Folks, we are in the tunnel.
That’s how I feel about the darkness that descends on the farm this time of year. Yes, we snuggle up by the fire. Yes, we bake bread and make things cozy. But it’s still dark - dark like 6:30 p.m. feels like 10:30 p.m. and the moon can feel brighter than the sun that just skims the horizon before dipping down again for 18 hours.
Some years I zoom through this time of year, focused on the holidays and keeping things shoveled and taking some time to catch up on a lot of deferred relaxation. This year has been different.
I took a swing at the seasonal craft scene, making dried flower and fresh evergreen wreaths and it didn’t go super great. I sold some wreaths, but not enough to make two weeks of prep followed by two weekends of busy craft fairs worth it.
As an entrepreneur and small business owner, flops are part of the deal. But this one hit me deeply. I felt unusually discouraged and doubtful of my decisions and efforts. That’s a hard place to be at this time of year, when you are supposed to be full of holiday spirit and joy. I’ll be honest, I just wanted to crawl under the covers and stay there.
But then, the seed catalogs started to arrive.
Even that wasn’t enough at first. Yesterday, however, I watched a video about the new flowers Johnny's Seeds developed last year and I fell in love all over again. I think it was the Guardian Lavender delphinium flowers, but it might have been one of the dozens of snapdragon varieties, or, more likely, the eternally uplifting sunflowers, my latest flower passion. Probably, it was all of them.
Last night, I went online and started putting together my flower seed order. It was a first draft, sort of like the way my sister and I used to go through the Sears catalog and circle all the things we would buy if we could - Strawberry Shortcake rain ponchos and all. I’ll refine it before I hit the go button, trying to simplify my flower plan for 2024 and cut out the underachievers.
But it was exciting! I felt the enthusiasm for what I do returning, and it felt so good. Like a drink of cold water after a long hike. And I kept going, into vegetables, too. This year, I’m devoting a whole tunnel just for me, to experiment, grow things just for fun. I’m going to grow things I love to eat but that don’t make much sense from a production standpoint, like bush beans and these adorable little baby pumpkins the size of a grapefruit that may or may not produce anything.
So I made that wish list, too. Herbs and edible flowers mixed into the crops. I set aside space for trials of arugula and spinach varieties. I dreamed of cooking with fresh fennel and crisp snap peas. And I felt the darkness lift. I imagined walking into this organic oasis amid the straight lines of farm crops and it made me unreasonably happy.
Farming is all about hope. It’s a gambell, rolling the seeds into the soil like dice and dreaming big. After 12 years of earning a living from this growing experiment, I know for certain that not all those gambells will pay off. There will be failures, crops we throw up our hands and walk away from (2023 tomatoes, you know I’m talking about you.)
But through it all is the thread of wild hope. True, hope, by itself is not enough. You have to have a plan based firmly in the reality of your environment and conditions. Even better is having experience to back up that plan. But without being able to envision a bounty of abundance, all the experience in the world wouldn’t be enough.
I rediscovered my hope in the pages of the seed catalogs. It will be months before I plant seeds in the soil again, but it feels so good to imagine it all, even with the certainty of chaos and failure. Because if that chaos and failure includes lavender delphiniums, isn’t it all worth it?
0 Comments