FIMBY

Enough eco-friendly orientated posts.

What I want to know is what's summer like in your backyard these days? If you care to share, leave a comment with a link to a blog post or flickr photo (my latest photography foray). Oh, and please share something sunny. Because summer in my backyard these days is, in a word, wet.

But I did manage to take this cheery photo at the farm yesterday after I gleaned peas. Today when I went for our weekly share pickup these beautiful strawflowers were all closed up from the rain (notice those foreboding clouds in the background). And what a rain we've had. Today, every hour or so the sky simply opens up and lets down literally sheets of water. And booming, bone rattling thunder at 9am, what's that all about? Weird.

But honestly, I'm glad for the break from the intense pace of summer sun worship. We live in Maine so when the weather's warm we grow food, harvest food, go to the beach, hike, camp, come home again and harvest some more. I needed a break, and this week I got one. Just don't tell any other Mainers I've enjoyed the week of quiet indoor weather.

I gleaned peas from the farm this morning. No altruistic motivations here (wish I could say I donated them to less fortunate folks), just taking advantage of stocking the freezer with free, organic veggies. This isn't the norm though. Obtaining local, organic and sustainably grown foods costs, sometimes a lot. So why do we do it?

Basically, our family has made the choice to value the health of our bodies, community, planet and the farmers who grow our food. Incidentally, these are also the reasons, more or less, for us choosing a plant based diet.

But the health benefits of sustainable foods aren't just physical. Knowing your farmer is good for your whole health and well being. Buying food from local farms is spiritually grounding and a return to our roots. I am connecting myself to a person, not a corporation, brand or store. That person is directly connected to the land - blood, sweat and tears. My connection to them connects me to the land, albeit somewhat vicariously, and returns me to the original Divine mandate to tend the garden, the task we were created to do.

Valuing everyone's health and "returning to the garden" is all fine and dandy but let's get down to the nitty-gritty, what about the cost? I'm not even going to address the long-term environmental and health costs of eating a fossil fuel dependent diet, that's a book. But if I did the cost question would be blow out of the water. However, I know most people think of cost in terms of next month's paycheck so I'll stick to the here and now.

It's late, I need to go to bed. Story of my life. But I can't help but taking a few minutes to post my favorite photos of the day. Summer is simply heavenly some days. Even though no day is perfect, summer (at least for my garden, farm, beach, woods, mountains, outdoors happy family) tends to have more perfect "moments". Trying to live more in those moments. These are those moments of my day.

Morning Nasturtiums

Stay tuned for tomorrow's garden tutorial on growing nasturtiums. Short of it is, if you haven't yet grown nasturtiums you should. Come back tomorrow to find out why *smile*.

Blueberry Farm Hand

Picked these for snacking at the farm today. Unbelievable to have blueberries already. I was weeding the Pick-Your-Own flower bed earlier so my finger tips are grimy with good ol' fashioned farm dirt - love it.

Ragamuffin on farm swing

Yes, I know her hair is kind of obscuring her face but this is my wild child and this is simply how she looks - on her better days. She's my ragamuffin and by the looks of it in bad need of a haircut. And I'm in love with her just the way she is.

Pickin

Eatin

The kids and I spent time at 4 farms yesterday. We started at Claybrook Farms where Celine was taking horse riding lessons, yesterday's was the last. To honor that occasion we simply had to stop at Nezinscot, farm number 2, on the way home for farm bakery cinnamon buns and cookies.

After a restful lunch at home with time to hang laundry and cut back June's spent perennials we headed to "the farm" (our CSA farm), as we call it. We visited friends, found swallowtail larvae (lovely looking caterpillars) in the parsley patch to grow into butterflies at home. And of course, the main reason for our visit, picked up our lettuce, chard, basil, scallions, spinach and peas.

And then it was over to the strawberry patch at another friend's farm. We started picking there a day earlier with Damien and went back yesterday to see if we could do some serious work to that patch. My three picking machines, also known as the kiddos, wowed and amazed me. I motivated them in the beginning with money but after they each picked a couple quarts they graciously agreed to continue picking for free. Good thing, seeing as in the last 2 days our family has picked 50 pounds of strawberries.

Yesterday was full, as was the day before, of summer activity but it was such a sweet day. Today I wash, freeze and stay home.

I'm a homebody at heart but farms have a way of luring me to enjoy their pleasures. Tidy rows and rows of green, surrounding wooded hills and blue sky. Wild flowers, honest-to-goodness hard work (mostly done by others) and fresh picked food. Oh, and acres for my kids to run, explore, enjoy. This is the good life.

