Towering

Towering

Mid April and Early May 2015

It is  May 11, and the rains have come to spend the weekend. We had been watering during a dry spell, but this is a crucial time for garden plants, and even our well water is not as good as rain. But, watering has kept things going, including the strawberry plot that Richard has been tending assiduously.

Plants have been growing well, each day surprising me by how much taller they stretch toward the sun, or how much farther their “arms” stretch to the sides, ready to drink in the rain. There has been much to drink in over the weekend, and I look forward to how much more quickly they will grow.

                   

Brussels Sprouts on April 13

                                      

Cabbages and Broccoli on May 7

 Japanese Giant Red Mustard on May 7

 Peas on May 7

Among the growing things are the potato towers. For some years, I have wanted to create these. The plan has been to have an airy “vessel” into which dry materials (straw, dried grass, compost, etc.) would go. On top of the first layer I would place potato “seeds” - pieces with “eyes”. Layers of dry material would be periodically placed on top as potato plants grow taller.

My plan has always been to put a row of potato towers in one raised bed each year. When it would become time to harvest potatoes (after the plants had grown tall through successive layers and started to die back, indicating the readiness of tubers), I would simply pick up the towers and let all the layers fall out. I would sift through to find the little treasures called new potatoes and plunk them cleanly into a bucket. Then I would spread out the material, which would become mulch for other plants in the bed that year, and then compost to enrich that bed's soil later.

Doesn't this sound like a good, tidy plan?  Let's hope it works. I finally get to try it out this year!

One reason I had not succeeded in carrying out the plan in previous years was lack of something to use for the “vessels”, or cages.  I had considered various possibilities, but never made it happen.

I am not one to run out and buy lots of new fencing, which is expensive, for a project like this. So, I was looking for something I could salvage.

A trip into the barn had not yielded what I needed (see “Archaeology”.)

 

But on another day I walked down to the barn and my eyes caught on a rusty old thing at the edge of the woods. It was an old pig farrowing crate that we used to use for transporting lambs to the butcher. It could not be used for potato towers in any way – I was considering other garden uses for it, letting my mind flow around possibilities. A support for some kind of vining crop? Covered with the right thing, it could even become attractive.

Then I saw it, what I had been waiting for all these years. Leaning against the old pen, almost invisible in its airiness, was a rusty roll of woven wire fencing.

I felt like an antique dealer who had found a hidden gem at a yard sale – or the dump.

I tossed it into my wheelbarrow and rolled it up to the gardens, then plopped it down onto a strip of lawn. It was all tangled with dried-up vines, stalks and leaves. I wondered if it was tangled up with itself, too. But, I've always loved a good untangling puzzle, so I brought out a pair of wire cutters and set to work.

 

I found the overlapping part and managed to unhook the fencing from itself and roll it out on the grass. Wow – plenty for me to use!

Here was the question, though:  why did Richard not have a use for this? He knew I had been searching for this kind of thing, so why did he not mention this old roll of fencing? Surely he didn't have plans for it.

I set to work with the wire cutters. I needed four potato towers. I snipped away until I had the right lengths for four towers – no – five towers! I decided to save the fifth section for some future use, as yet unknown.

I took the first section, stood it up, and bent it around in a circle. Then I wrapped exposed wires of one side around the wires of the other side to secure the whole thing. Voila! A potato tower vessel, as simple as that. I made three more.

I really cannot describe how elated I was to finally have potato tower vessels. Even more, I cannot describe the elation I felt after having made them myself, from something I found, into something useful. Resourcefulness is a good feeling.

Meanwhile, I had cut up my potatoes and set them in the sun to dry.

 

Aren't they beautiful? They are called Magic Molly potatoes.

I was so excited to find this variety – deep purple from skin to center. Beautiful color, beautiful health, and a really cool name. A real hippie name.

I spread some straw on part of Raised Bed #2 and set a wire cage on top of it. My first potato tower! There it was!!

