"In the dark of the moon, in flying snow, in the dead of winter, war spreading, families dying, the world in danger, I walk the rocky hillside, sowing clover." (Wendell Berry)
Our farm field has been too wet for plowing and sowing. 2,500 pounds of our cover crop seeds have been waiting to be put in the earth. Not yet as of May 1. Our mix is crimson clover, red clover, hairy vetch, winter peas, yellow blossom sweet clover, spring oats plus little bit of turnip and safflower.
Another poem by Windell Berry about this practice of cover cropping:
Enriching the Earth
To enrich the earth I have sowed clover and grass
to grow and die. I have plowed in the seeds
of winter grains and of various legumes,
their growth to be plowed in to enrich the earth.
I have stirred into the ground the offal
and the decay of the growth of past seasons
and so mended the earth and made its yield increase.
All this serves the dark. I am slowly falling
into the fund of things. And yet to serve the earth,
not knowing what I serve, gives a wideness
and a delight to the air, and my days
do not wholly pass. It is the mind's service,
for when the will fails so do the hands
and one lives at the expense of life.
After death, willing or not, the body serves,
entering the earth. And so what was heaviest
and most mute is at last raised up into song.
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