After a decade and a half of springs, of sowings and harvests, of walking this same narrow gravel lane, and packed earth footpaths, it’s too easy to become insulated from the beauty and vision of one’s home.  The familiar becomes comfortable and, in that comfort, the necessity of seeing is dampened.  Your feet know the dips in the path, your mind knows which route to take without much awareness or conscious decision making.  You become the landscape.  

To be a steward is to care, in the deepest and broadest sense of the word. But what does it mean to be a steward in the context of an agricultural system? What I have learned is this: it’s impossible to care about one single thing, because the more you come to understand how precious and beautiful that one thing is, the more you realize how connected it is to a myriad of so much more.

All this is a means to say that when Brad called me not long after he headed up to feed and water the animals last Tuesday evening, I knew something was up.  Even though it happens rarely, my instincts are so alarmed when it does that I leap into action before I’ve hardly even said hello.  It’s almost comical, this auto response. 

These moments?  These are what I love most about land and community stewardship.  When all the planning and working, all the tending and loving, all the careful attention and seeding of encouragement, all this germinates, bursts forth and blooms into something more vibrant, connected, and beautiful than I ever could have hoped for.  

The remaining characters, and they are definitely characters, are the four kittens themselves. We are pretty sure there is one boy and three girls. The little black one is the boy and the closest thing we have to a name for him is “Distinguished Gentleman” due to his mustache and tuxedo. The light-faced tabby kitten is called Pickles… because it’s cute. The other two girls are named Rainy and Sunny.