Changes are Coming

Give a husband and wife five days off in a row, and there’s no telling what might happen.

They might, for instance, serve Thanksgiving dinner to eleven, and in the process decide they’ve had enough of making do in their hodgepodge kitchen, and two days later order brand new cabinets and appliances and start gathering volunteers to tear the place up.

Or they might hear a sob story about a friend of a friend of a friend who found a sweet shepherd-mix puppy in the city and is looking to give her away.  They might visit, swoon and make plans to bring her home, right about the same time they’re planning to lose their kitchen and most of their dining room.

And it’s always possible that the English teacher who hasn’t had time to read anything but papers like this will pick up a book that will change her life.  And if that were true (hypothetically) it wouldn’t matter a bit that the book was a gift from the author, her cousin — if anything, it would make the experience that more meaningful, a little like a letter from an older and more experienced friend who knows the way.

The Urban Farm Handbook is a witty, practical guide to your personal paradigm shift from big-box grocery to local living.  Organized into seasons (beginning with winter — how timely and / or perfect for Christmas!) that are further subdivided into subject chapters, it gives just enough detail to instruct but not overwhelm.

I’ve read a lot about the locavore movement.  The vast majority has been in the form of personal narratives, moving and off-putting by turns.  The author (and, usually, spouse) is drawn to traditional methods of farming, producing, cooking and living; s/he spends a set length of time, almost always a year, practicing these methods, and in doing so reaches some degree of enlightenment.  Even when they’re beautifully written, as most are, these books don’t do more than vaguely inspire you in some ways and nauseate you in others. Titles in this category include:

• Animal, Vegetable, Miracle 
• Farm City
• Plenty
• See You in a Hundred Years
• The Omnivore’s Dilemma

On the other side of the spectrum are books that are so professional, they’re largely over your head.  They’re also fun to read; they’re great daydream material and would be perfect resources if you decided to move out to the country, but you can’t find much use for their advice where you live.  Examples:

• ABC of Poultry Raising
• Country Wisdom & Know-How
• Gaia’s Garden
• Nourishing Traditions
• The Four-Season Harvest

The Urban Farm Handbook has found the Goldilocks sweet spot: just right for people like me, who are frustrated when their increased knowledge doesn’t lead to life changes.  It’s for environmentalists who want to produce less waste, parents who want their children to grow up in a real community, and cooks who are obsessed with freshness.  It gives loads of advice to all kinds of readers.

I’m scheming to make this a monthly feature in my Patch column next year, supplementing the authors’ advice with my own research about the Mid-Atlantic region (they live in the Pacific Northwest.)  But I’ll write here about the behind-the-scenes activity, which you might find just as interesting.  In fact, I’m already hard at work on the first chapter.  Stay tuned!

An Avid Indoorsman

Now there’s a phrase that describes me perfectly:

If black people and Hispanic people don’t want to go to national parks, so what? I’m as white as they come, and I don’t want to go to a national park. You’d have to drag me there. It’s hot, and that’s where mosquitoes and bears are, and besides, you can’t get ice to refresh your cocktail. I am an avid indoorsman. And yet, I am very pleased that my tax dollars support the national park system, because I think it’s a fine thing that we have them. Does Jon Jarvis really believe that people like me sit around saying, “Thank goodness that the national park system exists so white people have a place to go fart around with animals and breathe the clean air and eat trail mix and stuff”? Please.

This is why Rod is so great.  I was just thinking the other day that, to me, camping is one of the biggest mysteries of humanity.  I get “there’s no other way to see the natural wonder I want to see,” and I get “I can’t afford to stay in a hotel.”  I don’t get “let’s drive several hours to hang out in the woods.”  Even if you do love being outside (I’ll admit, it has its charms this time of year) why do you have to spend the night there? With the bugs, the damp and the pervasive smell of woodsmoke that’s much less romantic a week later when you want to wear that jacket again?

I’m just saying.  There’s something to be said for civilization.

Tous les Matins du Monde

We spent a lovely weekend at the beach with our friends, who have really become family — and due to a lucky aligning of the scheduling stars, were able to stay an extra night and drive back this morning.  My husband, the human traffic sensor, did not want to chance the morning rush hour, however, so we were on the road before six, when the world was still dark — speeding across the farmland of the Eastern Shore with the highway mostly to ourselves.

I started to think (because I couldn’t do much else at that hour) about how seldom I had had to wake that early.  5:30 is normal for a lot of people, including many of my students, who attend swim practice before school or face hourlong commutes from other states.  My own commute is walkable, and I’ve never had a homeroom, so the earliest I’ve had to face the world is several hours after they are up and running.  What a blessing, to wake with the sun or well after it!

Yet, as I watched the white fog settle in pillowy sheets on the flat fields, and the ghostly, dark forms of cattle moving among the newly-plowed grasses, I wondered at the beauty of the early morning that I almost, again, missed — and that was even before the sun started to rise.

A lot must depend on where you are in the world, I suppose.  When I lived in New York I would sometimes walk to church for a midweek Liturgy in the early morning, and the dark alleyways and still-drunk residents of the street seemed awfully sinister.  Even here in the suburbs, the most I could hope for would be the romantic drone of the trash truck or the shriek of school-bus brakes.  Maybe it’s just out in the wilderness where we can watch morning unfold as God intended it to.

First Harvest

Once I was lucky enough to interview Eliot Coleman, an incredibly erudite and witty subject in addition to one of my biggest gardening heroes.  “Weeding is like voting in Chicago,” I remember him saying. “Do it early and often.”

How right he was.  And how discouraged I was when, after two weeks of fun in the mountains and at the beach, my yard and garden looked miserably unkempt.

But there’s nothing to do but tackle the project.  In stages, of course — one bed at a time, preceded by a soaking bath with the sprinkler, and the lamb’s quarters and morning glories shrug and slip out of the soil.  (Not the crab grass, though.  I think Eve would have thought twice about eating that fruit, had she known what she was paying forward to generations of gardeners.)

The one place I don’t have weeds, however, is in the beautiful square-foot beds my father built for me. Everything is going gangbusters there, from melons to okra and tomatoes and even little thyme starts grown from seed.  In the midst of washing the first batch of radishes and pinched-off basil, I was struck by the beauty that exists in the silliest places in nature — spicy, knobby roots and wrinkly, lush leaves.  They later became pickles and pesto, but even in their rawest form they were delicious.

New Orleans in Photos

Returned Monday from a lovely long weekend in Nawlins, during which the city kindly suspended its normal humidity for sunny skies and cool breezes.  The nightlife, however, was as it always is: fun and a little crazy.

More here, along with brief explanations.