New Blog

I'm not saying I'm done with this one, or anything. Who knows what will happen.

But this story is coming to a close, and a new one is starting.

Please come join me at Barnyard to Backyard.

Cheers!

The Things We're Selling

 Our walk-in cooler.

 Our grow lights.

Our souls, just a little.


It's the right thing to do. And it is so very hard.

So Much Gratitude

Thank you all, so much, for your kind words and thoughts and emails and cards. It's overwhelming, and Matt and I have been moved to tears so many times reading through them in the past few days. Our emotions are pretty close to the surface right now, but really, we feel the love and appreciate it.

The right decision isn't always the easiest. I have trouble picturing the future, so I just try to stay in the present, which is when we fix up our home and equipment and sell it all off. Then we regroup and make the new plan, whatever it is. I know it will be a much smaller dream, and honestly simpler, and will include much more leisure time.

There are moments when it feels very easy. And then there are moments, like Christmas morning ice skating on our little irrigation pond with the kids, where it feels much more difficult. There is some doubt.

But, you know, we'll just work to keep a sense of humor and optimism, and focus on love, and it will all work out, just like it always has in the past.

We will also listen to Kenny Rogers' excellent advice. We held 'em for a long time, and it's time to fold 'em.

A Really Huge New Year's Resolution

We are closing down the farm.  

It was, as I'm sure you can imagine, a tough decision. But that is the decision we made, and we both feel surprisingly good about it.

Listen, I love the farm. I do. It's a beautiful life we have out here, and I will miss chickens eating dead bugs off the grill of the van, and butchering my own turkeys, and the tactile joy of feeding myself and my community from plants we grew from tiny seeds, and my kids, wild and free, jumping off the corral fence into giant mud puddles.

But we always knew that it was going to be hard to build the business the way we were trying to. Buying the land instead of leasing it put us in a position where we had to keep our other jobs, which put us in a position where there was never enough labor to grow the farm to a size that would have allowed us to quit those jobs. We worked so hard to break out of that cycle, and we came so close, but just couldn't quite get there. 

We could continue, of course, exactly the way we are now, doing everything other families do and running the farm. We just don't really want to. It's too hard, and requires too much sacrifice to be a part-time gig.

Also, Matty and I have spent the past 18 months arguing about the farm, about how to run it and about how to balance life around it and about chicken feed and weeding habits and the price of irrigation valves. 

Recently, we realized that all that business arguing had, like the farm itself, bled into every other aspect of our lives. We were arguing about really dumb stuff, like whether hives were a good enough reason to keep the girl home from school or whether we should wash the car at a gas station in town or at home in the driveway.

We really aren't like that, or at least, we had never been that way with each other before, and we're coming up on 15 years of marriage. We didn't like it.

It's sad. But in one sense, it feels good to let it go, really; a huge relief. During the five years we have lived on the farm, we have traveled together back east to see our extended families exactly once. We have missed so many barbecues and birthday parties and events with friends we love that we are rarely invited anymore. I feel guilty about how little I've tended those relationships. We have sunk every penny into the farm infrastructure and management, and now that my sister and Matt's parents could use some help, we can't afford to offer any.

In the end, as much as I love the farm, I do honestly believe that marriage, and family, and friends should come before any sort of work, whether you love the work or not. And that hasn't been happening for a long time.

So, we're taking a cue from Mitt Romney and selling the place off in pieces. We split a parcel off the north to sell. We sold the water rights. We are working to sell all the equipment. We will put the remaining 13 acres and our beloved little prairie house on the market as soon as we can get it cleaned up. We're not sure what happens next.

We're both deeply grateful to have been reminded that none of that matters as much as the fact that we're leaving, all of us, very much together.

Farm Kid Dance Class

We have to do something with all this off-season free time, after all.

The Best Laid Plans

Just when you commit yourself to posting on your blog everyday.

Just when you get on a roll.

That's when the wifi at your house goes down for five days and you're sunk.

It was nice, the lack of technology. It felt good. We may not have had TV or Facebook, but we had each other. Saturday night, it snowed, and we were ever so cozy and happy to be together in our tech-reduced home on the prairie.

