Running a Muddy Trail

A Long Time Coming

{ 08:04, 26 September 2008 } { 0 comments } { Link }

It's been a good summer. It's also been a long summer: major building projects, twice as many weeks of farmer's markets as last year, and increased production overall. More hours at my "real" job, plus a two-week work trip to Oregon and, of course, The Olympics, which, when you work for a running publication, throw an enormous wrench into your normal pattern. Throw in a few things for fun: visits from family & friends (summer is visitin' season on a "farm"), wild-blueberry-picking camping trips (with said family), weddings, training for and racing a 40 mile race, and helping out with a friend's 50 mile (overnight) race (during the previously mentioned Olympics) and Yoiks! you end up with a really full 4 glorious months.

I enjoyed (almost) every minute of it. Restated, I enjoyed more than enough of it to be able to block out the less-enjoyable parts and say that indeed, I enjoyed every minute of it. period.

BUT.

I'm really looking forward to the winter! Sure, there will still be projects, vegetables, and even a few farmer's markets to attend to. There'll be work, and meetings and some running on our own and winter is the season where we go visiting, instead of waiting for folks to come for us. But the pace changes in the winter. We feel less guilty about spending time reading. It is in the winter that we blow through the books, cramming ourselves full of ideas to try out the next time summer hits.

Winter is also the season of anticipation, and anyone who can remember Christmas as a kid (and perhaps for some, Christmas as an adult as well) the anticipation is often the best part. This winter will be full of anticipation. We set a lot of balls rolling this summer, that will undoubtedly pick up speed over the winter months. When spring starts showing up, we will see where we are and where our ideas have ended up after a long-winter's nap, and we'll start the next lap in this crazy life we are all living together.

There's also some knitting projects to get down to business on. And maybe this winter, I'll figure out how to knit and read at the same time; double the pleasures, double the fun.

Go Figure!

{ 02:52, 8 September 2008 } { 0 comments } { Link }

2008 is the year of fruit at the Wolpertinger farm (well farm/garden/yard/bakery thingy that we have got going here). Hopefully it is only the first of many "years of fruit", wherever we are living. But this year we have installed a rockin and rollin strawberry bed -- a bed that was 4 neat rows of 44 total plants this April but is now an unruly bed chock full of an uncountable number of strawberry plants, a handful of volunteer tomatoes and a spattering of weed amaranth.

We planted an apricot tree from an Amish nursery in PA and a peach tree from a pit that sprouted in our compost pile. Both trees are taller than any of the inhabitants of this house at this point.

We trellissed and trimmed our wild black raspberries. This was the first time I've ever attempted to exert any control over this, my absolute favorite of wild fruits, and resulted in plants that bore an abundance of berries that one could actually access to pick.

When the younger brother came a-visiting, we went camping and wild blueberry picking (3+ gallons!) to supplement the meager first harvest we enjoyed off our domestic blueberry plants in the yard. And we enjoyed more and larger Summer Rambo apples from the tree that came with our house than we have any year since we arrived. Our cherry tree and grapevine also performed admirably.

Finally, we harvested and enjoyed (indeed, we are STILL enjoying) our first figs! Last summer and fall we were given a couple fig trees which we replanted into large planters and kept in the basement over the winter. One of them was slow to get started this spring, but the other wasted no time opening up leaves and growing it's branches. With a bit of help from our town's resident Italian fig farmer we managed to get the quick plant to set fruit and it is now ripening much to our delight. The slower plant, by the way, though it isn't bearing fruit this year is just so pretty and happy looking that it's quite enjoyable too -- just doesn't taste quite as good yet.

A Telling Chill to the Air

{ 10:53, 3 September 2008 } { 0 comments } { Link }

We're currently in the midst of a mini heat wave -- it is supposed to get up to 85 today. But earlier last week, we had some days where we wore pants all day (as opposed to shorts). The nights are regularly getting chilly and there is a crispness to the air which whispers sweet nothings into our ears about the glorious fall season that is just around the corner. It feels like cross country season!

Back in August, I planted the first of the winter crops. Not fall stuff, not end of the season market stuff, but winter crops. This included a bed of spinach, a bed of arugula and some mache and beets that we expect to stay in the ground and growing well into, if not all the way through the winter, and in the case of the spinach and arugula, into the spring. These will be our first market of the season crops for 2009!

