food is wealth – Page 2 – panache, perhaps

“Eggs and a Song” (poem out loud) (mine!).

Published on 04/20/2013 by taylor mardis katz1 Comment

Eggs and a Song

The chickens are just heading in

through their chicken-sized door

as I challenge spring in the car,

tires hugged in mud in the bend

where the fast-driving neighbor

does his fast-driving damages

of ruts in the road. I am not yet

thirty and wearing the remains

of red lipstick as I walk through

the door of my home. My man’s

on the floor with his toes to the sky

in a stretch and the teapot is still

breathing steam. Imagining other

couples is like imagining history:

I can’t do it at all without the help

of a movie. In the film of my days,

my man is healing himself

with patience and I am healing

my self with something like hope.

On a bad day I can’t even fight

off my rooster; on most days

I’m pocketing eggs with a song.

These are the days of seedlings (poem & motion).

Published on 03/25/2013 by taylor mardis katzLeave a comment

We’re planting our seeds. We’re

sowing them in. We’ve made

our selections, we’ve sawed

the boards & nailed them,

we’ve scarified the seeds

who need a little scaring.

Some seeds are smaller

than any item I’ve ever

collected. Some seeds

are blocky, brown & sharp.

We’ve showed them where

they can live in light

on the the dining room table

where the bulbs are big

and the view is right.

No one’s perfect, as

they say–I disagree. I say

a seed is perfect, through

and through. It’s got all it needs

to do inside of it, it knows

and does it in a mere

two days. The seeds

are growing on the table.

The seeds are chatting

with the moon, rising greenly

with their necks to greet her.

(gif by misha m johnson, the most talented photographer in the upper valley)

Why not: a birthday collage.

Published on 03/15/2013 by taylor mardis katzLeave a comment

Dear Scott,

I made you this internet collage comprised of (beautiful) images that remind me of you. I really hope you like it.

Love,

Taylor

Happiest of days to you, friend. I hope your weekend is full of even better things than Ellie giving the sneaky middle finger to you in a photo, though it’s hard to imagine what’s better than that.

So many farmers! So little time!

Published on 02/15/2013 by taylor mardis katz1 Comment

We’re headed to Burlington this weekend for the NOFA (Northeast Organic Farming Association for Vermont) conference. We are going to learn about growing shiitakes! About growing for our root cellar! About growing fruit! About DOWSING! I’ve only ever been to a writerly conference before, never one for farmers. But now I’m about to be a farmer! Misha and I are about to be farmers! Halleluyah!!!

(halleluyah squirrel via the animal blog. isn’t he just beatific?!)

Farm & fairy art (Phoebe Wahl).

Published on 01/22/2013 by taylor mardis katz1 Comment

There’s been a *lot* of farmplanning going on in this household, lemme tell you. So many facets are being organized that yesterday I had to call Misha into the bathroom while I was showering so he could write down some ideas I’d thought of while shampooing my hair. The artworks below, by an art student at RISDE whose blog I stumbled upon while tumblr-ing, are the sorts of pieces that relay what I love about a farmy life: patterns, brightgreen and brightpink vegetables, fresh flowers in jars, herbs hanging from string, sitting in the dirt in a dress, handkerchiefs for sweat and color, fairies. Once this farm gets going ,it’s going to be a beauty. It’s going to be a beautiful, colorful, scentful, and shareful thing.

Check out more of Phoebe’s work here.

“I’m a flexitarian” (poem) (mine).

Published on 01/07/2013 by taylor mardis katzLeave a comment

I’m a flexitarian

which means

I consume mostly vegetables,

flex a lot,

and eat bacon whenever possible.

Best Hannukah present ever (poemthing; photos)!

Published on 12/13/201212/13/2012 by taylor mardis katzLeave a comment

OUR CHICKENS LAID THEIR FIRST EGGS

There needs to be something MORE

than capital letters to convey my joy. I swear

I feel like my best friend just had a child.

I feel like I just won golden admittance

to Charlie’s Chocolate Factory. Our little

chickies, getting sexy, making chickies!

