Four Days With No Masks

It was not a spontaneous escape. There were weeks of preparation and planning and discussion -- right up to the end we were wondering if we should pull the plug and give up.  But Anna patiently shepherded the whole process, starting with choosing an Airbnb by sending a bunch of photos around in the early fall, trying to get other people to pay attention and think about what they wanted.

There were plenty of reasons to fret about the practicalities. That is, the real challenge of making sure we weren't going to bring covid with us and infect the whole group.  Covid tests were scheduled, and people who seemed particularly exposed were put into quarantine for relevant amounts of time. Still we fretted because our family has people who work in hospitals, others who are over 80, one who has cancer, one who had cancer and who has underlying vulnerabilities (too much fat) in addition to a healthy group of young folks.

But the day came and we were ready. Negative covid tests all around. The usual mobilization had started a few days earlier, with menu plans and shopping.  It snowed enough that we had to change our vehicle assortment so we had enough 4WD capabilities, just in case.  We piled into a Subaru Forester, a Honda Fit, and a gigantic 4x4 pickup truck with a crew cab that seats six. The back of the pickup was filled with coolers and suitcases and things wrapped in plastic bags. We left Alissa and Julia to come later with a fully loaded car, after they had finished their telemeetings.

We were headed for a hilltop in Pennsylvania. I hadn't even looked at a map, but I knew we were going toward Hancock, MD, a well-known destination on the way to Oberlin (where there was an A&P that has so many family stories attached to it, it could be its own blog post. Most famously, a horse disembarked out of the back of the pickup truck once when we had stopped to shop -- or at least that's my memory.).  Anyway, the route didn't require much attention because most of us have been out that way more times than we can count.  In our truck there were two Oberlin grads, an Oberlin parent, a cousin/sibling who has been to Oberlin for many graduations and reunions plus Shaia.  We had plenty to talk about and we barely noticed the scenery.

When we got to the smaller roads with snow and mud and ruts, we glanced up the ridge and Shaia said, "that's the house that Granna showed me in the picture!"  It turns out she was right. She was the only one who knew what we were looking for.  Jon got out and turned the dials on the front wheels and we chewed our way up the hill.  A few minutes later, Mom and ML arrived at the top.  And then a little while later we got a call saying the Fit was not going to make it up, and Jon went down to unload the car into the truck and bring everyone to the cabin.

It was a spiffy log cabin, built about 5 years ago by a family named Zook. Ten bedrooms on three different floors, three bathrooms, a spacious central area with enough couch space for 12, a nice nook for games and breakfast, and a very well stocked kitchen. The view was mesmerizing -- we could see a valley full of farms, various ridges to the east and south, and apparently we could see four different states. Indoors, the one thing that took a lot of attention was the array of animal heads mounted all around the room.  Marble eyes that followed us for four days.  A weird stuffed turkey with kind of neon skin on its neck. Each animal had a plaque with the name of the hunter and the date of death. There was even a black bear. We didn't love any of that.

In the late afternoon, we got a call from Alissa and Julia with a very flat tire. Luckily they were still very close to home and could be helped by Carrie, the only responsible adult left in the region.  After they unloaded everything from their car for a second time (first time to get to the spare tire, second time upon learning they also had a dead battery) into our empty VW, they were back on the road. They had most of the food in their car, so we had to improvise a bit when it was time to start dinner, but there were no more mishaps after that rocky start.

I took off my boots when we went in the house on Thursday and I didn't put them back on until we left on Monday.  Other people went on long daily walks in the snow, discovering trails and abandoned farm buildings and stomping through streams. They also found a cornfield that had hunting stands all around the perimeter. 

We cooked, we played cards, we washed dishes, we read books, we watched movies in the evenings. Shaia had her pick of adult playmates, and Rebecca became the fort builder. We did not see another soul the whole time we were there. We forgot all about masks. We lounged on the couches in many different configurations. Alissa made some real delicacies -- most notable was the lemon curd from a Meyer lemon that Mom grew... and then she made meringue and created a deconstructed lemon meringue pie that was good enough for a wedding. My knitting stuff stayed in a pile on the floor, ready to be picked up many times a day.  By the end of the last night, I had finished a rainbow scarf made of all the leftover bits of yarn from recent projects.  By the last evening, we had all run out of words, it seemed.  There was a solid half hour of silence with ten people reading and knitting and playing on their phones, after Michael had finished singing some of his newest songs, mixed in with some crowd pleasers from past years.  Julia came upstairs from putting Shaia to bed and she stood in the doorway, wondering whether she was allowed to come in to this silent space.

Until this trip, we had not eaten indoors together in nine months. We had not shared a couch or watched a movie together. We have always had masks around our necks, ready to pull over our noses. It was luxurious to live as if there is no pandemic. We know we are incredibly privileged to have created an opportunity like this for ourselves. We are aware that we do not want to model behavior that could encourage other people to gather in groups -- unless they do all the work to make sure there is no covid in their midst. We just got home yesterday, so I guess we don't quite know whether we managed it, but knowing that covid tests are so unreliable, we have been living like masked monks forever. And the ones who work in hospitals are super careful -- their hospitals have successfully kept their workers healthy from the very beginning. I am not worried that this was a superspreader event. None of our out of state family joined us this time, even though that is our normal tradition. 

On the last morning, the winter solstice, the sun came over the mountains at 7:35, exploding into view after a long rosy preamble. Every sunrise was glorious, even when it was foggy. The cabin was designed for sunrises.

When we stopped on the way home to get some fuel, we had to find our masks again. Our cocoon days were over. We were returning to the world where everyone is a hazard. Especially the Loser in the White House.  It sure was nice to escape for a bit and recharge our souls. 

 

Hunkering Down for Winter

With all the  conveniences of this era, lots of us don't need to think about getting ready for winter -- except maybe checking the antifreeze levels in the car and putting away the lawn furniture and making sure the outdoor spigots are turned off.  We farmers are not like homesteaders of old but we do start getting ready for winter on about September 15. It's a three month process, mixed in with the regular joys of autumn.

For a couple of months, we took out the summer crops and planted the winter cover crop in their place.  The fields are all protected by a nice blanket of rye and radishes and crimson clover and winter peas.  While we stay warm by the fire, those plants will keep our soil in good shape.  Both farms were planted on time and are covered in green. That was our first priority in getting ready for winter.

Today feels like the first day of winter. It is actually snowing.  Jon is out there in the snow, trying to finish up just a couple things, seeing if he can get some more tractors under cover. Some of them have been sitting outside for months and will not start up when he pushes the ignition switch. He comes from up North and he likes winter and snow. I would have given up on that tractor storage project by now. 

Three months ago we started digging the sweet potatoes and we were careful to make sure they never got below about 50 degrees so they would last all winter.  We have a small stash in the secret room, an insulated closet with a space heater. Those sweet potatoes should stay cozy until we finish selling them in late March.  In the walk-in cooler we have bags of carrots and radishes, all washed and snug.  There are onions and potatoes and rutabagas. It's like being Laura Ingalls Wilder, but with electricity.

All of the high tunnels are filled with plants. Just yesterday Olivia put in the last lettuce and chard babies, and a few days ago Carrie planted the last spinach.  There are six tunnels in Loudoun and three here, settling in for a few months of quiet.  In the last few days, Jon put the ends and doors back on the tunnels and put the supports in the middle, so we won't need to worry about them collapsing under too much snow. Over the years we have learned what makes the tunnels the most attractive to all the mice and chipmunks and voles and now we try to make the conditions just a little bit harsher in there.  In our earliest efforts, we thought we should cover the ground with plastic for weed control and cover the plants with row cover, but that just ended up creating this irresistible sleeping bag and the animals moved in and ate everything. Now we let it be much colder and bleaker, with no cozy hiding places. The plants are hardy.  Every day Carrie and Ciara, on their respective farms, open the doors in the morning and close them in the evenings so there will be fresh oxygen and not too much dampness inside.

There are still five Christmas trees out there in the lot, and we switched to self-service after last weekend. In a few days, they will all be gone. 

The chicken houses are empty, the pigs have gone back home, and there are no outdoor creatures in need of attention. Way back in the old days, we had so many animals to feed and clean up after. Lani still does. I do not miss hacking chunks of frozen silage out of the silage pit and hauling the bushels of steamy pickled corn leaves to the steer. I do not miss carrying buckets of hot water from the house to the chicken house, to thaw the chunk of ice in their water bucket. And I really don't miss milking the cow on a slushy, freezing morning with her disgusting manure-slimed tail swinging all around, trying to smack our faces while we hunkered down to milk.  Having a farm with no animals in the winter is just perfect. 

Oh yes, we have started the season of filling the freezer with venison. There are deer hunters on the farms who provide us with enough meat for the year -- but they bring it in large, peeled quarter-deer pieces. They do the hard part, dressing the deer in the field, and we do the kitchen part, taking it all apart and grinding the meat.  Our kids have never wanted to participate, generally making themselves scarce when they see a counter full of red meat and blood and sharp knives. It is a laborious process, taking the animal apart and removing all the in between bits that are not tasty.  We were taught by Roger that we absolutely cannot grind up any of the white parts that are between the muscles. Those have to be carefully excised. Jon fills tidy vacuum packed packages and we stack them amongst the packages of frozen corn and spinach and chicken soup.

