Himanee Gupta-Carlson, a writer and professor with SUNY Empire State College, is writing a series of articles about moving the farm she and her husband Jim Gupta-Carlson own and operate from a small piece of land in Saratoga County, NY to a much larger parcel in Washington County. The articles reflect on the journey as well as the couple’s commitments to cultivating food security on a regional level through regenerative agricultural practices and food sovereignty movements worldwide. This article explores how the author has gleaned new knowledge from the non-human beings that surround her.

Since I last wrote for this series in January, I have tried over and over again to freeze-frame time. I, as a human, felt a need for time to describe what has been shifting around me and to reflect on what those shifts might be teaching me, as my husband Jim and I continue what now has been more than an eight-month journey to move our farm.

But as I stalled, both time and Nature moved on relentlessly: time in a rather strident linear way marked by hours, days, weeks, and months; nature in perhaps a more fluid cyclical way marked by transitions from cold and darkness to warmth and light. Before I knew it, the snow was gone, the violets had appeared and then disappeared, and the dandelions had enjoyed their brief spell as flowers before going to seed. Now, the grasses at both our old and new farms are up to my waist. I wade through them to what’s left of our old farm’s asparagus patch, searching for young spears that are robust and crisp, hoping to harvest them for dinner before they, too, feather out and go to seed. At the new farm, I push them apart to find the remnants of the three sisters offering we had made last fall. I find a dried out gourd and corn cobs, surrounded by new garlic stems and flowers growing out of bulbs we sowed around the site just before an epic snowstorm in mid-December.

We humans often think we can learn everything from books or each other when maybe, suggests Robin Wall Kimmerer in her book Braiding Sweetgrass, the better teachers are animals and plants.

I started some radicchio seedlings late last summer. Radicchio is known for its lovely reddish and purple leaves and its slightly bitter taste, which mellows out beautifully when lightly toasted or sautéed. It is among a group of chicories that I like to eat in the early spring and late fall along with endive and escarole. I had hoped to harvest this planting of radicchio in early November. We did not transplant the seedlings soon enough, however, and a series of October frosts killed the immature leaves.

However, the plant did not die. New leaves began forming this spring. They were looking good. I began to plan for the ideal harvest date. What I did not know was that chicories are members of the dandelion family and behave similarly. As I sat back and pondered the possibilities, the temperatures heated up and the radicchio, like the dandelions a week or two earlier, knew its time had come. The plants bolted - a term that refers to a plant’s producing of seeds before dying off.

Nature moved forward while I stalled.

Garlic sprouts at the new farm in March. (Photo courtesy of the author)

Garlic scapes forming on rapidly growing plants in early June. (Photo courtesy of the author)

From winter to spring

In the winter, Nature itself slows down the pace, allowing both plants and animals a time of much-needed rest. Spring is a much different story. As I emerged sluggishly out of the cold, Nature was racing forward, transforming the fields at our new farm overnight.

In January, snow covered the rows of garlic we had planted about six weeks earlier in the new soil at our new farm in Washington County. As the snow began melting in late March, I began walking the large field Jim had designated as our vegetable bed. I spotted our first sprouts and tried to imagine what it would be like to plant lettuce, peas, and turnips in such unfamiliar soil, soil that is thick with clay.

The soil was healthy and rich, but in late March, it felt odd and foreign to me. I found myself missing the less fertile but more familiar sandy soil of our old farm. It was lifeless when we first began converting what had been a dirt bike racing track into a garden. Jim brought it to life by working in manure, compost, and other plant matter. It began to thrive through our no-till practices and our decision to abstain from all pesticides, fungicides, and herbicides. As we introduced animals into our rotational practices, we received not only fertilizer in the form of their manure, but also insect and pest control. As we stopped mowing the parts of our yard where we did not plant, we received weeds that flowered, creating habitat for birds, bees, and butterflies. It was wild and unruly. I missed it.

From January through March, our old barn emptied out. We began moving hens, ducks, and geese to our new place on New Year’s Day, and the time I had been spending on animal care during the previous fall had dwindled considerably by the end of that month. The male goats who had spent the winter here were destined for slaughter, and their one bad day arrived in February.

