The drought here in Tennessee has left me with a very difficult decision to NOT garden officially this summer. I really find I have much time on my hands to sit and wish that I am in my garden digging in the dirt.

While I was at Kroger’s, our local grocery store, shopping I ran across one copy of a gentle wonderful book called This Common Ground by Scott Chaskey.  Scoot Chaskey is a poet, farmer, and educator. For the last fifteen years he has grown garlic, greens, potatoes, and fifty other crops for the Peconic Land Trust at Quail Hill Farm in Amagansett, New York.

So now I’m living vicariously through Scott Chaskey as he farms through the seasons. It has also brought to mind the community farming movement.  The Peconic Land Trust farms over 650 acres while protecting 8000 acres on the Eastern end of Long Island. What a great community and it works.  I wonder if a community farm could work here in Tennessee ? Could it be a way to stall the hunger that plagues Blount County ? Could it be a way to stop all of these developments on farmland and to preserve the "peaceful side of the smokies’ for many generations ?

There are a couple of poems I would like to leave you with today. The first is by Scott Chaskey’s teacher Milt Kessler entitled;The Reef.

The mind must/love the heart.

The other is by Megan Chaskey entitled Summer

Every leaf shakes the light again,

begins to talk….

Cicadas

have found their August voice.

Surprisingly lightly

everyone lets go :

ripe now, all we’ve

sung into being

since before the leaves……

Megan Chaskey, "August" 1994