Patricia Damery's Blog, page 6
December 10, 2018
Letting Go
My Feldencrais practitioner told me that the human nervous system is organized around two bipolar processes at birth: Pushing and being pulled; and latching onto the nipple and letting go. He said the most difficult action is letting go.
Letting go of Harms Lavender business has been a saddening process. We have received wonderful e-mails from you, our loyal customers, you whom we have met through e-mails, at open houses, through packing your orders. Some of you are our neighbors.
We do want to explain some of the timing of our decision. The biodynamic certifier in United States, Demeter USA, lost its organic certifying arm, Stellar Certification Services, this fall. This meant that we would need two certifiers if we continued both Biodynamic and organic certification, and it meant a major expense of reprinting labels.
We are growing older, and the ranch is a lot of work. As we downsize, we are deciding what we will do in the future and what we won’t. This certification fiasco was the final straw!
So this may be a pause— a sorbet course, of sorts, a clearing our palate. We will keep your e-mails and inform of any future plans. We may expand the kinds of aromatics and medicinal plants we grow and focus on distillation. Distillation is an alchemical process that changes everyone involved— moves us all down to our essences, which is why it’s so healing. The process is addictive!
So although we are letting go of the business part, at least for now, we are still growing aromatics and we are still distilling. We continue biodynamic practices, which include organic and go beyond. We will wait and see what happens next. To quote Phil Schiller (Apple senior vice president), “There’s a little bit of pain in every transition, but we can’t let that stop us from making it. If we did, we’d never make any progress at all.”
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December 8, 2018
New Eyes on the Ranch!
First published March 9, 2016. Casey and Melissa and their two sons are living on the ranch with us. Both boys know where the sweetest blackberries grow, when to pick wild strawberries and where. They have helped with the lavender harvest every year and they continue to be a joy in the rediscovery of everything else that also lives here.
Donald and I are delighted that our youngest son Casey, our daughter-in-law Melissa, and our grandsons Wesley and Sabien, are joining us on the ranch! In the next months they will be taking over the lavender and aromatic operations, bringing new insights, energies, and projects. Melissa and Casey are particularly interested in nature-based education and bring that sensibility in working with groups of parents and their children. More on this soon!
Preparing for a raining walk.
For me, I am submersed in the great pleasures of grandmotherhood. I adore these grandsons. They bring a sense of wonder in a new pair of boots in a rainstorm, a crow in the garden, the worms in the driveway. A few hours with them returns me to center—yes, tired, perhaps, but also strangely revived!
These precious times when I remember the pleasures of the moment are also times I know why I am sitting through hours of Board of Supervisor meetings, Planning Commission meetings, and farming Biodynamically. These children are inheriting the earth. They are coming into an unprecedented time when the earth is warmer. We have no idea what this will mean for them. We need to do everything we can to learn a new relationship with the earth and to enjoy it with these children teachers who know the pleasures of an earthworm.
Wesley and Sabien weeding with Grandpa.
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December 6, 2018
We Are Closing Our Business on December 31, 2018
With some sadness, we wish to announce Harms Lavender will be closing our lavender and aromatic business on December 31, 2018. We have loved growing lavender and distilling lavender and then, in more recent years, helichrysum italicum and rose geranium. Working with these lovely, medicinal aromatics has been humbling and instructive in learning to listen to the earth and the plants it supports. Every time I package an order, I imagine the energy of the plant and of the soils and air in which it grew traveling to you, spreading the energies which organic and biodynamic practices afford.
We are ending our business but we continue our biodynamic discipline. The Biodynamic sprays and practices support carbon sequestration and make us all more in tune with working with plants and soils versus dominating them. We believe these practices may well mitigate some of the impact of climate change.
Over the next three weeks we will reprint some of our favorite blogs and offer you special deals as we sell out our existing stock. Please watch our site for specials.
We thank you, our many customers for your loyalty.
This week check out our sale on Biodynamic organic lavender essential oil!
