Volume 3 • No. 16 • Full Moon • August 19, 2024

*Trillium*, 24" x 36", 2017
*Golden Ripples,* 40" x 50", 2024
*Pine Prism,* 30" x 40", 2023

Mary Bea McWatters • Acrylic and Glaze on Canvas

an excerpt from

A Little Less Industrious

Working With What’s Already Here

Like this time last year, I’m struggling to keep up with mowing. Everything around me keeps growing and growing, all without my tending. One of my favorite things about where we’re at is its beauty and topographical character. But this part of the year, each year, the expectations of the expanse and the hills we’re on pile up. Every few days, I muster up some energy and get things rolling despite work, firewood, home repairs, and kids all calling my name. But once I’m out there, mowing through upright milkweed stalks, watching them bend at first and then walking over the mulched greenery, something seems incongruent.

We aren’t harvesting much from our home garden these days. It’s beautiful, biodiverse, and going well, but as a relatively young garden mostly comprised of perennials, it isn’t offering competitive bumper crops just yet. And here I am, by the sweat of my brow, working against milkweed, which I know offers a harvest.

We’re working on some soil tests on the garden front to see how we might shift some green things into gear. But here, on this meadowy periphery, I only need to look down as I tromp through grasses to see what the land happily supports. It’s a whole lot of plants we didn’t plant — and good ones, too.

I pilfer a pod, head inside, and set it down on the kitchen table. It’s right there looking back at me. I glance at its profile, feel its little nubs, and wash the sap off of my hands. What can you do with a milkweed pod?…

Click here to read the rest of “A Little Less Industrious” (4 Minute Read, 915 Words)

Click here to listen to the audio version

The Warp — Ideas and Inspiration

|| 1 || In case you missed it, the Northern Michigan Small Farm Conference was held last week. Thank you so much to all involved, from the sponsors to hosting farms, Grow Benzie, attendees, volunteers, staff, presenters, and more. We’re looking forward to next year!

Until then, we’d love to keep tabs on practices adopted, helpful learnings, and collaborations incited through the conference. Please reach out to share what stuck, and we’ll be in touch.

|| 2 || Absent from A Little Less Industrious, here are some overlapping milkweed foraging notes:

Eating milkweed flowers, and why their harvest doesn’t negatively impact monarchs (caterpillars or butterflies.)

Consideration of the whole plant, and how to differentiate from dogbane.

Some of Sam Thayer’s thoughts on milkweed in article form. (Both links above speak highly of Sam’s work—if you can spring for it his book The Forager’s Harvest might have the most comprehensive notes on milkweed of all.)

A Relevant Cultural Critique—No, We Don’t Just Need to Plant More Milkweed.

…Don't just plant more milkweed. Call us all out on why we need more milkweed, more goldenrod, more aster, more bluestem, more coneflower, more prairie clover, more sedge. Call out our lawns. Call out our parking lots. Call out our farm fields. Call out our coal trains. Call out special interests that have taken over our system of government. Do what you can where you can -- a pot on an apartment deck, a front yard lawn, a YouTube channel, a farmer's market, a city council meeting, your close personal friend Bill Gates…

A Relevant Poem—John Roedel’s The Cocktail Party Is Moving All Around Me, a poem on societal expectations, how we speak to each other, and tending to flowering weeds. Here’s a brief excerpt:

…when my neighbor knocked on my front door
to ask me why I am letting my weeds overtake my
planters in my front and back yard

"you could grow a really vibrant garden," he offered
without asking

"hmmm," I responded with a melodramatic thoughfulness
like I was considering a treaty that had geopolitical ramifications…

The Weft — News and Events

We’re heartened by a wide-range of expressions of resilient communities and gatherings. Here’s a smattering of regional events and happenings that reflect that diversity, collected for your consideration. Choose your own adventure!

|| 1 || Author Reading and Book-signing Event. Join author Mary Kay Zuravleff, author of American Ending, for a reading and discussion of her newest novel on August 21 and a fiction-writing workshop on August 22. Click the links for more details on the events, held respectively at Elk Rapid’s Bos Winery and Bellaire’s Grass River Natural Area.

|| 2 ||Kingsley Folk School’s Lamb 101. Sign up for Lamb 101, August 24th at Boone Holler Farm in Kingsley, to learn about butchering, tanning, fiber work, and food, all relating to sheep. Registration is required. Find more info here.

|| 3 || Hankering to work with bees? Weather permitting, the Benzie Bee Guild will continue to aim for bee-ing in the yard on the 1st and 3rd Tuesdays of the month, at 10am. If you’d like to help out, you can find information here on getting involved.

|| 4 || Real Organic’s A World Movement conference is taking place in Hudson, New York, Saturday, September 28th. If you want to catch the twenty-minute talks on food and agriculture held throughout the day and don’t find yourself in NY, there’s an option for live-streaming or gaining access to the recorded footage. The breakout sessions are only available in-person. Find more information here.

|| 5 ||FACT Grants for Farmers—A bundle of resources, including grants, conference scholarships, and opportunities for networking and mentorships, all geared towards pasture-based livestock and poultry farming is available at the Food Animal Concerns Trust website.

|| 6 || The Water is Life Festival will be held on Saturday, August 31st, from 12-9pm. Find out more and register for the family friendly, free celebration of water and connection on the Petoskey waterfront here.

|| 7 || Happenings at The Alluvion Between Now and the Next Whole Field include: Funky Uncle, Summer Stand Up Comedy: Steve Sabo & Tonya Murray, Hannah O’Brien & Grant Flick, Aaron Jonah Lewis, Dawn Campbell & The Bohemians, DJ E-Knuf, Dunes Review Launch & Reading, Big Fun, Viridian Strings, wtrbd & DJ Ras Marco, Super Nuclear, and SuperBlue with Kurt Elling and Charlie Hunter.

Find more information at www.thealluvion.org.