A Model for the Destruction of Hard Things

A woman studying the fracture properties

of coconuts may insist that nature

breaks its own structures reluctantly, along fault lines

of hard resin on fibrous interiors. 

She might apply that principle to apples,

animal horns and wood,

profile a pineapple so that she might

learn something about destruction.

You stand alone at the edge of ice, push

a half-submerged tree branch deeper into a hole.

Your branch a lever, the entire frozen pond reacts:

you recognize, (with iterations!) Mandelbrot sets

forming across its surface.  It crackles

loudly beneath you, obeying symmetry,

brokenness: illusions begin

to thaw as water seeps into lines from below.

Coconuts have nothing to do with ice.  Levers

do not determine fault lines.  The sound of wood

splitting has nothing to do with the smell

of a forest in January.  Wait.  Apples just might

have everything to do with a pond in winter.  I’m suggesting:

a woman in a lab, chiseling antlers to celebrate

breaking, has everything to do with you

standing in the cold wood, holding a tree branch.

--First published in Fourth River, Autumn 2011

Song for the Troubled Mathematician Who Confronted Remote Infinities

Cantor was depressive, too. Paranoid,

he believed he heard God’s voice reciting

theorems—divine mathematical whispers.

Here, birds eat, drink, and mate on the wing. Such

aerial existence has a certain

disadvantage: come what may, we all end up

on the ground. But the air has substance.

The spaces between stars are filled with dust

and gas. Large African antelope can survive

indefinitely without drinking. Saw off layers of

antlers to find the atheism of dry things. Still,

—and this explains a few things—

stars coalesce from dust and gas; God’s word

is flexible. Cantor had proof. 

---

[1] Georg Cantor (1845-1918), whose work implied “an infinity of infinities.”

--First published in Fourth River, Autumn 2011

Thank you, again, Tom Andrews, for continuing to answer my questions long after your passing. 
I've been struggling with what to hold constant with all the possibilities for experimentation. Today, re-reading an essay after Codeine Diary, I found this:
"...so much is open-ended when you write a memoir--I'm thinking of the 'writerly' decisions you make: about tone, pacing, structure, diction, repetition, what's left unspoken, and so on. The facts you're writing about, however, are 'closed,' even though there is plenty of room to approach them from different angles, or to acknowledge that you remember them differently at different times, within the memoir. But, in the end, the facts ...are the only 'closed' element amid all the open-ended ones."

"Light, Pinned and Singing": with attributions.

* Originally published in The Fourth River, Issue 8 (Autumn 2011). The borrowed phrases (italics) and credits didn't make it to print.*

http://fourthriver.chatham.edu/index.php/new-poem-by-jessica-reed

Light, Pinned and Singing

I am finally present. As Virginia said,

My eyes are hard. Years ago now,

in optics lab, my partner’s strange

pronunciation of ‘frosted glass’.

We were looking at spectra then: glass-
shattered light lines. But I couldn’t focus.

Those radiant projections—just as dazzling

as their sources. The glisten of one borrowed

from the other. And elsewhere, gaseous auroras

both southern and strange. They’d been there

the whole time. Facts may not shimmer,

but they are star-like occasions for metaphor. Even

if I have to bend them a little. That white

celestial thought. Virginia warned us

all: the light is fitful. White beams of winter,

wind compresses snow into hard

barricades. Shakespeare said fires singe

my white head! In kitchen sinks and pressure

chambers, we manufacture fourteen shimmering

forms of ice. See, I believed Tom when he said

There is indeed some light in us. We seek

to explain it, lest our own fitful light dissipate,

star-like in its collapse, with each

photon no longer so startlingly distinct.

Bruce Bond for "pinned and singing"; Virginia Woolf; Tom Andrews; the “white celestial thought” is Henry Vaughan.

Planting Native Grasses

I was warned: there is virtually no time to write in the Spring and Summer on a farm.


Still, I am an archivist by nature, so at least I documented the process of planting the warm-season native grasses with pictures. Establishing these grasses is expensive and elaborate; that is especially daunting for someone like me, who thought grass was grass until just under a year ago. They say that during the first few years, the grasses are establishing strong root systems and may not grow very much above ground.

This translates to: your field might be very ugly for three years, and only then will you know for sure whether the grass was a success. That's partly why the practice typically involves adding legumes and native wildflowers into the mix. Thankfully, it rained an inch and a half two days after drilling, and one day after broadcasting the remainder seed by hand. This is perfect to pack down the seeds.



One plants these warm season grasses both to control erosion (they have massive root systems) and provide critical wildlife habitat. This album shows the critical two days of planting the grass seeds, mostly Little Bluestem. We started spraying the field two months before (in this case, chemicals are the ecologist-recommended route). Despite all the spraying, the field still looks very grassy in places. Just looking at the unevenness of the field, it's hard to believe the no-till drill will work. The fluffy seeds can't be planted more than about 1/8 inch deep, and one should be able to see 30% of the seed on the surface after planting.

Dad (our neighbor!) supplied the tractor. We rented the drill. The ideal drill in this situation is a Truax, but because there are so few rangeland drills in the state and it was getting close to too-late-to-plant, we ended up with a Great Plains. We were not able to calibrate it like we would have liked. (I had a great video on calibration--free from the US Forestry Service, but this drill was missing the parts to do it right).



Insights about life on this farm will be better after a few years of perspective. At least I've got a few pictures in a Picasa album. I even had time to add a few captions.

Hoop House 1

It took two days to build. It didn't cost a dime.

I am trying to listen to real farmers. So here's one lesson I can recite, but have yet to learn (and the story of how I am obstinately trying to defy it). Real farmers know better than to try to force an early Spring. Around here, they say mid-May is the time to plant. (Of course, it depends on what you're planting, but...) I have not practiced patience, and this winter is killing me. This time last year, I was planting tomatoes and peppers in raised beds in Arizona.

