Garden
“There’s something about this place,” a guest said to me. “It’s the energy.” She took a deep breath and sighed. I smiled. I have heard this before, often. It’s why I’m here. You can’t stay in your tightly-wound-up stressed mind while you are here because Spirit Hill calls to you. It says, Slow down. Be […]
As farmer-in-training at Spirit Hill, I have learned that whatever I plant is as much the birds’ and the animals’—deer, turkeys, chickens, moles, gophers, birds, insects, for example—as it is mine. Growing things at Spirit Hill is a good exercise in non-attachment. Hello, three sunflower plants I bought at Harmony and love so much. Hello, […]
The roses are here! It seems like it happened over night. One day I went to feed the chickens and things were winter bare, and the next day an explosion of color had happened. And I hadn’t heard a peep in the night. Roses must rose very quietly. The thing I love most about the […]
We’re getting the pool resurfaced in April. Carolyn and Julie picked out the tile for the edge, and the color made me cry. It’s so this place—it’s the kind of blue you feel you’ve seen before in your childhood or later as an adult during times when you were very happy or in love or […]
When I wrote “small kindness” as a title I thought, Hmmm, that’s not exactly it. Small is so…small. Can something be small and massive at the same time? The acorn comes to mind. And so does the package we, at Spirit Hill, got in the mail. It was…small. And in it was a small card […]
According to the vegetable garden, summer’s over. The squash plants look like they got cooked, and the parsley looks like it fell asleep. Secretly, the frosting and subsequent toppling over of the garden is a big relief to me. I worked hard all spring and summer figuring out how to get plants to grow. (As […]
What Happens When Pulitzer-Prize Photographer Anthony Suau Stays at Spirit Hill Farm? First of all, he falls in love with the chicken coop. Who wouldn’t? (One day soon it might even have a chandelier inside. The chickens are going to have to learn to say please and thank you first or at least pretend to […]
You need to be careful what magazines you look at when you’re a farmer-in-training. If you look at magazines that have recipes, for example, this could end up being a lot of work for you and mayhem for your poor, unsuspecting already-established plants. I was reading the Spring 2020 issue of Edible: Marin & Wine […]
I had no intention of falling in love with the chickens. I try to be a good person, but I have to tell you that I think chickens are weird. If I’m totally honest, I think I was partly scornful of them because they are my shadow selves running around freely: easily frightened, scared of […]
I wrote and published a book last week. Actually, I wrote the book in less than an hour, and then it took me the next six days to figure out how to get it formatted the way I wanted and up for sale on Amazon. It all started when I pulled a turnip from one […]