For breakfast tomorrow: eggs on toast

and sauteed shiitakes, all of which

we’ve grown ourselves, oh heavens.

(that’s a Brazilian bean soup in the process on the stove)

Hot damn, horseradish (poem & photograph)!

Published on 12/06/201212/06/2012 by taylor mardis katzLeave a comment

Let me tell you

about a spicy experience

a very spicy experience indeed

when I made pickled horseradish

from thick dirty roots Misha dug up

from our little vineyard in the frontyard

which I washed and scrubbed in the sink

with a round bristled brush and let them soak

in the righthand sink and peeled them with a lefty peeler

and chopped them and threw them in the Cuisinart with salt

and whey and pulsed it pulsed it added water blended it until HOT DIGGETY OUCH

I ran yelling from the stuff when I opened the lid and horseradish slid down

my throat and in through my eyes and cut off my breath and my tears

and cleared my sinuses. Hot damn, not since hot sauce have I been

that spiced outta town. Now the stuff’s in jars, stuff you’d say

you’d never eat and I rarely eat it either but every year

there it is on the seder plate and Geoff from work

tells me you can take a tablespoon of it

with lemon juice to cure an asthma

attack and hey if horseradish

is just out there growing

in your yard all free

and spicy, you’d

jar it, too.

Things that are small & purple in Vermont (photos).

Published on 11/30/201211/30/2012 by taylor mardis katzLeave a comment

Can you tell what that is? It’s a teensy tiny PURPLE cauliflower! Leaves and all! Like, OHMYGOSH!

This tiny cauliflower (the variety is called “purple graffiti”) is currently on display with some other small things, in front of the microwave, which we do not use. Oh, and Heather made me that oven mitt! Don’t you want to buy one for your best friend for Hannukah?!?

Thankful for bacon pancakes & so much more (poemthing) (mine).

Published on 11/22/201211/22/2012 by taylor mardis katzLeave a comment

On the night before Thanksgiving, I am thankful for friends. Thankful for the emails I get from friends like Chase, with this enclosed:

because I’M LAUGHING and because that video is so much like my life, my life is so much of making up songs about loving the things I’m cooking, picking, making, seeing. Thankful for friends who have and will come visit, and thankful for new friends in the making, thankful to be back east nearby closefriends I felt so far away from and thankful for the busestrainsandautomobiles which transport me and them to and from the country where I live. I’m thankful for my family members who are my friends in the deepest sense, the friends I haven’t picked but who have made me and it continues:

Thankful for

winter sun and

a grownup rooster fluffed with feathers (his name is Claude!) and

the shoes on my feet and

good soup and a fire and

the ever-discovery of poems and

the way lighting a candle makes me feel sacred no matter the time of day I do it and thankful

and apologetic to the mice we’ve killed in the basement who did not deserve to die and

thankful for free health insurance from the state of Vermont!

and emoticons and

thankful for sage and sweetgrass and cedar incense and

for the pond that I hopehopehope will turn to ice and hopeful

for finding ice skates at the thrift store for our pond and

thankful for nice thick socks

thankful for nice coworkers and kind customers and a wall of windows

thankful for how cheap a stamp remains and

for letters and packages and our big box from “fungi perfecti”

which means we’ll grow mushrooms underneath the sink throughout the winter and

thankful for the boldness of 2012 and all the good change it’s wrought and brought and

thankful for mittens

and a yellow hat from my sister

and a red hat from the country store which makes me look like a hipster which I am a little bit I guess but mostly I’m just a farmer who likes clothes and colors and thankful for

a grey hat from amsterdam

and thankful for all the things that weren’t stolen from our truck

like eachother and my gorgeous blue rounded piece of sodalite

which a woman at the stone store told me to select

because she said the purple of my aura was sagging that day

and it was

I was sagging that day

I’m thankful for people who help me unsag

like that cosmic lady who made me buy a very dark sodalite and also for my family and friends and

now I’m back to where I began which is thankfulness and

yayness and love and thankful and giving

this tinysmall poemthing in thanks and

in preparation for a bigmeal tomorrow, amen.