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October 26, 2018
Old Growth Lavender: Lot#Toyon17
Old growth, gnarly vines produce fruit which in turn results in prized wine, but seldom do we hear of old growth lavender. We have a small acreage of lavender that we decided not to replant, but we didn’t pull it either. Its short stems are good only for our still yet so short they are difficult to harvest. But the work is worth it! The distilled essence of those ancient plants is ebullience! It has all the tones of the earth it grew from and the resonances of the sun which blares hot in the afternoon. The earth there is clay-like, and water is scarce, and yet the old plants’ joyful struggle to continue is recorded in the aromatic whiff you get every time you open a bottle of it―Lot number Toyon17.
Three of our five growing areas are labeled with the name of a goat, each of which is now on the spirit plane. “Toyon” is the name of this ancient field. Toyon was a sweet, independent pygmy goat whose mother Sophia equaled her in independence―but also in socialabilty. You get that in this essential oil, that energy: joi de vivre! love of life! the ability to rise above harsh and difficult circumstances and thrive!
More and more scientists discover the value of the plants that we have intuitively known are healing, and lavender is one of those. In the New York Times this week an article discussed recent discoveries of the value of lavender, and particularly the chemical linalool in lavender, in treating anxiety and pain. They discuss replicating that in medicine. But I know this: the plant lavender is so much more. Yes, she treats anxiety and sleeplessness, but she is also teacher who knows how to survive difficult times with love of life in tact. A relationship with lavender also brings an opportunity to discover her many qualities; her essence which comes to you in her essential oil brings with it the totality of time and place and love of living.
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August 6, 2018
Pause on Pulling a Vineyard
The last of the vines were ripped from the earth this week, the vines that were planted the same year Donald and I were married 24 years ago. We both feel sadness in their departure. Piles of vines and trellises punctuate the middle of the vineyard. The earth is disturbed where they grew only days ago.
They had to go. Weakened by the five year drought, they had been infected with two viruses. They were also Chardonnay grapes. We sold them for almost as much as it cost to grow them. The economics didn’t work. Cabernet brings three times the amount per ton.
Our plan is to plant ground cover and let the earth stay fallow for a couple of years. The soil will rest from what we have drawn out. We will run the goats on it, bringing in needed animal energy (and manure).Time allows us to listen to the earth and to our own hearts and figure out what we want to do next.
When I look at the rolling slope of the vineyard scraped down to her basics, I imagine what this vineyard and this valley used to be. Did valley oaks skip across her reaches? Was this also a a camp for the Wappo whose grinding stones we have found on the slope to the seasonal creek?
Last night Casey, Melissa, Wesley and Sabien camped near the old pioneer cemetery, setting up their tent just as the golden eastern ridge faded in the sunset. I was driving the mule through the carnage when I came upon my grandsons running excitedly toward me, flapping pillows like angel wings. They spend the days collecting broken irrigation parts to make into light sabers. They catch baby frogs the size of peas by the small pond as they gorge on the wild blackberries rimming it. Wesley turned 8 three weeks ago, Sabien, 6 this coming Wednesday. They are not nostalgic, do not know the way it was twenty-four years ago when the small plants were the background of our wedding photos, the wedding held in the same place as their camping spot. The future is in them, in this soil that was here when the Wappo were, when Donald first thought of a vineyard, when we were married, and now.
I ask the land: Help me dream into the future. Give me vision. I will listen.
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July 7, 2018
Measure C: the Next Steps
The aftermath of the loss of Measure C (the watershed initiative that would have offered some protection for oak woodlands and water supply) by 641 votes out of the 35,700 votes cast, has the quality of the quiet just before dark clouds rumble on the horizon. Soon the winds pick up, whipping treetops. Lightening bolts flash. When I was a child, we were taught to count from the moment we saw the fire serpent until we heard the explosive crack. One-one thousand, two-one thousand, three-one thousand, four-one thousand, five-one thousand. Each five seconds was a mile. My father told me lightening fertilized the soil, ripping nitrogen molecules apart to recombine with oxygen, then dissolve in rain, and seep into to the earth. Violent action can have positive consequences. Perhaps it will be so in Napa as well.