The Indy Star has run pieces on hoop houses--"greenhouse like structures"--that the USDA is supplying farmers, to extend the growing season. Also known as "tunnels," (low and high), these plastic structures retain heat and protect plants from the elements.

Fortunately, the articles and pictures motivated my Dad. That is all it took to start the project. I've talked big about converting our covered porch into a greenhouse someday, but it needs to come in stages, and I need help.


We used scrap wood from his barn and mine, scrap metal from the roofers, river pebbles Mom and Dad had collected, some kind of wire mesh (I still don't know its original purpose), plastic sheeting from painting the house, and we had all the nails, screws and tools we needed on site.

To make the hoops, we took dry-wall brackets from his barn, bent them to 30 degree angles and locked two into each other so there was no sharp edge, pounded them flat together, then bent them into semi-circles. Voila! Hoops.


I confess I did buy dirt. I needed this mix. Good starter dirt is inert, and I just have buckets of worm compost. Here's something I learned: nutrient-full soil is not the ideal way to start seedlings indoors. Sure, it gives the plants a boost--makes them tall and green--but you want to be strengthening the root system instead. It's all part of the hardening process, preparing sheltered plants to move outdoors. I thought that slowly exposing baby plants to the elements was all you needed to do.

The real problem: I need purely passive heat, from the sun and plastic. If the energy-food balance is off,--if I supply electric or fossil-fuel generated heat and light--I won't be living up to my ideal. From the beginning, I have called this a 21st Century Sustainable Energy Farm.

Alas, "real life" intruded, and the something-for-nothing wish was denied. On the second night, we had snow and the temps dropped to the 20s. The caulking to seal up the corners was in danger of not drying. Without good sealant, I'd have a mess on my hands every time I watered. I found myself running Dad's kerosene heater at full blast, burning fossil fuels--both directly and indirectly, as it plugged into an outlet. (If I were to start on how much propane we have burned this season, this discussion would be moot. That is a more pressing goal, but this project was a fun diversion.)

Was Hoop House 1 a success? Not unequivocal, but perhaps I can call it a compromised success. Actually, Hoop House 1's real test has not yet begun. That starts when I plant the seeds.

Life on the Farm

We moved to our Indiana plot next door to my parents in October of 2010. I imagined I would keep an in-depth blog, but the experience has been far too overwhelming to document on a day-to-day basis.

When Grandpa Burrous (left, teaching me to plant corn) passed away last May, the occasion served as a catalyst to get up and move near family. I dreamed of living near my parents, but we would have had to build on the land behind them. That was out of our price range.

In a rapid turn of events just months after Grandpa's funeral, the man who lived in the house next door to Mom & Dad's became ill and moved to Florida. We decided to leave the sunny, beloved desert of the Southwest to farm here.

The winter has been unforgiving: we've had more snow and ice than I've seen in my ten or so years (taken together) of living in the Midwest and years of winter visits. It has given me a chance to read and learn from others, to plan for indoors and out.
I am charting out our native grasses and wildflowers for soil, water, and wildlife conservation, and making the house more sustainable one step at a time. I am impatient by nature, and this harshest of winters has forced me to be still and accept what is beyond my control.








I would like to chronicle the progress of the place and how it teaches me. Only some of this growth will be for others' consumption. I know that the decision to move here was both sudden and had been building for years. Only perspective will help me tell the story.



In the meantime, the tangible:

1) We replaced an old propane water heater with a heat pump hybrid, which will burn considerably less fossil fuel. However, that (and a leak--now fixed--in our propane tank, which fuels the furnace that has kept us warm this winter) only strengthens my sense of urgency over converting to cleaner sources of fuel. I would love to preserve my lifestyle, but I know that the lifestyle comes at the expense of the planet and, more importantly, other people. Sacrifices will, and should, be made. This first winter away from Arizona (after a decade of acclimating to the climate I knew best as a child), the staggering propane bills convinced me and my husband to keep the house at 68 to 69 degrees.

2) We spray-foamed the completely open crawl space--an expense that also saves gallons of propane a month (maybe as few as 2 or 3 gallons, but at $2 a gallon and the rate we're going through it anyway, that's something). We did other, smaller things that I hope will make a marginal difference: caulked around windows and doors, insulated the hot water pipes (I spent that day on my belly and back in the dark, silver-fish infested crawl space), used canisters of spray foam (I do worry about the chemicals) in holes to the house, etc.

3) We put on a metal roof. This will reflect sunlight and reduce cooling bills in the winter considerably. It also makes the house look more modern, matching our sensibility.

4) We will establish 7.5 acres of native grasses in May. This carries a large up-front cost, but the benefits will last for decades to come. After ten years in the Conservation Resource Program, we might consider taking some of the land out of grasses to farm organically.

The rest will come in stages. We will scale up our composting operation from my two worm bins and outdoor spots by the woods. We plan to get some egg-laying chickens this spring. Of course, I will be busy growing produce for our family--and that family now includes two households. I am deeply gratified to know that we can help my parents around their homestead.

There are political and socio-economic caveats to all of this, more than I will recite here. We recognize that this life change is neither righteous nor consistent, nor is it a choice we advocate for everyone. Nevertheless, we came with the hope that we could live better. Better for the earth. Better for family. Better for ourselves. We will continue to be global citizens--hopefully more conscientious and deliberate than before.

That is the plan (the hope, the dream...) Apologies for the sentimentality here! I promise not to take myself so seriously next time. Slipping on the ice and getting the car stuck in the field keeps us humble.

PS: I forgot these two!
5) We replaced the very old carpets with carpet made from plastic bottles.
6) Of course, we changed all the incandescent light bulbs to CFLs.