This is a postcard from this moment. In this house right now we have Alissa and Benjamin and Rebecca and Jon and me. Alissa is working on a variety of desserts, Benjamin is examining an ancient camera that he found on the porch, Rebecca just went outside and brought in her demonstration plate of six different versions of cake and frosting (testing how they hold up in heat), Jon is about to clean up the pans that were used for frying fish. We just asked Rebecca to find some metal pitchers for the iced tea and she went right to Amazon and ordered some. Why metal? Because Jesse has made choices for his wedding that don't involve any plastic or paper so we don't want to serve anything out of a dish that doesn't match that standard. Plus it would be nice to have some good pitchers.
This is what weddings do. They cause everyone to come together, stop what they are usually doing, and focus on creating an event that is an expression and celebration of the people who are getting married.
My own role is minimal. I am continuing to do farm stuff, and I come inside now and then to help to come up with solutions to unsolved problems, and to taste the frosting to see which one will hold up best and still taste good when it is hot out. We just discussed and figured out what serving dishes we will use -- by looking around the kitchen and realizing that we have what we need, way up on top of the cupboards.
Alissa has switched over to making dipping sauces. None of us will be hungry by Saturday. We will have had our fill of cake and dip. The current version of dipping sauce under construction is ranch dressing with herbs.
Benjamin is disturbed to learn that we have one of those Alexa things in our house -- he thinks that our conversation is being recorded and sent back to headquarters. He has spent his life trying to stay off the grid.
Now Rebecca is reverting to her favorite pastime: sharing trivia questions from some huge database. I don't even try to answer those questions. Inevitably, the conversation moves on to discussions of history and culture as they try to figure out the answer. Rebecca has been playing trivia for years and years -- it entertains her mightily.
Anyway, I need to return to the outdoors where the vegetables are still happening, but these moments are so delicious. Oops, Alissa just ignored the timer and forgot to get the cakes out of the oven, so distracting is this conversation, and Rebecca is shrieking at her. All is right with this little world.
Thursday, June 29, 2017
Sunday, June 18, 2017
The Roller Coaster of Belonging
As everyone who reads this knows, Jon and I belong to multiple communities, and those communities provide the context for our identity. We live and breathe this farm, we live and breathe Blueberry Hill, and I have a longstanding role at the temple as a leader, in addition to our shared role as engaged congregants. Plus, we have our family. In all of these circles, we have dear friends. We are entirely committed to each of these communities and we give ourselves heart and soul to them. Sometimes one more than another, depending on the season.
Every story I write is about something that happens within one of these four communities. In the last two days, all four of these communities have asked something of us, or given us something. I woke up this morning (it is now 5:30) still feeling quite frayed. Bruised, almost, from the roller coaster. It's crazy because nothing terrible happened, nobody died, and almost no one else would even think of this as a bruising couple of days, looking in from the outside.
Luckily, the farm is great. The crew is doing excellent work, both farms look beautiful, the vegetables are plentiful, the management team is succeeding, and we are selling piles of nicely washed beets and lettuce and leeks. CSA customers are really happy and the trains are running completely on time. We could not wish for anything more than this. So there is nothing to report there.
At the end of April, nearly two months ago, I got a frantic call from the rabbi as I was driving home from Loudoun. He was panicked because he had just had a meeting with the President and Vice President of the temple and they had told him that the Board had just agreed that there is not enough money in the budget to renew his contract. He was shocked and upset to be told that the Board had come to this conclusion, without even having a conversation with him about what he might want in his next contract. Since then, much of my non-farm life has been spent dealing with the aftermath of this unexpected revelation.
He called me because I am the chair of the Pulpit Committee and there was no one else to call, really. The Pulpit Committee is the designated liaison between the clergy and the congregation -- we deliver the messages back and forth if the communications are not easy. We talk to people and find out how the clergy is doing and we report back to the Board and the clergy. Sometimes there is nothing to do and sometimes that work just takes all the time that there is.
In the last two months we have been learning how that conversation between the rabbi and the leaders came to be, and we have been using established processes to get the conversation back on track. I wrote about this already on May 30, so this is old news. But that calm between the storms did not hold and more storms came through.
