If we could add a month to our calendar and stretch out an already busy year, I’d opt for another November each year. Pre-Thanksgiving, days are wonderfully shorter, nights are cooler, and a rain or two has turned surrounding landscapes into a shade of new grass green. We have been starting our workdays at 7:30 – a luxurious morning – time to read, write, stretch, or have a complete breakfast. By 6:00 pm, darkness quiets tractor engines, the trucks for the following day’s deliveries are loaded and the farm has time to catch up on much needed rest.

We’ve been busy with the last of our fall plantings. The seeds have been sown for next March’s broccoli, lettuce, flowers, root crops and greens. We have planted these crops to soils fed with 10 tons of compost and about 1,000 pounds of lime per acre. The seeds will start to germinate and push in early December. We may be able to cultivate and clean the plant lines before mid December. The small plants will then kind of suspend growth through the coldest days of December and January. Flower bulbs are also being planted by the thousands, a crew of 5 was transplanting pencil thin onion plants that Andrew had sown into a nurse bed last August. You will see these onions in your [FarmShare] next May. In the strawberries, we are cutting back runners, striping off extra leaves and getting the beds ready for drip lines and plastic mulch. We don’t use a whole lot of thin plastic mulch on the farm, trying to stay away from plastic throw away ag materials, but the plastic holds moisture around the plant and keeps the strawberries away from soil contact and insect attack — so we make an exception. Next April the first berries will appear.

We are also planting cover crops — grasses and legumes to keep the soil covered for the winter. These crops sequester atmospheric carbon in the soil, harvest nitrogen from the air, protect the soil from erosion, and provide an insectiary for beneficial insects, when they need pollen and nectar in the winter and spring. We are also expanding our plots of small grains. The wheat, peas, oats, barley and other winter grains will provide us with next summer’s feed, seed, and grains for milling into flour. We now have the capacity to clean and separate seed for grain — either to grind into flour, mill as chicken or livestock feed, or to save as the seed for next year’s planting. We can choose varieties that have unique character, or aren’t available commercially. We try to close the loop and produce and grow more of our own seed and reduce the number of miles in the seed we buy. This allows us to be more directly involved in the selection and improvement of these ‘landrace’ varieties, and we also enjoy the greater self sufficiency attained by controlling the feeds and grains we use each year.

The grain growing is rather new for us. Grains allow us to take advantage of winter rains that may irrigate a crop for free. The grains also allow us to adapt to the uncertainties of sky high feed prices. Grains do not return nearly as much money per acre as other crops, but they give us a harvest of satisfaction. They allow us to control the feed that the many farm animals eat here on the farm, transforming seed to feed and then to meat, eggs or wool — or the seed for next years planting. The hope planted with each seed is that gentle nourishing rains will bring a crop along to harvest 3 to 7 months hence. Grain crops thus provide a different type of security to us — a security gained from diversification and spreading the risk of crop failure, a security of self reliance and the security of controlling one of the critical keys to regeneration of farm productivity — the seed.

We have Thanksgiving this week and we would be remiss if we didn’t wish all of you a wonderful holiday. We are truly blessed living in such a generous land. We have abundance from the simple act of saving seed and multiplying that genetic miracle. We practice the art that comes from the deep relationship with our subject, this small farm. It is a relationship of seasonal planning, lessons of history, attention to and responsibility for a place that supports all of us with generous yields. We share with you these blessings and thank you for your support and partnership.

The Vietnamese Buddhist Teacher, Thay Nhat Hanh offers Fourteen Precepts of the Order of Interbeing as a help for living in a more mindful manner. Each of the precepts are important and beautifully simple. At the time of Thanksgiving and seasonal reflection, I would like to humbly share one of those precepts:

“Do not lose yourself in dispersion and in your surroundings. Practice mindful breathing to come back to what is happening in the present moment. Be in touch with what is wondrous, refreshing and healing both inside and around you. Plant seeds of joy, peace and understanding in yourself in order to facilitate the works of transformation in the depths of your consciousness.”

We have much to be thankful for. Let us in this season also be mindful of our being and our community as a seed in the vast and beautiful fields of humanity.

–Paul Muller