what we have here is a bona fide guard donkey

just fixing up some winter paddocks and a stall for some sheep so Old Bobo can do what he does best.....
  and carrying out compost and not quite compost  onto the west garden..&carrying in some pumkins.

 if you are coming here for a stay-over,bring your longundies and your Bermuda shorts-this weather here changes dramatically from dat to dis and from dis to dat.

if you get the giggles practicing this qigong,enjoy yourself....

 this winter,we will be adding sheep and longear manure[composted[maybe] to the west garden,

a round of tai chi a day keeps the need for outside farm help away.

straight out with fall farm chores--one 20-minute  tai chi or qigong session in the morning does the trick.

planting seeds on october new moon

despite literal ego convictions such as' its too late to plant anything that can grow', I followed another knowing-phoned the manurer yesterday to come to the west pasture[that runs a football field sized north to south garden] and to cowgoosh the entirety.  In between deliveries of cowslurpies,I seeded forage seed-maybe for the sheep,maybe for deepening the connection with all that is:the Tao               early today-sunup- in the mist in the snowfall ,facing norhdeast gua, I heard innerteacher prompting"Just let Little Marky see-let Little Marky be.  just dissolve and let Marky breath and be breathed"   and I did.I complied with the promting-with the seedings....   I have Marky-a happy nature boy.

liquid manure & mountaintop firsy snow

yesterday began at 330 a.m. for me-in anticipation of deluge of liquified cow manure over entire new gardens.   first manure spread at  soon enough a.m.; very last spread way past sundown p.m. in all blackened nite-with one little headlamp on his tractor.   no sweat-a crackshot manure spreaderer at the helm.                                oh,so steff dowsed as to timing of broadcast seeding oilseed redish with a 'yes' answer from whoever the old ones consistently tell her is standing behind her.                         so i applied with relished expectancy my oilseed radish,asking the naturespirits who do live here to enjoy and to help.

 today our first snowfalling.-to blanket, protect and nourish.

Snow & a guard donkey named Bo

"Hee Haw"  Bo calls me.  A nuanced different  song:  sorta resonated inside my thorax receiver like "Aw Nuts"    So I  scrambled to the kithchen window where he demonstrates long distance from barnyard to farmhouse,with precise appolonian communications  whenever some important transition needs my attention.       & once he registered I would now be required to serve breakfest in his barn,he tiptoed through the six inches of extra farm labor into his straw floor in the longear barn..                                         yesterday,he froze & brayed till I joined him in the north pasture where the showed me a hole in the outercattle panel fencing.  he has only been here two months. I love his uniqueness-a true daoist.
  yesterday as i was interviewing farmers who were selling their sheep,one mentioned that sheep were compatible with guard donkeys only;otherwise most donkeys will play soccerball-killtoy with smaller animals.I believe we are gonna have a go at it...

crawled into my jeans 3:30 a.m.

crawled into my jeans,,grabbing some chow;write work shheet,sheet;open gate for the manure pspreders to spread load after load of cowmanure into garedens-between snowflakes.                                                                                   Laying out new fencing for a backup paddock for the soon to arrive sheep-only if Bobo guard donkey-doesnt initially accept them                                                                                         Building  a shed for round .bales to feed the sheep and donkeys through this coming winter..                      Straw on the barn floor for the winter.                                                            Still much more squash,pumpkin,radiccio,kale,lettuce,bok chow-out in the west gardem-to continue to be carried into the kitchen for Steph to freeze for the winter.

still drops of warmth to nudge up my new forage crop

if my manure speader er gits around to gittin his bleep together enough to piddle his cow dropping over this away,why-we are gonna have have somethin to cover all the oilseed radish I broadcast reseeded onto "IT".    meanwhile,lookin out my window watching the birds eat till their beaks burst- full of my covercrop seed , kinda brings the lifeforce into a tite jawed,clampfist,clampbreath , much undesireble ,highly animated fashion of farmstress.

wonderful harvest mayhem

it is just so wonder full to be in 'it'. one with it. a part of it.           'it' is over an acre now.   guests visit it and i tell them' i did not do it.'    i am going to comment that'i do not know' did it.     an alchemical soulsoil  dreamfest.       just walk out there and wolf down a tomato and some watercress,pull up some arugalia,wash it in the creek and munch. go behind the cornstalks and sunflowers and take a leak.                                            let your spirit soar.

spreading manure till the snow falls

cow manure galore -spreading out onto/into the western pasture/comercial garden till the snow falls n sticks.    + wheelbarrows of donkey manure here and there...

process

outside all infectious broadcasting seeds dancing with the wind struggle dissolving,disolving trying no point-no point just let go all joy all joy

spreading manure: tractor stop. uh oh? no point just dance the spreading step left step rite father sky mother earth heartbeat within the three rain,wind, grandmothers,ancestors,eight wu-all present- all big smile hearthome for so many

8 hours hard workin man? no sir,just fun-free play with the elements. throw into the soup:the soil,the compost,the chi of it all, the planting song,the harvest song, the mountaintop energy,the growth cycle,the seeds, thr rain-just taste this food -how you feel? but we did not grow it. the mystery-the beauty grew that.

