Some New Haiku

Those long-time (and therefore long-suffering) readers of this blog will remember in detail the post I wrote almost exactly this day five years ago.  Um, six?  Time flies when you're immersed in the illusion of time. For those others, I'll just give you this link to it.

Well, I was at a men's retreat a couple of weekends ago and got the inspiration to call a few likely brethren aside during the evening free time to partake of The Haiku Game.  Not everyone stuck with it the whole time.  And, as you'll see, not everyone entirely got the point.  But we all had a fine time.

The haikus themselves were particularly...  poignant?    I'll give you a sampling of our efforts and let you be the judge of what adjectives they most deserve.

  The Vaguely Financial

Two dollars in hand
Thought I had a better plan
I broke my ego

Where are my glasses?
My keys, my pens, my records?
My last chance at life

 The Nautical

Hoist the main sail, Boys!

Shiver me timbers, you dogs!

Boats with holes don't float.

If I could only sea

the deep currents in your mind

which can't be fathomed

 The Edible

The buffet was full

The calories were empty

This is my heaven

Sweet fortune cookie

But a sour fortune inside

Makes for bitterness

Running to stand still

Is like swallowing a big pill

Now breathless and ill

The Ocular

I focus my eyes

But not on shining lights

Deep cave, dead headlamp

The Autumnal

The last leaf fell down

Time for rakes and leafblowers

Oops! Here comes the tree!

The Purely Foolish

Dirty doodle pen

Is Dan's delightful dandy

Makes great eye candy

Shortly before sleep,

Count blessings instead of sheep.

I feel really baaaaad.

And One to Go Out On

Where is the moon beam?

Under the Man in the Moon

(the one mooning you)

The work of genius?  Perhaps.  I'll be waiting for those adjectives!

Rockin' the Triangle

On Saturday we held our first volunteer workday in 2012!

The target was a little 900 ft corner of a conventionally-farmed field directly to the east of our garden. We carved it out of the the rest in 2010 with plans to expand in that direction as needed. (At right is the google-eye view).

The farmer who leases the fields on the property is a great guy, very amiable and knowledgeable about chemical farming, and curious about what it is we're doing. So when we asked if we could take a titch of the field for our own uses he told us to mark out whatever we wanted, and that it wouldn't be a problem. That was April of 2010, about a month before he would spray and put in soybeans.

Two months later we had a real appreciation for what round-up and whatever else he sprays is capable of doing. Except for a few resistant (or persistent) weeds, the field was devoid of anything but soybeans. Our triangle, however, had erupted in every weed whose seed had ever landed there, and had jumped to a height of 5+ feet. It was almost funny. But there were some serious thistles and heavy-duty dock plants, besides the sheer mass. Over the past two years we laid down cardboard and chicken feed bags across the whole thing, then put branches and whatnot to keep them down, all in the interests of preventing any more weed insurrections. We also put in two Elderberry bushes, which are native here.

Since we are beginning to get a handle on our Biointensive garden, we have started setting goals and taking steps toward management of the rest of the land, including the ~4.5 acre field to the East and the ~7 acre field to the West. We won't be able to put cardboard, chicken feed bags, and windfall branches on all of that, and so we've been brainstorming what is possible. Every pass of the chemical sprayer makes our next move feel more urgent. While we've toyed with using a disc for our little Ford 2000, the current state of the soil means any cultivation at all will contribute significantly to the erosion already taking place.

So we decided on the strategy of broadcasting grains and legumes in a Fukuoka-style kind of way. For those unfamiliar with Masanobu Fukuoka, I recommend his book One Straw Revolution. Essentially, over the course of decades, Fukuoka developed a technique of growing grains that meant he walked his fields only five times a year - once to broadcast seed, once to harvest barley and again to spread its straw, and once to harvest rice and again to spread its straw. The result was a constant returning of biomass to the fields, with little compaction and no disturbance of the soil other than root action. The straw also cut down on evaporation and weed growth.

In our case, we broadcast wheat and field pea seeds and mulched them with grass clippings (experimenting with technique at left), in the hope that we can cover the soil with something that will cut down on weed growth, build the soil through root action, and possibly give us food in addition to straw. We will see what we can to to develop a Fukuoka process for ourselves.

For a mere 900 ft, not all that much work is involved, unless you take into consideration the cardboard and paper that were covering the soil, and the branches piled willy-nilly all over the place. It would have taken us a couple of days to make the transition happen. So we sent out a general email to friends all over the place, and invited them out for a work day. In the end we had four friends stop on their way home from Pennsylvania to northern Indiana, four friends from much closer to home, and my brother. Many thanks to Brian, Chris, Harley, Luann, Miriam, Owen, Tracy, Will, and Zach!

We pulled up paper, piled up wood, sickled and raked grass, broadcast seed and clippings, had a fire, and ate good food before we called it a night. It took less than two hours, though, to complete the task at hand.


As usual, we count it a great blessing to have the community we do. Many hands make light work, as they say, and so we try to trade around who gets the benefit of that. In the next few years I think it will often be us, though, since the land work we need to do doesn't involve any particular skill or training. A simple willingness to get dirty, and be able to laugh while you're doing it, is enough.

Our next work days will be tree planting and path building.

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OEFFA Conference and Earthineer

A big part of settling in a new place is gathering a community for support, encouragement, and inspiration. For agriculturalists, or agrarians, that community is especially important. It means the difference between floundering on one's own and flourishing with others. While we knew a number of farmers in our area before and soon after alighting here, we soon learned that Ohio has an extended and ready-made network of organic (and beyond-organic) growers, marketers, and activists. It is OEFFA, the Ohio Ecological Food and Farming Association.

