Transplant (v)
1. trans. To remove (a plant) from one place or soil and plant it in another. Also fig.
3. intr. †a. (for refl.) To leave one place of abode and settle in another; to emigrate. Obs.
Thanks Oxford English Dictionary!
Transplanting involves the uprooting of a plant or person and its subsequent sowing elsewhere. “Trans” moves across space and “plant” firmly roots it in a place. Seeds sown in Philadelphia or Massachusetts can grow perfectly well in Minneapolis, New York, or Maine. Sometimes there is an adjustment period or a transition period, to acclimate to new surroundings. So far the seeds survive, juicier then ever.
Some very generous farmers and community members from the local area have donated seedlings to the Good Life Center so that we may jumpstart our growing season. Thank you Warren and Nancy, Bob and Doris from Sweet Dog Farm, Debra and Paul from Clayfield Farm, Harry, and Ron and Jan Hitchock! Claire and I arrived on May 30th, eager to start putting roots in the ground. Many plant varieties have been started from seed, in trays in the greenhouse, or directly sown in soil in the greenhouse. Tomatoes, basil, lettuce, and peppers are scheming right now to injunglify (verb: to make into a jungle) the greenhouse. They sit tidy, stretching out, eager to absorb sunlight and nutrients with which to grow and explore their new microenvironment.
The Good Life Center is a homestead in Harborside, Maine, a hamlet on Cape Rosier within the town of Brooksville (pop. 934), on the Blue Hill Peninsula, of which Blue Hill (pop. 2,686) is the nearest large town. Got it? A 30-minute drive separates the homestead from the grocery store, food co-op, library, art galleries, shops, and a few restaurants. These provide the perfect splurge when the isolation of Cape Rosier (or the need to do chores like laundry) becomes a bit much. So far a trip to Blue Hill occurs twice a week. Astonishingly, having departed Brooklyn (pop. 2.6 million), Blue Hill feels like a bustling metropolis after a week out on the farm. So many people walking down the aisles, picking up their “normal” groceries. Everyone knows everyone else in small town America, except Claire and I. Newbies in this habitat, we reach out with friendliness, if not a little trepidation. Maybe the quiet solitude of the homestead, which we have all to ourselves, has already dug down deep into our psyches.
Not quite. Grasping town life in Brooksville takes the form of dinner parties with new friends David and Annie (relatively newcomers from Virginia who are building a house up the road from us), and Bob and Doris (Good Life Center board members), who invite us to their bucolic Sweet Dog Farm for dinner, along with their Wwoofers. Small towns have to make their own community. In Brooklyn thousands of different social and cultural events each week screamed at you, asked for large sums of your money, and made you feel bad if you didn’t go. Here the social calendar is more navigable. A church in Blue Hill has communal suppers every Monday. Warren and Nancy invited us to tag along, where we got excellent soup and salad (and cookies!) and met a slew of friendly locals. Tinder Hearth, a local bakery, pumps out build-your-own pizzas on Tuesdays and Fridays. Did you know that Blue Hill, Maine harbors its own steel drum band? Flash! In the Pans performs community “street dances” each Monday in a different town to benefit various local charitable causes. When they played Brooksville, we knew it was time to check out what everyone had been talking about. What a good time! All manner of generations dancing all manner of styles…of interpretive dance to very good musicians coaxing a bevy of lush sounds and songs out of nearly 40 steel drums. A former neighborhood Crown Heights, Brooklyn has one of the larger afro-caribbean populations in the nation, but I only heard a true steel drum concert once arriving in Brooksville.
