We will be at the Hillsdale Farmers’ Market this Sunday, 21st of March. The market opens at 10:00 AM. This will be our last market of the season, and we will return in July when the cane berries start to ripen.

The new moon gets rather shabby treatment. For example, nobody gets excited when there are two new moons in a month. For farmers at this time of the year, the new moon guides our activities. Catching the new moon earlier this week, we planted an acre or so of fava beans. Old wisdom tell us the best time to plant legume seeds is upon a waxing moon. Root crops are typically planted on the waning moon.

The practice of planting in concert with the moon is common to most agrarian cultures, and is based on careful observation. It is no more a superstition than the observation that the lunar phases affect the tides. The soil matrix where we plant our seeds has certain characteristics that are similar to a liquid, as the recent earthquakes have reminded us. The interaction between the growing plant, soil particles and water is very complex, and we hesitate at many of the simpler explanations. Planting with lunar cycles is similar to planting when the soil is sufficiently warm. The seeds may germinate in cold soil, but they are more prone to insect and fungal damage. From our perspective, we would rather work with the gravitational pull of the moon, just as we work with the warming effects of the sun.

Our appreciation of fuzzy phenomena was strengthened by the discovery that both us can “witch” or “dowse.” If we need to find a buried pipe or power line, we grab a pair of divining rods, pieces of soft copper pipe or freshly cut willow branches work. It is a remarkable feeling the first time the wires move on their own, and it takes a few hours to get it out of your system and put down the rods. Oddly enough, the first time we watched someone dowse was in Portland. A Northwest Natural worker located a gas line using a couple pieces of copper wire. He told us an older worker had doused with the wires, so he figured it was worth a try and it worked. He was a bit sheepish about it, lest someone would think he was looped. We figured he had some hillbilly in him, and left it at that. Many years later someone showed us how to dowse and, son of a gun, the wires moved. It is simple enough, just support the divining rods so they can move.

We are mediocre dowsers. Some people have a heightened sensitivity and can read more in the movement of the divining rods. Our dowsing ability saves us some time when we need to locate a buried pipe, but interpreting what it is that draws the divining rods together is beyond our ken. Not enough hillbilly in our pedigree, perhaps.

Here is what we will bring to the market:

Freshly Dug and Harvested

Mixed greens

We will have bags of greens, mostly collards and rapa, along with some other odds and ends. They are lovely and tender.

Gobo

Tarragon

Storage vegetables

Sweet Potatoes, Winter Squash

Dry Goods

Dried peppers

Joe’s Long Cayenne.

Dry Beans

Mostly Purgatorio, appropriate for the calendar.

Corn

Roy’s Calais Flint and Amish Butter meal

Popcorn

Carol and Anthony Boutard
Ayers Creek Farm