Comfort, Courage, and Crop Failure

William and I had been married for about two years when we put our first production size greenhouse into operation.  It wasn’t a huge frame, measuring only 22×48 feet, just over 1000 square feet of growing space.   We were renting a small one bedroom farmhouse, just up the road from William’s parents farm at the time, though they were not in residence.  My brother Roger, his wife Joy and their eight (yeah I said 8!) children were renting the house while they looked for a place of their own in Missouri.

It was a nice set-up, the greenhouse stood about 100 yards North of the DeMille farmhouse, a smaller propagation hut stood right next to it, and we had been lucky enough to come across an old long-wood furnace which produced heat on a dual fuel system and was set in a small shed directly to the West of the greenhouse.  We had a well cared for wood-lot, so heating was easy and the tomato plants that filled the propagation house were tall, lush, and almost ready to be planted into the beds prepared for them in the larger house.  Now, when I say that heating the greenhouse was easy, it should not be assumed that the wood fire took care of itself.  Cutting, chopping, and stacking firewood is by no means an easy task, nor is getting up every three hours during the night to keep the fire fed.  It was simply an easy choice because we were making do with what we had and determined to make it work no matter what.

On a regular basis we would check all of the working parts of the long-wood furnace.  We checked the body of it, we cleaned the ashes, we kept the area in front of the stove clear of debris and fire hazards.  When you heat with wood, as we always have, it becomes second nature to ensure that everything is safe around the stove. 

I don’t remember exactly what I was doing on that cool spring evening when my pleasant farm dream came to a rather harsh end, but I do recall the fear that filled me when my nephew, Ben, came running into the DeMille farmhouse yelling “Vernie!  The greenhouse is on fire!”  It didn’t register at first, it always seems that surprising events take some time to assimilate, but as soon as I understood what he was saying I raced out of the door screaming “William!”  over and over and over again.  My first thought was fear.  What if he were in the fire?  How bad was it? 

It was bad.  As I raced out of the door the flames were already completely engulfing the shed that housed the long-wood and the pile of wood beside it.  They had jumped up to the poly-vinyl greenhouse film that covered the frame of the house and thick billows of choking black smoke filled the sky.

I never had a conscious thought of “I think I will risk my life to save my husband”, I don’t think I had time to consider all of the consequences of my actions, I simply ran right for the flames.  I called for William, I got as close as I could to the shed, but there was no sign of him.  I prayed as I ran to the other end of the greenhouse “Please! Please!  Let him be okay, let me find him!”  I ran into the house, the covering was on fire and dripping onto the ground, little firey droplets of molten plastic hitting the garden beds.  William was nowhere to be seen. 

I have experienced true terror only a few times.  That was the first.

From behind me, outside of the greenhouse I heard Ben shout again ”He’s here!  He’s here!”  I ran back out and saw William coming across the lawn toward me, safe, whole, totally unharmed.  I cannot express the relief I felt, it was all encompassing, I ran to him and held on for just a few seconds while the inferno raged and then we got to work.

William ran to a pile of straw bales that the flames were licking at and tore it down so that it wouldn’t catch.  A propane tank stood on the other side of the burning furnace shed and he raced around to try and clear any flammable materials away from it.  My brother and several of his children raced with us, trying desperately to move any fuel away from the flames, but it burned so hot and so fast that it engulfed everything around it within minutes.  I went back into the smoke and flame choked greenhouse and started pulling out anything that would burn or add to the fire.  I couldn’t get it all, the flames moved too fast.  They jumped to the small propagation hut and it burned to the ground in less than five minutes.

The greenhouse itself took longer.  We finally just stepped back and watched.  The polyvinyl burned then gutted itself out, then lit again and dripped to the ground as the fire continued to belch out the black smoke that we later learned was visible from 30 miles away.  We stood there on the green lawn, I recall it was my favorite time of day, the gloaming, when everything is green and violet and golden.  It was total devastation,  months of work destroyed, but William with his usual humor turned to my brother’s wife, Joy, and said ”Hey, do you have any hot dogs or marshmallows?  We’re got ourselves a pretty good fire here.”  We all laughed, what else can you do when your dream is raining down in plastic puddles?

The local volunteer fire department showed up and put out the last of the blaze.  Our neighbors came by to mourn, laugh, and work with us.  There wasn’t much to do, after all was said and done, just check all the smoldering piles, make sure no hot spots remained.  It was over in less than an hour.  Months of work, prayers, hopes and dreams were gone. 

I will forever admire my husband for his courage in this situation, and many others like it.  You can’t farm, or live for that matter, without tragedy and destruction striking from time to time.  He waded into a situation that was frightening, with no certain outcome, you might say a losing battle and did everything in his power to save what he could.  He knew he couldn’t save it all, he knew that any hope of an early crop that meant our success that year was already gone, but he never stopped trying.  He never once said “I don’t think my effort will make any difference.”

I lay in bed thinking of this story all morning.  I honestly haven’t thought of it in years, but it struck me in the early hours of the day, that what he showed me that day was courage.  He could have wept, he could have cursed, he could have shook his fist at God, he could have yelled “Why me?!”  But he didn’t.  He could have stayed safely on the sidelines, waiting for the local fire department to arrive and cursed them later for being too slow.  He could have assumed that it was someone elses responsibility to fight the fire he saw destroying that which he loved.  But he didn’t. 

