Patricia Damery's Blog, page 5

Generations

We planted Califonia poppies in our vineyard in 1999 after our Biodynamic consultant prescribed a list of wildflowers to seed between the rows.  My son Casey and I mixed the various seed with sand in a wheelbarrow, some, like the poppy seed, as small as a period, some the size of a pearl. After stirring with our hands and then our arms, we then loaded the precious companions into the cone planter which I then pulled behind the 4-Trax.

It was late in the afternoon. Deep blue clouds rose from the west. I knew that I had little time before the rain turned the clay soil to pudding, so I drove quickly. Donald was right behind me on the tractor,  rolling the seeds in. Just as we finished, large droplets of rain splatted on our faces. It was the beginning of the winter.

I was in a state of ecstasy that afternoon. I always love working with the Earth. I feel larger, present as if nothing else in the world matters but what is at hand: the soil, the seed, the task before me. I felt this way yesterday, entering our garden to pull stray grass blades pushing up in the beds.  I experience this expansiveness walking goats on the paths of our ranch, watching and waiting as they browse poison oak and large-leafed weeds, or bite off mouthfuls of red oaks sprouting from the compost pile.

The vineyard was pulled a year and a half ago due to viruses taking hold during the drought. The undulations of the Earth are blanked in vetch and wild calendula, cayuse oats and fava beans, all descendants of these fall plantings. It is hard to call this cacophony of plants (yes, they do sing!) a fallowness. The truth is, they are busy restoring balance and fertility to a vineyard that served us many years. But none are as flaming and as beautiful as these poppies first appearing on our property in 2000 after being seeded that November day.

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Cruising

The following is one of a series from a trip we took this past month, beginning with the Portuguese Camino, then northern Italy, and ending with a cruise through the Greek Isles and Croatia. The month span of the trip not only gave me a vacation from the news but also brought home how much we are connected and need to consider who else is on the planet. I begin at the end of the trip, the difficult part of the journey for me.

This week Donald and I have been sailing on a cruise ship on the Adriatic, Ionian, and Aegean Seas through the Greek Isles. Our balcony overlooks miles of silence, despite all the noise and activity within the ship itself. There’s a lot to be said for limiting the numbers of these cruises and I am glad Venice will do so in 2020: every day several ships pull up to a little Greek island and regurgitate something like 1000 plus tourists each. At Corfu, I counted five cruise ships one day. We stand in lines to get off and then we inundate the town. After walking in standing-room-only crowds, we stand in lines to get back on the ship. On Santorini, I stood in line an hour to catch the cable car down the cliff to our ship. Yes, the Islands have become dependent on tourism, and yes, I am told they are very ambivalent about this fact. In fact, Montenegro decided it wasn’t worth it after two ships collided coming and going: we could not visit this country which was on the itinerary. Which brings me home again, to the question of what is it going to take for Napa Valley to reach a similar conclusion— or will we choke on our own successes?

Okay, you may have guessed that I am ambivalent about this cruise. It started soon after boarding when we were all called to our emergency stations in one of the main dining rooms. We watched as staff demonstrated how to put on life vests, telling us the greatest danger was fire. Not to leave anything plugged in when we left our room. Not to dry laundry on our decks. And then there is illness: wash our hands often. Use the antibacterial cleansing dispensers ever time we enter or leave a toilet or a restaurant.  I tried not to show my rising anxiety, but between germs and fire and sinking, I felt my stomach clench.

Suddenly I was four years old refusing to get into the rowboat that my father had just rented. We were vacationing at the Lake of the Ozarks. My parents planned to row my small sister and me out into the lake. As my mother was putting on my life vest, I asked what it was for. It’s in case the boat sinks, my mom explained casually. That was it! I would not set foot in the boat. They left me with nearby vacationers who offered to watch me and who, at my request, bought me a coke from a machine on the dock, something my parents later scolded me for.