What has not happened, as we get ready for winter, is a plan for getting away from home for a bit. This will be the first winter in a long time when we didn't get to see something very different.  Even ten years ago, when Jon had his bone marrow transplant, we hit the road and drove to California on the way to Hawaii. This winter we will be like everyone else, hunkered down, waiting for spring. It feels good to be all tucked in for the next few months, but it would feel excellent to see a new horizon.  Next year in Jerusalem.  That's the dream.

Thanksgiving Day Calm

It is weirdly warm and muggy out, and silent. At 9 AM there is no visible activity outdoors in our neighborhood.  The Japanese maples in Noel's and Victor's yards are still brilliant scarlet while most of the other trees are bare, and the neighbors have been diligent about raking and moving leaves off the greenway so everything looks tidy and loved.  Of course our own little patch of grass is covered with the leaves of the willow oak, and maybe I will break our passive tradition and rake those leaves today. 

While all of American society has wrestled with how to celebrate Thanksgiving, our family has not had to give up very much -- except for the far-flung cousins and siblings who will not travel to us this time. But there will be about 20 of us in Mom's front yard, sitting at tables scattered all around instead of the one big table at Anna's house.  It might be too warm for a fire, but there is a fire pit there.  Today the predicted high temperature is 68 degrees. I hope that everyone everywhere is eating outside today.

There are two large turkeys in brine down in the cooler. One from Sophia's father's farm and one from Whiffletree. Very fancy, pasture-raised happy turkeys. I don't know why I got two, but as it happens we have two cooks in this family who want to use two different methods -- Jon will do his butterfly method and Benjamin wants to do the boiling oil in the giant pot. We will have enough to share with everyone who is stuck at home and is not cooking turkey this year.  

Alissa has been doing her pie preparations since yesterday afternoon -- and she arrived with all her pie dough already made, packaged in portions.  Her list of pies is exotic and varied ( Coconut pineapple, Ginger cherry, Blueberry swamp, caramel Earl Grey, Pumpkin chiffon, carrot pecan, North Carolina lemon pie, cherry chocolate, apple.). For the last ten years or so, she has been honing her pie systems, and getting further and further from traditional recipes.  Last night Jon made a pumpkin chiffon pie using his mother's recipe, something he hasn't done in many years.

But this isn't really what I wanted to write about. This morning as I toodled through the farm on my golf cart, admiring the fields with their healthy crop of crimson clover, I was flooded with that familiar feeling of joy and gratitude. The farm is ready for winter, packed up and put away.  Where there were cherry tomato vines on trellises, there are now beds of winter radishes in Carrie's front yard.  Where there used to be beds of sugar snap peas and lettuce, now there is spinach that will grow all winter and be ready for spring. The whole farm is beautiful, dressed in its winter clothes. There is no bare soil. Yesterday, in fact, I used our brand new no-till grain drill and put the last seeds into the stand garden that only got disassembled on Dick's last day of work, a few weeks ago.

All of that beauty came out of a season that stayed on schedule from start to finish. While the whole world suffered and struggled to cope with the pandemic and the horrors of our political reality, the vegetables marched heedlessly forward.  The soil was ready, the plants and seeds went in, there was rain and sun and the seasons rolled on. Many people worked steadily to keep it all going forward. While it was certainly stressful for the humans, the constant effort to avoid getting covid, the vegetable part was practically stress-free.  Everything grew. Bugs ate some of it, but still everything grew.

When I got to the stand (also mostly packed up for winter), I went into the coolers to gather dinner. On the way in, I was welcomed by the fresh green smell of Christmas trees -- they are leaning against the stand, waiting to go out this weekend. I gathered handfuls of perfect carrots, one big rutabaga, an armload of cauliflower, some small potatoes for roasting. I had already given Gordon a crate of root vegetables yesterday so this was just a small supplemental load.  My mother had picked lettuce for dinner and left it in the cooler.  The two turkeys reposed in their brine.  It just made me feel so rich, seeing all that food stored and waiting. We are now good at hoarding food for the Winter CSA, especially potatoes and onions, because we know we will sell every single one if we don't save some for our winter folks.

This is the first full pause since late March when the season started.  We have not had many chances to catch our breath, and we have not been anywhere or seen anything off the farms. We have to live on memories of restaurants and theater. But we have nothing to complain about in this family, on these farms, in this community. I am full to the brim with gratitude. It is great to have a moment to notice the riches of this life.  Shechechyanu.

November Weekend Journal

When I was in the 7th grade (that was 1970, a full 50 years ago), my teacher made us write a daily journal. She took them home on the weekends and read them and made comments, with little smiley faces in the margins and lots of exclamation points. When I reconstruct her in my mind, I realize that she might have been in her late 20s or possibly early 30s.  I particularly remember the task of keeping a journal when our family went on its annual trip, driving down to Mexico that year. Sometimes it was hard to think of anything to say when we just spent the day lying in the back of the bus, on the big mattress, barely paying attention to what was going past us. But Kathy Diehr loved that journal and enjoyed the vicarious life of traveling with our family. She wasn't the first to encourage my reporting habit, but she was certainly one of the most enthusiastic.

With that beginning, I kept a journal religiously until about 1990 when a life with two little kids just took over -- and the world of word processing arrived. Writing in a book by hand gradually became too time consuming. Now I write a lot of letters and notes and sporadic blog entries, but I have no regular journal habit. 

So, with that introduction, I am going to post a journal entry from this weekend. Just a typical November weekend with no drama.

Saturday, November 7, 2020
Got to the stand at 5:45 and turned on the lights. Olivia arrived right away and took Carrie's usual place in the cooler -- I stood at the door and read from the clipboard while she unstacked the crates, creating each market load. 1 collard, 1 cabbage, 1 ginger, 1 turmeric, 4 lettuce, 1 Cherriette...  By 6:20 all three trucks had rolled out and I loaded my van with the CSA boxes that were stacked in the coolbot and then shopped for the Leesburg market. It was already warmer than I expected and it was barely dawn.

When I got to Leesburg, Susi and Tara were in a little bit of disarray. Susi was substituting for Jess who has just finished being a positive covid patient and she had never driven the truck to that market and didn't know where the parking spot was. She had unloaded about twenty feet away from our spot and when I got there they were schlepping their stuff up to our fancy real estate (we are at the top of the market). The market felt really weird to me. Where was everybody? The parking lot was practically empty.  Turns out this was the first week of winter market and it starts at 9:00 now. Whoops. Susi was filled with relief to have an extra hour to set up.

I went to Loudoun to deliver the CSA boxes. Ciara met me there and helped me unload everything. Then we loaded up Attila's stuff and the Takoma Park vegetables and just as I was ready to go, Kathy came with more eggs.  On the way home, I stopped at Mom's in Leesburg and picked up more lettuce and bok choy, packed in bread trays and wrapped with plastic. So heavy and hard to move.  As I was leaving Leesburg, Sarita called. We sometimes manage to connect on Saturday mornings when she is on the way to her farmers market and I am on the way back from my rounds. It's nice.

Mom was washing and bagging for Sunday markets when I got back. I decided not to unload my van until Jon could help me and I got on my golf cart to go pick some more for Takoma Park.  Fields are full of gorgeous choy and kale and mustards. I was picking lettuce mix when my phone binged "Hallelujah hallelujah hallelujah!" Biden won PA! What a relief.  I felt like I was missing all the noise that must be happening somewhere. There must be horns blowing and people singing somewhere. For sure people were crying, after such a week of learning that half our country still wants more of this horrible president. 

Jon came back from Sassafras Creek Farm with a little load of beautiful carrots and Jerusalem artichokes and we unloaded the vans together. There was the van with 85 crates from Sunnyside plus my load plus his load. We tussled over the cooler management and how to unload -- for some reason we just couldn't get into any kind of sync and we just yelled at each other over stupid stuff but eventually we got it down. He loaded the carts and I rolled them into the cooler and unloaded them. I'm the one who needs to know where everything is, in the end. Unloading trucks is hard work for these old bodies which probably contributes to our crankiness.

Then the trucks started coming back from markets, with triumphant crews and not much to unload.  We fit all the greens leftovers onto one cart. That's pretty good.

2:00 Zoom call with a small portion of the Newcomb family.  Jude is the star attraction. That family has been holed up in their apartment in Manhattan for months and months, never seeing anyone. I can't quite imagine it but they are managing fine with that little 1 1/2 year old cruising around trashing everything (and also putting things in the trash). It is very nice to see Sarah N every week, up in her own little hidey hole. She is not allowed to see anyone either. Ugh.