We tie dyed shirts. We made a pot of decaf so that we could drink more Bailey's. We settled in and watched The Fellowship of the Ring (Matt and I, of course. My kids are still freaked out by the dancing zombies in the Thriller video. I can't even imagine when they'll be ready for the Lord of the Rings trilogy. I can't wait until they are, though. I love those movies. This is an inappropriately long parenthetical. Apologies).

Here's to having the wifi back!

Suffrage

Thanks to the Greeley Moms, Allyson in particular, for reminding me of this. It's funny. Seriously, urgently funny. VOTE!

Mommy Strength

I heard a story on the radio a few weeks ago about how people who had become very rich attributed that success to the fact that they managed to associate with other people who were financially successful. This made sense to me in a lot of ways, but since I've sort of given up on the getting rich thing, I focused on how we learn to be better moms by associating with women who are excellent moms.

And I have a leg up, in this department, since two of the best moms I know, I mean , moms who had to deal with crazy, unfair, miserable circumstances and still raise kids, are my own mom and my own sister.

My sister and her family, in Oregon, are going through something heartbreaking and awful. My 18 month old nephew was born with a very serious genetic disorder, and is currently undergoing cord blood replacement therapy. My sister has taken leave from work and spends all week in the hospital with her boy, while her husband holds down the home front, which includes keeping his full time job and managing the daily needs of my nieces, ages 5, 6, and 17.

On weekends, they switch jobs. This will be their life until Christmas, at least. There really aren't words.

My sister, when we talk, occasionally reveals her worry and pain and deep, aching sadness. My sister is real, but she is also tough as nails, and most admirably, manages to remain present in the moment and open to joy. For example, on her boy's last day of chemo she emailed us a video of him in the hospital play room, IV tubes trailing in all directions. In the video, Michael Jackson started playing in the background, and my also tough as nails baby nephew started shaking his diapered booty. My sister, off camera, laughed in such complete, honest delight that I cried. It was the most wonderful 15 seconds of video I've ever seen.  She's amazing. I don't know that I would be so poised and so present if I was in her shoes.

But I might be. My sister and I share a model for how best to handle extreme medical caretaking: our mother. 

My mom and dad married young. When my mom was 22, I was 2, my brother was 1, she was pregnant with my sister, and my dad was nearly killed in a road construction accident. When I was 13, my dad had a massive stroke that, again, nearly killed him. I could fill a book with all of the craziness my poor mother had to parent us through. . .a Disney vacation that ended in an emergency air lift back to an Ohio hospital, cross country moves for better therapy and treatment. . .and that is not nearly all of it. My dad's still hanging tough, as you can see, but it hasn't been, and still isn't, an easy road.

I don't know whether to be grateful that my sister had such an incredible example of how to handle this caretaking stuff or to be angry that both my mom and my sister have had to go through such horrible things. 

Honestly, I feel all of that and more. It's hard. It's confusing. It sucks.

There's really not much to do but call them both as often as possible to remind them that I love and admire them.  

What I don't tell them nearly enough is that I'm proud of them both, am inspired by their poise and grace, and feel incredibly lucky that they are my family. Knowing them teaches me how to be a better mother. . .a better person all around, actually. I'm sure that's true of everyone else who knows them too. 

Hang in there, sis. You're amazing. 

How to Entertain Children While You Use the Bathroom in Peace.

Also, it's awesome.

Old Pictures: Boy Edition

Too.


Much.


Sweetness.

Old Pictures

I got my first big girl phone. . .that's right. . .my very first smart phone. And I love it, but I have no idea how to use it now. In the process of trying to figure out the camera part, which is my favorite, I have come across some old pictures, taken with other phones, that I hadn't seen for years. Here's one from, I'm thinking, 2009, before the girl learned that headbands have both decorative AND practical purposes.

Also from 2009, from my cousin Lindsay's wonderful wedding.

She's just. so. small.

Precious.

Now. Two weeks ago.

She is still precious. But also, tween precocious, which is its own thing.

My heart just grew three sizes.

Thanks, complicated new phone that I don't know how to use.

