Simple Wonders

This blog's address may be "Farmer Bronwyn", but I’d like to take this opportunity to tell you that I met Garrison Keillor this summer. In person, after his live broadcast of A Prairie Home Companion at Tanglewood, July 1, 2006. Garrison Keillor has been part of my Saturday evening routine for as long as I can remember. I even had a Garrison Keillor birthday party one year.

The conversation at Tanglewood went something like this:
Garrison: Hello, and what’s your name?
Bronwyn: Bronwyn.
Garrison: Bronwyn. That’s Welsh, isn’t it?
Bronwyn: Yes.
Garrison: I’ve never met a Bronwyn before. How is it working for you?
Bronwyn: Very well…
Garrison: Mmm, that's good. And you look exactly as a Bronwyn should look.

I was on cloud nine.

Actually, there is a small connection to farming. While munching on strawberries and lying on the lawn that evening, I heard the following poem:

Hoeing
by John Updike

I sometimes fear the younger generation will be deprived
of the pleasures of hoeing;
there is no knowing
how many souls have been formed by this simple exercise.

The dry earth like a great scab breaks, revealing
moist-dark loam –
the pea-root’s home,
a fertile wound perpetually healing.

How neatly the green weeds go under!
The blade chops the earth new.
Ignorant the wise boy who
has never performed this simple, stupid, and useful wonder.

We’re not doing quite so much hoeing these days, but I have gotten my share of simple wonders this season. The sweet scent of grain for the chickens. A full moon rising over the mountain. Scallion roots washed clean. The way a spring turnip smells after it’s just been picked. Cold water from the stream shocking my cheeks and toes after a long day of hoeing in July. The soft, spring green blanket of rye grass before it is fully grown. The tiny curve of an onion seedling. A whiff of lilac on my way to the greenhouse. Chocolate cake with twice the butter. Clean, brown eggs drying on the washing machine, all in a row. Garlic just harvested: purple, moist, fragile. The soft, hollow sound of the cows munching on grass. The delightful, unexpected fragrance of Jack-o-lantern vines fermenting: sweet, and intensified in the rain.

Not everything we’ve been doing this week, however, has been poetry. Shoveling out the manure from the barn, for instance. On Tuesday only the chicken coop had been cleared, but by Thursday afternoon, six and a half hours of shoveling and a lot of 95.9FM later, two of the three pig pens were cleared down to the cement floor. If you look out the window at the end of the barn you'll be able to see the fruits of our labor: a beautiful pile of next year’s compost. (You could also see the fruits of our labor in our biceps – I’m sure they’ve grown.)

I hope you’ve been able to enjoy the clear, crisp days of September as much as I have. Perfect for hoeing.