How often do we wade into a fire to save what or whom we love?  How often do we have the courage to rush into a future we can’t see and risk getting burned because there are some things worth fighting for?  Because there are some things worth risking our own comfort for?  It’s easy to stand on the green grass and watch the world burn around us.  It’s easy to watch while others labor for our good. 

Perhaps I’m just too much of a farmer to want to choose the easy path.  Perhaps I have seen enough of what happens in our lives when we don’t fight for what means the most to us.  We have experienced many crop failures in our life together.  If we were smarter, and certainly saner, we would probably give up farming altogether, but there is something in the soil that always pulls us back.  We picked up the pieces of that burnt out greenhouse, we raked up the debris and tilled the earth again.  And when we plunged our hands back into that rich, black Midwestern soil we found something that we thought we’d lost: comfort.  Because, you see, comfort wasn’t to be found on the green grass doing nothing; comfort wasn’t to be found in standing around waiting to be saved.   Comfort was in the labor for something that will last well beyond our own lives.  Comfort was in knowing we had the courage to race into a losing battle and fight for something that was precious to us.

There is so much of fear in the world right now.  There is so much uncertainty.  We have friends and family whose lives are falling apart, who have lost jobs, homes, careers, marriages, and the list goes on and on.  How do we go on?  The answer is simple, it is profound, it is hard.  The answer is: Courage.   And how does one gain courage?  I believe that courage is a direct result of love and love is something that grows with action and use.  Love doesn’t just happen, love is cultivated just like a garden crop.  It is a result of nourishment, tending, continually weeding out of selfishness, and thought for the future good of the garden itself.  That which we love has the power to move us to action.  That which we serve builds love in our hearts. 

Comfort, courage, and crop failures.  They are inseparable.  This is the Law of the Harvest.  You reap what you sow.  If we live our lives in fear, comfort eludes us, for at the end of the day it isn’t the measure of our ease that satisfies us, but the measure of our heart and dedication.  Find your courage today and fight your battles, push back at fear and you will find that you have pushed forward towards your own goals and dreams.

The Color of Abundance

LaSal Autumn Road

I was on a field trip with my son several weeks ago, walking through the forest around Wood’s Lake in the San Juan Mountains, when it struck me suddenly what autumn smells like. 

It smells like purple. 

There are so many scents to autumn, it’s hard for most people to narrow their favorite down to just one.  Just a week ago I was picking out scented candles and the store had a few selections that were supposed to be remeniscent of the fall of the year.  They offered “mulled cider”, “pumpkin pie”, ”apple spice”, “mandarin cranberry”, “toasty fireside”, and a few others.  They all smelled wonderful, in fact I bought a jar of each because who can decide on just one?  But there wasn’t a single scent that gathered all that autumn is for me and bottled it up to be taken out and enjoyed later.

But as I walked through those woods in late September I finally got the purple fragrance of fall.  From the rich Murex snail shell stains of the Phonecians to the cloaks of kings, and from pop icons to little girls’ “princess power” playthings the color of purple has been well loved and used in human history.  It was the foundation for an entire civilization, the color of segregation in South Africa, the color of new life to the Roman empresses in the Porphyry, the color that seperated the kings from the commoners, and to me the color of abundance. 

Abundance is at the heart of autumn.  My husband, William, often comments on the wealth of late summer and autumn in the garden.  The summer fruits are still growing, the winter crops are finally maturing, the gathering in of crops begins and there is plenty and to spare on the farm table.  It is every gardeners delight. 

Is is also every gardeners sorrow.  For with the arrival of the harvest abundance comes the awareness that the winter is ahead.  The garden will become lean again,   the soil that sustains us will grow cold and still and the splendor of the leaves in their finery will give way within days to the bare beauty of limb and vine.  While we gather our crops in the warm afternoon sunshine, placing the hubbard and banana squash in the root cellar, the apples in the basement and the cabbages beside them, we are already fretting over whether we have enough wood for our winter fires, enough blankets on the beds to keep out the chill, and as parents whether or not the children will need new coats and caps this year.  Even in the midst of all the bounty, the subtle bite in the wind reminds us to prepare for what is coming in the months ahead. 

It seems to be the season of reminders.  It pushes us to remember what has been and rejoice in it; to look forward to what will be and prepare for it.  It is absolutley the season for teaching us to live in the present.  To look around at each breathtaking moment and soak it in.  The gentle stroke of the wind sent showers of aspen leaves skittering across my path as  I watched the children that day in the San Juan’s running and laughing through the forest, the leaves fluttering around their feet, twirling with the least provocation into a frenzied dance.  The youths gathered them up by the armfuls, flinging them into the air just to watch them fall again.  The death of the year was all around them and yet they rejoiced, without fear, in the beauty of the Earth; accepted, without qualification, the gift of life today.  Indeed, I have a suspicion that when the snow is falling, instead of the leaves, they will be equally filled with joy at the gift.

And so I walked through that landscape, relishing the moment, embracing life in the midst of the dying leaves and breathed deeply of all the world around me had to offer.  This is what I breathed that day:  the crisp smell of fir and spruce needles, the clean smell of a mountain lake, the pungent odor of decaying aspen and oak leaves, the dry smell of finished pumpkin vines, the sweet fragrance of apples fallen from the trees. 

This is the smell and color of Abundance, this is the smell of purple.