On the farm a lot of time is devoted to moving dirt.

Moving dirt is maybe the main thing we do here. From here to there. clay dirt over with the loam; rocks over in a pile (out of the way-ish), compost waste in separate pile; digging out some of the substandard for the specialized vegetables and putting in richtopsoil. *sigh

Really, there is no end to it.  I suppose because there is no end of dirt.  Under the nails, inside the baby’s diaper (take off the diaper), clay on the shoes (rock needs tobe laid before the rains come cause then, clay gets ankle deep).

Really, no end.

And what does this have to do with simplicity?  More and more, as I live here, more and more, my thoughts lead me back to simplicity.  What it means.  How to live it.  How to define it.  I came across a beautiful teaching:

“Rabbi Simeon bar Yohai said: Three things are equal in importance: earth, humans and rain.  Rabbi Levi ben Hiyyata said: And these three each consist of three letters (in Hebrew) to teach that without earth, there is no rrain and without rain, earth cannot endure; while without either, humans cannot exist.” (M. Genesis Rabah. 13.3).

Perhaps the first rule of simplicity is that we are dependent.  Dependent utterly.  Our power is much less than we think.  Our span, fleeting.  Our power, mostly destructive unless we are…..conservative.  

Simplicity.  ”The Lord placed the human in the garden of Eden – to tillit and tend it.” Gen. 2.15

I used to take for granted.
No longer. You get up in the morning and feel like you have to crack the water in the bowl in order to wash your face and the baby is smiling and waving in his crib, signaling I am cold! pick me up pick me up ack!
It’s time to get a heater.
Of course, we have a heater. Propane. $400. a month last year to heat during the winter. In California. Is this crazy or am I imagining this. I kept expecting the numbers to change. They didn’t.
So, we are looking at wood stoves.
New age, ow particulate matter emission, guaranteed to warm everything from here to Jupiter. Just put in teh wood. WooHoo!
We went to the wood stove store. Talked to the people. Kind of expensive, maybe 2k, 2.5 k altogether. We can do this though’ I think. And the babies teeth are chattering. The Finns (Laura’s family) don’t really think the cold has arrived if it is in the high fifties or low sixties. They just put on layers. Oy vey.
Anyway, the stove lady came out to talk to us ad look at the house. She drives a Mercedes SUV. Business is good for iron stoves, obviously. Also obviously, her car is warm. She steps out and into our house. short skirt. one layer of tight shirt. no socks or slippers (we take off shoes when we come in). She tip toes, then tip toes faster across the floor, her face kind of in a rictus of disbelief. To polite to ask why is it so cold. (Of course that is why she is there in the first place). Starts dancing from foot to foot and talking faster and faster. ‘YOu don’t need a stove. A insert, an insert! Yes that’s the key’. “How uch is that?” I ask.
It turns out to be a thousand more. Then installation. Then padding. We are rapidly getting up into five thousand, six thousand. Who knows.
She is still hoppping from foot to foot.
By this time we have gone silent. We are just watching her dance, thinking about how uch money this is. An open stove is looking pretty good. Hell, even the baby is ruminating on this.

… from my porch, looking southeast — go far enough in that direction you run into city. Looking from the porch, in any direction, over three or four or five lines of hills and valleys, you run into city. Here though, it is a moment suspended.  It is an in-between place. An odd convergence of space and time which has allowed this profoundly rural environment to exist, yet be surrounded by urban.

The nights are very dark; very little light pollution.  The owls and bats cruise the sky and the yip of coyotes is sharp against silence.

It is easy to be simple here and I plan over the next few months to talk about the simple life – and the complexity that seems to be involved in making a simple life. But not forgetting, even for a moment, that this mini paradise is itself a matter of a fortunate confluence of factors and easily swept away.

People crave simplicity. I have found that people talk a great deal about the complexities in their lives – but in reality, after you speak with them a little longer, what really comes forth is a deep need for simplicity. And what is simplicity? And what is a simple life? Certainly it is a matter of fewer possessions – or at least not being covetous or possessed by one’s possessions. The 10th commandment comes to mind: ‘Do not covet; do not covet anything your neighbor possesses….”
So, a discipline regarding possessions. But what else?
I have come to think it also requires a certain ongoing and sustained work or commitment. Simplicity requires commitment.

Not long ago I ritually slaughtered my first chicken. Eight to be exact; over the course of several days. I killed them quickly, as painlessly as I was able, in accordance with Jewish Law. I then plucked them, gutted them. It was a process. It was a straight forward process, but not a tidy one.

Such a work (and I call it work with some reservation, for though it was certainly not play, neither was it any sort of drudgery), demanded the attention of a range of my senses. It demanded my concentration certainly but it also commanded my sense of smell, (the smell of blood is coppery and boiled feathers is sweet, clotted and slightly rancid).

It commanded my hearing, from the sounds of the chicken when I caught it, to the sound of the rope when I bound its feet and the sound of the ritual knife on the whetstone (slick, zippery), to the lowing of cattle in the field nearby.

Such a work commanded my physical senses, but most of all it commanded my sense of time. Unless one has taken on a business-like impatience for time, it is difficult to hurry the matter of killing. Even a chicken. For, while the cut must be instant (in accordance with Jewish ritual law), the preparation and the aftermath of killing (even a chicken) have a pace that is dictated by a slower pulse. What this pulse is and how one might define it I do not exactly know. Yet I have come to think that this pulse runs through many activities in life but abides in marked contradiction to the clipped, machine-like cadences of modern life.

The closest I have come to a satisfactory definition is ‘thoughtfulness’. And the issue of thoughtfulness leads me from ruminations on chicken slaughter to farming – or, more exactly, the thoughtfulness underpinning small-scale farming.

I must first admit though that I am new to farming. Trained as a Rabbi, I was introduced to living on the land by my spouse. I might be defined as a strange hybridized Rabbi-farmer (sounds like quite a contradiction doesn’t it?). My spouse comes to it naturally though. She is the third generation born on this farm (and our son was just born here as well) and she is patiently teaching me (as is her mother).

The whole story … Dead Chickens…