Drip, drip, drip

Look closely... can you see the water droplets falling from the roof?

Whenever the winter snow starts to melt, I think of Laura Ingalls Wilder in The Long Winter (nerd alert!) when she woke up one night so excited to hear ice melting and dripping off the eaves of their cabin. I know spring is a ways off, but today was sunny and the slush and ice are melting and for now, that is enough.

Hello again, sidewalks! Maybe I'll start to choose you over the treadmill one day soon.

Snow Day

Just when I thought we were going to cruise through the rest of winter with 40 degrees and sunshine, a storm hit. Not a storm in the sense of a blizzard with angry whirling winds, but the quiet consistent snowfall that makes you want to get outside.

 The kind of snowfall that allows you to see each flake individually!

I may hate winter, but I love snow! If it's going to be cold and gray, at least give us a snowfall to make things prettier.

As of last night, it had been snowing for almost 24 hours straight. Yesterday morning, I had to get out and walk around in it, even if I didn't have anyone to play with.

That's right, I willingly went out in the cold. Snow is magical like that.
 

There goes September

Is it just me, or did this month fly by even faster than normal? I could swear September 1 was just yesterday! I guess this is what happens when you have a busy month. It was a great month, and I guess all I can do now is enjoy every minute of October starting tomorrow!

*There is no season when such pleasant and sunny spots may be lighted on, and produce so pleasant an effect on the feelings, as now in October.*  
-Nathaniel Hawthorne

CSA Week 12

The fruits of my labor this week: I helped pick these cherry tomatoes!

Pattypan squash

Tomatillos

Canteloupe

Beets

Cucumbers

Carrots

Ross' favorite: hot peppers

Sadly, I had to give some of this produce away to my friend Johanna because I'm leaving town for almost a week. I know she'll put it to good use, though!

Fair Share Farm

As part of our CSA membership, we have to work two 4-hour farm shifts this summer. I worked one this morning and helped pick pole beans and cherry tomatoes. It was fun, but I was ready to go home by lunchtime. I loved the summer I spent working at Wenninghoff Farm in 2004, but I'm glad I don't have to do it again!

Producing good, clean food is hard work. Organic produce isn't so overpriced, it's just realistically priced for the manual labor that has gone into growing it without pesticides, crop dusters, and harsh artificial fertilizers.

Here are some pictures I took at the end of the morning once things were winding down and people were starting to leave.

Most of these pictures are obviously from the flower patch. The vegetable patches were further from the house. I didn't feel right taking pictures while other people were picking and once we got cleaned up, I didn't want to walk back in the heat of the day. Fair Share Farm is a beautiful piece of land and while it was inconvenient for me to drive an hour each way this morning for 4 hours of work, it's always good to know where your food comes from and see the work that goes into it.

You Are So Much Stronger Than You Think

My gym membership has officially expired. I loved having a membership in Texas because they had just built a gym right down the street from us. Here, the gym is a good 10-20 minute drive, depending on traffic. This drive stresses me out to the extent that it cancels out any endorphins I earned during my workout! Plus, we're not exactly rolling in the dough with two full-time incomes anymore. A gym membership just doesn't make sense right now.

I'm getting used to running outside again (my first love) and doing random speed workouts on the apartment treadmill. Running in the heat is SO MUCH HARDER than I remembered! Early in the summer, I was good about getting out early to beat the heat. I'm dragging lately, and even if I got up early I'd still have the humidity.

My last three workouts have been some of the hardest of my life (at least it feels like it at the time, even though they've been nothing special). The other day, running an eleven minute mile on the track took so much effort I felt like my Garmin should've been reading an 8-minute-mile pace!

Fortunately, my July Runner's World made me feel a little better: Every five-degree increase above 60 degrees Fahrenheit can slow your pace 20-30 seconds per mile.  This would mean that the effort it takes me to run 12 minute miles in 90-degree heat could be the same as me running a 9 or 10 minute mile at 60 degrees, the ideal running temperature. After my run the other day at 90 degrees and 60% humidity, I definitely believe that!

For now, I'm so proud of every single workout that I complete and I've adopted this runner's mantra: You are so much stronger than you think. You are so much stronger than you know!

*It takes patience to become the best runner you can be... running is a long-term sport. It is set up for people who value delayed gratification and who like hard-earned success* -Anthony Famiglietti, two-time Olympian and six-time national champion

As if you could kill time without injuring eternity

Wednesday night was supposed to be a casual, fun night. I'd had a good day off and I was headed to sand volleyball. I've been to the volleyball courts before. There are approximately 3 turns from our apartment to the main street and then it's a straight shot west. Yet I got lost. I drove for 20 minutes down the wrong (but parallel) street, tried to cut over to the right street, hit construction and a huge detour, couldn't find where the right street started up again, and then quit. I spent an hour in my car and I was in a huff when I got home!

To calm down, I went for a walk around a tiny park by our apartment complex. It's always full of people in the evenings and that night the fireflies were out. Seeing the fireflies sent me from angry to nostalgic. Perfect seasonal weather (any season) always makes me nostalgic. Remember when you were a kid and there was nothing better than a perfect summer day?! No school, no homework, just a full day to play outside and wear yourself out!

Summer is made of sunshine and water. And free time. Little kids always know how to fill free time with fun.

When I was in grade school, my brothers and I could play with the neighborhood kids until the street lights came on in the evening-- that was our "curfew." And that golden hour was what we lived for. We wore ourselves out playing in the heat, but when the sun started to sink and the air cooled, we got one last burst of energy. Just in time to chase the fireflies who were waking up.

It was also the best time for a softball game.

