|
|||||||
|
|
|
|||||
|
|
|||||||
|
|
|
The Sunday bonnet Dawn Hunter wears on the seventh day is the hat she wears all week long. Each morning at sunrise, she tucks her short silver hair under the bright fabric and ties the straps beneath her chin. She pulls on a pair of garden clogs, and steps out of the family trailer into a chorus of birdsong. Aurora Farm is her ceilingless chapel, its plots of tilled soil her altars. And during farming season, she kneels in them from dawn until dusk.
It's 8:30 a.m. when I swing my bicycle off Kale Boulevard and onto the gravel driveway that leads to Aurora Farm. Dawn calls hello from the field and waves a green handful of plants at me. She has been harvesting since the sun sliced the morning fog into layers of pink and lifted them from the sky.
Dawn's friend Beth works alongside her today. They are collecting lamb's quarters for Beth's spinach pie and chatting companionably.
"What do you do with this?" Beth asks, pointing at a cluster of anise hyssop plants.
"You just graze it," laughs Dawn, tearing off a piece and nibbling it by way of example.
Beth and I follow suit.
"Mmmmm, tastes like Good 'n' Plenty," says Beth. I nod in agreement, and slip a few extra leaves into my mouth.
Dawn says she uses the plant in a variety of recipes, "and when you come across it in a salad it's just wonderful."
The three of us walk over to the weathered barn that contains produce ready for today's customer pick-up. Beth is one of 11 local clients whose family participates in the Aurora Farm Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program this year. In return for $250 and a 15-hour fieldwork commitment, members take home a regular supply of herbs, vegetables, flowers, grains, plants, and seeds--all organically grown.
Two eastern phoebes dive through the doorway as we enter the barn. Inside, baskets and trays display radishes, edible flowers, assorted lettuces, and cooking greens, all of which Dawn invites me to sample.
I'm immediately sold on the arugula, plain-looking greens that explode in my mouth like a nutty Dijon. The rose petals aren't bad either. I take a deep breath and inhale chamomile, mint, thyme, and dill.
Dawn sweeps her hand over several bunches of wild-harvested nettles and lamb's quarters. "We're giving everybody lots of good nutrients this year," she smiles.
•
Dawn Hunter is one of the healthiest-looking women I've ever seen. Her supple skin glows walnut brown. She has muscular limbs and she moves them with a dance-teacher's fluidity. At age 47, her face has few lines, and those that I see are from smiling and laughing. She is plain beautiful.
Some of Dawn's customers have known her for years and some she has just met. She chats easily with them all--"Let's get you some veggies, eh? Some plants?"--while her dogs bustle underfoot.
As she stands, rake in hand, something in her posture reminds me of the spear-wielding women of mythic Mount Olympus. These were women with close-cropped hair and strong arms. These were women who rode thunderbolts. These were powerful women.
But although Dawn's eyes are intelligent and penetrating, there's nothing fierce about them. Yes, Dawn is a powerful woman, but her power lies in her capability, perceptivity, and compassion.
•
The sun beats down as Dawn and I cross two wooden planks over a small stream and head uphill to the barn. It's only 10:00 and early in May, but today it's unseasonably hot. Two sheep laze in the shade cast by the barn's roof, their wooly bodies shaking as they pant.
Dawn unlatches the wire gate and steps in. A clucking ocean of feathers pours from the chicken coop and floods her ankles.
"Whaddaya think?" she asks the birds, scooping pearls of wheat from a bucket and scattering them with her sun-browned hand. She wades through the sea of darting beaks with ease. "They've been eating barley," she tells me, her hand still sweeping the air. "This is wheat we grew," she adds as an afterthought. "We grew the barley, too."
The "we" she refers to is the core "staff" of Aurora farm: Dawn, her husband Billy, and their five children, Erreth, Blythe, Skye, Olivia, and James. Olivia, 12, and James, 14, still live at home, and regularly help out with planting, transplanting, and watering. Erreth, 22, Blythe, 20, and Skye, 17, live a few miles north in Fairfield, but they drop by from time to time to lend a hand. The bulk of the labor and all of the planning is done by Dawn and Billy.
Dawn heads into the empty coop and pours mash into a stainless-steel chicken feeder. Then she slips her hands into the straw lining the wooden lofts and pulls out half a dozen or so eggs. Placing them in a bucket, she says, "Go ahead, feel them." I cup a smooth, brown oval in my palm. It is still warm. The eggs will eventually be transferred into cardboard cartons for customer pick-up or make their way onto the Hunter's table.