November Sunrise

Today I was going to post about Halloween. How my girl planned and executed a costume that involved sewing glow in the dark critters on a witch costume all on her own. How my husband and my boy matched his jack o lantern to his Star Wars Clone costume.

And then the orange glow of this lovely morning happened, and I thought, "Why live in the past?"

I realize this is a cliche, but I also had an urgent realization that today was the first day of the rest of my life and that I best get on it, you know?

A sunrise like this on a farm like ours will make you wax poetic in spite of yourself.

And then I blinked, and the weird orange haze had dissipated, disappeared, disapparated.

I still feel inspired. I was there, in that moment, after all. I captured something of the feeling of it.

Joy and wonder abide.

Tuning Out

From Wikimedia Commons

So, yesterday, I think I watched 4 hours of television.

4 hours.

Matt read somewhere that this is actually the national average for an American adult.

But since that felt very gross, we're cancelling the Hulu Plus tomorrow when our free week expires.

It's a little bit like deciding not to keep an emergency stash of candy in the house because you know you'd just eat the whole bag the week you bought it.

I will return to normal levels of productivity tomorrow about 5 p.m.

Thank you very much.

Winter Regimes

From Wikimedia Commons

I haven't actually been as lazy as that last post made it sound.

Almost. But not quite.

I did go camping last weekend, after all. And I still teach two classes at the university. And this week, in between TV shows, I went running. Two days in a row.

It was awful. Like waddling through mud.

I am so very sore.

The farm season keeps me strong, this is true, and active, even.

But cardio, it's not. Most days, anyway. When winter hits and I am forced to slog my way back into more traditional fitness routines, I always wish it was possible to do everything I should be doing all the time.

I am always amazed at how many non-crop related pieces of our lives have also become seasonal. I would never have guessed, honestly, that all aspects of our lives would become so calendar dependent. That's what has happened, though.

And yes, to summarize, this entire post is about me blaming my uncomfortably sore quadriceps on the farm.

I just call it like I see it.

Wasting Time

The farm season has been over for one week. You might think that I would have been tackling all the projects that I put off all summer long, like laundry. You might think that I'd be eager to get the season packed up by cleaning the barn and the cooler and the truck and such.

But so far, I've done nothing but waste the time I normally spent working on the farm.

Pinterest.

Facebook.

Blogger.

Oh, and I got my first smartphone, so now. . .Instagram!

And to make it worse, yesterday we signed up for Hulu Plus. We've been working our way through Breaking Bad on Netflix, but now, we can watch sitcoms and PBS and all of that, too.

I feel a little pathetic. I might have to start applying "screen time" limits to myself, much in the same way I do for the kids.

I'm going to give myself a few more days of this, though. Or a few more weeks. Or until planting time next spring.

I'm surprisingly satisfied with such slothfulness.

Camping On Mars

Almost, anyway. For those of you who have not been down to the Arches and Canyonlands National Parks, near Moab, Utah, it is what I've always imagined Mars would be like. Crazy rock formations. Dry, desert landscapes. Giant arches and huge slickrock cliffs. It's a crazy place.

Camping there isn't easy. There are lots of campgrounds, but very few of them have any running water. Water for campers in the entire area is provided by a small natural spring that flows out of the rocks on the side of one of the roads. They've built a pull-out in the road, and you just drive up and fill your water bottles. I'm not kidding. If you, like us, end up camping 30 miles from this water source, you take a really big water jug and plan accordingly.

 It was a farmer-on-vacation paradise, though. The kids got to climb lots of rocks, sleep in the tent, stuff themselves with Doritos, s'mores and other junky delicacies, and get as dirty as it is possible to get in three days by making sand angels in the desert. In return for these privileges, by unspoken agreement, they stayed upbeat, enthusiastic, and complaint free when Saturday's "2 mile hike" turned into a 6 mile desert trek with very little water because their parents didn't read the map carefully enough. It helped that they got to scale the slickrock fins, jump through at least 5 major arches, and learn to navigate by rock cairn. They were troopers. We started what we think will be a fun family tradition by buying them a patch at each park. We're going to sew them onto their sleeping bags, and keep adding patches at each park we visit. I wish we had done something like that when I was a kid. It would be so fun to have all the 80s park patches.

