I know, I know, it's been a long time...

But I'm still alive!  Once a person gets behind on blogging, the amount of things that COULD be said is overwhelming, and one just doesn't even want to try.  But here I am, nonetheless!  I'll deal with my little problem with a random list of things I've been thinking about, in no particular order.  I'm just going to be ok with being a sloppy blogger. 

1. This is my first fall without school in 19 years.  Which makes me feel excited and nostalgic and unprepared and lonely and excited again.  I do miss the grand adventure of learning, every day, as my main task.  Always at this time of year I get itchy to start writing papers, thinking new thoughts, being challenged by ideas that I never would have encountered on my own.  I particularly miss the tactile bits right now: new notebooks, not yet the unorganized chaos they would become mid-semester.  New pencils.  A daily schedule, written out and full of possibilities!  But that's my life looking forward... I mean the "full of possibilities" part, not the "written out."  It is entirely unwritten.  
2. Yeah, about that future... Coming towards the end of something always makes me anxious and day-dreamy about my long-term future.  Brendan and I dream out loud a lot about what we could do.  Start a farm/commune/social justice community?  Organize communities around food availability and intimacy?  Find some community without a co-op and start one?  An apple orchard?  An off-the-grid house on our own plot of land?  Notice the theme: FOOD.  
3. My amazing friend Amanda asked me recently how I came to care about food so much, and I had a new realization today on that front.  I believe that there are two basic categories of human need: the physical (food, shelter, etc.), and the spiritual (community, nature, pleasure, God).  Food is one thing that can fill both of those needs.  Obviously everyone needs a certain amount of daily calories, but we can become just as sick without our spiritual needs met.  People gather around food, find pleasure in it, get to be outside when they grow it.  Making and eating good food forces us to slow down and just do one thing.  And (of course) food is theologically significant, a major part of Jesus' ministry, the center of Christian ritual in the eucharist.  Ask me someday about a eucharistic ethics of food justice.  Or go read Sara Miles' really really good book, "Take This Bread".  Anyways.  Food.  Love it.  
4. And just for good measure, some things I've been doing lately: harvesting and processing food like crazy--roasting and freezing tomatoes, canning salsa, drying pears, storing potatoes.  Today we picked two bushels of apples from a friends trees, so we'll be elbow deep in applesauce and apple butter soon.  We're almost done putting up a high tunnel (a sort of unheated green house to grow produce in the winter!)  Generally loving up this place all we can while we can. 

Life and Death

It's been a while since I've written, so I thought I'd make up for it with some really intense subject matter--Life and Death.  I used to have the impression that farmers were people who made life happen--farmers help plants and animals to grow and thrive, so that the people who eat them can grow and thrive.  And this is true.  I understand myself as a food midwife, ushering zucchini and eggs and cheese and jam into the world.  But farming is undeniably also about death.  There's a lot of casual death around here.  Out in the garden, where we are helping the tomatoes and carrots and beans to grow, we pull out any plant that we don't want there, starve it of water and nutrients, and throw it on the compost heap to rot.  The beautiful red beetles that were munching on the potatoes last week were smashed under my boot by the handful.  Of course, too, we know that the turkeys that I've fallen so in love with will be dinner come November, and that we are raising two beautiful calves that will likely be dinner too, and that soon we have to slaughter a couple of roosters because we have too many of them.  I know that life and death is everywhere in the world, but the interplay between them is so close to the surface here on the farm.  Yesterday it bubbled up right in my hands.  We had a little chick, two or three weeks old, who couldn't walk.  Something had gone wrong with his or her legs, and the poor little thing would flop over every time it tried to stand.  We tried nursing it, separating it from the others and giving it its own food and water, making little splints out of pipecleaners... but none of it worked.  The Chick sat in one place for a day and a half, unable to hobble even to the dish of food we'd put out for it.  And so we had to kill it.  I know that I kill mosquitos all the time, and weeds, and that I've eaten meat for most of my life and so am implicit in the killing of animals, but this was the first creature that I've had to take in my hands with the implicit purpose of ending its little life.  I could feel it breathing, and hear it chirping, and he relaxed in my hands when I turned him on his back and through my tears I had to twist its neck.  I don't think I was decisive enough--it kept breathing, chirping, flopping.  Brendan gave it a few more twists and we left it on the compost pile and went to eat breakfast.  And our lives go on.  One becomes very aware, on a farm, how much our living is tied up in dying--not just our own eventual deaths, which color everything, but the little lives extinguished for our survival--or even just our comfort--every day.  It's enough to make one stop and think, isn't it? 

God, bless the little berries, black, blue, rasp, and otherwise...

Guess what this is?  Ah!  Our first beautiful ripe red juicy RASPBERRY!  We've been harvesting strawberries for a week and a half now, but we only get a handful every day--soon we'll be simply SWIMMING in raspberries.  Can you tell I'm pumped?  Yesterday we had buttermilk pancakes with raspberries and rhubarb syrup for breakfast.  YUM. 

