I Heart Farms

The Fruits of Our Labors

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I can make no excuses about my absence here, except to say the past months have been fraught with challenges in our family—from health issues to difficult circumstances surrounding Logan's well-being. But I've been inspired by recent events, which I will share with you now.

Monday, a friend visiting from Toronto broadcast (yes, he Tweeted!) that he was seeking photographic inspiration. I suggested a visit to the UCSC Farm & Garden, and he accepted. The day was overcast, which is optimal for photography—no glare, no harsh shadows, and clear colors. We met my daughter up at the Alan Chadwick Garden, a two-acre terraced hillside garden that is predominantly orchard, but which also contains rows of vegetables—lots of over-wintered peppers and some Napa cabbages were present on our visit. 

It was the first time I'd been to the up there in February—everything was muddy, covered in mustard grass and other "weeds" (it's hard for me to call anything green a weed), and sloppily beautiful despite the disorder. The garden is so different in winter. All the bare stone fruit trees—with their gnarled, grey branches—contrasted with the citrus trees, which were bearing heavily amid their dense, dark, waxy leaves. To someone else's eye, there might not be much to see, but I was seeing things in a new way, and I loved it.     

The Good News: He's Alive & Well

So I know I promised I'd be back soon...and found that the best laid plans of mice and men oft go astray. And then I learned that if Chef Dan Barber had visited my page, he wouldn't even have seen the most recent post, because a little glitch in [geek alert] "domain mapping" meant nothing new was showing up. She said feebly.

Then, on January 26, the nearly unthinkable happened: Logan was involved in a horrible car wreck and survived with "only" a broken leg and a bloody lip. If you saw the wreck, you might be surprised that anyone lived.

Our lives have changed radically: he's back here nearly full-time because he can't climb stairs or ladders. He's in a cast until the end of April. When I'm with him, I can't go out of the house farther than our mailbox, in case he needs help, which he often does.

Bob and I both missed a week of work due to complications, and there is dust still left to settle.

Logan is back at school, and has figured out how to scoot on his back like a crab while inside, so he doesn't have to sit in the wheelchair. But talk about robbed: his fifth birthday was spent getting his leg set, without painkillers, at several dozen decibels. And I'm at a loss for ways to find entertainment and play that is restricted to sitting or lying down. (I'm at a loss for a lot right now.)

Apparently kids heal quickly, but three months in a cast for a rambunctious little boy is going to be challenging: it already is. I confess to being overly indulgent and buying Jelly Belly beans (which I would never do) because just five of them work so well in dissolving his reasons to cry. He's showing some PTSD—we all are—and hypervigilence in the car.

Anyway, he's a total trooper and a hero: he cried only twice in the hospital during the several hours we were there. Is there anything worse than being in a hospital until the wee hours of the night, with a child in pain? (Yes, there are, but that was the worst night of my life.)

I've got work ramping up, and maybe I can get to a farm sooner than later, and yes, I still have a project coming up that I'm really excited about.

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY?

CHINESE CURSE: "May you live in interesting times."

And thank you to all the nice people at TransitionSC.org and the big crowd who turned out on January 30 to see my slideshow. That was some powerful medicine, and it went a long way to healing a bruised soul.

I'll be back soon!

Thanksgiving and Thanks Receiving

I don't have a farm. I don't plant seeds, I bury them. So naturally ("nature" + "ally"), I am grateful to all of the farmers in my life. They're my heroes.

This year in particular, my appreciation has grown enormously, as I have gotten to be good friends with a handful of farmers, with whom my family have shared many beautiful dinners. These farmers and ranchers have not only supplied me with the meat and vegetables on the table, but they have shown me, through good times and bad, what it means to be a real friend.

Pictured above is Love Apple Farm, owned by my friend—more like a sister—Cynthia Sandberg. Tomorrow my family will join hers, and her crew of helpers who've traveled from around the world to work on the farm. I'll get there early to help with the turkey, which we'll cook using local herbs and shiitake mushrooms. My ex-husband and our daughter, as well as his two young sons, will be there, along with my biggest hero, Bob, who's been my partner for over seventeen years. The little grandson we having been raising for four years is out of town, but Logan is truly the center of our gratitude to a beneficent universe for his presence in our lives.

