Christmas Bonus

We live in the eye of an active construction vortex.  Judith's house, straight across from ours, has workers going in and out doing something major in the basement.  Jack's house, right next to ours, is getting the entire first floor remodeled -- walls moved, doors changed, every surface and floor replaced.  And just last week the crew that we all hired to replace the walkways started ripping up the asphalt: our own entrance path was first.

Each of these work crews has the challenge of the greenway.  They can't drive to the houses because there is no road -- our emergency access is a grassy open area that is easily damaged when it is wet. The dumpster for Jack's project is parked as close as possible to his house, in the parking lot. Not very close. During the day, there are about six work vehicles jockeying for position at the top of the greenway.  My neighbors are extremely sensitive about ruts and mud, and almost all deliveries are done with a cart. After fifteen years, it feels normal to load up a little wagon and tow groceries from the car down the hill to the front door (that may be the biggest deterrent to people who are thinking of living here -- it is not the suburban model that most people expect).  The UPS guys leave their trucks running in the parking lot and run the packages through the neighborhood.  Only an ambulance or fire truck is allowed to drive through the whole place, and only then would the neighbors fix the ruts without a comment.

Which means that winter is not usually the time when home improvement projects happen. In the summer, the greenway is usually solid and trucks can go through without leaving a mark.

The walkway crew had planned to start at our house, the top of the hill, and work their way down, always driving the truck downhill so the damage would be minimized.  They have a little rented backhoe, a flat bed truck to remove the dirt and asphalt, a rented bobcat for bringing in the gravel and the pallets of brick, and a few noisy tools that run on small gasoline engines.  There are two manager types (white men who speak English) who run the rented equipment and three laborers (brown men who speak Spanish) who do the skilled work by hand.  The whole project was predicted to take about three weeks, weather permitting.

Ha. Starting a project in late December will make this an uphill battle and I predict that the walkways will not be finished before early March if they are lucky.  They have already changed the plan because it has been raining for about a week and the greenway is impassable. So instead of finishing our walkway and heading down the hill, they reversed direction and headed toward the Common House, staying on pavement.

On the days that it wasn't raining much, or only raining a little, they stayed and worked until well after dark.   They were here on Christmas Eve until 6:00.  They don't get paid unless they are working.

I am mesmerized by the process, and I can see it from half the windows in our house.  I still haven't quite figured out how they do it -- I understand everything up to the part where they cut the bricks to make the herringbone pattern. After the backhoe has removed all the asphalt and the gravel is dumped in, one guy makes it perfectly smooth and level. It is a painstaking process with strings and  pieces of conduit to make sure the brick will be at exactly the right level. One guy, who has a steady hand and a strong back, cuts each brick for the edge row.  One guy, completely confident in his experience, lays the brick and bonks it in gently with a soft mallet. The last two have to work very closely together because it is a handmade process, and the cutter can't get ahead of the bricklayer.

There is a thick cloud of grey dust and the constant sound of sawing bricks.  It's a good thing the results are so beautiful.  I am sure that the people who live in the middle will be quite tired of the constant presence of all this racket and disruption by the end of winter.  I am sure there will be lots of email commentary.  I am glad they started up here so our turn with the noise and dust will be over soon.  And I now completely understand why this process is costing about $80,000.  Now I don't see how the landscaping company could be making a profit on this, but what do I know about the cost of renting equipment or how much a bricklayer gets paid.

Anyway, Christmas was blessedly quiet here.  No leaf blower, no saw, no backhoe, no bobcat, no beeping backing up trucks, no UPS deliveries.   It's not what most people appreciated about Christmas, but it was enough for me.

Winter Solstice -- Trip to the Mikveh

Long ago, on March 2, I wrote a postcard blog about the Mikveh Ladies and how we had started to meet, acknowledging the 20th anniversary of the year that we officially converted to Judaism.  We continued to meet every month or so until summer got in the way, and then we met a couple more times to create a ritual that would wrap up this year of discussions.

Thank goodness for Rabbi Gold, really.  She had some ideas, she kept us on track, and in the end she gave the whole thing a form and a shape.  She was our rabbi when we started our studies and in retirement she has continued to be our mentor.  For myself I cannot imagine taking the leap of converting without the good fortune of having her as my teacher, since she is a feminist, an intellectual, a wise person, sometimes snarky, often funny, and extremely human.

Anyway, we went to the mikveh today.  The five of us met at Blueberry Hill and got into one car together and Jon drove us into DC to Adas Israel.  We have all been back to that building for one reason or another, but we Mikveh Ladies had not returned to the mikveh in two decades. 

As we went down the steps and into the bowels of the building, we realized that our memories had morphed.  None of us remembered it as it is.  We all thought the space had been bigger, the pool itself had been bigger, and even the waiting room was smaller today than it was back then.  Maybe it is, but probably not. It doesn't seem likely that they changed the pool, and it doesn't look like it has been renovated.

The rabbi brought a pretty beeswax candle that someone had given her at her retirement (over ten years ago) and a nice ceramic plate for the candle that she had once used at a healing ritual for our late friend and teacher Betsy Giller. We listened to a recording of Enosh, in memory and honor of Betsy. We read some prayers that we had selected, and then we each read a statement that we had written for the occasion -- we had decided to reflect on our Jewish lives and what we hope for ourselves in the future, Jewishly.  We did everything in the order of who went to the mikveh, so I was first, Ruth second, then Peggy and finally Nell. There were lots of similarities between our perspectives, but they each reflected our own  personalities too.  Even though it was hard for us to make ourselves focus enough to write these pieces, it was an excellent idea (another two points for Rosalind Gold).

