The Grass Isn't Always Greener

The Dreaming

This week's essay started as a dream about a house I didn't know I owned. Then, it became something bigger — an investigation into why the nature of my dreaming changed the moment I moved to Lavender Hill Farm, and what it means that I'm finally, for the first time in my life, sleeping straight through the night. In this episode I'm reading the full essay, which traces the dreaming through the science of REM sleep, the mystery of the Voynich Manuscript — a fifteenth-century illustrated codex full of plants that don't exist and a script no one has decoded in six hundred years — and into the work of Carl Jung, who went into his own basement at thirty-eight and came back with a map. The essay also visits my cousin Janette, a botanist who told me years ago that she no longer daydreamed, which terrified me at the time. It took me decades to understand what she meant — and to recognize that something else was moving in to take daydreaming's place. If you've been paying attention to your own dreams lately, or noticing that something in your interior life has shifted, this one is for you. In this episode: The house as the self — Jung, Bachelard, and why so many of us dream of rooms we didn't know we have What actually happens in the final hours of sleep, and why most of us never stay down long enough to find it The Voynich Manuscript and the long human tradition of trying to record what lives inside us Active imagination — Jung's practice of going back into the dream and asking the figures what they want The second half of life and the gold that's too close to see Links and references: The Voynich Manuscript [https://collections.library.yale.edu/catalog/2002046] — viewable in full at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University Carl Jung, The Red Book: Liber Novus [https://amzn.to/3PN4r4e], edited by Sonu Shamdasani, W.W. Norton & Company, 2009 (affiliate link) Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space [https://amzn.to/4vd3nFS], 1958 (affiliate link) If my work resonates with you: Stable Roots [https://stableroots.substack.com] publishes weekly essays on the land, the interior life, and the slow work of paying attention. Free subscribers [https://stableroots.substack.com/subscribe] receive each essay in their inbox. Paid subscribers [https://stableroots.substack.com/subscribe] support the farm and the writing, and get a little more of everything. Stable Roots is written and read by Kim Carter and recorded at Lavender Hill Farm Get full access to Stable Roots at stableroots.substack.com/subscribe [https://stableroots.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

The Grass Isn't Always Greener

This week's episode is the audio companion to the Stable Roots essay — and it starts with Hero, my little chestnut Quarter Horse, army-crawling under an electric fence in the middle of the night to graze the forbidden rushes by the pond. I thought he was being a pain. Turns out, he was a prophet. What begins as a pasture management problem in the middle of a Foothills drought opens into something much bigger — the difference between forcing compliance and allowing recovery, in the land, in our horses, and in ourselves. In this episode: — Why drought weeds are nature's emergency response team, not a sign of failure — What tall fescue's vault strategy teaches us about resilience — The one-rein stop as a metaphor: compliance isn't the same as willingness — How Hero accidentally saved the topsoil by escaping at night — Why I'm trading a perfectly managed life for a recovery-driven one Read the full essay and subscribe at Stable Roots [https://stableroots.substack.com]. Get full access to Stable Roots at stableroots.substack.com/subscribe [https://stableroots.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

We Don't Save Old Farms

We Don't Save Old Farms: (They Save Us) In this week’s Stable Roots, Kim Carter traces the layered history of Lavender Hill — the 200-year-old farm in Simpsonville, SC now home to Bramblewood Stables — through old letters, photographs, buried spring stones, and an antique hand plow that may have originated from the land itself. What begins as research into the farm’s past slowly becomes something more intimate: a meditation on stewardship, memory, and the feeling of stepping into a conversation already underway long before your arrival. This episode explores: - The transformation of Holly Springs Acres into Lavender Hill - Charles and Alona Lavender’s restoration of the farm after the Korean War - The excavation of the original spring house - Forgotten infrastructure and old ways of living with the land - And what it means to enter a relationship with a place instead of simply owning it Read the full essay and explore Stable Roots: Stable Roots on Substack [https://stableroots.substack.com] Learn more about Bramblewood Stables at Lavender Hill: Bramblewood Stables [https://www.bramblewoodstables.com] South Carolina Department of Agriculture listing for Lavender Hill Farm: Lavender Hill Farm and Bramblewood Stables [https://agriculture.sc.gov/agritourism-farms/lavender-hill-farm-and-bramblewood-stables/?utm_source=chatgpt.com] Last week’s companion piece on disappearing farmland in Upstate South Carolina [https://stableroots.substack.com/p/your-new-neighbors-are-costing-you] continues the larger conversation around land stewardship, development pressure, and preservation. Follow along with the ongoing restoration and history work at Lavender Hill on Facebook [https://www.facebook.com/kim.carter.equestrian] and Instagram [https://www.instagram.com/two_point/]. Get full access to Stable Roots at stableroots.substack.com/subscribe [https://stableroots.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