To learn all about what OEFFA does you can look at their "About OEFFA" page. In a nutshell, though, they are an organic certification agency, an education and support network for farmers throughout Ohio and the US (there are many members outside Ohio), and a well-organized advocate for farmers and consumers in the realm of state and national legislation. They publish a newsletter, hold farm tours and workshops across the state, and have a bumpin' annual conference featuring far too many workshops to choose from, inspiring top-notch keynote presenters, a trade show, meals from local and organic sources, and an opportunity to meet peers face-to-face.

Last year Margo went with Alten, had a great time, and made useful connections. This year it was my turn. I rode with a friend, Ben, who farms nearby at Mile Creek Farm, and that ride gave us an opportunity seldom afforded to folks in our situation (farmers with young children) to sit and have a focused conversation for hours. Soon after arriving at the site he introduced me to friends of his from our area, among them Doug and Kat of Smaller Footprint Farm and Isaac, the Food Service Coordinator at Antioch College.

I attended workshops on food preservation, defining one's vision, NRCS funding opportunities, using mushrooms in your woods and garden, companion planting, creating and maintaining native gardens to capture rainfall runoff, and what to do when you've got lead in your soil. I would have loved to attend the workshops on moving old barns, the risks of "fracking", cultivating edible mushrooms on logs, raising and selling fiber, and a number of others. I attended Woody Tasch's keynote on the Slow Money investment movement and Andrew Kimbrell's on the progress being made to keep Monsanto's (and others') aggression towards small farmers at bay.

Then, of course, there was the Saturday evening contra dance, which needs no explanation to those who know contra dancing, and of which no explanation of mine can do justice for those of you who aren't familiar with the past-time. Suffice it to say, I think you should try it if you never have before.

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I did come out of the OEFFA conference with one more potential internet habit. The one booth in the trade show that I could not resist was that with the two computers, a large flat panel tv, and a flashy red GrainMaker mill. It was the display for a new social networking site, Earthineer. The two founders, Dan and Leah, were there making their pitch, which was this: Facebook is all well and good, but for those of us who are pursuing a sustainable lifstyle a world-wide community could be an incredible asset. For any question that one might have, many are steps away from the same problem and many have already found various wonderful, creative solutions they want to share. That's the gist of it, anyway.

Leah and Dan's background is similar to many of the rest of us: they had a formative experience that sat with them for a while, and when a transition came in their lives they made some big changes based on the vision that experience left them with, and Earthineer.com is the product of those changes. I can identify with those motivations, and knowing that two of my favorite companies (GrainMaker and Countryside & Small Stock Journal) support the project makes it even more appealing. How useful I find it remains to be seen. I don't really understand how Facebook works, and for all my blogging the internet still leaves me, ironically, feeling dazed and disconnected. But I expect, as the Earthineer community grows, that I am going to find conversation and answers through a single website which would previously have taken me days of searching and many wild-goose-chases to find otherwise.

So if you have the inclination, join Earthineer and be my friend. 'Cause I only have two right now, and one was the default.

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The Haiku Game

We go for the cheap thrills. When we are looking for entertainment, we don't go to the cinema, the races, or skiing in the Alps. Usually not even to the bowling alley. We're game-playing people. There may be later posts dedicated to Settlers, Ticket to Ride, St. Petersburg, Scrabble, Chinese checkers, and the host of other games we love to play, but this one will sing the praises of The Haiku Game.

Haiku, as you may have learned in elementary school, is a form of poetry from the Japanese culture. It is the simplest kind I know in terms of rules, classically consisting of three lines with a reference to the natural world. The first line holds 5 syllables, the second holds 7, and the third concludes with 5 more. That's a simplified and strict definition - modern forms infrequently stick to the 17 syllables or images of nature. For example, here's one I wrote in the back of class during the poetry unit in my Elementary Education courses:

Half of my classmates
Talk too much, saying nothing.
The other half doze...

More recently we spent four years in Willits just a few miles up the 101 from Ukiah, which holds a grand Haiku festival every year. They take it pretty seriously, with judges, awards, and submissions from around the world.

Enough with the background. Now for the game. I have, sadly, not been able to figure out from whom we learned it initially; none of the people present the first time I recall playing it even remember the occasion. But since learning we have introduced it to many friends and acquaintances. It goes like this:

Each person sits with a piece of paper and writing utensil in front of them. Each person writes the first line of a haiku (5 syllables) and passes the paper to their right. Each person then takes the paper passed from their left, and writes the second line of haiku (7 syllables) to match the first line in front of them, and passes the paper to the right once more. On the sheet now in front of each person, they write the final line (5 syllables) to complete the poem, and pass it to the right once more. When all poems are complete, each persons takes a turn reading the haiku that the three people to their left wrote.

Depending on the group and the time of day, poems can be entertaining, deep, foolish, or completely unintelligible. And if the young (or syllablically-challenged) are participating, the 5-7-5 rule might end up as more of a suggestion. But it remains good wholesome fun, encourages community, and creates art.

So in honor of the past participants of Haiku Games that Margo and I have facilitated, and in honor of the 10,000-view-mark that the blog passed recently, I am instituting a "Haiku of the Week" to be featured in the sidebar. Each one will be taken from the sheets of Haiku Games past that I've kept.

Happy reading!

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