Thanksgiving

I think thanksgiving is my favorite holiday because it's the only one that is still tied closely into it's original roots. It is at heart a harvest holiday so as I farmer it's one I value most. To consider really where all my food comes from, to be thankful for not just the people that raised it but also the animals and the grass and plants truly lets me sit down with a sense of wonder and a sense of being part of a huge system.

This year at one Thanksgiving we were talking about why Canadian Thanksgiving happens before American Thanksgiving. I said I though it was because Thanksgiving was a harvest holiday. "Oh really?" she said. "I guess that makes sense, I never thought about it.".

I was dismayed. here is my favorite holiday, the one that to my way of thinking is still relatively untainted by commercial profits. The holiday that encourages reflecting on what we are thankful for, which I know I still don't feel that I do enough.

This year, I am thankful for family and friends. For getting a chance to go to Argentina and finding out that my father is not weird because he eats the middle out of baguettes and then sticks sausages in, it's something Argentinians call "choripan." I am thankful for the chance to have my hands in the soil in Argentina, in Massachusetts, in New York. I am thankful for being welcomed into communities which honored my work, supported me and made me laugh. I am thankful for so many rich relationships which made me laugh and made me learn. I am thankful for the chance to start many days this year with my head pressed into the flank of Chloe, the dairy cow, and to end my days looking at the stars.

Urban Sustainability

How do you compromise sustainability when living in an urban setting? I have been facing moral dilemmas every day since I moved back. I can't get raw milk in the city so I settle for expensive organic milk purchased at the co-op. I have been composting despite not yet discovering where I will bring the compost when it is full. I have been eating an incredible amount of non-local guacamole, which i feel is justified by the fact that it will get thrown out from the bakery if I don't take it to a good home. I miss farming desperately - I went up to Methuen to help out with some gleaning last week. A farm up there donated 30,000 heads of lettuce to the food bank and they had to come up with volunteers to harvest it. We spent the morning cutting lettuce into laundry baskets, dumping them onto a tarp and then hoisting the tarp and throwing the rest into the back of a pickup truck to drive it to another farm where they were delivering the pallets and boxes to ship it all into the city. The soil out here is incredibly sandy compared to western Mass, the fields are flat and the sprawl has surrounded the land, but it is still a joy to be outside in these late fall days, getting my hands in the soil and contributing to one part of the growth cycle.



I've started working at the bakery (www.canto6bakery.com) and learned how to make lattes, cappuchinos, sandwiches and how to run the register. I've been back to work on target hunger meetings in western mass and I've been down to Maryland to wait with my mom in doctors' offices. All the while i've been reading Wendell Berry's "The Unsettling of America", bell hooks' "Belonging" and Helen Nearing's "Loving and Leaving the Good Life". All of them are pointing me towards the land, towards overcoming the fear of change and the lack of security of farm life and going for it. I often think of my personal goalsetting through the question "what would i regret NOT doing years down the line?" I am likely to regret decisions I make through fear or lack of confidence in my abilities. I am likely to regret taking the easy road. If I go boldly in the direction of my dreams, I don't think I will regret it, even if my dreams change and I learn that I am actually supposed to be moving in another direction. We'll see where those dreams take me next...

Snow!

It snowed last week. We put straw on 4 beds of garlic and 4 beds of strawberries to keep them from constantly freezing and thawing - it's better if this holds the freeze. We spent a bunch of time digging paths in the flower garden - marking them off with stakes and string so we'd dig them straight and then digging the paths and throwing it on top of the beds to build them up and better define them for next year.

It was also our last week of distribution - and it was busy Friday and Saturday! we moved the chickens back inside the barn and started bring the cows in (they didn't always cooperate - we were out til 6:45 in the dark snow on Tuesday trying to chase down Leche, one of the beef calves that ran through a fence). Jason took Moses, our Brown Swiss foster calf, back to Cricket Creek farm and dried Chloe off for the winter.

We also said a lot of goodbyes - to so many great shareholders who we've gotten to know this year, to Don and Bridget, Sam and Elizabeth, and each other. Driving back into Cambridge was a bit surreal, but I'm back living with Liz, Mel and Emily and spent my birthday surrounded by friends, playing with the dog, going out to brunch and getting settled back in here. I miss Caretaker already - but i'll be back Saturday to finish moving!