A Completely Biased Book Review

Full confession:  all the gorgeous photos and all the great ideas in this book arose in the minds and hearts (and through the excellent photographic, culinary and literary skills) of our Companions Erin Martineau and Anne Ditzler. The book, savor: natural · simple · healthy, is a delight for the eye, a lovely window into our lives here on the farm, and a terrific help in the kitchen.

I am definitely biased.

But even with my caveat, this is a book you and your friends will adore.  Helpful hints throughout encourage one to venture into the wonderful (and tasty) world of fresh foods, farmers’ markets and creative cooking.

Not exactly recipes here, but guidelines for how to use those beautiful veggies now appearing in yard gardens and organic markets around the country.  Whether you use it as eye candy for your coffee table or as a quick reference for your kitchen shelf, you’ll want to buy a copy today.

And don’t forget a copy for your best friend. S/he will love it, too.

Winter art

So many surfaces are conducive to lovely frost-art — this is the top of our car yesterday morning. The close-up shows the little ice towers that make up the frost. [Click on an image to see a larger version.]

News in the wind

Six years ago our convent was a lovely retreat house surrounded by several other buildings (a small chapel, large building used for the school and convent, and a dilapidated caretaker’s house). We have a total of 20 acres on this side of the road, and most of that is second- and third-growth woodlands.

Then we began to awaken to the dilemma facing humanity and the danger facing all of Earth’s communities of life — and we realized we had to add a different, extremely demanding, and urgently necessary work  our already-worthy ministries of retreats, quiet days and spiritual direction.

The Earth needs us, our vision and our skills.

So about a third of the half-acre or so of manicured lawn around the retreat house was transformed to a budding (no pun intended) vegetable garden. About a fourth of that same lawn became a firepit area surrounded by four-direction posts, and the rest was allowed to return to natural meadowland. The three life-professed sisters living here at that time moved into the retreat house and the old convent was converted into a lovely guest facility.

We began an intensive period of study, learning about biodynamic farming, permaculture, food preservation, and the wisdom of the planet which brought us into existence and nourishes us daily. We studied the Universe journey from its inception, and we studied our own religious tradition’s wisdom as an incarnate reality.

We’re still studying, growing more (and more varied) foods every year, adding animal companions to deepen our biodynamism, planting trees, saving seeds and inviting others to explore what it might look like to live happily, sustainably, simply and joyfully, and to be intensely fulfilled spiritually in the process. We’re learning how to make our own vinegar, ketchup, wine, cheese, maple sugar and yogurt; we’ve learned to spin and weave, to collect rainwater and to compost everything compostable.

We’ve discovered that our liturgy and prayer are focused and informed by the ways we are finding to live in harmony with Earth, by our experience of the sacredness of the soil and water and air, by the natural abundance of Earth and the balance that upholds it all.

And more and more people are becoming interested in what we are doing here, and why. Now there are four professed sisters and four resident companions in our little band of prayers and farmers.

We have also come to realize that the old heating, plumbing and electrical systems in this 200+-year-old farmhouse need to be renovated for safety’s sake, but they also need to be designed and constructed in ways that reflect what we are learning about sustainable, wholesome practices, and which hold future generations in deep regard.

We’ve been working with architects who understand our spiritual lives as well as our efforts toward sustainable living, and as we begin to hone in on some plans, I’ll keep you posted.

What an exciting time for us all!!  If you’re anywhere near Brewster NY and would like to visit us and see what’s happening here, do let us know! As time allows and funds make some of these changes possible, I’ll be taking some before and after photos and will share more of the details of our vision for this place and for the future.

Stayed tuned!

Some pictures really are worth a thousand words

Silent night, holy night …

Tonight we had a surprise visit from Sr. Chilly Perpetua of the Fire Hydrant. She brought her faithful friend Snowball with her, and we feel honored they chose this lovely snowy night to bless Bluestone Farm.

We don’t know if they will still be here tomorrow morning, but if so, perhaps they will pose for a few more photos.

Snowy nights and odd musings

We’ve already had one snow this season, but this is the first one that has gotten past the dusting stage. I love trying to get a decent night shot, since the flash picks up the large flakes so well.

St. Fiacre, apparently an Irish saint who landed in France to get closer to God (someone might be able to explain that thinking to me … ), was known for healing miracles and for the fact that he created his own hermitage space and surrounding garden, supposedly using only his staff.  His particular healings included venereal disease (hmm), and he never allowed women into his oratory (hmmmmmmm).

We’ve had this little statue of that saint in our kitchen garden for almost two years. So far we’ve had no venereal diseases out there, but I’m afraid women have been in constant presence.

One out of two ain’t so bad.

Wild winds aloft

Simon woke me up early Thursday morning, so we were out before the sun came up. It was really windy, and I was fascinated by the setting moon as it quickly appeared and disappeared behind the racing clouds. No matter where I looked, though, the views were amazing.

I grabbed the camera and caught a bit of the action.

