Earth--in my hands

The topic is earth. It immediately conjures up images of soil in my brain. I come from a couple of generations of farmers. They grew food for cows and chickens and pigs, who, in turn, generated food for us to eat and sell. (Granted, the pigs were more deeply invested in the “food production” than the cows and chickens. But the cows and chickens ended up on the dinner plate eventually, too.)

Earth, or dirt, was what we used. But, first we needed to prepare it. Our farm was apparently the former path of some ancient glacier, because when the snow melted, and the plow went through the fields, a very large quantity of rocks was always our first harvest. Sigh. It really didn’t matter how many rocks we’d hauled off that field in previous springs, there were always, always more. Roundish, varying from the size of softballs to footballs, and sometimes we’d unearth a really big, ottoman-sized one, but always, lots and lots of rocks. Years later, when I was a married woman with children, and my brother had taken over the farm after our dad died, the highway department bought many trucks full of those rocks to build a roadbed for a new highway. I imagined my dad, in heaven, throwing up his arms, and shouting, “At last! A market for my best crop!”

It wasn’t just that the job was endless. It was an exceptionally obnoxious job. Imagine slogging through furrows, beside a wagon, on a not-quite-warm Saturday in May, picking up rocks and tossing them onboard. Then, you get to go over to the fence line, where there were rows of rocks from previous drudgeries, and tossing them off onto the piles. Then, back out to the muddy, uneven field and just keep going, knowing that you’re not done until you’ve gleaned the whole vast area. 

And, there was a deadline. The barley had to be planted by a certain date, or it wouldn’t have time to mature before the killing frost in the fall. So, sometimes, we were up early on a school morning, dividing the chores between the cow milkers and the rock pickers. I often heard my school friends from town discussing their plans for the afternoon on the last day of school—always a half-day—and I knew what my plans were going to be. Blah. 

But,we'd finally finish, and the grain would be sown, and we’d be treated to the sight of the little green shoots in their endless rows, growing in rock-free soil. 

When I first moved to California as a newly-wed Navy wife, I was astonished at the huge fields that were cultivated there. One area where we lived had been an alluvial flood plain, the soil was rich and black, and seemed to go on, and on. You could dig and dig, and never hit bottom. And, of course, I saw NO rocks. It really caught my eye! I was appalled one day to drive by a former tomato field to see big machinery scraping off the layers of dirt as the developer prepared to build houses. I actually went and asked if I could get some that dirt for a garden bed I was building. They let me take it. I don’t even know where they put the rest. Maybe they saved it for yards around the new houses. I realize my naiveté about the value of top soil to other people. But, still! They had no idea how my dad would have loved farming dirt like that. 

When we lived on the East Coast, our first house had a garden area that I dug up and planted with tomato starts, and lettuce and radish seeds. Due to the regular rainfall in the afternoon, I didn’t pay much attention to it during that first week, except to glance over at it when I’d leave for work in the morning. On the weekend, I went out to admire my crops, only to find that rabbits and deer had eaten all my plants down to the dirt. But, I did have a nice crop of seedling oak trees sprouted and thriving, since I’d cultivated the soil. So…I build a bed right in the middle of the circular driveway to keep marauders at bay, and used soil I bought at the garden shop that didn’t have acorns embedded in it. 

Now, I live in the Mojave Desert. There isn’t soil here. There is a thin layer of really sad, sandy dirt, and then an impervious bed called caliche. That abundance of calcium carbonate is great for the wall board factory a few miles out in the desert from our home. But it means that gardening here is done in raised beds. In fact, it’s almost time to plant my tomatoes so that the fruit can set before the summer heat kicks in. I’ll also get lettuce and radishes and even peas before May. Then, after that, everything just stops because of the endless heat, day and night. Everything except basil—it loves the hot air. When it all cools down again in October, the tomato plants will perk up and start growing flowers again, and I’ll get a second crop until the frosts in late December. I replenish the dirt each year with my homemade dirt from the compost bin that CoolGuy gave me for a birthday present when we first moved here.

Earth, dirt, soil—it is in my genes. I cannot resist digging and planting and harvesting.

That green stretch up in the distance, beyond the barn, is where all the rocks were.

We milked our cows in that barn, when I lived there. Shortly after I graduated from high school, my dad had to go big, or get out, so he built a modern dairy barn in the field behind this red relic.

  These are my parents and two big sisters, I was born some months after this was taken.Notice his irrigation boots? This was his usual attire when I was a child. That barley field was watered with canvas dams and system of ditches.Both of my parents grew up farming and milking cows.

 Here I am picking rock in that notorious field with my younger sister, my brother-in-law (and his little boy).

We were visiting back home about a month before our first child was born---1976.

 Yes, even after foot surgery, you can’t keep me out of the dirt.