I loaded the raised beds up with compost and old manure and planted tidy little rows of seeds. These freshly tilled beds, of course, make the BEST scratching and peeing areas for the cat. So don't worry, the "tidy" rows won't stay TIDY for long. Things sprouted well and have generally survived the hot and dry-ish days well. I've had to do a bit of fill-in plantings, but that's how it goes. This is also the only time during the year that I have to do any watering at all, just to nurse the wee plants through the hot days I give them a little dousing at dusk the night before.

With the Olympics over and done with, i have a bit of time here before the fall marathon season begins to get back into the gardening. I've also started going to middle school cross country practice a couple times/week, just because. We've been drying tomatoes non-stop and over the labor day weekend managed to put up quarts upon quarts of tomatoes, tomato sauce and salsa. That makes me feel a little bit more prepared to say goodbye to the summer, since we have a whole shelf of it stored away to enjoy in bits and pieces throughout the rest of the year.

A Good Kind of Stinky

{ 09:49, 13 August 2008 } { 0 comments } { Link }

I just don't get what the general public dislikes about garlic breath. We love garlic in all of it's forms: plants, scapes, roasted, dried, grilled (with eggplant, preferably) and even the dried, granulated stuff has it's place. And receiving a kiss from my husband after a meal full of garlicky goodness is in no way unpleasant. Perhaps garlic flavored toothpaste is on my horizon. ...

The only time I've found the smell of garlic to be unpleasant is when it is rotting. Not surprising. Sometimes a head splits in the ground, little organisms head into the split and fill the available space with their garlic-powered stink, or sometimes a little worm works its way through the layers of paper and goes to work on one or more of the cloves that make up the head.

That's not too common for us though, luckily. We harvested this summer's garlic crop last month and it was a whopper. More garlic than I've ever grown before. Two years ago we got a bunch of seed from different

varieties from our friend Todd. We planted that stuff, chose our favorite varieties and didn't eat any of them so that we could save it all for seed (some parts of this farming thing are nearly heartbreaking). We are doing the same thing this year, further narrowing down our varieties to 4 main types. But it looks like we have enough to at least sample all the varieties this summer.

Last night, well past sundown, we kept ourselves awake cleaning, trimming, sorting and weighing all of our biggest varieties. The smaller varieties had already been mostly sold or used, we didn't care as much about them because we weren't planning to save seed stock from those. The favorites though, we needed to go through to figure out yields and where we wanted to go with this garlic thing. We decided to grow our growing -- we'll at least double our planting this fall.

What's the significance of this, you ask? Less garlic breath in 2008 means more garlic breath every year down the road!

One Month

{ 05:08, 23 July 2008 } { 0 comments } { Link }

It's been one month since I last posted something here. Running and Summer have taken over my life lately. I spent nearly 2 weeks out in Oregon, covering the US Olympic Trials for Track & Field out in Eugene. It was a fascinating trip, but I was particularly ready to be home, oh, about 4 days into it.

But I met lots of nice people, made some friends, watched many many incredible races and did a good bit of running myself. Also made it down to the Eugene farmers market a couple times, and got to visit with a good friend for an evening.

Now it's back to the grind, lots of weeding and vegetable growing and picking. There's planning for the winter and for next year starting to come around, just as the truly hot weather of the year starts to hit us. We've gotten a couple really great thunderstorms in the last day or two, which was a nice break from the week+ of hot dry weather (we aren't used to that kind of thing around here). It knocked some plants over, but they'll be fine, I'm sure.

Aside from these poppies, whose time as flowers has come and gone, we have a lot more flowers just starting to open. Most of them are kinds that I've never tried to grow before, so there have been surprises waiting for me nearly every morning these days when I step outside in the morning.

It's Iced Tea time of the year. Yum.

A Swimming Hole

{ 09:11, 23 June 2008 } { 0 comments } { Link }

Last week was the week of mothers. My Mom came to visit and she worked and worked and worked. We fixed her meals and cleaned her dishes and gave her a bed to sleep in, and in return she worked and worked and worked some more. We were very impressed ... and thankful.

On Friday our supply of mothers doubled when Joel's Mom arrived. Both accompanied us to market on Saturday and both scored monster bunches of purple larkspur when one of the farmers decided to leave for the day.

After a week full of productivity and field work, we headed out for a gentler task on Sunday: visiting some friends, picking up a load of firebricks and taking a walk to the river. From Kate's hillside pottery studio (the location of the firebricks) we headed down the hill, after a cool and damp week, Sunday was warm, summery and sunny. The river was down since the heaviest rains were several days behind us now, so it was running fast enough that you knew it was a river, but slow enough to safely navigate on foot.

