Patience

I planted beet seeds about two weeks ago, before the first round of rains. I have been watching over them, waiting for signs of life. I have generated several theories as to their fate - that they were damaged by lime, that they were drowned by the rain, that I completely misplanted them. It's a continual nightmare of mine, that things just won't grow, and the beets seemed to prove this to be true.

My mom told me about how my Great-Grandpa Hoadley would plant beet seeds, then get impatient with them and plant more seeds in the same spot thinking the first round was not going to germinate, only to have both sets of seeds finally germinate. I saw this too at Hands of the Earth farm in Austin; peas were sowed in after beet seeds assuming that the beets had failed, only to have beets start popping up everywhere after the peas started germinating.

I think this is the lesson of spring. Perhaps even the lesson of farming. You must wait. Patiently.

This past week has been so wet - we got 2 1/2 more inches of rain. I felt like I was going to burst out of my skin with impatience to plant and do some tractor work (I'd borrowed a tractor just the day before the rain started). During those rainy days I did get my first round of summer crops seeded into the greenhouse, but I really wanted to be putting things out into the field. Now the rain has stopped, but the field is still far too wet to mess in, and needs at least another day or two of rest in the sun.

I walked out there today to check on things, the ground looked stable but with each step I sank into several inches of mud. I teetered through the narrow walkways, stopped to squat by the beets, and stared, training my eyes in on tiny, red stalks. The first beets came up today (thank goodness!), 16 days after I planted them. When I came back into the house I noticed a little message on the windowsill - one of those tabs from a bag of tea with a quote on it, left behind I believe by my friend Liz. It said: "Our patience will achieve more than our force." Easier said than done.