Spring is Early This Year
The Lilacs are budding.
it’s evening now, and ironically since I took these photos it has snowed again and we are expecting even more over the weekend. The temperature this winter has been freakish. Major cold blasts then very warm then sudden cold blast again. It is going to wreak havoc on the plants that have started producing buds for spring already. This is climate change impacting the farm. This shouldn’t be happening this early. Something is very very wrong with this planet. Typically, I love to see new buds on the lilac bushes. I love a return of spring. I love smelling the mud and the rebirth of all that is green. But this year after this demented winter it just feels too early.
Pussy Willows
The pussy willows stand tall along the road all fuzzy and cute. I love to great them every year. They always make me smile. Some of the first signs of life poking up from the roughage of the edge of the still dead and skeletal woods. Pussy willows are cute. I think of them as the forest’s pet house cat, and in the spring they do that thing where they stick up their tails, purr and walk around your ankles. I get the same feeling from that as I do when I see the earliest pussy willows of spring.
I can feel her, the lady of the spring. The energy of life returning, the green wood woman… She is waking up in the mud getting ready to rise into her fully glory as she does every year. But I can feel a sickness in this spring time Goddess. As I felt through the winter months. The Holly King too was unwell… Like Covid infected us for all these years, it seems we have become a viral pandemic to the forces of nature that we once lived with in harmony. Glorying in their light and abundance, today most don’t even realize vegetables grow from the ground as they lob bombs at nuclear power plants in Europe. As we frack away our clean water. As we pollute to supply foods that are unnatural to given regions in certain seasons… While we keep too many cows that fart endlessly. Yes, I love cows too. I have none, but I think they are amazing. All the same, we must be honest their numbers are part of the problem here. Not the entirity of the problem far from it. But a piece of it that we really could and should cut back on a bit in conjunction with cutting back in other areas of pollution as well. The Lady Spring, lays sickly in the mud, and no doubt she will rise like every year as she has since the beginning of time. But the fact is, she is diminished by what we do to the natural world that is her body.
Tess The Maple Tree
I even got to greet Tess, my maple tree friend. I have missed her through the winter. The buds she wears are such a welcome sight. Though I worry for her budding so early. By July she will seem tired and abused by the heat. It will be hard to watch her laboriously holding up the sky. Then finally she will turn red, before going to sleep again. This is the cycle of life on a homestead. And like it or not, we are part of it. Like it or not, we are having a profoundly negative impact on the planet.
Think about that before you go to the gas station to pay for the over priced gas.
Ask yourself is it really worth it, when there is a better way.
It is worth the investment of dumping what is poisoning our planet.
Each year we don’t my way of life is altered.
Each year we don’t the planet gets sicker.
One day, Lady Spring, may not rise from the mud.
She may lie there in a puddle as she slowly ceases to be.
I don’t want to live in that world.
Please, think about the choices we are making before there are none left to make.
Thank you for reading
Amanda Of Wildflower Farm
Wildflower Farm, is a small New England homestead, B&B and AirBnB, in the Baystate. We came out here 7 years ago, when we returned from the better part of 10 years as peripatetic aristotelian nomads, for my husband's post docs. Upon our return, we had a plan. We had a lovely home. Everything was so clear. Then, I got sick. Things I used to eat all the time during our travels elsewhere in the world and even here before I left almost 10 years earlier made me ill. It took a couple trips to the ER and a trip to specialist... It became clear, something had changed in the way food is processed in this country since last I lived here. Some off label things was inevitably going to be my demise.
My husband and I looked around to see the clear path we were on, had exploded in front of us. We decided we had to create a new path for ourselves. We put children on hold. We found a small piece of land with a house we loved in a rural suburb in a right to farm area. I began researching how to do it ourselves. Grow it ourselves, make it ourselves, survive on our own as much as possible. We bought the property, and began plotting a new course. One that didn't involve off label chemicals. Closer to nature, with a lot more DIY, gardens, and animals for the products they provide. We created a life we loved though it hasn't always been easy and has of course come with compromise with each other, and even with ourselves.
Our family thought we had lost our minds. What were we doing leaving the city? We had no idea how hard this would be. They thought we would be back in 6 months. That was over 7 years ago, now. We have been making it work. They were not wrong, it isn't easy. But has anything worth doing ever been easy? And for us, avoiding as much store bought food as possible was simply necessary so I could live given how sick I was getting.
Then Covid hit.... We were lucky to have this place. It has allowed us a lot less need for public use territories which has kept us a lot safer and spared us much of the risk others face daily. This place, has given us a privilege through this of great meaning to us. To be of use in a difficult time. We have been able to help friends family and even strangers in need when things couldn't be found on store shelves. Or money was tight due to not working, rent being due and a child at home, or some other draining situation. We are so very grateful to have been able to not be helpless like so much of society through this miserable time. Our families, got used to it some time ago, us being out here. They made peace with it the day there was no bread and they had to ask me for some. Or when fresh vegies were rotten due to supply chain issues but they could find plenty in my garden.
Wildflower Farm, was a place I dreamed of. One of those sweet pastoral dreams a city dweller grows up knowing will never come true, that became unavoidable when I became ill. I never expected to get to do this. I never thought I had what it takes to make this work. I have learned pacing myself is important, compromise is critical, hard work never ends, burn out is real so breaks are just a necessary evil.
We are not fully self sufficient, but we work hard in that direction as we create a new path through life for ourselves, always reaching to do even more ourselves and to get closer to the ideal we envision. We are however far more self sufficient than many in this world. 7 years in, we continue to learn and grow in this homesteading lifestyle. We welcome comments and advice and ideas and questions.
We welcome visitors from all over to our home with strict covid policies in place. We spend our time learning to live all over again in a more environmental and sustainable way though even there we are far from perfect always learning and growing doing better as we know better.
This little homestead farm is a magical place named for the New England wildflowers that grow all around. A place where a physicist, watches the night sky on clear nights with the aide of mirror and glass, and a woman, works endlessly in the gardens, the kitchen, and a variety of projects to create and to keep a very unique life style running and functioning. Wildflower Farm, has become so much more than simply a piece of land we can grow a few vegetables on. The longer I spend here, the more alive the land seems, the more I learn about it's function and the more meaning it has. My place in the universe and the next steps on our new path become ever more clear.
We welcome you on this journey with us.
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