Bramblings: Thanksgiving seeds

Photo by Becky Nelson
We had two seed catalogs in the mail the other day. You can’t help but start planning for next year’s crops, even though we just barely stopped picking the summer crops here. Looking back on the last couple of years, it isn’t all that unusual to be picking the crops in the hoophouses well into November. I didn’t think it was the ordinary until I started looking back at records, and it appears that the unusual is now the usual, or at least the anticipated.

That’s what I feel when I see a seed — anticipation.

I anticipate the summer warmth, the clear skies, the humidity, the hayfields and the sunshine. Wit news reports of supply chain bottlenecks and shortages affecting farmers and their already small margins, I can’t help but wonder what 2022 will bring. Expenses here at our little farm have skyrocketed. Fuel is through the roof. Supplies at the store and produce and products purchased for resale are 10 to 50 percent higher than last year. Wreath products came with a huge sticker shock. Not only were the rings and supplies more expensive, but the shipping cost was a full third of my cost and there was even a “COVID-19 surcharge” probably because labor costs had impacted the supplier.

There have been reports of a shortage of Christmas trees. That too has been impacted by weather, by by the higher costs of fuel, the lack of truck drivers, producers going out of business, high price of labor, and the same difficulties faced by all employers, shippers and purchasers across the nation. The cost of your tree is at least a quarter higher than last year, and for some varieties almost half again the cost. It’s a pretty scary scenario out there. Labor shortages, higher wages needed to get traditionally lower paying jobs filled. Inflation, product shortages, and the COVID-19 years have affected us in lots of ways we never anticipated. And there is that. The virus rages on. We are trying as a nation to control the spread and the loss of life, but I think life will never be quite the same again as just a couple of years ago, and we need to adapt to new ways.

But back to seeds.

They hold the potential for a new crop, a new year, a new life a new hope. Every time I look at a seed I feel that hope. I came across a big patch of milkweed pods the other day. Dull. Gray. Blackened by wet and weather, yet standing strong against the cold fall wind. The pods on the thick stalks had opened but not all the seeds had been dispersed. Looking at the amazing feathers attached to the little seeds, I was filled with that hope. A stiff early winter breeze would come along and lift one of those feathery parachutes into the breeze and send the little seed on a trip. It may only be a few feet, but it might be a mile. That little seed has the potential to drop to a friendly field edge and snuggle into the thatch. In the spring it just might germinate and create another milkweed plant. Traveling Monarch butterflies just might come across the beautiful milkweed blossoms in their travels and stop for a bit of nectar and deposit a couple hundred eggs. A couple of those eggs just might produce a caterpillar and another Monarch butterfly. The milkweed just might produce some seed pods from those blossoms and the circle of life continue.

Seeds. Such hope. Such promise. Such potential.

This Thanksgiving and holiday season we should take a moment to reflect about the hope and the promise ahead of us. The water under the bridge of our past is gone, and we need to look forward to a better day, a better world, a better life.

Seeds. We are those seeds.

Becky Nelson is co-owner of Beaver Pond Farm in Newport. You may reach her at [email protected].