Can't remember the rest of the day. I spaded Hoop House Two so we can start planting for winter.  Oh, I decided to pick a little more spinach for the Sunday markets at about 4:00  and sent Carrie a text telling her to tell Zoey I was doing that. Zoey came RUNNING out at top speed. She has been feeling the burden of being the oldest in a house with a newborn.  Then a few minutes later Carrie and Olivia came out on the golf cart -- Olivia was in a dark and sad mood, having been awakened from a long nap, but after about half an hour she came back to her usual runningaround self. We all went down to the stand together and Carrie and I washed and bagged the spinach while the girls did their stand routines, writing on the whiteboard, eating apples, stomping in puddles, running in and out of the CSA room. Those little girls are craving normalcy but they are doing just fine. The moms are getting very little sleep but the baby is only barely two weeks old by now. Things will get better.

Sunday, November 8, 2020
Turned on the lights at the stand at 5:45 as Ciara rolled in. We unloaded and loaded veg and she left at 6:15. It took me a full half hour to pull together the TP load, but it was a good one. I made sure they didn't have anything suboptimal. Unusual amount of diversity for the last market of the week. Went back up the hill for a hot yukky. 

CSA prep was easy because we had so much food in the coolers. Susan and Robert and Mom and I worked without hurrying, bagging carrots and lettuce and bok choy, setting up a glorious display. It was a hot and sunny November day.

Practiced some of our choir pieces with Yael who has skills.

1:00 Zoom call with the Friday Club that has been meeting on Sundays for a few years now. We reveled in the election results. I made chicken soup while we talked.

Yael and I went out to pick the last vegetables that we needed for Anna's birthday dinner. She had requested a dinner that included every vegetable that was at the market on Saturday. We picked some broccoli (Yael had never seen it growing in the field and was amazed to find that the head grew in the middle of a big green plant. It's fun to be there when people learn stuff like that.) and four tiny cauliflower heads because this was a special occasion and a few kale leaves and a couple of bok choy.

Jon didn't like the original idea of eating in the greenhouse (we were going to practice for a covid-avoiding Thanksgiving dinner). He didn't see the point. He said let's eat around a fire. So he set up picnic tables and lights and a fire pit in Mom's front yard and we practiced for an outdoor Thanksgiving. Might be raining and freezing, but we will cross that bridge later. 

The lights were so bright that it didn't seem like night at all. The pyros in our family were happy. We had a big green salad (lettuce, arugula, mustards, carrots, garlic in the dressing) by Jon and Yael, cole slaw (cabbage, ginger) by Mom, roasted vegetables (rutabaga, potatoes, radishes, sweet potatoes, carrots) by Gordon, chicken soup (Moutoux chicken, kale, collards, carrots, forgot to put the turmeric in) by me, roasted broccoli and cauliflower by Yael, steamed choi and tatsoi and Choi Sum by Jon, bread by Gordon. We ate almost all of it. Rebecca had been wrestling with a dessert all day, failing in her efforts to make the cake for tiramisu so she made oatmeal chocolate chip cookies (gluten free for Gordon) instead and everyone was happy.  Shaia spent many cheerful minutes putting ponytails in everyone's hair, including Michael L's and doing ballet poses with Yael. At my request, Michael did a reprise of his walking chant that he performed at the Shadow Cabaret (We are all made of 'shrooms. We are all made of mushrooms... goes on about centuries of tradition and about being a song that will never end and ends with many repetitions of "I cured my depression cause I LOVE MYSELF"), which we all recognized as being much inspired by his Grandma Mel.

We finally opened up the Winter CSA to new folks, and I watched the numbers go up until I just needed to go to bed. I knew it wouldn't fill up after 10:30 at night.

When I was a teenager, I signed every journal entry "Love, Hana" because I always felt that I should sign off. 

Love, Hana

Virginia Wedding

Because there are people who do not use Facebook and have not yet heard anything about how today went, I am writing a quick report. We missed all of you and we wish you had been with us. There were 40 people in attendance, representing all the circles of  our community.  The farm, family, temple, Blueberry Hill, friends. As Jon noted in his toast later, about a third of the guests had been at our wedding 35 years before.

As you know from the most recent post, Jon cooked all the food and Alissa and Rebecca made the cake.  The venue was the Moutoux Barn, a building with lots of family history.  Benjamin chose that spot from a nice list of outdoor spaces, and he chose it mostly because Jon and I got married there (and then after us, many more). Anna and Gordon assembled the linens and the dishes and many other items, Stephen brought the tables and chairs from the stash that was created for his wedding two years ago. Most of the quilts came from our house.

Benjamin was right to choose the barn. It is in the middle of a farm full of baby cows and chickens and vegetable fields and rustic buildings and tractors. The Moutoux family runs a full diet year round CSA and it is a lively place with lots to see.  The barn sits on the top of a rise so there is a lovely view of fields and animals in three directions -- the fourth side is a fence and a tall hedge that marks the southern border between Lani's horses and the Moutoux property.  Our farm is on the eastern border.

The weather forecast for Sunday had been grim and unsettled all week, and last night there was 100% chance of rain by about noon.  So we got ready by assembling lots of market tents and Alissa bought twelve clear umbrellas. We all brought our boots. We put up the tarp structures over the parking area so we would be ready to carry them in on a moment's notice.

Some family members arrived at about 9:00 to put the finishing touches on the set-up (we did the first touches on Saturday afternoon, figuring out how to use the space, setting up little tables in the appetizers area, putting out the chairs, hanging the quilts).  Guests began to arrive at about 10:00.  Because we were all outside, we had plenty of room for visiting, in masks.  Jon brought out the appetizers at 11:00 -- sushi, dumplings, summer rolls, edamame -- and Tillie and Hugh were very happy.

The whole event was broadcast and narrated by Hugh. He interviewed guests and kept a running commentary until the wedding started.

After the ketubah signing (the witnesses had to write their names in Hebrew, for the first time in years), the chuppah ceremony began.  Jon and I walked Benjamin up the aisle and then Julia and Shaia accompanied Yael. Julia walked the bride in as one of the most recent additions to the Newcomb family, knowing how to welcome Yael as the newest member of this clan. The chuppah holders were Michael, Anna, Scott (B's longtime friend) and Tillie.  Rabbi Gold performed the ceremony with grace and wisdom and lots of affection for the bride and groom.  Benjamin had written a new version of his vows last night, and they were very place and time related, welcoming Yael to his community and home of origin. Yael used the same perfect words (and my favorite phrase remains the same -- that she is spoiled by having her creative dreams brought to reality by Benjamin, giving her a feeling that anything is possible).  The seven blessings were ably recited and interpreted by family and friends, and this time Yael's mother delivered hers from Israel, over the phone.  Magic.

After the wedding, we had lunch.  Guests sat with their own families -- after they brought their own tables outside and placed them wherever they wanted.  Still no rain, just a grey, cloudy sky and plenty of humidity.  Lunch was cold sesame noodles, Butter Tofu (instead of Butter Chicken, as this was a vegetarian affair), sweet and sour cauliflower, Asian slaw and our signature garlic green beans.  This is a crowd of real eaters, and we ate all the food. Everyone got plenty to eat but Jon did not end up making way too much, as he often does.

Then the performances!  The bride and groom did a long and complicated couple dance that they had learned for their first wedding. It was so much fun to watch. Then Michael and Kenyon did an excellent reprise of "Agony" from Into the Woods, complete with a long explanation of why this song is appropriate at a wedding.  Nell led us in a socially distanced song, the Newcomb sibling generation sang the only song we still know well enough (Sto Mi E Milo) which made Yael cry somehow, and then a big family group performed a customized version of Favorite Things that Yael's mother and sister had written and performed for them at the last wedding. It was all very satisfying and not too long.

And then the cake was presented. Alissa didn't tell us that there was about five pounds of butter in that three-tiered masterpiece, but that's part of what made it so delicious.  One layer of espresso with chocolate ganache, one of brown butter with caramel , one layer of strawberry with lime curd. We ate all of it.

Still no rain, so we moved on to the next phase -- starting the wedding quilt.  We made a circle of tables and piled fabric scraps on them.  People sat down to work with some scissors and created squares for future stitching. That project could last a lifetime, but Yael is a determined crafter.

We got everything cleaned up and loaded back into trucks (my contribution to this event was behind-the-scenes logistics: getting the flowers picked and ready for bunching, having the right vehicles in the right places, asking people to retrieve things before they were needed, ordering the bridal bouquet...I didn't cook a thing but I did pick the green beans myself.).  It started to rain as we finished packing up. We could not have asked for anything more.

It was so nice to have a whole wedding in daylight, with no rain and no heat and no bugs.  The whole thing felt calm and right. Perhaps less weighty because they had already gone through all this a month ago.  Jon's toast (concocted in the middle of the night when he couldn't sleep) reminded us about the toast that Leon gave at our wedding, and he pondered the differences between the generations of Groisser men.  When Jon speaks in public, we all sit up and listen because he rarely speaks without thinking first, and therefore he is succinct and on track. What Jon did not say was that when he first got his diagnosis, his first big regret was that he would not see his children getting married. Well, yes he did.  And it was just perfect except that so many people could not be here with us.