By mid-March, only seven roosters and four geese whom we had kept here as guards remained. Jim had been planning to process the roosters for our farmers markets over the next few weeks. But after a predator made its way into the coop and got first one, then two of the birds, we decided it was best to move the remaining ones as well. They left amid a brilliant twilight on the first day of spring. Jim had anticipated that the geese would fight; instead, they were so overjoyed at being reunited with their flock that, he said, they literally kissed.

I awoke the next morning surrounded by my three cats and silence. Two of the cats had moved to the farm with us in 2011, and the other had joined us as a kitten in 2014. All of us knew the start of morning as the sound of roosters. How would we live without them?

Not seeing the change

Completing the move to the new farm means making sure the historic house on the property is ready to live in. Although we have cleared it of some debris, many windows are still broken, paint is peeling from the walls, and there are mold and pest infestation issues that need to be addressed. None of this can happen until we get the house itself lifted off its foundation and the foundation rebuilt. I had anticipated this work would be done in March. Then Jim informed me in February that we were on a contractor’s schedule for late June.

In many ways, the delay made sense. Jim was in the midst of planting, and I was overwhelmed with the tasks of balancing my work as a professor with that as a farmer. But the delay made me feel sluggish. How could I begin packing up books, clothing, cooking and eating supplies if I did not know what we might need in the immediate future?

Our old house, built in the 1840s, is not furnished with an easy pack-up in mind. That’s partly because I never thought we would leave. When Jim and I moved in ten years ago, movers had to struggle to carry our king-size mattress up the stairs. The staircase to the second floor was not only narrow but also had a sharp 90-degree turn. They twisted the mattress into a sausage shape and carried it up the stairs, bending it in half at the turn. As they placed it intact on the frame, Jim and I looked at each other.

“I guess we’ll never be able to get this mattress back down those stairs,” he said.

“I guess that means we’ll never leave,” I responded.

For years, we operated with that mindset. I would speak occasionally of returning to a bigger city and a cosmopolitan urban life when we were too old to farm, and Jim would respond by saying he wanted to be buried beneath the topsoil his practices of regenerative agriculture had produced. As our weed-laden backyard evolved from holding a dirt-bike track to a garden circle, then a farm with fields for crops and pastures for animals, we committed ourselves to being stewards of that land.

Then, almost when we were not looking, the area around us changed. Swimming pools replaced animals, dirt bikes and motorcycles competed with the roosters in sound. Some of our neighbors grew hostile toward our way of life and filed complaints with the town. As town officials grew less inclined to allow us to continue farming where we were, we made the decision in 2020 to leave. We found a beautiful farm property for sale and bought it.

Checking out the landscape from the second floor of the new barn. (Photo courtesy of the author)

Now, one year has passed. I am still at the old farm, feeling stagnant as the world changes.

Stuck in one place

One might assume less animal care would free me up, giving me more time and space to get rid of our years of accumulated clutter and to pack up. Instead, I fell into a funk, which left me feeling lonely and unable to concentrate.

Jim was with the animals at the new farm, starting seedlings under grow lights and brooding baby chicks. I was alone with the cats at the old farm, trying to keep up with my teaching and writing commitments. Once a day, he would drive up from the new farm to shower and eat.

In March and April, he often arrived cold and exhausted to find me complaining of stiffness in my neck and dryness in my eyes from sitting at a computer all day. The barndominium — a two-room living unit that Jim had constructed in a former machine shop in the barn — was poorly insulated and often dropped below 50 degrees at night, despite the space heaters he was running around the clock. He was working with cold water, gusty winds, and amid farm animals. While I was living much more comfortably with heat and hot water, I felt overloaded with college work, housework, and my set of farm responsibilities which include managing finances, delivering eggs to our CSA customers, and attending our farmers markets.

Both of us were behind schedule. But when Jim told me he had put off the date to have the house lifted so its decaying foundation could be rebuilt to late June, I retorted angrily that he was not committed to moving forward.