It was a much needed family vacation. It was the absolute best use we could have made with those three days. I feel very refreshed. I think we all do.

The kids have loved the hiking we've been doing recently so much that I think I'm going to take them up to Rocky Mountain National Park this Thursday, since they are off school again. They've been there before, but as they pointed out, they didn't get a patch there.So we'll take care of that and find another fun hike to do.

I want to encourage this love of nature thing as best I can. We do, after all, live in Colorado. It's kind of the whole point.

Repost from 2010: Because It's Funny

Dinner conversations at our house really span a range of topics, from mean kids at school to why parsnips are yummy to, you know, wherever the conversation takes us. Often, we use this time to teach our children about the core values of our family. . .about kindness and tolerance and other essential ethics. And some nights, we talk science.

The other night, we had waffles and sausage for dinner, and the boy pulled a "chewy bone piece" out of his mouth. "Don't worry, son," Matt said. "That's just a little bit of cartilage."

"What's cartilage?" the boy asked. And his sister piped up.

"I know what cartilage is! We're studying that in Science! Cartilage is like the bendy bone like stuff that is, like, in your nose." She says like a lot. Apparently, that's the third grade style.

The boy seemed still confused, so all of us started bending and pushing on our noses and ears. "See?" Matt said. "Your arm can't move like that because your arm has bone, not cartilage. But your nose and your ears can bend all over. . .that's cartilage."

It is possible that some of you have never witnessed the magic of a child learning something, I mean really getting it, for the first time. They sit suddenly a little taller in their chairs, and their entire face changes with the pride and delight of this new idea that has suddenly connected itself to their worldview. It's amazing to watch.

The boy had this exact reaction to the idea of cartilage as he twisted his ear nearly off his head. With his eyes all sparkly and bright, he sat up and said,

"Yeah! I know! It's like my penis! Sometimes when I touch my penis it feels all hard but still bendy, just like my ear. It's cartilage!"

Here is the thing about parenting in moments like this. If you don't ever want to hear your boy describe his penis as "hard but still bendy" again, if you'd rather he didn't ever again talk about touching himself at the table, you MUST stay mature. You can't react to this at all. With a straight face, keeping it all very scientific, you really just have to say that no, that's not exactly the same thing, and what that is might be a subject for a lesson in the distant future. You have to be the grown-up.

But all Matt and I could do was laugh. Laugh and laugh and laugh ourselves nearly out of our chairs. The kids love making us laugh, and we are certain they have filed this one away for future use. "Penis cartilage is funny. You can make grown-ups laugh by talking about it. At the next opportunity, I'm going to do this again."

We're pretty sure that the topic of "cartilage" might come up at a fancy holiday meal with family we don't see regularly and on which we are trying to make a good impression.

We're so sorry.

The Not-So-Detail-Oriented Mother Goes Camping

From Wikimedia Commons

I've been blogging for the local newspaper for the past few weeks on their new "Greeley Moms" site. You can read my posts, and those of the other excellent mommy bloggers I'm keeping virtual company with here or here. I'm cross posting today to share with you all the very exciting way we're celebrating the end of our season.

I am doing something very unusual and also very nerve wracking this week. I am packing for a family camping trip.

Camping was a fairly important part of our lives before the farm, even after we had kids. We have backpacks we can live out of for 3-4 week trips, if necessary, and lots of gear, like a water filter and a mini-stove, that are very impractical in any other setting. But, like mountain biking and seeing friends socially, camping is a hobby we gave up in favor of growing food every summer.

Our last family camping trip was Labor Day Weekend, 2007. Our fancy backpack currently holds the propane tank for our flame weeder.  The last time we used our camp stove was to scald turkeys and chickens. Using these tools in their intended setting feels very unusual to me.

Since summer travel is no longer an option for us, we have resigned ourselves to the idea that our kids will be viewing our great nation's national parks and monuments during wintertime. They will have fond December memories, I imagine, of getting out of the car in a deserted parking lot at, say, Mount Rushmore, shivering at the overlook for two minutes, becoming hypothermic, and then scrambling back in to demand hot chocolate.

