On my phone, there is a place to go and find out where specific family members are, in real life, right now. I haven't really used it yet but other people in our family do it all the time. In fact, just a half an hour ago I see that Rebecca sent a message to the five of us: "We can't find Benjamin."
There is no reason for alarm, but the girls were probably poking around looking to see if he was back at home in Haifa yet. He left yesterday afternoon, so he must be there by now and his battery must be dead. (Jon just commented: "Maybe he's at that Five Guys" as the last time we can see Benjamin's location is at Dulles, very close to that restaurant. I chuckled.)
Just an hour ago, Anna picked up the girls and took them to Dulles so they could resume their normal lives in Boston. Those were the last Groissers to leave the house -- Jon left for Shreveport yesterday morning -- and now I have four days of quiet ahead. I already know that my days will be full, but they won't be full of vegetable wrangling, and that is a huge shift in focus.
It takes me absolutely no time to shift into non-farm mode. You would think there would be some whiplash, after the steady pace and intensity of the last many months. But, nope, I have been here before and I am already looking at my cluttered house with off-season eyes. I could really use a dumpster in the front yard.
This winter the farm will not completely release its grip on us, but it will not be our only source of entertainment. There will be someone working on picking and selling vegetables all winter long, so the conversation won't go away. I hope to keep my distance from the day-to-day work but I already know that I will be needed in various ways as we navigate new relationships and roles (we have a new farmer joining us...lots of challenges ahead).
Benjamin was here for nearly three months, after being away for more than three years (except for visits for weddings), and he settled right back into the household without ruffling anything. The weddings and family gatherings have been frequent enough that he can still have projects lying around. He has a never-ending list of things he wants to make or fix or learn, and he only manages to get about two of them done on any particular visit. This time he had to write a paper for school that just took forever -- it ate up well over a month, with much gnashing of teeth. But as soon as that was done he could dive back into his world of metal and wood. Benjamin gets the most of anyone out of the shop resources that are available at the barn, which is pretty funny since he lives on the other side of the world. He made a mandolin that came out very well, and now he knows what he would do differently next time. And then he spent about a week learning to make a kitchen knife from a piece of steel that he ordered from Amazon. Lots of learning there, and we have a big scorch mark on our kitchen floor from the early phases when he was using the stove for heat, before he built a forge outside the barn. In the end, he said the handle was what gave him the most trouble, as he kept breaking it when he tried to bend it just a little too much, since wood has completely different properties from metal. Both the knife and the mandolin are quite beautiful.
When he left yesterday, I felt the same tearing of a mother's heart that I always feel when he leaves on his adventures. We have all had a lot of practice, saying goodbye to Benjamin, and we are determinedly unsentimental, as a group, but it takes me a few days to recover.
Ah, my phone just dinged From Benjamin: "Hey guys I'm back on the map." Alissa replied with a photo of herself and Rebecca, smiling and groggy, waiting for their plane. And Jon called a minute ago to tell me to get some parts ready for the mechanic this morning. All are accounted for. Not present, but where they should be.
Tuesday, November 28, 2017
Saturday, November 11, 2017
Virginia Is Growing Blue Spots
Sometimes people say that Virginia is a purple state, but it really isn't. It sounds good to say that we have a blend of opinions but it is basically not true. After Tuesday's election, the map showed that the areas of most density, more urban and suburban, those are the ones that are getting more blue all the time. When we first moved out to Virginia, we felt like the only Democrats. But times have changed. Northern Virginia is now full of immigrants and progressives who vote, and we are overwhelming the rest of the state, with the help of urban centers with big universities.
Usually I don't do anything political, except by being part of a longstanding farm business that lives by some strong principles. And we have taken to putting big in-your-face sized signs at the entrance of our driveway during elections.
But last year's presidential election showed me that we can't let that happen again. This year, like so many other formerly inactive people, I joined the ranks of the active. I was late to the game, as vegetables can be very demanding, but I did make it a priority to do something real this time around.
For a good five years or so, I have been part of a non-partisan, interfaith community organizing group. This group (Virginians Organized for Interfaith Community Engagement) takes the long view, spending a lot of energy and time on building relationships and creating connections between elected officials and clergy, mostly. It takes a lot of patience and faith to keep going to the meetings because things seem to move at a glacial pace. Also, the jargon can be off-putting, and I think they miss a lot of opportunities to collect up some good minds and hearts by using words that don't mean what they think they mean. We once spent a whole meeting talking about our goal of "agitating" people. There were plenty of people in the room who didn't like that word, and didn't want to let the conversation progress until they had made their discomfort very clear.