Flying has also always seemed risky. Do we really belong 36,000 feet in the air? Trains are safer. But this forgotten memory of boats roused its head in the “Versailles” dining room of the Norwegian Star.  Our greatest danger is fire, the voice on the inter-calm announced. Don’t smoke. Don’t hang clothes on your deck. Unplug everything electrical every time you leave the room. 

Laundry on the deck? The windy deck? There is also the hazard of never seeing your undies again, but how would they catch fire? This seems like overkill, but I am not taking any chances. After the California fires of the last three years, I have had enough of fire! No drying on the deck.  Yes, I will unplug and I don’t smoke.

But there are other dangers. What about suffocation in crowds? Or participation in an economy that renders the locals unable to afford homes in their ancestral lands? What about our carbon footprint in flying to the cruising site, and then the carbon footprint of the cruise itself, which competes with air travel? And the pollution of our oceans, which is also significant.

But it’s not a clear-cut issue. Yes, I also enjoyed this cruise, although I won’t do it again for the above reasons. The peace on the deck outside our cabin with its wide vistas mesmerizes me, bringing the rhythm of waves into my dreams. And then there’s visiting ports and sailing seas that have always inhabited myth more than the everyday world for me… meeting people from Italy and Greece, Australia and England, Germany and the Ukraine, Mexico and Northern Ireland… it’s a melting pot of a ship. I can’t help but think there’s a value of all of us in this together, taking turns, standing in lines to get on and off, laughing at a child challenging a grandfather at shuffleboard or offering to help an aged parent up a ramp. We may speak a number of languages, but we also speak the language of the heart: petting stray, fat cats patrolling a dock, having our pictures taken with willing resident dogs because we miss our own back home. We have more in common than we don’t. 

We’ve got to make it on our planet. We got to find a way to cool this earth down. Maybe within this high carbon footprint, polluting ship is also a seed of hope: the experience of our common humanity, even with all its hazards.

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Climate Strike, Napa Style

For many of us attending the downtown Napa Climate Strike yesterday, the event was energizing if also poignant. Such energy! I could hear cheering and chanting from several blocks away as I parked and walked down Main Street to Veterans Park, the beginning of the march. As new groups of students arrived carrying signs and cheering, they were greeted with cheers and clapping. So much excitement! So much optimism. That’s where the poignancy comes in.

We older folks stood in the back, in the shade. A Napa Register reporter approached me: Why are you here?  I gestured toward the cheering, shouting group of kids, ages from kindergarten through high school, and said, They need us. They need our support because they are facing a huge burden: climate change. And the actions of many of our governing officials do not reflect this.  Yes, we are in a climate emergency.

As I was telling my son Casey and daughter-in-law Melissa about the march last evening, Casey showed me the most recent National Geographic magazine. On the front cover was a man kneeling over the last white rhino on the planet, dead. Opening the magazine, I came upon a picture of a giraffe, the largest living ruminant on the earth,  laying on its side, shot. What would ever motivate someone to kill such a beautiful animal? The issue is on extinction. “This issue is too sad to show Wesley and Sabien,” Casey said, and then added, “Yet I have so much respect for National Geographic reporting as they are.”

When is a child able to take in the severity of our situation? At what age can they handle knowing the facts? Yesterday I asked myself that as I watched classroom after classroom arrive, as chills ran up and down my arms as I listened to the cheering welcoming each group: the little ones, the teenagers. As I listened to their “yes we can” attitude. Yes, they are optimistic. Yes, that is good, because it will carry them a distance. But we need to have their backs. We all have to act as if this is a climate emergency– because it is.

 

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Using a Quill

My youngest son Casey made this quill fountain pen for me. The point of the pen slows my writing down, but I also like to think it brings something of the spirit of wild turkeys into the written word.

Casey has always been unique in his pursuits. When he was still in the early years of elementary school, he started collecting swords, two of which he wanted to be mounted over his bed in an “X”. “No mom would allow that in earthquake country,” I told him. He was annoyed but complied. I am sure he understands now that he has two sons of his own, both about that age.

