A free-climber perched upon Yosemite’s El Capitan, the only thing holding her onto the rockface her  fingertips and the barest nubs of rubber shoes. A kayaker slaloming down a 100-foot waterfall in waters swollen by winter runoff. An unltramarathoner pushing through the knee-deep sands of the Sahara in the Marathon des Sables. Athletes pushing their bodies to the very limits of their capabilities in conditions that mark the very extremes of what Mother Nature can dish out. To do so requires months, even years of physical conditioning, a store of knowledge that gets suffused into the moment of physical action and the mental and spiritual stamina to stand alone, exposed, raw and open to the ultimate possibility- death.

It requires, as the French say, sang-froid. The ability to think clearly even in the midst of a situation that is running away from you at chaotic speed.

It isn’t often that planting vegetables in Newfoundland reaches this pinnacle of extreme. Yet yesterday I daresay I came as close as I am likely to. I put in five rows of vegetables! On April 21! I can already see the weathered faces of hardened Newfoundland growers shaking their collective heads at this bit of heady optimism bordering on the ridiculous. They’ll lament my lack of foresight, point out that they’ve known snow into June, frosts well into July. And yet this hasn’t been a “normal” year. Local weather guru Ryan Snodden noted that, for the ninth straight year temperatures have been above average over the duration of winter. So while I certainly played up the excesses of winter visited upon us in previous blog posts, the reality has been rather tame by the standards of winters of old.

Further, the temperatures over the past few weeks have brushed well past ten degrees Celsius, often rocketing up to nearly twenty in the sun! So it was that I resolved, over a morning coffee, to plant some peas and carrots. Somewhere along the way this spiralled out into lettuce, swiss chard, onions, broccoli, radishes, rutubaga and Brussel sprouts too. This might all be a pique of carefree optimism in the light of the sun and warmth. There is every possibility, being an island mired in the swirling waters and rushing winds of the North Atlantic, that a cold spell may descend upon us with a rush of snow and sleet. But for the time being, I’m having a laugh. Out in the extremes of growing vegetables, knowing the possibilities for failure I press onward anyway. Sang-froid.

Black Sheep Garden has begun in earnest!

Just three days ago there were hares eating the scant few crocuses who dared to poke their purple heads beyond the mat of dead grass amidst the rose bushes. I was watching them, enthralled. At once lithe and confident, yet fidgety, their fur turned over to the dull brown of spring through fall that all but camouflages them, they moved with nervous impunity. All too aware of the neighbourhood dogs, no doubt. They left no crocuses in their wake.

By lunchtime the sun was radiating, and if you were out of the wind (a cool easterly breeze) you felt that spring had arrived in a blessing of UV-charged rays. It was glorious, and has remained glorious, for three days now. Forgotten memories are the 31 cm of snow that drifted in wet piles on March 31. The howling northerlies that accompanied the beginning of April, the ultimate April Fool’s joke, all but relegated to the mental wastebin. Spring is here, which must mean another growing season has arrived.

Which brings with it a moment of panic. There is still a slew of work to be done. There’s the greenhouse to get up. The manure to be spread out, rows to be plotted, the ground cover to be laid over. There’s still seeds to be planted, seedlings to be transplanted, and I am playing an impatient game of when-will-my-soil-block-kit-arrive-from-Lee-Valley as my plastic starter trays quickly diminish…

In short, it’s the time of year when all growers try to cram a years worth of work into a day, and get frustrated when it doesn’t happen. Or at least, I do. But over the past few months, as I’ve walked our garden, raked away the debris of last season, shovelled in soil, limestone, manure often with a temperamental (see here crying, loudly) five month old strapped to my chest I’ve come to appreciate the minutia of nature. The creak of birch trees and the whisper of spruce boughs in a March wind. The smell of new life poking through last years (unruly, dead) growth. The reverberation of birdsong through the woods- a melody so more beautiful after a long absence. The smell and feel of soil in ones hands, moist, crumbling, caked into fingernails. There’s a Zen-like peace in being out in the world, even with Anna crying. Cries of hunger/sleepiness/general angst of  a baby transcend into an ‘Om’ of human-nature interaction. I can be at peace for a moment.

And the crocuses have redoubled and requadrupled since the hares first discovered them. Which means I’ll probably enjoy my morning coffee tomorrow to the pitter-patter of spring rains, watching hares eating flowers. No doubt my eyes will stray over the garden plots and I’ll think, You know. It’s coming together.

And then my mental check list will remind me of the five million things I should have finished yesterday.