Here is the link to the Facebook livestream that Hugh did:

https://m.facebook.com/?_rdr#!/story.php?story_fbid=10158768780067354&id=666652353&anchor_composer=false

https://m.facebook.com/?_rdr#!/story.php?story_fbid=10158769163977354&id=666652353&anchor_composer=false

Wedding Prep -- Round Two

For the wedding in Israel, those of us who were stuck in the US had nothing to do but wait to watch it all unfold on Facebook.  This time around, the folks in Israel and the ones who are unable to travel due to the coronavirus (ALAS) are the ones who just have to wait to see the celebration online. It is a very strange experience, especially for the parents, I think.  Yael's mother and I are regular penpals now because of this unusual set of circumstances -- and that has been an unexpected pleasure. We have never met in real life, but we are getting to know each other, bit by bit.

This wedding is not causing much stress.  We plan to get really serious tomorrow, which gives us a full 24 hours to do the work of preparing the site. We will clean up the Moutoux Barn and get all the tables and chairs in one place and find out if we actually have enough forks. The weather (which has been absolutely picture perfect for over a month) is on track to deteriorate rapidly  by Sunday, with the remnants of Hurricane Delta coming through right about when the wedding is supposed to start. 

It's not as if nothing has been done yet. Rebecca and Alissa have all the pieces of the wedding cake in the freezer. They have stayed on schedule with all the steps that they planned out, and the process has been calm and without drama.  They are both experienced bakers and they decided to make three different cakes into a not very big masterpiece, so it won't be one of those seventy pound tiered structures. And they won't be weeping in the walk-in cooler as they try to keep the icing from melting because it is going to be perfectly chilly on Sunday. 

The bride and groom have done their part, getting an official marriage license, meeting with the rabbi on Zoom, taking their wedding finery to the dry cleaner and getting the ketubah printed.  They are also coming up with appropriate activities for a covid-era wedding.  Since we can't sing and dance and schmooze in close quarters, we will be doing crafts (now there is a plan for wedding quilt squares to be assembled at the event, which will be stitched together later by Yael) and sharing performances at a safe distance.

Jon has been making sample appetizers and main courses for the last week or so -- all of us in this house know what each dish will taste like. He will undoubtedly be challenged by the lack of a stove and sink in the barn, but this is not his first rodeo. And the group is so small that it is much like cooking a fancy common meal. I think he has done all the shopping but he has not started to cook yet and he doesn't seem too worried. When I came home from Loudoun last night and reported that all the plumbing in the Green Barn is clogged up, he said he has time to go out there this morning and work on that. So, based on that, it seems like he feels pretty good about his level of preparation.

We have not had any sort of briefing on our various roles, but we have a lot of collective experience with this wedding business, and we will pull it together.  Apparently the rabbi is a bit unsettled about a few things that haven't really been discussed, but they are minor and will all become clear (we don't even know yet where the chuppah will be since we have to wait to see how hard it is raining and whether the assembled guests can actually sit outside under market tarps and be able to hear anything).

It will be memorable. Benjamin is worried that it won't feel enough like a celebration, with everyone in masks and forbidden to be close to each other. The masks will definitely be a drag. But it can't help being a joyful celebration, just by definition. The invited guests have assembled many, many times in our lifetimes and that alone is a source of joy.

It is very sad that the parents of the bride and groom have never met in person. But someday we will, and this is not the first time in history that this has happened. I am not sure that my mother's parents ever met my father's parents, come to think of it.  My parents got married without the blessing of my Chinese grandparents -- and apparently all was forgiven only after I was born.  Benjamin and Yael have the blessing of all four of their parents, and I am certain that we will meet Hedy and Gadi in person in the near future.

Kind of Like Sinai -- We Were There!

At 5:30 this morning family members up and down the East Coast were awake and trying to find the Facebook feed, and people in Denver were up at 3:30, and people in San Francisco were up at 2:30. All so that we could be there for Benjamin's wedding.  As expected, it took them a while to get the livestream going, and there were glitches and freezes and moments when it went into a loop. But in the end, we got to see the whole thing and it was awesome.

A beautiful day for all ages.

What we saw was a lot of people at a party, some with masks, some without, greeting each other, milling about. The venue was a lovely tropical space with big umbrellas for shade and fans to combat the heat wave.  There were people in T-shirts, and people in dresses. Benjamin and Yael were clearly the groom and bride, with clothing that they had designed and created themselves, with professional help.  They both looked happy and comfortable and dressed up.  

The camera was a phone and the phone was not really monitored by one dedicated person, or maybe that person had many jobs. Sometimes we couldn't see very well, sometimes the phone rang and the picture got all wavy and blurry and sometimes we could just see the palm of a hand. But it was completely satisfying to be included in that way -- the people who were there probably couldn't see all that well either. There were maybe 50 people there, and everyone looked happy.

Finally there was some activity around building the chuppah. And then it seemed like all of a sudden Benjamin was being walked down the aisle by two friends. And then Yael appeared with her parents. She looked radiant, beautiful, completely the bride. 

 

Yael, with her parents Gadi and Hedy.

Benjamin, with his parents, in spirit.

The whole thing was in Hebrew, with small amounts of English sprinkled in. In the comments section on Facebook, the best man was heroically translating for us -- summarizing the speeches.  There was an officiant with a beautiful singing voice and it was a real Jewish wedding with lots of American-type thinking. They wrote lots of the ceremony, including their ketubah and some wonderful vows that revealed a lot about each of them. Those vows made them both so appealing (they are appealing anyway) because they were honest and warm and sweet. My favorite line was from Yael, "I am spoiled." She says she is spoiled by the way Benjamin can bring her ideas into being. I have the same experience myself with his father.

Benjamin and Yael under the chuppah.

It didn't seem like it was going to work, my role of reading one of the wedding blessings. The Zoom feed had run out and our family bailed and went back to our own Zoom connection (we shared commentary throughout the event, especially while we were waiting for everything to start).  But when it was my turn, Hedy called me from her post in the chuppah and I answered from where we were sitting on our bed in Northern Virginia. That was surreal.  It was my turn to offer a blessing about creation, which I had written and Rebecca had suggested I change one thing (don't say "making their dreams come true" -- too trite).  They held the microphone up the phone and my voice could be heard loud and clear in Israel. 

Because this is my report, I will share my blessing here since I don't really know what everyone else said in Hebrew:

We share the blessing of living in a world created with vast possibilities and wild beauty -- the sun and the soil that provides food and energy, air that powers our bodies, water that sustains all life. May Benjamin and Yael keep their feelings of amazement and awe, wherever they make their home. And may they continue to dance and sing and scheme and build and dream, creating the world anew together.

Baruch atah Adonai, Eloheinu melekh ha-olam shehakol bara lichvodo.

Well, I do know what Hedy said because she kindly said hers in English too. Her blessing was about Zion and she said that she and Benjamin had both made aliyah, a physical return to Zion. But Zion is also a spiritual thing, and her hope was that Yael and Benjamin would stay connected to their Judaism in whatever way worked for them.  

That was a good one too.

Part of what was so fun was just being in Israel for a bit.  It is a country of pragmatic, unpretentious, purposeful, authentic, direct and friendly people. It is easy to see why Benjamin likes living there. I am so glad that he found a place for himself in that new country, and he found Yael and her family, and he clearly has friends he loves. There is nothing more satisfying to a parent than having a happy child -- and one who is self-sufficient and adaptable and so on.

They crushed the glass together -- Yael's high heeled shoe on top of Benjamin's shoe and there was a roar of joy and that was that. The video ended.

It was about 7:30 in the morning and we had already finished attending a wedding.

Some of what we missed.

I got out of my dress and earrings, put on my work clothes and raced down the hill.  I was due in Loudoun at 9:00.  By 8:30 I was picking flowers, dripping sweat, with three others.  At the morning check-in I gave a brief report about the wedding while we cleaned onions together.  The go-round was inspired by our experience:  tell about some form of technology that you have liked.  Solar power (and refrigerators powered by solar), toaster, FaceTime, power tools, Skype (creating more connection with parents far away), navigation system in your pocket, and more.

And the rest of Friday unfolded as it has for the last few months.  Picking, washing, loading, driving back for potluck, bunching flowers, watching over the flow of ten people working together to get ready for markets. I walked up the steps to our house at 5:00 and then hurried off to acupuncture.

It was a long, long day. And a very happy one. All day Hedy sent me photos of the party -- the cake, dancing, singing, casual shots of people we don't know.  We were sad that we couldn't be there, but they did a really good job of including us from halfway around the world. I bet over time my memory will put me right there at that wedding, including the heat and humidity.  

Thirty-two Hours Before the Wedding

 At the dinner table tonight, Jon remarked that we are completely unprepared for this wedding. No kidding, we haven't done a thing. They are getting married the day after tomorrow and our only preparation is that we have decided not to sleep in Loudoun tomorrow night so we can be here, closer to our technology expert, at 5:00 in the morning when the festivities begin.

Doesn't all this just sound odd?