When he was in middle school he joined the Center for Creative Anachronisms and learned to fence. He ordered pirate hats with feathers and great capes lined in silk. Once in Florence, Italy, he bargained with a hardware store owner for the price of armored gloves. When he discovered that the store owner tricked him and was only selling him one glove for the agreed-upon price, he walked away from the deal.

These days he makes unique and beautiful knives, often out of old files he finds at garage sales and then fires and reforms the steel. A son whom you can count on to do the unexpected, he is massively generous in his time and energy. He is also one of the best critics that I have of my own writing, telling me as he sees it. He is reading my most recent manuscript now, Fruits of Eden: Fighting for Home in Napa.

What I like about writing with Casey’s quill is this: a fountain pen definitely slows me down, not like typing or even writing with a uni-ball pen. I become conscious of the movement of my hand as the words flow. Do I write different words than when I type? I ask myself this. Does slowing down put us in a different state of mind? Then add that wild turkey feather energy to the mix. Wild turkeys know how to live in the wild. I like to think one of their feathers brings a little of that to my writing.

Casey too. He is a little of the wild, the generous, the one who walks to his own drummer, and when I use this gift from him, I feel all of that.

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Pilgrimage

In two and a half weeks I fly to Lisbon and then on to Galacia, Spain, to join ten other women in walking the Portuguese Way Camino. The path has been traveled for centuries by pilgrims, a path weaving through myth and legend, fiction and fact. Preparation for this journey involves walking 4-10 miles a day, as prescribed by our leaders over the four months preceding the trip. This particular week consists of an hour and a half each weekday and about 3-4 hours at least one day on the weekend.

I  have been a walker for many years. When I was in my mid-twenties, I accompanied a group of eighty teenagers for 100 miles in the High Sierra. I had gone camping with my family as a child and had done a lot of camping with the Girl Scouts, so I anticipated this would be similar, but I was wrong. The first day we climbed from 7000 to 9000 feet, an altitude I had seldom experienced and in which we would reside for most of the next three weeks. I thought I would die.  The 40-pound pack was a third of my weight and my knees suffered, swelling. I comforted myself by imagining being rescued by a helicopter.  There were many high spots, though, no pun intended. The beauty of the mountains took me by surprise and bonded me forever to thin air and austere ruggedness.  I learned to snowplow in my boots down snowy slopes while wearing that awful backpack (yes, there was unexpected snow, and we froze at night), and to wade waist-deep through streams of snowmelt holding onto ropes for balance. I still can remember almost every day of that trip. Looking back, I realize it was a pilgrimage, a time outside of time that was also life-changing.  One of the greatest benefits was the realization that if I was in as bad a shape as I was then, I wasn’t going to make it to 70! Since then, I can count on my two hands every day that I haven’t walked at least 3 miles, a daily practice that is the meat of my life.

Walking is not new to me. Our ranch has trails I walk every day, and often with my goats or our dogs. The ranch is a friend, and these walks are visits. But this new regime of preparation for the Camino is different. The shift in the length of time I walk has pushed me to find more places to walk. When my husband and I visited his brother in Florida this past month, I kept up my regime, but it involved getting out before sunrise to tolerate the heat in a climate in which the intake of breath is like breathing bathwater. Covered in sweat that dripped from my brow even at that early hour, I witnessed landscapes and fauna foreign to me: the sandhill cranes that walked up to meet me; the eight-foot alligator swimming between me and the pond next to my brother-in-law’s home. Through it all I was developing a mantra, of sorts, asking myself: why am I embarking on this journey now? Where am I at this point in my life? What is important to me? It has opened a space within of quiet reflection, space not site-specific, unlike walking the familiar trails of our ranch, but more pure and ethereal. Perhaps, after all, that is what pilgrimages are.

Our leaders have sent us chapters of lyrical material on the Camino, its legends, its history, and the function of pilgrimage. One of my favorite sections addresses the liminal space pilgrimages afford, stating that “a pilgrimage route is designed to take you into a place between worlds, the ordinary and the sacred.” I realize that function has begun for me in the preparation period: the strains on my body, the unfamiliarity of the several routes I walk, the extended time by myself to think, meditate. Already I am changed.