There are times that one has to wake up and smell the coffee. Proverbially, and literally. Facing down the weather provided one such awakening. It has snowed for the past two days, there’s a freezing rain warning today and the promised warming amounts to two degrees above freezing for a couple hours before the mercury takes another plunge. There is, alas, no changing the stark, grey realities of the Newfoundland spring. It is what it is. I can be glad that, unlike those who had to garden for their very sustenance not so long ago here,who relied upon the bounty of their root cellar larder, we aren’t going to starve. We won’t have to eat bean sprouts and putrefying potatoes alone until Mother Nature at last smiles upon us anew.

Although more of us should be gardening here in Newfoundland, growing our own vegetables. The more I read about food security the more precarious I find our position. An island, adrift in the North Atlantic. Literally at the end of the thousands-of-miles link from the farms of California and Mexico that provide the bulk of our produce most of the year. This shoud be a cause celebre, with eveyone from Jake Doyle (okay, Allan Hawco) to Premier Dunderdale promoting backyard vegetable gardens and community chicken coops and stands of grazing ,docile, delicious sheep so that we might be freed from the spectre of starvation and hardship when that link finally breaks. Anything so unstable, so complicated must eventually break, whatever the supposed rules of economies of scale.

But that rant has been seen here before. No. Today I want to reminisce about starting seedlings. Onions, kale, leeks, lettuce, rutubaga and broccoli too. Even some optimistic artichokes, destined for the greenhouse. I thought this would be an excellent opportunity to introduce the girls- Anna, aged four months and Eve, newly turned three- to the finer nuances of getting a garden started. It all began so well.

I mixed some compost, soil and potting mix together to begin the seed trays. I had previously connected up a rudimentary seed starter- two shelving units with growing lights suspended between them. I gave Eve the job of thoroughly combining the seed starter mix. I knew, from making pancakes, cookies and bread with her that she delights in mixing together. Anything. True to form she took the Asian gardening implement given to me for my birthday and began to mix like a toddler possessed. Further, Anna watched her big sister with a big smile on her face, as though nothing was more entertaining than watching a three year old use a gardening tool as big as herself. And maybe there isn’t.

It was all going too well.

I ran into problems the moment  I asked Eve to help me fill up the seed trays with the soil. Quickly the floor was covered and I cursed my lack of foresight. Then I thought that I could get her to help me water the seedlings. Eve, besides being a Class A Mixer is also an adept waterer. She loves the watering can beyond all other gardening tools. No sooner had I given her the watering can than I saw the error of my ways. I was poking onion seeds into the soil when I noticed Eve watering the floor, the lights, the gardening books I’d brought down for reference. But not the seed trays. This led to an off-key chorus of ‘No! No! NO!’ from me and Eve glorying in watching the rain fall down across the accumulated wisdom of Elliot Coleman. Leaping across to snatch the watering can I ended up with an upset Eve and, consequently, an upset Anna. I tried to assuage the situation by offering to let Eve help plant some onions. Quite quickly all of the onion seeds were pressed into one inch block of the seed starter, and Eve was climbing the stairs, trailing behind her mud and grime and cheerfully eschewing any more helping out.

And Anna was screaming.

I looked around. I had one bushel of soil starter mixed, half a tray of onion seeds started, largely within the confines of a one square inch block. Water everywhere. Yet those were memorable moments, stuff that I will reminsce about in the years to come. Maybe too, the seed of what fun gardenng can be was planted. Especially if a watering can is involved.

Eve helping out. It wasn't that warm...

I have a confession to make. I am not a Newfoundlander born and bred. And it’s doubtful that I’ll ever really overcome my outsider status. Which probably makes my next statement borderline treasonous.

I miss spring.

There. I’ve said it. I watch with dismay the temperatures soar in Ontario, in the Prairies, even in London, England where we lived not so long ago. T-shirt weather. The kind of days that make one feel invigorated, that suggest life is going to work out in your favor. Yes, it suggests a change in climate. Recently, a researcher in New England has proved that spring is arriving nearly 10-14 days earlier that in Henry David Thoreau’s time (see here for more). But a part of me doesn’t care. To borrow from UK-essayist George Monbiot, writing during a warm spell in February 2005, ‘winter is no longer the great grey longing of my childhood… the overwhelming sensation is that of being blessed by our pollution’.

Unless you live in Newfoundland.

