Wind in their manes
October 7, 2011 § Leave a comment
The wind blew and blew and blew today. Yesterday afternoon it began, and kicked dust into my eyes as I headed into the Therapeutic Riding Center for my volunteer time. As we waited for our riders and the horse leaders tacked up the horses, out in the half-sheltered grooming area, we kept having to squint and turn our faces. The indoor arena where we had the lesson was quieter, but still came the sound of the wind against the walls.
At the boarding stable that night I looked west to see the sky all blue-gray, and a cloudy white mist suggested snow falling in the mountains. The horses trotted anxiously and tossed their heads. Hurry up! The storm is coming! They wanted their food and their paddocks with their sheds for shelter. We wanted that, too, but it takes time! Hungry horses riled up by wild winds make for an interesting night, but I am lucky in my coworkers. We manage to be careful and focused yet able to laugh at the same time.
So the wind whipped my ponytail and blew through the manes of those lovely horses as they hurried through gates, and at the end of the day I was glad to come home to soup and crackers and my friendly roommate and of course my darling dog.
Woke up this morning to cold air and a pink sunrise. Hurry up, Tassie. The poor dog hears me say it every morning, first thing, while I stand outside in slippers or bare feet waiting for her to do her little business, because I’m always staying in bed until I absolutely must get up or be terribly late. And she usually kind of hurries, because she wants her food (which she gets next), but this morning I had to chase her as she decided to wander far from her usual spot into a cluster of pines. Tass! Come on. And I was late, but not by very much, at least, and I had time to grab a sweatshirt.
Oh, it was a shocking kind of cold this morning – our bodies have been so adjusted to heat thanks to this summer, and even earlier this week I was growling to myself about when the heat would please leave. In the early hours of this day I wore gloves, a winter hat, pulled up my hood, wriggled my numb toes in their boots to try to get blood flowing. All of us sniffed all morning as we brought in the harvest – fortunately, no frost last night! Just the wind blowing from the West, down over Long’s Peak to the farm.
The sun came and the shadows moved out of the way, and by mid-morning I was down to a cozy hoodie. A chorus of blackbirds had settled into two or three trees on the outskirts of the farm, and noisy, they were! Perhaps fussing just as the humans have been – all warning one another about the likelihood of rain and the possibility of snow tonight. I doubt snow will come, especially this soon. It sits on the mountains and teases me most of the winter. But you never know!
We shall see how the market goes tomorrow, with the forecast of “Light drizzle for most of the morning. Cold.” These are most definitely days for dressing in layers, and bringing along just-in-case items. I will wear merino and a scarf, grab a puffy vest and my raincoat, and throw an extra pair of wool socks into my market bag. Bring on the weather, October!
Waiting for frost
October 6, 2011 § Leave a comment
We check the weather every day. When the frost comes, everything changes, and quickly. What will survive – and for how long? What won’t?
Growers and producers set up farmers’ markets and CSA shares around specific dates, carefully defined growing seasons. But the frost makes the real call as to how long the farm will continue to be in production.
Do we humans control nature? Sometimes, and sometimes too much. But the weather reminds us that in the grand scheme of things, we have to fit within the earth’s habits and patterns. We can make the most of them, and adapt to them. We can use such things as hoop houses and greenhouses and row covers and mulches for the fields, sheds and heat lamps and straw and water holes and fans for the livestock, to support better and longer growth and survival. But we can’t force nature’s hand. We have to follow it, and pay attention to it. Sometimes we hate it. We learn to respect it.
My grad school friend Mae Rose Petrehn talks all the time about grazing practices, and holistic management in particular. (She’s currently grazing several hundred sheep on a ranch in Nebraska.) Here’s a link to an article in The Atlantic about cattlemen who are looking at new (old) ways of having ruminants on the land, grazing in a way that emulates how nature would have it done in the wild, in order to restore landscapes in addition to producing food.
Lisa M. Hamilton writes: “The basic premise of holistic management is to use livestock like wild animals. But whereas bison on the Great Plains moved through the landscape by instinct, now ranchers must supply that direction. Rather than simply turning cattle into a pasture, these ranchers conduct them like a herd, concentrating bodies to graze one area hard, then leaving it until the plants have regenerated. The effect can be tremendous, with benefits including increased organic matter in the soil, rejuvenation of microorganisms, and restoration of water cycles.”
Read the article! The Brown Revolution: Increasing Agricultural Productivity Naturally.
There is a kind of tension that can exist when one’s livelihood and/or survival depends on nature. But we are kidding ourselves if we think that only applies to some people. It applies to all of us, as nature’s resources feed, clothe, and shelter us – even if we have so distanced ourselves from the process of production that we forget this reality. So we would be wise to explore the tension, to avoid the downfall of domination, and to move as much as we can towards harmony.
