Winter Wassail

Dear Friends,

With this morning’s blanket of snow, winter has arrived at Old Frog Pond Farm. The apple trees, who gave and gave this fall, are finally slipping into their chill time. Apple buds need a certain number of chill hours in order to bear fruit. I imagine them settling into the expansive softness and quiet of this snowy day, grateful and at peace.

We are grateful for the trees and on Sunday, January 21 at 2pm we will celebrate with a wassail, an old English tradition when farmers gather around one of the largest trees and pour libations of cider onto the roots. They also hang bits of bread dipped in cider on the branches for the robins, spirits who protect the trees. The farmers, of course, drink the cider too, likely hard cider, and then, circling around the tree they sing:

Here's to thee, old apple-tree,
Whence thou mayst bud, and whence thou mayst blow,
And whence thou mayst bear apples enow!
Hats-full! caps-full!
Bushel, bushel, sacks-full!
And my pockets full, too! Hurra!

Wassailing celebrates the gifts we have received from the trees by returning some of what they offered. The ritual acknowledges our gratitude for nature’s generosity. Bread and cider are the pagan sacraments for this orchard communion. Bread is a symbol for well-being, physical sustenance, and community. Cider quenches thirst, physical as well as spiritual—this golden juice is sun, rain, and soil.

For our Wassailing celebration at the farm, we’ll toast with hot cider and listen to original poems written for the trees by the farm’s Plein Air Poets. We’ll sing and send out prayers that all beings will have food, shelter, and a fruitful 2024.

The wassailing will begin at 2pm. If the weather is stormy, we’ll post cancellation by 10am at oldfrogpondfarm.com.

Please join us! RSVP is not necessary, but if you let us know at fruit@oldfrogpondfarm.com we will be sure to have cider for all.

Let there be peace everywhere in 2024!

Let there be Peace, On the Common in Harvard, Massacusetts, October 22, 2023

Keeping Time

Dear Friends,

The farming season is officially over! Whew! I haven’t written a blog for months. Not because I didn’t have time, but because the swirling activity was all geared towards outside, external, farm business, and necessary haste. I’ve written newsletters for Old Frog Pond Farm, but they promote the farm and encourage visitors. For blog writing, I like to travel on back roads, interior paths, to keep my finger on the pause button, to listen for thoughts that arrive in quiet moments and wend my way. A little like how I sometimes begin a sculpture. This morning I stayed in bed with my eyes closed and let the dreaming continue until seven! Instead of the darkness I was greeted with this view.

Sunrise Colors in the Pond

 I share this poem by the great 13th century Chinese Zen Master Wumen, the compiler of The Gateless Gate koan collection.

Ten thousand flowers in spring, the moon in autumn,
a cool breeze in summer, snow in winter.
If your mind isn’t clouded by unnecessary things,
this is the best season of your life.

The great Zen master, Dogen Zenji, a 14th century philosopher, linguist, and poet, wrote in the fascicle, Uji, “The Time-Being.”

Since there is nothing but just this moment, the time-being is all the time there is. . . . Each moment is all being, is the entire world. Reflect now whether any being or any world is left out of the present moment.

 Translated by Dan Welch and Kazuaki Tanahashi from The Moon in a Dewdrop, writings of Zen Master Dogen

Dogen’s Uji text is only a few pages long, but he completely twists and turns and challenges our view of time. As a teacher he wants us to realize the wonder and completeness of each moment and not be caught by the conventional view of time as a continuum. These and other writings about time are inspiring a new sculpture, The Keepers of Time, though the title is always provisional until it is complete.

It begins with a wheel, one of two old cart wheels leaning against the chicken coop. This wheel has eighteen spokes, six more than hours on a clock. The Timekeepers are women who will inhabit the wheel. I envision them placing the numerals for the clock in position around the perimeter of the wheel.

I'm not sure if the Timekeepers recognize that time is not an abstraction, but something they are creating. Do they know there is no time apart from their creating time? How will they each play with their hours, days, and weeks ahead?

How do I have more time to read and write? This thought arrived in my mind this morning? I held it as if it was lightly filled with helium. It had form. But as I stayed with my attention on this thought, it squirmed away. For a moment I couldn’t find it. Then as if it could slither like a ghost under a door, it appeared again. It wasn’t a shape any longer. It was detaching, losing meaning.

In mid-November I gave a Dharma talk, Time Present, at Zen Mountain Monastery. Writing this talk is what started me on this investigation of Time. If you’d like to listen click here.                                             

Another new project is Two Chairs—Conversations with my friend, Lyedie Geer. Posted on the farm’s youtube channel are the first two videos of this new collaboration. In the winter of 2022, inspired by a purple velvet chair I inherited from my mother, and Lyedie’s blue chair, we decided to get together for conversation. We didn’t know where or what we were doing, but it was a treat to be together in person and talk as the pandemic was losing its grip First, I went to Putney, Vermont, with my mother’s chair in tow, then Lyedie traveled down to the farm and we sat in two chairs outside my studio near the pond.

In the first Two Chairs—Conversations, we explore Pruning—daring to make those difficult cuts—in the orchard and in one’s own life. In the second, Splash, we dig into the creative process as we talk about one of my new sculptures. We’re grateful to be working with David Shapiro, who also made our farm’s video.

Finally, I want to let you know Lyedie is an amazing coach of creative women. Until December 21st, she is accepting applications for the Bluebird award! I suggest if you have any desire to be encouraged and inspired in your creative life, click here to learn about the three-month pro-bono coaching program she is offering.

That’s it for now!

With love, Linda

This Apple-Shaped Earth

The apple-shaped earth and we upon it, surely the drift of them
is something grand,

I do not know what it is except that it is grand, and that it is
happiness . . . .