But I am personally not quite ready for that sort of trip yet, so we're heading to Arches and Canyonlands National Parks for the weekend. 

The packing is nerve wracking because I am not a detail oriented person. Even when we camped more frequently, we would sometimes (right, often) find ourselves with only two matches left in the box, or with plenty of peanut butter but no bread, or with some other difficult to remedy situation.

In case you're wondering, my lack of attention to detail is not limited to a camping situation. My kids more often use toilet paper than tissues to blow their noses. We sometimes sit down to homemade soup only to realize that I forgot to run the dishwasher and all the bowls are dirty. I lose my keys every other year. Don't be like me.

Being rusty at the whole taking kids camping thing, I'm pretty sure I'm going to forget any number of very important things. But luckily, my consistent lack of preparedness has made my family fairly flexible and resilient. I am pretty sure we're going to have a great time no matter what I forget. I hope. Wish me luck!

Shockingly Free of Catastrophe

From Wikimedia Commons

Friday was our very last farmers market of 2012. And today is our last CSA delivery. And early Friday morning, we head south for a desert camping weekend.

In 2012, we learned a lot about grasshopper controls, and what a season with no hail or flooding is like, and also what it feels like to work outdoors when the temperature is above 95 for an entire two month stretch.

This season had its own problems, of course, because there will never be a season without problems. But they were manageable problems. Not devastating catastrophes. It was nice, and while I don't normally try to think about things in terms of what I do and do not deserve, I think we were due for this. Thanks, God, for the solid. We appreciate it.

We are happy to have pulled it off again and also happy that it's over.

Phew.

Let The Record Show

Thursday, October 4 was the first wood stove day of 2012 here on the Little Farm. The wind hit in whirlwinds yesterday about 4 p.m., dropping the temperature from 85 to 60 in the space of a hour and lining tumbleweeds up like dominoes along the corral fence. The freeze advisory posted late last night, and we pulled the down comforters out of the closet before falling into bed.

Opening the chicken pen and letting the dogs out was a chilly business this morning, and I am rather shamelessly putting off my field work until my working member arrives at 8:30. I am going to need the insulated coveralls to dig the potatoes and slash down the Brussels sprouts, and it will be lovely to work in the chill of fall. I am looking forward to it, though the Saturday forecast of 45 degrees with a rain/snow mix doesn't bode well for market sales.

On the other hand, I am here, alone, and I plan to savor the peace of a cozy farmhouse writing morning for a few more moments. Only two weeks left before the promise of an entire winter of these days shines out before me. I don't know what it says about me that my favorite part of being a farmer is the time of year where I get to live on the farm without having to try to scrape a living from it, but I know that fall and winter are fast becoming my favorite seasons. I suppose we all have to embrace our truths, and this is mine.

It is also true that I could listen to the Lumineers all day long, except that I can't take YouTube with me to the field. But this is the flavor of my morning. . .what's yours?

Lookin' Fly

I mean, the clothes are one thing. Picking tomatoes and digging leeks ruins clothing very easily, so I have a very strict "field clothes" system for myself and for the kids.

But why, honestly, is it too much to ask that my shirt is buttoned properly when I'm being photographed?

Farming is an excellent antidote to excessive vanity.

October Creepies

Take a moment, if you will, and make an "OK" sign with your hand, where the tip of your thumb just touches the tip of your index finger and forms the "O".

Now contemplate the idea that the body of this spider, without the legs, would just barely fit inside that "O".

These are the October creepies. . .spiders that every year, near the end of the season, build their webs between the rows of staked tomatoes, making our tomato harvest a little bit horrifying, every day.

The problem with these giant arachnids is that they're great things to have in the field. I have seen them eat grasshoppers, and I'm sure they eat other undesirable insects too, which means that we are on the same team.

The Spider/Farmer Defense League? The Spider Squad?

I don't know, but I do know that during (and for about an hour after) tomato picking, I feel spiders crawling on my back and freak out that they are in my hair and of course they are not but the feeling is so very real in the moment. And so very awful.

Also unfair, since these spiders, in all the years now that we've been doing this, have never once seemed the least bit interested in us. They don't bite. They don't jump. They don't even really move. They are unassuming and very easy to avoid. But still.