The story isn't interesting enough to tell in detail, but in the last two days, a new level of drama emerged. It's still about personalities and bad patterns, but time is getting short. In less than two weeks, the rabbi would need to decide whether he is going to start looking for a new job. The drama is heightened by the financial troubles at the temple. And it is made so much worse by the President's desire to have the rabbi go, and the congregation's desire to have him stay.
Yesterday, after finding myself crying on multiple occasions about all this trouble, it became clear to me what needed to happen, and happen now. It was not at all clear how to get it to happen, but we had to try. Nancy and I spent a lot of time talking to people, writing, thinking. We found others who agreed with us. And by the end of the day, the President of the congregation resigned, effective immediately. There is no joy here. Only relief that we can try to fix these problems with a new set of players. There are endless meetings on the horizon, and I don't doubt that my name and my integrity will continue to be questioned (hence the tears) and I am sure there is more ugliness to come. This is so tiring.
On Friday night, while it was Shabbat and the emails could stop for a few hours (Reform Jews just stop emailing on Friday night. On Saturday most of us just get right back into it.), Blueberry Hill had its annual recital. Betsy (my friend since we were in elementary school) organizes it every year and it is a triumph of sweetness and joy and warmth and entertainment. This one was amazing. The youngest performer was two years old, singing so quietly, sitting on the piano bench and barely visible, that none of us could hear the words but we could see that he was earnestly singing a long song. The oldest performer was about 85, reading a loving poem that she wrote about her granddaughter coming to visit and hogging the bed. The most polished performance, I thought, was delivered by three musicians (two farmers and a lifelong singer)-- an original rap song based on a great Hamilton song, called the Ten Commandments of Farming. The harmonies and the rhythms were perfect. So clever and delicious. My mother and I, for the first time ever, performed piano duets. We had decided the day before to do it, but I had already learned the duets for a recital in May and my mother could easily learn her part in one day. After two rehearsals in 24 hours, we were ready and we did ourselves proud. All the performances were enthusiastically cheered, and they were all delightful. This is Blueberry Hill at its finest.
Last night, Jon and I went to different social events. I went to the party to celebrate our recently retired choir director and Jon went to the weekly family dinner. He is preparing to be the chef for Jesse's upcoming wedding, and he has been practicing his recipes at these dinners. The choir party was a final gathering for a group that has sung together for decades -- many of the singers are planning to stop singing with us, taking this transition as an opportunity to reclaim their Sunday evenings. Some have been singing for over 40 years together, so this was a bittersweet event.
In a few minutes, I will go down to the stand to help load the market truck with Stephen and Michael Lipsky, then Heinz will roll in with his load of CSA vegetables and then I will get to work on setting up the CSA room for our third week. Sometimes the farm is a source of drama, but not now, thank goodness. The weather is not challenging us at the moment and the work is getting done without undue effort.
As always, I am so glad we are healthy. Jon is doing better than ever right now. Our life is just about as good as it gets.
Every story I write is about something that happens within one of these four communities. In the last two days, all four of these communities have asked something of us, or given us something. I woke up this morning (it is now 5:30) still feeling quite frayed. Bruised, almost, from the roller coaster. It's crazy because nothing terrible happened, nobody died, and almost no one else would even think of this as a bruising couple of days, looking in from the outside.
Luckily, the farm is great. The crew is doing excellent work, both farms look beautiful, the vegetables are plentiful, the management team is succeeding, and we are selling piles of nicely washed beets and lettuce and leeks. CSA customers are really happy and the trains are running completely on time. We could not wish for anything more than this. So there is nothing to report there.
At the end of April, nearly two months ago, I got a frantic call from the rabbi as I was driving home from Loudoun. He was panicked because he had just had a meeting with the President and Vice President of the temple and they had told him that the Board had just agreed that there is not enough money in the budget to renew his contract. He was shocked and upset to be told that the Board had come to this conclusion, without even having a conversation with him about what he might want in his next contract. Since then, much of my non-farm life has been spent dealing with the aftermath of this unexpected revelation.
He called me because I am the chair of the Pulpit Committee and there was no one else to call, really. The Pulpit Committee is the designated liaison between the clergy and the congregation -- we deliver the messages back and forth if the communications are not easy. We talk to people and find out how the clergy is doing and we report back to the Board and the clergy. Sometimes there is nothing to do and sometimes that work just takes all the time that there is.
