Mercury in retrograde really got me this time with my cell phone acting crazy, my car broke down and yes my modem short circuited in Saturdays storm, so I have been not only a little out of sorts & a lot out of communication. The good news is I have been reading, yes real books… I hate to admit this, but my hands are always so busy I rarely read, but this old fashion pleasure has resurfaced this week and oh how I love it!!
Another old fashion pleasure that has been packaged into this week was the ancient, but new-to-me art of flood irrigation. As most of you know, flood farming dates back way beyond 1492 and yes still there are over 1,000 functioning acequias in New Mexico still today. I happen to live right next to one and this week by a stroke of slow, steadily evolving luck, and some dear hard working farmer friends, I had my first go at flooding a field I hope to carefully tend in the season to come. 
Most of you readers know farming has been a long time dream of mine and a gradual work in process. As I sowed my cover crops seeds this week, with my little boy doing the same in my shadow, stepping right into each fresh footprint I had made, he said, ” We’re farmers mama”.
My heart swelled. ” We may just be son, we may just be.” Not every young las dreams of being a farmer, but I sure did. From the time I first lived on a farm at age 14 I really did want to be a farmer. As I worked on farms in college I quickly learned how much work farm takes and that I may not have it in me to farm, or at least earn a living farming. 
I have tried lots of different ways to live a farming life; being a farmers girlfriend (totally unsatisfying as I left the farm every day to go to work!!) living and working on other people’s farms (wonderful, but not a long term solution). And finally just gardening and teaching other people to garden, which frankly suits me quite well….but I still pine for more open land to sink my seeds in…
and this is not because I have a ton of free time and energy, it is, I guess what you would call a calling, a vocation. The earth simply calls to me, what can I say? I guess it is almost like a love affair, we were made for each other, me and mother earth. Nothing, not even ‘reality’ and ‘impractically’ can keep us apart…for now. So for now, this field and I, we are new and consumed; irrigating in the moonlit and step by step placing every seed as if every single one was a carefully placed kiss….
And as with all new love affairs, we are keeping it between us right now, not quite ready to expose our tender connection, not quite ready to meet the family yet, but I just had to share, this field found us and it just might make me a farmer yet!!
