Bags of Fertilizer

I wonder how many bags of fertilizer are spread on a single field to grow corn. In the United States alone we grow corn on 90 million acres. How many 50-pound bags of synthetic fertilizers are emptied out and fed to the soil?

I’m obsessed with this thinking, it’s formed a loop in my mind, like a morning dream that repeats over and over. And while one detail changes, nothing significant enough shifts to allow an escape. The parking ticket can’t be found, the man is still in the bar drinking, how to get out of the parking lot and to safety.

After World War II ended, the companies who made nerve gas and poisons reprogrammed their products, calling them fertilizers. Then, they persuasively changed the way of farming all over the world, poisoning the earth instead of the enemy, while in the long term, harming both humans, insects, and soil. How did we arrive at this idea that we need to manufacture synthetic materials to help the earth grow plants? The microorganisms in the soil are all part of a complex soil web:  the bacteria, the fungal populations, the earthworms, the nematodes, the mycelia are the real farmers.

Sketchbook page, Julia Tricca

In Beirut this week, thousands of tons of fertilizer exploded and took the lives of 150 people, injured thousands, destroying the homes of hundreds of thousands of others. A country that was already suffering from oppression, injustice, war and corruption is in chaos. Bags of fertilizer, or shall I say explosives, from Batumi, Georgia destined for Mozambique, one of the ten poorest countries on the planet, has shaken this country to its core.

Fertilizer bags are usually cheap paper just thick enough to hold the weight. But if they lay around and attract moisture, the paper decays, the bags leak, and moving them becomes a huge mess. Hazardous waste. Human trash needing to be gotten rid of.  We’re good at manufacturing materials that harm the planet, that have a long shelf life, that don’t disappear even after hundreds of years.

We are caught in a loop of our own creation. How are we going to get out of our destructive cycle?  Surely the farmers in Mozambique know how to grow food naturally. Buying expensive synthetic fertilizers is not going to solve their country’s many problems. It’s not solving the problems in our country. For example, in Kansas, where 90 percent of the state is agricultural land, one in five people go hungry. Kansas isn’t growing food, it grows feed for cattle, ethanol for fuel, and high fructose corn syrup, while a large percent of its population starves.

We have to envision a new model. We have to collectively re-envision the world we want to pass on to the unborn. We live on the planet, we need to eat food grown in its soil, and drink water from its underground rivers. Here is where we need to begin.

We need to believe that nature works and there is a natural way to live in accord with nature. The system is designed to work. We need to trust. And we need to make changes. Almost 70% of agricultural land on the earth is used to grow feed for animals we eat. And this meat provides a much smaller percent of calories to the world’s population than plant-based crops. If we are to provide food for the growing number of people on the planet, farming needs to be a journey in which we relate to the land and all its creatures. 

Sketchbook page, Julia Tricca

The good news is that a United Nations report in 2014 stated that 80% of the world’s food is still produced by family farms. The future is not in industrial agriculture, but in intelligent small-scale farming. I heard a surprising statistic while listening to a podcast between John Kempf and Zach Bush, two modern agronomists—70% of our food comes from farms that are five acres or less. This statistic gives me hope. But for the people suffering in Lebanon, an outpouring of aid is what is needed. A few of the organizations you can donate to are:

The United Nation’s World Food Program
Unicef
Impact Lebanon
Project Hope

And remember to support your local farms!

Sketchbook page, Julia Tricca

Note: Artist Julia Tricca was a farmer at Old Frog Pond Farm during her high school and two college summers. She graduated this spring and shared her final art project with me. Julia will be installing a new sculpture at the farm this fall. We’re all proud of you, Julia!

Weeds and Other Gifts

A Small Piece of Land, Watercolor LH, 2020

“The greatest fine art of the future will be the making of a comfortable living from a small piece of land.”                        —Abraham Lincoln

When I am anxious or out of balance, which is often these days, I turn to weeding. I can always find weeds on the farm. The weeds are tenacious; they want to grow. One definition of a weed is a plant growing in the wrong place. We have lots of plants growing in the wrong places. Most of them need to be dug up. On the farm ‘to do’ list, weeding sits in almost every category: blueberries, raspberries, rhubarb, asparagus, around the apples, pears, and peach trees, the hoop house, and the kitchen garden.

Sitting on the ground, along the rows of blueberries, as if at a banquet table, each of us brings our favorite utensil. Ariel’s preference is the triangular Korean hoe, Holly prefers a claw, and I use a pink-handled small trowel.