The room was steamy hot, which was too bad for the other three who followed directions and brought big robes to wear while they waited their turn.  True to form, I did not bring a bathrobe but instead I brought one of my Hawaiian cotton jumpers -- perfect in that heat.  We sat in the waiting room and ate potato chips and chocolate (the signature snacks of this group) while each of us took a dip in the warm water.  Roz had created a playlist of Debbie Friedman music on her iPad, and that helped to separate us from the person who was in the mikveh.  Another example of her understanding what would make the whole experience better -- we didn't really see why we needed a soundtrack, but now we get it.

I remember how magical it felt, twenty years ago.  And I can still see why it seemed like magic.  You have to immerse yourself completely, without touching any walls or floor. You have to be entirely naked with no makeup or jewelry so the water touches you everywhere. You say a blessing before each immersion and you think about it. This time the blessings were about gratitude, including the shechechyanu, a favorite prayer forever. The lights are low, the water is so velvety and lovely, and the rabbi stands on the edge, holding the plastic coated paper with the blessings.  What could be more spooky and myth-invoking?  Women for centuries have been immersing themselves for various reasons, marking important occasions, cleansing themselves for other reasons.  It is a tradition for women and it is awesome in the way it separates a person from all other reality.

After each of us had taken our turn in the water, we dressed and read another prayer that we all like (the one about joining hands and walking together).  Then the rabbi had us stand in a circle, close together, holding hands, and say a blessing for the person who was on her left.  I was impressed by our ability, each of us, to say something articulate and meaningful with no warning at all.  I loved it that we had no warning, and that the order was entirely random. 

Then we packed up and got on the Metro and had a leisurely lunch at the Lebanese Taverna.  I might get the picture from Ruth and then I can post it here later.  I also agreed to draft an article for the newsletter, so maybe I will need to take some words from this blog, come to think of it.  Not that we absolutely need to publicize this to everyone at the temple, but we have been a part of that community for a long time and they might like the story, if we tell it well enough.

After spending so much time preparing for this commemorative event, I guess it makes sense that it took the whole day, even if each of us was in the water for about three minutes total. 

My favorite prayer, and Nell's, and probably most people's who know it:

Praise to You, Adonai our God, Sovereign of the universe, for giving us life, sustaining us, and enabling us to reach this season.

Baruch atah, Adonai Eloheinu, Melech haolam shehechyanu v'kiy'manu v'higianu laz'man hazeh.

Friday Club

What do an emergency room doctor, a deputy director of an air quality NGO, a music teacher and a farmer do when they escape together for a weekend? Not very much!  In our everyday lives, we get up early and push hard to get stuff done and go to bed tired.  But when we get a chance to escape together, the bar gets mighty low.  Today I was in my nightgown until 1 PM because I was reading a book.

Nell generally is the main organizer of the group -- she is persistent about finding a location for us, she makes the reservations, and she even maintains a list of what we need to remember what to bring each time.  Nancy always makes sure her car is all checked out and ready to go, even if the trip is only as far as Rappahannock County.   All of us bring way too much food, and the knitters bring loads of wool and several projects apiece.

This is our fifth escape.  They started out as beach trips, even though we can only go during the winter or early spring because of my scheduling limitations.  Every trip has a different setting but we always cook and eat and laugh and talk.  Sometimes we take walks.  We always knit and if there is a knitting store in the vicinity, we patronize it loyally.

Tonight we are all sitting around in our cozy living room, where we staked out our spots on the first afternoon.  We are surrounded by our bags of yarn, our iPads, water glasses.  There is a nice fire in the stove and the house is quite decorated for Christmas. In the last few days  we have told stories about our childhoods (music, singing, going to camp) and we have discussed all the ways that we would like to change the world and we have talked about current national politics way more than we meant to.

We are an amazingly well matched group, conversationally.  We also have sat very quietly for long periods and yesterday afternoon we all took a nap here in this living room -- perhaps the first time in my life that I have been in a room with three other adults, all asleep in couches.  I can see us doing this for many years to come, as our physical demands on ourselves are minimal.  When my siblings do these retreats, they like to do something that gets their hearts pounding.  These days I would have a hard time snowshoeing in Colorado or cross country skiing in West Virginia.  I couldn't do it, actually.

We decided to make the driving part of the trip shorter this time, and Nell found us a little renovated farmhouse in this teeny little town of Sperryville, just 90 minutes from home.  It amuses me greatly to be within walking distance of Waterpenny, where we have been many times to visit Rachel and Eric and kids.  Part of our little tour of this town today included a visit to the building where Rachel and Eric got married 13 years ago.  The town is a tourist destination, with art galleries, artists, pottery shops, good restaurants.  We have done our bit to support the local economy in the last few days, buying gifts and art and lunches and dinner -- but it is fun to shop at these small businesses with really nice stuff. Nothing plastic, nothing from China.

Anyway, we feel very lucky.  Lucky to have such good friends, lucky to be able to go away together, lucky to have endless conversation material. It usually takes us a whole day to get all the temple topics out of our way -- we always have so much to chew on as we are all still engaged in leadership roles, one way or another.

Last night while we were sitting around the table, someone knocked on the door.  We don't live here, so we weren't  quite sure who would be knocking, but I had an inkling.  Sure enough, there were some Boy Scouts and some parents on the porch, ready to sing us some Christmas carols.  We sang with them, knowing all the words to Santa Claus Is Coming to Town.  Unsure whether this was part of the tradition, we offered them some chocolate as thanks.  It was nice to be welcomed, and our house is quite decorated and lit up, so they had some reason to think we might be observing the holiday.  As they were leaving, the dad said he hoped that we were having a nice bridge party.