Wordle, and an Awakening to Organic

Pictured here: my visit to "Wordle.net" produced this themed art of my own words about loving farms. Go try it out. You can enter a URL for your weblog, or any text you want. I used custom colors and a friendly font. Experimental play is the key. Make your own.

And now for something harvested after planting the seed, in a hostile climate, many years ago. It gives me hope for my (or your) relatives who think everything we do is crazy, expensive, or "too California."

Some time back, we shared a holiday meal with Some Family Members. While these people are good and funny and fun, they are essentially afraid of real food. My offering one Thanksgiving of an organic turkey with an herb crust and shiitake mushroom stuffing was greeted with skepticism: the turkey skin was discarded (to the dogs) from some plates, and few would even try the suspicious gravy or stuffing with the shiitakes. 

Found a Peanut

Okay, this is not a post about a farm, but maybe a farmer can solve an ongoing mystery for my family.

We live on the central coast of California, where peanuts are not likely to have been planted, as they need conditions that don't really exist here. I know that they ripen and grow underground, as well. And that a peanut has to be attached to a plant to grow, just as any legume would.

I have asked some of the smartest people I know in two different forums (Readerville.com and MouthfulsFood.com) to come up with an explanation, and none have been able to answer the question I am about to ask you all.

Well, Jennifer Started It!

Pictured here: some of the pigs at TLC Ranch, taken in March. Yes, there is an explanation about its deliberate appearance.

Yes, another two weeks go by, and here I am, bedridden with one of the ghastly colds that is being shared by a broad userbase in Santa Cruz county. So between downing cups of tea and Vitamin C tablets the size of bricks, I have been scanning some blogs. I don't have the energy to catch up on reading all of my favorites—one of which I am currently 47 posts behind on!—because it's just too strenuous. You know, the contests, the solicitation of our thoughts on certain topics, and so on. Things I enjoy when I'm feeling great, but not when half the air is out of the tires in my brain. Too demanding.

There are a handful of blogs that I scope out first, and will always click in if I see a new post has been added. A couple of days ago, I saw that my friend, the beautiful and über-creative Jennifer Jeffrey had added a new post to Jennifer Jeffrey: Writer/Editor. (She's selling herself short: her design skills are fabulous, too.) At the top of the post is a photograph so brimming with life that my mouth dropped open. And true to herself as ever, she finds something to inspire on an otherwise miserably hot day in the city.

You would not think that the statuesque and lovely Ms. Jeffrey and I share a host of addictions, what with her doing yoga and all, but under the skin, we share an insatiable craving for at least four things: cheese, typefaces, the election of Barack Obama in this year's presidential election, and playing around with images. (Read my comment on her post, if you like, to see where we're going here.)

Tana in the Sunshine

Pictured here: a stone that my friend and client, Ben Bording, spontaneously carved yesterday. He called it "Tana in the Sunshine," and surprised me with it when I visited his family. (He's a landscaper, and I'd link to his site, but it's under development and in transition.) This sweet gesture is kind of the theme of the week: people have said and done and offered the kindest things lately.

Yes, it really has been two months since I wrote here. This week must have been some kind of watershed, because I got a bunch of e-mails from people who miss me, asking if my absence was because of "fabulousness" or "otherwise."

Delicious Treats, Part VIII: "No More Lobster Please!"

Pictured here: oh, one of the cutest little boys in the world. We had such a sweet Christmas, it's hard to let it go yet.

Here is the eight guest author, Monica Reyes, from Robin's Somers' writing class at UCSC, "The Meaning of Food." Her students are offering up their memoirs of childhood food, and it's my pleasure to publish them here.

Robin writes:

Monica Reyes, a sophomore at UCSC, was born and raised in El Salvador, where she ate more than her share of wild lobster. Her story of lobster reeks of nostalgia and nausea as she wistfully recollects her special family treks to the balmy seaside. Here, on El Salvador’s warm, salty beaches, her father caught and cooked lobster for his family, creating precious memories of a homeland which Monica revisits through the process of writing.

No More Lobster Please!
by Monica Reyes

For many people, their traditional dish comes from their native homeland. For Salvadorians, it is either popusas or tamales, while for Mexicans it may be posole, tamales, enchiladas, sopes and birria. The list goes on. One of my family’s favorite dishes is lobster with a side of salad—not what one would call a typical Salvadorian dish, but it happens to be our favorite.

