Balancing Act

            Today’s the Spring Equinox and here in Homer the sun rose at 8:07am and will set at 8:21pm which, in terms of daylight, is about as balanced as we’ll be until September. From here until the summer solstice it’s power up time. Each day will be a little longer than the previous one. There’s a sense of anticipation and a readying for summer’s intensity. We’re not there yet, but we know it’s coming.

            Spring isn’t really the right word for this time of year in Alaska. We’ve made it through the dark days but it’s still winter. Our garden beds are buried under four feet of snow and the nighttime temperatures are still dipping down into the single digits. And we still have to get through April.

            There’s very little about April that is pleasant: The snow melts. Our driveway turns to mush. All of the things strewn about our yard that were buried under snow emerge and remind us of all the unfinished projects we still need to attend to. In April my reserves of inner fortitude that have thus far gotten me through winter are nearly depleted. It’s a good time of year for deep cleaning the house, for starting a daily yoga routine to get in shape for gardening, and for getting creative with using what’s left in the freezer and pantry.

            Last year’s expanded garden brought us through winter nicely. There’s scarcely been a day this winter when we haven’t consumed something that we grew, foraged, or harvested ourselves. My younger self wouldn’t have thought that such things would be cause for delight, but they are. Joy for me is closely tied to the satisfaction in seeing something through from start to finish. Whether it’s a cabbage started from seed, transplanted, tended, harvested, and fermented into sauerkraut, or a piece of writing that starts as a vague idea and is wrestled with, rearranged, pruned down, and then finally presented. 

            Now we’re down to the last package of frozen kale in our freezer, and two small winter squash, a handful of garlic bulbs, a few varieties of potatoes that are beginning to sprout, and four jars of kraut in our pantry. We’ve still got several packages of halibut that my step-dad caught for us last summer when we were too busy to get our boat in the water, salmon that is unfortunately starting to show early signs of freezer burn, three chickens that our neighbors raised, and beef that we bought from Otto Kilcher that was nourished from grasses at the head of Kachemak Bay. We have berries too—red and black currants, blueberries, raspberries, and lingonberries—that we use primarily for flavoring kombucha or adding to smoothies.

            There’s a cycle, an art, a rhythm to food and herb preservation and storage that I’m just beginning to understand. My compulsion is to hold on to things, but food doesn’t last forever and it’s meant to be eaten. Having a nearly empty freezer at the beginning of summer is a good thing but it requires a bit of faith that we’ll be able to get what we need to fill it up once more before winter rolls around. Having relied on grocery stores for most of my life, this is a new way of thinking about food. It seems that culturally we’re nervous about anything being depleted, whether it’s our bank accounts, our freezers, or our energy. There’s a balance though, between adequate storage and hoarding. And there’s something to the idea of letting energy, in whatever form it takes, flow.

            My husband and I talk frequently about how fortunate we are. Unlike people from the not-too-distant past, we get to enjoy the literal fruits of our labor for fun. If we decided to take a break from gardening for a year we’d be just fine. We can and still do go to the grocery store. We even buy produce from other local growers to fill in the gaps of our own harvest. But we choose to make growing, harvesting, foraging, processing and storing food a major focus of our lives because we find it meaningful. It demands that we pay attention to the seasons, the soil, and the patterns of nature. It requires flexibility, as no two seasons are exactly alike. It provides us a constant sense of wonder. Sometimes, when time runs out before we get everything done or if something fails to grow, we have to surrender.

           On a small, close-to-home, and affordable scale, providing food and herbs for ourselves gives us what climbing mountains and rafting rivers used to give us in the earlier days of our marriage. In this way, we’ve moved into a new season. While there’s still a desire for wilderness adventure, we’re finding this intimacy with our five-acres fulfilling and awe-inspiring in its own way. The more we recognize the abundance we have here, the more abundance is revealed to us. We’re sometimes overwhelmed.

            Of course we still have to get through late winter. We have to be patient while the snow melts. We’ll likely have to endure a few more snow storms, and then rain, and then the season of not being able to drive to the house while we’re waiting for our driveway to dry up.

             It’s not surprising that this is the time of year when my writing is most prolific. My energy is growing but I can’t quite put that energy into the outside endeavors yet. Once summer is here, after breakup, I’ll be busy. I’ll be picking wild herbs. I’ll be raking dried grass for mulching the garden beds. I’ll be transplanting the starts that are beginning to take over all the available window space in our house. I’ll be sowing the carrot, beet, radish, turnip, and parsnip seeds. I’ll be watering, weeding, tending the chickens and working with Dean to repair and build the infrastructure that will give our gardens long-term sustainability. I’ll be going full speed until September.

            Until that descent back toward winter, there will scarcely be any time for actual writing. I’ll still be gathering ideas though, and jotting them down in my journal. While I’m immersed in the physical labor that will fill our pantry and freezer for another year, I’ll have hours of quiet, contemplative time to connect those ideas into something coherent.

            I don’t consider myself a food writer, but writing and the work of growing, gathering, and putting food aside for winter are closely intertwined for me. They support, inform, and compliment each other. They feed my body and my soul in similar ways. One gives me the opportunity to dig in the dirt and immerse myself in this beautiful place that I live. The other allows me the opportunity to take what I’ve been given and turn it, tend it, and condense it into something I can share.

            And now after writing this, I realize that I can even think of April as a gift. It’s that last big inhale before the race. It’s my last burst of writing for a while. It’s a time to start recharging my internal batteries.

            Balance is a difficult thing to achieve. It’s different for every person and it’s different in Alaska than it is in other places. Here the vernal equinox can be a challenging time for sure, but the energy it offers is palpable. Tune into it. Find a way to use it to your creative advantage. And hang in there for a couple more months. Soon enough we’ll be waist deep in green.