The title of this post is Friday Club because that is one of the names of this group (based on Carolyn Newcomb's threesome who met every Monday for decades), but we are also self-named Beach Babes and Hannah's father has called us the Mouseketeers (and wishes he were invited on our retreats).

Anyway, it has been a delicious few days here in a county with no stop lights and very few distractions.  We arrived, parked the car, and have not got back in.  We have walked to all our destinations, which were about ten minutes away at the most distant.  We are rested.  Mission accomplished.

Tropical December -- The Dark Side

Almost three weeks since the last postcard -- this is a sign that there has not been nearly as much time to reflect and lounge around as one might expect, in December.  It has been about twenty degrees warmer than usual this month, and that has ramifications -- for some people that means more golf or running in shorts and a T-shirt.  For us, it means the vegetable crops have not melted yet, and instead they are thriving. And this comes with some dilemmas.  We already said goodbye to all our customers just before Thanksgiving and we don't really want to blow our cover, that we actually could still be working and sharing all this food that is still in the field (ah -- I just figured it out -- we can call the gleaners after next weekend!).

Last weekend we broke with December tradition and I went to the winter market in Leesburg.  It was sunny and about 70 degrees and we had already picked far too much cauliflower and carrots for our little winter CSA, so it was not hard to go.  I left all the Christmas tree selling to Jon and the neighbors, and they were busy all day long, despite the tropical weather.

It is hard not to think that this is all part of climate change, as once again 2015 was hotter, globally, than 2014.  It is hard to enjoy all this San Diego style weather when it could mean that our own grandchildren will be in peril, and perhaps our own children. Not to mention everyone else.

A few weeks ago Nell asked what we should be doing about this terrible group of presidential candidates that is dominating the news, and it seems to me that the only answer is that we have to figure out how to make sure that Virginia does not go to the Republicans. Virginia has become a completely tippy state, going one way for one race and another way for the next.  Here at Blueberry Hill we live in a district that is split just about exactly in half. It is solidly purple, in the jargon of political commentators.  This is progress, as when I was growing up it seemed like our family might be the only Democrats in town.  I feel ill-equipped to be a political activist, but I think circumstances might demand it.  It is very hard to know how to be effective, but I might have to follow my neighbor Noel's lead and put some hours into it in the next year.

Just last night, when we were cooking a meal for the homeless shelter (back to the topic of unseasonable weather:  about twice a month we will bring hot meals to a county facility that is open from December through March, and it is called a Hypothermia Shelter even though they probably wished for air conditioning last night), our friend and former neighbor JP was visiting from Tennessee. Over the years, he has become more and more of an activist and he has been intensely concerned about climate change.  He told us that he is taking a sabbatical from farming next year and he has sold every one of his goats and most of his chickens because he is going to spend the year working for Hillary Clinton's campaign.  In other words, he is really worried about what could happen if one of those Republicans gets elected. 

I hope that a whole bunch of us get worried and take action. We won't all be ready to take a sabbatical, but we can't let this happen.  So many people say they will move to Canada. That is obviously not a good answer.  I take some solace in knowing that the crowd of completely inappropriate candidates will thin down to just a few and then we will know better what we need to do.

So, while warm and beautiful weather in December is a treat, it feels like it has a dark side. And I am not even talking about the possible effects on the next farm season -- bugs and diseases that could get more plentiful instead of getting frozen.  There are much bigger concerns (although I have never thought that it would be so bad if Florida just disappeared.  Ever since the 2000 presidential election, I have never forgiven Florida. It can sink into the ocean.) and we can't ignore them.

But I am encouraged by something I heard reiterated on the radio last night -- that on the local level (mayors, boards of supervisors) people tend to work together much better and figure out the best answers to the hard problems.  And the higher up you go, the more partisan are the politics.  So I can imagine being useful at a local level, and having that make a difference because apparently the hard-headed politicians at the top do look to see what the more cooperative and creative people are doing.  This is what Michael L. has based his life work on, now that I think about it, so I have a resource right next door.  Maybe he will help me figure out how to be useful, in the non-farm world. 

Or maybe, as Stephen, is thinking, the farm can be useful in the non-farm world.

These are the tangled thoughts of someone who is only beginning to stick her toe into the off-season, and who is uneasy about all this warmth in the middle of December.

Thanksgiving

Our Thanksgiving traditions are quite established -- we eat at Anna's house, most of the cooking happens on Thursday morning at Anna's house, Alissa is the one who plans and organizes the pie making, Jesse and others do the deviled eggs and mashed potatoes, it is a beehive of activity.  I am in charge of procuring the vegetables for the day and delivering them after everyone has finished the Thanksgiving Day Turkey Trot. Somehow Jon and I get to have a quiet house to ourselves, once all the bowls and pie pans and ingredients have been whisked away.  Jon prepares the turkey and I make some vegetable side dishes, but we also get to sit in the living room quietly or read the paper at the table.

Almost everything went according to the usual plan.  Yesterday Sophia brought over a gigantic turkey (31 pounds) and Jon put it in a brine solution in a huge pot in the walk-in cooler.  I had already bought a smaller turkey from the milk delivery people, and it was waiting patiently in the bottom of our refrigerator but it got out-classed by Sophia's bird.

Ever since Sunday morning, Jon has been developing one of his chest colds. To be fair, he has been quite healthy all season long -- but when he does get sick, it travels to his chest and sits there.  By yesterday he was feeling worse and this morning when he woke up he knew he had to call Kaiser, even if it was Thanksgiving.  He got an early appointment and optimistically thought he would be home in time to get the turkey in the oven.  We had calculated that he would flatten it, divide it into two pans and it would need to be in the oven by 10:30.

