weeds indeed!    I bet no agri-corporate manager, no matter how much they make, has ever received such a precious and unexpected gift. Not by their wildest imaginings - or anyone else's. 
(Somestimes one thinks they spend their time scheming how to steal such gifts though.) *
 
so

Open your golden farm-tool account today!

Let it accrue your interest.

Keep track of it.

Count it as income.

Use it or Lose it!

------------------------------Some people think . . .  I've been wrong before . . .