 

 

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A Mountain Lion’s Death

A Mountain Lion’s Death

Last night or early this morning a landowner shot a 13 month old mountain lion cub, a lion that had recently been pushed away from its mother and was out hunting for himself. Only four nights before I had watched scientist Quinton Martins’ team trap this lion, sedate him, and then collect biological samples of his blood, feces, and DNA. They weighed him, took his vital signs, measured his tail and body, studied his teeth and claws, and then collared and tattooed him. They would follow him over his lifetime to understand more about the habits of this creature for which that I have come to have great respect. 

I didn’t always feel this way. I really was tested on my balance with nature philosophy! Only hours before, my main objective was to get rid of Jupiter, the name that I was privileged to  confer upon him. He had killed one of my dear goats, Dasher, and the images of the grisly death still lay before me. I wanted to protect the rest of my goats and llama, all traumatized, and I wanted to protect my grandchildren who also live on the property.  I had spent the morning getting a trapper through the game warden and Fish and Game. By state law this ends in euthanizing the lion. I thought this was the only alternative until a friend insisted that I talk to Quinton and his organization, Living with Lions.  Quinton arrived with his team, set up his trap. By 12:51 am Tuesday morning, Jupiter, or P15 as they called him, was trapped. The trap set off a camera, sending a photo to Quinton’s phone. Within the hour,  the team arrived. My son and I watched as the lion was sedated and studied. 

As Quinton worked, he reassured me that there are measures to take to secure my goats and family so we are safe. To kill this lion would do no good whatsoever, he insisted. Studies show the same lion seldom returns to the same spot to kill after the carcass is eaten. They seldom bother humans. Lions are a keystone species, necessary for keeping a healthy balance in the deer population. Their presence is a reflection of health in an ecosystem. Our main defense with our domestic animals is to keep them inside a secure area from dusk to dawn. The fact the lion killed Dasher was not the lion’s fault; it was mine for not securing her that evening.

We cannot continue to pursue a policy of killing these magnificent predators. There are a number of mountain lions out there with wide ranges. We need to learn to live with them, not kill them off. Should you encounter a problem with a mountain lion or should you want more information about how to live in our county which has a number of mountain lions, please contact Quinton’s team at 707-721-6560 or quinton.martins@egret.org of the Audubon Living with Lions.

I feel such sadness: first, for the death of Dasher. Now for this death of Jupiter. One of Quinton’s team, Alex, texted me a quote the day after we watched Jupiter’s collaring:

“Again and again, I am reminded that the wild, like the human spirit, cannot be managed or reproduced, it can only be recognized, protected, and honored.” (Rick Bass, “Wild Berries”)

Perhaps the best tribute I can make to Jupiter and Dasher is to understand the importance of learning to recognize our fellow creatures and their habits so we can protect ourselves and those we love, while honoring the natural flow of what can also be a brutal world.

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In Celebration of 19 years! Thank You!

Celebrating 19 years

In August 2018, Donald and I celebrated 19 years of growing Biodynamic organic lavender. We began when our viticulturist suggested we try another crop on some of our vineyard land where the vines weren’t thriving. Lavender uses less water, and our land does not have much. Besides, he claimed after having taken a lavender growing workshop, we could make 3-4 cents a stem (dream on!) About the same time, we had another grape crop on Mt. Veeder that wasn’t ripening. A friend referred us to a biodynamic consultant who he claimed could help. It was a leap of faith, but we saved a grape crop and increased grape tonnage on our ranch where we live. I have recorded the story in Farming Soul: A Tale of Initiation.

