Three Whole Days …

Stretching out before me. Glorious. I’m fried, and the prospect, now that I’ve turned off the work computer, of having three whole days ahead of me to putter in the garden, get back to my novel, and yes, get back on track with blogging is a glorious prospect.

I have tomatoes coming out my ears and I’ll be posting some pics. I just got a pressure canner so I might try putting up some salsa or tomatoes. I also just bought half a pig from my Milk Lady, which I’ll tell you all about. And I hear there’s some rain on the way, so maybe I’ll go up and look for some mushrooms. I also need to post photos of my ginormous broccoli with no heads — it’s a mystery. The plants are three feet tall but nothing that looks like a head — so my friend Wendy-the-Buddhist, who is also a biologist, and I pinched off all the apical buds a couple of weeks ago. We’re hoping at least for side shoots.

It’s been a lovely summer. My fake children were here for 2 months and have returned to LA for the school year — they put on two spectacular performances of Midsummer’s Night Dream, Lili and I sewed a skirt together as a project that was part of her eighth birthday present, and with any luck my flock of little girls will welcome a baby brother in January — we’re all looking forward to that sweet feeling of a little infant head on the collarbone — and Lili is looking forward to her younger sisters, the twins, learning what it’s like to be deposed by a new baby!

The dogs are on the mend — Owen’s completely out of all bandages and although he’s favoring the hurt leg still, he’s getting stronger by the day. Ray had a tooth pulled last week but seems to have recovered just fine (I can’t look — I’m afraid of teeth things). I think Ray in particular could use a good long run in the mountains this weekend.

But mostly I’m glad that good people fought so hard for us all to have the opportunity to rest at the end of the summer. The Corporate Job is going quite well these days, but the workload has been intense and I just need a wee break. So thank you good people of the labor movement. A break. A small rest at the end of a fun summer. Whew!

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Change is in the air …

It happens every year, and it’s always something of a surprise — about mid-August you can feel that chill in the air every morning — fall is just around the corner. So soon. It was only 2 months ago that it stopped snowing, and now it feels like there’s snow in the air. Overnight temps have been down into the low 40s.

But the hardest part has been that it’s not getting light so early any more. It was easy getting up at 5:30 when it was light outside — and I like getting up so early — it gives me time to take the dog for a walk, get some writing done, water the garden before I have to go to work. But now it’s not light out anymore. Even the dog doesn’t want to get up when the alarm goes off. I’m going to have to grow some discipline someplace before winter (when it’s *really* hard to get up early).

We’re also seeing the beginning of the fall migrations — sandhill cranes, white pelicans, flocks of little songbirds.

Happens every year, and always somethign of a surprise.

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Whole Foods, Whole Lives …

I’ve been thinking for days about Michael Ruhlman’s tribute to his dad — it’s just a tiny note in a really beautiful piece, but Ruhlman points out that his father died in his house, among family, and with his ex-wife by his side. We should all be so lucky, or perhaps, we should all aspire to lead the kinds of lives and build the kinds of relationships where our family and loved ones will want to be there with us for that last mile. Another dear friend just buried his beloved, last week, an incandescent woman who went far too soon, who fought to stay with her daughter with a ferocity that left us all awestruck, and who died at home, with her beautiful daughter and my friend and her sisters and brothers and her mother at her side. It is unbearably sad, but there is something real and comforting in the fact that she died like a real person, surrounded by love, and not in some sterile hospital bed hooked up to things that beeped and shrieked, that she died surrounded by people who were heartbroken, but who helped her make that crossing.

And while it might sound glib at first, I can’t help wondering whether when we all write and talk about food in the way that many of us have been these past few years, what we’re really writing about is our relationships with one another and our deep desire to connect with what is real, and elemental and whole in the world. Our primary relationship with the physical world is through what we eat and what we feed one another — do we want that to be products so mediated that they are unrecognizable, or do we want to eat and feed our loved ones food that is whole, food that comes from known sources, food that was grown and harvested by people with whom we have a relationship, even if it’s as slight as a smile across a Farmer’s Market table once a week?