Morning Promise

I seem to be in a poetry kind of mood lately, so here’s another. This was written early one morning at Holy Cross Monastery. Their refectory (dining room) is essentially round and filled with windows that look north, east and south over the monastery’s vast sloping yard, the Hudson River and the hills beyond. I often sit in the dark room to witness the sunrise. This day was spectacularly beautiful, so I stayed on to see the river itself awaken.

Sadly I didn’t have a camera with me, but a generous and excellent photographer allowed me to use one of her fog-rising-on-river shots. Though this is not the Hudson, the mood evoked that morning is caught to perfection by Virginia Allain. You can visit her blog here, and see more of her amazing photography here.

.

The last drifts of night fog
rise as columns of incense
from the Hudson, an aching
prayer for promised Light;

.

wind disturbs the river’s surface
marking paths of slow and pointless
journeys that linger on
the glassy edge of water
until the river stirs and stretches
and swallows them with the dawn;

solitary crows patrol the river’s
northward line then four
geese vee toward winter warmth
coining energy in the
shelter of each other’s draft

and low-slung clouds lazily haunt
the wake of the geese until
the dry air breaks its fast
on their moist and fated wisps —
a sour skin of smog
all that remains to trap the
morning’s reckless glory

I ride Earth’s back toward the
blinding sacrificial star
that gives us life,
my hasty benedictus a
postscript-pale song of hunger
for the day that
breathes itself into me —
that will become me —
before Earth and I
sail into night.

Grandmother moon

Today is the first full moon of the month. On New Year’s Eve we will see a second, known as a “blue moon”.  This is rather unusual, which is why the phrase “once in a blue moon” means “rarely”.

I’ve been drawn to the moon ever since my dad tried to explain to me what it was, and why it changed its faces. Having been born with strange eyes, I have no depth perception and see the moon as flat. The rare exception is during a total eclipse, when the moon’s unusual coloring makes it appear to me like a shaded ball does on a printed page. That’s when I get the visceral sense that a large ball of rock is wandering around our planet.

I wrote this ten years ago, probably on another full moon night —

I am grandmother moon —
hidden self only
loved by the light of
my Sister’s fiery passions;
my rocks and craters,
my icy hills,
sometimes revealed in this
yielding to distance, alignment and shine.

First cold
then hot; then cold again;
thin-aired and dry,
an old woman walking great sleepless circles,
threading shadow through
the needle’s eye of day.

I stir the great waters of cousin Earth
into taffy-tides
and pull them halfway round her skin;
I’ve cradled her ships and her men,
shared the sum of my life
with the mystery of theirs;

and when their day is full
I sigh them off my lap
and tiptoe into the windless night.
Sleep safely, my children —
I am grandmother moon

Now I’m a chicken farmer …

… and I love it.

Every morning I head out to Cluckingham Palace, home of twenty-two red and black chickens, clad in my chicken boots and carrying whatever the needs of the day might be: empty egg cartons, cracked corn, a bag of layer pellets or a sack of shavings for the house.  In the winter I’ll also need to carry down a bucket or two of water, but for now the duck hose is still connected outside, so I use that.

I’m greeted by all of the chickens that aren’t already settled in a nest for the day’s laying. They surround me, clucking quietly, knowing I’ll toss out a hefty handful of corn—their fave.  I’ve come to recognize a bit of chickenese:  the tiny little whirrs are egg-laying related, an ear-shattering buh-CAWK seems to be an expression of pure happiness, and a rich variety of clucks apparently do for all the rest of their communications. Those I haven’t sorted out yet.

While they are busy pecking at the corn I fill up the pellet and water feeders, collect any eggs that might have already appeared and clean out their house.

Oddly, it’s the housecleaning that is the most soothing of all. I love the chickens and enjoy their various clucks and chirps and whirrs and squawks, and four or five usually join me in the house.  This work requires a five-gallon bucket, a good pair of rubber gloves and a flexible back.  I have all three, thankfully.

The girls, as I think of them, hop on and off their roost bars and scratch around me as I pick up the night’s, um, leavings. By 8:00 am all five nest boxes are usually occupied; the girls who surround me are in something of a holding pattern, waiting for nesting space. Occasionally the urge to lay overrides the niceties of waiting one’s turn, causing two or even three chickens to crowd together in a single box. Apparently this is fine with everyone—they seem perfectly happy to share egg duties with each other.

The bucket is emptied either in the chicken yard, where the girls will make quick work of turning it into mulch, or into the garden where it is coveted fertilizer. Back at the Palace I spread out a bit of clean shavings over any bare spots, open the windows and head back to the house, having spent a peaceful and renewing half hour with the girls.

I’ve done this every day since the chickens came over here to live, except when I was on vacation recently. I was sure I was going to enjoy that break in my routine, but as it turned out, I missed it.

Now isn’t that strange? Missing a thirty minute poo-cleaning session every morning, rain, shine, cold, hot, sick, well? I’d don’t really understand this myself, but I suspect this work is making more than my back flexible. The simplicity of chicken life is seeping into my soul.

Well, whatever is happening out there I’m not going to worry about it … unless I begin buh-CAWKing for the pure joy of it.

And maybe I won’t worry about that, either.