Dawn then picks up a small white bucket and tosses eggshells from the container to the chickens, who scurry over and gobble them up eagerly. I'm a little shocked by this apparent cannibalism.
"Recycling," Dawn explains to me. "Gives them back the calcium they need from when they lay 'em."
It's true, the chickens seem absolutely delighted with the treat. I watch their yellow beaks peck away at the eggshells, and mull it over. It's a reciprocal relationship, I think to myself. Dawn feeds the chickens, the chickens' eggs feed Dawn's family, the eggshells go back to the chickens, the chickens lay more eggs, and the cycle continues. Nobody mourns anything, nothing is wasted, and everybody's belly is full. Go figure.
•
Dawn's pick-up customers tell me they buy from Aurora Farm because the produce is "much more fresh." and has "much higher energy."
Many just love the chance to get out and visit the farm. A mother of three says, "I'd join even if I wasn't eating it because the kids get the experience of working on the farm, coming out here and milking cows and getting eggs and stuff . . . they really enjoy that." She says her 11-year-old son likes to spend the day exploring the Hunters' frog pond.
Another woman comes for the fresh tomatoes. "The difference in taste is phenomenal," she tells me, "just phenomenal." But tastier tomatoes are just a small part of what impels Dawn to grow organically. She tells me that conventional farmers, whether they realize it or not, are destroying approximately 6 pounds of soil for every pound of food they produce. U.S. croplands are losing nutrient-rich topsoil to erosion 17 times faster than the soil formation rate. Worldwide, only 50 to 100 years' worth of topsoil remains. "As a people, we have not taken care of our earth," she says.
Dawn and Billy use sustainable and Biointensive techniques to regenerate the soil as they farm. They also teach and participate in agriculture workshops nation-wide. This past year, they established a Mini-Agriculture Center at Aurora Farm, "so local folks can come and ask questions, check it out, see what's happening, have some feedback and some help."
•
It's called a stirrup hoe and it's good for weeding. Dawn grasps the wooden pole and rakes its bell-shaped head across the dusty topsoil. She does this with a scraping motion, almost as though she's mopping a floor, cleaning, cleaning, scrubbing. She uproots some stringy greens and tosses them against the wire fence that surrounds the plot. She is business-like, loving, ruthless. Squatting down on her haunches, she runs her fingers casually through the plants. The soil is so dry it's nearly white.
"I was kinda waiting for rain so I could get up here and pull them by the root, but we haven't had any rain!" She smiles as she says this, but we both know a farmer's livelihood depends on ample rain.
I inspect the fuzzy, tongue-shaped plants she weeds around. To me, they look like weeds themselves. Dawn informs me they are Echinacea tennessesis plants. She has four other kinds of echinacea growing this year: purpurea, angustifolia, paradoxa, and pallida, which she keeps separated by as much distance as possible to maintain pure seed. Pallida is the only species native to Iowa.
"All the rest of them have their own little niches," she says.
I wonder aloud, What does she do with so much echinacea?
"Oh, I make tinctures with them and offer seed to other people. And plants."
I remember seeing a kitchen cupboard in Dawn's trailer crammed with home-made remedies in glass bottles. "We hardly ever see the doctor," her daughter Blythe told me emphatically.
It's too hot under the sun for me. I retreat to the side of the barn with the panting sheep and watch Dawn work. There's something universal about her motions in the field. In her green garden clogs, she could be a Dutch farmer hoeing potatoes. In her bright Asian "fan hat," she could be a Chinese woman working a rice paddy.
Dawn weeds a small corner of the plot, but the remaining rows will soon be planted with peas, garlic, onion, broccoli, and cabbages. This particular plot is a "mini-agricultural Biointensive demonstration site," which means that only 40 percent of the produce it yields will be eaten. The remaining 60 percent will be composted to nourish the soil.
"Our goal is basically to move towards this strategy on the whole farm," Dawn tells me. If she succeeds, she'll be regenerating the soil up to 60 times faster than nature herself usually does. Not bad.
Today, as usual, the wide Iowa sky contains a bit of everything. There are vast stretches of blue, cottony clouds, and mercurial storm patches; anything could happen. Dawn rakes the hoe against a backdrop of green trees. As the sheep and I hunker down in the shade, I think I see some wet-bellied clouds heading our way. Looks like Dawn might get her rain after all.