We went to The Rocks. An area of huge bolders scattered across the riverbed that form large eddies and deep holes. Kate and Tom came with us, as well as 7 of their dogs. We sat around talking on the rocks for some time before the call of the river and the sun on my back urged me on to more active pursuits. Off with the shoes and the shirt, I scampered across more of the rocks to join the dogs on the second-biggest bolder.

There, hidden on the far side of the boulder, was a perfectly clear, perfectly still pool and with the late morning sun just peeking over the top of the rock, the water was illuminated in concentric circles from the inside out. Joel jumped in first before I, for some reason, always hesitant to jump off rocks into water, made the leap.

A Storm, A Flood & Some Quiet Time

{ 04:21, 5 June 2008 } { 0 comments } { Link }

All in the last 24 hours. Yesterday a big storm rolled through the area. Well, actually it was one of a whole string of storms, beginning with one that I completely missed overnight. Apparently there was ridiculous lightning, lots of loud thunder and plenty of heavy rain, as evidenced by the look of our yard in the morning which showed that the stream had actually jumped its banks and made its way, riverlike, all the way up through our pea bed.

It was (fairly) calmly back within its banks by the time I woke up. Anyhow, so there was that storm which basically filled us up with water in this area. It was clear-ish in the morning, but not for long as one storm after another rolled through, all just appetizers for the big kahuna that showed up around 2 in the afternoon and killed our electricity.

I got to turn off the computer after it went onto battery backup and we'd just finished lunch, so there we were, fed and worked and nothing to do! Of course not NOTHING nothing, but all our usual suspects were out of the question. The power was off which voided the "work on the computer" and "fix dinner" options, and it was raining cats and dogs which nullified the "weeding", "hoeing" and "planting" options.

Well, we manged to pass the time. My Dad came by for the night and we chatted in the dark out on the porch, with only the hum of a neighbor's generator to keep us and the first lightning bugs of the year company. We brushed our teeth by candlelight and went to sleep, no fridge buzzing in the background.

By morning, the power was still out so instead of a hectic morning of writing articles and catching up on work from yesterday, we lounged till Dad woke up, walked around the yard in Mucklucks to assess the damage, re-trellissed the peas that had toppled in the storm, sampled some strawberries and just generally had a good time. A quick bike ride to the store allowed us to feast on the always in style PB&J breakfast option (#4 on the Value Menu) and Dad headed on his merry way.

I headed to the yard to rake grass. And continued to do just that until the power returned and life-as-we-normally-know-it resumed. It was nice, having the power off, but I did wish I had a cookstove or at least a gas range.

Garlic Up To Here

{ 10:10, 3 June 2008 } { 0 comments } { Link }

This spring has been really nice to us. Plenty of rain, warmth, coolth, sunshine & energy to get things done around this place. One of the beautiful things about farming though, is the plants don't need constant coddling. This garlic, for example, was planted in October, sprouted around November sometime. Sat around all winter and started growing again in March.

Since then, as you can see, it has really taken to this growing thing. Its up past my bellybutton and starting to put up scapes. The necks, where they enter the ground, are as thick as a narrow wrist. We're hoping the bulbs reflect this incredible growth when their time comes. But it does it by itself: no coddling, no coaxing, no daily feedings. When the patch started to get weedy, we weeded it once and laid down a thick layer of hay/mulch/grass cuttings.

Its been a good lettuce year too, the weather has just been perfect for lettuce and for the first time ever, I have been able to grow nice heads of tasty lettuce (as opposed to ugly heads of tasty lettuce or nice heads of bitter lettuce). No bug damage, no bolting, nothing to it, right?

Well, at least, when the weather lines up properly there's nothing to it. The swiss chard, on the other hand, has been much less impressive this year. So it goes, one year its one thing, another year something else.

I'm looking forward to eating lots of good apples this year (the trees are loaded). All the blossoms around

here were frosted off last year, so no local apples. It was alright, because we had a bountiful and delectable crop of raspberries, elderberries & wild blueberries in the summer, so we've been overflowing in preserved fruit products for our PB sandwiches through the winter. But after the 12 month break, a warm bowl of fresh applesauce is certainly going to be something to look forward to for this fall.

Apparently I have this thing for fruit. I've always associated closely with it, in fresh, preserved or dried forms. Dried peaches, dried applesauce or any number of other dehydrated fruit products were my fuel of choice during high school and college cross country meets. My mother sent me every fall in college, a box of apples. Friends were receiving "care packages" of cookies, candies and snacks, I got a box of apples -- my favorite variety.

And now, our yard is coming into its fruit. The strawberry plants are loaded and each morning we go out and sample a couple fruits. I waited until 10am this morning so the berries were sun warmed and so sweet. I can still taste it.