When did we lose that ability to make the most of every single day without even trying? I'm guessing the age at which we started learning phrases like "seize the day" is when we lost the ability to do so. When you think about anything too hard, it somehow eludes you even more. Like grasping sand in your fist, all the pressure does is cause it to slide through your fingers. I can never get a good grasp on time well spent.

Which leads me back to my present nostalgia and anxiety over the fact that I can't just enjoy a day any more. I only know how to be super busy, or kill time. ("Killing time" is a terrible phrase. Who am I to abuse the luxury of free time by wanting it to pass by faster?) I'm not good at living my life. I miss having friends to walk around the park with or little neighbor kids to run around with (as their babysitter now, but still).

I ended the night determined to spend less time on the computer reading about other people's lives and spend more time living my own.  Monday morning, I dug out my copy of Walden. Who better than Thoreau to teach me the art of embracing place and enjoying time? I could quote you paragraphs at a time that apply to my life, but this line jumped off the page: "As if you could kill time without injuring eternity."

Something to think about, certainly, but also something to LIVE.

CSA Week 5

We got the last of the strawberries this week and ate them in about two days! We also got some 'troutback' lettuce (a speckled version, related to Romaine) and arugula.

Sugarsnap peas.

Tri-color Swiss Chard.

Note farm chard...

...versus mine. Maybe it needs more sunlight!

My garden is growing slowly, but it's getting there! Some cheerful flowers popped up this week. The cucumbers plants are starting to bloom:

And we just bought these for looks :o)

Have a sunny weekend! I'm off to small-town Missouri for a family reunion.

Green Thumb

In honor of Earth Day 2010, I present to you my gardening attempts...

My gardening resume is patchy at best (no pun intended)! I remember my parents being really into gardening when I was younger, and I've cut my fair share of chives for salads and picked fresh bell peppers, basil, carrots, tomatoes, and zucchini when the time came. All that time, I never knew how lucky I was to grow up knowing that veggies come from the dirt.

In 2002, the summer after my junior year of high school, I did a 10-day volunteer program with some other students from Sacred Heart schools across the country. We were at Sprout Creek Farm in Poughkeepsie, NY and we did our fair share of volunteering at the inner city soup kitchen and helping out with day camps for inner-city kids (who don't always know where food comes from). However, what I remember most is the farm work. I LOVED it! I didn't know what I wanted to do in college, but I thought it sure would be great to go into AmeriCorps like some of the other volunteers and be back on the farm again. We weeded, cleaned barnyards, milked cows and goats, picked produce, made cheese, drank fresh milk with breakfast and made dinner every night with meat/eggs/cheese/veggies from the farm!

It was there that I first started to become interested in local food. So local that you picked it on your way into the dining room (or, in the case of taco salad night, so local that you met the cow a few days prior... thankfully they didn't tell me until dinner was over). Everything tasted so fresh and green. I loved the fresh air every day and nothing to do in the evenings but sit around and talk or play games on the porch as the sun went down!

At Sprout Creek, I learned that happy cows go out to pasture every day and eat grass, get milked twice a day, and don't get hormones or antibiotics. I learned that fresh milk is WONDERFUL. And I learned to recognize a few other veggies that we had never grown at home, like beets.

If you've only tried pickled beets from the salad bar, you're missing out

Feeding the goats

Baby sheep!

One of the less savory farm tasks

Much-deserved rest

Making a new picnic table

I'm always the barefoot one...

Did someone say dinner?!

Stacking cheese molds

Charades is just not my game

Baby cows! So fun.

LOVED the view every morning. I'd go back in a heartbeat!

(Click here to see more pictures from my trip to Sprout Creek Farm).

Two summers later, after my freshman year of college, I worked on a family farm must outside of Omaha. At Wenninghoff's Farm, I learned what kohlrabi and pattipan squash look like. I learned that you NEVER handle a fresh tomato more than necessary, lest you bruise it. I learned what corn tastes like fresh off the cobb and what beets taste like when you bite into them like a carrot. I learned that most veggies I'd previously only eaten cooked, tasted GREAT right out of the ground! I learned that picking okra is prickly business and it leaves my arms covered in rashes. I learned that baby eggplants are really cute. I learned that family farms are a dying breed and the few that are still out there don't make the money they deserve for their backbreaking work.

I learned to drive a truck and get it out of the mud on my own. I learned that it's always a bad idea to hoe barefoot (my toenail never quite recovered). I learned after picking onions, you lay them right next to the row and let them cure in the sun for a day. I learned that it's really satisfying to smash rotten bell peppers by throwing them on the ground! I learned that picking green beans is a never. ending. job. I watched tough boys cry like babies when they bit into the hot peppers we were picking in a field a mile away from any fresh water.

I (re)learned what I seem to learn every summer- that I LOVE fresh air and being outdoors and being barefoot and getting covered in dirt. I had about 5 different farmers tanlines. I learned what it's like to work HARD 5-6 days a week and how good it feels to shower when you're really dirty and sleep when you're really tired.

I was never actually this clean at work. This picture was taken when I was nannying the next summer and I took the girls out to Wenninghoff's to pick some produce.

And there you have it, my short but intense resume. This spring, I'm learning that picking and eating produce is much more my forte compared to growing it. At least starting from seedlings. It's harder than you'd think to get a seed to grow into a big plant on your first try! I have high hopes, though, and pictures to post once my beet seeds decide to sprout. I'm on my second attempt. The first round of beets and cucumbers sprouted a few weeks ago, only to die while Ross and I were partying it up in Omaha. Alas, the peppers weren't meant to be this summer. It's too late to sprout them now (although I finally got the seedling heating pad in the mail) and they probably wouldn't thrive on our shady balcony.

Happy Earth Day! And if you have any gardening tips, please share!