March 22, 2011

And then came the breaking news…anymore it seems that all news is breaking news…we are sending tomahawks into the guts of Libya. And there is a raging golden fist with a crushed toy USA airplane as a response. War. Why is that breaking news anymore? Seems it’s all we do anymore. We send missiles and kids wherever there is oil…

I spent most of yesterday in the garden, or what I call my field. Over the years my planting space has increased from a few hundred square feet for feeding two, to an acre feeding 20 or more people now. I’ve gone from growing a row of beans and a few tomatoes to…well, to a lot more – now I am growing plants that I had not heard of, and had never thought of as food that I’d like.…but its all good, all very good.

Mostly I added gypsum, or calcium, to the soil, and then began spreading the compost I had made last year. From last weeks rain, the soil is still a bit soft for the tractor, so it makes it slow going to bring in the compost. My ground is low – it makes it a bit too soft in the shoulder seasons, but perfect in the summer for growing. The tractor gets bogged down here and there. I got about half way done with the compost. The plan is to till it in as soon as I am done getting it spread. That will all happen with the weather.

Nine days ago there was an earthquake and tsunami in Japan. Rescuers are pulling survivors alive from the rubble. Nothing but miracles.

Our buff rock chicken is getting broody again. Broody means that she wants to stay on the nest and hatch the eggs. Every year she does this. She’s the only chicken we ever had that gets broody. Now that we have a rooster I think maybe she will be able to hatch some chicks. I am thinking of putting eggs from other chickens under her too, so that the chances of her sitting on fertilized eggs will be good.  It’d be pretty cool to have our own little ones, rather than buying them.

I am reading a book about the 1886 Chicago Haymarket Riot/ Massacre/ Affair. When police began to break up a peaceful outdoor, public union meeting, someone (still unknown) threw a bomb into the crowd. The police began shooting and many, many gatherers were shot and wounded. Eight police died, pretty much from their own friendly fire. In the aftermath, six unionist/ socialist/ anarchists went to trial for murder – eventually four were hung, one committed suicide before he was to be hung, and the others sentence was commuted to life by the governor. It was never proven who threw the bomb – a union member, a policeman, a Pinkerton?  Yet only because these men were organizers, they were tried by default. Then hung. They were asking for an eight hour work day….

Ten years earlier, in 1876, an eight hour workday had been voted into law in Illinois. They were only asking for what was already the law.

 “And I've been on the pinball,l and I no longer know it all…Got a call from a good friend, come on down for the weekend, didn't know if I could spare the time”

                                                                                                            - Brian Protheroe

I found a pair of scissors today under a mat of dead grass in the garden. I guess either I or someone else had laid them down and never picked them back up. As I lifted them out of the grass I could hear all the voices of last summer and taste the air…