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!
Meandering sidewalks
August 2, 2011 § Leave a comment
This morning I got out of bed and before doing anything else (other than throwing on something to wear), I grabbed Miss T.’s leash to take her out for a walk. Forever I have been promising myself and her that we would start mornings with a walk through the neighborhood, and forever this has been an off-and-on thing – much more “off” than “on.”
So out we went, with me still bleary-eyed and really hoping not to see anyone who might happen to care how I looked, or make me care how I looked. Whatever. Tassie pranced along and I went after, and in my my head I kept thinking, “See, this is a good thing. How nice it would be to get up at 5:30 each morning before work and just have this space of time to be with my dog and pray and ponder. It would be a healthy, slow, energizing, wake-up-and-greet-the-world start, just a bit of time for me and the quiet world, before going forth to dive into work.”
But. Silly suburban neighborhoods! Why must you have illogical routes that curve and wind, and small instead of big trees that don’t offer much shade, and houses that all look the same? I have walked this neighborhood numerous times and still I get lost in there, in its twists and turns and depressingly garden-center-patched-together yards (I’m sorry, I don’t mean to judge, but hardly any of the houses we walked past had interesting landscaping and I don’t think even one had a vegetable garden – mainly we saw the same annual flowers over and over – and oh how boring. Come on, use that wonderful space that you have for food and creativity! You’re so luck to have it, and the opportunity to tend it. For the far-too-busy, maybe you can find a business like this one to help: Love and Carrots. What a cool idea!). Walking on. Where were we? And why were we here? And would we get out? The houses even blocked the mountains so that I had to stand on tiptoe and peer through gaps in yards to find out where west was. (Oh. Or I could look at the sun, there’s a thought.)
We walked and walked and the sun got hotter and hotter. T. was panting and I was wrinkling my eyebrows and squinting and thinking of ice cubes. Sun! Go away! And it actually sort of did. A scattering of clouds and a breeze pushed through right about the time I was wondering if we’d ever find our way back or would just have to wander through suburbia for the rest of the morning until I got over my pride and slovenliness and asked someone to point us back towards our apartment complex.
Some curved road led us back to home, somehow. T. kept looking for shady spots to walk in, for lighter pavement to keep from burning her paws. Thirsty seems to be the prominent state of my body these days, and this was cold lemon-water thirst. My morning desire for hot coffee was pretty much gone. I am sorry to say that, in fact, I had a mango popsicle for breakfast and should make something more nutritious next, but eating isn’t much fun in the summer heat.
The whole “peaceful morning walk” idea didn’t uphold itself, today. But we may try again tomorrow. 5:30 a.m. will be earlier, but also cooler, than 8:30 a.m. And afterwards, it is satisfying to know that my girl is exercised and content for the rest of the day, and I can do my thing knowing I’ve started off well.
Dirty clothes
July 31, 2011 § 2 Comments
I am getting used to being sweaty and dirty almost every day (again).
It’s actually much easier than having to dress in appropriate business attire almost every day, that’s for sure.
Not that I don’t like to dress up, to don ribbons and pearls like most girls. I happen to find the perfect balance is this: a tank top, jeans, and boots most days of the week, then light, pretty, ruffly sorts of things for outings and social times. Work clothes and play clothes. This seems right.
My dad likes to say that if he went to work in a suit and tie and came home still pressed and neat, he wouldn’t feel like he had really worked. This isn’t to say that all those out there who do go to work in nice clothing haven’t done anything all day – I know lots of you do, and it’s strenuous and challenging and important and it brings home a paycheck. We need suit-and-tie people just as we need jeans-and-boots people (and skirts-and-pumps people, uniforms-and/or-costumes people, corduroy-and-oxfords people, hard-hat-and-coveralls people). But I think what my father is getting at is the same thing I crave, too, in a job: to have visual, physical, immediate evidence of hard work, well done, towards a clear purpose.
Mud on my pants means I’ve been down on my knees getting weeds out and plants in. Spit on my sleeve means a horse got fed (and wiped its mouth on me). Straw down my shirt means bales moved to where they need to be. Sweat on my neck means distances paced, loads lifted, buckets and bins and wheelbarrows filled. These things are satisfying. Satisfying to me in a way that paperwork will never quite be.
So I toss filthy clothes in the laundry basket at the end of the day, glad I’ve saved these rag-tags from the Goodwill box when numerous moves tempted me to toss them. And oh, man, doesn’t a shower feel good when you, in fact, truly badly need one!
