Springtime at the Funky Farm

Spring has arrived in all its glory here at Ferraro’s Funky Farm. Above is a photo of an old sign that was painted lo these many years ago, and not by me, but by another calligrapher who used to frequent these precincts (and who, legend has it, actually brought Donald Jackson by the Funky Farm during his seventies tour of the U.S. – doesn’t he sound like a rock star! but that’s another story). The sign was here when I arrived thirty years ago so it is at least that old. I love this old sixties-style lettering with its whiff of psychedelia.

Amazingly this old sign has kept its paint mostly intact, though I think in places the paint is all that’s left as the wood has shrunk around it. It’s been through floods that have periodically risen above the banks of Coyote Creek to inundate this chicken coop, which lives in the floodplain in our lower back yard. Over the years this coop has housed chickens, pheasants, and most recently a whole bunch of rabbits. My dear husband Pat is a farmer at heart and can usually be found deep in the vegetable garden which makes up our front yard, or digging manure out back (to fertilize all those vegetable plants), or mowing the vineyard, or icing his sore back after all this interactivity with nature. Me, I have done my share of gardening and canning, but mostly these days tend my medicinal herb garden.

After I began this post this morning, I heard the news that there will be an organic vegetable garden planted on the White House lawn. They are digging up the lawn today. There are so many good things about this I don’t know where to begin, from healthy food grown locally to the money saved by growing our own food to the energy saved from trucking less of it across the country to the sheer joy of getting people back in touch with dirt. Gardening was one of the first ways I became acquainted with the old ways and the ways of my ancestors.

Today is the vernal equinox, Ostara in the Wheel of the Year. A time to contemplate balance, or lack of it, in our lives. The days will continue to get longer from now to the summer solstice, so there is no better time of the year to attune ourselves to the increasing light and energy of our celestial life-giver, the sun. What a splendid time of year!