A Rabbit Habit

I went out for a walk last evening after supper then did a stroll around the property, just to see if anything was growing in the strawberry patch.
Spring is a month behind here in Nova Scotia and yet as I passed the round bales of hale squatting by the patch, I spied the first sprouts of dandelion leaves.
I thought, "Rosie!"
Because that's been the habit for seven years: Grab the early shoots of grass and clover and dandelions and take them to Rosie for her first taste of spring.
But now there is no Rosie. There is no quiet bunny eager to eat these sprouts, no furry nose to twitch over the scent of new greens, no friend to hear me say, "In another month, you'll be able to move to the cottage."
These small habits I took for granted.

Country Living Is Golden

What I saw when I opened my eyes this morning. Glorious!

In the past six weeks, I've put out notices for two workshops -- a writing workshop and a compassion & creativity workshop co-hosted with Mary Purdy -- and only two people signed up for either of them. Those workshops were meant to be sources of income for me and for Mary as we strive to do what we love to do, in rural Nova Scotia.
It's definitely not easy to live a creative life in rural Nova Scotia. Or rather, it's the perfect place to do so. It all depends on what you are trying to accomplish.
I'm luckier than Mary: The work I really love to do -- writing -- can be done anywhere. I have found enough ideas and interesting stories here in Cumberland County to keep me publishing in newspapers and magazines on a fairly regular basis (although not enough to support myself, which speaks more to me than it does to the availability of stories; I am a slow worker). If you rely on other people to actually support what you do -- people to attend workshops or concerts or visit your store or buy your art -- it can be a lot more challenging.
We don't have a large population in this sprawling county and those who live here tend to be older; while they might say to themselves, "I would love to have Mom and Dad's stories written down," it might not occur to them they could do it themselves and that my workshop would help them get started. (FYI: Starting is the hardest part of any project.)
We can't keep tapping the same people all the time; no matter how we mix it up, no matter that new ideas are spawned by each workshop, once they've taken a couple of my/our workshops, they've had enough. How do we reach other people in other markets? To put in the time making contacts in Halifax, a two-hour drive, or in Moncton, a 90-minute drive, takes money and time, takes us away from writing or creating or figuring out how on earth to stand out in the social media world where we are inundated with information.
Whenever I get twitchy about living in rural Nova Scotia, whenever I wonder if this will hold me back from reaching my goals, an ever-more pressing concern as my 45th birthday looms, I go for a walk. I open my eyes. I stop and hold my arms out and breathe.
I want to write and publish books and this is the perfect place to do it. For me, living in rural Nova Scotia has been a boon to my writing, not a hindrance. I wake up each morning and look out that window and feel grateful to have all this space in which to write. The other stuff -- the worry and the workshops -- are simply distractions. I know I am lucky; I can do what I love to do in rural Nova Scotia.

High Quality Food for Low-Income Families

As published in the Wednesday, May 6, 2015 issue of the Citizen-Record.

Nick Smith & Becca Jones in late April.

         When Becca Jones steps out of her small cabin onto a hay wagon turned into a deck (which works fine once you get used to the slight wobble), she takes in the early spring view: A mid-sized greenhouse where leafy greens are planted, the almost-an-acre of muddy soil waiting to be tilled for this year’s seedlings, and a wide expanse of field and sky for which this stretch of Route 6 in Shinimicas is known.

And you know when a young woman like Becca says, “We’re into food in a big way,” you’re talking to that new breed of small-scale farming entrepreneurs that believe in growing their own good food and making sure others enjoy it as well.

Becca, and her partner Nick Smith who grew up on his parents’ beef farm in Shinimicas, know what it’s like to spend hours every day with their hands buried in soil; they met while tree planting out west.

As they worked their way back to Nova Scotia, the couple, who now are in their late twenties, spent a season volunteering on small, organic farms that gave them the knowledge and confidence to start their own market garden once they returned to Cumberland County.

As Good Thyme Farm heads into its third season, Nick admits market gardening comes with a huge learning curve.

“The first year we lucked out; everything ran smoothly,” he says. “The second year was a lot more challenging. We had a wet spring and a dry summer. We learned a lot quickly.”

They sell their vegetables at the Pugwash Farmers’ Market and at a roadside stand at their farm, and part of that learning curve involves planning what vegetables to grow. Two summers ago, they grew tomatillos (small, green tomatoes) and sold them with a recipe for salsa verde. I loved it and had looked forward to buying tomatillos the following year but Becca says they didn’t sell very well so they didn’t grow them again.