 I cope by tucking my hair way up under my hat, wearing gloves and long sleeves and long pants no matter what the temperature is outside, and by generally reminding myself to stop being a ninny.

My self-talk is very simple, these days. "Don't be a ninny." It's excellent advice, really.

I am very reassuring to my poor working members, I'm sure, who find the spiders even more creepy than I do.

But if you want these lovely heirloom tomatoes, and we most assuredly do, you have to work around the October creepies.

Food For Fall

 Freshly dug potatoes.

Freshly dug leeks.











Earthy, nourishing, and ever so delicious. Eat the season, people!

The Menagerie

Okay, well. . .not technically a menagerie, because domesticated farm animals aren't really wild and unusual animals.

Or maybe, in this day and age, they are becoming so. It is possible, I suppose, that more Americans own pet iguanas than they do chickens. Maybe the wild and unusual are becoming more domestic than the previously domesticated.

Anyway, the girl's chicken flock has grown right up this summer, and since they are more or less distinguishable from one another this time around, they have names. The Barred Rock, the beautiful black and white bird in this picture, is Rocky. For the girl, there is no reference to Rocky Balboa. But just saying this hen's name, well, doesn't it make you want to run up some steps while the funky horns play?



The White Leghorn is named Peck, and the Black Sexlink is named Falcon. The kids are in love with these birds. Honestly, I've missed having chickens more than I thought I would. They are truly very entertaining, and so far, have laid three tiny little eggs. It's all very exciting.

 We just started letting them free-range through the corral this past Sunday, much to the consternation of the pigs, who are so clearly trying to make a meal of these girls. It's disturbing, because the love of scratching through poop lures these girls dangerously close to the pig pen.

But you can have freedom or you can have total safety. It's a pig eat chicken world out there (this is actually from a For Better or For Worse comic, see July 21st), and we all just have to learn to survive, right? I really hope that if one of these pigs, or a hawk, or something manages to get one of these birds, it happens while the kids are at school. It would be much uglier if there were young witnesses.

 Our last hens were shameless egg eaters, and that was mostly because we were never able to figure out a simple, portable nest box system for them. Matty built this one out of 5 gallon buckets on Sunday, but I have yet to see a hen even go inside one. Those eggs you see in there are decoys. So, it's too early to evaluate this system. We will let you know in a couple of months whether the internets were right about these.

 As I was inside the chicken hut, taking that last picture, our cat Noodle jumped right up on the side of the tarp and climbed up to her favorite vantage point. It scared the daylights out of me until I figured out what it was. You'd think this would make her vulnerable to various raptors, but she seems to like it up there, and since I'd rather have her climbing the easy and relatively cheap to replace tarp than the far more expensive greenhouse plastic, I suppose it's all good.

And that's the news from the Little Farm this morning.

Winter Is Coming

This winter, I will learn:

• Just exactly how HBO has managed to turn George R.R. Martin's frustratingly rambling, plot-wandering, murderous writing style into compelling T.V. Because we are always a year or two behind pop culture and so have just added the Game of Thrones DVDs to the Netflix queue. 
• Photography. This just might be the best bouquet I ever made, and the picture just doesn't do it justice. You can't really see the red/orange/black beauties that are the Moulin Rouge sunflowers. I suspect that is partly because I consistently make bouquets after 10 o'clock at night and the lighting in the barn is crap, but also I know nothing about camera settings.
• Wordpress. I need more control over my social media habit/farm marketing. I need to consolidate. I need to (gulp) learn some HTML, I think.
• Knitting. Didn't I learn this two years ago? Why yes, yes I did. And I haven't done any knitting since. Total feminine handicraft fail.
• Final Draft 8. I'm writing a screenplay with The Metropolitan Brother. The story is super fun. The software is helpful in that I don't know how to format a screenplay, but also confusing in that I don't know how to use the software.

Anyone else have any big plans for the off-season?

Also, and in case my angst over the farm has overshadowed this fact, I LOVE ARRANGING FLOWERS! Enough to scream over the interwebs, even!