At 10:00, after I had picked the spinach and pulled some carrots and gathered up other things from the coolers, I lugged the heavy turkey to the kitchen and announced to the many kids around the kitchen table that they would have to look up on google how to butterfly a very big turkey.  They got right on it.  They looked at two videos and appointed David the task of muscling the turkey into the pans.  First I had to go to Betsy's house to borrow some good kitchen shears since we don't seem to have anything here at the moment.  David cut out the backbone while I held the turkey steady on the counter. Shalini stood by with her phone, watching the You Tube pictures to verify that we were doing it right.  It took 40 minutes to get it ready for the oven, after I cut off the drumsticks and thighs because it just didn't fit in the pan.

Jon sent a text saying he was coming home soon, but they were doing some blood tests to rule out things, and they had confirmed that he did not have pneumonia.

Alissa and Becca and David and Jesse and Shalini took all their ingredients to Anna's house and I stayed home.  Jon got back at 12:30, having been poked and examined and found to have a bronchial cold (he knew that). But they did give him a round of antibiotics, which usually helps. He went upstairs to bed.  We just bought our first new TV after 28 years, so that makes watching TV more fun now.  He came down to make the gravy and then escaped again, not hungry and happy to be by himself.

Dinner at 3:00 with 17 of us around the table, a vast array of vegetable dishes, so much turkey, many simultaneous conversations.  As always, we were full way too early.  We got to see both Benjamin and Stephen in their respective faraway countries -- Benjamin had a big Thanksgiving gathering/housewarming party at his Haifa apartment and apparently Stephen was by himself today since they had forgotten the holiday, living in Berlin.

I organized a brief work expedition so we could take a rest from eating before we got to the pies.  We mulched the last garlic bed and did a little bit of work in the Christmas tree lot.  Then back up for dessert.  The pies were outstanding.  Most people decided the key lime pie was the best one, but the maple pecan pie was a close second and there wasn't much of the chocolate pie left at the end.

I feel grateful all the time. Not sure that I feel even more grateful on Thanksgiving, but it is a good time to notice all the many blessings that should not be taken for granted.  To start with, I am grateful for deep breaths and clear airways. I hope Jon gets better quickly so he can be happy to have healthy lungs soon too.

Suddenly Winter

Here is how we can tell it is winter:  I stayed in bed until 8:30 this morning reading a novel because there was no reason not to.  It was 29 degrees outside, no one needed me, and I have been starved for fiction reading lately.  And then I had a long meeting with Ellen, getting our world views aligned again (all relationships take maintenance, even the ones that have lasted for decades).  I practiced piano for a little while before taking a short nap and then I picked up my knitting!  Many momentous events in one day, and not a single vegetable has touched my hands.

But when I went to bed last night and thought about the last six days, I realized what a long sprint that was to the finish line.  On Tuesday it was CSA, and Wednesday we did CSA with an extremely small crew so others could devote time to picking, and then on Thursday it was rainy but we picked anyway because the weekend was going to be big, and Friday was a long day (already documented) and then Saturday and Sunday were markets, markets, markets.  On Saturday I went to all three markets between 6 AM and 11 AM, for one reason or another and Sunday I went to Takoma Park with my mother and Michael Lipsky and Richard and Michelle, thinking that I would just stay long enough to be sure they were fine without me.  But it was busy enough that we all stayed the whole time.  On Saturday and Sunday we managed to sell just about everything we collected up and washed between Wednesday and Friday, which is just what we hoped would happen. 

Other signs of winter are all around.  There is a fire in the woodstove.  Last night Jon took every single thing out of the freezer and the refrigerator and put it all on the porch and got to work and scrubbed out the entire fridge.  There are more leftovers in there than usual because it gets dark so early and I have been cooking lately.  There are some clear surfaces appearing -- half the counter, half the dining table, and maybe a third of the coffee table.  My inbox is EMPTY.  My phone is silent! 

It is incredible how quickly these changes can happen.  While other people continue to go through their daily routines, we are suddenly cut loose from the vegetable-driven existence (Chip Planck's term that I have always loved).  The roads are clogged with vehicles and we don't really care. We don't have to go anywhere.  Well, I don't.  Jon is currently driving to Winchester and then to Berryville (over the mountain, in other words) towing a trailer to pick up a loader that needs to go to a mechanic.  Jon's life is not exactly vegetable-driven so he doesn't have the same level of freedom that I am wallowing in today.

In two days the house will fill up with Alissa and Rebecca and David and other Thanksgiving celebrators, so I am going to soak up this quiet and read and knit and cook and clear surfaces to my heart's delight.  And soon I will go back to yoga...

Sunday, Not The Usual

I got a text from Richard yesterday saying that he was sick in bed and he wouldn't be able to make it to market on Sunday.  At this time of year, we are piecing together the market crews using whoever is still here, and since we all know how to do it, it doesn't really matter what the combinations are.  Only there weren't any combinations left for Sunday except Hana and Jon.  We haven't been to market with just the two of us since I don't know when.  Maybe never or at least before we had kids.  Anyway, we were scraping the bottom of the barrel and we came up with us.  Well, if we are the bottom of the barrel, this place is doing pretty well. 

So then I had to find someone to do my regular job of setting up the CSA room on Sunday.  Carrie has been easing back to work, a little bit here and there, so I decided it would be okay to ask her if she would watch the room for me in the afternoon, and I would set it up before Jon and I left for market. She said of course.