Organic Soil, Organic Mind and Organic Body

Yesterday, I am driving around and I felt spent--hypo this&hyper that--so I stopped off for some fried fish and today I could hardly move.. Still, I willed myself, I wheeled myself and the food wagon [a 2' x 3' pull wagon] through this afternoon's harvesting, did my medicine wheel, which transformed my mind but not my muscles, bones & joints.

Got back to the farmhouse and Steff cooked up our own garden stir-fry veggies with brown rice, and -- ain't it somethin -- I feel great all over.

Tai Chi Classes

I am organizing different Tai Chi classes, of which 100% of the proceeds are for the Vermont Foodbank. The first 10-week course will begin Tuesday, October 16th, to be held at the Unitarian Universalist Church in St. Johnsbury.

Opposition

Ohsawa said "opposition is great friendship."

When folks ask me 'how is da farming going?', I sometimes tell em "for me, for me--farming is like theater of the absurd--like being in love--being in the moment and simultaneously aware I have very little control how our crops are going to turn out." Time line lingo--in time and through-time [big picture--details]. One month, a drought and next month a deluge. All dried up and probably pretty soon--washed away. Still, not to be analyzed, I am experiencing "I am the soil". Yesterday, with a boatload of chores in front of me, I felt the prompting "Now, right now, disc your next forage crop field, now". Now? Made no analytic sense whatsoever--the drought has compacted that already deeply contracted clay beyond reclamation for this year... still, Steff was busy re-engineering a newly discovered well [out by our commercial crop field]--never give up, give in, OK]; so Steff told me not to interrupt her. so I jumped on the old Case tractor and got the newly repaired [thanks to my three stooges-Marx brothers ingenuity] disc harrow, held together with farm chains -- onto the compacted field. And the field opened right up and I got down pretty deep. Just absurd... Chuang Tse butterfly dreaming: the mother earth is dreaming of us& we are dreaming into the mother. Extreme yin and extreme yang are the same. Frozen, stuck thought forms dissolving into, transmuting into prayerful tobacco smoke offerings of just deep enough for me & 'mine'-- gratitude.

Harvest and Cover Cropping

Bringing in some of the harvest before the frost tonight: corn, bok choy, squash, fingerlings, beets, watercress, and few tomatoes still to be gently saved, etc. Covering yesterday's broadcast seeding of winter rye.

Promise from God

Yesterday, as I was plowing and preparing a 300' x 60' area of soil to be annexed into our 'commercial West Pasture garden' (now totaling over an acre), riding on my tractor joyously for several hours (hard work driving the big go-cart--yup), the what-was-called-weather changed dramatically from sweater cold rain, to humid, to rain. I found myself praying, giving thanks, blessings, and the mists cleared in the West -- revealing a rainbow in front of me and this old tractor. I believe the sensation I felt was in the innermost core of my heart.

Mid-September Harvest

We are harvesting more crops than I know what to do with at the momen, and weeding the beds that we will soon plant garlic and bibb lettuce in.
For this summer growing season we quadrupled the size of our 'commecial garden', and now we have doubled even that -- laying in forage radish seed, winter rye and forage turnips. Soil is magical, the land, sky, hills, seasons beautiful.

Farmer in the Dell (or Mountains)

Farmer casts some seeds
Farmer casts some seeds
High, hoe -- the ...
aw nuts...
Broadcast forage seeds onto newly reclaimed gardens
Stomped in -- to differing rhythms
Who thought of the label 'legs'?
Halfway into the dance I was drumming the soil -- motherdrum -- with my own two Tao prongs
"It's a treat to beat your feet on the Mississiipi mud"...

Rain, Mist, and Moose Prolonging His Residency Here

Blessed rain all night. Mist covers the farm early a.m.
Yesterday, as I spent my second day shoveling cow manure out from the 40'-50' rental trailer, Moose appeared once -- for what I would like to believe was a deliberate 'how d'ya do' -- from our very deep woods in the Southwestern section of our farm. This is his second week here and his prints are all over 'moose bog' -- located in the Southeast section of our farm. I was honored to have him as a guest. It was as if he knew I was preparing the clay soil for a seeding of forage turnips, which I imagined would be to feed our longears for the winter ...

