Jeremy Haworth is an Irish poet and writer. In 2019, he started Charis Garden, renovating a tumbledown farmstead and walled garden into an organic market garden that now serves local people with a weekly share of fresh, seasonal produce. In conjunction with Social Farming Ireland, the garden also serves as a space of welcome and support for those living with poor mental health or disability. The garden is based near the Laois/Kildare border, in rural Ireland.
Last year, Jeremy published his first collection, a book of haibun entitled Four Season Farm. Haibun is a Japanese-related form, inspired by the writings of Matsuo Bashō and his landmark seventeenth century work, The Narrow Road To The Deep North. Haibun combines terse prose pieces with haiku. Unique to Japan but practised worldwide, haiku is a verse-form that records a single, glowing moment. It is unrhymed one-breath poetry. The interplay between the rhythm of prose and the meditative flash of haiku creates the unique dynamic of haibun.
Four Season Farm is loosely based on Jeremy’s experience as an apprentice grower on an organic farm in Ballitore, Co Kildare, Ireland. Copies of the book can be purchased via PayPal at www.jeremyhaworth.com/books or direct from the author via email at haworthj@tcd.ie.
Excerpt from Four Season Farm
January 9th
The feral cat came from Brennan’s farm: an assassin, sleek and cold. Piebald he-man. A pygmy lion. I saw him pounce a rabbit once. Snap the spine. Merge with the hedgerow, the dun pelt limp and bloody in his teeth.
Now he is a wet clump in the nettle-bed. Mouth open to the rain. Tell-tale prints in his flank.
Yesterday the rubbish man owned up. ‘Got snarled in my wheels,’ he said.
gathering light
the groove the cat left
in the straw
January 12th
Rain patters the gravy-brown earth. Horizons fog. Staring into a bank of leafless trees, I spot him: the dark totem on a beech limb.
Silence amplifies the clamour of my footfall. Both wings spread in a flash of dappled cream.
a shadow
in the timbered mist
the buzzard cries
January 19th
The sleeping farm. I pace the hard, frost-eaten earth. Nothing stirs in the silvered hedgerows. Wood-smoke hangs in the air.
The ceiling of the glasshouse is veined with ice. I imagine the dreaming hedgehog curled in a bed of leaves, wrens hugging in a nook of bark, the badgers dozing in their sett.
Time to rest. I unlatch the door and enter butter-light, the warm fug in the farmhouse kitchen.
a burst of applause
rising over the stubble
the pigeon flock
February 1st
Imbolc, the beginning of spring. Saint Brigid’s Day. Traditionally, the season of the wolf, when farmers crouched from the lurking terror in the woods. Fire to ward away the fleet-footed beast of fur and teeth.
The last wolf in Ireland was killed not far from here, on the edge of a stream in the foothills of Mount Leinster, just outside Carlow. When the shot rang out, the forests trembled for the loss. They diminish, and tremble still.
the bare pine
snags the shadow
of a leaping wolf
February 14th
Valentine’s Day. First sowing of the season. Radish, kale, spring cabbage, kohlrabi, mixed salad leaves, fennel, scallion. I press the tiny black seeds into the moist nothingness of soil.
Every year the same knot in my gut. A tremolo of butterfly wings in the stomach. Heart palpitations.
The teetering sensation of gazing down a free-fall. Standing before the testing arc of another season. All weathers, unstinting labours, the growth, the loss: the exigencies, the exhilarations that lie before me.
I lean under the bench to plug in the heat blankets. Imagine the hum of the wires, the slow rise of energy through dark matter, jump-starting a season of growth, the buried seeds popping into life.
a burning moon
in the dark dawn fog
my headlamp
February 21st
We keep about a dozen hens on the farm. Rhode Island Reds and white Leghorns. One of the whites we christened Frank. Most evenings, she flies the coop. I go out to find her nestled in the shelter of a fallen beech, reach slowly through brambles: slowly, slowly – and grab!
cold spring night
still warm on my hands
her breast feathers
March 6th
I rise early. Breakfast simmers gently on the hob. I lift the steaming pot and empty a ladle-full of hot porridge into a blue bowl. Sink into the kitchen chair, eyes full of sleep.
When I pull on my work clothes, my hoodie smells of earth and stars.
daybreak sky
stuffed in a raincoat pocket:
Old Farmer’s Almanac
March 7th
Spattered by rain, I kneel in the wet, claw down into the dark, dig to find the magma-red shafts. I am astonished at the suction power of the long tap roots. More than once I reach for the fork to pry them up. The large ones rise from the black loam with an audible pop.
a volcano
seething in the mud
the carrot pile
April 17th
I spend the morning crawling through an Amazon of corn salad, ripping hundreds of pristine plants from the soil as if I were a giant levelling the forest with my own bare hands.
By lunchtime, the tunnel is bare. The plants had been painstakingly sown, nurtured and watered. The crop went to seed before it saw a single market stall.
Liam is unfazed. A fresh sowing will replace it next week. Meanwhile, the salad isn’t wasted.
sinking slowly
into the belly of the farm
the compost pile
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(Photo: The Monkey/ flickr.com/ CC BY-ND 2.0)
- Four Season Farm by Jeremy Haworth - May 2, 2024