Today and tomorrow
October 18, 2011 § Leave a comment
Today has been a perfect fall day. The kind where you put on and take off layers depending on how much wind there is, and whether you happen to be in the sun or the shade. T and I lingered outside this long morning, while I browsed jobs online and entertained dreams and occasionally tossed her orange tennis ball. The light was just like fall light ought to be.
The farm is winding down, and quickly. Several frosts have come, and plants are beginning to die. I might have flowers to take to the market this week, and I might not. But there are shelves full of all kinds of varieties of pumpkins and squash, and bunches of cornstalks for sale at the farm stand. Afternoons we will cut down finished plants and shell dried beans. I have small plates and container lids spread out on the counter, drying seed. In the evenings I soak in the bathtub and circle vegetable and fruit and flower varieties from the Seed Savers Exchange catalogue with a Sharpie marker, already excited for next year.
But today, this perfect day, I need to remember what comes before the next farm season. I’m filling out application forms for temporary Christmas jobs (admittedly I actually kind of enjoy retail – it’s fun helping people find just the right thing, especially during this cheery holiday time, and the fast pace makes the days go quickly). I’m looking for full-time jobs that might start after that, ideally ones that I can do during the day while putting together plans for my own farm. I’m sometimes anxious. I’m mostly calm. Even struggle and change and waiting can produce a fine harvest. I wonder what winter will bring? And next year? Oh, today. One of those days where you juggle loving the present with hopes for the future.
Salt and sugar
October 11, 2011 § 1 Comment
The perfect crust still eludes me. I’ve succeeded perhaps once or twice. This time? I grabbed the 1/2 tablespoon measure instead of the 1/2 teaspoon measure (in my defense, the only marking left on the spoon is “1/2”) and subsequently ended up dumping in too much salt. A peach galette with a salty, rather than sweet, crust. It doesn’t taste too badly if you break off some of the more crusty bits. And the smell of hot peaches is still perfect and lingering in the air.
On a better note, I have been the lucky recipient of good and unexpected gifts lately. Kind words have been spoken to and over me, in places here and there. A coworker handed me a peach ripe from the Palisades. A boss gave me a box of chocolate-covered macadamia nuts. And my roommate decorated our whole apartment with a variety of charming, adorable pumpkins. These acts of generosity, gentleness, and appreciation end up making me approach the world differently. I feel cared for. It’s natural that a full, warmed spirit will go on to offer warmth and kindness more easily to others. Or at least try.
A quiet, joyful self is something I have learned to treasure, and to aim to maintain for as long as I can. Tonight my roommate and I will have fried green tomatoes, sweet corn, and cherry pie for dinner. There is a bouquet of flowers from the market still looking pretty on the table. The aspens outside are going gold and the breeze is almost always cool these days. These are the things that are beautiful in my world, at the moment. What’s good in yours?
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.
The sunflowers are done
September 29, 2011 § Leave a comment
We pulled the stalks out of the ground this week, taking care to save some of the heads for harvesting seed. So here is a last sunny face for you! Till next summer.
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!
Muck boot days and flower bouquets
September 16, 2011 § 2 Comments
Goodness gracious, has it been muddy! Three days of clouds and rain. Morning mists, and white wisps hovering around the mountains. It has felt like England. It has meant tea and toast with butter and jam.
It has also meant sliding around in the paddocks with high-strung horses, horses even more eager (read: demanding) to have their food. It has meant mud-caked shoes and wisely switching to muck boots, or wellies. Wellies are great, and it makes me happy when I get to wear mine. But you have to walk rather differently in them, especially when they are heavy with mud on the bottom, and after doing that – while pulling wheelbarrows full of hay or toting buckets full of flowers – for a solid day or so you will end up sore in muscles you didn’t know you had, or at least had forgotten about.
And then you get to go inside and sink into a bath, or stretch out by the fireplace, and let the cold and wet sort of seep out of you. Fleece and wool, sweaters and thick socks. It is only September and yet the rain means I get to drag out and use these favorite things!
I don’t know why what some would call “bad weather” is so often a favorite thing for me. I am completely aware that it means more work. I know it means having to worry about things you otherwise might not. I definitely know it makes more laundry! And it surely upsets the comfort and efficiency of routine.
But isn’t it a relief to have routine upset sometimes? There is just something about having to work around the weather – about having the ordinary course of things thrown off – that I can’t help finding amusing, interesting, and honestly quite satisfying. I suppose some thanks should go to parents who taught my siblings and me to laugh at difficulty and work with the unexpected. After all, that makes it more fun to plow through, if one must plow.
As I write, though, the three days of clouds and water have just passed. After a cold, foggy, coat-hat-and-mittens morning at the farm today, with plenty of sniffling and even a change of socks, I settled with the flowers into the shed to make bouquets, and the sun came out once again. The mountains could be seen blue to the west. The other farm hands and I had slowly been shedding layers all morning; I had to grin a little at going from fleece-lined softshell jacket to tanktop and ponytail in only a few hours. Now in the shade of the shed I was still sweating. Still, at least I had the shade, right?
These Fridays are my flower days, and happily full of color. So many flowers just exude optimism. Others seem more serious, or romantic, or even melancholy, and these can be nice to put together. Cosmos, snapdragons, zinnias, pincushion flowers, bachelor’s buttons, amaranth, love-lies-bleeding, sweet annie, and black-eyed susans have all been gathered into pretty bundles to greet people at the market in the morning. And I’ll be there, too – hopefully with a mug of coffee in hand and a smile more noticeable than my sleepy eyes.
