agriculture

A Handful of Earth

It has been a long time since I have drawn much with colored pencils- many decades as a matter of fact. But the youngest of my kids love to draw with them and we have been spending time drawing together in the evenings. There are many levels of joy in rediscovering the accessibility and immediacy of colored pencils with my children.

The Farm in Mid-Summer

celebrations of lucerne and other legumes, solar crescents, roots, and the husbandry of even toed-ungulates

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

Summer Harvest

Landscape Hewn and Tender

Small Rain

There is the first part of an interview about my Puppet Theater here at UK artist, Clive Hicks-Jenkins’ blog if you would like to check it out. Thanks everyone for the visits.

The Caprine Outpouring

Amidst the bustle, we are celebrating the increase of new life this week. Two of our does ushered in kidding season in ernest. The first one had quadruplets and the second, triplets. I’ll spare you the “I’m not kidding” jokes.