We came home with four pints of berries and two very stained little faces for $11. I have to say, I think we got the better end of the deal because I’m positive those little girls ate at least a pint between them, maybe more. Swee filled one of the pint boxes we purchased, though her hand went to her mouth just as many times as to the carton. Beans didn’t even pretend; every single berry went into her tummy. Together they charmed two different grandpa-types, both of whom “helped” them pick despite being strangers five minutes before.

We plucked the first cherry tomatoes this morning, and soon after, found a cucumber hiding under the leaves. My big helper, who doesn’t care for tomatoes, distributed her finds to everyone else, and the first cuke went to work with daddy in his salad.

We made it to the farmer’s market this afternoon for the first time this season. It was bustling and lively. Cars lined both sides of the road, and boats were coming and going from the dock at the rear of the market space. I remarked to J at one point that it was wonderful to know people now, though how interesting to realize that everyone we knew was working, not shopping. I suppose that’s what separates the tourists from the locals. The ice cream bus, the woman selling handmade dresses, even the mandolin player – all acquaintances from our little village. We bought carrots and kale, purple beans and sunflowers, and two strawberry pops that were gobbled before making it into a photo.

With the girls in bed and J at work, I let the chickens wander the yard as I poked around in the garden. Out came the last of the chard, three tomatoes and three more cukes. I moved some broccoli that was being crowded out by the volunteer sunflowers (cheeky chipmunk planting birdseed!), and pulled a few weeds. I’ll need to make sure my pickling supplies are stocked up because I think we’ll be buried in cucumbers soon.

It doesn’t get much more local than this. From the berry farm two miles away, to the market with vendors and growers from around the area, to our own scrubby little back yard, right now it’s easy to eat locally. It’s an area in which I need practice – mainly learning to plan the menu around what’s available rather than the shopping trip around the menu. I think we’re almost at the point financially where the grocery budget won’t have to be what suffers when things are a little tight, which will do wonders for the choices I’m able to make. I’ve gotten really good at feeding us healthy food on a small amount of money, and haven’t fallen into the trap of buying processed crap, for the most part (there are always a couple of snacky things that wind up in the cart). But I’d like to make a shift to a more local diet.

I don’t know what that will look like when the weather shifts. I don’t know if I can convince the girls to eat root veggies, or J to forego meat – the latter not because it’s unavailable, but because I think it will still be out of our price range.

I’ve been reading a lot about food lately. I finally finished The Omnivore’s Dilemma which I started way back in my Food & Politics class at Johns Hopkins. I read Animal, Vegetable, Miracle and marveled at their family’s ability to produce so. much. food. To be honest, I struggled with both books, a little bit, and I think it’s because both authors were coming from a place of such privilege – money, connections, land. Great points were made, and there was so much interesting content, but it was a little hard to connect.

I finished Ben Hewitt’s The Town that Food Saved just this weekend. I don’t usually buy books, but picked this one up at our local library’s used book sale for a dollar because the title grabbed me. I was doubly interested when I saw the author’s name, because I thoroughly enjoy Ben’s blog. His tale acknowledges that eating locally can be a real challenge when you’re living paycheck to paycheck, and dives into what needs to happen for a local food economy to really be a viable option for normal people. It was an interesting read.

So! As with everything, we’ll keep taking baby steps.

I’d be interested to know what successes (and failures!) you’ve had on this same journey, as well as any tips for us!

The pumpkins are taking over our sitting area. They have tumbled almost completely out of the raised bed, and are creeping towards our chairs and gliders. Huge yellow-gold flowers are in varying stages of openness, and below each one is a round, green mini-pumpkin. The cucumber vines are similarly flowering, smaller lemon-yellow blossoms hiding beneath the canopy of leaves. Broccoli looks like broccoli now, a fact that tickles Beanie’s funny bone whenever she peeks inside the leaves.

We’re not harvesting anything right now. The chard and strawberries are done, and the tomatoes aren’t anywhere near ready. I overheard another gardener at yoga the other night, bemoaning the slow season, so I don’t believe it’s just my small patch that’s lagging behind the calendar.

Petunia, Pansy, Dottie and Pinky

Dottie and Pansy

Petunia

 

Our chickens will be thirteen weeks old this coming Sunday, and are allowed to free-range the yard in the evenings. We let them out when the girls go to bed and they wander around our ankles as we unwind by the fire. Tonight they joined me as I read, pecking at the dandelions underneath the glider. Only Pinky has been bold enough to investigate the veggie patch so far. Dottie is the biggest, and at the top of the pecking order. She seems to be something of a barnyard mutt with crazy coloring and fuzzy feet.

Pansy and Petunia, the Silver-Laced Wyandottes, are referred to as “the twins” because for a long time, only I could tell them apart. You can see, however, that Pansy has developed a substantial wattle, very distinct from her sister. She has also taken to making noise in the morning, a sound very much akin to a rubber chicken. We are wondering if perhaps she will soon be “the chicken formerly known as Pansy,” requiring a more masculine moniker. We shall see.

We acquired two cast iron skillets, so some re-seasoning is on the list as my next project. Beanie and I foraged some black raspberries last week, and my little helper helped herself to several tremendous mouthfuls. With a scant cupful leftover, I tried Molly’s puff pancake. I enjoyed it, which is good because I ate it for breakfast and lunch since no one else did. Some of those strawberries we picked were plunked onto homemade shortcake one evening. I managed to freeze a few, but most of them got gobbled right up. I’m hoping to sneak out early one of these mornings to pick raspberries up the road.

I’m enjoying the cool evenings, even more because I am not enjoying the heat of the late afternoons. I shouldn’t complain because soon the snow will fly, but for now, I’m happy to light the lantern and relax in a hoodie with a good book and my chickens.

