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 Black Hills, Part Two: Oh, how we ate!
September 13, 2011 § Leave a comment
I think we dined better over a campfire than I often do in my somewhat well-equipped apartment kitchen. We met up at Spokane Creek Campground and Cabins, nestled in a quiet valley outside of Keystone. Such a peaceful place, with just enough conveniences to keep us comfy. The first day, I’d dozed under a tree and listened to the creek running along behind me, waiting for my family to get there (they all came from the east, while I came from the west) . . . they arrived just before dusk and everyone was hungry!
We had quick happy greetings and then, starving, got dinner started. How nice to stand next to my sister, slicing peppers and summer squash and onion and garlic and hamburger to wrap in aluminum for hobo pies. With sweet corn on the grill. Most of the vegetables were from the CSA my sister and her husband belong to, with some of the squash and the garlic from the farm where I work. I brought raw milk and filled everyone’s blue speckled mugs. We were eating late so darkness crept around us as we buttered the corn and felt happy about being together. My father and brother-in-law set up kerosene lanterns, and we put water over the fire for coffee. A good first dinner. A good sign that we’d be eating well for the week. And so we did.
Breakfast was zucchini chocolate chip bread (courtesy of my sister), sometimes cereal, and gluten-free and buckwheat pancakes. Lunches were buffalo meat, cheese, bread, peaches, plums, apples, crackers. Of course we had s’mores. Peach cobbler in the Dutch oven. Dinners of brats and burgers with a side of beans, and more sweet corn. And more roasted marshmallows. (I will make homemade marshmallows one day. This was not that time, so yes, we had the bad-for-you marshmallows, a little food-sin I can occasionally live with.)
Later, we moved over to a cabin at Palmer Gulch Resort. What a fun place! The electricity was out the first day we were there, though, so we laughed and made shiskabobs over the fire. How entirely delicious. Thanks to E. and J. for their hard work! Thanks to the cabin for having a delightful porch, with a picnic table and stunning view.
One evening after lots of driving and hiking and scrambling over rocks, we ate at a pie shop in a purple-and-pink painted Victorian house, aptly named The Purple Pie Place. Admittedly, the appearance of the building got us three ladies to clamor for going there. Mostly we wanted a good dinner after our day’s long activities, and we got it . . . then split a piece of bumbleberry pie for dessert.
Our last real meal together was a good-fun chuckwagon dinner, at the Circle B Ranch. Mom and Dad went ahead of time, to get on horseback for a South Dakota trail ride. We met up with them later to see the miniature donkeys, the wood carver, the small shops on the Old West street, and then to eat: beef, beans, potatoes, biscuits, peaches, and ginger cake on a tin plate, and coffee and lemonade in tin cups, while the cowboys strummed their guitars and sang to us in rollicking harmonies.
Ah, good food. Good times.
Seeds and sky
September 7, 2011 § Leave a comment
“Keep your eyes clean and your ears quiet and your mind serene. Breathe God’s air. Work, if you can, under His sky.” – Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation
A favorite book on a favorite subject
September 5, 2011 § Leave a comment
As I was writing the previous post, and thinking about good words in the world, I happened to remember this book. It is the book that made me want to try my hand at nonfiction when I was adamantly going to be a young adult fiction writer. I am so glad. This book is written in a way that reminds you of snow falling in a dark night. There is something quietly powerful, quietly beautiful. Read it.
The Rural Life by Verlyn Klinkenborg
Measuring
September 5, 2011 § Leave a comment
The pictures and stories from the Black Hills adventures are still coming. I haven’t forgotten. I’ve just been focusing on other things, and I want to spend a nice good time on it so you have a nice good full-ish story when I tell you what a perfectly wonderful vacation we had.
For now, I am in normal life. It is not always my favorite place to be. I like it – oh, I totally love so many of the things I get to do each week, and then at week’s end I go through the rich vivid things I’ve gotten to do, and touch, and see, and there is so much color and life in it. But do you ever have those moments when all the things you have been quietly, or not-so-quietly, brooding and stewing over for the last day, or week, or even months just pile up on your chest so that you literally feel like you can’t breathe? When the pain from this-or-that – sometimes little pains, sometimes big ones – that you have been suppressing for so long suddenly pushes back? Things are good, things are fine, you keep telling yourself and everyone else, and there you go still grabbing onto hope and trying to be everything you need yourself to be, and not always succeeding.
I am crawling out of that and noticing how easily lately I can get shot down into that tailspin. Sensitive, much? I thought I outgrew it after life punched me in the gut a few times, but nope, it is still there. This is certainly a little bit of a feel-sorry-for-me kind of thing but much more of a I-am-really-tired-and-running-out-of-ideas-for-how-to-fix-stuff kind of thing. Although, actually, the ideas abound but the means to actualizing them gets gritty. Do you have what it takes, girl? And if not, where can you get it?