In the last two months we have been learning how that conversation between the rabbi and the leaders came to be, and we have been using established processes to get the conversation back on track. I wrote about this already on May 30, so this is old news. But that calm between the storms did not hold and more storms came through.
The story isn't interesting enough to tell in detail, but in the last two days, a new level of drama emerged. It's still about personalities and bad patterns, but time is getting short. In less than two weeks, the rabbi would need to decide whether he is going to start looking for a new job. The drama is heightened by the financial troubles at the temple. And it is made so much worse by the President's desire to have the rabbi go, and the congregation's desire to have him stay.
Yesterday, after finding myself crying on multiple occasions about all this trouble, it became clear to me what needed to happen, and happen now. It was not at all clear how to get it to happen, but we had to try. Nancy and I spent a lot of time talking to people, writing, thinking. We found others who agreed with us. And by the end of the day, the President of the congregation resigned, effective immediately. There is no joy here. Only relief that we can try to fix these problems with a new set of players. There are endless meetings on the horizon, and I don't doubt that my name and my integrity will continue to be questioned (hence the tears) and I am sure there is more ugliness to come. This is so tiring.
On Friday night, while it was Shabbat and the emails could stop for a few hours (Reform Jews just stop emailing on Friday night. On Saturday most of us just get right back into it.), Blueberry Hill had its annual recital. Betsy (my friend since we were in elementary school) organizes it every year and it is a triumph of sweetness and joy and warmth and entertainment. This one was amazing. The youngest performer was two years old, singing so quietly, sitting on the piano bench and barely visible, that none of us could hear the words but we could see that he was earnestly singing a long song. The oldest performer was about 85, reading a loving poem that she wrote about her granddaughter coming to visit and hogging the bed. The most polished performance, I thought, was delivered by three musicians (two farmers and a lifelong singer)-- an original rap song based on a great Hamilton song, called the Ten Commandments of Farming. The harmonies and the rhythms were perfect. So clever and delicious. My mother and I, for the first time ever, performed piano duets. We had decided the day before to do it, but I had already learned the duets for a recital in May and my mother could easily learn her part in one day. After two rehearsals in 24 hours, we were ready and we did ourselves proud. All the performances were enthusiastically cheered, and they were all delightful. This is Blueberry Hill at its finest.
Last night, Jon and I went to different social events. I went to the party to celebrate our recently retired choir director and Jon went to the weekly family dinner. He is preparing to be the chef for Jesse's upcoming wedding, and he has been practicing his recipes at these dinners. The choir party was a final gathering for a group that has sung together for decades -- many of the singers are planning to stop singing with us, taking this transition as an opportunity to reclaim their Sunday evenings. Some have been singing for over 40 years together, so this was a bittersweet event.
In a few minutes, I will go down to the stand to help load the market truck with Stephen and Michael Lipsky, then Heinz will roll in with his load of CSA vegetables and then I will get to work on setting up the CSA room for our third week. Sometimes the farm is a source of drama, but not now, thank goodness. The weather is not challenging us at the moment and the work is getting done without undue effort.
As always, I am so glad we are healthy. Jon is doing better than ever right now. Our life is just about as good as it gets.
Monday, June 12, 2017
Upper Management
I cannot remember when I have ever overslept -- or not since high school. The kind of oversleeping where you wake up to that shocking realization that you are supposed to be somewhere else, and you fling yourself out of bed and into your clothes (which you set out for yourself the night before, in the event that such a thing might happen, even though it never does). I only set an alarm for Saturday mornings because the rest of the week there is enough leeway that I am sure I won't need technology to get me up on time.
But it happened this Saturday. I had set my alarm, but had not made sure that the volume was up. Somehow Jon woke up, touched my arm, I opened my eyes and saw it was 6:08, Thirty minutes late. I flew out of bed and onto my golf cart and was down at the stand by 6:13. Hadn't been able to get my feet into my underwear so I went without, but I did have pants on. I had missed the first truck before it left for market, and they had not noticed they didn't have their money box.
The funny thing is, nobody was worried that I was not there. And the reason is that they don't really need me. The systems are all in place, everyone knows what to do. The clipboards with the lists are all prepared and the vegetables are stacked and ready to be assembled into their market vehicles. I am merely a back-up, in case of mishaps. There are mishaps -- people oversleep, there are car issues, we have made mistakes in picking, etc.
