"I guess that this must be the place..."

When the world is going to hell in a hand basket, there is always home. I realize that home has changed for me in the past few years as it has changed for each of my immediate family of origin. We are dispersed across the lower-48, and from each other, scattered to the winds of change and our own winter of discontent. The homes we now make are the ones of our choosing with our own families. This is the way that it is and the way that it shall be. There is no returning. So be it, I say. But I can't help but envy what home might represent for others as I rediscover it here for ourselves, in this place we are making from scratch, with some other history, but also our own new sense of rootedness.

Here in Kentucky and throughout much of Appalachia there are many abandoned homeplaces that are still honored and revered, even as they fall into the earth. I have written about this phenomenon several times [as well as here and here and again, here!] at In the Pantry. [And I just found my essay "Homeplaces" on Google books, as it appeared in the 2008 issue of Early Homes. If it doesn't appear, you can scroll down to the end and read it: last page of text before two ads.] I will likely continue to muse about them here on my new blog and in future writings––as the idea of "homeplace" captivates me. Also the sense of belonging, of family who stay near each other on their ridges or in their towns or who come back to each other, to their own terra firma. You can't really replace that feeling of togetherness, of kinfolk. Even when the old homeplaces fall into the ground or get overgrown by vines and the creep of nature, the offspring of those who were raised in these places, their families, usually abide.

For the fortunate, home is a sacred place, for others it might be a hell or completely destroyed in an act of nature or fire or selling off. I realize, while the location of our homeplace has changed in recent years, that it's really about the people you are with or the home that you carry in your heart. I'm not a natural nomad by any stretch but I do know now that home is within us, or in our memories, or in the places where we are able to return. I often dream of various places where I have lived and they are all homeplaces, of sorts: one has even been a museum for more than fifty years and is now the repository of "home" for part of my family. I can revisit them in mind at any time. I can see the rooms as they were. These are just shells and husks of existence, but such important cocoons and feathered nests to who we are and to who we might become.

Here is an excerpt from Home Economics, a book of essays by Wendell Berry. He, too, waxes on about the specific reasons why Amish (and also from our experience, Old Order Mennonite) farms survive on. It is that bonding to the earth and most of all, to family and community, and to the old ways of doing things. His poetry often speaks of home and place and rootedness. As a farmer who writes, how could it not?

A Standing Ground

However just and anxious I have been

I will stop and step back

from the crowd of those who may agree

with what I say, and be apart.

There is no earthly promise of life or peace

but where the roots branch and weave

their patient silent passages in the dark;

uprooted, I have been furious without aim.

I am not bound for any public place,

but for ground of my own

where I have planted vines and orchard trees,

and in the heat of the day climbed up

into the healing shadow of the woods.

Better than any argument is to rise at dawn

and pick dew-wet berries in a cup.

~ Wendell Berry 

Perhaps this is why so many people are returning to the land or wanting to be on a farm: for their romantic leadings as well as the practical. A collective getting back to basics, to each other. I know it was the impulse that drove my grandparents to leave their post-war New Jersey suburbs in 1946 for a farm in New Hampshire, what brought my mother back to that same homeplace from Ohio after her divorce. What led my husband and myself to want to keep that farm in the family, despite our best, and ultimately misunderstood, efforts to do so. It is what ultimately brought us to Kentucky. Perhaps, in the end, this is what was meant to be all along.

And that, my friends, is the end of my sermon for today.

You come back when you're ready!

Catherine

Grace Notes

Clothesline and daffodils • Casey County, KY • Spring 2011

To be grateful is to recognize the Love of God in everything He has given us - and He has given us everything. Every breath we draw is a gift of His love, every moment of existence is a grace, for it brings with it immense graces from Him. Gratitude therefore takes nothing for granted, is never unresponsive, is constantly awakening to new wonder and to praise of the goodness of God. For the grateful person knows that God is good, not by hearsay but by experience. And that is what makes all the difference.

~ Thomas Merton

After the storm • March 2011

"Written in March"

The cock is crowing,

the stream is flowing,

The small birds twitter,

The lake doth glitter

The green field sleeps in the sun;

The oldest and youngest 

Are at work with the strongest;

The cattle are grazing,

Their heads never raising;

There are forty feeding like one!

Like an army defeated

The snow hath retreated,

And now doth fare ill

On the top of the bare hill;

The plowboy is whooping––anon-anon:

There's joy in the mountains;

There's life in the fountains;

Small clouds are sailing,

Blue sky prevailing;

The rain is over and gone!