Garden vegetable soup, greens on toast, and getting things done
October 4, 2011 § Leave a comment
This has been a Tuesday for doing things. Running down the checklist with some kind of strange enthusiasm. Bathroom cleaned. Laundry in the machines. Dishwasher running. Phone calls made. Library card obtained – and first book checked out! (I will finish it.) Mail sent and retrieved. Dog fed and walked, lying contentedly under the table on the patio.
Can’t you tell she loves having her picture taken? Really?
Then I felt so satisfied with myself and my use of time that I waltzed out to the swimming pool because, yes, on this 5th of October it is still hot enough. I sat there with my big floppy hat and a magazine all by myself in that quiet, clean little pool area and felt oddly like some rich girl in her private, swanky back yard.
After a while of appreciating the warmth of the sun and the cool of the breeze and my newly painted toenails (another item checked off the list), I slipped in the water for a swim in that empty turquoise pool. A few lazy laps, the whole expanse just for me.
Aaah, Tuesdays. I have the whole morning and afternoon free, and it’s so nice to catch up on the important and routine things, and then have a pleasurable rest moment in between all the work of all the other days. Especially now that I’ve crammed Thursdays full, too. The cramming is good, and necessary. But so is the down time.
All refreshed back at the apartment I realized I’d forgotten to eat lunch. 4:00 p.m. and I’d need to leave to feed horses in 45 minutes! Fortunately, the soup I’d made a few days before sat in the fridge. I heated it up, made some toast, threw on some toppings, and sat down at the table.
I read my book, and ate my lunch, and went off to work. Even more satisfied.
—–
RECIPE: Garden Vegetable Soup
Ingredients:
4 cups beef broth + 4 cups water
Chopped veggies of whatever is in season: I used some eggplant, medium-hot and/or sweet peppers, Swiss chard, summer squash, arugula, and carrots. (about 3-4 cups)
Rice (about 1 cup uncooked)
Salt to taste
Directions:
My method is, honestly, to throw everything together and let it simmer until all the vegetables are tender. You can just cook the rice in with the broth and vegetables, but be aware if you use brown rice this will require a longer simmer time (about 45 minutes) and you may want to add extra water. I decided to add the brown rice AFTER I’d simmered the vegetables and broth, so I cooked the rice on its own and then mixed it in with everything else. If you use winter squash, potatoes, sweet potatoes, and/or beets you’ll want to chop them smaller and/or put them in the broth first, then add the rest of the vegetables about 15-20 minutes later.
RECIPE: Toast with Farmer’s Cheese, Arugula, Swiss chard, and Bell Pepper
And that’s what it is. Toast the bread, spread on the cheese, pile on the arugula and Swiss chard, then slice the pepper and layer it on the top. I used a chocolate bell pepper, which is nice and sweet.
So long, September
September 30, 2011 § 3 Comments
I will send September out in high style this Friday night, with a long bath and Country Living, re-warmed homemade chicken soup with rice, and an early bedtime.
But first, here is the John Keats poem I feel the need to re-read and remind everyone of this time of year. You may want to put on your literary thinking cap since it’s all old language and meter and rhyme, but it’s a gorgeous piece and worth the time. Can’t you just imagine England in the fall? I was there in the gloomy winter/spring, but I can imagine. And I’m remembering so many pastoral paintings, hanging on the walls of European museums, by artists whose names I wrote down on scraps of paper, and shoved in my pockets, and inevitably lost.
—–
To Autumn
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;
To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.
Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep,
Drows’d with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cider-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.
Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,-
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.
Flight
September 27, 2011 § Leave a comment
The other night the sky turned so luminously pink it caught my attention from where I had busied myself indoors. I was chatting on the phone with my mother or sister when the sky beckoned me out onto the patio. I walked out onto the cement, maneuvered around the bicycles, the table, and the tomato plants, and looking out over the trees and garages and parking lot and lampposts I saw them: three skydivers, their parachutes pulled, floating down through the sunset.
We see skydivers out here all the time – Longmont seems to be a city of the sky, with numerous small planes, air shows, hot air balloons, and a skydiving outfit – so it wasn’t unusual to see the figures falling. Usually I don’t envy them, as I am happy enough keeping my money and staying on the ground, but this night I did, a little. They weren’t looking at the sky-canvas, as I was – they were in it. They had become a part of that sunset. I imagine they could practically feel its colors.
Yesterday, while we were picking beans, a great flock of small black birds went racing right over us. Their noise caught our attention and we looked up to see their silhouettes against the blue-and-white. There had to be hundreds of them, all flying at the same speed, one body with one purpose. “It’s like a pattern,” I said, and wished I could sew a dress out of the fabric.
