Some men say an army of horse and some men say an army on foot
and some men say an army of ships is the most beautiful thing
on the black earth. But I say it is
what you love.
-Sappho, as translated by Anne Carson
photo of Littleleaf by Misha
Category: farming
Life at Littleleaf (photos of a new home).
We’ve named our homestead Littleleaf, come visit. Raspberries grow through the chilly autumn nights.
We bought chickens from a man named Dan; we haven’t named them yet. I visit them every day and hold each one for a couple of minutes. They don’t love me yet, but soon.
Last Sunday, we celebrated. We bought our first farm animals, and before that, we planted the greenhouse full of food. I harvested all the cherry tomatoes, which are still coming.
Homestead in the background, man in the foreground.
The day was warm. We inspected tools in the barn. Well, Misha did.
The sun sets earlier every day. The trees are the color of our chickens.
***
All photos by Misha. See more.
“I swept my trampoline” (poem for a new home) (mine).
The first thing I did today was sweep my trampoline.
This house came with a trampoline. Two, actually. One small one
for porch jumps and one of those huge ones with netting
that many people got sometime in early high school
and then lots of people broke their arms. My neighbor had one
and so did one of my closest friends and we used to play
“Popcorn,” which is when one person sits on the trampoline
and the other person jumps, and the sitting person bounces
like a popping kernel. Or at least I think that’s how it went.
I swept my trampoline and then did many big jumps
in the center of it and some small running jumps around the perimeter
and then a lot of big jumps in the center again
until I was so tired I slipped out and back into my sandals.
I walked, a little breathless, up the slight hill, towards the shed,
touching the apple trees as I went, even the dead one. I looked
for peaches but didn’t find any. In the shed I found the hand trowel
I used later to wrestle horseradish from the ground. Horseradish!
really puts down roots. I dug and dug and found worms
and found the smell of Passover too, and finally gave up and pulled
so hard at the root that when it finally came out I was flung backwards
into the soft mulch. I laughed at myself and the birds kept on scuttling
on the ground. While I was trampoline-ing, Misha was preparing
for his first day of work. At a farm, of course! Well,
a farmstand. He’s going to sell vegetables and bring home
vegetables. I don’t start as a waitress until Saturday
and today I stayed home to make pickles, My First Pickles.
I had no idea what I was doing and my shorts were too short
when I went to go pick up supplies at the country store. Oh,
well. I bought lids and pickling salt and mustard seed
and a butter dish, for our Vermont butter. But before all this
I picked raspberries in the warm sun for a long time,
maybe two hours, I have no idea but I was singing
for most of it, little ditties like “Oh berries you are the gems
the thorny gemstones of the earth and you my little bees
are buzzing with the song of songs of singsong songs LA
DEE DA DOO DOO DEE DOO DOO OH HONEYBOOBOOS.”
About halfway through I spied two frogs to my right
on the shore of our pond, so I had to go over to see them
(I love frogs and always have), and one hopped away
immediately and the other one let me touch it but
when I touched it, it jumped into the water! Of course
it did. I am always trying to befriend the following creatures
that aren’t interested in my friendship: frogs, toads, chipmunks,
grasshoppers, and a cockatiel named Zeke (“Zeke the Beak”)
that we are currently birdsitting. And today I wanted to sit
on top of that damn bird because he sounded his alarm sound
all the damn day because he misses Misha and who the hell
am I, this girl yelling his name all highpitched, trying to be
the cool birdsitter. I got so frustrated with his loudness
that I thought about sticking him in our new dehydrator
but of course I would NEVER ACTUALLY DO THAT. In fact
this was just an excuse to talk about our new dehydrator
which arrived yesterday. It is the mob boss of all dehydrators.
It’s named The Excalibur and it is all black and huge
like a mobster vehicle and you can dehydrate so many fruits
in it at once it’s like a mass fruit juice removal program.
And before doing any of the other things I mentioned
today, what Misha and I did first was eat our first
apple chips and banana chips. But wait, back
to the pickled, the cucumbers. I sliced them
and stuffed them into jars that I boiled
in a pot you could fit two turkeys in and on top
of each jar I placed a piece of grape leaf, which
supposedly ensures pickle crispness. The whole process
took hours, I have no idea, I was so unaware
that when I was finished I noticed there was a package
on the porch that a human being had dropped off.
A human had been on the porch! There aren’t a lot
of human beings around here, and being human here
is the minority, the butterflies are fair and regal rulers
and the birds are busy at their games. With what was left
of cukes I mixed with overripe tomates and made gazpacho.
Now it’s an hour until Misha pulls into the driveway
and I’m drinking a beer and placing it on the table
that Scott and I built together. We named it
“The baby giraffe” because its legs are so long
and made of old stairway banisters, and if it walked
it would walk like a baby giraffe. People I love are all over
my house, but not all over the yard, where I’d like
them to be. Today I envisioned the music festival
we could throw on our property, and how people could bob
in the pond while listening to Dillon or Sean jam
acoustic. It’s strange that I’m not lonely yet, the grapes
outside keep feeding me and the tomatoes volunteer
themselves inside the greenhouse. I’m hoping hard
for visitors. I’m stocking all the shelves with food
in jars and waiting for the chilly drive to town
where I’ll pull up before the train arrives and jump
to see my friends or family getting off, their faces
not accustomed to the rundown railroad town,
but their faces full accustomed to the way
I greet them, yelling, pull them back into my home.
A poem of farewell (mine).
Misha’s off to work in a shirt that’s too big
on him but he loves its colors. I bake the bread
when he leaves, mist it and cover it, cooling.
