I read over the few posts I have published so far and it is like a time warp, or, better described, a story that is missing several chapters. I never wrote about the mysterious exploits of my attempt to grow heirloom Styrian hulless pumpkins from Austria, which are green and gold, and how the patch produced large orange jack-o-lanterns instead, which caused me to be captured in a 4H-like pose that some people think is cute.

I didn’t explain the feeling of stretching long hose out into the orchard to water, one by one, the new little apple, nectarine, plum and pear trees during last year’s drought, as the sun would go down pink or purple or orange in stripes, and as the coyotes started to bark and howl closer and closer in the neighboring fields.

I didn’t write on the blog about how Sara died to this form of life at the end of May, a short time after I set up and started the blog as I sat with her in her room as she slept.  The days after she was gone, I worked on the farm from sun up to sun down, along with my step father, who knows how to be about the business of working outside on the land, mostly silent, yet purposeful.

I know there is more to write of about Sara, like why her kite hangs in my art studio, and how she painted flowers around her fingerprints on a pink bee hive that now lives down by creek. But the farm was coming to life since May of last year, and there was a pause in place in other ways.

Starting from a more recent point, the farm has been named: Soule Solstice. This is the name because it echoes different purposes of my last name, and because the Solstice happens in winter, too, when, on this unique farm, things are still growing. The name is actually more complete as: Soule Solstice, A Natural Homestead and Farm.   Kelly enjoys a title, followed by a comma, with a descriptive phrase.  Since writing a year ago about piles of dirt and mulch waiting for projects on the farm, a passive solar heat greenhouse has been added to the South side of the barn (“shed”).  Since Fall, and through winter so far, plants have been growing, have been harvested, and have provided deep and bright greens in the middle of a cold and windy landscape outside. Good for the soul? Yes, when the sun shines, even in below zero temperatures outside, it is hot enough in the greenhouse to shed coats and layers. Meanwhile, the middle of the barn is frozen solid.

I can’t fill in all of the missing chapters at once, but I can confirm that a deep seeded vision is emerging in growing things. Some are literal, some are green, some are figurative. Sometimes when grief or hints of fear come washing over, there is a red cardinal that lives somewhere around the farm that will just at that moment come to the window, the fence or the pear tree. And it will face me and look and move its head around just long enough to say that there is another level, more growth, God, Presence…more than me (of course), and a level of experience that is tangible yet invisible. It is a reminder from another realm, and very timely. Bookends can be lives well lived and/or well-ended, evolution of a farm against the backdrop of a distant wilderness (both sharing coyotes), Summer and Winter, chapter one and chapter two. It isn’t so neat all the time, so it will come out in whatever order it can.