At the barn that night, I watched the birds gather on the fences of the runs where the horses eat. They wait for the horses to finish their feed, and once we pull the horses and buckets out of the runs, the birds hop in for the spilled grain. Mostly they are sparrows, but one of the birds was different, bigger than the rest, a kind of brindled brown and black. I don’t know what he was, and I still haven’t found out, but I kept looking back at him, wanting to see if he got the leftovers along with the others, wondering where he lived and how he had come here.
And all these things came together to make me start thinking about wings. That old human desire for flight. An airplane doesn’t quite suffice – it’s so inside, so loud, so mechanical. I’d rather grow wings out of my own back, nice white feathery ones, tinged pink or gold, that I could tuck away and unfold as needed. I’m not an angel of the heavenly variety nor the (rather opposite) Victoria’s Secret variety, but I do envy their gorgeous feathers! I wonder what kinds of things might we see, if we could add that other dimension of space to our daily, usual movement? How would our perspectives change? What beauty might we know?
Adventure isn’t something I can very well afford right now, but I can daydream about hang-gliding, parasailing, boat sailing, ballooning, and galloping bareback across a meadow. Lightness, height, speed . . . we pursue these things for a reason. I want to do it. I want to find out why.
At the Farmers’ Market
September 24, 2011 § 1 Comment
When I woke up this morning it was dark. The temperature was 45 degrees and my feet were cold, but a quick glance at weather.com warned me of a high of 85. Tank top underneath three-quarter-length underneath a fleece and out the door with a slice of bread-and-butter.
The sunrise on my way to the farm helps the morning to feel calm for ten minutes. It’s almost always orange, pink, sometimes hazy with blue and purple. How crazy what a difference fifteen minutes makes; most mornings I get to the farm at 7 but the sunrise is done by then. 6:45 and I catch the brilliant tail end.
We load the truck, my co-worker Adam and I, and get to the market to set up in the bright (and I mean bright) morning sun.
And then when we’re finally settled one of us gets Silver Canyon Coffee, and we get to talk and sell to the folks of Longmont and Boulder County. How fun to share the produce of Sol y Sombra Farm – the result of our week’s hard work!
As the day goes on we take turns taking breaks, wandering through to see what we want to buy from other vendors, what we might have for lunch or a mid-morning treat.
The market in Longmont isn’t as packed nor as renowned as the one in Boulder, but it has plenty going for it, including music, seriously remarkable face painting, prepared foods, and space, glorious space. Parking isn’t a headache and elbows aren’t so jostled here. Come see the spread of colorful vegetables, fresh-baked and gluten-free breads, handmade soaps, local flowers, grassfed beef and pastured poultry, pies and teas and roasted chili peppers. But you’d better come early if you want okra!
And the best part? Going home and looking at what you just got from your local farmers and producers. Today, for me (in addition to my usual share from the farm): apples and sourdough and this season’s first pie pumpkin.
Then there’s the fun of playing with ideas for what to make, and whom to share it with. It always makes me glad to see how creativity and community and seasonality come together here.
I’ve got to say thanks to all the vendors and staff at the Boulder County Farmers' Markets. And to those involved in farmers’ markets across the country, both bustling and just-getting-started . . . keep up the good work!
A book to read in fall
September 14, 2011 § Leave a comment
A slim little paperback of 20 poems by Robert Bly, one of my beloved Minnesota poets: The Urge to Travel Long Distances.
The geese in flight reminded me of the cover of this book, a book I dig out this time of year for a good re-read. Here are poems to enjoy by the season’s first fires, with mugs of cider in your hands.
The geese fly south
September 14, 2011 § Leave a comment
Even as I write this several geese are honking overhead, the sound coming and going along with them. A welcome reminder of the nature beyond my apartment and beyond the town. On my way to the farm last week, I caught a glimpse of at least a hundred of them off to my left, settled and sifting through the stubble that remained in an already-harvested field. Yesterday, as we took the last horses from their runs to the paddocks, a large flock flew over, loud and many enough to catch our attention, even while our work requires us to be pretty darn focused on the animals at the end of our ropes and in our near spaces. Look! said my coworker, and I did: several V’s formed against the blue, against the last white beams of the sun as it slipped behind the mountains. Dark silhouettes with long necks and purposeful wings. It is time, and they always know.
Ulani
September 13, 2011 § Leave a comment
Have a look at Ulani, in one of his fancy gaits. He is a Mangalarga Marchador stallion who belongs to hosts I stayed with in France. I just recently found this video on YouTube and it made me miss him, and my hosts Frederic and Dorine (who made the video, I am sure). It also made me remember how glad I am to have known and met them! I never got to see Ulani demonstrate a marcha so it was very cool to come across this. Isn’t he a fine fellow?
An afternoon’s happiness
August 14, 2011 § Leave a comment
Happiness is sliding into a nap on the couch.
Silent rain on the patio, an open door, window blinds tapping one another.
The sound of the wind pushing around corners.
A yawning dog.
Kinds of Honey 