Especially when said flowers are for wonderful farmer friends who are getting married tomorrow. 

Congratulations, you two.

Farming In Fall

Wednesday nights are our CSA delivery in Greeley. About 4 weeks ago, I started working for 4 hours in the middle of every Monday, Wednedsay, and Friday, and that complicated the Wednesday night drop quite a bit.

Those first few weeks were crazy. I mean, like, I can't actually believe we pulled them off kind of crazy. But then the flower shares ended. And the field started to be a bit less abundant. And yesterday, for the first time, I was able to get the entire harvest in by myself before the kids got home from school. Not only that, but since I harvested some of the largest cauliflower heads we've ever grown, I got to make some cauliflower gratin for dinner to confirm that even though they were gigantic, they were also delicious. They were. And the head I chose to use made about 7 cups of chopped cauliflower all on its own. Often, I am delivering vegetables that I haven't tasted at all due to the amount of time spent harvesting and getting them out to others, and it's a real treat when that is not the case.

So this morning was very calm. The pre-pack shares are sorted and in the cooler, and the chalk board is finished, and everything is set and ready so that when I return home, it will be quite easy to load the truck and go.

This is how we run the CSA drop every week. I have crates of veggies, and the customers come through and "shop" through them according to the size share they have. We've tried pre-packing all shares in previous years, but have settled on this as the best way to deliver the produce. One, it is much simpler for us, since the sorting phase can take a long time when you have 35 (or more) shares going out. Also, I do think it's better for the customer, as they can pick the tomatoes or whatever that they like the best, and also, if they don't want, say, eggplant, they can just leave it in the bin and we can send it over to the food bank or give it to another customer who loves eggplant. It's working out.

I wish we could find a way to solve our labor problem so that the pace of high season could get a bit closer to the pace of fall season. This week felt manageable, which is so rarely an adjective that I can use to describe a day during farm season. There was work. . .digging, bending, hefting crates of melons around, irrigation monitoring. . .the work itself is not at all the problem, really. It's more that most days during the season  I wake up to something that doesn't feel manageable at all. . .something more frantic and impossible.  But these weeks in fall make me hopeful that someday, in the future, we'll have a manageable farm. I don't mind so much a busy farm, in fact, if you aren't busy during the season, you're doing it wrong, you know. But a manageable sort of busy feels so much better than a chaotic busy.

Either way, though, those are some beautiful and delicious veggies going out today, and I'm very proud of them.

Science In The Barn!

This is the time of year I spend a lot of time convincing people to can tomato sauce. Our tomatoes are in. It's, like, time to do that. For many of these folks, canning vegetables is either a brand new idea or a tedious chore they gave up years ago. And I manage to convince a fair number of them to give it a try.

Anyway, because of that (I think), one of our lovely customers gave me some clearjel for canning today. I've never used clearjel before, though I know it's common, and he swears by it, and was kind enough to bring me some to play around with.

I think he meant for us to use it in the kitchen. But instead, we began playing around with it in the barn. Clearjel is a modified corn type product that acts a bit like pectin or gelatin, and it reminded Matt of this powdered creamer experiment his high school chemistry teacher had shown him.

So he got out the propane torch, set it up on the barn floor, and proceeded to blow some of the clearjel powder through the flame.

Nothing happened, and we were both a little disappointed.

We've just watched our first episode of "Breaking Bad", you see, and were hoping for something really amazing.

Turns out, clearjel is not nearly as flammable as instant coffee creamer.

However, I'm sure it will make some great peach jam!

Farming requires daily encounters with applied science. But not often this kind. It was fun to branch out, even if there was no cool explosive result.

Indecision May or May Not Be My Problem

Jimmy Buffett said that. At least, according to at least two moderately reliable online quote clearinghouse websites, Jimmy Buffett said that. Jimmy Buffett also sings some really great songs. I like these in particular:



We're working out some things about our future. We're trying to figure out a way to start running this farm, rather than having it run us. Because some days it feels a bit more like a forced ultra-marathon than the grand adventure we'd rather it was. I've never been so confused about what the best path might be. I didn't imagine that it would get harder to make big decisions as I got older. I suppose I always thought that with age would come wisdom. But so far, age has brought only gray hairs and worsening eyesight. As far as wisdom goes, I'm sure I know less now than I used to.