For much of the late 20th century, the impulse was to outsource all unpleasantness — we removed butchers from supermarkets and hence, removed any evidence that meat came from actual animals. We removed our old people to “homes” where they are cared for by strangers. We removed our sick and ill and dying to hospitals filled with florescent lighting and beeping machinery all designed to preserve the illusion that no one need ever die. We divorced our eating habits from the seasons to the point where we’re flying grapes and oranges and flowers from Chile and Australia and Columbia and we think this is perfectly normal.

I think these things are connected. I think that a growing awareness that natural limitations are not simply challenges to be overcome by technology might be a good thing. And I can’t help but think that there is a connection between chefs like Michael Symon and Chris Cosentino insisting that we learn to honor those animals we eat by not wasting any of their parts, by reviving the old habits of husbandry and thrift, habits which are delicious when done with care — and the movement to bring our dying loved ones home, where with the help of those dedicated hospice workers we can help them through this last transition. When my youngest brother died it was in a hospital, a hospital to which in the 1970s we weren’t even allowed to visit him. He went away, we were sent to our aunt’s house, and then he was gone. It was very sanitized. It still seems unreal. I grew up in a cancer cluster so this happened over and over — and I can’t help but think that while there is nothing more traumatic than losing your mother, that my friend’s daughter will be stronger from actually having been there instead of having her mother whisked away for her “protection.”

The whole/local/SOLE food movement gets a lot of flack for being elitist, for being a yuppie affectation, for being out of touch with “real” people — in this it reminds me of the environmental and adventure sports movements in which I spent so much of my teens and 20s — but there is a deep human need to connect with the unmediated realness of the world — whether that comes by putting on boots and a waterproof jacket and getting up at five in the morning to climb a mountain peak or by building a relationship with an actual person who raises animals or grows produce for you to eat. To seek out ways to connect with the elemental forces of the physical world is a powerful drive in a culture in which we are swaddled in layer after layer of corporate mediation, and perhaps simply deciding to find out where your food comes from is a first step in reconnecting with the world.

Feeding ourselves and our loved ones is our most basic act of love. Michael Ruhlman says his father was a man who loved to be the host, who wouldn’t sit down until everyone had everything they needed, a man who took care of his family. Jim and Mari and Isabella welcomed me into their French idyll that fall when I was so heartbroken over Patrick’s death. I was still very raggedy around the edges and it was generous of them to welcome me to their little green metal table outside that farmhouse near Aix, a green table where we sat and talked and drank wine and ate delicious veal chops we bought from the local butcher (who proudly displayed a photo of the steer who now resided in the case). If what we feed ourselves and our loved ones is the most basic building block for the relationships we build, then it’s not elitist to take more care, to build a food system that relies on actual relationships between people, between people and the land, between people and the animals they raise. Because when it comes right down to it, these relationships are all we really have in this world.

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First Tomatoes

 First Tomatoes Here they are, the first tomatoes of the season. Sasha’s Altai, Prairie Fire and a couple of Galinas. The catalog copy is right — the Sasha’s Altai are delicious — I took one bite of my lunch this afternoon and thought, as I do every year, why would anyone eat a tomato out of season? I really mean it — I’d rather wait all year and eat delicious tomatoes for a few months, than eat those hard things from the store (canned tomatoes are a different matter altogether).

I didn’t really get my act together as far as basil goes — mine is only just coming in — but the summer savory is taking over the herb bed and a chopped up tomato with some salt, olive oil, summer savory and parsley on it was delicious.

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Free at Last …

 Free at Last ... Here he is — Owen with his leg free for the first time in about six months. He’s a little freaked out, as you can see, and the poor leg is pretty irritated from tape and bandaging, but we think the achilles tendon repair is going to hold (knock wood).

The bandages actually came off yesterday, but the vet and I are such chickens about it that he hung out there yesterday and spent the night in a nice, contained little crate. He’s still favoring it, but he’s cruising around the house and yard pretty well, and as you can see, he wanted a boost so he could take a little nap on my bed.

