< A Dazzling Debut: Our New Farmers' Market! | Main | Stunned >

Tidbits

Posted at 11:32 PM on September 29, 2008 by Vera Schabicki (1 Comments)

I am not sure where to start....it has been so long since I have written a post.....feel rather guilty, being a grown up and locavore is rather time consuming........as this poem nicely illustrates:

The Continuous Life
By Mark Strand
What of the neighborhood homes awash
In a silver light, of children hunched in the bushes,
Watching the grown-ups for signs of surrender,
Signs that the irregular pleasures of moving
From day to day, of being adrift on the swell of duty,
Have run their course? O parents, confess
To your little ones the night is a long way off
And your taste for the mundane grows; tell them
Your worship of household chores has barely begun;
Describe the beauty of shovels and rakes, brooms and mops;
Say there will always be cooking and cleaning to do,
That one thing leads to another, which leads to another;
Explain that you live between two great darks, the first
With an ending, the second without one, that the luckiest
Thing is having been born, that you live in a blur
Of hours and days, months and years, and believe
It has meaning, despite the occasional fear
You are slipping away with nothing completed, nothing
To prove you existed. Tell the children to come inside,
That your search goes on for something you lost--a name,
A family album that fell from its own small matter
Into another, a piece of the dark that might have been yours,
You don't really know. Say that each of you tries
To keep busy, learning to lean down close and hear
The careless breathing of earth and feel its available
Languor come over you, wave after wave, sending
Small tremors of love through your brief,
Undeniable selves, into your days, and beyond.

We have had very little time to go to the local farmers markets, so we have been having some scanty meals.......i am very tempted to go to my local unionized Cosco and buy all of my vegetables there, the selection of organic produce is ever larger......why am I doing this? We do get some wonderful things but they are very rarely organic, one has to wonder if this is a step forward or not.

One really wonderful local thing I have been enjoying is apples....there is such a large selection of different apples at Jones Orchard....they sell at the Ag center (where I have been getting delicious peaches all summer....did you know that there are several different kinds of peaches and they ripen at different times). These apples are all smaller than the apples I am used to getting....but I purchased four different kinds, each with a different flavor and characteristic.......I will ask them if any are storing apples. I did make some apple sauce and freeze it from some apples that Tammy gave me (she is great at finding free things...in this case a neighbor with an apple tree but not the desire to "process" the apples......you have to cut out worm damage and stuff, so not a lot of them were good for just chomping.

I am finding Locavore issues being discussed in so many venues....an article in Ode Magazine entitled Silent Spring, Again, by Amy Domini discussed the connection between pesticides, green investments and supporting local eating.

I watched a very nifty movie called The Real Dirt on Farmer John......check it out for an interesting story about farming and America.......My friend Michele got it on Netflix.....she said it reminded her of me....hmmm, maybe I really ought to start wearing all of my old fancy city clothes to go work out in the garden....if I ever get back to the garden.

To end my ramblings I wanted to share another poem....one that I think us Locavores can, perhaps, appreciate a little more from our experiences in the past few months:

The Hungry Gap-Time
By Thomas Lux

late August, before the harvest, every one of us worn down
by the plow, the hoe, rake,
and worry over rain.

Chicken Coop confiscated
by the rats and the raptors
with nary a mouse to hunt. The corn's too green and hard,
and the larder's down
to dried apples
and double-corned cod. We lie on our backs
and stare at the blue;
our work is done, our bellies flat.
The mold on the wheat killed hardly a sheaf.
The lambs fatten on the grass, our pigs we set
to forage on their own-they'll be back
when they whiff the first shucked ears
of corn. Albert's counting
bushels in his head
to see if there's enough to ask Harriet's father
for her hand. Harriet's father
is thinking about Harriet's mother's bread
pudding. The boys and girls
splash in the creek,
which is low but cold. Soon, soon
there will be food
again, and from what our hands have done
we shall live another year here
by the river
in the valley
above the fault line
beneath the mountain

Best Wishes,Vera

Comments (1)

Hello!
I understand.
We have a few farmers markets that are year round. You have to get there on a Saturday or Sunday morning. Even when they are open until 1 or 2, you have to get there early enough!

I don't often make it either because I have a workshop or am trying to get some sleep! If I choose to go to services, I won't make it to the farmers market. When I get home, I have to take off my clothes and put on something comfortable. It takes a while to get out of the house.
I am a single girl so if my mom has decided that she will make the family dinner, I'll spend time with my family. If I don't spend time, she'll drop it off at my house.

If I go with someone, like a get together, I am more motivated to get rolling.

Paulette

Posted by P. Thompson | October 2, 2008 9:22 PM