I'm not sure exactly when the summer steam roll train started this year. Probably sometime in February when I began to fantasize about raised beds, weekly pick-ups at the farm, fresh picked berries, wearing sundresses and going to the beach.

I'm officially five days into summer and pretty dog tired from living out my winter fantasies. (No, not that kind silly!) Maybe feeling tired is just a Wednesday thing.

"oh, what a lovely flower", as my kids wait in the car to go to yet another farm

Or maybe it's the-week-is-crammed-with-so-many-good-summer-things-but-you-just-can't-stop-because-the-summer-train's-a-rollin'. Whew, I got tired just typing that.

I'm thinking crossing my fingers a lazy week or even a day will come along in the next couple weeks, realistically sometime after our camping trip. But this week's list of dentist appointment, library visit, berry picking(s) and freezing, cooking a meal for 20 folks, trip to the beach, unsuccessful trip to farm to get manure for building raised bed, last horse riding lesson, farm pick up, and usual weekly errands, grocery shopping, cooking and general home management doesn't allow for a lot of lazing around.*

Frozen strawberries ready to be put into freezer bags

Sometimes that's the way summer is. The "must-dos" all happen NOW because the same weather that ripens the berries for picking (the window of time for picking organic strawberries in Maine is brief) makes for great beach days and for growing weeds in the garden and for picnics and for nightly skateboarding and hiking and camping.....

Tonight is a happy life-is-full tired but I'll be glad for some happy feeling-lazy tired too.

*footnote: Did you know that at week's end the kids & I will have been to 6 different farms this week, cool.

Watched a great movie this weekend that I wholeheartedly recommend seeing. The Real Dirt on Farmer John is a documentary about a family farm turned CSA farm, but it is so much more than that. It's a story about a man and his love for his land. His family's past, his own struggles and triumphs as he tries to make a go of small scale farming in modern America. His mother's love and the alternate cruelty and mistrust of a rural community. And then ultimately finding community where you least expect it.

Chicken at Willow Pond Farm

The really unique thing about this movie was all the 8 mm home movie footage taken by Farmer John's mother when he was a child. This was a significant part of the story and watching it gives the viewer a nostalgic picture of what "the good old days" were like. Obviously, it wasn't all as rosy as the footage, as you find out in the movie, but watching it left me longing to grow up on the family farm in the 50's. Funny, just the kind of upbringing my mom had. And which I never gave much thought to growing up a town girl (and happy to be one).

Good movie. Made my heart ache a little to watch the decline of a community and its farms but gave me warm fuzzies about the increasing popularity of CSA farms.

Tonight's supper was Maine grown potato salad with garden fresh chives and lovage. Celine was simply delighted to pick the first of the garden's offerings as part of her supper prep tonight - she takes after her mom in her love of all things green and blooming. We rounded out the salad with a couple farm ingredients - carrots and chopped dilly beans that I canned last summer. The other additions of chopped olives and spicy mustard, lemon juice and tahini dressing were decidedly not grown in Maine. We made up for it by serving the potatoes on a bed of farm greenhouse grown spicy mesclun mix. It was a wonderful meal made even lovelier by the hyacinth, our first cut flower this season, that graced our table. And like my daughter I was simply delighted.

I'm munching on my salad of farm grown greenhouse mesclun mix that we picked up with our spring share yesterday. The first taste of farm greens is a near spiritual experience for me. Correction, it is spiritual. I am deeply grateful for the turning of the seasons, the Creator and the farmer who grew these vegetables for me. While at the farm yesterday I volunteered to glean the remains of the morning's baby spinach harvest while the kids played for hours in the orchards, fields, mud and barns with no worries about cars or strangers - another gift I'm so grateful for.

Today we are in our garden. Building the calendula bed, raking, pruning and cleaning perennial beds. Chives are up and looking beautiful but that's about it for edibles - thank goodness once again for the farm! The day is an unbelievable 78F, hot enough to warrant homemade lemonade made with (don't tell) white sugar. Kids are happy and I'm in gardening euphoria.

We spent a little time at Willow Pond farm yesterday and the kids discovered another hayloft.

Maine Spring Sheep
Chilly morning
at the farm
skittish lambs and ewes.

Last pick up
of winter roots
and unexpected greens.

Warming sun
melting
frozen mud.

An overcast afternoon
that tempts us
out of doors.

Longer days,
more time to play.
Mounds of dirty snow.