We got a copy of the invitation by email this morning. Of course we already knew what day it would be -- that was decided at least a few weeks ago. But what was remarkable to me was that the invitation was from me and Jon and Hedy and Gadi.  We have never met Hedy and Gadi. They are doing EVERYTHING while we are doing NOTHING. Sigh. Thank goodness for them.

The whole thing is like something from Alice in Wonderland.

Benjamin and Yael decided to get married, and they decided that the pandemic was not going to stop them from having a wedding, however that might end up being possible. They have made Plans B,C, X, Y, and Z. I don't actually know the details of the current plan, except that there is a date and a time, and there will be some guests present.  There will be an officiant and many of Yael's family members will be there. Part of the reason for rushing is that Israel is experiencing another surge of the coronavirus and the country is preparing for another lockdown. They are trying to squeeze in a celebration that fits in with the current restrictions.

This is not a time of year when we would usually travel, but we would have gone to Israel if it had been possible. But two weeks of quarantine on arriving, and then on returning, is really not an option during the farm season. We could do it in February.   But they are on a mission, and we will watch this event live on our television, if our technology expert can get that to happen. Otherwise we will watch it on our phones.

How do I feel about this whole thing? I am very glad that our son is ready and glad to be married. I am happy that we had a lot of time last year to get to know Yael. They are made for each other in ways that I would not have known if I hadn't seen it for myself.  They are another one of those creative teams, which bodes well for the future. I know that finding someone you want to be with forever is a gigantic accomplishment, and that makes me very happy.

But this distance makes it all seem sort of hazy and fictional. They are working hard to make an event that we can barely imagine. We will see it on TV. So weird.

I will report back when I have seen it with my own eyes.  I guess we should not be wearing our pajamas, even if no one can see us. We should get dressed and feel like we are part of things.  Benjamin will be able to see us because we will be on WhatsApp or something but I don't think anyone else will see us. It will be pitch dark outside here.

And after the wedding is over, I will go out and pick flowers for market when the sun comes up.

It's just bizarre.

Serendipity

Jon has been doing the banking for at least a decade, maybe two by now.  He has revamped the whole money box system, of course, little by little.  When he took over the money counting from my mother, we had money boxes for markets, but they weren't specifically assigned to a particular market. When the workers came home, they would straighten the money, leave $60 in the box, count the rest of the cash and leave the change undocumented. No one ever double checked the counting. They put their money in an envelope, wrote the total on it and that was that. We shoved the money box under the passenger seat of the market truck and there it sat until the next week.

That was not Jon's style.  Over time, he has turned the whole system into one where the count is accurate (I am still not sure it matters that much, since all that really matters is how much goes in the bank) and the coins are accounted for.  He is the kind of person who straightens every corner of every bill, makes sure all the edges are lined up, and the deposit slip is precise -- beyond what the bank expects or wants. Every night before market he assembles the boxes for each market, charging up the tablets, making sure exactly the right amount of coins and bills are in place, and even putting pens in each box. The boxes are still old cookie tins, some of them salvaged from the stash in his mother's furnace room. They are dented and dinged, they don't look special, and they have character.

A few years ago Rebecca got him a present. He now has a machine that counts the bills. One of his favorite toys.

I have childhood memories of my father counting money at the kitchen table. I remember him wiping the grit off the table after dumping the cash out of apron pockets.  He drove to the bank and made deposits on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. That's how tight the cash flow was. Jon makes deposits on Mondays. Nowadays there are credit card deposits that keep the money flowing and we are not as dependent on the cash deposits to keep us afloat.

This year has changed everything in the money counting department.  At the markets almost everyone uses a credit card now. We tape a reader to the table, one of the workers holds the tablet and enters the information, and the customer taps the card to the plastic block.  For a while people were afraid to use cash because maybe it was covered with virus.  Now we know that it is a low risk activity, using real cash, but the world has shifted and it may never go back.

All of this is preamble to the story I set out to tell.

Jon came home from the bank last week, looking fretful and puzzled. I asked what was wrong. He said his deposit was wrong.  What?! That hasn't happened in years.  What was wrong?  He couldn't explain it but the wad of cash that went into the magic money counter ended up being hundreds of dollars off. He just couldn't understand it. I wasn't very worried because there was nothing we could do about it -- the machine at the bank has the final say. He must have made a mistake. Oh well. I forgot about it.

Then the next day I went out to Loudoun to do some long overdue tractor work. I went by myself in our car (very rare), spent some sweaty hours mowing ahead of Stephen who was doing the spading, and when I was getting in the car to come home, I noticed a lot of twenty dollar bills under the driver's seat. Huh. That must be the answer to Jon's Uncle Billy moment.  I didn't even pick them up. Figured I could do that when I got home.

I stopped to say goodbye to Stephen. He walked across the field and asked if I had a check.  Nope. He needed a check to pay the trucker who was about to arrive with a load of chicken manure.  This is typical -- no warning. I need a check. I asked how much the poop was going to cost. He said something like about $750. I said look under my seat. He looked a little surprised, but when I opened the car door he could see an unusual pile of twenties. He sat down and counted them.  $780.  Okay, perfect, you can take that. Get a receipt.

And that's the definition of serendipity. 

Telemedicine

So I am sitting here in the Green Barn with my phone next to me, and I am also in the waiting room at Kaiser.  A couple of days ago the nurse who works with my internist called me and said it was time for my annual check-up.  And then she said how about Friday at 8:20 AM?  I said, okay, that's kind of in the middle of the day, but that can work.  It wasn't a regular appointment, it was to be a video chat.  So I had to set up my phone with the right app, etc.

(I have just had my video appointment, so I am actually not in the waiting room anymore. But I was going to say that even when you don't physically go in to Kaiser, you still have to wait...)

This morning I started earlier than usual so I would be able to stop at 8:20. I was in the zinnia patch by 6:00. Perfect temperature, sunrise just about finished, normal soupy humidity. (I think we failed to break the record for consecutive 90 degree days because yesterday was overcast and it didn't quite get there. So I think we only got to 20 days in a row. Now we have to start over to try to break that nasty record.) Finished the flowers right on schedule so I could get the tractor that Jon had set up for me to dig potatoes.  Just as I was finishing the last row of potatoes, I got a call from Kaiser saying it was time to check in.

The good part is, I didn't have to stand on the scale in order to have a check-up.  The news has not been good lately in the weight management department -- no swimming pool, no acupuncture, and Jon has been cooking every single night. His repertoire is extensive and he has raised the bar for himself because we have Rebecca and Isaiah to feed too -- not just the two of us. So dinner has become the meal that we eat the most, and that has always been a bad idea.

Another side note -- this week the pool opened up again, reservations required.  You have to navigate a rather cumbersome system but in the end you get a reservation for your own lane for a big block of time. It is heaven. On my first lumbering lap, I actually said a Shechechyanu aloud. It was that momentous. Just the feeling of the swimming pool water on my bare feet was enough reason to say a prayer of gratitude.

So I just had my first dabble into the world of telemedicine. Not memorable but there are many aspects to appreciate. You don't have to go through all the rigmarole of transporting your entire body to a place that is hard to navigate on your stupid knees. You don't have to even take a shower and you don't have to be with lots of other people who make you nervous, just by breathing. I just sat here in my unsavory clothes and had a nice conversation with a doctor I like and know. I told her I had been unexpectedly dizzy the other morning (it went away) and she told me all the ways I can work with that, and to drink more water.  My mother would completely agree with that advice. We give it to everyone all the time, but none of us drinks enough water right now to make up for the amount that pours out of us.

Anyway, it is time for morning meeting so I need to pay attention again. People have dug potatoes, picked squash, spread wood chips, picked herbs and it is just 9:00 in the morning.

Vignettes from a Straight and Narrow Path

I travel on a pretty straight path right now with no side trips. There is this unasked for thing on my phone that tracks every trip and I can look at any day and see where I went.  In recent months, I am creating a rut on the map between the two farms. Back and forth and back and forth. It even keeps track of when I go to my house and for how long.  So I know I have been indoors hiding from the heat for 36 minutes now. Might as well do something semi-productive while I am staying cool.

I am thinking about vehicles and transportation and motion, and how we get from here to there.

The other day the battery on Jon's golf cart fell through the rusty box that holds it, and he needed a tow back to the barn for repairs.  I was going by on my golf cart (it has its own problems, maybe needs a new spark plug) and he asked if I could try to pull him up the hill.  I was a little dubious, but we hooked the chain between the two carts and we started to move slowly up the driveway.  By about the halfway point, where it seems the most steep, he got off and started to run along next to it. We made it to the top. Then he hopped back on and and I put my foot down harder on the gas pedal to get some momentum up.  We were really zooming by the time we got to the last corner and Jon started to yell, "not so fast, not so fast!" because his golf cart really doesn't have much in the way of brakes. Now I find that I am glad Lilah isn't reading this.  As I got to the front of the barn, he passed me on the left looking a little alarmed, but the chain was still attached and he stopped before he went crashing through the pile of detritus that always grows there.  And I thought to myself, we have been doing things like this for years and years. I asked him if he was breathing so hard because he had to run up the hill, and he said, no, it was that last part without the brakes.