I am not saying that we eat at Red Lobster. Instead we catch our own food, cook it, and eat it.  In the summer, when the sun is shining, and when it is the perfect time to go to the beach, we do what my dad likes to call “lagostear.” My mom gets the sandwiches and chips ready, and my dad packs his surfing wear, while my siblings and I wait in the car with our swimming suits on. It is on days like these that we have lobster for dinner, and it is precisely here where my story begins.

Delicious Treats, Part VI: Food, Weaponry, and Wheatgrass

Pictured here: our little grandson, Logan, who is almost four. Ya think he loves Christmas? He took some of his own money out of his piggybank to give his mama a present. (A silver picture frame that will soon hold this particular photo.)

I hope everyone's holidays are going smoothly: we had a very nice Christmas that was really about family, though my daughter is far away in Utah with her brothers, daddy, and his wife.

Here is the sixth guest author, Nicki Blaufard, from Robin's Somers' writing class at UCSC, "The Meaning of Food." Her students are offering up their memoirs of childhood food, and it's my pleasure to publish them here.

Robin writes:

Nicki Blaufarb writes about the uniqueness of being raised in the shelter of food conscious hippy parents only to be seduced by milkshake machines, packaged pizzas, and gooey sweets when she leaves the nest for college. Truly, a heroic journey, which tests and tempers Nicki’s love of good food.

Food, Weaponry, and Wheatgrass
by Nicki Blaufard

I am a product of proto-hippy type parents, the folks that followed around the Grateful Dead, took a liking to ‘Ghandi-esque’ ideals, hot tubs, and redwood trees and then became lawyers and nurses who practiced yoga and hiked religiously.  Being the offspring of such individuals threw me into the ever growing culture of those of us who strive to find the right way of living life, desperately seeking ways to make ourselves feel better, emotionally, physically, spiritually… It seems obvious then to start this adventure and deep search of the right way of living by embracing the essentials of what allows us as human beings to survive, the essentials, meaning, food.

Delicious Treats, Part V: "German Chocolate Cake"

Getting into the holiday spirit earlier than usual for me: maybe it has something to do with having a three-year-old boy in the house with eyes as big as basketballs when he looks at our eight-foot-tall tree. A tree which will likely stay up until the Superbowl: we're shunning the tradition of kicking it out immediately, as some heartless people do!

[Note: Our beloved friend, Charley, came home from the hospital last night, and we are so grateful. He's doing gr-r-r-r-reat!)

Here is the fifth guest author, Lindsay Elam, from Robin's Somers' writing class at UCSC, "The Meaning of Food." Her students are offering up their memoirs of childhood food, and it's my pleasure to publish them here.

Robin writes:

As Lindsay Elam weaves through her family’s mixed ancestry—so archetypical of this country—we discover many stories within the larger frame of her memoir. Her paternal grandfather has hidden his Native American ties; her maternal great-grandparents have emigrated from a German occupied city in Russia. Lindsay seeks to define vague spots in her lineage by rejoicing in the German Chocolate Cake of the holiday season, choosing to believe partaking in the cake honors her German ancestors.

German Chocolate Cake
by Lindsay Elam

“I cannot wait until we get there!” I said to my mother.

“I know sweetie, but remember it still takes us a little over an hour just to even get there,” she told me in a soothing, but at the same time irritated voice.

Once we were on the road I began to get more and more anxious. My little sister and I would complain when we got restless. She would complain about how she would burst if she did not go to the restroom, even though she just went about twenty minutes beforehand. I can honestly tell you that that girl has a bladder the size of a bean. Our parents would try to keep us occupied by bringing a small television so we could watch movies and not bother them, but we would continue to ask them “Are we there yet?” or “How much longer until we get there?”

After a long drive we finally arrived at the house. It smelled of smoked bacon and turkey, which had been in the oven all day. Our family stuffs the turkey with loads of stuffing, bastes it, and then places smoked bacon on top for extra flavoring. The best part about eating Thanksgiving dinner is the smell of the turkey cooking and eating the bacon. The first time I saw my mother stuffing the turkey, I did not understand why she was doing such a thing.

!I asked, “Mom, why are you putting your hand in its butt?”