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First Tomato ….

I’d post a photo but since I picked my first yellow cherry Galina yesterday and popped it right into my mouth, well, that would be impossible. I’m thrilled with my tomatoes this year, something I didn’t think would be the case since I couldn’t even get them in the ground until June 17, which is 2-3 weeks late. But the new bed along the fence, combined with the alarming-but-effective pruning of all side suckers, has me looking at a bumper crop of tomatoes. The early bush ones are starting to pink up — the Sasha’s Altai and Prairie Fire — small round tomatoes that grow on low bushy plants. I’m really tickled about the whole thing …

The rest of the garden is in sort of a transitional period. I had to pull a lot of overgrown greens, so when the Mighty Hunter showed up looking for “something green for dinner” I had to send him home with some of the monstrous Gallego kale — all the more tender things have been pulled up. The favas did okay — I got about a cup of favas once all was said and done — I might get another batch, we’ll just have to see — it’s gotten so hot that they’re starting to shrivel up. The beans have finally taken off — Nothing to harvest yet, but the vines are looking good considering their late start.

The season is starting to turn though — all summer we’ve been getting up about 5:30 in order to get stuff done in the morning before work — a little internet goofing off, breakfast, a long walk with Raymond, watering the garden — and the last week or so, it’s not really light at 5:30 any more. It’s making it harder to get up, and really, it’s been more like 6:00 the past few mornings.

And sorry for the spotty blogging — there’s a lot going on around here — some family obligations that are burning up time and energy, work is crazy, and a few other things — plus, it’s summer. All I want to do is GO OUTSIDE. Because as the light in my bedroom window is indicating — winter will come again, bringing it’s own pleasures, but those pleasures do not include living outside as much as possible.

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Garden Update

 Garden Update Well, it’s been about six weeks since the garden went in, and things are going great guns out there. I’ve been through the cool weather crops — spinach, arugula, turnips (mostly greens), and broccoli rabe — I spent last weekend pulling up two rows of bolted arugula that was 2 feet high with pinkish flowers, as well as pulling a bushel basket worth of turnip greens. So now we’re on to warm weather crops, which here in Montana include fava beans.  Garden Update I haven’t harvested any of them yet, some of the pods feel like they’ve only got one or two beans in them. I hear this happens when the weather gets hot — they don’t set beans. We’ll see.

My tomatoes are really happy in their new raised beds. I’ve grown them on strings a couple of times before, but I’ve never really been disciplined about cutting back all the side shoots, which is what they say you should do in order to force the plants to put all their energy into fruit instead of into growing greenery. So this year I bit the bullet and did it — so far, my plants are covered with big bunches of green fruits: here’s the Milano Plum  Garden Update, this one is Jaunne Flamme  Garden Update, and this one is Sasha’s Altai (a Russian tomato I got from High Altitude Garden/Seeds Trust) Garden Update. I think the heavy pruning is great for the indeterminate tomatoes, but I’m not so sure about the bushy determinate ones. Next year I might do the determiniates like Sasha’s Altai and Prairie Fire in cages instead. But I’m thrilled — they love the bed along the fence, and my remote thermometer over there regularly reads in the 100s during the daytime (the white powder is diatomaceous earth — I was having trouble with flea beetles).

I’m growing a couple of new things this year as well. I have Gallego Kale, a Spanish variety and it’s enormous — nearly three feet tall Garden Update and broccoli. I’ve never grown broccoli before and it was a surprise to me that it gets so big. I’m waiting for anything that looks like a head, so far I just have these big plants:  Garden Update.

We lucked out this summer — although we had some high winds (I lost half an old apple tree) we didn’t get the golf-ball-sized hail that they got over in Bozeman. From what I hear, gardens and crops over there were nearly wiped out. The only real failure I’ve had so far this year was my peas — it got hot very quickly and I wasn’t on top of the watering so most of my peas burned up. There were a few, enough for Nina’s twins, Vivi and Lola to spend a lovely afternoon in my yard picking peas and eating them raw out of the pods.

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