“The thing about market gardening is that you want a good variety so that your table looks nice but you also want to grow what’s profitable.”

She says kale was their best crop last year.

For the second year, Good Thyme Farm is participating in the Local Food Box Program, an offshoot of the Community Shared Agriculture (CSA) movement. CSA brings farmers and lovers of fresh veggies together by allowing consumers to purchase a season’s worth of vegetables at the start of the season. According to Becca, this is a way of supporting a local farmer because people pay  up front to get whatever farmers can grow for four or five months.

While Becca and Nick aren’t part of CSA, they do support the Local Food Box Program which uses the same model as CSA to pair low-income families with boxes of fresh veggies.

“The point is to make healthy, local food available to those who might not normally have access to it,” Becca explains. “Instead of paying up front, these families pay weekly and only half the cost of a regular box.”

The other half is covered through fundraising. Local Food Box Program is a partnership of the Ecology Action Centre, the Cumberland Food Action Network and five Cumberland County Farms: GoodLake Farm, Side By Each Farm, Wysmykal Farm, Glennie’s Farmgate and Good Thyme Farm.

“I really like this because it challenges the traditional charitable food model,” says Becca. “It empowers low-income families to put a value on food because it’s not just a handout. It helps them realize how great fresh food is and gives them access to it. We live in this amazing farming community and all people should be able to experience it. It shouldn’t just be people with better paying jobs who get to be part of CSA.”

Good Thyme Farm can support five Pugwash-area families in the Local Food Box program so for more information, call 902-297-1687.

SJ

Gardening For The Unemployed

It's been seven weeks since I lost my job and everything was fine until the end of April. That's when it became obvious that my part-time paycheque did indeed make a difference in our household. So now I'm waking up at three in the morning, worrying about money and hoping the savings account lasts through the summer.
Everything was fine because I am editing a manuscript under the guidance of an experienced mentor and anticipating writing the first draft of a book about Stella, my dog who died three weeks ago. After 25 years, I finally have developed SINGLE-MINDED FOCUS about writing books and that's all I want to do. I want to pour everything I have, everything I am into getting those precious letters after my name: author of.
So I'm waking up at three in the morning, wondering what job I could get when the savings run out and knowing that the reality of writing in Canada means you have to have an "off-writing" job to support your writing.
There is only one solution for this anxiety, for this exhaustion: get thee to the garden.
Three hours of cleaning and snipping and weeding and tidying and greeting the green shoots popping up through the soil is the antidote to worrying about the future. Gardening has a way of reassuring you that the future will take care of itself. The perennials will come up again. The weeds will return. There will be two months of lugging water jugs around the yard every evening.
These gardens demand single-minded focus. Kneeling in the garden, the wet earth seeping through the knees of my jeans, I think of nothing but the task at hand: Will the bee balm come up this year? What am I going to do with more lilies? and Where did that hole in my garden come from? There is planning to be done: this bed needs more daisies, this walkway needs to be wider, that's the perfect spot to grow more phlox. Call the chiropractor tomorrow morning.
Just like a day spent writing, the end of a day in the garden comes with proof of the work done. There is a sense of accomplishment in ten fresh pages, in gardens that are free of dried leaves and twigs. Right now, it's easier to anticipate the blooming of the garden -- in a month -- than it is the publishing of the book -- in a few years.
Of course, my friends, there is the ultimate relief for anxiety and fear: digging up that damn ornamental grass and hacking away at the roots that have spread their tentacles into the irises and echinacea. Nothing demands single-minded focus like ornamental grass -- and writing books.

A Day Well Begun

There may be a snowdrift draped over the side yard 

and it may have been minus four

when one of us (ahem) got up to walk the dog,

but at 8 a.m., when it's plus four and sunny,

and an osprey is chirping from the top of the tree next to the house,

the season of drinking coffee on the front deck has officially opened.

Pity the poor man whose wife insists on taking a photograph

before he's finished his first mugful.

The sun mellows him and he forgives the intrusion

into the long-awaited morning meditation.

Happy-maker

Someone is very happy to have the sunshine show up during his nap. 

Then he ruins the moment by saying, 

"Now, Mama, you get outside and clean up the gardens."

You're not the boss of me, little orange dude.

Go back to sleep.

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