Howdy y’all. Ben here, updating you this week from the hilly reaches of Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage in beautiful Northeast Missouri. This time of year was known to some Native Americans as the Maple Sugar Moon, as the dynamic temperatures get the sap flowing.
In true testament to my shiftless nature I haven’t been tapping any maple trees myself, though crews have gone out to do so over the past couple few weeks. Instead, I’ve just been hugging maple trees instead, in true ecovillager fashion. I’m more accustomed to sorghum syrup these days anyhow, but I do like tromping around in the woods this time of year, especially when the understory is bare of poison ivy, ticks, and chiggers.
Quite a few posts back I referred to the beginning of winter as the Springtime of Death. Now, it isn’t quite the Springtime of Life at this time, not just yet, but I do believe we’re getting there. The vernal equinox is upon us this week. Somewhere deeper down in the dirt I sense the growing buzz of spring. I have seen the massive hulks of filthy old snow expand and recede for weeks, sometimes giving up the ghost and melting off into our watershed, only to return emboldened as a thick carpet of ivory powder in less than a couple of days. Some days the sun kisses me, makes me sweat and strip down to a t-shirt and bare feet in its sixty-five degree embrace. Other times (yesterday) I wake up in an arctic nightmare. As the old saying goes this is the month that comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb. Well, we Critters have some lambs due, but they haven’t come out yet.
The Maple Sugar Moon is a time of natural revelation. As the snow melts and rolls toward the Fabius and Mississippi Rivers, and eventually the Gulf of Mexico, the Earth basks nude beneath, baring treasures left behind throughout the winter: bony gray owl pellets, a puff of downy duck feathers, a small collection of shiny pebbles left behind by my child, and weathered yet resilient chickweed, the first wild greens of the year, gritty feeling, tired but alive in my mouth.
I have taken my scythe out on the warmer days to clear out some old thatch on our pastures in anticipation of spring grasses. Beneath the thatch is a whole other world of flora and fauna and fungi, sometimes dead, dormant, or alive. I have found perfectly intact field mice, naturally embalmed in frost, entombed beneath the snow, wrapped up in dead grass for the big sleep.
Taking a low slice of thatch off the pasture, I occasionally slide the blade across the basal growth of a grass clump and see the green concentric rings that promise a flush of sweet tasting goat milk in the near future. The soil in my garden, still frozen solid a few inches below, writhes with young red wigglers, wood roach nymphs, and the occasional groggy-looking cricket. Mats of white fungi penetrate the cardboard laid beneath our raised garden beds. Our compost pile is warm and surprisingly intense in aroma.
I suppose I oughtn’t to get too led on by these titillations of Springtime. A lot of folks have been reporting robins. I have been seeing them since January, so I’m nonplussed. However I have noticed skeins of geese honking way up high, headed North. The cardinals, bluebirds, juncos and woodpeckers seem to have vacated our warren and returned to the thickets, leaving a vacancy filled by common, thieving sparrows. The barren woods provide ideal hunting for hawks that scan the west slope on occasion, scattering our chickens with their shadows.
In matters more visceral, I have been supplementing our chickens’ diet with roadkill. This is a perfect time of year for this sort of activity, with the chilly nights providing necessary refrigeration, and the warm days allowing for some ripening. All I do is hop on my bike, stuff a few plastic grocery bags in my panniers, and head for blacktop. A rabbit here, a squirrel there, and soon my bike is loaded with quality protein that doesn’t cost a dime.
My preference is that we don’t have asphalt slapped all over the land on which distracted drivers fly at inconceivable speeds across turtles, skunks, and other living things, but that probably won’t change for awhile, so I may as well make lemonade out of the situation. Or eggs, I guess. And yes, the chickens do eat it, and enjoy it. Some breeds seem to like it more than others. It doesn’t take more than a day for them to reduce a small, dead animal to hair and bones.
I’m pretty much in the same boat as the livestock. Not that I eat hay or roadkill very often, but this is the hunger gap. There’s no forage. I mentioned the chickweed. If all I had was chickweed, I’d probably die, healthy as it is. Bobolink kitchen invited us Critters over for dinner a couple nights ago. It was really good. They even had greens, stored in their freezer. It feels like I haven’t had anything that was so obviously a vegetable in many months. A special treat for sure, perhaps enough greenery to get me through ’til the cress, peppergrass, and chickweed come on in full.
A lot of dogs have been visiting Dancing Rabbit recently. At least one seems like he’s here to stay, and I don’t mind him that much. He’s laid back and plays nice with our ducks, not like the pack of hunting dogs that invaded our warren just the other day. By the way, please don’t loose your hounds on our land. I think I speak for most Rabbits when I say that I like coyotes just fine, even as a livestock grower. That’s what we have a guardian donkey for. As I’ve mentioned, our chickens will eat anything, and I can’t be held liable if they were to eat your dogs.
Speaking of acquired tastes, I did manage to get the rest of my sunchoke crop out of the ground, and they are much sweeter on the other end of this winter. I cannot say the same for myself, not yet. I feel extremely aged right now. It must be the hunger gap. I just found a few white hairs in my beard. I don’t know how or when they got there. My crow’s feet have deepened slightly. This week is Bob’s birthday. He is twice my age, and probably twice as healthy.
Soon, not yet, will be the time for spring tonic herbs. I sense that the time of introspection is coming to a close for a while, for me, maybe for this village, as we prepare to welcome, or perhaps just endure the nearing busy season. I got buzzed by a honeybee the other day, and it helped remind me just how much work lies ahead. I don’t really know what I’ve been doing the past couple of months, but there’s definitely three hundred or so trees being mailed my way, plus a mound of clay on our warren that’s probably ten feet high, so I guess I’d better put all the books away that I never started and go organize my shovels.
To paraphrase last week’s column, we have indeed survived the winter. Thus far, I might add. The grass does not grow, not yet. But it doesn’t even take faith to see that soon it will. I’ll survive this winter, assuredly, and I’ll probably have some good tales to tell of the Winter of ’14 when I’m older and nearer my end, but I can’t credit myself with my own survival, when so many creatures, animal and human, alive and dead, are responsible for getting me this far.
Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage is an intentional community and nonprofit outside Rutledge, in northeast Missouri, focused on demonstrating sustainable living possibilities. While we dream of spring, when tours will begin again, you can find out more about us by visiting our website, reading our blog, or emailing us.