Here, on the other side of the great oceanic climate conveyor belt that brings warm water and air up to Northern Europe and draws cold water and air from Greenland back down through the Labrador Sea, it isn’t unheard of for snow to greet June. Winter is an accumulation of action in Newfoundland, of howling winds, lashing rains edging towards sleet and swirling vortexes of snow that disguise horizon from sky in blinding white. Spring, by contrast, is a vast, undulating grey- fog, drizzle, rain and even snow until summer finally wins out. Or doesn’t, like last year.  It’s a battle waged annually, and enough to drive me to dance nude, chanting through the trees and garden in a bid to lure spring sunshine. Or maybe that isn’t such a great idea…

I write all this because, with seedlings started, work on clearing the garden begun, and even yesterday turning over soil with spade in the warmth of the sun I awoke this morning to snow showers, a howling northerly and a sinking suspicion that we’re in for a few more weeks of this cat and mouse game of chasing spring.

Let me be clear. I think climate change is one of the gravest threats to human civilization as we know it. I am dismayed at the sudden (ecologically speaking) loss of so much of life’s diversity. And yet I can’t help wanting, even longing for, Spring’s smile of green growth, of buzzing insects and vegetables taking root.

Raking up. Dreaming of spring. Someday.

There are times when I come across a song, or a band that becomes the background music of my life for a time. So it was this morning when I stumbled across Of Monsters and Men, an Icelandic folk-pop band. Eve, Anna and I were all dancing- I in the peculiar, stilted Methodist upbringing of my forebearers, Eve and even Anna in the free-floating grace that only children and those blessed with the dancing gene have (which my wife and daughters do, thankfully!). Perhaps it was because they’re a band situated on an isolated North Atlantic island, and their music spoke to me on a day when Old Man Winter howled through once more. Or maybe just because their music infused me with an energy I have been missing these past two days after fighting off the stomach flu (yeach!) Whatever the case, when at last the girls and I went outside to shovel some snow, it was Of Monsters and Men (you can check them out here) that were singing in my head.

In this roundabout fashion I came to be thinking about how, as parents, we can see parts of ourselves in our children. The Peters nose, the Power ears- the familiar conquest of the body along family lines, as if to reaffirm that she/he is our offspring. At the same time, though, there’s a certain je ne sais quoi, best described as individuality, that pokes through. They are their own people. And we try to shape them as best we can, introduce them to right and wrong, feed them nutritious food (preferably local), provide a shoulder to lean on and a listening ear. But at the end of the day we are preparing them for this great adventure called Life. And as in all adventures, it doesn’t really get started until something goes wrong, breaks free of the plan we parents so carefully lay out for our prodigy.

In the roughest parrallel possible, I contend here that we parent our gardens, infuse in them part of our DNA. Yet they are unruly, and don’t always conform to our wishes. But it is here, in their unruliness, that adventure is hatched, creativity unfurled and great satisfaction (or its sinister opposite) achieved.

There is a care, love even for the land that must take place in growing vegetables. We nourish our gardens with compost and manure, mineral rocks and limestone so that it might provide for us. We put sweat, blood and yes tears into our toil and sometimes see little reward. Last spring/ summer on the Avalon Peninsula it was cold and wet, great conditions for slugs. Those vegetables that did survive were besotted with slug love bites. We plan the layout of our garden according to sun direction, crop rotation, experimental whims. But then you forget about local phenomenon like the St. Philip’s rats that devoured my potato crop whole last year. Lesson learned. There was a reason why every other local gardener had a fence up round her crops.

With Icelandic folk-pop songs floating through my head I trudged through the snow over the terrain of the garden-to-be. Remembering the hope of the weekend when the signs of spring, the willow blossoming, the rhubarb poking out red-headed growths, fat robins perched atop the maple trees, demanded gardening action. The garden will come together, we will work hard to make it work. But in the event that it rebels, we’ll seek out a means of new direction. Because we are adventurers, dancing to our own beat (with respect to Of Monsters and Men, for the moment) seeking our vegetable nirvana.

There is borrowed nearly verbatim from an article (with the documentary ‘Fresh’ embedded in the article already) by Dr. Mercola titled ‘The Time Bomb on Your Plate- When Will Your Moment of Truth Arrive?’. But I think it’s worthwhile to share because the article and film underscore a lot of what this blog has set out to do. As an aside, ‘Fresh’ in it’s free preview form is only available until this Saturday, March 3rd.

There were also a few points the author of this article wanted to share, which will enhance community and make the earth, the soil, healthier and we the recipients of its bounty, the better for it. Many of you will have seen them before, but it bears repeating.