The truth, of course, was that I was having trouble moving forward myself. I was questioning whether I could live with the discomforts that Jim was enduring: One source of running water (a pump); a 200-foot walk from the barndominium to the house to use the toilet while carrying a bucket of water to fill the bowl so it would flush; no cooking appliances beyond a microwave and a coffeemaker; limited heat.

Meanwhile, the hens and ducks were thriving in their new space and laying abundant quantities of eggs. The geese were laying good numbers of their special large seasonal eggs as well. All of these eggs, coupled with the fact that we had timed our raising of meat birds to ensure a steady supply through winter, gave us stronger farmers market sales than we had anticipated and helped offset the costs of paying two mortgages and two sets of utility bills. But, as the added work piled up, I started to feel my energy and enthusiasm flag. I rarely left the house for any other reason. And Jim’s daily but brief appearances made me feel as if my role had been reduced to being just the farmer’s wife — the one who did the laundry, cleaned the house, prepared meals and washed all the dishes afterward.

The human world was beginning to emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic, in the United States, at least, and we were to receive the first dose of our vaccine in late March. After months of isolation, I looked forward to more interaction. But like many others, I also feared coming out of my shell. Being alone for so long had produced a certain level of security, and with it a sense of stagnation I was not sure I had the strength to shake off.

Learning to leave

I began going for long walks, partly to ease my moodiness and partly to get the fresh air and exercise I was missing as a result of not having to haul water and feed out to the animals. As I walked the rural roads surrounding my home, I looked around me and listened. I saw the snow lines recede and heard the creeks roar with accumulated water from snow-melt. The frogs began their spring mating calls, which aroused the cats’ hunting instincts and lured them outdoors.

A frog that spent the winter in the author’s basement is ready to reunite with nature. (Photo courtesy of the author)

A frog had made its home in our basement the previous summer. We knew it was there because it chirped constantly. Sometime in late fall, it landed in a bin filled with ice water. Too busy to deal with it then, we left it alone. I wasn’t sure whether the frog had died or entered a state of hibernation. One day in early April, I decided to find out.

I found a smaller bucket and a pail. I dipped the pail into the bin and watched the frog’s body slide in. I then watched the frog swim out, offering proof of life. I poured the pail water into the bucket, and tried again. After a couple of dips, I managed to capture the frog in the pail and then the bucket. I carried the bucket to the back of our farm, where a branch of the Kayaderossas Creek flowed. I knelt down on the wet, sandy bank and gently tipped the bucket’s contents into the gurgling waters. The frog responded immediately, swimming with a few vigorous strokes before hopping onto a stone. A minute or two later, the frog hopped back in the water and swam away.

I walked back home through the woods, feeling incredulous.

If this frog could leave the comfort of a basement bin just like that, couldn’t I, too, move forward with a similar ease?

Moving forward

The author with goat Varuka and newborn kid Mink. (Photo courtesy of the author)

Now, it is June. I am still living at the old farm but spending much of my time at the new farm, planting and harvesting in what is starting to feel like friendly soil. Grasses outside the fenced-in area of the garden tower over my head, and I am starting to see birds and butterflies. The garlic sprouts I spotted in March have grown into stalks, and at least some of my hours outdoors are devoted to weeding out the hay grasses, wild broccoli, and dandelions that are finding their way over and through the fence, into the field. Jim is filling the field with the vegetable starts he seeded in March and April. I am harvesting baskets of salad greens, spinach, arugula, tatsoi, and mustard greens for our weekend farmers’ markets.

At first, I thought the field was too small. Now, its abundance enthralls and at times overwhelms me, as I compare it to what we farmed in before. As an example, I used to use one pack of radish seeds for two or three sowings because of the limits on space. Now, one pack fills just a speck. I look forward to more great harvests.

If I have learned anything in the past five months, it is that the cycle of change never stops. There is always life and then death, death and then life. I always knew that. What I have come to realize is that to be fully in sync with this cycle, you cannot afford the time to stop. If you farm, you have to think on your feet and act. If you write, you have to write. You cannot take too much time out to think. The moment you’re trying to capture will be gone if you do.

Plants and animals seem to sense this reality and accept it without a fight. We humans, saddled with the ability to think, fight it way too much.