Tough Decisions

{ 02:58, 15 May 2008 } { 0 comments } { Link }

The world is a crazy place right now, on a global scale, as well as on a personal scale for many, as the country sinks deeper into this unnamed recession-type situation. But darn it if life doesn't just keep on

going on, despite financial struggles, housing market collapses, and natural disasters of any imaginable kind and magnitude.

In this house, for example, last Sunday both of the inhabitants came independantly to the decision that it would be a good day to make cookies. It so happens that the inhabitants have been working on their communication skills over the last couple of years, so they actually alerted each other of their plans and discovered how closely they aligned.

Roundabout wording out of the way, my husband and I both wanted to make cookies on Sunday evening, so we both did. It was a very efficient way to get it done, actually, just have to get the sugar out once, ditto for the flour and the butter. I think those were mostly all the ingredients our recipes shared. The point of this story is that come Monday morning, we had a motherload of cookies around this house, which is slightly unusual. And so naturally, what else would one have for breakfast but cookies (the ones I made did contain a significant amount of oats)? I have no idea.

My dilemma presented itself quickly though: milk or tea? I mean, what sounds better than tea and cookies for breakfast on a chilly, foggy spring morning? Nothing, really, except maybe milk and cookies. The milk happened to be the incredibly tasty kind from the pretty Jersey cow up the road. Well, I stood there in the kitchen debating this situation for a good while before deciding to do the "sensible" thing. I came to the conclusion that I believe any practical person in my situation would have arrived at (probably sooner than I).

I had both.

Blooming & Bees

{ 03:27, 6 May 2008 } { 0 comments } { Link }

It is that time of the year, when we are eating the leaves of plants, not the fruits, and maybe the flowers of plants if we're lucky or knowledgable. Our herbs that made it through the winter are thriving in the land of all-other-plants-are-but-tiny-sprouts. They have all the sunshine to themselves. And across the Appalachian mountains, all the small apiaries are sending out their packages of bees!

I ordered them last year, two packages of Russian bees. They didn't come and they didn't come and they didn't come, mostly due to tough weather conditions last spring. So I put the delivery off till this year and I'm at the top of the list and the bees are in the post right now. I should get to pick them up tomorrow, and we will once again, and hopefully forever onwards, have bees.

We're entering a new era in this area: the farmers market is starting next week -- in MAY. The market has existed for 30 years, and has always opened in mid-July. But with the way things are going in this crazy world, that is about to change. Or at least we're trying it out this year. We're starting in May, and going through November, meaning that the market season is now long enough to make it worthwhile for a farmer to actually spend some quality time working on his garden and tending to her vegetables. We've been handing out flyers and pamphlets in hopes of getting enough customers to the market that it might develop into an actual economic opportunity for small farmers in the area. Imagine, actually being able to make a financial contribution to your family by selling at market.

Its a fairly normal situation in many parts of this country, but has not been the case around here. We will see if we can get the ball rolling.

In the meantime, we have blueberry blossoms. And I just don't have the heart to pick them all off once again. Some will have to serve as trial berries for this year. yum.

Life! How can you be so crazy?!

{ 07:10, 28 April 2008 } { 0 comments } { Link }

The intensity of this past week hasn't been matched since sometime deep in the throes of my college years. Classes, track practice, exams, lab work, bike accidents, german novels and the ever-present interactions with family and friends kept me on my toes day and night. My life has calmed down noticably since then, with a move out of the city, a marriage, a full-time job that usually doesn't have homework and just in general coming to terms with myself, how i prefer to live, what i prefer to do and how busy I prefer to be.

Throw it all to the wind in April though, the month where all facets of my life reach a climax simultaneously. Into that mix, unceremoniously thrown, we had a grandparent's 60th wedding anniversary, a family relationship emergency that I never saw coming, a couple birthdays and a couple other unforseen emergencies and you get this past week.

Sunday morning dawned clear, cool and full of potential ... as I looked out of my hotel room in Boston. I was there to cover two races, the women's olympic trials marathon and the 112th Boston Marathon, for work. Sunday I woke up early, after a late night (finally got dinner at 9:30pm), to meet up with a woman who was running the marathon on Monday to go for a short run. Finished the run, threw on another couple layers of clothes, grabbed my camera and headed out to meet a group of readers of my magazine to watch the olympic trials marathon. We watched the incredible race together and towards the end I bid adieu to head to the press room for the rest of my day's work. Worked through until 3 when my boss and I realized it was now or never for our first meal of the day.

