Field Notes: Staying Grounded & Inspired

{Field Notes come out every Friday, and are a look back on the week in the fields, greenhouse, and farm life.  What are you growing?  Share your own field notes in the comments below.}

6:00 am: It’s cool—spring cool, fleece and sweatpants kind of cool—when I walk outside in the morning light.  I know there’s snow forecasted to fall today, but I can’t believe it now.  I see a robin hopping in the driveway, and my body feels brighter.  The first robin sighting of the season overrides any dampening of more snow.

This week has been one of emergence:

Seedlings popping up, a return to harvesting, and lots of new seedings in the greenhouse.

We’ve been in the greenhouse every day, rearranging tables, filling trays with soil, and eating fresh lettuce and sweet over-wintered spinach.

I feel the energy of spring bubbling up in me as I soak up the sun in the lengthening days.

I love these clear sky days, this light, this space.  And I need them now more than ever.

Last weekend I read the news too early on Saturday morning, and it threatened the quiet I’d woken up with.  The rhythm of morning brought me back to balance: the simple, irrefutable truth that the sun rises, that the sky clears after a storm, and that this has happened forever. That this will keep happening, and that I can show up in the storm and the clearing. That I can bear witness to light and keep it in my heart and share it everywhere I go.

Are you finding a deeper need for grounding?  For space?  For truth that cannot be changed through acrobatic rhetoric?

These are precisely the times I go to the soil.  Aside from feeding my body, working the soil grounds me and gives me a soul-reassurance.

Here’s what I’ll be doing in the coming week to stay grounded and inspired:

• Create my flower plan: organize flower seeds and sketch out where and when each variety will be planted
• More seeding in the greenhouse: kale is up next!  I LOVE kale for its tenderness and heartiness.  We’ll be planting red russian, westlander, and meadowlark for this first round.
• Read: No Time To Lose, by Pema Chodron, and The Practice of the Wild, by Gary Snyder, are both open on my reading shelf right now.  (I’m almost always reading more than one book at a time!  One for morning, one for evening, one for growth, one for fun, and on and on).
• Sing: Our sweet town of Worcester is holding a Variety Show fundraiser for the local food shelf, and Edge and I will dust off our duets and perform a little tune.

What do you do to stay grounded?  What keeps you inspired?  I’d love to know and add them to my resources, too.  Leave a comment below to share~

I wish you all a bright weekend (even if the clouds will be showering more snow).

In good heart,

Kate