Holly weeding young blueberry bushes on a cold and windy day.

We yank, we pull, we dig, leveraging our tools into thick mats of grasses, and tug some more. Grass clumps lift out—these get a hearty shake sending the worms and the soil attached to the roots back into the row, while whatever is left finds new life in the compost pile.

Frederic G. Cooper, 1917, U.S. Food Administration

My mind is occupied by thoughts of farms and food. The largest apple grower in our town depends on two migrant workers, but he has yet to hear from the embassy about their arrival. The commercial vegetable market in California doesn’t know how they will manage not only because of their dependence on migrant workers, but the chain of supply, the connective system, the trucks, the transport, the weigh stations, the middle places where all the packaging happens, are facing their own challenges. Farmers in Florida are plowing under vegetables, and in the Midwest, dairies are dumping fresh milk, though stores limit the amount customers can buy. Small farms feel the pressure, too. The restaurant that bought fifty pounds of greens a week is now closed, and many farmer’s markets have been canceled.

Abraham Lincoln promoted the cultivation of land after the bloodshed of the Civil War. During and at the end of World War II, the American Victory Garden movement created sustainability and health. England had their own movement, Dig for Victory. Maybe the restoration of the world’s psyche after times of great suffering was in part due to the return of our connection to the soil, to food. Maybe, it is a time to build more resiliency into our communities. Food is basic to our needs along with water, clean air, and shelter. We need to return to the basics and provide this for all people on the planet. Let’s give up fighting for causes and beliefs that only divide us. Let’s rally around what truly supports us.

I think about these things, and obviously oversimplify them, while I grab a small clump of grass, and ease out its long root system, pure white and thick, from among the blueberry’s dark, thin roots. Pull too hard and the root snaps. Only by teasing gently but firmly, can I coax out a foot-length root, with grass nodules every few inches, to release its hold. Of course, some weeds will quickly regrow, we don’t get them all, but if we don’t weed, the mass of growth under the blueberry plants will rob the bushes of nutrients. We weed in order to ease the competition for resources, to encourage a bountiful crop.  

Weeding is not glamorous work and It doesn’t save lives, but it offers a connection to something trustworthy that helps keep me balanced. I know not everyone has access to weeds, but even in a city, we can break for a moment, see a bit of earth or touch a tree, and know this is all part of us. Amid slicing an apple, or washing salad greens, we can pause within our anxiety, and connect to this gift from the earth, the ground that sustains us. 

This morning’s surprise: blown by the wind from a pile of old materials outside my studio.

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A Dream for the New Year

I went to sleep not having written a blog and this dream woke me . . .

I was in a room and it was time. My mind was clear and present. I agreed to have the injection that would end my life. But when a tall man with a black suit and white shirt arrived with a syringe ready to plunge the needle through my skin, I freaked. “No! No, no!” I shouted as I pulled away. He was determined and latched on, but I was thrashing wildly and ripped free of his grip. I would not give in easily, I wanted to live.

With every particle of my being, I fought back. Then I said, “Please, if I am to die now, I must tell my Zen teacher and community.” He agreed to let me go make a phone call if afterwards I would return for the needle.

I ran out of the room, ran as far and as fast I could. I was on the lam. Up and over bridges, staircases, down alleys, and across lonely boulevards. In an area with small shops I saw some boxes of biscuits and thought of snatching one, but resisted.

Then I saw my daughter. I called, “Ariel!” and again, “Ariel, come with me, please!”

She came over, I grabbed her hand, and we sprinted until we arrived on a grassy plateau. I was about to tell her what was happening when the tall man with the black suit and white shirt arrived waving the syringe. He grabbed my arm and said, “You will not escape me, now!” He jerked my right hand towards his body to plunge the needle into my wrist. He injected the fluid with great glee and strode away. But I had seen the needle catch on my sweater’s knitted cuff, the poison had not entered my body.

I had outsmarted death. I didn’t know how many more times I would be able to avoid him, but I secretly hoped for nine lives like a cat — and that when the ninth time came — I would be ready. I want no regrets, I want to go with grace.

You might wonder why such a strong dream at this turning of the year. A few days ago, I had breakfast with a friend who lost her partner to a re-occurrence of breast cancer. I have a friend struggling with depression, another paralyzed by the political turmoil in the world, and another beside herself with grief because of the destruction of the natural world. Many of us carry serious fear, and even terror.

