#2 - November/December 2004
Healing Handiwork
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By MaryJane Butters
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When life hands you a lemon of a day, make a cherry!
In my head, my little farm is big. My thoughts stay latched onto every piece of it all the time, moving from one distraction to another. I remind myself of my chickens. Full of purpose, they bolt from the henhouse every morning. They head to the feeder—but wait, what's this? And over there, what's that? The unexpected urgencies of a farm brook no delay in work.
Any kind of break, for a farmer, is hard-won and hard to find. For me, vacations are out of the question. I prefer home over anyplace else. Why spend time in a car or plane unless you have to? Besides, for the price of a trip there are always more fruit trees I can buy.
But today I needed to find an escape that would save me big time, something like a good two- to three-hour meditation. Having just pulled off two farm events back to back, one bringing more than 1,200 people to my farm, I was weary and behind in my work. The morning hadn't helped. I needed to get water to some fruit trees, but when I turned on the water, I discovered several geysers—rabbit damage. Why do they have to eat my hoses? Isn't my garden enough? I spent two hours repairing hoses. Then, upon closer inspection of the three droopy-looking cherry trees, I realized the problem wasn't lack of water but an outbreak of bacterium cankers.
I needed to move fast. Bacterium cankers on my cherry trees! This was the plague. The last time I discovered cankers, I cut down a seven-year-old tree and burned it. But today I couldn't bear to cut down any trees. This was the first year my “cherry pie” trees had produced. One of our farm events was my daughter's wedding, and from our young trees we lined a table with cherry pies. Now there's a sight, cherry pies rowed up. (“Rowed up” is a farmer term to describe the sight of a green line of seedlings in a newly planted field.)
I decided to scrape off the lesions and briefly heat them with a torch. But the torch needed a new part, requiring a trip to town. Like my hoses and my trees, I was now clearly in need of repair. For me, however, meditation doesn't last long enough or go deep enough. A movie? Television? “Do nothing” doesn't work for me. Why would I want to do nothing? I'm happiest when my hands are at work. I felt an urge coming on. A hot bath? Call up a girlfriend and cry? A long bike ride?
Handwork. I craved handwork. Specifically, I wanted to embroider a cherry. I'd pick up some red thread in town. I'm not the first woman who has turned to handwork for salvation. What is it about needlework that stitches and sews us back together again? My mother was the doyenne of doilies, quilts, crewel, cross-stitch, knitting, and crochet. In the winter, she'd be up long before we were and sit for an hour, handwork in hand, making everything just so. I remember her right foot. She always sat with her legs crossed, and her top foot would swivel slowly in a circle. Sitting by the heat register, I learned to watch in silence. I craved the free-floating feeling it gave me. Any kind of noise brought me crashing. Even a simple “good morning” abruptly stopped that floating feeling. The Japanese (my oldest stepson lives in Japan) use a phrase called ukiyo-e. It means “images of a floating world.” My mother's meditative stitching introduced me to the concept of evanescent human pleasure.
It had been a year or more since I'd stitched. I was almost giddy. I found my equipment and started on some freehand embroidery. By the time I finished stitching my first cherry, I was kind of okay again. When I reached my second cherry I was somewhere else. And the green leaves, they put me on a cloud.
MaryJane Butters is an organic farmer, teacher, and author in Idaho. Write to her at maryjane@maryjanesfarm.org or visit www.maryjanesfarm.org.
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— Sidebar Content —
Freehand Embroidery
Freehand embroidery involves working without a pattern; you're the artist as well as the artisan. All you need is a hoop, a needle, some embroidery thread, and some fabric. (Embroidery thread usually has six strands; I like to separate out and use just two for my projects.) Here's a tip: Use an old manila folder to make “spools” for your embroidery threads, preventing tangling. These are 1-inch squares cut in a tubby hourglass shape (see photo at right).
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Making a Knot
1. Wrap the end of the thread (the last two inches) in a loop around your forefinger. (I always moisten the thread first by licking it. It knots more easily that way.)
2. Using your thumb (on the same hand), roll the loop down toward your fingertip.
3. Position your middle fingernail down in front of the twisted loop and lift your forefinger out.
4. Pinching tightly between your thumb and middle fingernail, pull down on the loop until all the twisted threads become one small knot. This requires practice.
Outline Stitch
With a small knot in one end of the thread, bring the needle up through the fabric at “a” and pull the thread taut. Bring the needle down at “b” and up at “c,” and pull the thread taut. Repeat. Make stitches small and close together.
