Now dark mornings find me
On aching knees
With headlamp pointed down
Searching undersides of ragged leaves
Stems fouled with droppings
Tangles of shredded buds.

I spot the velvety worms
The color of what they’ve eaten,
The shape of where they hide.

I lift them tenderly
With forefinger and thumb
To squeeze out their guts.

A.    This project has many potential benefits

1. It can produce healthy nourishing food for local consumption with minimal energy and water consumption.  The soil is excellent, the water is on site, the market is nearby.
2. It can provide both a learning experience and employment for farmers, a valuable profession in decline for 50 years but now beginning to revive.
3. It can serve as site for education about local history and sustainable food systems and for recreation.
4. It can serve as a wildlife preserve for butterflies, birds and beneficial soil organisms.
5. It can contribute to the worldwide movement for sustainable agriculture, healthy eating, and stronger local communities.
6. It can bring fame, fortune and foundation support to the City of San Luis Obispo.
7. It can provide retraining and employment for people who need it as agricultural and hospitality service workers.

B.    The site has many advantages:

1. Proximity to commercial and residential areas and a huge volume of freeway traffic that will allow for easy publicity of successful development, assuming that poisons are not used.
2. Proximity to Laguna Lake Park, which already attracts recreational uses which could be linked—e.g. hiking and equestrian trails, wildlife habitat, views of mountains and valley
3. A varied set of present uses and resources that fit well together for potential development, e.g.
4. Historic barn and farmhouse—for education center and livestock facilities to be used by public and 4H, Cal Poly Ag Education program, local schools
5. Creek and tributary riparian areas—for pleasant landscape and riparian uses
6. Heritage Eucalpytus grove for wildlife habitat and park
7. Enough class one soil for a variety of sustainable agriculture uses, including leasing to local farmers or coops, e.g. New Frontiers, Cal Poly Organic Farm, Central Coast Ag Coop, community allotment gardens, Non-profits like Growing Grounds

C.    Priorities

1. I believe making a significant portion of this land financially viable as source of local food production is highest priority. Potential for longer term leasing, easy access to water and distribution outlets and a history of successful cultivation could allow for both profitability and a pricing structure making access to organic produce, including perhaps poultry, dairy and eggs, available to lower income customers.  Linkage with local Food Stamp and Food Bank and School Lunch programs could be encouraged.
2. Education is a second priority.  The present existence of Ag Education programs in County schools and at Cal Poly promises extensive use of this potential.
3. Recreation and tourism.  Places like Fairview Farms, Avila Barn, the original Knott’s Berry Farm, demonstrate the potential in this area.

In early November I went up Stenner Creek Road with Lucas and loaded our Subaru, Jade, with serpentinite boulders I found abandoned at a turnout.  I dug up a dozen heavy carex clumps in front of the house and transplanted them to make a little retaining wall, spaded and levelled the adobe clay in an irregular eight by five foot patch that might catch a little winter sun, laid out a new path around part of it connecting the brick walk to the top trail, surrounded it with the boulders, and worked in leftover compost.

I decided to plant sugar snap peas since, like the leaf crops, peas would grow in winter on our north-facing, shaded slope.  Peas also enrich the soil  and grow large plants in small patches of ground.  Like tomatos, their expansive vines provide something to watch and fiddle with, and they yield an ongoing harvest of food that’s good raw or cooked, both the pods and the little treasures inside.

I couldn’t find organic sugar snap pea seeds anywhere in town in November, but New Frontiers put in a special order.  The packet was embellished with an an enticing illustration and invitation:

Once torn open it also offered information about the history and culture of the fruit.

I’ve always been a little intimidated by gardening, partly because I could never compete with my neighbors, Stan and Peter, back in the seventies, but also because of the patience required by its slow rhythm and its uncertainty of outcome.  With both anticipation and fear, I patted the little off-white marbles into the holes I’d punched with my fingers every two inches into the dampened soil.  After just a week of watering  the seedlings came up juicy and vigorous and curled their tendrils around the fence marking the row.  I’d gotten the thumbs up from the Great Outdoors, confirmed every morning as I watched their progress in the golden light of sunrise.

In the space enclosed by the fence, I’d planted spinach, beets and chard, which I knew could get enough sun while the peas were short but that could thrive in the shade as the vines grew higher.  By the first of the year the vines required taller supports and I wired together pairs of bamboo stems from the backyard and made crossing arches by sticking both ends into the soft but solid clay soil.

By the end of January the thick growing tips had started sprouting shafts, each carrying two buds, along with wrapped and wrinkled miniature leaves.  Then the buds burst into translucent white flowers of pleasing and suggestive shape.  The stems reaching upward were thick as a pencil, hollow, delicate and brittle.

