The geese fly...

They took off from the river honking, and I barely captured their V.

Another group took off right away this time in a line.

I finally got my glasses on so I could see what I was taking photos of.

Geese flying toward the North in November? I guess they were just moving around. When I was kid geese flew South for Winter.

Critter Control

Protecting my little peach tree from bunnies chewing the bark.

This tree had just started to be eaten.

But since it had been chewed we wanted to save the bark.

Yesterday the kids had done their orchard. Some of the trees had lost so much bark they put grafting wax to protect them from drying out and losing nutrients before wrapping.

Over the little orchard a view of the Ivory Silo.

Daily Harvests 11/27 & 28/13

11/27 Turnip greens...

along with sugar pumpkins in winter storage and sumac for Pumpkin Kibbeh.

Thanksgiving prep: toasting bread, and making veggie broth for the veggie stuffing.

11/28 herbs! Still alive after several hard freezes for Turkey and stuffing.

and the corn dried and ready for decorating with...

arranged with help from family and friends

There is a lot to be grateful for.

There was so much more of this Harvest Feast.

Including local free range pasture fed turkey from Copicut Farms.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Stormy Day

I came down to the farm a day early to avoid driving in the storm.

But the orchard was being eaten by bunnies so we had to go to M&R Feed to buy some protection for the little trees' bark.

Objects are Closer than Mirror

I waited in the car.

Truck in Mirror by Ed Howe

Ed says objects aren't closer than they appear in his mirror.

 After waiting for 3 wet ducks to cross the road we did some farm stands for Thanksgiving shopping.

Stormy Sea

Pebbles

Objects Closer

Stormy Sea 2

And then who could resist a few views of the stormy sea?

MassArt MADE Holiday Sale December 1st -7th 10am-7pm

Massachusetts College of Art and Design, located at 621 Huntington Ave. Boston, MA. The sale is on the ground floor of the Tower Building right on Huntington Ave.

 http://www.stevenedson.net/

Steven Edson provided the artwork for the above poster. He has some fabulous photos on his website.

I will be selling prints of photographs as well as packs of photo cards mostly taken on Ivory Silo Farm.

 Ivory Silo

Dried Beans and Husks 11/17/13

Black Turtle Beans dried and ready to be soaked cooked and eaten.

An experiment in our kitchen garden this year-an 8 foot row, yielded just about enough for 4 people.

And the little french beans that got too big to eat, we also dried to see if we could do anything with these white beans.

Early 11/16/13

Farm Cat Sleeping

Daily Harvest 11/15/13 Turnip Greens

These were used in the latest version of Pumpkin Kibbeh pie. This was a perfect choice for flavor in the center spiced with Sumak. Our sugar pumpkins need to be eaten.

Twilight on Ivory Silo Farm in November

Full Moon Rising through the Trees

Shannon and I walked down to the turnip field to pick some greens before dark. Ed and Gary were taking rocks out of the blueberry patch with only the lights of one of the tractors. Shannon said "keep walking and dont look!" The days are short at this time of year and its hard to get everything finished before the light fades. Its around now I start to wish that humans hibernated.

Venus over the Hay Field

Walking back, the sun already set and Venus super bright in the Southwest, we were reassured by the sounds of the tractors coming back. 

In the Southwest close up

Trees...musings on my path towards environmentalism

When I was a little girl my parents went to see a movie called Silent Running, "an environmentally themed American science fiction film..." They went to the drive in with my brother and I after our bedtime. We were supposed to fall asleep on the backseat of the car, but I had insomnia from the time I was 3 until I was 26. So I positioned myself for a good view of the film, pretended to be asleep and watched a movie about a time when there would be no plants(although I remember it as trees) left on earth. They had been destroyed by human ignorance and destruction. The only plants that existed were in 3 pods in a space station being taken care of by a few astronauts and droids.

No trees left on earth. Even as a child I was horrified by this thought. I wasnt sophisticated enough to know that without trees our atmosphere would probably not hold enough oxygen for human life to exist. I only imagined a dry and barren dusty planet devoid of color and life as I knew it. I was already too scared to watch, but needed to see what happened. It only got worse.

The project was defunded and the astronauts were ordered to blow up the pods and return to earth.

No plant life left anywhere in the Universe.

I knew what a Universe was and I was already frightened of infinity. The idea of endless fathoms of deep dark space filled my insides with infinite fear. The farther I traveled from earth in my mind the more terrified I became, the more lost and lonely I felt. Or did seeing the movie coupled with my father's lectures on science and infinity create these fears? Memory is trickery.

I was so absolutely devastated by the thought of blowing up these trees that my heart would burst, and then, one man decided to try to save them.

He started killing people to prevent the plants and trees from being destroyed. My young naive mind could not comprehend or justify this violence. I wanted the trees to live, but the good man saving them was now a bad man killing people. I was confused. I wanted it all to end so badly that I wished I was "out like a light" as my family called it, like my brother.

I was silently sobbing at the end of the movie as the last pod of trees-mostly evergreens-was catapulted into space and the good/bad man killed himself in a huge explosion in outer space.
And throughout these catastrophic events as I remember them, and I am aware that emotions focus the memory in distorted ways, Joan Baez sang hauntingly.

I was so young during this experience, that I had trouble distinguishing between fantasy and reality. I was obviously already connected strongly to trees, and sensitive to the human tendency toward devastation and violence. However, I had not yet realized what role plants played for me. I consider them my equal. I can almost hear them talking to me. They draw me to listen and observe the way of nature-the greater nature of the Universe. I accept their generosity and admire their selflessness. We eat them, we heal with them, we build our homes with them, we perfume ourselves and our atmospheres with them, we use them as decoration and decorate them-at Christmas time while they die slowly in buckets of water-and yet I never sense any bitterness. If I believed in hierarchy I would regard them far above us on an evolutionary scale, scientifically or spiritually, and consider the fact that we eat and use them in reverse like the alpha cat who grooms his betas-Nature in her wisdom taking care of all creatures.

A tree sits in one place for hundreds of years adapting to its surroundings while we run around using and changing our environment to suit our own needs in the name of progress. My zen masters are the trees.

My joy is the rich and colorful abundance of miracles that exist and thrive on Earth.

11/12/13 Snow on Ivory Silo Farm

The following photos were taken by Ed Howe

Snowy Field

First Snow

Snow on Mustard

We are still hoping the mustard will go to seed so we can collect this year, but...