 

Then I set up the other three on straw along that bed. The Dandelions would be taken out as other things needed the space, and I would use the leaves and roots as I harvested them. For the meantime, their bright green leaves and glowing yellow flower heads decorated the bed around the potato towers.

 

I then put potato pieces on the straw, spacing them. I felt like I was tucking pets into a cozy new home.

After I finished that, I put another layer of straw on top of the potato pieces. I rounded up various sturdy, tall things I had saved up (reusing again – more things saved for a future unknown purpose.) These I pushed into the ground on either side of each tower, then tied them on, making the towers safer for windy days.

 

And, there we have it!

After all these years, there were four potato towers standing tall, with Magic Mollies tucked in!!

Now, I'm stopping here to explain something:

 

All of the time I was figuring out and constructing these things (from the time I tossed the roll of fencing into the wheelbarrow), I thought of Mary Jane Butters and all she has done for me and other women.

Mary Jane is an intelligent, creative, resourceful, inventive ranch woman from Idaho who created Mary Jane's Farm Magazine* (which I subscribe to) and the Farmgirl Sisterhood** (which I keep meaning to re-join) and she is the author of several books (I have most of them.) She not only provides education and inspiration for women to do everything from building a shed to needlework to taking care of a cow to repairing things to making great food in cast iron to camping skills to reusing things (and on and on), she also provides forums for all of us to share what we've learned. Best of all, she makes everything seem possible, or, rather, shows us that it is.

Making potato towers from old fencing may not seem like much of a project to some people, but it's the resourcefulness of it that is most important to me. Anything different that I learn and do is a big deal for a woman raised in an era when tasks were still pretty gender specific. I would love to have learned, in my younger days, how a car works, how to change a flat, how to use woodworking tools, how to build a tree house, or how to build a miniature working Ferris Wheel with an Erector Set.

But, none of that happened. So, everything I learn or figure out  during my adult years is like passing another class with flying colors, or earning a badge (which, by the way, you can do through the Farmgirl Sisterhood), or climbing another rung of a ladder I couldn't use when I was younger.

And what had my husband planned to do with that old rusty roll of fencing?

Get Rid of It!

Yes! He was going to take it to the metal recycler! 

At least that's another form or recycling, but, still ….

When he saw me working with that rusty, vine-tangled fence on the ground, clipping away, I said, “It will be good,, but it doesn't have to be pretty!” to which he replied, “That's good, because it's not!” (pretty, that is.)

Moving forward to early May:

My Magic Molly potatoes have not sent up shoots, but they haven't rotted, either, and still have vital, purple eyes. They need rain, and I have not watered them as I should (all those other things in Life distracting me.)

So, I removed most of the straw from the towers. A kind, generous neighbor had given us this pile of brown gold …

...so I put a layer of it on top of the potatoes in each tower. Then I watered them and put most of the straw back in, loosely. I felt like I was taking care of my pets again.

 Straw-seed potato-compost-straw sandwich

Grow, Magic Mollies, grow!

After the rains, I hope to see dark green, thick, crinkled potato leaves poking through the straw. I will reward them with more layers of compost and other dry stuff periodically. I want to see those plants tower up as high as they can get in their homes I built for them!

Meanwhile, Richard and I have more plants to put out after the rains subside ...

 

(For years, I have climbed to the top of fire towers whenever I have had the opportunity. Then, I found out that, for years, Mary Jane Butters had a job in a fire tower!)

*    www.maryjanesfarm.org

**  www.farmgirlsisterhood.org

 

 

Vulnerability

Vulnerability

“When we were children, we used to think that when we were grown-up, we would no longer be vulnerable.

But to grow up is to accept vulnerability … to be alive is to be vulnerable.”

Madeleine L’Engle

April 8 …

On the screened porch at home.