At 6:00 this morning, Robert and I were working with the lights on, behaving as if it were three hours later in daylight.  He just got to work on the bagging and I went right to the room and started setting up the shelves.  After an hour my mother joined Robert and by 7:30 we were pretty much done.  Jon loaded the market truck by himself (95 crates, a hefty load) and then we jumped in and left.

We drafted two fellow vendors to help us unload (I am not proud) and then we put up the tarp and set up, barely finishing by the time the bell rang.  It wasn't really very busy but we did our best to squeeze as much money as we could out of each transaction. I spent all my time puttering around, rearranging, getting things out of the sun, and Jon took all the money. It was hard for both of us to stand up for so long, on pavement, but of course we did it.  Loaded up (with help from Michelle who dropped by, bless her) and closed the van door at 2:33. I took a quick nap on the way home. 

When we got home, Forrest was pretty much finished with his book signing event. He said it had gone well.  Hard to tell what that means, but he said he sold some books.  Mom was the right person to be here to host, since she is the real reason anyone would come to the book signing (she is the subject of the first chapter).

After unloading the truck, chatting with Carrie, checking the room,  doing my daily homework of figuring out what we need to do tomorrow, writing the blog, making the chart, we went out for a quick dinner with Cookie and Paul.  Just as we were leaving the farm, I got a call from Bev, the farmer who loans us his pigs. He was coming to pick them up in a couple of hours.  I told him to call me when he got here and I would meet him at the pigs.

These pigs have only been living here for about six weeks and they never really truly warmed up to us.  They tolerate us, I think.  They let us scratch their backs, they come to check out the menu, but they don't actually like us.  Various people on the farm pay attention to them, but when push comes to shove it is really only my mother and me who remember to think about them every day.  And when  I was away overnight, they got out because they were too hungry and no one had remembered to feed them.   Stephen had to run and run, catching those fast little beasts -- the rest of us tried to be helpful by blocking their path as they scooted out of Stephen's reach, but he really did all the work, catching first the little pig and then the big one, many minutes later. The second time they got out a few days later (because now they knew that was an option), Michael and I were the only ones around when I found the pigs at Blueberry Hill, and we caught them without doing any running.  He walked behind them and I herded them with my golf cart and we convinced them to go back in without much argument.

My kids think that I am disproportionately attached to the pigs.  That I think about them more than I think about my own children.  Of course this is hyperbole.  But I do like having pigs around. They are interesting and they have personalities and they enjoy eating so much of what we would ordinarily throw away.  Each of my siblings has pets (in Lani's case, dozens of pets) but I don't. Like my mother, I don't want to have animals in the house.  But pigs and other outdoor beings are perfectly entertaining. 

Anyway, Bev called at 8:15 and I met him at the barn.  We figured out our plan -- he would catch the big one and maybe I would catch the little one.  He said the big one was at the very top end of the size of pig he can pick up and carry: about seventy pounds.  I don't catch pigs, actually.  I help other people catch pigs. I figure out how to get them back into the pen, or I lure them with food. But I don't throw myself on pigs like my nephews and son.  That is a young person's sport.

I stood at the door of the stall, and Bev stood at the open end. The pigs were between us, looking pretty wary.  Bev grabbed the big pig by the back legs but she squirmed away immediately.  Now she really didn't trust Bev and she had her eyes on him.  I was behind her so I got down on my knees and grabbed both her back legs.  She wiggled and screamed and then Bev grabbed her with his whole body (the way boys do) and picked her up -- while she screeched like she was being murdered -- and carried her to his truck, climbing up on the drawbar and heaving her over the tailgate that was well above our heads.  She stopped squealing immediately. Meanwhile, the other pig had taken off into the dark of the pen, not wanting any part of it.  We repeated the routine, trapping her in the stall, both of us dropping to our knees and this time Bev held onto the wiggly little one.  I laughed through the entire exercise, of course. 

We have hosted various groups of pigs for about four summer seasons now. I am glad that these don't automatically get butchered. Bev is always breeding pigs, trying to find the ones that make the best mothers, so all the girl pigs get to be mothers at least once. They get to demonstrate their mothering potential. If they are good mothers, they get to do it again. If not, they don't.

And then I went to close up the CSA room for the last time on a Sunday night.

Another excellent day among many.  This life is never boring. Tiring, yes, but boring, no.

Written for the last newsletter of the year

Not Everyone Can Be a Farm Kid, But Every Kid Needs a Farm

On Monday morning, Katherine and I were picking arugula for the CSA in the field that is right next to Beulah Road.  We were inside the deer fence, and therefore we felt sort of invisible – even though there are houses looming on all sides and cars zooming past constantly.  We were focused on collecting up the arugula, sorting out the yellow leaves, not cutting ourselves with our sharp knives.

We saw a minivan pull up to the gate.  Unusual.  A mom and two little boys got out of the car.  Hmm.  Where were they headed?  They eventually made their way over to us – they were CSA customers on a field trip, coming to see the farm before the season ended.  They were very respectful, they didn’t step on the beds, and they watched us pick for a few minutes.  After the excitement of watching someone pick leaves wore off, they went to visit the pigs and the chickens.

This got me thinking about another one of our missions on this farm.  Of course we have many missions – from the mundane (growing vegetables) to the sublime (changing the world through our efforts).  But since the very beginning of time, this farm has been about kids.  Teaching kids, feeding kids, having kids, raising kids, making memories with kids.  If you expand the definition of kids to include people who don’t yet know what they will be when they grow up, then the population includes the people who work here.

Every Sunday, a parade of families visits the CSA room.  Some of the young ones have been coming since they were in utero. I remember watching their moms’ bellies expand each week, and then they began to arrive asleep in car seats, and then they approached with the very slow walk of the newly upright, and then they come in running, crashing through the plastic strips.