The lavender also thrived. We quickly learned we knew nothing about marketing and now we had an acre and a half of lavender to market! Again, some good fairies arrived in Lowell Downey, who early on referred the Napa Valley Register to do a story on organic farming, and Kathleen Parks-Perry, graphic designer, who designed our labels and helped with our website, created a marketing plan, and even helped “woman” a booth at several Mustard Festivals. She also designed a booth for an Austin TX All Things Organic trade show (2003) in which we got some big projects. 

And then there were the bees—our big marketers! —who seduced the Napa Valley Register photographer into two Sunday two-page spreads. He arrived two mornings before dawn to catch that moment the sun hit the lavender where bumble bees slept all night. When the warmth hit the bees, each slowly removed its proboscis from the lavender and flew away, caught on film.

The biodynamic process has changed both Donald and me, weaving us into the land in a way that nothing else could have. Biodynamics is good farming, yes. You learn to watch the crops, to walk the land every day (“the best fertilizer is the farmer’s feet”). You pay attention and do all the things a good organic farmer does. But biodynamic farming goes the next step. It also deals with the energetics of life.  Stirring preparations often takes an hour, and in that hour we meditate on the ranch and all who live here, picturing harmony and health for all, including you, our customers. We appreciate the discipline that biodynamic farming offers, a discipline we will continue. 

Our attention now turns to the forest. Most of our ranch is forested, and after the fires of 2017 which got way too close, after we evacuated our goats and llama and ourselves in the early hours the night it all began, the eastern ridge glowing gold, the western sky, orange—we know it’s only a matter of time until we too are visited by Fire. But how do we maintain a forest in a healthy way? First Peoples knew, caring for the forest for centuries. That knowledge is still there, and we will turn to it as well as that of foresters, and yes, of biodynamic consultants.

We are in a fallow period, not unlike the crystallization time Rudolf Steiner describes (January 15-February 15) in which what is above ground is quiet but in which the earth is most receptive to the cosmos. We had to pull our grape vines this year and have decided the earth needs the rest. We are caring for our aromatics, waiting to see what impregnation of Spirit occurs and where we go from here. We are also getting older and preparing for that transition we all make. How does that fit into this? A fallow period in which we are open to the larger energies of Spirit will help us decide.

We appreciate all of you, our readers, customers, friends and family who have used our dried and distilled products over the years. May your 2019 and beyond be fulfilling and may you thrive. 

Note: We will keep our e-mail list for notification of any future plans. Should you wish to contact us after December 31, 2018, use my e-mail: pdamery@patriciadamery.com.

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The Holy Nights

The Holy Nights

A blog from three years ago, but the sentiment endures!

I know! Many people are happy when the days lengthen, but I am always a little sad when the morning light comes earlier and the sunset stretches the day into the evening.  I love the festiveness of Christmas and then the contrasting quiet of the  short days after. Naps happen spontaneously, even while reading the book I never get to. The air is crisp, and the earth on the trail, slippery with the latest rain. Early evening often gives way to a long winter’s sleep.

These twelve days of Christmas from December 25 to January 6 are called the Holy Nights. Cultures all over the world celebrate this time of the birth of light. Rudolf Steiner believed that during this time, we can interact with the spirit world and the forces of the earth in special ways¹.  You can feel this access in that draw to the in-between states. It is a time for mediation and vision, a time to rest so the spirits can speak. This is the time to set intention for the coming year.

And so I set intention: that our work here will serve the earth and our bodies, that all who reside here, flourish. That we hold the light of love and hope for life on our earth into the new year and beyond.

May you too have a rich and meaningful span of Holy Nights! And may your intentions become your guiding stars!

Patricia and Donald

Harms Vineyards and Lavender Fields

¹”The Season When the Earth is the Most Inwardly Alive: Biodynamic Practice September through March,” by Karen Davis-Brown. Applied Biodynamics, Newsletter of the Josephine Porter Institute. Fall/Winter 2016, Issue No.88. p.13.

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Return of the Light

Return of the Light

Note: This was originally published three years ago, but its sentiment still holds. May you too celebrate the returning of the light on every level!

The longest night of the year is over. The light is returning.