A few winters ago, Jon got obsessed with getting a lot of fallen oak trees off a slope down in the woods, across the creek.  He spent some time building primitive bridges so he could get the loader across the stream. I kept telling him it wasn't worth it. He was working so hard to get firewood off a hillside, probably expending much more energy than he was going to generate with the wood. Of course that was an exaggeration, but I told him not to call me if he got stuck. Naturally he did get stuck and he had to call for help. So I had to get the 880 (a 60 year old tricycle tractor, quite tall, really tall tires) and a chain and wriggle across that mucky area, back up to the loader which was buried up to its belly and find an angle that could get it to move.  We were making such a mess down there in that protected stream valley.  All the stream valleys are designated as "environmental quality corridors" and you aren't supposed to disturb them. It took a few different tries, pulling uphill, rearranging, pulling a different direction, rearranging, but finally we got that machine unstuck and dragged it back out of the mud.  I told him he had to stop doing that, that's enough. He is incorrigible when it comes to collecting up firewood.

In the old days, we never assumed that a vehicle would work reliably. They just didn't. But now, with the new regime of preemptive maintenance (whoever heard of such a thing), we barely ever have to tow a vehicle home after breaking down. But because Jon was here way back then, he still thinks of that as a reasonable solution when things go wrong. I am no longer interested in side-of-the-road rescue adventures. There are way too many people on the road. Now I just vote to spend the money and call a tow truck, as painful as that may be. Since we travel up and down the same roads all the time, we both have memories of the breakdowns that have happened.  By the Popeye's in Sterling, that's where the power steering in the white minivan went out.  Right across from the 7-11 at Countryside, that's where the timing belt in the red Subaru broke.  Oh yeah, right past that overpass at Rt 15, that's where Lani and I left the baler with a flat tire on the shoulder.  That's the stone wall just as you are leaving Leesburg that Dad clipped with the right tire of the baler. Not good. And just at the bottom of the hill where the Rt 28 overpass is, that's where I dropped a bale off a trailer and got a warning for not having my load secured.

These are not memorable events, they just rattle around in our brains and pop up whenever a button gets pushed.  The generation before ours had much bigger adventures because they did not have preemptive maintenance, only reactive.  But that generation helped to create the assumption that roadside rescues were normal.  To this day, we have never belonged to AAA.

I just got a text from Eric Cox, with a picture of him standing in front of a rusty dump truck, with the bed tipped up. He said, "The truck is like me...it still kind of works! I think of your dad when I'm using it, we drove to Pennsylvania when it was one year old, that was only 40 years ago!"  Eric has the White Dump that Dad bought new in 1979, and Eric is still making memories with it. We are not the only ones.

Every day that goes smoothly, without a vehicle incident, is a day that I notice and feel glad about. Most people don't live with such an awareness of impending disaster.  I always tell my kids to take shoes whenever they drive anywhere because they never know when they will need to walk home.  But I forget that cell phones have made shoes unnecessary.

Even if you can call from the side of the road, you should still have your shoes. The tow truck drivers will take you much more seriously. (Sounds like a fortune cookie.)

Limping Along

In this day and age, you can take action and try to get any orthopedic issue fixed if you want to and you have the means.  When she got to be 80, my mom finally decided she didn't like being so disabled with her bad knees and she got herself all ready and she had both knees replaced successfully. I think that all of her siblings have at least one new knee.  Last fall Lani finally got to the point where she realized she was too hampered by her knees and she managed to get both of them replaced before the covid lockdown happened.  Both of them are very glad they did it. Lani turned into a born-again knee surgery salesperson within 24 hours of her first replacement.

So I know, and everyone tells me this all the time, I can fix this.  Maybe five years ago I had to give up walking for exercise, after giving up running before that.  And when we think back to our winter trips in recent years, I have been walking less and less. Eventually it will be really clear that I am totally disabled and I will have to make the decision.  I am hobbling (Rebecca calls it waddling, and she is right).  Up until this pandemic, I had a good thing going with the swimming pool and the acupuncture. Without those two supports, I have really aged. My knees hurt more than they used to, for sure. And now I will wait until the medical world is clear of bigger emergencies before I think some more about this impending downtime.

I think about the people I have known who may not have had the options we have now, and how they moved through the world.  There was a wholesale customer named Sam Stalcup with one leg much shorter than the other and who walked with a cane. By the time we knew him, he was probably in his 60s. He could drive, he could get out of his truck, he could direct other people, and he seemed like a relatively happy person.  He may have had that short leg all his life and his hip probably hurt all the time but he definitely lived a full life. There was Darryl who ran cross country for Penn State and then for the Marines and then just for the love of it. He used up all the cartilage in his ankles and he was hobbling by the time he was in his 60s.  Hobbling and swearing and grimacing from the pain with almost every step.  But he said he would not have changed anything about his running life. He would do it all again, just the same.  He got a lot of happy miles out of those feet and ankles before they broke down. I see my neighbor who has been a runner all his life, grappling now with the consequences of all that happy athleticism. It is a big mental and emotional shift, to learn to live with a less-able body.

I also got a lot of joy out of racquetball and running, dancing and picking corn. In my dreams, I walk like a normal person and sometimes I even notice that. I stop to think, hey, look, I'm walking!  The time will come when I decide that these limitations are more than I want to deal with, and luckily I live in a world of health care privilege. I do have a choice. I just can't quite make that choice right now and it doesn't make me sad.

There are a few upsides to this lack of mobility. I am also now in my 60s and up until very recently I did a lot of physical work. Now I do almost nothing that hurts my body. I may pick lettuce or chard or parsley, but not for very long. I only mulch enough to show someone else how to do it.  The days of carrying heavy bales across an uneven field are over for me. I miss being that person but I have so much other stuff to do. Since I can't do all that real work,  I have devoted myself to making this farm run better without my body doing the work. Now it would take a lot of managerial wizardry to find enough hours in the day for me to be in the field. In truth, there still aren't enough hours in the day. How did I ever have time to do all that work?

I am very conscious that other people have opinions about my limping around. Everyone thinks I should get my knees replaced. Everyone thinks I should lose weight. Everyone thinks I should take a day off.  Everyone is right about all of it.  I don't have a single argument with any of those correct opinions. But I also am living a full and happy life, if you can believe it.  I have a golf cart, I have lots of comfortable places to sit, I am busier than I ever remember, and I sleep well at night. When those supports start to collapse, I will take action. I will not lie on the couch all day eating bonbons. I will do what I need to do. I promise. I just hate the idea of being taken out of commission for so long. Lani says I will know when I have hit that wall. She had the same attitude that I have -- too much to do, too little time, this is fine for now.  And then all of a sudden it wasn't fine anymore.  I expect that time may come sooner than I realize, but I sure don't want to mess with the hospital right this minute.

At 5:55 this morning, I was driving around this beautiful Loudoun farm, looking at all the fields.  On the far side of the garlic patch, maybe 500 yards from where I am now, I ran out of gas. I was barefoot. I walked back to the Green Barn. I didn't need to call for an Uber, I just walked slowly back. If it ever happens that I run out of gas on the other side of the farm and I cannot get myself back on my own two feet, that will be a clear sign that the time has come.

The Wildlife Report

Last night we were sitting on the deck at Timothy's cabin (a most bucolic spot on the Loudoun farm, one among many, but certainly a premium location far from most humans) and having dinner, just the two of us.  I looked up at the scraggly mulberry tree that is growing through and over the deck and I saw an animal perched on a branch, about ten feet above the ground.  It looked familiar even though it was facing away from me and I couldn't see anything but its furry back. "Is that a groundhog?"  Jon went to look more closely from under the tree.  "Sure looks like one."  It was small and completely still. It couldn't be dead since it was balancing so nicely on that branch but it was completely unmoving.  I kept looking at it while we ate our hamburgers and salad and it just didn't move.  I think it was stuck up there, just waiting for us to go away.

Every day we encounter wildlife here on these farms.  The workers in Vienna spend an inordinate amount of time trying to coax black snakes out of the hayshed so they can get the bales out for mulching. They tell stories of getting the snake to slide into a bucket, then picking up the bucket only to have the snake pop back out.  Of course. What would you expect?

 Jon traps raccoons and groundhogs as they are entering under the deer fence.  There are clear paths made by these vegetable marauders -- you can see where they slide under the fence and often the paths head straight to their holes.  Twice this spring he has caught foxes but we always let them go because we like it that they eat rabbits. The foxes are heartbreaking because they try so hard to escape that cage that they bloody their noses and feet.  Raccoons have a different temperament -- they assess the situation quickly and save their energy. They often look bored and relaxed while curled up in the Havahart trap, waiting for release. Jon has a few favorite spots that he takes the groundhogs and raccoons to release (it is illegal to move these animals and legal to kill them, but we would rather just have them start a new life somewhere else).  He puts the trap in the back of the pickup truck and drives a few miles away to a stream valley and unloads the trap, carefully stands to the side as he opens the door and watches the (usually chubby) animal hustle into the woods.  Once he caught two small raccoons at the same time, presumably siblings.  When he let them go, they immediately ran off in opposite directions, never looking back.