P.S. Extra points to anyone who gets the title reference...

Turkey-Love

You know how you always hear that turkeys are stupid and mean and ugly?  I vehemently deny it!  I am quickly falling in love with our little turkey charges.  We have ten of them, and Brendan and I share most of the turkey duties--mainly giving them food and water, changing their bedding, and spending some time with them each day to make sure that no one is acting funny or sick. 

Ok, so other people might think our little turks are ugly, but I think they're... endearingly ugly.  Like little dinosaurs.  They're definitely not mean--though they are a bit clumsy and keep on accidentally stepping on the ducks.  And they may not be the brightest birds in the coop--they can't find any kitchen scraps we put in unless we put them right in their dish with the feed--but they're sweet.  They're really curious, and will peck lightly at any speck they don't understand--a colored patch on your jacket, a picture of a chicken on a feed bag. 

And they're growing so fast!  Already it takes two hands to hold one, and they get bigger every day.  The toms have started getting red on their necks (you can see a little in the picture above--it's more pronounced now) and they've taken to puffing up, holding out their wings, fanning their tails, and turning in little circles, showing off for anyone who will watch them.  They think they're pretty tough, but when we tried to let them out of their little pen to explore today, not a one would leave the coop on its own.  I think they're shy around the big chickens. 

My mom is ordering one of these babies for thanksgiving.  I look forward to sharing my handiwork with my family, but I know there will be a few tears shed and many thank-you's said when I eat one of these sweet little critters.  

The Deluge

There's a section in my favorite novel, One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, where it rains for something like 20 years straight.  That's what it feels like this week, although it's really only been 4 days or so.  The chickens have been hiding under the truck bed to keep dry; I guess they have cabin fever too and want to stay out of the coop.  I have a lot to do in the garden (the weeds!  the rain is helping them out TOO MUCH.) but the whole garden is a mud puddle, and every step I take compresses the soil into a concrete brick, which I absolutely want to avoid, so... I have to find other work to do.  I'm getting a head-start on baking for the weekend (this week: lemon-poppyseed chick cookies, peach-strawberry tarts, rhubarb cupcakes, and, of course, wood-fired sourdough bread...) and I've been cleaning out the barn... an adventure that could take a loooong time.  Yesterday I faced the extra-glamorous task of scraping chicken poop out of the barn loft, where they roosted all winter.  Today... I think I'll organize the GIANT PILE OF TOOLS in the front part of the barn--they'll be much more useful if we know where they all are!  My mucking-about boots are getting a solid workout in all of the mud.  Here's hoping it clears up for the weekend! 

Me and My Cow Friends

I'm working on befriending the cows.  I really want to learn to milk, so that I can give Sue some time off.  And so I can know how to milk a cow!  I've been spending a bit of time in the pasture each day with a pocket full of cow cookies and sweet grain, trying to convince them that I'm a pretty nice person, really.  LaFonda is such a sweet and loving cow that the very first time I came out she let me brush her all over.  She's the one I most want to love me, since she's the milk cow. 

Her calf, Lindyhop, is less convinced.  Here he is playing on the compost pile--he's kind of a goof!  He's getting bolder--now he'll come and lick my fingers, if I'm patient, and today he even let me pet him for a second.

Lariat is kind of a grouch.  She knew that I had food today and came right up, and would tolerate petting if I kept up a steady stream of food, but I could tell she didn't like it.  When I tried to spend time with the calves, she actually headbutted Lindy out of the way to get to my pocket-full of grain!  At least she let me touch her--she used to take one sniff and turn around as if to say "nope.  we're NOT friends."  I don't have a good picture of Lariat's calf Jitterbug, who's beautiful and black and very shy.  I can't haven't ever gotten close enough to touch her, although she's starting to get used to my presence.  I'm hoping to start halter training the calves soon, but I'll need to get the piggy mamas out of the way first! 

 Lindyhop, the steer calf, is starting to be convinced.  He'll lick my fingers a little and today he let me pet him for a second. 

Moo Juice

 Meet LaFonda, our ever-generous milk-cow, and her calf, Lindyhop. 

When we first got here, LaFonda was producing 3 gallons of milk a day--not counting what Lindy drank.  Now, as Lindy gets bigger and more hungry, we get more like 2.  Nonetheless... that's a LOT of milk.  Wanna guess what the fridge looks like?

And that's not counting the fridge out in the barn, which is TOTALLY full of milk!  Needless to say, figuring out what to do with all of that dairy is a daily chore.  Today I made ice-cream, frozen yogurt, mozzerella, and cream cheese.  We had the mozz (which only takes a half-hour to make and is really fun!) and the frozen yogurt with dinner--the ice-cream and cream cheese will be ready (and good, I hope) tomorrow. 

