Pheasants, Orioles, and Strawberries

Michigan's spring weather has been prickly with more twists and turns than a wooden roller coaster. One day we think summer is back, then the bottom falls out. But the strawberries are laden with blossoms and the Baltimore Orioles are eating all my grape jelly. Can they be enticed to stay? Yesterday was gorgeous with calm winds. So calm my son tackled the extension ladder to fix a hole in the eavestrough where starlings were nesting and wasps were wasping. That problem was solved just before the wind kicked into high gear, shifting out of the North with plummeting temperatures and frost warnings for the entire upper two thirds of the state. So.... off to the strawberry patch I went to save the blossoms.

I have a double layer of shade cloth I've been taking on and off with each frost warning. Bundled up as if it were March, tight hood, snug gloves, and heavy socks, I wrestled the cover back over the row of berries, weighing the sides down with dirt and rocks. I have a plehora of them because a Mad Farmer always has rocky ground. 

On my knees (lo and behold, as grandma would say) I discovered that nestled under the plants were more than blossoms.  Plump berries are already starting to form. Strawberry season used to be mid-June to July 4th. No more. They keep coming earlier and earlier, like the lilacs and the asparagus and the peony. Topsy Turvey weather but don't call it Global Warming or the deniers will drive a stake through your heart.

But on the intermittent nice days of spring, I walk the pasture which is now our pheasant habitat. We left a large area uncut last year, and an impressive patch of Queen Anne's Lace went to seed. Now there's a stretch of stalks waist high to a tall man, two-hundred feet long by fifty feet wide that pheasants love. We hear their excited two-note calls all the time and a few days ago I saw one running through the grass, head bobbing above the seed pods. My pheasant habitat looks brown and weathered but there is a lot of life going on under foot. Anything but dead. So, why do I tell you this? Because there is something to be said for uncut grass, dandelion bracelets and ringnecks on the fly. Pesticides had thinned them rare, so to see them and hear them in the wild brings us joy. 

Now at nightfall the winds calm. The chickens roost and the pheasants hide. Jupiter rides below the quarter moon in the western sky and the earth sleeps.

The Blackbird and the Strawberry

Observe the girl eating a strawberry. Observe the cattle observing her. They line the electric fence bordering the patch and watch with unblinking eyes. Some become bored with her repetition and chomp on grass, others chew their cuds as the calves scamper to and fro. They follow her progress along the 300-foot row and jostle each other for a view. Their fence runs out. Her row continues. She leaves them behind. 

Her fingers seek the silver dollar-sized berries hidden under the leaves in the center of the plant, heavy with ripeness and replete with moisture, nestled out of sight of the most keen-sighted blackbird. She holds them by the stem and drops them in the box.

The strawberry plant is the perfect camouflage, the perfect fruit. It needs no fungicides or chemicals. It needs no genetic tinkering. She regrets her father's position.

The odor from the animals wafts on the whip of their tails, earthy and fungal, not unpleasant, but memory-laden. The cattle, the grass, fresh cut hay in the air and holding hands in the night. A memory.

Strawberry Fields Forever

I know y'all get tired of me carrying on about organics and genetically engineered crops and Monsanto's herbicides, but a new development is so upsetting I simply have to vent and share it with you. Whole Foods, Organic Valley, and Stonyfield Farms have all surrendered to Monsanto.

As reported in the Organic Consumer Association's newsletter, "These companies have betrayed their customers and publically stated that they no longer oppose Monsanto's efforts to contaminate our farmland with their genetically engineered alfalfa. Monsanto's GE alfalfa is a perennial crop, guaranteed to spread its mutant genes and seeds across the nation; guaranteed to contaminate the alfalfa fed to organic animals; guaranteed to lead to massive poisoning of farm workers . . ."

If you are concerned about our nation's food supply and the decline of the honeybee, which has been directly contributed to the use of GMO's, please read the article and take action. We deserve truth in labeling and I think we all have the right to clean food on the table, if so desired. When asked if they want herbicides and genetically-modified organisms in their dairy products, meat and vegetables, most people say no, but then they don't do anything about it. We need to voice an opinion while there is still time. The only thing that will make a difference is if enough people voice opinion and follow through in the grocery store.

Thank you for reading this through to the end. The only thing more important than what we eat is the air we breathe. Every year we have to put up with Roundup spraying in the field across the road. Every year they come in with their big expensive tractors and tanks of poison and race up and down the field as the toxic brew billows out behind them. The fuckers don't even care which way the wind is blowing. We can be out there picking strawberries and there they are, getting it done.

Thanks for hearing me out. If you care, please pass the word.

Strawberry Fields

We picked the first strawberries of the season yesterday. There is nothing like a Michigan strawberry and they're well worth the wait. The memory of our Michigan berries enables me to keep walking past the morbidly huge berries, grotesque and hollow, that show up in grocery stores in April from irrigated desert fields. The reason Michigan and other places in the Upper Midwest grow the best vegetables and fruits in the world is because of our adequate rainfall, warm days and cool nights.

I like to mash them up with a bit of sugar and spoon them over vanilla ice cream for dessert. A dollop of real whip cream on top adds a special touch. If you take the time to whip up some biscuits or shortcake you'll have Michigan's best early summer dessert on your table. Wherever you are, should you see Michigan berries for sale, snap them up. They're worth whatever price you have to pay.

With my garden approaching forty fifty-foot rows on one side of the driveway and nine two-hundred foot rows on the other side, my hands hurt tonight and my legs are crampy. Tomorrow I'm taking a break from the garden to paint and work on my query letter and my ideal agent list, the perfect agent who will guide me to an editor and a publisher and a rewarding writing life.

Three Hail Marys for an agent, and editor, and a rewarding writing life.