The other day I got a text from a past worker who lives nearby.  He said, "Hey I have a deer that looks to be injured and is hanging around at my place do you have a good vets number someone that could take care of an issue like that?"  I assumed he didn't mean he wanted someone to come and euthanize the deer and I said "I don't think vets treat wild animals." He persisted: "Other than a police officer, is there animal control or localized care taker of animals that you know of? Like if we had horses that were able to walk free and one got injured who could treat it. A company. Something like a vet." I said I doubted anyone would come for a deer. He persisted some more: "Do you have know anyone that knows how to take care of an animal." So I answered more clearly. "My sister is a vet so I do know people who take care of animals but I can guarantee you she would not treat a deer...this is a wild animal and will need to heal or not heal on its own. Not safe to handle it. You will freak it out and it could die of panic. I have seen it happen."  I tried to imagine what he was thinking -- someone comes and treats the deer (you would have to tranquilize it first), fixes its ailment, maybe sets a bone. Then the Good Samaritan Wild Animal Vet says to the deer, "Now take this medicine every day and don't walk on that leg.  Come back and see me next Tuesday and we will take a look at that wound."  I mean, deer don't do appointments and they don't have anyone to make sure they take their meds.

A few years ago a deer got its head stuck through our deer fence and there were so many concerned workers gathered around trying to free it that it just got so frantic and upset that it died. It was a tragic end.  Then a few of them felt compelled to not waste that meat and they spent the rest of the day butchering that little deer.

With wildlife, you have to assume they don't want you to intervene.  They do get hurt and they do end up in the wrong place, but most of these animals are managing (THRIVING) on the edges and in the midst of this area.  As we all know, deer are in their element in the suburbs, wandering through any yard or garden, jumping over gates, completely at home on the fringes. In the last few months, the deer population has shifted away from the Vienna farm and I think it has everything to do with the massive road widening project with huge earthmovers ripping down trees and rearranging the landscape.  Where there was once a hillside across the road from the stand, with tall White Pines and underbrush and a daily parade of deer, there is now a mound of subsoil getting scraped and carried away.  Deer are staying away from that mess.

A few years ago I started a campaign to encourage groundhogs to move off the farm in Vienna. There were a couple of condos established on hillsides on the edges of fields and I made a regular practice of dumping garbage down their holes and stuffing those holes with sticks so it would be a lot of trouble to come back out.  Day in day out, I made those holes disgusting and inaccessible.  Once I even buried the bones of a boiled soup chicken (knowing that a fox would find it and dig it up and maybe it would get interested in those groundhog holes and make them even less enticing).  I am happy to report that both of those condos are still unoccupied. I go and check from time to time.  Apparently groundhogs like a very clean hole and maybe it just got to be too much, having to clean up every day. Also I have heard that they move to empty holes when they find them and the biggest, most dominant groundhog gets the best real estate. So far I have managed to make that excellent real estate seem like a terrible dump.  No one got hurt, and the nearby lettuce and bean patches are uneaten.

In fact we have no real interest in killing these animals that are living their best lives. We just want them to move to a place that isn't trying to grow food for humans.  There is plenty to eat everywhere. They don't have to be so opportunistic and lazy.  I do hate raccoons, all raccoons. They have proven over time that their best life includes randomly killing chickens. Not even eating them, just killing them. Even though that is their nature, I can't tolerate that.  Minks and weasels are the same, but we don't have those around anymore. 

Anyway, I have been telling stories about wildlife forever because those interactions never stop.  I see how inexperienced most people are when they encounter a wild animal, and I watch people try to rescue and raise baby rabbits all the time. They just die. It never works. 

Dad always said he wanted to breed a big cat, a really big cat, that could patrol the farm and keep the inappropriate wildlife down. He wanted a cross between a puma and a house cat. That would probably do it.

When Jon and I came back to Timothy's from doing our computer homework after dinner, I looked up in the tree and that little groundhog was gone. It had been pretending to be asleep, waiting for those bothersome humans to get out of the way. It lives in a hole right under the cabin.  You wouldn't think I would let that happen but the nearest vegetable fields are a long way away.  If they are mowing our lawn, I don't mind.

Missing The Beat

I was lying on my couch in the early morning, like I do, reading the news and posts from farmers and doing my thing, when I got to wondering, "What day is it?" I went through some possibilities, feeling pretty comfortable that it didn't really matter since most days are the same. We work, we have too many Zoom meetings, there is a nightly Happy Hour on the Greenway, we have dinner, we don't go anywhere, we stay up too late. Then we get up and do it all again.  But I persisted in trying to remember the name of the day.

Wednesday! What -- WEDNESDAY?!? Really?  Shouldn't I be somewhere?
It was 7:45.  In 15 minutes I was supposed to be at the stand with the rest of the picking for Crossroads Market completed.  Well, to be precise, I was supposed to be at the stand 15 minutes ago so I could finish getting the load ready for an 8:00 departure. 

I levitated off the couch, got myself into my work gear (mask, knife and clippers in holster, real clothes) and hustled outside.

From the time I was in high school, I have assembled what I need the night before for a hasty departure in the morning, just in case. That routine has saved me many times. Back then I had to walk/run all the way to the end of the Moutoux driveway to catch the school bus at 6:15. It was important to have my clothes and books already poised in case I had to skip the rest of the routine and just bolt out the door. There was no back-up plan for getting a ride to school.

One of the huge unexpected benefits of living in this neighborhood, right between the two farm properties, is that I can be at work -- on a golf cart -- in three minutes. So I zoomed out through Maymont, past all the megamansions (and my old bus stop), careened down the path to Parents, opened the deer fence and went in to pick my last - minute crates of greens.

In my tiny world, this lack of rhythmic structure is just a mild disorder. But for so many others, these past ten weeks or so have uprooted everything.  We all wonder what normal will be, eventually.  How will theater work? Will there be theater? Will restaurants be able to make enough money to stay in business?  What will public transportation look like? Will we go back to traffic jams every day? What about these kids?  We aren't just missing a beat here, the entire orchestra has left the stage.

Of course, in our self-absorbed way, those of us who don't have young children can't even imagine in our wildest nightmares what these ten weeks have been like.  I guess the families who were homeschooling before might be less disrupted, but still there are no dance classes or zoos or band rehearsals. Parents everywhere are exhausted.  It seems like the easiest age to manage at this point might be a newborn. Talk about topsy turvy.

So I know that my occasional lapses of memory are really a non-issue, compared to the wider world that is really traumatized. I count my blessings while grinding my teeth at the political news.  The fields are filled with healthy plants and we are shifting into a higher gear around here.  My selfish self misses the joys that come with having a season subscription to Arena Stage, an unlimited pass to the swimming pool, a regular appointment at the acupuncturist, a library card, a Common House and common meals with my neighbors, and so many restaurants that are within 20 minutes of home.  Those are the elements that add texture and light to a fundamentally satisfying life. 

In the meantime, this is my last Wednesday until Thanksgiving that is not all about the CSA. There will be no forgetting what day it is, for the next 25 weeks.  Game on.

Barefoot Grandsons, Bossy Daughters

Anthony Mead Newcomb, memorable father and enthusiastic creator of "great concepts" was born on May 13, 1935.  So he would have been 85 years old today.  It is difficult to imagine that, as the pictures and stories end when he was 48, but he left a big, resounding legacy.  People who never met him know a lot about him, just from knowing his kids and this farm.  In honor of this date, I will remind us why some of us are the way we are...and why this farm is the way it is.

1. What's with all those barefoot boys? From the beginning of their lives, all the grandsons have gone barefoot in all weather.  They didn't learn that from their parents. None of us goes barefoot when it's snowy out, but all five of them have some corrupted gene that makes them a little crazy. Their grandfather went barefoot more than anyone else in his world -- and it may have been his undoing, in some ways.  Walking barefoot through a field that was sprayed with herbicide was never a good idea. He described it afterwards as feeling a tingling in his mouth.  (As a a result, our boys will never have a sprayed field to walk through.)

2. Homemade everything.  The four of us grew up in a world where everything could be constructed or fabricated from scratch.  As a result, we all prefer to make our own stuff.  And our children have also come to appreciate a homegrown solution over one that can be purchased. For example, our market furniture is unique. We don't buy a table with legs that fold up, we figure out what size and shape we want, and someone builds it.  So when we need a different configuration -- like when the coronavirus forces us to change everything about the way we sell at the markets -- we don't miss a beat. We just rearrange the furniture in ways that meets the need and it works immediately.  I get to tell Stephen or Jon what I have dreamed up, and when I have described it well enough, they build it. Now Stephen and Michael have gone off on many building tangents, having learned how to construct regular everyday things, now they build without a formal design. And they change the plan as they go, depending if the telephone poles turn out to be long enough to create a second story.

