Homecoming, White Pine

So, I haven't written anything here for quite some time -- about half a year. I originally revamped my blog mid-2010 as "On the Farm Road," anticipating being a hobo farmer for quite some time and hoping to document what I was learning on the way. But then my camera filled up with sand and stopped working, so I couldn't post pictures. And then I was too busy to write. And then I was coming up with more excuses why not to do it. In the end, it kind of fell apart. Which is fine. But things have changed quite a bit, and I feel a pull to come back to the "blogosphere." I'm hoping that what I have to say this time you will all find interesting, thought-provoking, inspiring, and useful. At the very least, if you keep reading, I promise to never use the word "blogosphere" again.

I'm back in Maine. I'm back in the house I grew up in, an old turn-of-the-century farmhouse a bit north of Portland in what's considered the "midcoast" ecoregion. And I'm starting a project.

This year is about roots. For the past few years I've been a bit of a bird-woman, flitting from place to place, staying for a few months and then migrating somewhere different. While this has satisfied (for the most part) my wanderlust and has taught me invaluable lessons, the one thing it couldn't give me is a sense of Home and Community (I capitalize these because I did experience home and community on the road, but my transient nature made me always feel a bit like a visitor. By capitalizing these terms I mean the more permanent kinds). So I decided to forgo the lure of nomadism for a year and set some roots down in the place where I already had them. As a recent writer for Permaculture Activist says:

I decided to move back to the town I grew up in. I've lived in rural and urban places that are beautiful, functional and magical. And yet, for me there's something about [the place] where the earth chose to put me when I was younger. There's power in that.

That power of home, combined with my increasingly strong desire to not work for anyone else (except Big Mama N, of course) and my incredible luck in having 37 acres of semi-rural land in the place where the earth put me when I was younger, has led me to take what I've learned these past few years about organic farming, permaculture, biodynamic agriculture, sustainability, and living in community and apply them in my own backyard. That is, I'm starting up the homestead.

So far this winter its been a lot of planning and clarifying what exactly my goals for this project are. And I'm going to use this blog (or perhaps a new one, I haven't decided yet) to chronicle how this thing unfolds, to share my visions, sources of inspiration, strategies, and actions -- in part for posterity, but largely to (hopefully) inspire others to similarly take their lives into their own hands. So stay tuned. In the meantime, here's a short poem I wrote inspired by my desire to appreciate my homestate of Maine more. Its about a white pine tree (very common in Maine, mostly due to its strong presence in areas that have been previously clearcut) that I watched through a window as it bent back and forth with the strong February winds we've been having.

White Pine

While I watch

you are busy

turning water

into wind,

soil to the sound

of secrets

shared among shifting

needles.

Upright, bristly,

an unjaded green

in an ocean of winter white.

Full and juicy,

lush in a sea of sparseness.

Yesterday there was a red-tailed hawk.

Today the moon is almost full.

The river is still covered in snow,

but the rain is coming.

You grow slow, white pine:

the rock of trees.

An anchor

held fast

to something fleeting,

held fast

to something within

turning water into wind,

turning water into wind.