Your New Neighbors are Costing You a Fortune

In 2020, the world tilted on its axis. For the Upstate of South Carolina, that tilt sent a wave of 100,000 new residents crashing into our pastures. As we cross the milestone of one million neighbors, the infinite horizon of the American South has officially hit a bottleneck. This week, Kim dives into the canyon between agricultural value and development prices. From the ingenious survival strategy of European track systems to the personal desperation of cashing out a retirement to save her farm by purchasing thirty acres, we’re talking about the high cost of holding the line. Is a farm just a vacant lot waiting for a purpose, or is it the essential, self-sustaining lung of a growing city? In this episode, we discuss: The Million-Resident Milestone: The rapid expansion of the Greenville-Anderson-Greer, South Carolina metro area. The Mother of Invention: Why land scarcity in the Netherlands and the UK forced a smarter way to keep horses, and why we’re next. The Hidden Subsidy: The math that proves farms actually lower your taxes, while subdivisions send you the bill. Legislative Victories: A look at the Old White Horse Road Corridor victory and the new SC laws fighting to protect 7 million acres by 2050. Lavender Hill: A raw look at the survival of a 30-acre heart of a 1,100-acre legacy. Once our dirt is buried under six inches of concrete, the conversation is over. The soil doesn’t get a second chance. And neither do we. Connect & Support: Read the full essay and see the data: at Stable Roots on Substack [https://stableroots.substack.com] Subscribe to Stable Roots: Join our community [https://stableroots.substack.com/subscribe] of land stewards and help us hold the line against the asphalt funnel. Follow on Facebook: @kim.carter.equestrian [https://www.facebook.com/kim.carter.equestrian] And on Instagram: @two_point [https://www.instagram.com/two_point/] About Stable Roots: Stable Roots is a weekly exploration of land, legacy, and the grit it takes to keep them both. Hosted by Kim Carter, a farm owner and advocate in the Upstate of South Carolina, we look at the intersections of agriculture, economics, and the equestrian life in an increasingly crowded world. Get full access to Stable Roots at stableroots.substack.com/subscribe [https://stableroots.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

We Are All Watching the Same Shoreline

We Are All Watching the Same Shoreline This week I did something I don't usually do — I went down a rabbit hole that started with my clients asking about rain and ended at a United Nations report declaring global water bankruptcy. I work outside every day. I watch the same fields, the same fence lines, the same pond across the street from my kitchen window. And what I've been watching all winter is a shoreline that keeps moving in the wrong direction. Most people around me have no idea we're living inside the driest stretch this region has seen since 1895. They're caring, smart people but their water comes from a tap and their lawn starting to look brown feels like a southern summer rather than a symptom of something much larger. In this episode I'm reading the full piece from this week's Stable Roots. It covers the US Drought Monitor — which was built the same year our pond at Lavender Hill was excavated — the record-breaking drought numbers for the Southeast, what it would actually take to correct the deficit, and why a hurricane may be the only thing that fixes it. From there I zoom all the way out to the UN's January declaration of global water bankruptcy, the shrinking lakes and collapsing aquifers, the cities that are literally sinking, and the Colorado River agreements written for a river that no longer exists. Then I bring it back home. To the rain that fell on Saturday. To the oak grove in the cemetery pasture. To what my grandfather was really afraid of in 1999, and what he couldn't have known to fear. And to the clover fixing nitrogen into dry ground without any help from anyone, because the land is not done. Neither are we. All sources are footnoted in the full piece at Stable Roots. Links below. Read the full piece: Stable Roots on Substack [http://268L4RNSTT] Follow me on: Facebook | Substack [https://stableroots.substack.com] | Instagram [https://www.instagram.com/two_point/] | If this episode resonated with you, share it with someone who lives indoors. Get full access to Stable Roots at stableroots.substack.com/subscribe [https://stableroots.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]