Since I've started quoting entertainers, I'm just going to keep it up with one of my favorites, from Will Rogers, which is:

"Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there."

I've stalled out. Or burned out. Or something. It does feel a bit like we're just sitting here on the tracks, waiting for the train to run us over. We need decisive action. Smart, productive, decisive action. And all I can do is waffle and fret and worry. It's not like me.

(It's a little like me, actually, but times 10).

Is this because I'm almost 40? Am I about to go off the rails and get a spray tan and buy a flashy convertible and move to Spain? I'm going to mix myself a boat drink and think that one over for a while.

I need help. Anyone want to inspire me with some of your own "I made a big decision and it turned out okay" stories? Goodness knows I'd appreciate any inspiration I can get.

Repost from September 2010: Bizarre Mind Clutter. . .Tomato Edition

First thought upon seeing this tremendous tomato harvest: Thank you, God, for allowing them to ripen before frost, and for keeping them safe and delicious. And thank you Mary Sanders Poor, the world's best college roommate, for such lovely heirloom starts. I love the variety and color.

Second thought upon seeing this tremendous tomato harvest: The scene in the Disney movie "Cars" when Lightning McQueen wakes up in the Radiator Springs impound and meets the rusty tow truck, who says, "My name's Mater. Like tuh-mater, but without the 'tuh'". If you have a small child under the age of 10, you know exactly what I'm talking about.

Third thought upon seeing this tremendous tomato harvest: I should call my dad and yell "To-MAY-ta!". This because of a wildly inappropriate story someone told me about him when I was in high school, which was that in his younger and wilder and less married years, he and his idiot friends used to yell "To-MAY-ta" out their truck windows when they passed a cute girl.

If you ever meet my dad, you should call him a "To-MAY-ta". He'll laugh for days.

Fourth and final thought upon seeing this tremendous tomato harvest is that it's no wonder I can't ever find my keys. My brain is, apparently, all used up.

Market Price Report: Broccoli, August 25, 2012

Photo from http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Broccoli_closeup_%27Fiesta%27.jpg

August 25, 2012

Broccoli at Walmart:

Growing Practice: Conventional

Grown in: Salinas, California

Harvest date: Impossible to tell

Time on Shelf: Unknown

Quality: Mediocre

Price per head: $2.35

Broccoli at King Soopers (Kroger):

Growing Practice: Conventional and Organic

Grown in: Salinas, California

Harvest date: Impossible to tell

Time on Shelf: Unknown

Quality: Mediocre

Price per head: $2.45 conventional/$3.00 organic

Broccoli at the Louisville Farmers Market:

Growing Practice: Organic

Grown in: Gill, Colorado

Harvest date: August 24, 2012

Time on shelf: 25 minutes to 2 hours

Quality: Excellent

Price per head: $3.00

So, I suppose I just should have told the very rude customer who told me that my broccoli was priced (shocked, dramatic eye roll) "way too high" that she could save 65 cents and get the special benefit of synthetic pesticide residue over at Walmart. Instead I told her that I thought my broccoli was a tremendous deal, but then again, I was the one who planted broccoli seeds in April, cared for tiny seedlings for 8 weeks, transplanted the broccoli into the field, raised it organically (read: Hand weeding. In 100 degree weather.), and then harvested, washed, and rose pre-dawn to bring it to market.

For $3.00. Not $10. Not $100.

$3.

All that manual labor might be coloring my sense of the product's value, it's true.

If you feel uncomfortable paying a farmer directly the same price that the local grocery store is charging, that's okay. Honestly. I won't judge you. I'm sure you have your reasons.

But please, please, don't insult me, loudly, while you're there.

(I would also like to take this opportunity to express my deep appreciation for every other one of our wonderful customers at today's market. We really couldn't do it without you, are very happy to do it for you, and we hope you love that sweet, delicious new crop broccoli!)

Images from Market 2012

Most taken by our girl. . .in no particular order. Tomorrow is Week 13 of 20. We're still having fun!

T