Is this the rhythmic pause between the in-breath and the out-breath? Or are we holding our breath? How hard to live with ambiguity, that consequential curse of eating from the tree of knowledge of the opposites. Is this the beginning of transformation? Jung spoke of the transcendent function, that which may appear when we consciously entertain all aspects without projecting what we don’t want to claim. Only then can something entirely new come, something often beyond our wildest imaginations. In the Jewish esoteric text of the Kabbalah, this fruit-eating is synonymous with “the great task of beirurim, sifting through the mixture of good and evil in the world to extract and liberate the sparks of holiness trapped therein.” Can we hope for such an alchemical, albeit painful, outcome?
To quote Super Chicken, one of my little brother’s favorite childhood heroes in George of the Jungle, “You knew the job was dangerous when you took it.” Holding opposite views is always psychologically dangerous: we are tempted to go to one extreme or the other to release tension. Ambiguity is uncomfortable.
Yes, I am angry that the No on C folks spent three times as much money as the Yes on C folks, mostly to deceive and confuse voters. I am angry No on C signs and fliers blatantly lied about the impacts of Measure C, should it have passed: that it would increase traffic, raise taxes, cause more cutting of trees, and more event centers in the hills. It was not a fair win, but it was also a very qualified win, reflecting what can be creative tension. Hopefully we are up for the task of staying present to the facts of the situation as well as to the anger, disappointment, and grief, knowing this is far more than the passage of a citizen initiative. In the words of the Talmud, “Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world’s grief. … You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it.”
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March 19, 2018
What Big Decisions Are Being Made in the Oak Woodlands?
There is a difference in crowds when the immediacy of the issue will impact them profoundly. James Conaway, author of the trilogy on Napa County agriculture and particularly the impact of the wine industry on the community, has been reading from his book to standing room only crowds in Napa County since its release last Tuesday, March 6. The Napa Main Library reading on Saturday turned large groups of people away because the room was packed. At the League of Women Voters and Sierra Club sponsored panel discussion on Measure C (Watershed and Oak Woodland Protection) Monday evening, March 12, people stood two and three deep at the open doors, sheltering under umbrellas, as Conaway and several others addressed some of the facts of the Measure. Of course, the wine industry was there, hoping to persuade citizens that Measure C will endanger profits and the benefit of the wine industry to community. But the fervency of citizens to listen and learn, to feel they have a voice, was also there, and that fervency is the very meat of Conaway’s message: Wake up, Voters! It is not too late! Corporate and wealthy greed need not eclipse the environment and the needs of the community. Educate yourself! Use the ballot!
Conaway’s books are an education in the history of the current political situation around land use issues in the Napa Valley. Napa At Last Light: America’s Eden in an Age of Calamity has a particularly dark tone, urgent, we can’t wait! Measure C and Measure D (no private heliports) are two of the most immediate opportunities that citizens have a chance to weigh in.
Tuesday evening’s Berkeley reading was to a different audience, one mostly not steeped in consequences of the decisions being made in Napa County. Conaway expanded to a larger overview: Napa is a microcosm of what is happening in our country, in our world. This is why it is so important citizens, vintners, and growers alike wake and act– and many in these groups are. Corporate interests and those of the newly arriving very wealthy are profit and/or ego oriented (lifestyle vineyards). Responsible farming considers the whole: water, soil, and the impact on one’s neighbors.
Big money bullies to get its way, mixing that all to familiar heady cocktail of false facts and fear: threats of loss of property rights, threats of ruin of the wine business if we protect the hillsides and the source of our water–the watersheds. It will hurt the small farmer, the small wine maker, they claim. But the truth is, corporate interests are what have hurt the small farmer/grower/wine maker. What we are farming now is tourists, not grapes. Vineyards have become fronts for development. The definition of agriculture has been perverted to include disneyland-like event centers because wineries claim they need “direct-to-consumer marketing” to survive– and in the ecologically rich and fragile hillsides. Sadly, the proponents of these perversions are willing to sacrifice our water supply, our hillsides, and our community, for their agendas.
