...checking in.

"Mainly, I think that we (and by we, I mean me, again)—against our great wealth of experience to the contrary—harbor the belief that in reaching our goals we will be freed from the neurosis, fear, self-doubt, obsession, and myriad other emotional and psychological discomforts that accompany writing. Or any other kind of work, life, or humanness. If I just find love. If I just get into this graduate program. If I just lose this 5 pounds. If I just finish this book. If I just publish this book. If it just gets reviewed well. If I just manage to assemble this Ikea bookshelf. THEN, I will stop wondering if I am good enough. Then, I will be able to stop worrying. Then, I will be liberated from the bondage of self-concern and free to pursue a life of service. Needless to say, this secret expectation is never met. I mean, thank god. Each time it goes unmet, I think we wake up a tiny bit more to the actual experience of living."...zzzzzzttttttttttttttt! Bazzing!

I mean, i guess that just magically turns into a kind of living in the moment stuff. Our own, weird moment, it's ok. Well, hell, it's the only time I've ever really felt happiness. :)

Cheaters and eaters

I can't resist alliteration.

I'm out of the raw milk I picked up last week from Family Cow Farmstand. It's too far to drive regularly, but they are planning on expanding their delivery to include a stop along Route 15 in Essex, and if so, I will definitely join their weekly milk CSA. $5 per half gallon, and yes, $10 per gallon. Not the cheapest I've seen, but delivery makes it possible, otherwise, I'd just pay that in gas getting somewhere.

This is the first raw milk I have had for years, maybe even since growing up drinking goat's milk. I love milk, for years it was my beverage of choice, but I am already ready to boycott the 'regular' stuff. Not because of taste, but because I feel as though I am being lied to, and cheated on. This has been a huge reason for my localvore quest lately - true, I certainly think this food is more healthy for us, and for the animals, community etc, but I am really just sick of filling my belly with falsities.

After bringing home the milk last week, in a big glass 1/2 gallon mason jar, I poured off most of the cream to have with our coffee (not big coffee drinkers but we have this stuff from Panama mmmmm), and simply drank most of the rest. Mmm. So when ran out of cream yesterday, I decided to run to the store because I was already looking forward to coffee for the next morning.

I think I spent at least 20 minutes deciding what to buy. First, I went right to the normal dairy section in Hannaford's, thinking I would get what I usually do, I mean, I'd bee drinking it for years and enjoying it. Well, not so much now. I have been reading a lot of milk literature. Not only about the benefits of raw milk, but about the dangers of mass-production, and even banality of pasteurization. (See this article for information regarding types of milk vs. types of cow...)

I picked up a half-gallon, not wholly satisfied. It was a 'Vermont' company, but I do not know how much I trust it, I do not believe it's really 'localvore' because it's never labeled that and always available in the huge chain grocery stores.

Then I walked towards the 'Organic' section to see what I might find. Thinking perhaps Organic Valley half and half would make me feel better, but here again is where my attempt to gain knowledge is turning me away. I know that though organic, this company is still owned by one of the huge companies promoting industrial agriculture. SO what's the next option? Soy. There are a few choices, even a soy 'creamer.' First though: what makes it 'creamy?' And why should I choose to support soy, another of our mutilated, industrialized crops? Well, at least it doesn't have (as many?) dying or sick animals involved. So, organic plan soy milk is what it is. Yummy, but I still left feeling like a fool.

How am I walking around in this land of plenty, and mistrusting everything I see? It's all going to fill my belly, but I want more than that. We seek truth in all other aspects of our lives, and we deserve to be able to nourish ourselves with it from the inside out.