I was watching a big storm move toward my home from the southeast – a huge one. Black clouds roiled across the horizon, rolling toward me like a huge, dark blanket, about to smother me in a thick, gray quilt of  rain, thunder and lightning.

Then it was here, at my home, complete cover.

It rained cows and horses, pounding down so hard it seemed the earth around me should be an inch or so shallower.

 

I had watched the storm coming, thunder rolling in louder. I watched huge bolts of lightning burn down to the horizon as the sky cracked - closer, more vivid, larger. I tried to stay on the porch as long I could, attempting (unsuccessfully) to capture lightening on my camera lens. As the storm came closer, I backed up toward the door to the house. Then it became so fiercely close that I was afraid I would catch the lightening itself instead of its image.

There was nothing for it but to retreat inside the house, have a chocolate chip cookie, and curl up with the cats, whose coping mechanism was to fall asleep.

Every time we have a storm like this, I am transported to a time during our first year on this place. Richard worked nights back then, so I was often out here alone. I did not mind that in the least, despite that fact that the many locations where I had lived previously were in towns. Living in a relatively open space was new to me, no matter how much I had desired it.

Along came the first severe thunderstorm since we had built this house and moved in. There was nothing around our house but fields and woods.

And lightning.

I walked through the house, room to room, seeing lightning flashes repeatedly outside every window. Thunder crashed constantly and shook the house, as well as the floor under my feet. I stood in the middle of the living room and turned in circles – lightning was everywhere. I was standing in a cage of flashing bright lights, any of which could pierce the house.

I stopped. What good would it do me to keep walking around, spinning, watching the surrounding lightening? There was no escape. I would just have to accept it, hope for the best, and roll with it.

It stopped, of course, and everything was fine. No lightning had entered our house. I had weathered the first severe storm in our new country home, alone – my first storm in the country.

There would be many more, of course, but none of those experiences would be quite so intense, so surrounding, as that first one. Was it really that way, or was it the huge impression it left on my memory?

There's one good word to describe how I felt then – vulnerable. Fear comes from that, as it does from many sources. Or, maybe fear always comes from the feeling of vulnerability, which comes from many things. It could be due to a place, a situation, a person, or anticipation of the unknown – something causing us to feel helpless.

Or, perhaps the feeling of helplessness stems from our selves. We can change some situations – take shelter, move away, whatever. Some we can just avoid in the first place – don't parachute from that airplane, don't scale that cliff, don't jump into the deep ocean.

But, some people purposely do not avoid situations that can instill helplessness and fear. Are they brave? Foolish? Or do they just don't have the same sense of fear as most of us? I believe they do feel that vulnerability, but instead of avoiding it they feed on it. The thrill of overcoming it, every time, makes them want more. It can even become an addiction.

As President Franklin D. Roosevelt so famously said in his First Inaugural Speech: “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself”, an eloquent and useful phrase understood by many and, in variation, used by many.

http://teachinghistory.org/history-content/ask-a-historian/24468 

Some of us accept challenges that are not necessarily life-threatening, but are still strongly different from what we've done before. We want to gain momentum, grow from the experience, become stronger. Each of those, when we achieve them, helps us weather the things we cannot avoid.

The storms we have here in southern Indiana probably are not as fearsome as a storm in, say, the Great Plains.

 Approaching a storm in western Kansas

We do have our share of terrifying, destructive tornadoes in southern Indiana. There is no feeling of vulnerability like being in the path of a tornado. At our home, without a storm cellar or basement, we have to accept that situation with a different kind of reserve.

But, what if you could see it coming from so many miles, can see the huge storm on the distant horizon, not knowing what it will do as it nears the place where you are? What if you are just out there? What if?

 

This is one of the most vulnerable places I have ever seen. No wonder it is abandoned.

I had never been out West until mid-April of this year. It was my first experience with the Great Plains and the Rocky Mountains.