On my bike around town my clothes don’t
get caught in the pedals. At the café I edit
my poem, the one that’s now eight pages,
I drink my favorite coffee. The man to my left
says to his friend, “We’re here to share stories
and energy.” His beard is braided. I ride my bike
to the store, I see Christina who makes earrings
out of old records, John from Self-Heal, and Jeff
from the fruit stand is my cashier. I treat myself
to sushi at the high chair that overlooks the street
and see the Suzie’s truck roll past, the one I rode in
yesterday. I’ve lived here three years and the food
I eat is delicious and so much of it I’ve planted
with my own short thumbs. I’ve lived here three
years and I get across town on my feet, I’ve made
human mistakes and baked foods in summer, heat
overtaking the kitchen, the kitchen that leads
to the porch where tools are hung or lean, the porch
that steps out to the yard where we grilled and drank
and read our books, the yard we bought a table
and umbrella for, the yard where poems woke
the neighborhood, where sunburns sang and worms
were fed on foodscraps. Friends visited and friends
stopped by and friends brought food and friends
bought books or art and used up all the toilet
paper. We met them and we said come in and now
the nights are warm enough to let us go out
into them, the nights we hope will lead us
heavenward into a land we’ll plant ourselves.
A baby’s shoe! A baby bunny! A tiny artichoke!
Not last Sunday but the Sunday before, this tiny Converse sneaker appeared on the ground just outside our market stall. Look at this! A tiny shoe! I yelled. Don’t you think it’s a hint from the universe that you should have a baby? someone asked. No! I said. It’s a hint from the universe that the more I love small, the more small that arrives!
My really cool crew wears Converse (Owen in grey, Sara in purple) and I wear Blundstone boots with my pants cuffed because I’m short.
*
The only thing better than a tiny sneaker is a tiny creature, and here below is Little Debbie, or Little Deborah (or Debra, if you like Beck [I like Beck]). She was found at the farm on a Thursday, looking terrified and alone. She’s currently being cared for and will be let back into the wild when she’s a little bigger. But for now she’s so small she looks like a squirrel.
Here she is in her little box:
And here’s a small artichoke going bad, plus my feet and Misha’s.
The End.
Treasure chest Friday (small treasures, small containers).
Brown bottles found at an antique shop in OB: blue bottle found by my treasured man at our local thrift shop. In the future, I imagine the brown bottles holding small amounts of homemade absinthe. Slurp slurp.
Tiny jam jar of wildflower seeds; small clamp jar of rose petals purchased at GALA FOODS; jar of Tiger Eye beans salvaged from Ellie’s car; tall skinny vial of stone beads from broken bracelets plus one marble.
Found bottles & bottles given to me as presents. Most exciting is the smallest one, which I found in the field at Suzie’s while planting on a Thursday. I had to nurse the dirt out of it.
Things that are small & grown in Imperial Beach (the series continues).
Sometimes a day involves burying dead chickens and stripping lemon verbena for tea. Sometimes that day also brings the tiniest of tiny carrots into your life. For me, that day was Wednesday. I was harvesting carrots for lunch with Misha and pulled out a handful, including the tiniest of tinies!
Here’s a shot of the smallest four, which I brought home (the others were eaten in a salad).
Then, on Thursday, I planted melons and lettuce and stacked onions for drying. And found a small onion for this project.
Then, while looking through photos, I found this one that Misha took last summer, where my face is big and shiny and strange looking. But look what I’m holding!
Onions & tomatoes come from Suzie’s Farm; the carrots are from Wild Willow.
Stay tuned for more tiny tinies!!
Bounty (mine).
Poem with a strawberry in it (mine).
Poem
A child was made to stand alone
on the outskirts of the market
stall, his father scolding him
into stillness. I asked him
if he’d like a strawberry;
I brought him the biggest one
I could find. “Oh thank you,”
he said. “Strawberries are my
favorite food.” “What other foods
are your favorites?” I asked
jauntily; I love to talk favorites
with children. He shook his head.
“No other foods, “ he said.
“Strawberries are my only
favorite.” I nodded. He stood
reddening his face with strawberry
with me crouched to his level.
Soon his mother took his hand
to exit. “Thank you so much
for the strawberry,” he said.
I too have only one favorite.
(illustration via “color my life with the chaos of trouble“)
Working at the farmers’ market is FUNS!
vegetables are so awesome! some people love fennel and some people spit it out because it tastes like licorice–i agree with both camps! squash season is over but hardcore farmers still have three acorns and a butternut sitting in a bowl or on a dark shelf! once in costa rica it was my job for a whole week to pick fat gluttonous worms out of corn leaves with a stick and squash them but i didn’t squash them! i put them in a happy squirmy pile together underneath some big leaves! and sometimes when there is a big ole snail in a box of lettuce that i’m unloading that is hilarious! that snail is my friend! he is so slow but with a big house! if you ever see an artichoke growing out of the ground you will think, holy shoot it’s a green pineapple! and if you try to make potato leek soup and it turns out all your leeks are actually fresh garlic, that is also delicious and works! garlic and leeks look so much alike it’s like they’re best friends who both have green mohawk heads! don’t feed me radiccio because my mouth hates it but also the color of it is beautiful! like the dress that i hope to find and wear to lilah’s wedding! lilah who loves tiny versions of vegetables and her mother who loves absurdly big ones that resemble penises! vegetables are hilarious and some of them are purple! and i love purple almost as much as i love vegetables! ok let’s dance!
blogs from not-america have awesome stuff like the above gif!
panache, perhaps 