The pause is to be noticed, like the moment between the inbreathe and the out; the out breathe and the in. Celebrating this time joins us with all who have done so before, including those not so immune to the dark and the cold.

Yes, we have the illusion of control of the dark with our electric lights, and we have the illusion of control of the cold by our heating. But at what cost?

At this time of the celebration of the winter solstice and  of the incarnation of the divine child, it has never been more important to keep our candles burning, our hopes for the planet stoked. For me, nothing does this more than gratitude and joy. Gratitude places me in proper relationship to the Other, whether that be our family, our ranch, our community, Earth, the Divine.  And joy opens my heart to receive, makes life’s simple pleasures enough.

My gratitude extends to the many plants on our ranch which have served us with sustenance and with a path of living this year. Learning and using the medicinal and nutritional aspects of lavender, rose geranium, and helichrysum italicum, has not only healed Donald and me on occasion and, yes, even our goat, Gaviota! but the plants have also served as teachers. Steiner called the farmer the quintessential — consciousness. These plants, and others… the grapes, the garden, the many natives: valley oak, black oak, coastal and interior live oaks, toyon, wild blue rye, shooting star… the list goes on and on!  —these teachers weave us back into the landscape, reminding us that we are only one part of the whole, and a younger part at that!

Donald and I are grateful to you, dear Readers and Customers. You have provided human warmth to our farming efforts. I love to package the essential oil and hydrosols, imagining the healing essences of these plants traveling all over United States to heal and delight you.

I am grateful for the coyotes yipping at odd hours all night and the white ghosts of barn owls swooping soundlessly over the meadow at dusk. For the doe and her fawns who sneaked grapes despite all our efforts to fence them out,  and yes, even for the pack rats! for the presence of these wild critters reminds me of balance, and that when they are here, all is well.

I am grateful for the 2.5 inches of rain this week and  for some movement in the 2015 Paris Climate Conference and the growing flame of awareness among nations that our relationship to the earth and to each other is interconnected. That we can still take up the challenges of the quintessential. That it is critically important to our survival that we do.

May you celebrate life and the joys of this holiday season with family and friends and  feasting. May you fan the fire of hope for our planet through everyday action. Don’t sink too long into despair—that is the lesson of the season: it is turning.  As the last line of the solstice song says, The light of the sun is born in the longest night! 

Elizabeth keeping the Ancient Flame alive.

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Yule Goat

Yule Goat

Another of our past postings, first published three years ago today! Somewhere in our psyche we know these things.

Evidently Santa Claus is the result of a long development of the original legend of the Scandinavian Yule Goat.  The  Norse god Thor’s chariot was draw across the sky by two goats, which Thor killed  and fed to the other gods for the winter festival. But the next morning he had great remorse and resurrected them with his hammer.

In the convoluted way that stories… and goats!… move, the Yule Goat appeared before Christmas in various ways throughout Scandinavia to check up on preparations and to demand gifts. Young men would dress up as the Yule Goat, walk and sing in the streets and get rowdy.  A Christmas prank was to sneak a goat into a neighbor’s home, who then had to sneak it into someone else’s to get rid of it!

Gradually, rather than demand gifts, the Yule Goat brought them. It is thought that St. Nicholas and Father Christmas may have replaced the Yule Goat in the late 19th century. The Yule Goat is still depicted being led by St. Nicholas or, in Sweden, being ridden by Santa Claus. One interpretation is that St. Nicholas is overcoming the Devil.

Speaking with a friend yesterday, I remembered how children often are afraid of Santa Claus. How many times do we see young children crying as their ambitious parents force them onto the lap of the large, bearded saint for a picture? I wondered aloud at this fear. Yes, Santa Claus looks different from everyone else the child meets, no wonder he or she is suspicious!  But I also wonder if somewhere in that child’s psyche, he/she senses the ambivalent nature of that seemly jolly old saint who once was an ornery Yule Goat!

Sources:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yule_Goat

http://festivals.iloveindia.com/chris...

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