The night of February 1, the wind howled and I tossed in bed worrying that they’d be bruised and snapped.  In the morning my fears were confirmed.  At least ten of the stalks were cruelly mangled.  I found a ball of soft cotton thread and gently splinted them to fence and bamboo stalks, hoping that like other plants they might compartmentalize the wounds and grow around them.

And so they did.  Meanwhile the blossoms dried and shrank as the seedpods at their bases swelled from the sepals.  I exulted with the sensation of reciprocated love, less eager to devour the fruit than to glory at the plants’ continuing climb.

Having run out of old bamboo stalks, I remembered a runaway patch of living bamboo pushing through the asphalt in the alley off Longview Drive just two blocks away.  I drove over and cut a dozen ten-foot tough and flexible stems and wired them into eight foot tall arches.  They dug easily into the ground and wove a structure that reminded me of the willow domes built by the local Chumash.

As the vines climbed ever higher, sprouting clouds of blossoms on their way, the pods on the lower tiers began to fatten.  I found that they reached their zenith of succulence as soon as a hollow pucker developed at the connection to the collar of sepals.

Now the harvesting began.  First just a few individual pea pods reserved for Lucas and Ian, with the occasional snack allowed to Claire and Jan.

But no limit to the numbers I needed to test as I hunted them down in the dense forest of vines.  Then the pods ripened in larger bunches that required harvesting into plastic bags every few days

I sent one  with Jan as largesse to share with her book group, and gave others to neighbors on the block and folks at the Sierra Club office, anticipating the moment when their faces lighted  with surprise as they bit into the tender crunchy morsels that exploded with flavor and melted in their mouths.

As the vines reached near the top of the third tier of arches, I recalled Jack and the beanstalk while I climbed on a stool to secure them with string.  Entering the enclosure they made, careful not to step on the ripening spinach and beets, I felt enclosed in a sacred canopy like a succah or a hupah.

By the end of the first week of the quarter at the beginning of April—my first time teaching in a year—I harvested a bag large enough to share with my freshman Argumentative Writing class while we read Michael Pollan’s proposal for reforming the American food system, “Open Letter to the Next Farmer-in-Chief.” The essay ends by urging the President to rip out a section of the White House lawn and start a Victory garden to set an example of how individuals can participate in food production, reduce global warming, improve their health  and have  fun.  I showed pictures and mentioned that reading that essay had influenced me to plant the seeds.

The week before Easter, sensing that the giveaways were getting tiresome,  I started blanching the harvested peas and storing them in half pound bags in the freezer.   As long as  I could still eat my fill raw, they were too precious to cook.

At about the same time, the plants stopped growing higher and started to brown near the bottom.  Those that had been cracked by the wind,  yellowed altogether.  I left  the longest and fattest pods on the vine past the moment for optimum harvest and marked them with string to save later for seed.

During Easter week, I felt the urge to plant new crops that would ripen in summer and bring back variety and mystery to my farming.  I got irritated with the peas for taking up so much of the little room I had in the sun and for casting too much shade.  I searched for vines that were no longer producing that I could cut to liberate space for  big tomato transplants and seedlings of squash, pepper and cucumber.  When I realized I was killing pea vines that were still producing flowers and would continue to yield, I felt shamed and disloyal, and I dug up more carex and pulled out two mature Toyon bushes to extend the growing ground.

To be continued

Saturday I bought three varieties of basil seedlings at the farmer’s market and sweet pepper, cucumber and summer squash seedlings at Home Depot. Jan transplanted flowers at Claire’s mobile home this morning during the Easter Egg Hunt,

and for the last two hours I dug in yesterday’s purchases.

Then there were the hikes: Tuesday with the Ecolit class into Poly Canyon, Wednesday with the Cal Poly Land class, guided by geologist Scott Johnson

the light and the green overwhelming after Tuesday’s rain.  Up to Felsman Loop on Bishops Peak with Lucas before his nap on Thursday, and up on the ridge between Los Osos Valley and Clark valley on Good Friday afternoon, botanizing with Matt, Hunter, Jen and Bridey,

And yesterday into Froom Canyon with Jan.

The force of April, that pierces “the draught of March… to the roote”and “through the green fuse drives the flower”  drives me like lust to dig in the dirt and wander the earth.  Writing down this  desire is as old as poetry, which I rediscover like Spring with students as we read Solomon and Vergil and Marlow and Shakespeare, and as we listen to the raunchy flute and entwining voices of sixteenth century airs.

I stare at the bright spot that marks the entry point, the grand portal, tabernacle’s curtain, door of the tent.  That point has travelled ninety degrees north since December. No trace left of darkness.  The wait is impatient. Has the temperature dropped or have I lost all bed-warmth?  A small flock of birds scoots by. The newspaper sits waiting in the driveway. Bunchgrasses I transplanted yesterday to make room for tomato plants grow rootlets to take up water in their new home.