But citizens have the vote. There are more of us than there are of these wealthy interests.
We are being faced with the necessity of considering the impact of our actions on each other and on the environment, of recognizing our own greed and willful ignorance. Our personal interests cannot eclipse those of the whole, or we all will go down. Nature has the final say.
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March 3, 2018
Grace in a Flock of Goldfinches
This morning: a flock of American goldfinches chattering in a still dormant valley oak by Casey and Melissa’s house. Fresh feathers bright yellow against blue, blue sky. Over two inches of rain the last two days, and everything sparkles, air as crispy as goldfinch chatter.
It’s been almost 10 months since I posted here! The shoemaker’s children always go barefoot!—This week I crossed my fingers and finally submitted Fruits of Eden: Napa and the Quest for a Conscious Activism to three agents! Another phase.
But the goldfinches remind me: celebrate! The sun reveals prisms in raindrops as the goldfinches “sweetly sing their twittering song.” (as described by Hermann Heinzel, Birds of Napa County.)
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May 10, 2017
Mother’s Day Memories: Sweet and Bittersweet
Every year Mother’s Day brings two big memories, both when I was a preteen, one sweet, one bittersweet. Both were formative in my becoming a mom myself.
The first “sweet” one was funny: My younger sister Judy and I decided to bake our mother a cake to celebrate Mother’s Day. Although not experienced in baking anything more than chocolate chip cookies, we decided to go all out and make a layered chocolate cake. We got a devil’s food cake mix and managed to get through the first steps of mixing the batter and baking it in two round layer cake pans. Did we remember to grease the pans? I am not sure. Nor do I remember why we decided on pea-green icing. Maybe it was a May theme. All went well enough until we attempted to remove the first cake layer from the pan. It stuck, and then cracked. No problem, we thought, we’ll just glue it with green icing (we loved icing!) Besides, it wouldn’t show.
However, the second layer didn’t come out of its pan so easily either, and this time, there were several pieces. What to do? Being the enterprising cooks that we were, we pieced the top to the bottom with tooth picks. To our horror, part of the top slid to the side. More toothpicks, these horizontally holding the top layer together. A little more icing, and that was that!
Our mother was delighted! She loved great fun more than she loved cooking, having not learned to even boil an egg before she married our father. Her father warned mine before my parent’s marriage about this. It is certainly not a skill that she deemed important to teach us– but enjoying family was!
A year after the cake, my mother’s mother, our dear grandmother, died four days before Mother’s Day. We were bereft. My mother was in her mid thirties at the time, now with four children, young, I think now. At the visitation, I remember my mother taking my sister’s and my hands and walking to the open casket of my grandmother. I would rather not have been there, but my mother’s grip was insistent. Our grandmother lay in her best suit, cold, and looking very different— dead. But what I remember most of all is the strong grip of my mother. I felt it then: the passing down. She was only mother now. No longer daughter, but mother.
I felt this same passing down many years later when she stayed with me after the birth of my first son, Jesse. I was a nervous mother, and her guidance steadied me. Jesse quieted almost immediately when held by her. She showed me how to bath and diaper him. “Oh, you are just like I was when I had you!” she told me.“Don’t worry! The only important thing is to love him!”
The morning she was going out our door to return to my dad and her work as a teacher, she turned to me. I told her I didn’t want her to go. After a tearful embrace she said, “It is time for the old mother to go and for the new mother to take over.”
That moment was the passing down for me. I fully accepted the mantel of responsibility of parent, as I suspect she had before the casket of my grandmother.
The day after my grandmother was buried, was Mother’s Day. My mother took us on a picnic to Fairview Park where she had played as a child and where my father proposed to her. As we sat at the picnic table, my mother, father and we four kids, I realized that my mother wisely understood the whole family needed a day of simple pleasure. She was stepping beyond the grief of a daughter to fully bear the mantel of mother, a mantel she would pass on to each of us in the years to come.