Meat Share vs. Car Repair

In line at Hannaford’s, I’m looking down at the black belt where I’ve placed my carefully selected items, knowing it’s going to cost more than it looks like it should. A plastic stick divides my bounty from the woman’s in front of me. I try not to be assuming, but I look out of the corner of my eye to asses her situation. She must have at least 3 children at home, and this week’s dinner looks like tacos, hamburger helper and salad mix. She had chosen meat, baby skinless carrots, bags of salad mix and soda. Delicious and home-cooked no doubt (except for the soda), and it will fill their bellies.
I look at my measly produce, almond milk, eggs, tofu and pasta sauce,(etc) knowing that she’s feeding three times as many people, and not spending much more than I will. And – I didn’t even buy organic this time. Hannaford's doesn't have much of a selection, anyway, Their organic produce section consists of lettuce, cucumbers and celery, and it seems to be cleared out by 4 p.m. every day. As far as I know, the only local products they sell are Bove's pasta sauce ($6 per jar, but delish) and hydroponic tomatoes - Vermatoes. Haha.
I am not pointing this out to try to make a point that I am a 'better' shopper. I have no idea what I would be buying if I had to feed a large family. It would completely depend on our budget - which is what sucks about this food system right now. It's nearly impossible to buy idealistically when you're broke. Many times, I come to the end of the month and buy good groceries on my credit card because I believe we deserve to eat well. Now I am being good, and leaving the credit cards at home, lest I think I will ever be able to pay them off.
Well, one of the reasons and I am working on a particularly tight budget is because I needed a new starter in my truck this week. $250. I can't complain much - I was not even very upset. I have had this truck, which I paid $700 for, for a full year this month (in fact, I also paid to renew the registration, but this was an expected cost.) I have not had a repair in five months, so I had felt it was due - routine maintenence kind of thing.

Though, that $250 was going to be Jamie and I's meat CSA money for the summer. I had met a woman from Maple Wind Farm at the last Burlington Farmer's Market. The farm had a pick-up point in Richmond (very close) and this could work for us! I had finally gotten Jamie even more excited about eating local, good, clean food. Though truthfully, I believe we can go without meat if we were going to be totally hardcore, but we are choosing a different angle. I know we will both want to buy it every so often, and the last six months or so we have been only buying local. It's easy enough to get now that we realize that Sweet Clover Market is close by, but it gets quite pricey. $12 for some chicken every once in a while sometimes gets hard to spend too.

Eating right has lots of challenges (who knows what is right, anyway - this just feels right and real right now) and budget is a big one. It makes me upset to know what I want, to know what is best, and to not be able to get it because we're trying to get enough to eat. I have certainly been the one to say 'Pay more, eat less' and I think I do follow this mantra.

But that unexpected $250 really threw off me off my golden path.

Whammy.

(PS, Jamie and I ended up finding a cheaper meat share from Applecheek Farm, which we will pick up on Thursday - wow!)

Ramps, rocket, redemption

It's only just hitting mid-April, but I found my first ever wild leeks (ramps). I feel like a Yankee, or Pocahontas, or something equally as idyllic and conjoined with nature.

It was a gift from our woods, the first one to come directly to me, unless maybe you would count the pussy willows I found a month ago, before anything had turned green at all. But well, I couldn't eat those.


I was actually heading downtown to go have lunch with a friend, but I just had these little things on my mind, and had to see if it was that easy to find them. I left the door open to my house, and the door open to my truck (not realizing this of course, until I came back to them both, and hoped that my battery was not dead) and struck out right then and there. Cell phone in my pocket, I was still texting Laura saying I was "leaving in 5" as I crossed the threshold from the yard to the forest. There were quite a bit of green things. Trilium (not blooming yet) as I had learned from one of the herbal talks I went to recently. Also, one other small, dark green-leafed crawling vine I recognized from the same talks, but could not name. Then ferns (not fiddleheads) and another single-leafed floor covering. I thought it may have been one of the leeks, they were just not fully grown yet. Perhaps I was looking too early in the season.

These little leaves were sticking up in patches everywhere, where any bit of sun ma have happened to pass between leaves and hit the forest floor. I had expected the leeks to be like this. These leaves, though, were not promising, almost menacing - a darker green, and dappled just as their mother.

