{"id":235,"date":"2010-02-09T17:32:00","date_gmt":"2010-02-10T00:32:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/farmingforprofits.com\/?p=235"},"modified":"2010-03-14T17:58:33","modified_gmt":"2010-03-15T00:58:33","slug":"primordial-ooze","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/?p=235","title":{"rendered":"Primordial Ooze"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Snow is a fleeting beauty.\u00a0 Tree limbs iced with fluff.\u00a0 Pristine stretches of white in the meadow.\u00a0 Delicate flakes against the windowpane.\u00a0 Intricate ice designs on the pond.<\/p>\n

But then they cancel school.\u00a0 Sigh.\u00a0 And the hose to the automatic waterer in the barn freezes.\u00a0 Sigh.\u00a0 And the chickens refuse to come out of the coop, pooping all over the nest boxes in protest.\u00a0 Sigh.\u00a0 And the goat stops giving milk.\u00a0 Well, actually she has milk, but\u00a0 I let her have her kid at night instead of separating them so I don’t have to milk on freezing mornings.\u00a0 Ooops, I mean, because no kid should be without her dam when it’s only 20 degrees outside.\u00a0 I’m perfectly willing to go out into the dark winter morning, sit hunched over on an upside down plastic bucket that is so cold it threatens to crack into a thousand icy splinters, expose my already numb fingers to the frigid air, and try to warm myself on my own steaming breath in exchange for for a few squirts of fresh milk.\u00a0 But the health of the herd demands\u00a0 I sacrifice the family milk for the sake of the poor little goat kid.\u00a0 And who am I to argue with proper herd health management?\u00a0 Really.<\/p>\n

So it doesn’t bother me to see the snow melt.\u00a0 As a matter of fact, the thaw ushers in one of my favorite seasons.\u00a0 The season of mud.\u00a0 Sandwiched between Orion shining\u00a0 in the January night sky and the blinding yellow of the daffodils is this underappreciated marvel of nature.\u00a0 Actually, mud in the Southeast is such a vigorous, boot- sucking force, I cannot believe it’s importance has not been noted.\u00a0 “Rednecks” and “Tar Heels” are misnomers in this region.\u00a0 Obviously, we are “Red Heels” if you examine our carpets or tire treads during the glorious mud season.<\/p>\n

Now I know you are standing in your kitchen window, surveying the rust-colored water washing over the driveway and the bottomless sludge pit at the end of the kid’s playground slide, and thinking I must have happy pills in my coffee.\u00a0 But mud is the first act of Spring.\u00a0 Branches dripping under rainfall, the ground opening up its pores,\u00a0 water and\u00a0 sunlight breaking up the frozen wasteland of winter.\u00a0 On the farm, it is more than mere wet dirt.\u00a0 Here we have the added value of autumn’s leaf debris in the woodlands, the fallen rushes by the pond, garden vegetation pulled and piled aside after it was browned by frost, the hay strewn by the animals, and, of course, their droppings scattered throughout the property as they make their daily rounds.\u00a0 Here we have more than mud—we have the primordial ooze.<\/p>\n

Step in the right spot and your foot can sink four inches or more in the fertile ground.\u00a0 A fecund smell\u00a0 rises from the pond and the puddles in the pasture. \u00a0 The garden becomes a black sponge where the lightest sparrow can leave tracks sunk deep in the earth. \u00a0\u00a0 Feathers and fur are smeared with it, shoes are caked with it, and yet we rejoice.\u00a0 For the primordial ooze is the harbinger of life—chickens discover sleeping grubs in the soft soil at tree trunks, the pony and lamb discover the first grass seedlings on the south side of the dam, the goats nibble saplings downed when the saturated soil can no longer hold their roots.<\/p>\n

Sure, snow is pretty.\u00a0 But the primordial ooze is power.\u00a0 Pure, raw power.\u00a0 Snow makes for cute snowmen.\u00a0 Primordial ooze sets the minutiae of life in motion, from the tiniest aerating earthworm to the larvae-gobbling spring peeper.\u00a0 Snow makes a tasty treat of snow cream.\u00a0 Primordial ooze prepares the land for summer’s burst of fruits and vegetables.\u00a0 Snow can close the schools and make everyone late for work.\u00a0 Primordial ooze breaks the grip of winter and pushes the Earth toward the Spring equinox on its muddy slopes.\u00a0 So, you can keep pretty.\u00a0 Now that I’m over 35, I’ll forgo pretty for powerful any day of the week.\u00a0 I do have some nice pictures, though, of the kids making snow angels.\u00a0 You should stop by and see them.\u00a0 Just make sure to wear your mud boots!<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

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\u00a9<\/span> Stevie Taylor 2010. All Rights Reserved.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Snow is a fleeting beauty.\u00a0 Tree limbs iced with fluff.\u00a0 Pristine stretches of white in the meadow.\u00a0 Delicate flakes against the windowpane.\u00a0 Intricate ice designs on the pond. But then they cancel school.\u00a0 Sigh.\u00a0 And the hose to the automatic waterer in the barn freezes.\u00a0 Sigh.\u00a0 And the chickens refuse to come out of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[17],"class_list":["post-235","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-garden"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=235"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":559,"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235\/revisions\/559"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=235"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=235"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=235"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}