I love listening to the kids as they are helping to choose the week’s vegetables.  They are just like any customer – they go for color and beauty.  They tell their parents that they WILL eat it.  There are cabbage lovers and carrot mongers, and kale chip aficionados.  They are such sophisticated foodies, even at age four.

These parents are consciously bringing the kids to the farm.  It is part of their education.  Sometimes unexpected opportunities come up – like the day that I wanted to till up the beans in the stand garden but there were still too many nice beans still there.  I decided the CSA customers should get the beans out of the patch, so that Sunday afternoon they did.  Since they didn’t know they would be in the field, most people were not dressed for the occasion, but CSA customers are adventurous by nature –  they got a little dirty.

We have had school groups visiting the farm for the last 45 years.   Occasionally the mothers of the preschoolers tell us that they remember when they came for a hayride as a toddler. I guess pretty soon someone will introduce herself as a grandmother who came on a tour of this little postage stamp of a farm.  It will happen.

And now we have a few CSA customers who can walk to the farm from home, without going on any big roads.  There is a family that pulls a little red wagon all the way to the CSA room, and after they gather up their flowers and vegetables they go to visit the pigs.  In the heat of the summer, they often had to have a drink from the hose (such a novelty) before making the long walk back.

One of our biggest missions is just to be here, really.  In order for all these children to stomp through puddles and taste celery straight from the field, we have to be here.  We could have moved our entire farm operation to Loudoun years ago, or somewhere even further away, but when you really think about it, it was the kids who kept us in Fairfax County.   

We are making a point that no one else has decided to make in this area.  Food is part of everyone’s life, and the more that you know about your food, the better you will be as a consumer.  Kids who see a carrot coming out of the ground will never forget it. Petting a chicken is a memorable experience.  Farms are not a thing of the past.  Food comes from farms, and kids need to know how that works.

Changing the world is a long, slow job.  We take it seriously, as we talk to small people wearing rubber boots decorated with ladybugs and fireflies.

Winding Down

It is pitch dark at 7:00 in the morning. I have no choice but to sit here in my nightgown, sipping my hot yukky, and work my way through this list of unpaid balances.  When it is light out, I can escape my desk and go out to work/play.  At this time of year, work is almost like play because it feels like a form of entertainment and distraction.  It is like we have work dates.  We meet at 9 or 9:30, we do our ritual CSA tasks for a few hours, and then we disperse again.  A few people go to deliver the CSA bags, others go home, others go back to the fields to round up more radishes.

Today there is a 100% chance of rain.  I certainly remember days when it didn't rain, even with that prediction, but I made a plan for today that accommodates rain. We are not going to a market that has been declining  every week, and all the people from the Loudoun farm are coming in here to join us. This is another week of Last Days.  Yesterday was Jess's last work day, today is Jaclyn's.  We are winding down, getting down to the bare bones crew.

I am not sad but it is a melancholy time, like the end of a school year.  This group will never exist again, these people will move on and become part of our history, we will not have these spontaneous moments of laughter, we won't be together in mud-covered clothes.  Some of them will come back to form a new group, and their stories from this year will inform the next generation, but this one is disbanding.

The potlucks have been a huge addition to our culture.  In the long ago past (the 1970s), we had Community Dinners in the front yard on Wednesday and Sunday nights.  It was often dark when we gathered at the picnic table and we ate and talked late into the night. One summer, when Saroj was here, we ended every dinner singing "Good Night Irene."  Those dinners went by the wayside when we started having babies and families to tend to and we stopped housing workers at the Vienna farm.  We gave up on trying to create a community when we started hiring more commuters who went home well before dark.  Out in Loudoun in the last decade or so, they had Friday night dinners, with the small group that worked together all day and all week.

In 2014 we started doing Friday Lunches here in Vienna, religiously.  Sometimes there were four people gathered in the greenhouse, to get out of the wind and cold in April and in the middle of the summer we could have as many as 20 people at the table. This year we instituted Thursday Lunches in Loudoun, again religiously.  We do not take our potlucks lightly.  Everyone comes.  It is the moment when we are all sitting down, not working, together. 

Last year's final Friday Lunch, on the last week of markets and CSA, was in the greenhouse.  Rowan and Becky were there, and Darryl joined us.  He was so tickled to be warm on a November day and he suggested that we have every lunch there forevermore.  You never know when the last time is. I am glad he had such a good time. That was the last lunch we shared with Darryl, but the rest of us have eaten together for another 30 weeks in a row.

This community has been chugging along for over fifty years, in one form or another.  It would be really something to have a gathering of past workers and past supporters.  Maybe that is something to aspire to, just for the fun of it.  It would be the potluck of a lifetime.

Frost

Yesterday as I was driving out to Loudoun -- my Saturday morning routine after the market trucks roll out -- I noticed what a gorgeous day it was.  Crispy, clear, full of color, absolutely beautiful. And I then noticed that I was filled with joy.  This doesn't happen all the time when I am headed out to work as fast and hard as I can, mostly by myself, so I can get back in time to be here when the market trucks roll back home.  I just felt so glad about everything.

First of all, how can you feel anything but joy when the days are gorgeous and you get to be outside all day long?

Second, we have been preparing for the first frost. We are clearing every field of everything that will turn black. Everyone is tired of peppers and eggplant, the most dogged of all the plants.  They continue to produce, week after week, and the fruits are lovely, but we have had enough.  I am not tired of beans -- I am never tired of beans when they are fast and easy to pick -- but they will go down if it gets below freezing.  On Thursday they stripped all the peppers and eggplants off in Loudoun. On Friday afternoon Becky headed out to the pepper patch by herself and I headed up to the beans.  I had a feeling there would be a lot of peppers, so I texted her, "need help?" She did. From my office in the bean patch, I found her some help -- and they filled 44 baskets with purple and green and orange and red peppers of all sizes.  I stayed on my knees and kept at it with the beans. Mom came up to help, and we had 15 baskets when we had to stop to do other things.