A bird in the topmost branch across the street silouetted against sky. A new vapor trail in the same spot above the ridge now hardly visible against the bright background. Maple leaves have grown from one inch maroon to five inches olive-green in two weeks. No more pink above the ridge. The volunteer oak on the lot corner below glistening light green, almost doubled in size.  Pea tendrils quiver. The windmill starts turning.  A quick look at the horizon leaves a mark on the retina and warmth on my forehead, but fingers stiffen with cold.

Can I sense the earth revolving eastward? Vapor seems to condense above the ridgeline or is it my tightening eyelashes? Two crows overhead.  A car alarm goes off. Its infuriating pulse persists.  But perhaps this is a chorus of welcome—horns of a procession entering the city gate.

Then it stops, leaving a moment of pure silence.

Flame tops the horizon in slow motion, frees itself from the land, and ascends, throbbing heat, needling eyes.  I put my hand up and squint through the slit of fingers glowing orange-pink at the full circle in the center of a luminescent web. The pea blossoms turn translucent. I cast a shadow behind me and the sharp shadow of the pen dances with the line across the page.  I don’t dare look longer at the naked body in the sky. From the bedroom I hear stirring.

At 8:45, my teaching partner Jim and student activist friend Eric arrived to join Jan and me for a ride to the Guadalupe Dunes, site of the 25th annual New Years Day hike originated by Bill Denneen and this year organized in his honor by Kara B., San Luis Obispo’s first lady of Land Conservancy.

More than 40 people showed up including 85 year old Bill, son and grandchildren.  The further south we went, the more pristine and dramatic the landscape, low dunes giving way to taller ones sloping steeply down to the ocean, gradually revealing longer stretches of coast and Coast Mountains, the small human settlements in appropriate proportion to the immense land, sea and sky.

We stopped at a hollow where Liz Scott-G., founder of the Dunes Center,  pointed out strawberry leaves poking through the bare sand which are harvested for seed by commercial strawberry growers in the Santa Maria valley to produce new hybrids every few years as the old ones succumb to insects and fungal diseases.

Bill read from his letter to the Tribune entitled “Drop Condoms not Bombs,” which had appeared that morning. He paid tribute to his mentor Kathleen Goddard Jones, who had saved these dunes from the nuclear power plant that was planned there forty years ago. Unfortunately she was unable to prevent the utility company from constructing it at Diablo Canyon at the north end of the bay, or the State from developing the noisy and destructive off-road vehicle recreation area on the beach near Oceano.

Bill recited his favorite poem, “Invictus,” and others read poems blessing the place and welcoming the New Year.

Then the group spread out again and moved higher and southward toward the headland.

I hung back photographing a lone fisherman above the spray and the arches of Mussel Rock and I collected pieces of obsidian flaked here by prehistoric California dwellers.

Jan went ahead along a precarious trail she told me later caused her vertigo, holding Jim’s hand above her head as if in a twirling minuet while he distracted her with bardic song.

Turning a corner we came around the Point and gazed down upon the radiant expanse of Paradise Beach and the silouetted outline of Point Sal at its southernmost tip.

There we remained for snacks and sand play and relaxation that blended into exultation.

On the way back led we tumbled down sand cliffs to the low road along the beach.

I walked through shallow water at the edge of the surf to narrow my capillaries and get used to the temperature, greeting curlew and gulls.

I caught up with Jim, who guarded my clothes while I wallowed rather than swam in the super turbulent water.  As the parking lot emptied, Cal and Rosemary agreed to join the four of us for a late lunch in one of Guadalupe’s fabled Mexican restaurants.

slideshow

The lettuce is arisen!

Five days after planting.  The seed packet says 7-10 days to germinate.  Perfect late September weather  has speeded the process–midday in the nineties and cool nights.  I’ve kept the beds damp.

I also greet last year’s food surfacing from the compost in the soil—-peach pits, bits of egg shell.

And the chard thrives–another  meal soon.

Peter emailed this from Canada under the subjectline “Harvest Time”:

• the less than erratic progress of the Cal Poly sustainability projects I’m involved with
• my inability to get adequate mastery of SC accounting and fundraising
• the demands of Jan’s electoral campaign, even though I’m not taking any real responsibility and just doing support work
• several weeks of computer foulups
• the impending doom of one more stage of takeover of the country by a syndicate of mafiosi–this time the Wall Street crooks commanded by Paulson and Bernanke. What’s been going on this week is a sequel to the hair-raising horror story by Naomi Klein I’ve been reading for the last month: The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism

Days to germination: 7-10

Days to Harvest: 40-60

This planting is about hope and the illusion that I can do something to provide for our needs outside the collapsing system.