So much of life can seem to be about measuring up. For a perfectionist this is exhausting. We have to extend grace to ourselves and to others. We just do. Everyone slips; we are human. Everyone caves to their disappointment and pain sometimes. And everyone is just trying to make it. Some are trying to not only make it, but to help others make it, and to love the world and its people, and this is incredible.
Some recent reading of comments to online articles and youtube videos and such has made me shudder. How wretched we can be! How vile, and hateful, and hurtful. (Sorry if you’re one of those sorts who thinks everything is relative and okay, and we should be able to say and do what we please, but it isn’t and we shouldn’t in all cases.) Some of the things said seem to ask for someone to track that person down as they are on the verge of truly troubling crimes, and I’m not exaggerating. It’s startling how hiding behind online names/personas allows people to be so open that they walk and so often cross a precarious line, moving from freedom of speech towards assault.
Yet at the same time there are good-hearted, well-intentioned nonprofits abounding. There are people dedicating their lives to the well-being of other humans, animals, the earth. There are people who cry for others, who fight for others, who equip others. Maybe these people are so busy doing these things that they don’t have the time to lurk and comment on the online news and entertainment pieces. (Ooh, that’s a comforting thought.) The negative comments and the mindless ones far outweigh the good ones. I’m going to stop reading these follow-ups as, usually, they go round and round and only make me end up despising humanity and wishing to be a sleek, cheerful, laughing bottle-nosed dolphin instead. Or maybe a baby bear. At the same time I wonder who is hiding and why they are hiding and how they got to such places, and if someone can reach them somehow. Everyone has a heart; some hearts have just gotten clouded or overgrown with thorny tangles.
I don’t know. What I do know is that as I, the formerly avid real book reader, become a part of the online writing community (one that is now huge and happening), I want the voice I have – even one that is from an imperfect, still-wandering, often a wee bit discouraged person – to offer light, hope, encouragement, and kindness. I hope you can find these things here. I hope you feel free to check me if too much criticism, anger, or even resentment creeps in (I am still human, not a dolphin, unfortunately). I sometimes imagine tossing (magically biodegradable) gold glitter out over the earth’s surface, over the people in parks and the people on bicycles and the people walking stolidly to work along the sidewalk – sparkling handfuls to make the day a little brighter, to garner a surprise and a smile.
Can words do that? I like to think that they might.
Ballerinas in New York
August 30, 2011 § Leave a comment
Just wanted to direct y’all to this sweet collection of photographs posted on http://www.chicquero.com.
Ballerinas take over the Big Apple by Dane Shitagi.
Tulle, toeshoes, sidewalks and city lights!
Storms
August 30, 2011 § Leave a comment
Since we’re on the subject of water I just have to share another song – a favorite piece from one of my favorite groups, on their new album, Bright Morning Stars.
Be careful in real storms, obviously, especially hurricanes. But what a beautiful use of symbolism; the images and the harmonies make nature feel right there.
Clean
August 30, 2011 § Leave a comment
This morning I lingered in the bath. There is something just wonderful about slowly squeezing water from a soapy sponge, letting it slide down your skin and wash you clean.
So many metaphors ask to be brought up here. I love them all. I don’t know about all that “What’s your element?” stuff but I do feel like water and I, we somehow go together. If there is any truth to it water would be mine. I grew up alongside Minnesota lakes, wading in the shallows, easing in the coldness in the impatience of late May, slipping out to swim at midnight during summer camp, so maybe that’s why. It seems wrong to be without water access, to not be able to freely immerse myself in it all summer long, with no ridiculous fees to pay for the privilege. This is part of why Colorado has been hard for me; and part of why Coot Lake, though only swimmable for Miss T. and wadeable for me, has been such a relief and gift.
I could go on about the environmental problems we’re facing and how water is among the most important of issues. But most of you know those things and others have written plenty about it already. I did, for a class in undergrad, and I don’t really feel like reliving that experience, honestly! A great organization I’d recommend if you care about water issues, though, is Blood: Water Mission. I supported them for awhile when I could, and right now I can’t, but I meant to go back to it eventually. You can find a list of other water-oriented organizations at Water for the Ages.
It’s also perhaps a bit insensitive of me to regale everyone with my love for water when back east water is causing so much damage. Flooding has, in the past, harmed my beloved Midwestern states as well. Still, I can’t fault the rivers and the rain. Weather happens. Some of the damage we might have prevented through our own actions, some of it not. But I’d far rather a rainstorm than a sandstorm. We will recover. We’ll get stronger. One of the marvelous things about the floods that happened in Missouri and Iowa a few years ago was watching how communities came together. It is always good to see people caring about other people. Proof of love.
As I’m all clean from my bath and feeling cool and happy, my soul seems to be asking for a scrub as well. This song by Needtobreathe is one that I’ve played over and over, have had as my ringtone, and can’t stop going back to now and again. When I start to accuse myself of being broken, start to feel that I am valued for what I am or am not able to do, start to think failure and disappointment are all the future might hold, this song gives me a reminder of who I am.
Kinds of Honey 