Nose to Tail
story by David Wagoner
There’s a new presence on the front lawn at the Holly Hill Inn, gifted from the adjacent venerable walnut tree, one of many on the grounds still standing tall despite a trunk-splitting lightning strike some years ago.
This summer it is heavily loaded with maturing nuts – a sign of a harsh winter to come according to the old-timers, says neighbor and farmer Mike Perry. So heavily loaded that a large branch snapped off on a calm August morning and planted itself, branch tips down, firmly into the ground, as if to make a statement of some sort. A beautiful piece of ready-made art? To my eye, it seemed a fine sculpture, and I set about the task of clarifying that – arranging nuts, leaves and branches – using everything the tree had offered. The result is “Nose to Tail”, an installation that will last as long as the walnut wood can withstand the elements and remain stable. Maybe till the Spring Beauties arrive in April?
But before I could declare “Nose to Tail” complete, additions were called for. I made use of another not-windfall walnut tree that had fallen on our creek bank in late July during a flash flood, our worst on record. From that tree, I cut all the branches and its entire trunk and brought them to be woven into the assemblage at the Hill.
Such hauling of natural resources became routine over the last two decades as we quarried Three Springs Farm for field stones, cedar logs, salvaged barn siding, and produce grown in fertile bottomland soil. The latter was so regularly delivered to various Holly Hill locations that our remote farmstead earned a place on the “All Roads Lead to Ouita’s Restaurants” map. A great honor! Especially since we are so far into the outer-Bluegrass hills that to find us, an arrow pointing northeasterly was required at the map’s very edge.
Vegetable growing gets more challenging as flash flooding becomes more frequent, but Ouita Michel’s support of Three Springs has been unwavering. I think of our beloved place as a quarry for the imagination, in addition to the rest, for Chef Ouita. Since Holly Hill Inn’s earliest days, she has believed in supporting Kentucky’s farms and farmers like no one else I know.
Her commitment to us has meant not only that one more family could keep on farming, but that 200 acres of hills and hollows around a big truck garden could be transformed from depleted pastureland into a vibrant, reforested habitat for all kinds of wild creatures.
At Three Springs Farm we started out with Community Supported Agriculture before transitioning to Restaurant Supported Agriculture. Now we’ve come all the way to what can fairly be called a Wildlands Conservation Project, still supported by our Holly Hill community.
So when you see a startling assemblage of tree branches, or cedar poles holding up a tin roof, or limestone rocks paving a spot by the herb garden, or willow sticks trellising pole beans at one of Ouita’s restaurants, you may rightly guess that the sourcing of materials was done no further away than that now-growing-wild Three Springs Farm, over yonder to the north, just off the edge of Ouita’s map!
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Arwen Donahue shares her recipe for this “freaking beautiful” salad made with odds and ends from the garden she tends with her husband (and our staff farmer) David Wagoner at their Three Springs Farm.
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