1. Buy local products whenever possible. Otherwise, buy organic and fair-trade products.
2. Shop at your local farmers market, join a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture), or buy from local grocers and co-ops committed to selling local foods.
3. Support restaurants and food vendors that buy locally produced food.
4. Avoid genetically engineered (GMO) foods. Buying certified organic ensures your food is non-GM.
5. Cook, can, ferment, dry and freeze. Return to the basics of cooking, and pass these skills on to your children.
6. Drink plenty of water, but avoid bottled water whenever possible, and do invest in a high quality water filter to filter the water from your tap.
7. Grow your own garden, or volunteer at a community garden. Teach your children how to garden and where their food comes from.
8. Volunteer and/or financially support an organization committed to promoting a sustainable food system.
9. Get involved in your community. Influence what your child eats by engaging the school board. Effect city policies by learning about zoning and attending city council meetings. Learn about the federal policies that affect your food choice, and let your congressperson know what you think.

The last point, that you pass on the article, has already been done!

March beckons. Maybe warmer weather isn’t too far away?

Goat Cove Trail

I came to gardening the long way round. After finishing up my undergrad degree I spent a summer working with Frontier College as a Labourer-Teacher. I went in knowing that I would be working on farms with migrant workers from the Caribbean or Mexico (Canada has worker-exchange programs with several island nations in the Caribbean as well as Mexico). I’ll admit that I had romantic visions of my time on the farm- long, hard hours for little pay. The gruff mumble of a lean, grizzled farmer the only words of encouragement I would need to hear. After all, we were growing food for the country.

The hours were long. The pay, terrible. But otherwise modern farming has little relation to such romantic ideals, as anyone who has read Michael Pollan or watched Food, Inc. knows. On the first farm I worked at, a sprawling 100-acre tobacco and ginseng operation, it was the former rather than the latter that left the farm a healthier product. The farmer bragged about exploiting a loophole that allowed him to douse the ginseng in a banned chemical that rendered the roots three times their normal size (and thus worth more money). I wondered how healthy they could be. On the second farm I worked upon, a U-Pick fruit operation spread over nearly 200-acres, I quite often had to explain to Torontonians why the cherries were white.

“It’s a pesticide residue. But don’t worry, it’s completely harmless…”

I didn’t quite believe the words myself.

On the other hand, I felt for those farmers. They were among the few family farmers left in Canada, and they were succeeding. On the merits of market-driven economics, they were doing well. By the standards of feeding Canada, of making Canadians healthier, I’m unsure. I know points like this only serve to, at least superficially, divide farming families from the urban markets they predominately serve. Yet the fact that most commercial farms grow food in a manner wholly unlike anything nature devised, augmented by petro-chemical derived nitrogens and pesticides is the very reason Maureen and I decided to undertake the challenge of Black Sheep Garden. We wanted food that was nutritionally dense, locally sourced. The best way to achieve this end was to grow it ourselves.

Those of you who have been following this blog will notice that the tagline has changed. We are no longer a CSA. Instead, Black Sheep Garden will be a family run garden, and the produce here will sustain a family of four. Which includes one vegetable adverse three year old who only recently discovered that carrots aren’t all that bad, actually. I hope and pray that when she tastes how sweet carrots are pulled fresh from the ground she’ll be a vegetable convert, but I’ll take reality one step at a time…

The tagline change reflects a notice we received from the Town of Portugal Cove-St. Philip’s. In short, they haven’t zoned for home businesses that aren’t restricted, physically, to the inside of the house. They did mention, in their letter of rejection of our CSA proposal, that they liked our idea and were willing to revisit their current policy. However, bureaucracy moves at the speed of a snail snug within the juicy folds of a June-ripe lettuce head.

Slowly.

In the meantime, we’ll press forward with a vision of gardening a little more in tune with what Newfoundlanders of old would have done. Growing vegetables to sustain body and soul through summer and autumn, into the creeping drudgery of January through March until we can plant anew. Perhaps we’ll even dig in a root cellar, like the one down the road on the Goat’s Cove Trail. But a garden decidedly different from the farms that pushed me, physically, spiritually and philosophically away from the modern agricultural system.

The rain is cascading in sheets outside. The wood in the fireplace roars with each rush of wind, glowing a bright orange in the wood stove. It’s a wonderful day to be inside, thinking of the months ahead (silently hoping that spring will bring with it better weather than we had last year… But also trying to be careful in my demands upon Mother Nature).

