Nothing. Everything. Nothing.

There's a line in the movie "Home For the Holidays" where the main character's daughter asks her what's wrong. She says, "Nothing. Everything. Nothing. I had a not so good day today, honey." Just before that, as she got into her car after being fired, the song, "That's Life" came on the radio. She sat there for a moment in utter disbelief and sort of just existed.

At this terribly precise moment it has been 366 days, 7 hours and 37 minutes since I heard the words, "I'm sorry to tell you this, but your mom has passed." I can distinctly picture the place in the driveway, at the exposed tree root and the gravel, where I fell down, breathless and wailing at the same time. I can still feel the grief, shock, and pain take turns squeezing my chest and my throat making it nearly impossible to breathe.

It isn't unusual - the passing of friends and family members. People die all day long, every single day. But when you learn that their death was caused by suicide, the maddening culmination of mental illness and depression, it changes things. It changes everything. It changes nothing. It changes everything.

The last words I heard from my mother were, "I love you!" And my last words to her were the same. There are days when I can remember her face so vividly it is as if we are eye to eye and heart to heart in the same room. And when the fog of grief is heavy - I can scarcely see the shape of her stunningly beautiful face - she is but a wisp, iridescent pink and white, of my heart's imagination.

Heart trumps logic in grief, this I know for certain. Every hour of every day I can tell you, intellectually, that she is gone, there is nothing that can be done about it, and that someday the sharp, icy edge of grief will be softer. But the heart rails against all logic and intellectualism. The heart sees nothing beneficial in being realistic. And just about every hour of every day I am acutely aware that she is gone.

She would have turned 60 on July 15 of 2016. She wrote in her planner on that date, "60th Birthday OMG!!"

To be continued.....

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year to all of you from Hope Farms - may you spend more time doing what you love, what is right, and what is best. 

I'm, hopefully, going to spend more time on horseback this year. No resolutions here, except to live in the moment, which is a daily resolution, not just an annual one. 

Cheers!

Cheers!

Day 14: List

List

Day 8: Looking up

Looking up

The Lull of July

The lull of July: We enter into it with some denial that it’s really summer. “The end of June already?” we exclaim. The cicadas begin to sing and vie for courting honors. The summer thunderstorms sweep in with the strong breezes turning the leaves of the Catawba and Pecan trees upward. It is this period of time, when the thermometer registers 85* Fahrenheit at just 9:30 am, that farming seems so much less attractive than it did in early spring when the muck boots and hooded sweatshirts were in need.

Chores must be done– the weeds need to be pulled, goat & cow milked, chickens fed, eggs collected, as well as laundry hung out on the line regardless of the temperature. At least the heat assists with the radical civilly-disobedient laundry-drying apparatus in the back yard: the clothes dry at an alarming rate – much faster than I can fold it. Especially when all three lines are loaded down and I’m hoping I’ll have time to get it all taken in before the next thunderstorm rolls in. I’m not at all opposed to the second rinse cycle though, and it happens often. It has been especially common this season – we just ended a 21-day streak of daily rainfall. “Rain much?” is the most common phrase my husband and I ask one another as we don our muck boots, a seeming anomaly in the heat of July, to do our chores.

I spent the last week during the hottest hours of the day in the air-conditioning – sorting, folding and putting away the clothes that had piled up on the couch(es) for weeks on end. Really.


Occasionally, during the heat of the summer, I carve out blocks of time for reading. Having just finished Forrest Pritchard’s Gaining Ground I am seeking for more food for thought. This time it is Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. My favorite thing about Kingsolver's writing is that she skips around a bit – much like the way my brain works – and I find myself very much at home in her books. This book, although new to me, is dog-eared in about 9 different places already – that’s how much I skip around.

 

Rightfully, dubbed the “fair-weather-farmer” by Captain Strong Arms, I've accepted the idea that I don’t like to farm when it’s too cold or too hot. Actually, I’ll take the cold over the heat, but I do not care for more than 6 inches of snow. I’m stubborn: just as stubborn as the July heat and the August humidity. I’ll wake early; greeting the morning dew on the grass with my flip-flops and listen to the birds call and sing while I quench the thirst of the plants in the greenhouse and garden. Then when it gets to be too much, I will slink back into the respite of the air conditioning by 11:30 on those days admitting defeat. With raised beds, the watering schedule will increase to twice daily on those days, also.