It was easy to figure out how to get the money box to Arlington since we had an unusually big crew going to Falls Church. The two markets are ten minutes apart, so Carrie could go the extra miles and drop it off. That was no big deal.
As it happened, there was an unexpected lettuce shortage and we needed six more crates. Luckily the Reston truck leaves a half an hour after the first one, so I had time to go to the field, pick six crates of lettuce and get back in time to stick it on Michael's van before he rolled out. As I raced back from the field, I saw a deer inside the fence (a familiar one, a regular Saturday morning trespasser) and I didn't have time to deal with it, but I knew I would come back to find it in a few minutes.
Then I loaded a van with 24 crates so I could pick the Sunday lettuce. I knew I didn't want to chase a deer around in a minivan so I got back on my golf cart to go in search of the deer. Couldn't find it. Went back to get the van and found that Jon had taken it, thinking I had left it for him to go pick up vegetables from Casey and Stacey. I had to laugh. The morning was still off-kilter, and we were less than an hour into it. Loaded another van with more crates and of course this time the deer was hanging around near the gate. Usually I don't try to round up deer on my own two feet, but this deer is particularly slow-witted, and I herded her out of the gate and got back in my vehicle.
It is high lettuce season and it takes no time at all to pick these gigantic, gorgeous heads. I parked next to the patch and did not have to move once. Just filled up all the crates from one spot about the size of our kitchen.
And then I could finally go home and put some underwear on. Carrie would come back from market to wash the lettuce in a bit, and I would head to Loudoun with Jon.
The point of this story is that we have come to a place in our work culture where the systems are strong enough to withstand most unexpected events. We can handle anything that is expected -- there are charts and schedules for that -- but we can also manage when the most upper manager falls down on the job. That is really good to know.
But it happened this Saturday. I had set my alarm, but had not made sure that the volume was up. Somehow Jon woke up, touched my arm, I opened my eyes and saw it was 6:08, Thirty minutes late. I flew out of bed and onto my golf cart and was down at the stand by 6:13. Hadn't been able to get my feet into my underwear so I went without, but I did have pants on. I had missed the first truck before it left for market, and they had not noticed they didn't have their money box.
The funny thing is, nobody was worried that I was not there. And the reason is that they don't really need me. The systems are all in place, everyone knows what to do. The clipboards with the lists are all prepared and the vegetables are stacked and ready to be assembled into their market vehicles. I am merely a back-up, in case of mishaps. There are mishaps -- people oversleep, there are car issues, we have made mistakes in picking, etc.
It was easy to figure out how to get the money box to Arlington since we had an unusually big crew going to Falls Church. The two markets are ten minutes apart, so Carrie could go the extra miles and drop it off. That was no big deal.
As it happened, there was an unexpected lettuce shortage and we needed six more crates. Luckily the Reston truck leaves a half an hour after the first one, so I had time to go to the field, pick six crates of lettuce and get back in time to stick it on Michael's van before he rolled out. As I raced back from the field, I saw a deer inside the fence (a familiar one, a regular Saturday morning trespasser) and I didn't have time to deal with it, but I knew I would come back to find it in a few minutes.
Then I loaded a van with 24 crates so I could pick the Sunday lettuce. I knew I didn't want to chase a deer around in a minivan so I got back on my golf cart to go in search of the deer. Couldn't find it. Went back to get the van and found that Jon had taken it, thinking I had left it for him to go pick up vegetables from Casey and Stacey. I had to laugh. The morning was still off-kilter, and we were less than an hour into it. Loaded another van with more crates and of course this time the deer was hanging around near the gate. Usually I don't try to round up deer on my own two feet, but this deer is particularly slow-witted, and I herded her out of the gate and got back in my vehicle.
It is high lettuce season and it takes no time at all to pick these gigantic, gorgeous heads. I parked next to the patch and did not have to move once. Just filled up all the crates from one spot about the size of our kitchen.
And then I could finally go home and put some underwear on. Carrie would come back from market to wash the lettuce in a bit, and I would head to Loudoun with Jon.
The point of this story is that we have come to a place in our work culture where the systems are strong enough to withstand most unexpected events. We can handle anything that is expected -- there are charts and schedules for that -- but we can also manage when the most upper manager falls down on the job. That is really good to know.
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