Monday was the Boston Marathon; an incredible race. Blood pounding, scintillating sprints (that stretched out over 8 miles), lots of adrenaline even in the press room, and then endless editing of over-long and hastily written recap articles until it was time to catch a train to the airport. The trains were packed. Not only had 25,000 runners just finished running a marathon and were trying to get home or back to hotels, but the Red Sox game had just ended. Sheesh. There was even a traffic jam in the subway.

But I made it to the airport, got on my flight, which was full of tired and still sweaty runners. That was neat. I've never sat on a plane and heard such familiar conversations going on all around me. ("by mile 13 i knew my splits were ..." and "i surged after mile 17 to try to ..."). Got to DC and made my connection back to Morgantown. First time flying into our teeny airport. One gate, one employee, who kindly helped me fill out my missing luggage forms as soon as the other 15 passengers had left. But Joel was right there at the gate, to give me a huge hug and what better way to return to West Virginia after being gone for 10 days of big city life?

We made it home and crashed by around 1am. The next day, I learned, was plowing day. A friend was bringing his draft horses over to help us break a new field that doubled our capacity. I worked a couple hours on the computer, then spent the rest of the morning plowing. And marveling at how beautiful this place is. The overwhelming green and flowering crabs and apples and cherries and bulbs were a sight for sore (and tired) eyes.

We found the first morels of the year, I dug a bunch more ramps for us for the week. Things were getting back on the right track. Girls on the Run on Tuesday and Wednesday afternoons made getting on track with work a bit scrunched. Then Thursday, after a frustrating morning, I just couldn't take it any longer and swore off the computer for the afternoon and went digging in the yard, in between my mid-morning meeting and my evening beekeepers meeting. Planted a bunch of stuff and ran out to the beekeepers meeting. Throughout the day though, from the moment I got up and said to Joel, while looking at my arms, "hmm... might be we have a case of the bed bugs?", something funny was developing on my arms and hands. Seemed to be a case of poison ivy. But I don't usually get poison ivy. Ahh well, guess maybe I do now.

Friday came and went, with plenty to fill the hours and Saturday morning we got up and headed back to Pittsburgh for one more track meet. The poison ivy stuff was getting a bit worse. Found a couple spots on my legs and thighs, and more came out on my arms. hmm, strange.

By the time we arrived at the track, it was definitely impeding the use of my hands somewhat. I made it through the meet though (and i'm a bit relieved that they didn't need me to fill out the co-ed 4x100m team afterall, I was getting really itchy by that point). Meet, team cookout afterwards and the bumps are starting to appear on my face now. Gah!

We stayed at my old coach's house that night, had a good time chatting with him and his family, as always. The conversation kept my thoughts off the itching, which was getting worse by the hour. The next morning I chose to wear my least invasive clothing: a pair of running shorts and soft long sleeved shirt. We headed out after lunch, before the Pen's game started and paused at Loews to get a sink fixture we'd been needing before we headed home. Once home again (thank goodness!) (for good!) the bumps were even worse. I called a couple doctor friends for their thoughts and no one was home. At which point I collapsed on the futon to wallow in my pain and try try try not to scratch. ahhh!!!!!!!!! Joel came in, made one more phone call and informed me that we'd go see Doctor Tom at 8:15.

We did just that. and Doctor Tom identified my ailment as Poison Sumac! Gave me a shot, and a prescription for a bunch of corticosteroids and we limped our way home by 9:30. One week down. Hopefully many many more to go. ... but i'm really glad that April is over.

Night Running: Clear as Mud

{ 10:35, 2 April 2008 } { 3 comments } { Link }

I wasn't trying to go for a night run. But it had been a super busy day at work, and Joel was gone to an evening meeting, and I wasn't really all that hungry. So when I finished my second job (baking bagels) by 7:00pm and still had the urge to throw on the running shoes and head for the door, I did not hold back.

Out the door by 7:30, in this week just past the solstice and already well into Daylight Savings Time, there was still light in the sky. I'd just go for a few miles, just to stretch out the legs.

Now this might be incomprehensible to a non-runner, but the above scenario happens to be a perfect possible recipe for a long run. Kinda like making babies, you just have to have the right ingredients in the right place at the right time and it might or it might not happen. In this case, it happened (not babies, but a long run). 2 miles in, I was feeling really smooth, strong and good. So instead of turning for home, I kept going, "oh, maybe I'll do the slightly longer loop," I thought. I still had options for a 6 or an 8 mile loop.