Frost used to be the end point, back when we only grew summer-friendly crops.  But now we grow so much that can stand the cold -- it is just a punctuation mark. It ends a chapter.  We are moving ever closer to the end.

I think that is really where the feeling of joy started.  I love this work, but I also love NOT working.  And we are exactly five weeks from the last market day.

Instead of rushing home to meet the trucks yesterday, I decided to stay on my knees and pick beans out in Loudoun.  Jon has noted that the cell phone has made it possible for me to work and be other places at the same time.  I can also ask someone to bring me some lunch (I got two lunches delivered to the bean patch, so nice) and I can lure others to the beans.  By the end of the afternoon, there were five of us having a bean party, even though everyone had been working since before dawn.  Frost is a great motivator.

Being surrounded by beauty, even in this godforsaken suburban world of Northern Virginia, is a constant source of joy.  Will wonders never cease.

These blurry-edged photos are of the CSA room this morning.  Somehow I can never take a good picture of the room, but it is stunning today.

We Are At That Age

We are at the age where we go to more memorial gatherings than baby showers and more funerals than weddings.  I have already written about my feelings about funerals -- I go to them whenever I can. It is important to me to be present, in support, as a listener, to be part of honoring someone as they leave our world.  So often I learn things I had never imagined about the life story of the person who has died, or about the family, and it just adds so much to my understanding about the person. 

Today's memorial event was for a neighbor I did not know well.  When he came to Blueberry Hill, he had already suffered a traumatic brain injury a few years before, so I never knew him as his real self.  I went to the gathering out of respect for his wife, and because that is what we do here.  No matter what, we support our mourners and we mourn with them.

This man had an amazing life.  Absolutely amazing.  (His wife sent this to us: "For those that are interested, please go to the link http://www.arlingtonsistercity.com/ to see an interview with Jim about his role in the Arlington Sister City Association (ASCA). Just click the link Interview with Jim Rowland in the Popular list. Jim believed in international understanding at the grass roots level - he helped to build ASCA from its early days - he was a great host to numerous international students and had friends in many countries as a result. I think this story is interesting in and of itself and for me it also has the flavor and feel of Jim, since it was based on an oral interview.")

All of his siblings and their families were there today, as well as his ex-wife and a whole other family, plus people who must have worked with him (there were no formal introductions), plus us.   There were several themes that came through -- he was a brilliant guy who had lots of unusual ideas, many talents and skills, a quirky way about him, he loved young people, he was generous and kind, he made his siblings do all kinds of wacky things because it was entertaining, he had a flare for the bizarre, he could learn to do anything.  They didn't talk much about his brain injury, which he got in some freak mugging in McLean, never solved, but it clearly changed his life completely.  

One of our newest neighbors who has lived here for less than six months said something eloquent and touching, directly to Jim's wife.  She thanked her for modeling a kind of love that we don't appreciate or honor enough -- when times were tough, his wife stayed right by him and took care of him with devotion and respect. It was an unusual and lovely observation, and I was stunned by her clarity. 

My own experience with Jim was one of patient listening as he repeated some thoughts or ideas. I missed out on the quirky, funny, high level Jim.  We only knew the kind, open-hearted, kid-friendly man who slowly deteriorated and began to despair. 

No one gets to choose the end of the story, and that is a hard thing.  But he lived his life to the best of his abilities, and people loved him a lot.  You can't do better than that.

A Four Outfit Day -- Not Counting Nightgown

And it wasn't hot or rainy -- it was a beautiful day, almost to the very end.

First Outfit:  Jeans and T-shirt for picking radishes and arugula and chard.  Soaking wet and very muddy by 9:00 AM.

Second Outfit:  waiting for me in the kitchen because I knew I would be in a rush, a clean T-shirt and my baggy Hawaiian pants for going to the hospital to sit with Anna while Gordon had his exploratory cardiac catheter procedure.  Rushed from the parking lot, got there in time to see Gordon coming back to the recovery room in fine spirits (drugs are good). They found no blockage at all, despite his alarming stress test yesterday, and next they will do a CT scan to see what else they might learn.  The three of us chatted while we waited the two hours before Gordon was allowed to get up. 

Raced home to make fried rice for lunch, and attended the farm potluck in my unusually clean clothes.

Third Outfit:  a third T-shirt and a lightweight pair of long pants for bean picking, not clean.  Right after lunch, went out to Loudoun to join the crew in the bean patch for a bit.

Fourth Outfit:  yoga clothes that were out in the barn from the last yoga class two weeks ago.  Joined the crew for a 4:30 farm yoga class.  By the end it was raining hard and we couldn't even hear Kate giving instructions, as the water pounding on the metal roof drowned her out. 

Came home and unloaded my vehicle, sloshing through the water that filled the flooding cooler, still wearing my yoga clothes but no shoes.  Stephen came to help me and did the heavy lifting. I mostly tried to figure out where things were supposed to go.

And now I have actually returned to Outfit #2 because I thought I was going to the airport to pick up Jon, but his flight which was diverted to Richmond because of the storms is now cancelled and it is not clear when or how he is getting home.  Maybe it is time to get into my nightgown.