 

 Tallgrass Prairie National Reserve, Flint Hills of Kansas)

The Flint Hills were like nothing I had seen before, and so strange to me – wide, haunting, lonely.  For me, it was like being on a different planet. How did I feel out there? Vulnerable. It's the kind of place where you can see all of the weather systems around, and you keep an eye on them.

 

Any wisp of cloud extending to the horizon gives pause.

I wondered it people who were used to being in this kind of place, born and raised here, ever feel vulnerable when they are in a place full of forests, mountains or buildings? Does it make them feel insecure that they can't see what or who is coming from miles away, and be ready for it? Does it bother them that something could come around that grove of trees, that steep slope, that cluster of houses, without warning?

 

My traveling friend Patti and I walked trails in the Tallgrass, at that time devoid of tall grass, below and on top of gently sloping hills, but always wide open.

There was an old stone schoolhouse in the distance, settled on the hills, surrounded by mist and smoke. An empty swing set stood next to it. I imagined children playing outside, the rhythmic squeak of the swing chains as young legs pump and bodies stretch back, hair blowing in the breeze, gathering energy for another lunge forward into the prairie air. Black clouds in the distance approaching, the wind picking up. A teacher steps out of the stone building and calls. Children jump off of the swing boards, hit the dirt, and go running. They disappear, to be huddled in safety while empty boards swing from chains flung wildly about in the fierce wind.

Or, maybe a prairie fire. When we were there, firemen were busy conducting controlled burns on many thousands of acres. But, if a fire long ago was started by lightning and ran uncontrolled across the land, what would it be like in that schoolhouse in the Flint Hills? Or to be in that small wooden building in the middle of a wide, flat plain?

Into the Rocky Mountains.

Patti and I met up with our friend Angie for a few days in Colorado.

I wondered if the majestic, huge mountains would make me feel vulnerable. But, wondering that could make one feel that way. However, I had a more “scientific”, rather than emotional, interest.

 The mighty mountains – taller than anything I had seen before. Taller than the older, rounded Appalachian Mountains that I have been surrounded by and that I love. So many angles, cliffs, jagged edges, slanted rock layers.

 

I thought of what it would be like to be at the top of one of those taller peaks. How would I feel? Perhaps surprisingly, I was comfortable with that thought. I have always loved climbing hills and rocks, higher and higher, always wanting to see what was further up, what would be on the other side. It is a drive, an intense curiosity that overcomes the things I could fear.

 

I have no desire to scale a bare cliff face like a Big Horned Sheep, however.

 

Being on the top of the mountain would be exhilarating. Would I feel vulnerable? Maybe not. Maybe I would feel comforted by clouds, instead.

A lady I know once said to me, “I don't understand why people climb mountains. A little hill, maybe, but not a mountain.”  She and I are very different people.

Would I hang onto a hole in the side of a rock, so far from the ground, like a Raven on its nest?

 

No.

But, we went places where I was higher up into the sky than I had ever been (while still standing on Earth.)

  

And I did not mind at all.

In fact, I got to the top of a snow-covered rock with nothing behind me but air, the valley far below, and more mountains way back in the distance.  I sat there and had someone take a picture to prove I was there.

 

This may not mean a thing to someone who climbs rocks like these frequently, or someone who scales shear rock sides. But, it meant a lot to someone who had never before sat on a high, snowy, slippery rock with nothing but vast air behind her, no one holding her there.

I was gaining momentum, growing, becoming stronger.

There are other situations where one can, figuratively, feel as if one is on a high, snowy, slippery rock with nothing to hold one there but one's self, one's acceptance, one's willingness to take the opportunity and do the best that can be done with it.

A literal, physical experience can help one with any figurative version that might come along. It makes one stronger.

One. We must rely on ourselves, first.

Meanwhile, back at home, the storm retreated and went on to become a storm for someone else. It left behind small, temporary floods on our property, and flash floods elsewhere in the area ….

 ...and a full bucket of water for the cats.

 

Still, though, I sure wish we had a storm cellar.