Well, those two turnoffs came and went. Its starting to get fairly dark now, though the mild spring weather was quite pleasant, in daylight and at night, it was a shorts-and-a-tshirt kinda run. It was Wednesday evening, and by that time of night it seems that most of the other inhabitants of my area are pretty well holed up for the night. The roads were almost completely empty of cars.

You could probably guess that I didn't turn back at the 4 mile or the 5 mile points either. Nope, I took the last turnoff available that would really get me back at all -- the long way. Up around across the mountain and looping over the hills in a particularly indirect direction, I finally ended up back on a road that led back to town. No street lights out there, no cars, an occasional house or abandoned strip mine. Complete peace -- within and without. I haven't been feeling much like running lately, but everything clicked tonight and the miles passed without effort or notice. Winding through the hills on these narrow gravel roads, I could only hear my footsteps and breathing and my night-vision was working nicely.

4 miles turned into 14. I wasn't wearing a watch, so I have no idea how long it took. But I was back home, and eating a hastily prepared (bagel cheese sandwich) dinner before 10 o'clock.

A Strange Combination

{ 09:54, 20 March 2008 } { 0 comments } { Link }

As I write this, outside my window the sun is shining brightly, and a thick blanket of fine snowflakes is blowing back and forth. The birds are singing and the tress are tipped with a light blanket of the white stuff. A very strange combination, particularly appropriate for the first day of spring in this part of the world.

The little knobblies of developing fiddleheads are prominent at the base of all the ferns. In areas of turkey scratching and deer feeding, the fine, bleached, tender tendrils of sprouted forest floor plants glow amid the damp earth. The trails are slowly picking up a carpet of red buds that have started falling off the trees and even the peonies have sprouted. Snow or not, you can't fool me, winter, spring is definitely on its way.

Yesterday the cat and I went for a walk in the woods. Our goal was to sneak up on the spring peepers in the old reservoir at the top of the hill. We successfully did that, and sat and listened to them until the rain started to really fall again. Their collective song rang loud and resonant, particularly when I turned and faced the crowd. The sensation was almost like a rock concert, I could feel the noise in my skull. But as we sat and listened, individual songs would pop out of the woodwork. At one point I was pretty sure there were a few wild turkeys chattering on the other side of the pond.

These individual tunes would wind and waver their way above the sound of the collective, unique songs of a very different nature than the rhythmic chirruping. We ran down the trail back to the house in the rain storm, the cat keeping up admirably.

A Good Foundation

{ 08:35, 17 March 2008 } { 0 comments } { Link }

Having been denied our well intentioned bakery plan in downtown we have gone underground once again. We have begun the process of building the brick oven right in our own backyard, where we have permission to build it from the city, but have been specifically forbidden to use it as a business. Fine, then, we'll just bake lots of bread there and take it elsewhere to sell it.

So in the midst of our fine weather last week, that held out for days despite many weather reports full of doom and sleet, Joel got most of the foundation dug. He's out there now in the frost, tidying it up while we wait for the visiting relatives to wake up for breakfast. Its looking promising to have a warm enough day to pour the concrete this week and then we can buckle down and start building up the actual oven. The goal is to be able to host our first firing party in May.

This baby will multiply our productivity exponentially and clear up the kitchen space for important tasks like making lunch on baking day, something which we have had to forgo in the past year. Meanwhile, in the rest of the yard, things are slowly waking up. Buds are swelling, leaves popping out and some tough little seeds we test planted super early are bravely pushing through the damp soil. Purple Orach, peas & turnips are turning their little seed leaves to the sun as I type, and a few rows of dormant cilantro, arugula and collard plants from last fall are wiping the sleep from their eyes and getting ready for a productive spring.

Our eating table has been downsized in lieu of having table space to start more seedlings inside. Now I just need to track down another grow lamp. Poor, light deprived things. Its an exciting time of year, for sure.

Icy Lashes

{ 02:16, 20 February 2008 } { 1 comments } { Link }

The view through icy lashes is a familiar one. Nothing has changed really, from the past few days, and we've all seen snow before. The familiarity though, is what makes observation fascinating. On a snowy day, one visiting a new place will forever associate that place with a blanket of snow. At home though, each day comes with its own subtly unique features.

The view, through icy lashes, is difficult to decipher. The thick snow falling, the cause of the aforementioned icy lashes, obscures trees, buildings, and potholes. A runner is a bit more hesitant than usual with her foot placements.

The view, through those icy lashes, is a quiet one. The recent turn of the weather, back into winter mode has muffled the bird songs and the runner makes footprints along the single car-track trail on the street. Plenty of wood smoke billows out of each house's chimney, but it is a silent participant as usual, and there is not enough wind in this valley to turn the squeaky whirley-gigs of the furnace caps.

