Eleven

I turned over the first garden patch a few days ago. About a third of the lower field, getting ready for peas and potatoes and onions and radishes.
The soil turned easily and neatly, following the moldboard up and over and back down again, where it layed down smooth and flat. That means I hit it, for once. Not too wet, and not too dry.
The margin is slim in February - you get maybe three days when you can plow. That's ten per cent. Seems like an adequate margin, until you look at everything else that needs to get done. It would be, of course, ludicrous to think that I can hit better than ten per cent on a regular basis. I did it this year, though, and the field dissolved into its little aggregates and rolled along the moldboard and fell back down into a field again. Just in time for a few nights in the teens. It's just what you ask for.
I walk the fields before and after I plow. I pick up a rock, a dried tomato stalk or a shred of reemay. I'll pick up and earthworm, afterward, or lunge for a ground beetle. I'll cup the soil in my hand and press it into a ball. Then I'll rub it between two hands and let it fall through my fingers. It's just this little moment of communion that we have, and I like it.