The terrace for the beds next to the front deck is the only place on this north-facing lot that gets enough sun to grow any vegetables.  I put in the first bed to grow cherry tomatoes when I took out the ivy and first built the ziggurat. Here’s Ian getting into them six years ago:

Basil and lettuce and snow peas and chard have done fine.  Pole beans and squash and peppers not very well because of the lack of sun.  I put in another bed after extending the terrace with fill from the excavation of Jan’s office extension two years ago. But I never properly leveled or fastened the railroad ties, and lately they started separating as a result of the ground settling and soil expansion with watering. I pounded in fence posts to stabilize them temporarily, but that fix didnt work and looked terrible.  I got sloppy about planting and watering and harvesting, so for the last few months, all that remained was a patch of chard that I wouldnt even bother to harvest.  I also refused to water the gardens all summer to see how far they could be stressed.  The front didnt look that bad, a range of dry colors and textures offset by the brilliance of the California Fuschia.  But the back hill looks wasted, in the side yard the fifteen foot redwood died, and cobwebs covered plants and every nook and cranny of the house, many of them around the front door. While precinct walking I’ve noticed how sad those cobwebs look on other people’s places.

So cleaning them up and reviving the garden and planting vegetables is serving as my bailout. Today I put in spinach and trimmed the carex in the side yard and started watering it and the strawberries and the remaining redwood and the dried up Fremont Iris and the Yerba Buena.  Tomorrow I’ll complete the planting with Arugula.  I’m heartened by the survival of the chard.  I’d transplanted it to the lower bed while demolishing the top one and then two weeks later retransplanted it back.  With regular watering during the interval, it produced enough fresh leaves to supply the main dish for supper last night.

I wanted to stay focussed on the pure pleasure of placing those seeds in the soil–this activity being the goal of much preparation–but it wasnt easy to stay in the present.  I tried to revere those little bundles of promise and and ask for their blessing.

Woke up this morning feeling rested, relaxed and healthy—first time since the new year. Went for a swim, after which I felt exuberant. At 1 p.m. I took a break from grading papers to fill the bird feeder and discovered it was clear, breezy and warm outside. After I added a scoop of sunflower seeds, the red-headed finches twittered their gratitude from the surrounding cover. I walked up the steps to the blooming volunteer almond tree, the first sign of spring. Coming close, I was enfolded by its shimmer and fragrance. Honey not tasted but inhaled, its sweetness pouring through nasal passages up into sinuses behind my eyes.

What a day for bees, I thought, and immediately was surrounded by dozens of them flitting and hovering, trembling in the wind along with the blossoms and new leaves, apparently oblivious of my presence. The breeze died down and the fragrance ramped up. Up close I watched the bees nuzzle and grope and hump the tiny golden stamens at the center of each blossom. Vibrating with excitement, released from the pull of gravity, they rode a wave of pleasure in taste and smell.

I was transported with them for a moment. Then I tried to observe. A single blossom held an inexhaustible supply of delight. One after another bee entered its bower of warmth and brightness, took its harvest, and was replaced and sometimes bumped out of the way by a new visitor.

I tried to track an individual bee, noticing how it used two or three or four hands to grasp whatever it gathered on the top of those stamens and shove it greedily into its mouth. It moved to another blossom, dove in, turned on its back, curled its abdomen around the group of stamens and rubbed furiously against them with its belly.

At most ten seconds on any one flower. But, why move on when there’s plenty left? Why approach another flower and then back off, or touch down on a third and depart without entering? What determined its preference? I couldn’t track a single bee for more than a minute before it sped out of my narrow focus.

more bee pics

I yanked the decrepit old cherry tomato plants out of the raised bed and salvaged the remaining fruits to explode in my mouth while spading the damp compressed soil. I’d planned simply to insert the peas in the ground without disturbing the soil structure but it was too hard for my forefinger to penetrate. Digging revealed that roots, probably from the adjoining Toyon or Hollyleaf Cherry, had invaded the bed from below and were converting it into a dense fibrous tissue. With the shovel I was able to turn the soil and pull out most of them. I used a hand cultivator to smooth the surface and picked out several dozen stones that somehow had floated to the surface. Then in a corner of the bed, I poked a circle of ten holes and dropped one hard quarter inch sphere into each. I made six more such circles to fill the space of the bed. At the center of each I stuck one of the ten foot bamboo stalks I’d been reusing for years to grow peas and beans and tomatos. I pulled the tops of the bamboo stalks together like tipi poles and tied them up with a short length of soft cotton string that I’d cut off one of them with kitchen scissors. I patted the soil smooth over the seeds with the flat of my hands. Seventy seeds, sixty climbing vines, twenty sweet and crunchy pea pods each, by the end of March, when it will be time to replant tomatoes.