So, this non-partisan group decided to focus on the governor's race in Virginia this year and they put all their energy into finding out what the most important issues were so we could tell the candidates what VOICE has identified as key goals. They taught people how to facilitate conversations and they held thousands of meetings to find out what was troubling people the most. I am not entirely certain that they didn't have the final list in mind before they even started having all the conversations -- they didn't come up with anything earth-shattering -- but the conversations were really the point, not the issues. They were moving toward this one big event where they invited both candidates to come and hear our list of demands, based on 5000 conversations.
Even though it was the middle of October and still a very busy time for farmers, I had committed to be there for that meeting (so had my mother and Michael Lipsky who are also engaged in this) and to bring as many people as possible. The VOICE strategy is to get public commitments from each institution (church, mosque, synagogue) for the number of people they will bring to these big "actions." Our temple had said it would bring 85, which was a stretch. I was shameless, of course, and asked my sister to come because Julia and the baby were coming, and so on. It took a lot of reminding and asking, but we did get our numbers. And on a gorgeous Sunday afternoon in the middle of nowhere (a high school in Nokesville), there were 1500+ people in a big auditorium participating in this bit of political theater.
It was the most tightly-run example that I have seen in five years. Usually they spend too much time with the pep rally aspects, but they were on a tight schedule and they stayed with it. We heard brief stories from people who had specific examples of bullying in schools, bad experiences with guns, fears of getting sent back to a country they had never lived in, students who couldn't observe their religious holidays if they weren't Christian, etc. And we watched VOICE clergy members asking direct questions of both candidates, using the exact same words for each one. There was no cheering, no signage, no partisan behavior. It was actually really good.
VOICE has this entirely predictable and persistent way of getting commitments out of people and I signed a card saying I would do some thing real, like canvassing or phone banking. I couldn't imagine how I would really do it, but I said I would.
So on the last weekend before the election, for the first time in my life, I learned to knock on doors. My mother did three shifts in three days, I think, and so did I. The goal was to increase voter turnout in specific precincts that had historically low percentages. We didn't talk about issues and we didn't talk about the candidates, we just told people to vote. When we were driving to the church where we would be briefly "trained," we were talking about the non-partisan part and Michael Lipsky said, "I want to get out of this car right now" because it just felt so risky to be getting a cross-section of infrequent voters to go and vote when the election was looking so close. But it was so interesting to be in neighborhoods we had never seen, very tightly packed blocks of developer-built apartments and townhouses. We had specific doors to knock on, registered voters only, and we took notes on our results.
On Election Day, which was rainy and cold and quite grim, I thought we would probably be making phone calls. But when I got to the church, the organizer asked if I would rather knock on doors or make calls. I asked what would be most effective and she said she thought knocking on doors was the best use of our time. I hadn't anticipated this, but of course I had rubber boots and a rain coat on, as I always dress for success. So we went out to a lower voter turnout area and knocked on every door, indiscriminately, (they call this "knock and drag" for some reason) and asked if people had voted. We kept count of people who said they had voted and we found a handful of people who said they would go now. I am not sure that we did anything very useful, except to demonstrate to a lot of surprised people that there were volunteers who were willing to walk around in the rain and nudge people into voting. And that may very well have been useful, in a long term sort of way.
The election results were better than we could have hoped for, and I still don't know if we did any good, but at least we made a serious effort. Last year's election taught me that there are incredibly dire consequences if you let the worst candidate win. Obviously we weren't campaigning for anyone, but it was a very interesting exercise to try to get more people to vote. I absolutely believe in that, and since we were in neighborhoods with lots of immigrants, we were probably talking to people with a similar agenda to ours.
We have a neighbor in Blueberry Hill who is devoted to canvassing -- he really takes the political process to heart -- and he knocks on doors every weekend for months before the elections. Now I have a better sense of what he does, and I am even more impressed by his dedication. It is meaningful work. And you learn so much that you didn't even know you didn't know. I already knew this, but I really need to learn to speak Spanish.
As VOICE always says, power comes from "organized people" and "organized money." We were organized people this time, and it felt good.
Usually I don't do anything political, except by being part of a longstanding farm business that lives by some strong principles. And we have taken to putting big in-your-face sized signs at the entrance of our driveway during elections.
But last year's presidential election showed me that we can't let that happen again. This year, like so many other formerly inactive people, I joined the ranks of the active. I was late to the game, as vegetables can be very demanding, but I did make it a priority to do something real this time around.
For a good five years or so, I have been part of a non-partisan, interfaith community organizing group. This group (Virginians Organized for Interfaith Community Engagement) takes the long view, spending a lot of energy and time on building relationships and creating connections between elected officials and clergy, mostly. It takes a lot of patience and faith to keep going to the meetings because things seem to move at a glacial pace. Also, the jargon can be off-putting, and I think they miss a lot of opportunities to collect up some good minds and hearts by using words that don't mean what they think they mean. We once spent a whole meeting talking about our goal of "agitating" people. There were plenty of people in the room who didn't like that word, and didn't want to let the conversation progress until they had made their discomfort very clear.