3. Not so much respect for rules.  In this family, we don't do things to attract the attention of law enforcement but we also don't fret if everything we do is not strictly within the bounds of law.  If we are not causing trouble for other people, and we aren't a danger, then we pretty much do it if it makes sense.  We try to have all our vehicles registered and inspected in a timely way so we don't make it easy for the police to pick on us, but we do load tractors onto trailers and tow them from farm to farm without meeting every requirement. The housing that we provide for our workers is not strictly to code but it keeps them out of the weather and gives them privacy.  The bathroom that Jon built in the Green Barn looks completely legal but it is not on anyone's radar.  The cottage had a Tony Newcomb-dug septic tank for many years, covered artistically with leaves whenever there was a chance of inspection (we were on the radar of health inspectors on this farm for some amount of time).

4. So many vehicles, so many tractors.  Most farms don't have quite so many internal combustion engines to maintain.  Jon counted a few years ago -- we have something like 55.  What's up with that? My father owned multiple cars and trucks plus two airplanes when he was in college. Some of them were operational, some were waiting for repairs.  Jerry Lehmann told me they had a parade with all of Newcomb's vehicles at the end of one school year -- he ran a hauling company while he was at Oberlin, plus he had cars that he filled with people going home for spring and fall break.  People who rode in those cars have lots of stories about the gas tanks that could only be filled halfway because of the leak at the top, and needing to be rescued on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. Anyway, this legacy continues 40 years later. We almost never buy anything new but we are always ready to acquire a used tractor or truck for a good price.  Our maintenance record has improved dramatically since Dad died but we still like to have plenty of vehicles on demand so we always have exactly what we need.

5. Along those lines: only use the vehicle that meets the need. You can't drive a big empty truck just to get somewhere. You must take a load. Efficiency is key. Fuel efficiency but also hauling efficiency. Just the other day a worker asked me if she could take a car home so she could go straight to work on the other farm at 5 AM on Saturday, saving herself a half an hour. I had to tell her all the reasons why that didn't fit into my world view, but in the end I said yes.

6. Social engineering. Each of my siblings, like me, thinks nothing of maneuvering and manipulating people into places they really want to be, doing things they really want to do, even if they don't know it yet.  We have a lifetime of practice at this, and we learned it from our father.  Charles was one of the instigators of what has become a huge Fourth of July parade and celebration in his neighborhood. Everyone loves it.  Lani and I both run businesses that need to attract interesting, lively people who can work in an unusual setting -- our businesses depend on our ability to find and keep good employees even though we really can't offer much in the way of compensation. Anna is the queen, the head of the crowd, the top of the pile, when it comes to collecting up volunteers and getting things done. What people say about her: don't look her in the eye. How do you think Blueberry Hill got here?

7. Complexity is better than simplicity.  Contrary to what most people might prefer, we thrive on a maximum amount of moving parts.  When we were growing up, we lived on three farms plus we had a house in town and we were always moving from one place to another, and bringing stuff with us. The farm is tightened down a lot, now we only have two locations and we each live in one house, but we are still managing a level of chaos that other people might not enjoy. Pretty sure that our father had Attention Deficit Disorder, and that's why our farm is "organized" the way it is.

8. Love of travel. Just about every one of the descendants of Tony is a traveler.  We love to be home and we also love to go places. Driving long distances is normal and expected.  All the grandchildren have been to more countries and covered more of this planet than the generation before them (but that's because of the times they live in, not because they are more adventurous than their parents). We all have a low bar for comfort, so we can be happy with a very frugal trip.

9. Ah yes, frugality.  Families have cultures. This is a family that doesn't spend money except on things that they really want (Anna seems to have no trouble spending money on her house, Lani owns way more vehicles and horses than she should, Charles is a gadget collector, plus he spends lots of money on his house I think, and Jon and I have made our biggest investment -- other than children of course -- buying a piece of ground that we will never sell but has a really nice blueberry patch on it.). But none of us spends ,much on normal things like entertainment or clothes or decorations.

10. A big laugh.  I smile whenever I think of my dad's laugh.  We all have that laugh.  My mom has a good laugh too, so we can't give Dad all the credit, but I think the laughter that comes out of our deepest insides, that's the one we get from him.  Thinking about Charles' laugh makes me incredibly happy.  We all love to laugh, and we love to be funny and I think that comes straight from Dad.

Anyone could write a big list of the things they got from their father, and this is just the tip of the iceberg, but you get the point. So much of what we do and how we move through the world came from the training we got in the first 20 years of our lives. Some of that training had to be unlearned (a different post), but so much of it has served us well and given us so much joy as we spread our Tony Newcomb-ness around.

So, thank you Grandma and Grandpa Newcomb for having that particular baby on May 13. What a legacy.

The Spider in the Web

I wake up early and get right to work -- heading straight for my couch and my cozy blanket. There I might do an hour or so of farm work: scrolling through Instagram to see what other farmers are showing us (there is one particular farmer who grows bazillions of carrots and beets on perfectly flat, sandy ground and has got his weed management down to a perfect science. What a show-off, and so incredible.) and answering the load of emails that have come in overnight.  But my most important work is texting with other farmers.

Since we got past the era of the telephone on the wall, times have really changed for all of us.  Right about when that happened, farmers markets were also starting to sprout all over the area. And all through the last 20 or 30 years, more small farms have come into being.  In the olden days, if you wanted to talk to a fellow farmer that you didn't really know, you had to drive to their farm and introduce yourself. My parents did that all the time -- that was how they learned to grow vegetables, really.

Nowadays, we can watch farmers all over the country do their best work.  I know when folks have started to pick garlic curls and I should go out and look more closely at our own patch. When everyone in North Carolina has got their potatoes in the ground, we are still waiting for some dry soil, but we know it will be our turn soon. It is not really a way to learn to farm but it is certainly a way to check in with other experts, from the comfort of the couch.  I have to admit that I personally do not post -- I don't know if I have any pictures that I really want to share with strangers -- but there must be lots of farmer voyeurs like me, watching others at work.

But what is really good is the web that we have constructed, with PVF as a big spider. This sounds evil but this spider is a spider that doesn't eat the farmers it catches, it feeds them.  We lure farmers in, get them settled in our sticky web, and then make sure they are getting what they need so they want to stay right with us.

This process is a long, slow, persistent one, just like a political campaign or community organizing.  As the spider, we must be dependable and transparent, make no sudden or unfriendly moves. We just keep reaching out and inviting others to join us.

And what are we trying to do?  Maximize the amount of food that gets to the right place, for a fair price. I hate it when I hear about a surplus that is getting wasted.  Our farm has a CSA that is big enough to accommodate other farms' excess. The other farms just have to grow their vegetables to the same standard we do, and we will do our best to find a home for whatever they want to sell.  Right now there are 11 farms who are part of this flexible arrangement.  Some of them only have too much for about three weeks of the year, some of them grow stuff specifically for our CSA, and some of them are only right now realizing that this may be the best way to operate this year, as we are all adjusting to the changes that come with covid-19.

So this morning I texted with Casey who usually goes to market with a gigantic load, but who has chosen to find other avenues this year. His farm is avoiding the coronavirus by staying home, growing as much as they can, and putting it into a home delivery system that was established by a fellow vendor. They are selling just about everything they can pick, and they only leave the farm to deliver a whomping pile of boxes to the pickle factory, where bags are packed.  I am standing at the ready, ready to take whatever Casey doesn't package up for the pickle people.  We have an excellent relationship, built over the last ten years -- he and his wife worked for us for four years and then went on to manage a gorgeous farm in a more rural area.  They are a fierce competitor in the market, but we have been good friends since the beginning and we take all their surpluses, happily.

The moral of this story is that friendships and relationships matter all the time. You have to take the long view ALL THE TIME. You never know when someone might need your help, and you should always try to give help when asked. You will always be someone else's priority if you need their help, if you stay in touch and you say yes.  Last summer I was picking basil at 7:30 in the morning, on a tight schedule, getting ready to load for market, when I got a call from Casey who was broken down on the side of the road, with a humongous market load. He wasn't asking for help but he was telling me he would be late to market, where we were supposed to meet to pick up some of his squash and cucumbers. We mobilized and found a way to help him salvage the day. It took two of our trucks to get his load off the side of I-66 and into Dupont Circle, and he only sold about 2/3 of what he had hoped to sell, but it was better than losing it all.  And this is just one example of how we maintain our farmer relationships, so that all of us can move as much food as we possibly can.

Farmers are particularly able to help each other in times of stress and need -- we can send a crew to help fix a blown-down hoop house, we can tackle a job that is too big for a small farm to handle on its own, we can even send a tractor driver every Thursday when a farmer friend has broken his foot and can only watch everyone else from the porch for 8 long weeks.  It is harder to imagine other small businesses being able to jump to the rescue so easily, but I am sure there are many examples that I don't know about.  Our farm is generally more able to help because we have a lot of people and a deep pool of experience.  We can build, we can dig holes, we can harvest, we can go to market with a half an hour of warning. We have been doing all of that for years, and that is part of the reason we have 11 participating farms in our unofficial web. 

Most spiders are good spiders. And they do really good work. We will continue to maintain our web and lure in farmers who grow the way we do.