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?!)
Some people feel negatively about February, including, possibly, Maira Kalman. Or maybe she just picks up on everybody’s February blues. It’s hard to love February in the city, this I understand.
This February, I’m all about Patti Smith (again). Maybe I’ll make February my Patti Smith month. Why not?
But guys….remember those other times, those other seasons? Remember flowers?
Remember how it’s going to be Valentine’s day soon? Let’s not bring up our consumer culture rants again, we do that every year & even the truth gets stale. This year, lets just do some good lovin’. Let’s share what we got, or give ourselves a little bit more. I mean, Phoebe Wahl is doing it! And why not.
If you’re still not feeling good about February yet, then, here! Have this gift! It’s a free Frank Ocean mixtape! Also did you know he has a tumblr?! Fuck yeah, America! You know?
Alright February!! Allllllllright!
Today I bought blood oranges. Like the ones below painted by Emily Proud, an artist I discovered through another artist, Lisa Congdon. I don’t know either of them personally but maybe someday they’ll come over to the farm and eat citrus with me.
I bought them in preparation for The Storm. I also bought bacon, of course. And, as usual, kale. Also milk. And a knobby three-knuckle piece of fresh ginger.
Meanwhile, down at the coop, the chickens are all, “Where is the grass? Why can’t I have it? Why aren’t babies coming out of these eggs I’m sitting on? I’m cold!” They’re huddled on their roosts underneath their red-bulbed headlamps as I write this. If I make a ruckus the rooster Claude will crow & crow until he lets me know that he heard me do it. Having a rooster really gets one thinking about the term “cocky.” That dude walks around like he’s the king of something awesome. Because he is, I guess.
I love farmy catalogues.
White River Junction is where I live, and work, and eat. It is also where I yoga and latte and gossip and discover treasures. It is where I mail letters & where I show off my extensive hat collection. Joe Brainard passed through here on a bus once (probably more than once), and he wrote about it, and these days I’m reading Joe Brainard again because I think of him as a pick-me-up, even though he was mostly sad and worried about being too skinny and anxious about the concept of being a “painter” and the concept of love lasting. Then how does he make me so happy? Because he enjoyed being alive and wrote a lot just to do it and he drew pictures of things on tables and hung out with James Schuyler, one of my gay dead loves. And he had a good attitude, he did his exercises and illustrated books and drove places with friends. He was one of those charmers, I think. Here’s some of him.
*top image is from The Best American Poetry blog and the bottom image is from my phone’s camera, taken while drinking black tea with milk & honey.
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)
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.
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?!?
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
panache, perhaps 