So, this non-partisan group decided to focus on the governor's race in Virginia this year and they put all their energy into finding out what the most important issues were so we could tell the candidates what VOICE has identified as key goals. They taught people how to facilitate conversations and they held thousands of meetings to find out what was troubling people the most. I am not entirely certain that they didn't have the final list in mind before they even started having all the conversations -- they didn't come up with anything earth-shattering -- but the conversations were really the point, not the issues. They were moving toward this one big event where they invited both candidates to come and hear our list of demands, based on 5000 conversations.
Even though it was the middle of October and still a very busy time for farmers, I had committed to be there for that meeting (so had my mother and Michael Lipsky who are also engaged in this) and to bring as many people as possible. The VOICE strategy is to get public commitments from each institution (church, mosque, synagogue) for the number of people they will bring to these big "actions." Our temple had said it would bring 85, which was a stretch. I was shameless, of course, and asked my sister to come because Julia and the baby were coming, and so on. It took a lot of reminding and asking, but we did get our numbers. And on a gorgeous Sunday afternoon in the middle of nowhere (a high school in Nokesville), there were 1500+ people in a big auditorium participating in this bit of political theater.
It was the most tightly-run example that I have seen in five years. Usually they spend too much time with the pep rally aspects, but they were on a tight schedule and they stayed with it. We heard brief stories from people who had specific examples of bullying in schools, bad experiences with guns, fears of getting sent back to a country they had never lived in, students who couldn't observe their religious holidays if they weren't Christian, etc. And we watched VOICE clergy members asking direct questions of both candidates, using the exact same words for each one. There was no cheering, no signage, no partisan behavior. It was actually really good.
VOICE has this entirely predictable and persistent way of getting commitments out of people and I signed a card saying I would do some thing real, like canvassing or phone banking. I couldn't imagine how I would really do it, but I said I would.
So on the last weekend before the election, for the first time in my life, I learned to knock on doors. My mother did three shifts in three days, I think, and so did I. The goal was to increase voter turnout in specific precincts that had historically low percentages. We didn't talk about issues and we didn't talk about the candidates, we just told people to vote. When we were driving to the church where we would be briefly "trained," we were talking about the non-partisan part and Michael Lipsky said, "I want to get out of this car right now" because it just felt so risky to be getting a cross-section of infrequent voters to go and vote when the election was looking so close. But it was so interesting to be in neighborhoods we had never seen, very tightly packed blocks of developer-built apartments and townhouses. We had specific doors to knock on, registered voters only, and we took notes on our results.
On Election Day, which was rainy and cold and quite grim, I thought we would probably be making phone calls. But when I got to the church, the organizer asked if I would rather knock on doors or make calls. I asked what would be most effective and she said she thought knocking on doors was the best use of our time. I hadn't anticipated this, but of course I had rubber boots and a rain coat on, as I always dress for success. So we went out to a lower voter turnout area and knocked on every door, indiscriminately, (they call this "knock and drag" for some reason) and asked if people had voted. We kept count of people who said they had voted and we found a handful of people who said they would go now. I am not sure that we did anything very useful, except to demonstrate to a lot of surprised people that there were volunteers who were willing to walk around in the rain and nudge people into voting. And that may very well have been useful, in a long term sort of way.
The election results were better than we could have hoped for, and I still don't know if we did any good, but at least we made a serious effort. Last year's election taught me that there are incredibly dire consequences if you let the worst candidate win. Obviously we weren't campaigning for anyone, but it was a very interesting exercise to try to get more people to vote. I absolutely believe in that, and since we were in neighborhoods with lots of immigrants, we were probably talking to people with a similar agenda to ours.
 |
| VOICE volunteers on Election Day. After this, we went inside to pester people by phone. |
As VOICE always says, power comes from "organized people" and "organized money." We were organized people this time, and it felt good.
 |
| Alisa (organizer), two volunteers from a local mosque, and our rabbi Michael Holzman going door to door. |
Saturday, November 4, 2017
Notes from the Last Dark Morning
It is dark as midnight and it is almost 7:00 in the morning. We have already loaded the three market trucks and everyone is right now putting up tarps in various suburban parking lots and unloading crates of greens while I sit here in my summer-cluttered house and wait for daylight. Tomorrow is the end of Daylight Savings and the mornings will start earlier again. Personally I don't really mind the early dark in the evening because it lengthens the time we can spend not working.
Anyway. On the way back from the stand this morning I saw a box turtle crossing the road in the dark and I thought of my father. Many things still make me think of him, of course, as I am still driving the same roads we drove 30-some years ago. The view has changed completely but the destinations are the same, with one farm at each end of the daily trip.
Whenever he saw a box turtle, it delighted him. In those days our world was full of salamanders and snakes and turtles, before all the houses were built on our borders. We lived down the hill in what seemed like an endless woods. There was a busy stream, Dad dammed up a pond and there was a road on the dam that took us across the stream to the Tractor Shed and to the path through the woods that went uphill through the Moutouxs to Grandma's house.
