Today my work will be featured on a segment of a television show called “Artful”, produced by Monument tv. It will air at 8 am MST and then again at 1 pm on the BYU tv channel, and then it will be available for streaming after that on the BYU TV website. While I haven’t yet seen it myself, the other episodes are beautifully and sensitively done, and my experience with the production team was truly delightful and meaningful. I hope that you will have a chance to take a look.
Go On, Shepherd is a new wood engraving available for sale in my online store Baumwerkshop. As a shepherd, often I find myself in this position, kneeling on the ground tending an animal. It is a humble position, yet, to be nearer to the earth by half or more is significant. Don’t forget that you are dust. Great comfort that is. When I learn of the soil I am learning about God, creator and king of the Universe. It is good to be humble, kneeling on His earth.
What do you think? If a man has a hundred sheep, and one of them goes astray, does he not leave the ninety-nine and go to the mountains to seek the one that is straying? And if he should find it, assuredly, I say to you, he rejoices more over that sheep than over the ninety-nine that did not go astray. Even so it is not the will of your Father who is in heaven that one of these little ones should perish. Matthew 18:12-14 NKJV
“I am a steward because I am not here for very long”, I heard a farmer say once. The land remains and was here before. The sheep flocks – the good ones, are like an organism or a nation, and they persist, reflecting the decisions of the shepherds over them. My flock carries the intention of many shepherds before me and it will reflect mine after I am gone. The sheep too will remain. Any ownership I have is really only stewardship for One who is greater, and it is good to take care of life for Him and with Him. This too is comforting.
These are some of the thoughts I have, kneeling on the earth with lambs.
The month of May was wet for nearly the whole of Kansas, and we happened to be one of the wettest spots in the state with over 30 inches for the month. Spring rains make grass grow and the lambs are good and growing. Photography and blogging has taken a back seat in a year of heavy labor on every front, but I managed to take my camera with me a few times while I did my rounds on the farm.
sward of chicory, crimson, and white clovers
inquisitive crossbred pig in a paddock of rye and vetch
hampshire pig eating bolted chicory
improvised by a previous farmer, well worn window weight cover chains
nitrogen nodules formed on alfalfa (lucerne) roots
lucerne (alfalfa) roots and crown, pulled from the vegetable garden
garlic, un-earthed
root fire works
sonar malfunction (?) allowed us a daytime visit from a strange and fierce nocturnal beneficient
windrows in the alfalfa (Medicago sativa) meadow
the rusty old New Holland swather in contrast eating alfalfa
I read once that the Arabic word from which the name “alfalfa” came meant “best fodder”
Louis Bromfield justly brought attention to its role as a soil healer. It seems to live up to its names, feeding livestock, pollinators, humans, the soil and its inhabitants, and the atmosphere.
I feel grateful that I get to farm my own patch of lucerne. In the background is a mobile chicken coop with laying hens working the perimeter of the meadow. We’ve learned that alfalfa is a key ingredient in good eggs.
the angus bottle baby
bellows for milk
lambs in the illuminated profile of humid dawn
the young shepherd studies his flock
compact paddocks of soybeans and milo forage, bloody butcher field corn, and the Quonset barn looking at home in the landscape
the great blue heron disturbed from his breakfast, as we head across the creek to do the morning chores
sun in hand
interplay of lensing leaves and the light of 92% totality
solar shield
transfixed
the image of the solar eclipse projected through on half of pair of binoculars proved to be the most successful of viewing contraptions
photographing under the helmet, layers of eclipse and lense
contractions of the dry months
elevated mundane details; oxidations of copper and steel
a barn that is part celebration of geometry, part dog house
the colors of the barnyard hens grouped together over their dawn ration
wax goldenweed of the many cousins in the sunflower family
emergence of the inflorescence of Indian grass
dr. Seuss hairdo of thistle
snow-on-the-mountain
snouts and ears
coreopsis growing in a wheat field we are converting to perennial pasture
The School of the Transfer of Energy 