The view through icy lashes is an isolated one. The shadow of a person moves past a window in a house, but this is all. The raised red flags indicate that the mailman is late and even the most enthusiastic dogs fail to rouse themselves when the runner passes today. Horses huddle in protected corners of their field and signs of anybody else having past recently are quickly obliterated by the accumulating snow. The snow started in the middle of the morning, so school wasn't canceled - and all the kids are still there. The hills show no marks of sled riding or snow ball throwing.

This view, through the icy lashes of a runner, is full of determination, pride and hope. After all, if one is out running in these conditions, what in the future could not be attempted. When spring's ideal weather rolls around, this runner won't be struggling to shed her winter slothfulness. No, her stride will be light and full of spring as the sun warms her well-seasoned tendons and her shoes can grip the solid ground once again.

Yes, the view today, through those icy lashes, is certainly inspiring. Each tree branch is lined with white, large flakes swirl tightly and a monochrome picture of the world filters through. It was the view through a closed window that got the runner out of the house in the first place. "Let's go run in THAT," she might have mentioned to her running shoes, "I bet its not even very cold out."

The view through icy lashes is ... getting a bit damp. No, its not particularly cold out, not sub-0 at least, and the snowflakes have a bit of Stick to them. They employ that Stick, not just on lashes, but on chins, hats, shoulders and pant legs - where the heat generated by muscle contraction kick starts the melting process. Ice over deeper puddles is not so thick, and thanks to their cloak of snow, not entirely unavoidable. Several have been broken into and a bit of their water borrowed to help keep her shoes wet.

The viewer through icy lashes is grateful. Grateful to have this chance to go running, running in the snow, and to be able to return home to a well-warmed wood stove and a cup of tea; Grateful that such places exist still, where one can be alone with the weather, and safe from an unexpected turn of events due to a friendly and accessible community of friends and neighbors; Grateful simply for the physical ability of self-propulsion.

The view through icy lashes is getting a bit too obscured, so our runner covers her eyes with her warm hands, one at a time, to melt the crust that has formed there to clear her vision - for at least a few moments.

The Power of Speech

{ 12:14, 15 February 2008 } { 0 comments } { Link }

Perusing the online version of the NY Times this morning, I came across a quote from "presidential hopeful, Mrs. Hilary Clinton" that made me respond aloud to the empty house, "that is NOT true." Mrs. Clinton said of her opponent, Barack Obama's tendency toward and skill in the art of rhetoric,

“Speeches don’t put food on the table. Speeches don’t fill up your tank, or fill your prescription, or do anything about that stack of bills that keeps you up at night.”

They DO though. I do not see the role of a president to lead the country around on a leash, feed us at the proper mealtimes and make sure we have a comfortable bed in which to sleep at night. I do not see the role of the president to be to determine our morals and personal choices of who or how we will marry, whether we will or won't have children or what sorts of foods we should or shouldn't be able to eat (or sell). These are our own responsibilities.

The role of the president is to make sure that we remain capable of and allowed to make our own decisions and plans. Speeches DO put food on the table. A powerful speaker has much more power (than, say, George W. Bush) because he or she can inspire an audience to action. And when the energy, ideas and motivations of the individual constituents of our country are directed towards a goal (say, putting food on the table, or paying bills) in a productive and unified way ... there is nothing that we could not accomplish.

Do I dream? Is this realistic?

Yes. And I don't know.

But dreaming is step one. And the value of clear and inspiring communication can not be overstated.

His Nobs

{ 11:29, 4 February 2008 } { 0 comments } { Link }

While some ungodly percentage of the US population was glued to their television all evening to watch Super Bowl Commercials, Joel and I took each other on in an animated game of reading the Cribbage Rules followed by a spirited adventure around the cribbage board three times in a row.

Most of the weekend was spent organizing financial figures from the past year, and projecting the figures yet to come - in preparation for a meeting at the bank today to discuss funding for our bakery project. Scintillating, it was. While it is exciting to think about and talk about, just dealing with all those numbers left us pretty brain-dead and burnt out - we actually considered finding a place to watch the football game, just to mix up our life a bit.

We have a strong tendency to stick with the way we imagine our life to be - we aren't good at going out of our box. Once a box has been established, its easy in this area to stay in it. There's no deluge of outside forces that one might encounter in a city, or college town, that would stretch ones imagination and borders. What could we do? There's a BBQ restaurant a town away - for a former vegetarian and former vegan who rarely go out to eat. that could count as stretching boundaries. We could go visit some friends, just to mix things up.

