ON GOD AND GRAVITY.
The other day I cut down a tall cherry tree for next year's firewood. I sawed into it and eventually it began to drop, slowly at first, then with exceptional freedom. Woven through its branches, however, was an old grapevine that was also attached to a couple small but formidable cedar trees just uphill from the cherry. And if you've ever tried to break even a branch of a cedar tree with your hands, you know the unbelievable amount of tension the wood holds, and how uniquely difficult it is. But when that cherry fell it yanked the grapevine, snapping the cedars in half like dry twigs. Like nothing.Gravity is a fascinating thing to me. We are constantly in a dance with this extraordinary force. But thrown off balance, or in the case of our cherry tree, cut off balance, and it barely takes a moment for gravity to slam you to the ground with the most spectacular power. Mostly, though, and magically, we're in complete balance with gravity, and we've developed an important, and perhaps underrated, relationship to it.Because gravity is what makes us strong. Gravity is what moves the oceans back and forth, and ties us to our solar system. We build our furniture and our houses and our lives around gravity. Soon gravity will be pumping water to our house. In fact, gravity will even assist in the birth of our child.But gravity also makes a great analogy for all the forces we build our lives around. For me, I build my life around Nature––a force of life, death and rejuvenation. I build my life around love, for my wife, our unborn child, our farm, our family. Ambition, activism, art and food are all forces I can't help but build my life around, and all intangible forces that collectively one may even venture to call God––something that guides one's life, yet leaves great room for free will.Those who know me know I'm not overtly religious, but what I'm constantly learning here on the farm is you don't have to outwardly believe in something greater than yourself to forever be at its mercy. Because we still have yet to fully understand how forces like gravity work. We know when we release an apple, or a tree, or ourselves, it will drop to the ground, but we don't know why it will. Neither did Newton, and he said as much. So that's what I think of when I refer to these forces as God. I think of that balance, of that dance with gravity, or love or Nature––powerful forces all acting upon us constantly––and how when we become out of balance with them, we can crash with momentum enough to snap whatever we're tied to. These are forces we can't explain, but forces that are a part of our entire lives whether we see them, believe in them, understand them, or not. Like I've written before, I'm not as much of a man of faith, as a man of proof. And I find it. Constantly.- Jesse.
THE OTHER HALF OF FARMING.
The other day a local logger stopped by the cabin to see if we had any timber we wanted to sell. I pointed to our forest of tiny cedars and said, "Sure, have at it!"He laughed, but then his eyes lit up and said, "Well, you got a nice white oak down there at the road––wanna cut that?"It is a nice white oak. It's one of the nicest in the area, in fact. It's on the border of our property with Bugtussle Farm and could be worth $3,000 or more––$1,500 per family if we cut it. But when I told the logger we wanted to keep the tree, he laughed in that way someone does when you're being idealistic.Trees are an important part of maintaining the environment, though, and that's why we want to keep it. We want to keep it because it keeps our hollow nice and cool, because it creates oxygen, because someone has to keep trees. We want to keep it precisely because it is a nice white oak. Sure we could use the money, but we have to say no sometimes. Idealistic or not, we have to keep some good trees around.But it is this part of the job that we cannot charge anyone for––we cannot charge money for all the carbon we trap in our soil, all the soil we build, all the runoff we prevent, all the trees we keep. No one pays us for when we make a environmental decision that costs us $1,500 or more. We charge money for vegetables, sure, but we can't charge for the less tangible, and arguably more difficult, part of farming. We can't charge for all the good we do, even if it's the majority of the job.And perhaps this is why larger farmers don't care. Because no one––sparse government subsidies aside––is going to pay them for caring, for maintaining forests, for rotating their animals frequently, growing a diversity of vegetables, for turning down fracking opportunities, or mulching their gardens. Farmers get paid for what we produce, so in turn conventional farmers produce as much as possible, and we unconventional famers just accept the pay cut.So is there a solution? Not sure. Perhaps there's an investment opportunity in it. Perhaps small farmers could offer carbon shares, and every year or so measure the organic matter increase of their soil––the carbon capture––and report that to their shareholders who could then write it off. Perhaps we could sell shares in keeping certain trees alive. Or just in the farm itself. Doubling the price of our vegetables to reflect their true cost is an option also, especially if we want to sell zero vegetables. Or maybe we small farmers could just stop being so idealistic and cut the trees. But I didn't get into this farming thing to be part of the problem. I got into it because of all the good a good farmer can do, even when, at least for now, we have to do most of it for free.- Jesse.
TREE JUICE.
Have you ever had a glass of maple sap as it's being boiled down into syrup? It's a profound experience, perhaps even life changing––like an earthy sweet tea. When I went back to the farm this week, the Smiths were boiling down their sap––follow their experience here!––and let me have a taste. Now I want it every day with everything.I feel there are a lot of possibilities with sap, and with trees: wines, beers, medicines, syrups. In fact, recently, a friend sent us some hickory syrup (made from the nuts, husks and bark of a hickory tree) and some crabapple jelly. They're wonderful. We've put them on bread and on biscuits and (hopefully soon) pancakes.Anyone have any other good tree/sap recipes? We're into it!- Jesse.