Hour of Splendor

We've been under the weather lately and so the lack of chronicles. A feverish chorus of coughing adults and children. So I enjoy some thoughts of hours of spendor in the grass....

Excerpts from: William Wordsworth
Recollections of Early Childhood

Intimations of Immortality

There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
The earth, and every common sight,
To me did seem
Appareled in celestial light,
The glory and the freshness of a dream.

…Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendour in the grass,
of glory in the flower,
We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind…

How About Them Apples?

Megan- U of M Horticulture Student and Community Assistance Program project

coordinator for the CGB Fruit tree project
So last spring every kid at CGB Elementary School got a $30 voucher for healthy summer snack to be used at the local small town stores. A wonderful idea. A couple days later I bought a few fruit trees from Lou's Greenhouse in Big Stone City, SD. $30 food voucher in one hand- $27 fruit tree in the other. Hmmmm. If we planted a fruit tree, those kids could have healthy summer snack right out their doorsteps.

So three of us, a parent, teacher, and food shelf staff person put our heads together and now are starting a project to plant a fruit tree in the yard of every CGB Elementary student. Our dream is to:

• Improve household and community food security
• Increase families access to healthy food
• Teach children practical sciences about fruit tree care, horticulture, plant, and soil sciences
• Let our school children get to know a college student who is excited about her work in Horticulture and see this as a potential career for themselves
• Create local self reliance in fruit tree care, fruit production, and preserving fruit to eat throughout the year (think apple sauce, dehydrated apple rings, or cold storage of apples).
• Test a new way for Food Shelves to provide a more sustainable food source for clients (like planting fruit trees)

We could use a bit more support for this project. Click on Continue Reading to find out how:

If you are interesting in contributing to this project, we could use some help purchasing the trees.

Please make a tax deductible contribution to the Clinton-Graceville-Beardsley School Foundation!

Send your checks to:

Southwest Initiative Foundation (put CGB Foundation on the memo line)
15 3rd Avenue NW
Hutchinson, MN 55350

Thank you!

Small Enough to Care About (as opposed to Too Big to Fail)

Odessa, Minnesota- photo courtesy of the Minnesota Historical Society

Small Enough to Care About.

There is a scale at which it is possible to make an impact. A scale at which ideas, thoughts, and actions can turn into something changed, good, and tangible. Like our farm- we're going to put a chunk of it into pasture to raise grassfed livestock. The change and good I seek is 1) Meadowlarks return to our corner of the prairie 2) the winter snows won't be covered with black dirt from the blowing soil. (oh and more romatic ideas of flying kites, chasing kids, and watching cows chew their cud in verdant fields)

In small communities it is possible to work together, build a new idea, and see it come to fruition. We have a local food group forming in the county and there are steps forward. I hear a community garden may be planted on a vacant mainstreet lot. Now that is Change You Can Believe In.

What I like about where I lives is that it is small enough to care about.

An Unheard of Silence

This morning I stopped and listened to a silence in the world that I have never heard before. It was about 10-15 degrees, windless, a light fog hung all around the edges of the world.

The silence was startling in its completeness. No birds, cars, planes, people, machines, or wind. It was complete, total, and utter silence. There was not a single sound except my own heartbeat.

The only sign of life this morning was death.

I found a dead mole in the middle of the road. His whiskers still full of the ice crystals he made with his last breathes. He was curled in a comfortable ball- his fur lovely and rich in the early morning sun. What was he doing out there?

Mike came in the other night astounded that it was so quiet he had heard the 6 pm whistle blow in Clinton- 10+ miles away. Imagine standing in Highland Park, St. Paul and being able to hear a noise made in Edina.

Imagine being so surprised by a quiet world, having lived in it for 40 years. After a bit I hollered “I am here! My voice echoed back- but I’m not sure off of what on this prairie

Walking on Wate

Ice on (yet) un-named pond on our road

I dreamt the other night that I was in the barn with Jens and Alma. It was warm and I had lost one boot. Jens was barefooted. It was getting very dark and I decide to run back to the house with the one boot and with Jens in my arms - feet wrapped. I ran throught the snow and then fell through the crust and up to my chest. I could see the yellow glow of the house lights close- but out of reach. Alma and Jens crawled across the crust and I tried to "swim" my way out of the snow.

Monday I walked into the ditch to get on the pond. I walked on the crust until I fell in up to my waist- the dream returning to me in the pre-dawn morning. I walked around the ice taking in the frozen animal tracks, the drifts of snow like isthmuses across the blue grey ice, the patterns of cracks. Again yesterday I waded through snow onto the pond, thinking I was taking a completely different path and surprised to find I was walking the same steps. By day 3 it has become a looked for path of comfort. I smiled at myself the critter- a path making critter. There was an element of instinct- I'd found a safe path and sought that path.

What lies ahead of us is uncharted and we need a new path. It's going to require some trail blazing. There will anxiety, even fear. But somehow, sometime that new path will bring comfort.

Sunrise on the pond

With Eyes Froze Shut

One of our children playing outside BEFORE his eye froze shut

You might ask yourself what kind of parent would:
1) let their children play outside when it is -30 degrees (not counting windchill)
2) let they play outside long enough that their eyes froze shut.

I'm that parent. We were on Day 4 of of blizzard/life threatening cold that had cancelled school for 2 days and an additional two days where the buses couldn't get within 2.5 miles of our farm to pick up our kids. Hence, the outdoors kids. I never had 4 contiguous snow days in my life!

What's more, our power went out yesterday morning. Among the crisis this caused was our well line froze UNDER the barn floor and the potential for our central boiler (wood boiler) in our backyard to geyser scaling water into the -37 degree air (it didn't) .

Through all this I was single minded, completely focused, obsessively working to.... MAKE COFFEE. In a crisis I must first have my coffee. After rigging up a bunch of candles under a pan I realized that I no actual plan for cooking anything without power. With an electric stove I'm, politely, out-of-luck.

I will tell you this. In the Cities there are layers upon layers of conveniences that make severe weather a theoretical issue. Bad weather is, in large part, not even an inconvenience. Out here on the prairie- a single family- it is another matter. The elements are right against you, a raw and exposed feeling. There is a but a thin wall between my family's well being and the cold and blizzard. When I drive into the Cities- I can feel the layers of soothing complexity and comforts abounding. But my eyes see things differently than others -- I see those underpinnings as a fragile balance with tenuous supports.

In the mean time, the water came back yesterday afternoon. Kids are none the worse for the exposure to life threatening cold. I should have included the photo Alma took of me with my elbow on the table, head resting in my palm, bottle of chokeberry wine in hand.

The Granary Coop- Ortonville Minnesota

Alma in the storefront

Alma and I spent the better part of the day running the Granary Coop on mainstreet Ortonville, Minnesota. This store is a gem, and would be a gem anywhere it was located. It is a 100% volunteer run coop with the best variety of bulk organic foods that I've seen anywhere- Twin Cities included. The Granary, with its huge picture windows in a historic building on Mainstreet, adds a lot to the richness of living in Big Stone County for me.

This is a nice time for Alma and I to spend together- playing at being proprietors of our own little store of organic and local foods. Today there was bright sunlight, the smell of wholesome food, public radio playing in the background, and a mom and daughter with a world all our own.

This store wouldn't be here except for the dedication of a handful of people in Ortonville. Many thanks to Donna and Meg and all the others whose dedication keeps this great place open.