Planting Begins — With Inspiration from Teddy and Leslie
Spring planting
Teddy Roosevelt once said, “Far and away the best prize that life has to offer is a chance to work hard at work worth doing.” It’s hard not to be a Teddy Roosevelt admirer – the sickly East Coast boy who became the indomitable cowboy president. I love that he gave us the national park system and the quintessential stuffed animal. Still, something about him has always hit an off note with me. His hubris smacks of delusion; his rugged individualism of elitism in dusty boots. That’s probably why I so enjoy being able to start this blog by taking his pithy truism and wrapping it in a little Parks and Rec wisdom. Because, according to Leslie Knope, “What makes work worth doing is getting to do it with people that you love.”
Amen, sister -- Nothing could have been truer on the beautiful early March weekend when I planted my first acre of Christmas trees at Iron Sun Farm.
I’d picked up the frozen saplings Thursday and they’d slowly thawed in my garage while I hoped the forecast for clear, warm weather would hold and my army of volunteers materialize. Saturday dawned to clear skies and I went out to the rows I’d prepped and anxiously waited for my workforce. The first to arrive were Mike, Molly and Lily. Mike has been trying to harvest deer from my property. He’s never taken a deer, but he’s given me mushrooms he’s foraged, butter he’s infused with wild ramps, and a jar of delicious pawpaw butter. A glutton for punishment, he and Molly had packed up their kindergartener and driven over 90 minutes to dig holes for my trees. They were soon joined by my daughters and a few of their friends and then my sister and mother.
As my daughters and I carefully nestled saplings in the hard-won holes others were digging, my sister carried water from a distant spicket to give each newly planted tree a soaking. Meanwhile, my 91-year-old mother walked up and down the rows offering bottles of water to everyone. Even my husband eventually ignored the advice of his doctors and compression fractures in his back to attack the shaley, quartz-laden soil with a posthole digger.
In my defense, I’d done quite a bit of advance work to prepare for the day. Contrary to general tree farming practice, I’d tilled and retilled rows to break up the sod and loosen the rocks. I’d hand-spread three different soil additives to this first acre to adjust the PH. I’d measured and calculated and eventually run lines of string with red a green ribbons to mark out where holes had to go and to what depth given the two variety of saplings we were planting – Canaan and Douglas. I’d even dug and planted the first row of 40 trees on my own to better understand what the work would entail. Still, getting those 400 Washington State-grown saplings into the ground before they realized they were no longer in a temperate rainforest would never have happened without everyone’s help. I am so deeply grateful that these crazy people were willing to invest their time and energy in my dream.
I realize that growing Christmas trees won’t address world hunger, solve the climate crisis, or even cure night blindness. In Teddy Roosevelt’s heroic world, growing Christmas trees probably doesn’t qualify as work worth doing. Thankfully, I get to live in Leslie Knope’s less grandiose world too. In that world, it means something that, in a few years’ time, excited families will walk these same rows looking for the perfect tree. When they find it, they’ll cut it by hand and smell the sap sticky on their fingers; the same smell that’s coming from those little saplings today. At home, they’ll set that perfect tree we grew for them in a place of honor. And, on Christmas Day when they gather around it with the people they love, I truly hope they will feel the joy I felt when we gathered to give that tree its start here at Iron Sun Farm.