A couple of phone calls later, it was determined that most of the others must have already had plans: no one was home. A situation which makes visiting difficult, at best, impossible at worst.

It was with a flash of inspiration that I realized it was a perfect situation for a game night. So after a wonderful run in the evening darkness and a simple dinner of refried black beans and rice (and some leftover oatmeal chocolate chip cake), we settled in to re-learn the classic card game of Cribbage. After a minor confrontation about how to best disseminate the text from the rules sheet to both contestants the rules were comprehended and the game began - with a bowlful of date pieces to fuel us.

It was a tight match with a neck and neck first game, the deal landing on me unfortunately allowing Joel to break the tape first. I rallied with a killer second game that wasn't close at all - he had to deal most of the hands that game (which, if you're familiar with Cribbage means that I was scoring more points in a majority of the hands). The third game saw Joel out to an early lead before I came back and ended up winning going away, but by no means a blow-out, to win the set 2 games to 1.

Both competitors conceeded that it was a good game and a fun sport. We will certainly re-visit the arena before too long (and before the market season begins!) with fewer reservations and greater determination to be the one left holding His Nobs at the opportune time!

Baking Up A Big Batch of Dirt

{ 12:48, 18 January 2008 } { 0 comments } { Link }

That's right. Dirt.

Its getting on towards seed-starting time of the year once again, and in a monstrous attempt to start much stronger and better plants than I did last year, I'm trying a few new things. One of those things: sterilized soil. I use compost & garden soil to fill my starting flats. I just can't bring myself to purchase potting soil from the store. But I have heard, and it makes sense that garden soil is less ideal because it can harbor harmful bugs, molds and fungi. Of course, it can also harbor helpful organisms, but it seems that at the point of germination, harmful things cause more harm than helpful things cause good.

Or that's the theory at least. And I thought I'd try it out.

So yesterday, I baked up three big pans of soil. About 45 minutes (or a touch longer when I got involved in working and forgot to pull them out of the oven) at 200 degrees is what I did. Then I'll mix that baked soil with some amendments - bonemeal, kelp meal (if i can find it), lime, etc.

The new-to-us woodstove will provide some additional heat this year, to supplement the heating pad and I'm hoping to get a second flourescent light. My office, which had taken up residence in the sunniest part of the house, has been re-located to the coziest part of the house, upstairs, leaving the sunny living room, empty and ready for lots of potential garden crops.

The FedCo order arrived yesterday, so all we need now is a convenient weekend at home ... hmm, is n't today Friday??!

Inside Out

{ 10:40, 2 January 2008 } { 0 comments } { Link }

We went on a trip, a vacation, a family holiday. Passing the same landmarks on the way home that we had passed the week before as we started our journey, I was overcome with a realization of all that had happened in the last week. I felt like a changed person since the last time I had seen that escalator, that highway sign.

The beautiful, exciting and often difficult week that had passed in between the two signs had taught me more about myself, my family and enhanced relationships that have already been years in developing.

It is exciting to realize the point to otherwise entirely frivolous expense, and made the time, effort, money and resources seem more well spent.

Remissives & Permissives but not Submissives

{ 08:33, 17 December 2007 } { 0 comments } { Link }

Oh, I've been remiss!

Sitting here now, again at work, with the splatter of last week's raindrops morphed into the silent singing of snowflakes - big, beautiful snowflakes - I can't help but smile and feel cozy. Plans for the bakery remain stalled, despite our best intentions and I have not yet begun to build all the shelves I was hoping to have done by now.

But I will always have my individual short-comings, or goals that I haven't yet attained. Those are trivial details.

We have more friends around town and the area now and are involved with several programs locally that are making a difference, making connections and bring people together. This crazy life becomes more satisfying every month. (Plus, the seed catalogs have arrived!)

Our town has a Christmas tree this year, for the first time in decades. Its a big pine, cut out of a woman's yard and set up at the traffic light in town, decorated with donated and hand made ornaments by anyone from the area. Last night, as we walked home from a friend's house in the snow, we saw that the wind had knocked the pride of Belington over. Our beautiful Christmas tree was laying there in the snow, lights still lit, some ornaments hanging on, some scattered around it where it lay. We picked the monster up from the tip and worked it back up to the standing position. It was a bit ruffled, lights not evenly covering it anymore, but it was standing with a dusting of snow adding some decoration.

As we stood there and admired it once again, another gust of wind came through and blew it over once more. The stand needs to be wider.

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