Waiting for Joaquin

As always, the weather is awfully hard to predict.  And there seems to be quite an industry in hyperbole and storm-chasing.  For many days the weather people have been watching the progress of a storm that has been growing into an increasingly strong hurricane.  After all these years of Septembers and Octobers, picking before the storm with a name, preparing for the worst, hoping for something less drastic, we have learned how to keep all our options open.

Ellen gets really nervous because she watches the weather reports constantly; I am less nervous as soon as I have a plan. I don't like uncertainty.  Since hurricanes create uncertainty, it seems best to be ahead of the game as much as possible.

Yesterday I decided the best strategy was to fill the coolers and wait to see what happens next.  So today the whole Loudoun crew dressed for rain and we headed out to the fields -- it had already rained over four inches so everything was soft and mushy and trucks were out of the question.  All morning long a light misty drizzle fell on us.  We picked about five golf cart loads of kale (about 40 crates) and then moved on to the broccoli and cauliflower and radishes and celeriac.  By about 10:30 I was getting cold since my socks were soaked inside the boots.  We stopped to get warmed up, change our socks and have some hot chocolate.  Then back out for another couple of hours in the chard and beets and herbs and celeriac. It was a very good morning.  Everyone stayed cheerful the entire time.

We had the best potluck lunch ever (all potluck lunches are just about the best ever, but today's was especially good) and we spent some time on a "check-in" --
Shua had told me that he wished we had more conversations that allowed us to get to know each other better.  So we sort of had a hybrid question of "if you knew me well, you would know that..." and "tell us about a body part that is particularly interesting to you, and why."  We learned about Shua's childhood of hand massages, Ellen's obsession with feet, Hannah's interest in what it would be like to be a tall person with long legs... it was fun.

Some people headed back out into the rain for peppers and eggplant, and three of us stayed in the barn to wash the mountains of food we had collected up.  Ecole did the inventory -- we picked 150 crates of leafy stuff.  We still don't know which markets we will go to, but the reports are getting less dire and we might end up at four out of five of our weekend markets.

Meanwhile, because wisdom comes from experience, Ellen went out to make sure the drain pipe in the pond wasn't clogged so that the water wouldn't run over the dam.  She put on her waders and took someone with her to make sure she didn't get swept away or chewed on by a snapping turtle.

We loaded one Sprinter to the ceiling, front to back, with only crates.  Then we backed the new Sprinter up to the door and filled it about halfway.  Hannah and I drove 45 minutes back to Vienna and parked the vans behind the stand and left them to be unloaded tomorrow. I was too wet and cold to face all that sorting and rearranging. 

So now we wait to see whether the hurricane comes closer or turns back out to sea.  At one time they were predicting 6 - 12" of rain (I ignored that) and now it is down to 2 - 4" (still more than we need).  I feel much better with all that nice clean kale stacked up in the truck.  We have choices, and that's how we like it. 

By the Light of the Silvery Moon

(another piece written for the newsletter)

We pride ourselves on working only in the daylight.  Most of the time.  What I mean is, when we hear about other farmer friends who work with headlamps, or who are cleaning grain at midnight when the humidity is the least troublesome, we shake our heads and feel glad that we don’t have that life.

But, of course, sometimes we do.  There were the supremely memorable nights in our childhood when our parents shook us awake to go outside to cover tomato plants a few hours before dawn, just before the dew froze on the leaves.  Not just a few plants, but a whole field, thousands of plants.  In those days there were wax paper “hot caps” to cover individual plants, one at a time.  There was a bell-shaped metal implement that had a handle, and you placed it carefully on the hot cap so that the edges stuck out all around the bottom.  Then the adult would dump a couple of shovelfuls of dirt over the metal bell, the child would lift it up and move on to the next hot cap.  I always remember (not just on occasions like these) thinking that I was the only kid in my whole third grade class who was doing this.

And, nowadays, it is quite dark before 6 AM when we meet to load the market trucks.  So we have to turn on the lights.  That certainly counts as working in the dark.

Some evenings in September, I have to turn on the lights to finish packing the CSA tomatoes.  It just gets too dark to be able to tell a pink tomato from a red one, and I really have to be able to see every bit of the tomato in order to let it go into a CSA bag.

In mid July, when we were trying to avoid the hammering heat of the day, we started transplanting the kale and broccoli and cauliflower in the early evening. Ashley and I sat side by side on the transplanter, placing her precious seedlings into their individual puddles behind the water wheel. Jon was driving the tractor, keeping the rows straight, saying nothing about the growing darkness.  One night we pushed on for as long as we could, and the moon was high when we stopped.  Ashley said, “pretty soon the bats will be out.”  And we were amused at the thought, not appalled.

Just tonight I discovered that the streetlights along Beulah Road can be helpful to a farmer in the suburbs.  Ordinarily I wouldn’t ever have been on a tractor after dark, but I was feeling behind schedule and pressured by the possibility of a rainy weekend.  I had already spread the soil amendments on the field and it is wasteful to let that wash away in the rain.  So I started spading at 7:15, just as the sun was starting to go below the trees over Maymont.   It got dark pretty fast, but there is so much ambient light in the suburbs that I could still see the ground.  And I know that field like the back of my hand, truly.  I kept going.  And then the moon came up, bright, and there were shadows.  I could have kept going but my rational husband came to get me, so I reluctantly got off the tractor – finally understanding what my farmer friends who work in the dark are thinking when they put on their headlamps.

We still haven’t installed all the lights in the new barn in Loudoun because we believe in our hearts that we should not be washing vegetables in the night.  But sometimes on a dark, rainy day we wonder if we should just go ahead and put in a few lamps.  A couple lights over the sinks might be a good idea, especially in November when daylight is so rare.  Anything to avoid headlamps…