Confucius told his followers, 'Bring peace to the old, have trust in your friends, and cherish the young.' And he lived during turbulent times. The message I received in my dream is to live life to the fullest. I am grateful for my Zen Mountain Monastery community who helped me survive in my dream as they have through difficult times. I am grateful for my daughter who brought her angelic presence to the dream as she so often does in daily life.  

Ariel and I on a Hike, Selfie, 2016

Dreams have a lot to offer us. I tried to go deeper into sensing this ‘being alive’. I felt each thing awake — the singular blade of grass, the snowflake, the pink salmon. We shape the world with what we do, what we see, and what we think. Mind is what I cherish because it connects us all — each person born and unborn — each tree and star. And just maybe, the poison to my body had no effect because it will never have power over mind.

I wish you happiness and well-being in the coming year!

May you receive and offer gifts of kindness, generosity, and creativity.  

Many Hands Blessing Earth

Happy New Year 2018

Cutting Off a Leg

I started writing a follow-up to the blog, All about Art, from two weeks ago in which I unintentionally wrote about six women artists and did not mention one man. I thought about the fact that this would never happen in an issue of ARTnews or Art Forum, despite the work of the Guerilla Girls, a nonprofit organization that since the early 1980s has been raising awareness of the lack of equal representation of women artists in major art museums and galleries. Then I proceeded to write about some of the male artists exhibiting at Old Frog Pond Farm this fall.

Where I Get My Water, Ray Ciemny 

Ray's piece is a commentary on the scarcity of clean water for many people on our planet. Made of scrap steel and rubble, the girders were salvaged from the old Fitch’s Bridge above the Nashua River in Groton, MA.

Then I changed my mind, because it is the opening of apple picking and I felt I should write about the beautiful diversity of apples ripening in the orchard.

Then I had a dream where I had to cut off the lower half of my leg.

Cutting off one’s leg is a major life altering event. In my dream, I wasn’t upset about it, but was calmly trying to decide when would be the right time to do it. I wasn’t considering the challenges or the healing or the rehabilitation—it was a dream after all, a symbol.

Losing a leg in a dream is fairly easy to analyze. Our legs are what we stand on, what supports us, and having two legs gives us balance. To dream that I was about to cut off a significant part of one leg seems to indicate that something in my life is out of balance. Or is it a way to take control of what is out of control? Or, maybe, I saw myself as split in two, two legs, and was trying to become one. I agree, there are other, better ways to make myself whole, but my unconscious did find the imagery to express itself and get my attention.

When I wake up with an image from a dream that is very clear, I like to contemplate and write about it. This cut off my leg dream was giving me a clear signal of the need for radical change, though what exactly it refers to remains opaque.

I could be anticipating the craziness of harvest time. Yellow, red, green, scarlet, and striped fruit orbs weigh down the flexible apple branches. There is an abundance of ripe fruit out in the orchard, but there is an angst that comes with it. Apple-picking time is when both my husband, Blase, and I feel like we have absolutely no control over any moment of our lives. We interact with hundreds and hundreds of people, through emails, phone calls, and complete strangers knocking at the back door. You might call it the downside of success, and sometimes it feels overwhelming.

It’s also possible that I was disturbed by Freedom Baird’s haunting sculptural installation, Graft. She has used the cavity from a once twin-trunked oak tree and created a prosthesis of sorts.  

Graft, Freedom Baird       Photo:Robert Hesse

Freedom Baird writes,

Like so many I’m preoccupied with environmental stewardship (this preoccupation has ratcheted up to acidic alarm under a Trump administration). Recently I’ve been experimenting with ways to catalyze a reconsideration of humans’ relationship to the “natural” world. Specifically, I’ve been inventing objects that push against the construct that man and nature are separate. Projects have included synthesizing plastic utensils from food, grafting milled lumber onto a living tree, designing prosthetic limbs for amputated trees. . .

I’ve been horrified by recent government proposals to cut back the boundaries of protected land. Specifically, the acreage around the Bears Hill National Monument in Utah that President Obama protected honoring the request of tribal nations before he left office. It’s enough to make anyone who cares about our environment feel out of control.

But the truth is the next seven weeks are much too busy for me to spend time thinking about other places and possibilities. Dream or no dream, I need to focus on what is right in front of me. I need to have two feet firmly on the ground.