“Inch by inch/Row by row/Gonna make this garden grow/All it takes is a rake and a hoe/And a piece of fertile ground/Inch by inch/Row by row/Someone bless these seeds I sow/Someone keep them safe below/Till the rains come a-tumblin’ down.”
–”The Garden Song,” by David Mallett
Shanti and Corey Rade
Whipstone Farm, Paulden, Ariz.
Dear Shanti and Corey,
Greetings from the thawing northland. Corey, you haven’t seen a snow pack on the peaks like this since you were a kid. Snow banks still hide in the shade of the forest. I trust you’ve been getting your share of this winter’s moisture. Spring is springing all over here. Sue has 13 varieties of heirloom tomatoes started in the sunroom.
Sue has a six-month-old border collie-heeler cross (named Juno) she’s sharing with the grandkids upstairs. She’s a bright-eyed little live wire. The dog is. Great with the kids. Only killed two of the chickens so far.
The whole family got together for Easter. Three-year-old Mark Anthony observed the day by falling off the top bunk bed and breaking his arm. “I boke my arm. I almost died,” he told grandma.
How’s life on the baby farm? I guess you’ll be breaking new ground to feed that crew. I’ve gotta say Corey, at an age when most fellas are planning where to string their hammock, starting a crop of twin girls and a little boy seems like a bold agricultural move!
I didn’t exactly celebrate but I did recognize my 60th birthday on Monday the 12th. I sure woulda taken better care of myself if I’d known I was gonna live so long. My granddaughter Emma Kate made me a cherry cheese cake and stuck one large candle in the middle to represent all that water under the bridge. I think there’s a county ordinance against putting more than 50 candles on one cake.
Something about that big candle lighting up the night reminded me of the full moon over the holler up Little Laurel Creek in Lincoln County, W.V., when I celebrated my 21st birthday. I got drunk as a lord on Henry Baker’s moonshine whisky and rode naked up the holler in the moonlight on my horse. I was naked. I guess the horse was naked too.
The farm there had rich, deep soil that ran right down to the banks of the creek. Between the barn and the smokehouse I plowed a patch of ground with the horses and planted it to seed corn given to me by my neighbor Henry Baker. He called it Bloody Butcher corn. This was his preferred variety for making whisky. The big white grains were flat and flinty and veined with streaks of rusty red.
The plants twisted and stretched in the West Virginia sun with an audible rustle till the stalks towered 10 foot above me. When the ears developed they looked like sticks of firewood and were as long as my forearm. They reminded me of the spoof postcards my dad had of watermelons that filled an entire flat car or single tomatoes strapped to back of a mule. There was plenty of feed for our horses and goats that winter and in a hand mill we ground meal and made the best tasting damn cornbread I’d ever had.
Jim McConnoch worked with me several years on the production of Flag News. He’s a super lighting guy. He donated a big box of heirloom seeds to Flagstaff Foodlink for distribution to the community gardens and the gardens in the school programs. As Sue was cataloguing the seeds she was surprised to find a package of Bloody Butcher corn! It has a growing season of 120 days and I don’t think I can pull that off in Flagstaff. Would you please plant a row for me in tropical Paulden? I’ll make you a skillet of the best tasting damn cornbread you’ve ever had.
I look forward to the farmers market starting up again so I can see you guys and worship in my own way on Sunday mornings.
Ya’ll be well and pinch the babies for me.
Love,
Tony