This milk... let me tell you.  It's good milk.  It's raw, so there's some amount of risk, but Sue takes lots of percausions to make sure nothing nasty gets into it.  It is so rich and flavorful that I don't think I'll be able to go back to plain-ole watery bland skim.  If you ever want to take some off of our hands, just come visit and we'll load you down with dairy products! 

Me Vs. The Violets

My title doubles for the name of my new one person band; me and my diggy-prying tool singing to the strawberries.

I used to really like violets.   My favorite color was decidedly purple.  When I was I kid I imagined that I'd name my first daughter violet, and I was always thrilled when I'd find them growing in someone's lawn. 

But the story has changed, I'm afraid.  Violets are one of the worst weeds in my garden, and I've spent all weekend trying to rescue the poor strawberries from their grasp.  When we got here the strawberries were invisible under a jungle of tall thistles and grass; it was our first weeding job to free them.  It's evident now, a week and a half later, that in all of our clueless enthusiasm ("We're weeding!  In a real garden!  Wowee!") we didn't do a very good job.  You can't pull violets up by their roots--they grow in clumps with big, horizontal, tuberous roots just under the surface, and when you pull, you just get the stems.  My tool of the week is a long diggy-prying tool that in the past I've seen used to get out long dandelion roots; it's the best way to pry violets out of the soil too.  The problem is, the violets really like to grow right at the root of my strawberry plants.  More than once this weekend I found myself triumphantly raising a violet clump only to find that I'm also holding up a poor, uprooted strawberry, gasping in the air.  I guess I'm accidentally thinning our over-crowded little patch. 

The best thing about violets, though, is how SATISFYING they are to dig up.  Unlike grass, at which you can dig and pull for a long while without much victory, violets pop out of the ground with a satisfying THUMP! when you get the diggy-pryer under them just right.  This work is full to brimming of little victories. 

Fashion Forward

Here is my all-purpose, chilly-out-with-sun-and-pitchforking-to-do outfit.  It's all the rage!

 I know you were wondering... yes, those are $100 Ray-Ban sunglasses.  To be fair, my dad found them in a dumpster up North, and the hinges are real wobbly, but they fit over my glasses great!  They had a little adventure today--I was pruning around the outside of the pasture's electric fence with the sunglasses ticked into the top of my ubiquitous straw hat, and somewhere along the way realized that the $100 sunglasses were (gasp!) gone!  Luckily, Brendan found them later.  Whew!  

Tools O' the Trade 1: The Crowbar

Says Brendan: "My father always told me never to get between a woman and her crowbar!"

Thus far, this is my favorite gardening tool--a crowbar with one bent edge and notches out of both sides.  I use it for hacking up chunks of dirt and also for the more delicate work of weeding in between closely spaced plants.  It got a lot of use today--I spent all morning weeding between the rows of peas, radishes, lettuce, and beets, with this bad boy in my right hand and a bunch of weeds in my left. 

By lunch time I had weeded, thinned, and mulched these four rows.  They look lovely, but I'll admit that I was a bit disappointed.  Five hours of work for four measly rows??? This is one of my big lessons so far.  This work takes time, and the gratification is the opposite of instant; it'll be another month before we're enjoying the crops off of these plants.  Life on the farm is forcing me to slow down, do one task at a time, and do it well.  It reminds me a bit of the taoist idea of wu-wei, or "actionless action."  Followers of the Tao are supposed to act without being attached to the outcome of their actions.  Of course, I'm terribly attached to the dream of peas coming off of these plants, but I know that any number of factors could get between today's hard work and next month's salad, and I have to work hard anyways.  It's incredibly satisfying to work so hard, so simply, in the clean air.  Just me and my crowbar. 

Hello Goodbye, Hello Goodbye...

It's been about a year since I've last written here (yikes!) but as I leave one home and find another, I want to refresh this as a way to keep in touch about my adventures. Here's the scoop: I graduate from Gustavus Adolphus College on Sunday. Next Wednesday, Brendan and I are moving in at Squash Blossom Farm (squashblossomfarm.blogspot.com) a very lovely little farm outside of Rochester. We'll be helping out with the cows, chickens, and garden and running a farmers market stand with yummy fresh sourdough bread. Hoorah! We're getting really excited for the brand new adventure. Both of us are really committed to changing food systems and can imagine farming in our future, but we haven't farmed a day in our lives and have no idea how we'll like the work. We're thinking of this summer as a sort of farming sampler platter, a chance to test it out. In the fall I'll be moving back up the Camp Amnicon (www.amnicon.org) for a year-round internship. As excited as I am to go to the farm, it's hard for me to NOT be going to camp this summer; after three summers of guiding, Amnicon is really a true home for me. I'm glad that I'll be going back in a few months, and that I'll get to see an entirely different side of camp life.