We have a series of paths that begin beyond the large field behind our house. They would be perfect cross-country ski paths, or snowshoe paths, (we intended to do more snowshoeing, but did not do enough to get back there anyway - this year) wide enough for a tractor or something, which probably originally cleared them. Also, we hear, they go all the way to a neighbors house on the other side of the hill. We really need more than 5 minutes to explore, but that is another story.

I decided it seemed illogical to start out on the path - why would wild leeks be sitting nicely ready to be picked alongside a wide, once-tractor trodden path? So I started near and even crossed over into the bull's (Hercules') fenced in area, since he has kind of a little stream which I thought they might grown near.

They live in colonies. I saw quite a few pictures while I was dong some research, and they grow as in little families up out of the dead leaves. In the pictures I saw, there was not much else for green around. The trees are not green yet - we're lucky that there are even a few red nips of buds starting on some certain trees. It's going to happen so fast though - in less than two weeks, we'll have a neon backdrop. Just like in the fall, the hills are on fire for the same amount of time. It's even a fast change for us humans.

I walked through the woods, finding some old barbed wire fence (not Hercules') and tried not to catch my leggings on them. Dressed for yoga, cell phone still in my pocket. I felt so 17th century Yankee... I was only about 20 feet or so into the woods, walking parallel to my yard, up hill, the parallel to the field. Nothing but more of the same four types of greenery I mentioned before, but not what I wanted. I thought, "Why should I think it would be so easy?" Like wild animals, the leeks would know where humans were living, and wouldn't set up their homes so close by. They're wild things, they have the intuition. Perhaps I was giving plants way too much credit.

I kept thinking I saw them...those single-leafed beings were fooling me. Some larger than one another, and glowing in the bit of sunlight, looked like the lime-green feathers I was searching for. I almost turned around (mind you "leaving in 5" text was probably 20 minutes in the making) but I saw the path I had spoken about earlier starting in front of me. I had made my way to the top of our field.

There is a huge, ancient tree very close to the start of the path. This winter, and in other low-light times, this tree scares me - it's more like a dark being. It barely sprout leaves, and the few were so high up last summer, I could barely discern what kind it was (my guess is Maple.) The tree certainly has a presence, but I saw it and realized I had been building up it's size - for the winter, I had not wanted to face it alone, that's how intimidating it is...But well, I looked at it in the face, and asked gently "Tree, show me where the leeks are." In my head, not out loud, ya know, preserving some sanity. I turned my back to the tree, to head down the path towards the field and house, and BAM leeks right in front of me. Glowing green, the big bright floppy green rabbit's ears settled in their circle right under a different old maple.

Thank you.

Local recipes and perhaps a supper club

Hello all,

It's Spring and I am falling over myself deciding on a meat share, where to get my raw milk, and what I can find/harvest from my woods. I want to share my excitement (and bounty) with everyone!

I am going to start exploring and exposing recipes including all local ingredients, and maybe when we get it together, we can have monthly dinner parties.

Here's one from last night - a light dinner, but so good:

Sauteed zucchini and tomatoes w/shaved cheese on top of polenta, side of Vermont Cranberry beans. (The tomatoes and zucchini were not local last night, but could have been 100%!)

OK, enough for now....who's down for some dinner!?

DOing it

I made some purchases today - and desired to make more, but it's December, and Christmas is right around the corner. How come it's only now that I am 26 and an adult that I know what I would ask for?

Purchase: Mediabistro.com Avant Guild Membership and Freelance Marketplace subscription. $55 dollars plus $15 monthly.

Desired purchase: Down dog t's from stayhuman.com

My new goal is to either submit something to a literary magazine, or to send one query each week. Doable.

It's weird to find yourself in the same cycles. The web remembers. It was Dec. 2007 when I last had an Avant Guild membership. It's December again, life slows down, but I still have yet to accept that. I'm fighting against the freeze! What I really end up doing though, I spreading myself too thin, and taking my focus away from other important things, like the jobs and commitments I have already.