~ by William Wordsworth (1770-1850)

SPRING has arrived on Hickory Nut Ridge!

You come back when you're ready!

Catherine

The Hellebores are in bloom again!

I can't write this post without thinking about Katherine Hepburn's immortal words, "The calla lilies are in bloom again!" Our hellebores caught me by surprise in our first winter here. I'd never seen them before and one day I went out to the freezer on the back porch and there were white and purple papery petals coming up in a small patch of green next to the porch. Also known as "Lenten roses" for the period of time in which they bloom, they are a long-lasting, shade-loving flower that emerges in late winter here in Kentucky and will bloom for most of March. Quite extraordinary!

"The calla lilies are in bloom again. Such a strange flower, suitable to any occasion. I carried them on my wedding day, and now I place them here in memory of something that has died...Have you gathered here to mourn, or are you here to bring me comfort?...I've learned something about love that I never knew before. That I never knew before. You speak of love when it's too late. Help should come to people when they need it. Why are we always so helpful to each other when it's no longer any use?...This is my home. This is where I belong. Love was in this house once, and for me it will always be here, nowhere else...One should always listen closely when people say goodbye because sometimes they're, they're really saying farewell."  ~ Stage Door, 1937

In the past few weeks, I've thought a lot about Lent––it is quite late this year with Easter being on April 24. Mardi Gras, or Shrove Tuesday, is tomorrow and Ash Wednesday will be on March 9. I want to do some necessary restructuring in many realms, including domestic as well as spiritual. I also want to give up some things, especially food-related ones, for the first time in my life. I was raised Presbyterian and confirmed as an Episcopalian and in all of these years I've never taken the 40 days of Lent very seriously. This year I feel the need to do so and to extend that into my immediate family as its matriarch-in-training. I'll keep you informed of the journey. It's also about time: taking things day by day and trying to slow it down. I find it is flying past me and I need to try and grab it. I think this might be somewhat perimenopausal and that I'm really staring at my 50th year in its plump and squishy double-chinned face. I'm learning to go with these necessary revisions––and plans for revisions.

In the meantime, "the hellebores are in bloom again!" And in our "Isn't it ironic?" department, I just discovered that I've written about hellebores before, with the same photo, in fact, over at my other blog, In the Pantry. You can read that entry here. It was even written last year on this exact day, Monday, March 8 (well, almost, but same DAY and a day away from the same date). Talk about time fleeting but sometimes staying exactly the same.

You come back when you're ready!

Catherine

March Came in Like a Lamb

The chickens are laying prodigiously again.

But February 28th was wild and tornadic! Imagine sending your children off to school in a cloud of brownish murk and wind and severe weather? I did tell my husband to turn back, if necessary. As it turns out, the next county, where our children attend school, was under a tornado warning at the time! Yesterday was fair and beautiful, the calm day after the storm, and today dawned clear, cool and sunny.

In the meantime, I have seen full-blooming croci in Somerset (near asphalt so they have an extra bit of warmth) and daffodils are popping up in our yard with their small encased blooms-to-come. There are even tinges of green grass around the farm!

March and April are going to be fun, busy months around the farm and off the ridge. I will certainly keep blogging, even if for a few moments or in photos.

I need to get out and do some garden projects before it gets too hot––and it will. It is such a gift to have several months of beautiful spring weather here to do what needs to be done before the heat overtakes us (and when you only really want to get outside to garden in the early morning or early evening).

And I'm really itching for greenhouse season to begin. Last season I made a few new discoveries near Crab Orchard, Kentucky that I can't wait to check out––by the time I arrived, in mid-April, much of their inventory was gone but I could tell that they offered the kinds of plants I often seek out.

Meanwhile, the cottage is coming along inside and I will post photos when we're finished. We have many baby calves on the ridge and the birds seem to be back and looking to nest.

Mother Earth is waking up and losing her winter crankies! And this Persephone is emerging, too. So will March go out like a lion or a lamb? Only spring will tell. [My friend Teresa mentioned on Facebook the other day that Kentucky folklore––as also mentioned by the writer Janice Holt Giles––says that "thunder in February means frost in May." My friend Anna confirmed this!]

And did I tell you that we had roast lamb dinner on Sunday (which also happened to be my mother's 72nd birthday, so we fêted her from afar)? And then lamb leftovers on Monday. Divine.

You come back when you're ready!

Catherine