Got Weeds?

Call it defeat, or call it the way of nature, taking the spent lettuce plants out of the raised beds might feel like giving in, but I prefer to consider it moving through. In my beginning days of growing food I had a hard time with any seedling that was tossed aside – I wanted to save them all – and the same for the beds of lettuce. Since it is only just a few days from the end of July, I’ll count my blessings that the lettuce lasted as long as it did without bolting to seed.


It’s time to plan for the fall crops. Actually, I feel a bit tardy as I’m about 3 weeks behind schedule for starting seeds. That’s okay, I’m late nearly everywhere I go, so why not late to the greenhouse too? The list of crops I want to grow for the latter half of this year is lengthy; kale, collards, Swiss chard, kohlrabi, broccoli & rabe, cauliflower, carrots, radishes, onions and on. Some will go into the raised beds and most will be tried in the greenhouse.


This summer’s weather has been unpredictable. Life can be that way also. What we need to do is learn to adapt and overcome. Those two words may not bring success; however, they will bring lessons for the next season.

Aspire to inspire, not just make a living.....

That is what I’m keeping my eyes on at this point; the next season. It’s too late to un-do what has been done here in regards to crop failures. It’s time to accept the lull of July and go with nature’s dictation.

“Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished” Lau Tzu

Independence Day

John Adams letter to Abigail:

"The second day of July, 1776, will be the most memorable epoch in the history of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival. It ought to be commemorated as the day of deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward forever more."

Happy Fourth of July, y'all!

Dirty Lettuce

Lettuce is one of my favorite things to grow, besides Swiss chard, and it can be relatively easy to start from seed. What isn't easy is keeping it clean. And then we have the bolting lettuce that wants to produce seed instead of leaves when the heat gets turned up.

This spring we've had an unusually high amount of rainfall and whether in raised beds or not, the lettuce seems to be a magnet for the dirt that splashes up from the splat of the raindrops into the soil.

Food safety is high on our list of priorities here at Hope Farms and we take it seriously. We use a hand-washing station and sanitize our harvesting utensils and containers with a sanitizing solution as necessary. Of course, we're not preparing for surgery, so there will be no masks or scrubs donned while picking lettuce but we do follow a basic procedure. Although we are not "certified" by any institution or organization we do follow the basic outline of the GAP's, or Good Agricultural Practices.

Often, at the market, you might hear me say "wash the produce really well," and I mean that not because there are unpronounceable chemicals on them but that the produce is probably dirty. As in dirt. Actual tiny grains of dirt and sand, in which it grows and gleans the nutrients it provides to us.

In the research that I've done, it has become fairly clear that sometimes the potential contamination of a product can occur during washing it. So that pre-washed lettuce that we've all come to see in the grocery stores? Not-so-much on the safe side. In fact there have been many recalls on bagged lettuces and spinach. Here's a list: (a list? we need a list? is this normal?)

• Listeria
• Salmonella
• 3,265 cases of bagged salad recalled
• E-Coli
• All recalls - FDA site

Scary, yes?

No, I'm not trying to scare anyone, but just bring the level of awareness up to the playing field. Think about all the times that we eat each and every day - feeding our children, parents, friends, neighbors, and more - do we actually stop to contemplate where the food has come from? No? Why not? If yes, then how did you get to that point of awareness?

Not all farmers work hard to put safety at the forefront of their operations. Not all farmers are transparent and allow you to come to their farms. Not all farmers care about their customers. I encourage you, the consumer, to start asking questions about how the farm operates, whether or not you can visit (and no, you can't just 'show up' that would be rude!) and about food safety practices. There are, just like in other types of businesses out there, individuals who are in business for financial gain only. Don't get me wrong, authentic farmers should make a fair living wage, too. Get to know your farmer. 

A little dirt on your lettuce might be a good thing. We are, above all, a family here at Hope Farms - we're just like you. We welcome questions, inquiries, and visits by appointment. We aren't perfect, but we hold to the standard that if we wouldn't put it on our table, we won't ask you to put it on yours. 

Have a great day y'all!