So glad to have spent most of the day with Robynne Anne Locke yesterday! We always get too deep about career and life though, going along with my mood of the last week. I think maybe this cycle is perpetuated by another - the travel cycle. I tend to travel every November. Perhaps it shortens or elongates the fall season, so when December comes, I'm scattered.

December is the prettiest month name.

Beginning delicately,
like shards of thin ice
I place in my mouth,
to taste the winter.
Turned too quickly
the edge is as sharp as a knife -
the iron taste lingers
and blends with the grit
taking me further
into the darkness
of the season.

I decided not go to yoga tonight, since the truck is broken again, and I need tires. I did an experimental practice at home - though I may venture out to buy a bottle of the darkest red to first alleviate my cabin fever before I come back home to relish in it.

Blue

It's said that starting something new on the first Monday in December is a bad idea. The waves started first. She was sure they were waves, the comforting, familiar sound of white and blue and the whoosh as the water trickled back through the sand. She didn't open her eyes for a long while, wanting to hover in the half awake, half asleep feeling for as long as possible. But inevitably, then sunlight pulled her to the surface, and she was conscious.
Canary sheets, new, clean, cool. Alone. She stood up, still holding onto one corner, and stepped through the open doorway of this room, into the sun room off the side. The front door was open too. Open to an expanse of yellow sand, and the cobalt sea that woke her. Dropping the sheet, in underwear and a tee, she sat at the small table in the center of the room. She felt the cold, polygonal shapes of the mosaic making indents in her thighs. She traced the designs on the small matching coffee table. A few wild grains of the ocre sand had pushed their way in through the open doorway, the breeze was warm, as though it was coming off a dessert, not the ocean. In the most casual way, she felt lost.

"Coffee?"

She spun around, this was real? Well, she'd "Love some..."

The woman was friendly, familiar, but she couldn't remember her name...her mother? No, certainly not. But images did not come flooding back to her. She hoped when she brought the coffee, the woman would sit down and join her.

Again realizing she was in her underwear, she decided to look in the dresser across from the end of the bed. It was filled with her clothes, things that smelled familiar. She grabbed a wrap-skirt, and tied it around her waist. She picked the sheet back up, but only to place it back on the bed, unmade. She felt lost, yet comfortable. Not quite sure where she was, or why, but at the same time, not surprised.

The woman came back with the coffee, and did join her at the table with her own small cup. "Thank you..." she trailed off.

"Lydia," smiling. "I own this small inn here. You've been sleeping for a day or so...you had a long few days of travel...Joan."

That opened a door. Joan slowly sipped her coffee, sensing conversation was not necessarily necessary. She was brought a little closer to earth, a little more of the dreamlike cloud she felt like she was in lifted. "Thank you...yes, it was a long few days...coming from LA." She looked out at the blue water again...waves continuously and quietly crushing the sand into even tinier bits. Fiji. She had known nothing about it, wanted to go on a vacation alone. Here she was.

"Thank you for the coffee, I think I needed it." Said Joan. "I am sorry if I am acting a bit loopy, I must have needed this vacation badly."

"Think nothing of it, Joan. I think you're right on - spend the day on the beach, relaxing. I will be around and we can talk whenever you'd like."

"Do you have an international phone I can use?" asked Joan.

"Yes, of course. Who would you like to call?"

Joan didn't know. She just felt so out of touch...wouldn't some one be worried about where she was? 'I am a grown woman,' thought Joan to herself, looking down at the same time towards her own lap.

Lydia rose, taking the empty cups with her, seemingly satisfied with out an answer.

Joan did not feel depressed, did not get back into bed. The coffee had not cleared her head, but had given her some energy. She went back to her dresser, and decided to grab her notebook to write down her thoughts, or at least put pen ot paper to try to find them.

There was a small, new notebook in her dresser, with an envelope sticking out the top. She picked up the empty notebook, and pulled out the letter, from her sister.

(((More to come soon...)))