 

 

The green wheat’s a-growing,
The lark sings on high;
In scarlet silk a-glowing,
Here stand I.

– Cicely Mary Barker, “Poppy” from Flower Fairies of the Seasons

The poppies in Swee’s wildflower garden opened this week, a bright contrast to all of the green around us. She loves the Flower Fairies, and it’s been such fun connecting the pictures and poems with the real things growing. 

I don’t have much experience growing flowers other than marigolds and petunias, but would love to branch out with all kinds of perennials when we finally land in a place of our own. Until then, we’ll enjoy the surprises this seed mix throws our way. I think the cosmos are next…

I am finding that as I get older, I feel others’ tragedies more strongly, and I suspect that as a mama, it’s because I now have more to lose. Perhaps it’s also because social media brings everything into my living room, and I am reading the words and seeing the photos of friends and loved ones in pain so quickly afterward.

There have been unbearable losses this week, and much sadness and uncertainty.

My sorority sister lost her young husband suddenly. He was a veteran (like J) and they have two girls, aged 2 and 4 (like my girls). I am hurting for them. A family that is very special to us received a shitty diagnosis for their 5-year-old son, and I am hurting for them as well.

And unless you live under a rock, or even just in a self-imposed bubble, you know at least something of the violence people in our country are visiting upon one another. It is a heavy, heavy time.

Our little house in Maryland sat fewer than ten miles from the worst of the Freddie Gray riots. J was here and we were there, and while ten miles is a lot of distance in a city like that, it was all still so very close. Selfishly, I am glad that we are now living in relative rural safety. I like knowing that our water supply isn’t tied up in a city-wide system, and that I won’t wind up in a gridlock on the beltway should we need to leave the area.

I don’t believe that this is my season to be an activist, at least not outside of my own home. My responsibility right now is to my children, to keep them safe and fed, and to shield them as much as I can. To show them what kindness looks like, and encourage them to spread that kindness. To care for our community, and to be as self-sufficient as possible so that should the worst happen, whatever that may look like, we will be ok.

So today we picked strawberries. Lots of strawberries. We went as a family. We bickered on the way, but we showed our girls how you can disagree and then find resolution. We connected with the other people in the strawberry patch and talked about everyone doing their share of the work (an ongoing lesson, of course). We taught them how berries grow, and we let them gorge themselves on warm, healthy fruit.

Tomorrow, I will put those strawberries away – in freezer bags and in jars of jam for later, in bowls for snacking and shortcake for sharing. Tomorrow, I will begin to take stock of what we have in the cabinets – food, first aid supplies, water. Tomorrow we will continue this important work of raising good, kind, decent human beings. We will see what happens, but we won’t do nothing.

 

If you’ve been following along here for any length of time, you’ll remember that we made a point of going on “adventures” as often as we could last summer, when nearly every trip in the car was an adventure because everything was new. Last summer we were also a one income family, and our breadwinner had every Friday off, so we had the flexibility, if not the funds, for frequent outings. Adventures have been in short supply this summer. With both of us working oddball schedules now, time is the major issue, so when I was reminded that I had a flex holiday to use up within the next few weeks, we decided to take the chance to go adventuring.

To the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens.

About an hour’s drive away, the gardens are just gorgeous. Rustic and decidedly un-fussy, they have a wildness that is so very Maine. It was a very comfortable place to visit. Not overly manicured, but still carefully curated. We spend the majority of our time in the Children’s Garden, visiting with Little Bear in the blueberry patch and clambering across the rope bridge in the treehouse, but wandered through most of the Central Garden area as well. Mama loved the kitchen garden best, and our littles made wishes with pennies tossed in the fountain. There’s a lot we didn’t see, and I’m keen to try one of the boat tours, maybe as a date day with J. Either way, I think we’ll be back.

Wouldn’t you know, all that adventuring can make a girl hungry. We stopped in Wiscasset on the way home and enjoyed a lobster roll on the water. It’s kind of fun doing the touristy things now and again, without the pressure of trying to cram it all into a short trip, particularly knowing that we get to go home and sleep in our own beds. It’s the best kind of adventuring.

My chickens go bonkers for organic chard. It’s the only thing we’re harvesting with any regularity right now, and while I’ve tossed it in salads, I find I’m not a huge fan of the flavor. I hadn’t originally planted it for the birds, but I think I will sow another row or two this weekend just for them. It’s saving us on feed, I’m sure, and it’s definitely providing entertainment. The six little ones who were here this past week were just enamored with our little flock, and spent a lot of time feeding leaves through the fence and giggling when they got pecked.

Everything else is growing, and the garden is thick and lush. The tomatoes are beginning to form on the vines, and I’m really excited for them to ripen. I chose to plant only cherries this year, Sungold, and a red variety whose name is escaping me. My full-sized fruits never ripened last year, and I’m wondering if it just didn’t get hot enough. We were gifted a couple of tomato seedlings of indeterminate variety, two of which got planted before they withered, so we may have some big ones after all. It will be a surprise.

The strawberries are ripening slowly, and eager little hands checked them constantly last week. I read that I should have pinched off the flowers this first year to allow for more plant growth, but since we’ll be transplanting them in the spring anyway, I figured I’d just let them do as they pleased for now. The apple tree is laden with hard green fruit, and my lavender is finally blooming. Sweebee’s wildflower garden grew like crazy while I was gone, and she was so excited to see flowers opening this past week.

Thanks to the girls’ disdain for organized rows in the garden, I have lost track of which vines are pumpkins and which are cukes. They’re flowering now, and spilling out of the confines of the bed, so I think it will quickly become apparent which is which.

Today, Handsome Fixer Man is building a surprise for the girls in the yard, my parents are coming over to cook out, and then we’re all heading to the town beach for fireworks.

Wishing you all a safe and happy Independence Day weekend!