                                  —Walt Whitman

This Apple-Shaped Earth, bronze, Linda Hoffman, 2022

Do you remember as a kid thinking people on the other side of the world were standing upside?

My new bronze sculpture, This Apple-Shaped Earth is installed in Brookline, Massachusetts part of Studios without Walls exhibit along the Muddy River near the Longmont “T” stop. The theme is The Earth We Walk, and I made this piece especially for the exhibit. I wanted to highlight that this earth is all we have—there is nowhere else to go. We need to take care of it. This wonderful outdoor exhibit features thirteen artists. Put it on your summer to-do list! It will be up through September 5, 2022.

I also have a sculpture at The Edith Wharton’s Estate in Lenox, Massachusetts, part of the SculptureNow at the Mount 2022, featuring large-scale work of thirty artists. My favorite piece in the exhibit is the majestic dragon, Cecilia, by sculptor Robin Toast. It took three years to cut and stitch pieces of sheet metal to make the quilted dragon’s skin. It’s definitely worth a visit! The exhibit runs through October 19.

Cecilia, stitched sheet metal, Robin Toast, 2022

And a third outdoor exhibit that I recommend is the 2022 Outdoor Arts Biennial: Passages in Jamestown, Rhode Island. Take a stroll through this delightful village and you will find thirteen sculptures elegantly installed throughout the community. Refuge, my giraffe riding on a turtle’s back is installed near the library and playground. I’m hoping to see the giraffe and turtle’s noses rubbed smooth from young fingers discovering it.

Refuge, Linda Hoffman, Installed in Jamestown, Rhode Island. Photo: Molly Dickinson

And later today, Sunday June 19th, I will be giving a Dharma talk at the Fire Lotus Temple in Brooklyn, New York. It is part of the regular Sunday Service which begins at 9:30 with liturgy, followed by two periods of sitting meditation, and then the talk. I’ll be talking about Pruning, Juneteenth, and the Seven Factors of Awakening. The talk will be up on Zen Mountain Monastery’s podcast page sometime this week,

Happy Father’s Day!

Happy Juneteenth Day!

Happy Summer Solstice!

 Love, Linda

What is a Jizo?

Ancient people made stone piles to mark a site as sacred, while today we use stone cairns to indicate the direction on a wilderness trail. For over a year I had a small pile of stones on one of my work tables. It just sat there and didn’t draw attention from visitors to the studio. It didn’t point me in any direction.

When I begin a sculpture, I sometimes don’t know where I’m going. I will let something sit for a long time. I know there is a seed there, but it is buried in the earth. It’s as if my life, the practical everyday side, needs to catch up to the trusting, mystical side. My cairn waited, occasionally toppling to the floor.

Then I was asked if I could make a Jizo for the garden at Zen Mountain Monastery. Jizos are protectors. In Japan, even today, they are along roadsides, on city street corners, in temples and shrines. These stone figures are particularly important for the protection they offer to women, children, and travelers. A wood roughly carved Jizo sculpture had been in the garden at the monastery, but when the Jizo House was completed, a small building designed to house monastery retreatants, this wooden Jizo moved to the front door of the Jizo House to be a welcoming presence.

Jizo first appeared in Buddhist iconography in the 7th century in China as a male monk with robes and a staff that had rings on the top that jingled when he walked.

Jizo Bosatsu by Zen-en (14th century) Collection Asia Society

The jingle-jangle would scare away predators as well as warn away small animals that might get stepped on. But Jizo as it came down the centuries became more often represented by rough stone carvings. Red bibs were often tied around them as prayers for a deceased child, and women would knit little caps for them, too. I remember visiting a temple in Kyoto where there was a venerable sea of Jizos. It was a temple where women came to offer their tears for a stillborn or aborted child.

Jizos at Kiyomizudera Temple in Kyoto. Photo: https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/kiyomizudera-temple

Sometime during Jizo’s history, they became associated with the earth. The English translation of the word is “earth storehouse” or “earth womb.” 

Forest Jizo, Photo credit: https://www.okujapan.com/blog/japanese-jizo-statues

When Yukon, the monk who is the gardener at the monastery asked me make a Jizo, I immediately said yes. That’s when I began to hear this small collection of stones on my table speak. Earth mother, protector, guardian. Jizo traditionally was male, but became non-binary. Jizo simply cares. Working on the sculpture, I began to think of all the beings Jizo cares for, and I placed them all over their body.

Jizo in Wax with Iris Stem

Yukon had made it very clear that this Jizo needed a staff, and it had to be one like the traditional Jizo with rings. I picked out a couple of stalks from the dried iris clump near my studio door. They were the right size and I liked the idea of using the dried seed pod for attaching the rings. Zach Gabbard at Mission Foundry did a masterful job casting, welding, and burning out the iris pods to make the staff.

Jizo installed at Zen Mountain Monastery Garden, 2022, bronze

Jizo Staff in Snow (detail), Photo: Mn.Yukon Grody

A Jizo’s vow ensures that they will help all beings no matter what misdeeds have caused their suffering. Makers of Jizos, as well as those who venerate them are said to receive gifts. How grateful I am for the opportunity to make this sculpture and install it in the garden at Zen Mountain Monastery. May this Jizo be a protector for the earth’s beings everywhere.

Rudy the Cat, Jizo, and Yukon

We can all make Jizos. Build stone cairns, or bake a stack of cookies for a friend. Offer flowers, smiles. Spread the care, extend the love. I’d love to offer a Jizo making workshop when we can all meet again in person. Let me know if this interests you.                      

Jizo in the Snow, Photo: Mn.Yukon Grody