Tai Chi & Hard Work: I Teach Five-Element, Five-Spirit Meditation Practices--Not Self Defense/Martial Arts

Yep, farming is hard work--of sorts. Yep, it can be a shock to discover the degree of labor intensity required to farm professionally. True thing. I am not referring to part-time farming, etc. Steff and I are doing 100% of farm jobs ourselves. Folks ask me, "How do you do the hard manual labor with your Lyme diseases, three major potentially crippling injuries still taking their toll -- you are 67 Marc."

My answer is "I am practicing Taoist energy practices: what appears to be Marc shoveling a 40' tractor trailer-load of cow manure onto our compost pile is the single-palm change from Bagua zhang--done within a Taoist Yogic context; not a martial context whatsoever...


Shoveling our long driveway is practicing the mother-son five-element sequence from Hsing-Yi -- done in a Taoist Yogic context...


I do not practice/teach martial arts, even though the name might imply to some folks 'kung fu'. I practice/teach a pre-birth five-element, psycho-spiritual, Taoist yogic Bagua Meditation, related to Tibetan Bon Shamanism.

So, if you believe you see that I am coaching/practicing Kung Fu -- no, I am practicing/teaching Taoist Yoga--Taoist Alchemy--which will NOT help anyone to be 'number one guy/win/defeat/dominate/combat/compete/control or harm your fellow human beings in ANY way whatsoever'. If you want to learn any of those things, go away & find the right 'teacher' for you.


I practice/teach a pre-birth five-element, psycho-spiritual, Taoist yogic Bagua Meditation, related to Tibetan Bon Shamanism.

Kale, Watercress and Garlic

Our primary commercial focus this year is selling/developing kale, watercress, garlic, leeks and tomatoes. Our other foods are less commercial: beets, basil, dill, sage, herbs, Swiss chard, rapini, lettuces (esp. bibb), zukes, squashes, andnon-GMO sweet corn.

Following Nature

Folks call to tell me, 'Marc, I have a great horse for sale.' Great for who? Should be a natural enough match. Enough natural flowing together

'Marc, I have an acting role, come try.' OK, OK, but 90% of the time, I say, 'use other guy, better natural match for this role.' Not too much flowing for me.

'Marc, start vegetable CSA'. No-go to neighbors' CSA; they offer you consistency & I'm not there yet. In time, I naturally will be.

'Marc, I'd like to see you -- I heard you are highly recommended as a therapist.' OK, but, 90% of the time, I recommend another therapist -- should be a natural enough matching flowings. No blame.

'Marc, please grow lettuce, etc. it is a big seller' OK, and lettuce, etc., ultimately is going to need to be a natural match for the energetics of the farm & for the lettuce, and the local markets' needs. I am following the spirit of natural/supernatural cooperation. I do not enjoy the flow of technology. The relationship channel needs to hold the flow of pleasure, the potential of pleasure, of music & poetry, and for me to invest time, energy.

Back in the day, in the Old Country, a director brought an aspiring actress backstage to meet me, he wanted to cast us together. We went back to her 'pad', stayed there for years...

Humidity

Today was a bit too humid for me to weed, compost all them garlic beds. And noon-ish time is when I take my old baba nap--when the lifeforce is in the very yang fire element. Anyway, noonish arrives, it is humid and at least I was pretty sure which direction to walk to arrive back at the farmhouse. I cobblehopped back, Custer's last two steps, turned to Stephanie in the kitchen handing me a glass of cool Bancha tea, and I said, "Y'know, back in the old country, they used to give me a little schnapps when I come in from the field."

If I Was a Rich Man

If I was a rich man, biddee biddee boom, all day long I vouldn't have to veed, if I was a wealthy man.

Orphans, Orphanage, & Mickey Rourke

Every now and then--the conversation comes up and I tell folks "Quit the beef about Mickey. Mickey Rourke is just doin' exactly what our teachers told us to do." So, we are adopting longears, raising veggies, and sharing love, music and wavelengths... And thanks to Sandra Seacat, Walter Lott 'n Lee; 'n Maria Yraceburu. It is all OK

August 16 Chores

Early a.m. barnyard:

Chores while chanting, morning chanting,
Scything a burdock area where the old barn used to be...soil there is black gold...
Pulling weeds, preparing for fall garlic planting in commercial gardens...
Carrying buckets of rainwater down the hill to the tractor to cart way out to the West Pasture, to our cow manure soil soup area,
Adding soil soup to the tomato garden.
Reseeded buckwheat covercrop in tomato garden
Apply rainwater consistently to watercress

Watching Steff: effortlessly best of chums with all the four-leggeds, turning deep green with envy.

