Homesteading Middles: Unveiling Ferns + Cutting Sweetgrass = Slowing Down

I was once in the audience for a panel of diary farmers. ”It used to take 6 weeks to harvest hay and bring it into the barn. Now with machinery, it can be done in a day and a half. The funny thing is, it is not as though I am sitting twiddling my thumbs for the extra five and a half weeks that I used to take haying.”

I was thinking about this recently when mowing around bits of fern pushing forth in the grass. I will come back later with the grass shears and unveil the rest of them.

So I put the mower away and grabbed the hand sheers - two razor blades with no mercy for soft greenery. I kneeled down on the earth and looked at the hillock of grass and ferns, deciding where to snip first. Holding the ferns apart, I dove into the tall grass. Swoosh, snip, swoosh went the blades.

This reminds me of cutting Bean and Dragon’s hair.

Parting the grass, choosing a location to cut, moving to the next part of the hillock. Turning myself around the hillock to make sure all hiding ferns were standing tall among cut grass.

This must be what Robin Wall Kimmerer means when she said that her people, those who know of Skywoman, not Eve, say Sweetgrass is the hair of Mother Earth.*

Soon, I went to where Dragon and I planted Sweetgrass last year to see how it is fairing.

First I used the machine to give myself a border around the area. Loud, and fast, and the opposite of intimate. Then I knelt down - smiled, and pulled out the hand tool.

Snip, swoosh, snip, swoosh. Parting the Sweetgrass from the grass around it. Cutting the grass down so I could mulch around Mother Earth’s hair… I will give it another year or two to grow before harvesting any.

To harvest to say thanks.

*The lessons in this story are so profound. “Skywoman bent and spread the mud with her hands across the shell of the turtle. Moved by the extraordinary gifts of the animals, she sang in thanksgiving and then began to dance, her feet caressing the earth. The land grew and grew as she danced her thanks, from the dab of mud on Turtle’s back until the whole earth was made. Not by Skywoman alone, but from the alchemy of all the animals’ gifts coupled with her deep gratitude. Together they formed what we know today as Turtle Island, our home.” (page 4, Braiding Sweetgrass)

Humans are the animals who pray.