As I Stand Here Damned.

"No man, who puts his hand to the plough and looks back is fit for service in the Kingdom."  
 
 

I always look back. 

As I stand here damned I lean on my hoe. Hawks and buzzards circle overhead. Worms crawl through the soil under my feet. The wind edges through the leafless branches of the creek's trees, walks through my weedy onion patch and brushes lightly past me.  Still, I stand still. 

The tool I lean on is a "eye" hoe, with a handle nearly as thick as a softball bat, with a broad U shape to the cast iron head. It is called an "eye" hoe because the handle slips through the "eye" of the metal piece.  The wood handle flairs at the end, jamming the head into place. 

I grew up on a farm in Kansas, got a BS degree in Agriculture, worked several years for the Department of Agriculture, truck farmed for 5 years, then discovered - - what a good hoe was. I was 37. 

A 16 year old boy told me, Rafael, from Guatemala, my sort-of-son. I didn't believe him of course. What could he know.  But to be polite, and in spite of my doubts, I tried a friends eye hoe. I bought my own the next week at the hardware store downtown. 

It took me 37 years to discover what a good hoe was, and since no one ever told me I assume that none of my family or teachers or university professors knew what a good hoe was either, or never thought it  important enough to pass on. 

Rafael knew because he grew up in the mountains of Guatemala and used one, farming the steep slopes of the mountains, growing potatoes, wheat, corn and beans with his family. They ate what they could grow. Rafael grew up like most of the world's farmers, poor and largely un-schooled, valuing and using the body's labor to live, appreciating the balance and heft of a good tool if lucky enough to have access to one. 

Leaning on my eye hoe I think of the other farmers around the world leaning on theirs. When I work with it the motions of my body are a dance I share with a majority of the worlds men and women farmers. I am an oddity in the U.S., but in the world I am among the common folk. 
 
I appreciate a sharp tool, such as this hoe. A sharp edge brings delicacy and finesse to an otherwise heavy and coarse tool. This eye hoe is sold in pieces, the metal head and wooden handle separate. The head of my eye hoe is from Australia. But this eye-hoe-head, brought into my hands from half way round the world, leaves me with a question. Do the makers of this tool not know how it is used? 

They put the bevel on the wrong side of the blade. The beveled edge should be on the outside edge. The manufactured bevel is on the inside edge! It took me a long time to file off that angle and get it to work properly. 

Rafael once told me of growing and harvesting wheat in his village. The reasons for doing every part of the work particularly, he said, is to " please the grain - so it won't run away." 

At planting time the farmer broadcasts the grain over the plot of ground. Then he takes his hoe and "roughs up" the soil. If a rain shower should come and the farmer leave the field before he has finished this service for the grain it will become displeased and "run away". You may find that the grain, after the rain, has "run away" to the bottom of the hill.  

After the work of planting and growing the wheat, the work of harvest is shared by the family, and select friends or neighbors.  Traditionally no one bathes until the harvest is complete. 

The grain is cut by hand and tied in bundles. The bundles are piled into ricks. The ricks are hand carried or loaded onto the back of donkeys or horses. 

Generally, two or more farmers use the same patch of packed earth on which to hand thresh the grain. Donkeys and horses are brought in to help thresh by walking over the grain straw. 

Some animals are lazy and simply go to the center and turn round-and-round, so a post is generally placed in the center, or someone stands there until the grain starts piling up forcing the animals to walk around on the grain stalks where they do some good. 

An expert winnower tosses the beaten stems and grain into the air and the wind separates the grain from the chaff. The cleaned grain slowly rises up in a pile in the center while the animals continue walking around in the grain stems and chaff. 

When  the grain is clean the winnowing is complete. A rope is brought in and carefully layed around the toe of the pile of fresh grain. Again "so the grain will not run away". 

A ceremonial cross is stuck carefully into the top of the pile of grain and candles are placed in the grain around it. The men then call to service a young local woman (preferably pregnant). The woman  lights the candles and walks around the pile of grain three times, saying a blessing to the harvest. 

All this "pleases the grain". 
 
With a measure, the men finally divide out each person's share.  Only when all the grain is divided and the farmer's share carried to his family's kitchen can the farmer and his helpers go bathe, eat, drink, party, and rest. 

An article a few years ago by a young woman who returned from a tour with the Peace Corps described how the women of the village she had been assigned to would daily grind their grain for the day's cooking. 

The women ground a few handfuls at a time in a deep bowl. Two or three women would stand around the container, each with a slender log. Rhythmically they would lift and, in turn, heave the blunt end into the grinding bowl, thumping the kernels into flower and meal. Their timing had to be perfect because the pot was only large enough for one post at a time. The work was hard and would take an hour's labor or more of every able bodied woman every day. 

But this young woman also mentioned how wonderful it was to watch these village women do this work together, the beauty and effortless grace of their bodies and arms throwing the poles into the grain in the bowl.  When she tried it herself, the people jumped back laughing, afraid they would get hurt at her hearty, clumsy attempt. 

Imagine a family eating bread made from grain grown, harvested and milled in such a rich and carefully connected manner.  Such food demands remembrance and celebration again and again through the stories and jokes shared while preparing, eating and digesting that day's food. It is nutrition on many levels. 

How much would we be willing to pay for the rich tradition and community quality required to grow, harvest, and mill such flour? How anemic can our culture become before we begin to recognize our basic need for  food of such high quality?  This is nutrition we today lack. This is the food we need to make room for, in our gardens, neighborhoods, towns, and cities.

Before the Peace Corps woman ended her tour of duty, she presented her assigned village with a self-powered grain mill, "relieving the women of this tedious chore." 
 
I wonder what now will the women of that village come together over? How much less will their work be valued? What task will challenge them to the graceful cooperative exertion of their bodies? How long will it be before they can buy Jane Fonda Workout tapes (from the shelves of Salvation Army stores), learn aerobic excercise,  or take "folk dancing lessons" to learn to appreciate through pantomime the "traditional work" of their grandmothers? 

If  humans truly  have the ability to tame the wildly rocketing technologies that so dominate our modern "culture" how far it is that we must go when one of our world's most basic, simple, straight forward tools comes into my hands from the other side of the planet, with the edge beveled on the wrong side?

But then: I've been wrong before . . . 

"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.

of Gardens, Health, and Farmers Markets

Hi, I am Richard Roth, Founder & Executive Director of cChaos. (www.cchaos.org).

In the "earn a living" first life category - I am a grounds/maintenance and computer person at a nonprofit children's center. (www.chicochild.org)

I think home, community and school Gardens and local Farmers Markets can save the world. That means local people growing the food local people eat. Shared, sold, grown, bought or gleaned -locally grown plant foods are the very best a community can produce or a family or neighbor share.

The nonprofit cChaos has grown out of that belief, propelled by my intent to save the lives of dear people in the communities I live, work and move in, who are eating garbage foods; family, friends, coworkers clients, the disabled, and yes - the kids. We are killing our kids; and we are killing ourselves in the process.

This blog will wander from "synchronicity" & "Carl Jung" to "wheel hoes" & "cow dung" and passing through many surrounding topics.
This blog is mine. I am going to make some mistakes here - but I hope most what you find will be helpful and interesting. Sure hope you enjoy.

Health to you.

Please remember: I've been wrong before . . .