Preparations For Centuries
Our situation today can best be described by the old saying, “We can’t see the forest for the trees.” Unimproved land, no matter how elusive that is to imagine, can be a journey of constant discovery.
Yet, there is a lot of vulnerability on this delicate Earth. You don’t know what the day wants to do to you. Nevermind the coyotes, the mosquitos that can cause West Nile Virus and have caused heart worms in our white Labradoodle, Lincoln. Nevermind the area weather warnings of tornados, flash floods and dense fog, or the tiny deer ticks that cause Lyme disease, waiting in ambush at every step you take. Nevermind all that. The bulldozer wants to level the land for a driveway, but there has been substantial rain fall over the past three months, turning the ground to sponge.
In the meantime, we explore the property boundaries, keeping the hiking lanes open. Our two, used Can Am 4-wheelers, also good to winch out logs from the woods, provide exquisite enjoyment. We exercise the BCS walk behind tractor and nibble away privet and honeysuckle brush with machetes while we wait for the steady sun to show it’s smile. The faithful seeds we have sown will grow, surely as the seasons change. A summer harvest is on the horizon.
We clipped 100 thornless blackberry vines from our second transplant at God’s Farm in Temple, GA. I also think it would be nice to start a Christmas tree farm with red cedar evergreens. The local excavator guy gave us river birch saplings to plant around the lake. He also gave us red maple, and white oak saplings, no doubt the monarchs of the next generation forest. From a nursery west of Atlanta, we bought four native orange azaleas that, when in full bloom, spread out over the limbs in a riot of color much like a burning bush. I should have bought all 66 of those early standout sources of light. Each individual, plant and tree are waiting to break ground to establish themselves. All around me the kingdom of plant is preaching patience. As it should be when comparing decades to centuries. Simple enough concept, but hard to master.
The reality is we are living and breathing this land from dawn until dusk. Farming is tough – with or without John Deere, Johnny Appleseed, Daniel Boone or Davey Crockett. It’s a big, radical activism for our survival, and when we cultivate the same soil as our ancestors, we are touching time.
The Little River is peaceful enough- under the embrace of holly and hemlock, listening to the distant sound of train whistles and the cascade of water created from Moon Lake overflow. For four miles the canoe and kayaks took us through the backcountry on a lazy current to overlook beautiful DeSoto Falls. This will be a wonderful playground for our summer campers, because everybody loves summer camp. “Probably nowhere else in the United States is there a more highly concentrated group of youth camps than in the vicinity of Mentone.”
http://mentonealabama.org/Strayhorn/StrayhornCamps.htm
— §tacy §weeney