Cosmos and cheer in the morning
July 22, 2011 § 2 Comments
Today I was traipsing through the gardens with a bucket full of cosmos and coreopsis, wearing my floppy straw hat and listening to the birds chirping their morning songs. The sky was blue and the clouds were fluffy white, and to the west, beyond the neighbor’s alfalfa field, Long’s Peak stood clear and gray and strong.
It was one of those moments where you think, “Is this my life?”
Hot July summer days. We end at three in dirt and sweat, I go home and sip iced coffee for an hour and a half, then head out to feed the horses. After that, when I am covered in grass hay and smell like horse and have gotten a second set of clothes dirty, a cool bath is just the thing.
I hold on to the thoughts of the bath and the coffee to keep me going when I need to. Some days, the heat makes every minute drag. Many of those kinds of days lately make work a bit more difficult to go to.
But this day I thought, “I can’t believe I am getting paid to pick flowers!”
And this evening, “I can’t believe I am paid to hang out with these beautiful horses.”
I hadn’t started the day so grateful. I still stay up too late, and sleep too poorly, to be a morning person. I do prefer jobs that start earlier in the morning, but that doesn’t mean I am cheerful at the start of the day. (This reality doesn’t change, actually, even if my job starts at 10:00 a.m. Lazy me!) So many mornings I get up and do not want to talk, do not want to move, do not want to do.
So many mornings, as I am hauling myself out to my car, I find myself in an almost involuntary habit of considering other options. Even when I’m going off to the job I am happy for and have been wanting for months! Sometimes it seems I just don’t like to work. (Kind of a problem when life requires income.) But that isn’t true – during months of unemployment last year I was frustrated, disillusioned, defeated, and desperately bored . . . and losing a grip on any sense of a life-purpose. Still, along goes my mind . . . maybe a different kind of work, it suggests, would make me less grouchy in the mornings. Maybe if I’d been a ballet dancer, after all, I’d wake up ready to face the day with joy and ambition. Maybe if I had that farm/bed and breakfast already and could be my own boss. Maybe if I were a successful writer and could just stay home at my sunny desk with a steaming mug of coffee and baby blue striped pajamas to work in all day. Maybe . . .
So this morning I was going through all these thoughts, and then reminding myself of how about an hour or two into the day I’d be snipping lettuce and thinking how glad I was to be snipping lettuce instead of answering phones or grading papers. How the sun coming through the trees’ morning shade would cheer me up. How the first soreness of crouching would have gone away by then and I’d be appreciating the plants and the quiet and the air. How while weeding I’d be sharing ideas and interests and simply random things with fellow farmers and farmer-dreamers. How the smell of the soil and the splashing of water and a pile of colorful carrots would make this small world such a vivid one.
That helped, as it usually does. But today took me a bit further than most mornings of this in-my-head conversation, and I had a little jolting self-realization about attitude: particularly, how my morning one is really an issue. Here I go running through ways to adjust my situation so that I can be happier and/or things can be better. Honestly, I do this somewhat regularly as I assess life and its options, and I don’t think the tendency is entirely problematic. I am a great proponent of acting rather than whining when things aren’t quite as you would like them to be. But. Even what you really want can have its moments of being difficult, or stressful, or just not what you feel like doing in that particular space of time. Or sometimes you just can’t have what you want for a while. Sometimes, even, what is best for you and/or the world – what’s your purpose, even – isn’t what naturally feels the greatest.
My morning self-realization was that I can – and too frequently do – allow my emotions to be subject to my circumstances. How I feel can so easily be affected by short-term and long-term situations, or people, or jobs or specific tasks. Yet (and this is the good part following the jolt) I can decide to be stronger than all of that, and I can choose to set my own framework for the status of my mind and heart and spirit. I can select happiness and back it up with so many good things. I really can. So much is about what is in my head.
I am a gut-instinct, feeling, deep-in-the-mysteries-of-the-world kind of person. At the same time that I appreciate this about myself, I don’t want to be helplessly driven by momentary feelings. Instead I want to acknowledge them, accept them, and work with them. The ones worth rooting out? Well, I’m an expert weeder in the physical realm! Maybe I can transfer the skills to the psychological. When I find the thoughts or feelings that block contentment, out they go.
Anyway, that’s the thought of the day. Mornings might not be my favorite for awhile yet. (It’d be magic if I just woke up automatically cheery from now on, wouldn’t it?) Wait until I’ve had coffee and two hours of being awake before talking to me . . . if you want to be on the safe side! And I will practice refocusing each day towards gratitude. Oh. Doesn’t that sound life-giving just saying it? Dawn could become a beautiful time.
Kinds of Honey 