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
Practical farmers, practical beekeepers – and the first giveaway!
August 4, 2011 § 5 Comments
Two things I want to share with you all:
1. Practical Farmers of Iowa. This is a great nonprofit where I worked as an intern a few summers back, and in addition to feeling even more a part of the Iowa agriculture community, I learned a whole lot. Here’s a statement about/by the organization:
At Practical Farmers of Iowa, we come together every day to advance profitable, ecologically sound and community-enhancing approaches to agriculture through farmer-led investigation and information sharing.
We are working toward the day when:
- Farms are prized for their diversity of crops and livestock … Their wildlife, healthy soils, innovations, beauty and productivity …Their connection to a rich past and a fulfilling present where individuals and families earn a good living.
- Wholesome food is celebrated for its connections to local farmers, to seasons, to hard work and good stewardship.
- Communities are alive with diverse connections between farmers and friends of farmers … Places where commerce, cooperation, creativity and spirituality are thriving … Places where the working landscape, the fresh air and the clean water remind us of all that is good about Iowa.
Practical Farmers of Iowa is also a gathering place — a place for all types of farmers who want to be better stewards of their land while making a good living farming. As members, they become a part of something bigger than themselves — They become part of a network of individuals sharing information with and supporting each other.
They’re just great. Check ’em out. Attend a field day. Meet new friends! Support and learn. And join the movement! Practical Farmers of Iowa also recently asked me to review a book for their quarterly newsletter. Which leads me to:
2. Honeybee: Lessons from an Accidental Beekeeper by C. Marina Marchese. This is the most warmly-written, engaging, straightforward, informative book/story on beekeeping that I’ve read. In addition to sharing the author’s personal journey into beekeeping, the book includes helpful illustrations. recipes, and appendixes. It makes the whole process seem like yes, an adventure, but one you can take on and enjoy. You can learn more about Marchese and her bees at her website, www.redbee.com.
If you become a member of PFI, guess what? Among other benefits, you get the newsletter. Which means you get to read things like my book review. And then maybe you could purchase the book . . . and get some hives . . . and make some honey. If you do, please send me some!
Just joking. (Kind of.) Right now it’s my turn to do the giving. Comment on this post by telling me (a) your favorite honey recipe and/or (b) one of your favorite farms or farmers, and you’ll get your name in a drawing to receive a copy of Honeybee: Lessons from an Accidental Beekeeper. The drawing will take place one week from today, so be sure to comment before then. Looking forward to hearing from you!
A Sunday summit: 14,060 feet
July 25, 2011 § Leave a comment
Over a year in Colorado and no 14er yet climbed! It was time to do one. So when my (fun, blonde, Dutch, creative, athletic) cousins came from Iowa to visit their sisters we just had to get ourselves up a mountain. We found a 14er we thought we could handle on a day we could all make work . . . and then we emailed about it excitedly for several weeks . . . and then the day finally got here!
We started our ascent of Mt. Bierstadt around 6:20 a.m., which meant my roommate Kayla and I left our apartment at the wee small hour of 4. At 5:30 we all met up in Georgetown and cousin Katie bravely drove the winding, switchbacking road up to the trailhead. All geared up? Off we go!
Photo Credit: Kayla Chapman
It started off with such a lovely tramp through a green, bushy sort of meadow, with wildflowers and frost and mist rising from the small lake. And a creek crossing. I love water!
Do you see the moose? Thanks to the hikers who pointed him out!
The meadow went down, and then up slightly, and then the mountain rose steeply and our legs started to burn. Ooh, it felt good and healthy to get the heart beating that fast!
Of course we happened upon some good photo opportunities. My cousin Emily and I have been close friends for ages and have not had a photo together in years. Time to make it happen!
We stopped for a few breathers but kept trucking up. Everyone was happy, and joking, and encouraging, and patient, and optimistic. Are we all so great? Or were the endorphins at work? Or was it just the good old beauty of nature affecting our spirits? (I’m going to go with all of the above.)
And . . . snow!
Photo Credit: Evan Feekes
(We like pink, ja.)
For the last stretch we had to scramble up boulders. So many people had dogs and as we reached the top we saw more and more. Miss T. didn’t come because I didn’t quite know what we’d be getting into, and because she’d still been limping the day before. (She seems fine now, if y’all were worried.)
And around 9 a.m. we summited! All of us, together and triumphant.
Photo Credit: Kayla Chapman
We hung out, chatted with other hikers, looked and looked and looked around. So far to see. The colors and textures, the shade and light. The way the clouds left full shadows over the swells and vales.
Photo Credit: Kayla Chapman
And then, down.
Such sweet little flowers all along the path. I realized, on our descent, that they made me feel like Heidi (in the book Heidi, which, if you haven’t read, you really ought to. It was my favorite book in second grade, in close competition with Black Beauty, which you should also read). Heidi lives in the Swiss Alps with her grandfather and there are goats and mountain hikes and crisp air and, I imagine, flowers somewhat like these.
At the bottom, we felt tired and happy, and parted with hugs and promises of coffee (to ourselves) and another adventure soon (to each other).
A successful first 14er for me! I rather want to do it again.
Kinds of Honey 