Earth Day

Have you ever heard someone talk about "listening to the land" or "listen to what the earth is saying"? That is something that I have heard a few times from various people and depending on what mood I'm in, I either really try to hear, or I'll scoff and right them off as too hippy-feely for me! I always thought of listening to the land as paying attention to the sounds of the birds and of the buzzing bees and wind blowing through the branches of the trees (made myself a little poem there) but Tuesday out on the farm I experienced a new sound, a sound from underneath the surface of the ground, emanating from below the grass.

We arrived late in the morning and were going to get to work fast because it was supposed to start raining again in the afternoon. It has pretty much been raining almost every day so there are puddles everywhere out there, I'm happy the car didn't get stuck. I had to get from the car to the horse trailer, where we keep our tools and work boots, by walking up through the vegetables to avoid all the huge puddles. As I was walking I heard this trickling sound that seemed to be coming from all around me. I stopped and listened closely, but it faded away. I began walking and there it was again, that trickling or bubbling, so I stopped and listened, but again it faded away. The next time I heard it I bent down to the ground right away and sure enough it was coming from ground all around me. I called out to my partner to come over and listen to this with me (partly to make sure I wasn't crazy). Of course he instantly knew what it was. Apparently when the ground is saturated with water, especially with clay heavy soil, air bubbles get trapped close to the surface and walking on the ground shakes the soil enough to release the bubbles and then water trickles down as the bubbles pop at the surface (He asked me to double check on the interwebs in case his facts were wrong but I couldn't find anything about it, so I'll just take his word for now). I have never had so much fun jumping up and down! It was as though the ground was acting like a big rain stick :) It puts a new meaning to "listening to the land".

After that fun adventure we spent the rest of the morning and early afternoon working on my garden. We put up trellises and planted a bunch of goodies. I had just finished listening to the first lecture in the permaculture series on design, so we made spinach spirals and key holes and used the trellises for shading the partial sun plants. I can't wait to see it all grown up!

It doesn't look like much now, but just wait until all my little seeds start growing :) It wasn't until today that I realized that Tuesday was Earth Day, and what a way to celebrate!