mid august feast

arugala,mixed lettuces,beans,kake,bok choy,spinach,six varieties of beets,corn,rose finn fingerling potatoes,costata romanescu zucchini,giant sunflowers[several varieties],winter squashes,nasturtiums,yukan gold potatues,radicchio,swiss chard,brocoli raab,leeks,-all coming along in the west pasture commercial organic vegetable garden...

close by is Steff's tomato garden ,in which glacier,volkov,mountain princess,peacevine,big boy, tomatoes are all coming along.and lookin good....

several varieties of tomatoes, lettuce, arugula, swiss chard, peas green beans, corn, zucchini, beets watercress,broccoli raab,basil,dill,parsley,sage,rosemary,thyme,oregano,marjoram,chervil,green, peppers,radishes,lacinato and vates kale growing,growing ,grown in our organic guest house garden.

farm working week

I am continuing to add manure to our new forage radish garden..forage radish to address soil compaction and to provide wintewr food for our livestock...moving in thedirection ofself sufficiency. always careful not to trample,tractor under-our precious frogs[whom I am reading are prime indicator of non toxic -no chemical fertilized- soil...
I am continuing to cart out water,rainwater collected from two days of blessed prayed for rain-to our west pasture gardens.In some furrows,Steph has a pete moss -cow/equine compost concoction[the peetmoss to retain water.we are trucking in trailor loads of cow manure to compost biodynamically for next years compost piles.
planting kale,spinach ,lettuce n beets in the tail end of the growing season...weeding-experimenting this week with propane torch/tank to remove way too many weeds......
Preparing projected medice whhel herbal garden site for cover cropping. &planted more buckwheat into Steff's tomato garden-surrounded by oilseed radish boundary..
OUR Farmer geritol is brown rice n leafy green home growns.. Case VAC smokin when it is humid-loyal good friend tractor partner-I am workin us way too hard maybe.thank you good old oil additive BARDOL- I used Bardol in most everything old that still runs-tractor geritol.

july drought

july drought. midwest drought copycat.... farmer hardship....still,great abundant....
august downpour........amazon rainforest copycat-humid....farmer hardship.......still great abundant
the sprouting seed of a whole being makes steady growth...

Forage seed Turnips and Oilseed Radish

This past spring, we quadrupled the size of our West pasture garden [commercial garden, using composted cow manure]. In addition, we built a tomato garden,with hoophouses alongside--ready to cover the tomatoes when weather conditions warrant... I am continuing to lay in compost in the commercial garden for fall plantings--primarily kale, sunflowers, beets.

We have disc harrowed the remainder of the west pasture, and planted forage turnips, for winter food for our livestock and to subsoil the compacted soil. Tomorrow I will add cow manure to some of it to experiment; if needed, I will spread manure on all of it and reseed if I have to.

Time allowing, we are so pleased with oilseed radish as a subsoiling/food device, we disc/plant the entire north pasture with the oilseed and forage turnips and the guard donkey will just have to get over it--till it grows and he can eat it.

bobo donkey

Bobo,a donkey who was a guard donkey of cattle,arrived to his new forever home here on july 26.He is settling in nicely,taking command of his barn,barnyard,the north pasture and both paddocks as well,soon as the forage radish is ready,he will get the green lite to dive into what was the old barnyard paddocks, & then-the west pasture.donkeys need plenty of breathing room.ms

Forage Turnips, More Cow Manure, and Disc Harrowing

Up to 29 truck & trailer loads of compost and cow manure so far -- some of this latest batch for turnip seeds we scattered over a blessedly rained on newly-harrowed area (harrowed with a 700 lb disc harrow). , and a heavy chain is now wrapped around it for just the right dragging results (plus cinder blocks for counter-balancing weights). And it gets the job done.

These amazing forage turnips will root deeply -- displacing weeds, and breaking up conmpacted soil/clay. The tops are eaten by the equines as forage, and they keep growing back to get eaten some more -- thus cutting hay/feeding costs. In late winter the turnips die off, leaving composting vegetable matter in the now aerated soil, and enriching the previously lifeless clay.

Compost Delivered & Herbal Garden Relocated

Applying twelve truckloads of compost to all gardens. Relocated herbal garden site to where old barn once was...

Weeding Carriage Garden

Marc is carrying in composted manure (heavy),

and I'm weeding the upper garden.

Then we removed the low tunnel covers and put down black sheeting to smother weeds in garden's back end. Later, this back area will be filled in with oil-seed radishes to restore it to friability and health for next year.

Marc put down cover crop seeds on 'Garden A' perimeter for erosion control, and then laid down black plastic sheeting to smother burdock in herbal garden-to-be area...