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December 22, 2016
Eulogy for Bethel : Light that Endures
Two weeks ago I received a letter from the district superintendent of Bethel United Methodist Church, in whose congregation I grew up. The country church is being closed January 1, 2017, and I was asked where I would move my membership. I was given a few choices.
My Irish great grandfather Richard Damery was one of the founders of Bethel in 1870. He and most of my ancestors on my father’s side are buried around the church. As children we played “ghost”, a variation on tag, in the cemetery. My childhood social life revolved around Bethel.
A few years ago an ambitious, if misguided, minister attempted to combine Bethel with a church in town, splitting the congregation. The ones that stayed slowly dwindled until it became very clear that the church needed to close.
This Christmas is the last Christmas in Bethel. Although I will not attend (I live in California; Bethel is in central Illinois), I know in my heart what the Christimas pagent will be. In fact, each year in this dark time, I remember the cold, snowy nights we attended church and the light that comes when all is so dark. In the end, Bethel, “House of God” endures in my heart.
The following is a blog I did several years ago telling my own Christmas story about Bethel.
Abundant Life: A Christmas Story
My departure from organized religion began when I realized “eternal life” was “abundant life”— spiritually abundant. At the moment of epiphany I was sitting on the stage near the altar of our old country church, drafted to play the part of Virgin Mary in the annual nativity pageant. As every year before, the main players, Mary, Joseph, the baby Jesus (the newest born in the congregation), some shepherds, wise men, and an angel, had paraded down the center isle of the candlelit sanctuary to the stage, now bedecked with evergreens and a back drop of the star-studded skyline of Bethlehem, painted by my mother several years before. We were accompanied by the voice of God: the deep, booming voice of Bill Sheppard, a good friend of my parents and distant relative, reading the Christmas story from the balcony:
In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be enrolled… And Joseph also went up from Galilee, from the city of David, which is called Bethlehem…to be enrolled with Mary, his betrothed, who was with child. And while they were there, the time came for her to be delivered. And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger, for there was no place for them in the inn (Luke 2: 1-7).
This year there was an additional scene to our standard format in which Mary and her kinswoman Elizabeth, mother of John the Baptist, also had a discussion. God knows how that script ever got into our church, as it was a sterling sample of gnosticism! What were the words? I do not remember, except that Mary was telling Elizabeth that “abundant life is eternal life.” As I read those words (for I was home on vacation from college and had not had time to memorize them), it was as if the Holy Ghost descended upon me. I felt such happiness, such joie de vivre! Eternal life means valuing this physical life, I realized, enjoying the pleasures of liveliness. This is how we enter the state of eternity. Our task is to live as fully as possible!
It is true, we had an unusual church. For this I am forever grateful. The church was founded by Irish protestant immigrants in the late 19th century on a tract of land next to the railroad tracks. The building was simple, built by my great grandfather who is now buried in the cemetery nearby and attended by every generation after. When my dear grandmother died, one of the women took me aside and reminded me that the dead are all around us, that my grandmother had only undergone a transformation, a cocoon releasing a butterfly.
At the time, I did not find this particularly comforting, as I wanted the flesh and blood version, but I still remember this woman’s words and now know them to be true. Our church year revolved around the seasons, most of the congregation being farmers. We had Stewardship Sunday in June honoring the land, a church bazaar in the fall after harvest, and of course, this candlelight nativity pageant on one of the darkest nights of the year. Ours was a religion honoring cycles, soil, life.
My revelation was not well received by everyone in the church. (Of course, I couldn’t keep it quiet!) I remember one of the more fundamentalist types telling my mother that this is what happens when you send a kid to college. Although my mother was raised Baptist, she was also educated and liberal minded and buffered a lot between us kids and some of the more conservative members of the congregation. I know she also worried at my increasingly liberal views of Christianity, even up to the time of her death.
She need not have. Could she not understand that my path led me to Jung and to Rudolf Steiner and to others who appreciated the importance of the mystery of the Incarnating Divine? That Christmas before the backdrop my mother painted years before, I experienced the birth of a new consciousness, one that I would spend the rest of my life nurturing.
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