Right next to the Tractor Shed (where our bedrooms were on the second floor) there was a Bath House. The Bath House had a bathtub with plumbing that was somehow attached to the pond that was about fifty feet away. The bath water was brown. My dad was just tickled that we had a bathtub. This Bath House was a salamander haven. I don't remember electricity out there, but I do remember the salamanders skittering away when we arrived, so perhaps there was a light bulb.
In those days we had no inkling of what would come to our borders. As kids, we had no feeling of borders. Our tiny piece of property seemed to go on forever as there were no neighbors. There were trails for horseback riding, there was a marsh and creeks, it was wilderness. By the time our own children were born, most of that wilderness was hemmed in by houses but the boys still mourn the loss of all that wild space. They missed the salamander and box turtle era and they never knew that.
In the pond my father put a rowboat. As a teenager, he had built rowboats and canoes, so maybe this boat was one of his creations, I don't even know. But I remember spending hours and hours floating around that tiny pond in the rowboat, writing poetry with Libby and Nell who lived up the hill in the house that my mother now inhabits. There was a huge black snake that liked to wrap itself in the roots of a tree that hung over the edge of the pond. We did not go near it.
Back then my parents rented that house and we lived in the Tractor Shed during the summer months. With 50 years of hindsight, I see now that they were doing everything possible to find enough money to fund this crazy enterprise. They rented every space they could, as another income source, and we lived in buildings with dirt floors. It was totally normal to us since we had no reason to question our parents' choices.
This era of living down the hill in the woods lasted until my parents sold our DC house and we moved to Virginia permanently when I was 11. We moved into the real house and left the Tractor Shed and Picnic Shed and salamanders behind. Salamanders and weasels and turtles and skunks. They are gone now.
This is the first turtle I have seen this year. I didn't touch it (my dad used to collect them up and put them in a cage for a while, as entertainment, like an aquarium). It just reminded me of the days when there was more diversity around here. Now there are deer and groundhogs and rabbits and foxes. Very few toads. No salamanders at all. It's not great.
Anyway. On the way back from the stand this morning I saw a box turtle crossing the road in the dark and I thought of my father. Many things still make me think of him, of course, as I am still driving the same roads we drove 30-some years ago. The view has changed completely but the destinations are the same, with one farm at each end of the daily trip.
Whenever he saw a box turtle, it delighted him. In those days our world was full of salamanders and snakes and turtles, before all the houses were built on our borders. We lived down the hill in what seemed like an endless woods. There was a busy stream, Dad dammed up a pond and there was a road on the dam that took us across the stream to the Tractor Shed and to the path through the woods that went uphill through the Moutouxs to Grandma's house.
Right next to the Tractor Shed (where our bedrooms were on the second floor) there was a Bath House. The Bath House had a bathtub with plumbing that was somehow attached to the pond that was about fifty feet away. The bath water was brown. My dad was just tickled that we had a bathtub. This Bath House was a salamander haven. I don't remember electricity out there, but I do remember the salamanders skittering away when we arrived, so perhaps there was a light bulb.
In those days we had no inkling of what would come to our borders. As kids, we had no feeling of borders. Our tiny piece of property seemed to go on forever as there were no neighbors. There were trails for horseback riding, there was a marsh and creeks, it was wilderness. By the time our own children were born, most of that wilderness was hemmed in by houses but the boys still mourn the loss of all that wild space. They missed the salamander and box turtle era and they never knew that.
In the pond my father put a rowboat. As a teenager, he had built rowboats and canoes, so maybe this boat was one of his creations, I don't even know. But I remember spending hours and hours floating around that tiny pond in the rowboat, writing poetry with Libby and Nell who lived up the hill in the house that my mother now inhabits. There was a huge black snake that liked to wrap itself in the roots of a tree that hung over the edge of the pond. We did not go near it.
Back then my parents rented that house and we lived in the Tractor Shed during the summer months. With 50 years of hindsight, I see now that they were doing everything possible to find enough money to fund this crazy enterprise. They rented every space they could, as another income source, and we lived in buildings with dirt floors. It was totally normal to us since we had no reason to question our parents' choices.
This era of living down the hill in the woods lasted until my parents sold our DC house and we moved to Virginia permanently when I was 11. We moved into the real house and left the Tractor Shed and Picnic Shed and salamanders behind. Salamanders and weasels and turtles and skunks. They are gone now.
This is the first turtle I have seen this year. I didn't touch it (my dad used to collect them up and put them in a cage for a while, as entertainment, like an aquarium). It just reminded me of the days when there was more diversity around here. Now there are deer and groundhogs and rabbits and foxes. Very few toads. No salamanders at all. It's not great.
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