What’s caught my eye of late has been the need for local growers. Not necessarily huge farms, and definitely not mono crop monstrosities (but don’t take my word for it, check out this rather disturbing piece about factory pork farms here, or for a slightly more cerebral read check out Tom Philpott’s analysis of the effects of herbicides on farms, farmers and our culture at large).  Rather, the need for local farms makes sense economically. While you can probably get lettuce cheaper at Costco, the impact of getting that lettuce from California or Mexico to Newfoundland are prodigious environmentally, and have a negative impact on farm workers. Local produce carries with it more nutrients and to my mind is truer to the definition of ‘economy’- the means by which you get your needs and wants. We need nutrients to live, therefore we need local growers. In this sense local growers, embedded within their communities, find themselves decidedly for the forces of Good. They become the Luke Skywalkers of the farm world, fighting against the monolithic agri-industry Empire. It’s a classic tale of the little guy fighting oppression.

But really, it’s just a story of people deciding to grow vegetables for their community because it makes a lot more sense environmentally and economically. And because it’s pretty fun to muck about in the dirt and grow something to eat, as this photo ably demonstrates.

With winters wrath having fallen upon us (check out Ryan Snodden’s blog here for details of yesterdays freakish snow storm) and our yard transformed into a snowy wonderland, it may seem strange to be dreaming of compost and  soil blocks for starting seedlings. But I find the heart searches for that which it is denied, and just now that’s the smell of plants growing beneath a warm sun, the hint of the mornings dew lingering in the air. So my thoughts wander. Not to the toils of preparing the ground, or the back-breaking joys of weeding and watering- although I am excited about that as well. Instead, I dream of the simple pleasure of compost freshly drawn from the pile, black and teeming with life. Ready to be turned back into the soil, the circle completed.

Recently, and related to compost, Maureen and I came across soil blocks as a means of starting our seedlings (you can check out a video here that demonstartes the process). This could save us some money in getting seeds begun- no plastic trays, etc. But it’s invigorating, with the mercury nosing the -10 degrees Celsius line (not to mention the windchill factor), to think of working a potent growing mix of compost, soil, lime and rock particulates together into a peanut buttery consistency, breaking that up into blocks and planting seeds in them! Such thoughts bring with them the promise of a season beyond the endless rain, snow and sleet that punctuates our winters, where the temperature might get up into double digits and beyond!

I think it’s called Spring…

“In the dark of the moon, in flying snow, in the dead of  winter, war spreading, families dying, the world in danger, I walk the rocky hillside, sowing clover.”

- Wendell Berry, February 2, 1968*

As a teacher it is often a struggle to convey the importance of events and ideas like climate change, or food scarcity to students. Intellectually, they easily understand them. But without the catastrophe of the experience of losing your home to rising seas, or going hungry and malnourished for weeks bleeding into months those events remain abstract. Something that happens somewhere, but not to them.

Art is one point of access. I stumbled across Nicola Hawkins exhibit, Junkosphere, at The Rooms last week and have taken three classes over with universally strong results. Partly, its the interaction between mediums and students that doesn’t involve me droning on, that lets my students capture an idea on their own time and with an understanding they have created. But art also has the unique ability to provoke and amuse, to be superficially appealing and yet undermine the very foundation blocks of society as we know it. Hawkins exhibit, for me, demonstrates the profound need Western society has for nature and the bounty it provides, even while we delude ourselves into believing human ingenuity and technology have created a Brave New World. Pieces like Ground Control and Value Added speak to the centrality of nature and her resources to the technologically-savvy world we now inhabit.

So too do I think the words of poet-farmer Wendell Berry convey to the world the importance of farming. For all of our prowess with the mouse and the proliferation of ideas that leads to new breakthroughs monthly in technology, medicine, chemistry and on, we are little without food in our bellies. So I’ve borrowed from Mr. Berry here (and will continue to do so), to share a couple of his poems born, I like to think, while he ploughed the fields of his farmstead in Kentucky, squinting off to the hilly woodlands that border his land where the sun slanted dramatically through clouds plump and promising rain. I’ve done so because without those willing to provoke and amuse, to shake the very cores of the status quo we so readily hold onto we won’t see the necessity of a change in direction.

“…Say that your main crop is the forest that you did not plant, that you will not live to harvest, Say that the leaves are harvested when they are rotted into the mold. Call that profit. Prophesy such returns. Put your faith in the two inches of humus that will build under the trees every thousand years. Listen to carrion- put your ear close and hear the faint chattering of the songs that are to come… Practice resurrection.”

-Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front*

*Both poems were taken from The Selected Poems of Wendell Berry.

For those of you interested in seeing what Black Sheep Garden will be offering this summer, the title says it all. We’ve got four different varieties of lettuce, and kohlrabi too. More to come in the days ahead!

And have you noticed the days getting longer? Spring isn’t all that far away!