It's been a hectic week here on the farm even by July farm standards. We're having some technical difficulties with the filtration and flow on our gravity water feed system, which means we've been running around like crazy chickens micro-managing what precious water we have to make sure it gets to each plant, but as sparingly as possible. A very special thanks goes out to our neighbor and wizard Scott Kelley, who's been on the case so we can focus on the plants as much as possible. Save the best cauliflower head for him!)
It will all be OK, but the busyness has meant less time to craft newsletters! We had one all worked up in the old noggin about seasonality and the arc of growth and limits, but it will have to wait for next time.
So this week, in honor of this week's fresh torpedo onions, we'll leave you with the one-and-only... Pablo.
Blessed water!
* * * * * * *
Ode to the Onion
by Pablo Neruda
Onion,
luminous flask,
your beauty formed
petal by petal,
crystal scales expanded you
and in the secrecy of the dark earth
your belly grew round with dew.
Under the earth
the miracle
happened
and when your clumsy
green stem appeared,
and your leaves were born
like swords
in the garden,
the earth heaped up her power
showing your naked transparency,
and as the remote sea
in lifting the breasts of Aphrodite
duplicating the magnolia,
so did the earth
make you,
onion
clear as a planet
and destined
to shine,
constant constellation,
round rose of water,
upon
the table
of the poor.
You make us cry without hurting us.
I have praised everything that exists,
but to me, onion, you are
more beautiful than a bird
of dazzling feathers,
heavenly globe, platinum goblet,
unmoving dance
of the snowy anemone
and the fragrance of the earth lives
in your crystalline nature.
* * * * * * *
See you in the fields,
David and Kayta
