Merry Christmas from the Garden

As hard as it is to believe that the year is coming to a close - it feels like just yesterday we were feverishly preparing our growing beds for 2022 - it is even harder to believe that in a few weeks we will begin preparing for our FOURTH summer growing season.

As the year winds down, we will harvest our last major crop of the year, collards, and deliver it to Angels & Sparrows on Monday. Collards are a traditional holiday food in the South, and we are happy to provide A&S with enough to provide a hearty side dish for 150+ meals!

Once the collards are gone, the garden will be empty, save for some lettuce and carrots we are attempting to overwinter in one of the new table beds. We will take a few weeks "off" and then begin preparing for the 2023 season in mid-Febuary. The six-week period between mid-March and the end of April is arguably the busiest and certainly the most intense of the gardening calendar, and we hope some of you will be able to volunteer a few hours to help us prep and plant.

The addition of the table beds, along with one new deep compost bed, will raise our total area under cultivation to more than 1,500 square feet! Crop-wise, we will be planting a mix very similar to 2022, although we will plant four full 30' rows of corn and transition from bush to pole beans.

It may simply be the magic of this season, with its deep, mysterious darkness pierced by the cozy lights from homestead hearths and the twinkling of holiday decorations in our towns, but there is a sense of renewal and hope that reminds me just how special our New Beginnings family is.

Merry Christmas from the garden! See y'all in 2023.

Comments

FIELD NOTES: Random Cohabitation

In July of 1980, I received an invitation in the mail. It was from someone named Rod Smith, who introduced himself as my residence hall advisor for the upcoming fall quarter at Ohio University. He invited me to a "small get-together" at his house in Perrysburg for the incoming first-year students on his floor. I'll give Rod credit for trying, but I was the only person on that floor within reasonable driving distance, and I wasn't going to miss a night of work to attend his party. In retrospect, that might have been shortsighted of me. Except for a couple of high-school buddies who roomed together, no one on the first floor of James Hall that September had met or even communicated with anyone else until we showed up a day or two before classes. Apparently, that's not how it's done these days. I stumbled across a lengthy article from the Ohio University student newspaper, The Post, detailing how to go about selecting and vetting a roommate through social media....

FRIDAY MATINEE: Midnight Mass (🍺🍺🍺🍺)

I held off writing this review until I had seen all seven episodes of the new Netflix limited series “Midnight Mass.” I’ve been burned in the past by shows that start out well and then devolve into silliness as they progress. While “Mass" doesn’t completely stick the landing, I think even the East German judge would give it a solid 9. Taken as a whole, I think it is as effective a piece of horror as the combined “It” movies from a few years ago, and right on par with “Hereditary” and “Midsommar.” The story revolves around a man returning to his childhood island home after a prison stay for a drunk driving accident that killed a teen girl. Coincidentally, it is the same day the island’s beloved elderly priest, Monsignor Pruitt is supposed to return from a trip to the Holy Land. Unfortunately, the priest has taken ill and is being treated on the mainland. A temporary priest arrives to take his place. The story takes a little while to get going, and anyone who’s familiar with t...

FIELD NOTES: Of Cows and Men

On my way to get a cup of coffee early Saturday morning, I came across a strange sight along a lonely stretch of rural road. A dead cow was lying in a shallow ditch just a couple of feet off the pavement. Several other cows grazed contentedly on the other side of an intact wire fence, oblivious to the fate of their fallen sister. I wondered what had happened. How did the cow escape the apparently undamaged fencing? How does a cow just drop dead along the side of the road? Do cows have heart attacks? I also wondered if anyone had informed the farmer and whether cows are insured against sudden death. But mostly, I felt bad for the deceased cow. I passed the cow again later in the day. No one had made any obvious attempt to move it, and it occurred to me that a full-grown cow must weigh over a thousand pounds and would most likely require a front-end loader to lift it out of that ditch and onto a flatbed truck for a trip to the landfill or the rendering plant. I was up in that neck of the...

John B. Marek

Search This Blog