food and views

Saturday is the day when I most often return to a former life: that of a food person. If I devote endless hours now to growing things on farmette lands, it used to be that I would devote the same number of hours, year round, to preparing food. My garden then was small, my kids were at the age where school work and friends filled their hours and so I turned my attention, all my post-work hours, obsessively you might say, to food. 

Those were the years where I moon-lighted at a restaurant, first as an appetizer and dessert line cook, then as a baker in preparation for their Saturday market sales, and finally as a forager at the market, picking up the items on the long produce list left for me by the chef de cuisine. I'd be at the market at 6 a.m., when the farmers were just setting up their stalls. Getting there before the crowds hit the Capitol Square was essential. The restaurant wanted the best of the best. It was my job to find it.

That was then. These days, though I cook dinner every day for us and I think about foods that may (or may not) please Ed (as well as satisfying my own cravings), I don't obsess about it. I no longer fuss, nor do I introduce complexity into the game. But, on summer Saturdays, it all comes back to me as I stock up for the week with a run to Madison's Farmers Market.

Many of the farmers have been selling at the market for decades. They're in their same spot, selling mostly the same foods and when I head out, I make a mental note of who to visit first and what can stand a prolonged carry. Honey -- yes, flowers -- not so much. Today, I parked the car in a 25 minute spot which was unfortunate since it is impossible to do a full circle of the market in just 25 minutes. But, I mapped out how I could accomplish everything in just half an orbit and I set out, determined to get back before the meter ran out.

My mind is full of food thoughts. The stalls are piled high with incredible stuff and I have to marvel at how we have evolved to feed ourselves so well. Ed will say -- at the cost of plowing down fields and radically reducing animal and insect diversity as we plant our soy and corn, and he is of course correct, but still, this is not the way small farmers grow their crops. Theirs are not the fields of corn and soy. And judging by what's in the stalls, many of them have added flowers to their mix, which has to be a good thing! 

I go first to Mary, the Bee Charmer's stall because I'm low on honey. Too, she has great corn and I need to supplement what we picked up yesterday in Oregon. 

I'm all out of corn -- she tells me.

No! Really? 

It went in the first hour. Well, you know, Tory buys a lot.

Ah yes. The chef at my former place of employment. Darn those restaurant foragers who come out with their wagon at 6 in the morning! 

Not to worry -- it's always like this early in the season. Ambrosia takes a while to get going -- Mary reassures me.

And this is where my food loving side kicks in: it's not enough to love just corn: you have to have a favorite variety! Yesterday I wrote about Stoneman's Honey 'n Pearl. Well, the Bee Charmer's Ambrosia is another singularly wonderful variety. It's more delicate, but the taste is also sweet and, well, heavenly. 

They do have copious amounts of corn at a stand that sells nothing but corn and it's good, and it's freshly picked, but I'm looking for something even better. And I find it here:

This guy, like Mary, will be selling Ambrosia in the coming weeks, but today he has Trinity. This variety precedes Ambrosia and he says it's also singularly good.

Some people are really sorry to see it go when Ambrosia comes in! -- he tells me. So I buy a half dozen ears. I cannot wait to gently (and ever so briefly) cook it for dinner.

I need tomatoes too for the week. Here's a beautiful bunch:

And believe it or not, I need eggs. Yep, we had an incident last night that just goes to show you how complicated farm life can be. Very very late last evening, so late that I was all ready to retire upstairs,  Ed said -- oh, I forgot to bring in the eggs from the roosting box. (This box, placed on top of his table saw, is where our girls have been going to lay their eggs. Dont ask me why. I do not understand chicken logic.)

I'll get them -- I offered. We need to retrieve them so that predators wont raid the box.

And what should I find in the box? Henny, one of our older hens. Sleepy, woozy, comfortably settled for the night. Apparently she has gone broody (where she sits for hours on end hoping to hatch her eggs) and Ed did not notice that she was not in the coop when he locked it up for the night. Luckily, the raccoon that has been coming to visit us every single night this summer, had not yet made his rounds or she would have been his supper for sure. But, even though we saved Henny, we do now have a broody chicken who refuses to budge and so the other hens are laying their eggs -- well, who knows where. We can't find them. And I need eggs!

And of course I need flowers for the week. Picking the best bunch is tough, especially when you are on a 25 minute meter and you're giving yourself only half the market and one navigation through it for the day. I go back to a stand where I often find wonderful stuff:

And from the market, I go to Madison Sourdough for bread and breakfast pastries.

Not done yet! I still have my weekly order from Farmers Unite to pick up. It includes sweet and sour Door County cherries. Not thinking deeply about what I was doing, I had placed an order for a "basket" of the sour ones. It turned out to be this much:

So you're going to take out the stones from all those cherries? -- this from an amused Ed, over breakfast.

Uh huh...

And do what?

Bake maybe...

Yes, it's a very food centered day. But food thoughts do not replace outdoor work. Even before going to the market, I snipped lily heads. And I did count today -- I picked off an even 500. I'm sure if I poked around, I'd find one more, but I liked the way 500 felt so I did not look hard for others. Oh, and I took photos because, well, it was so very beautiful out there. Dry again and yes, I'll have to water if this continues (and it looks like it will continue), but still -- so very, very beautiful.

(The four Bresse hens, sunbathing together)

One last flower photo for the day:

In the afternoon, I get this idea that we should hike at Blue Mound State Park. A friend described a recent trek there and I get tempted.

We rarely have gone there over the years. It's a half hour drive and that kind of a commitment is reserved for the best of the best. Still, this one sentence was enough to convince me: 

Perched atop the highest point in southern Wisconsin, Blue Mound State Park offers spectacular views and unique geological features.

I love a place with a view!

There are two lookout towers -- one to the west and one to the east and in-between and all around, there are the trails. (Since it's on a hill, there's quite a bit of up and down which is a good thing!)

We spend a beautiful stretch of time there. Tower to the West:

(It almost looks like we live in a very hilly region, instead of just a somewhat hilly region!)

Tower to the east:

And the trails in-between!

It's a gorgeous place. Well worth the drive. (Yes, I know -- how dare I gripe about a 30 minute trip! You do get spoiled living in Madison!) 

We toss around ideas for supper and finally settle for a very home grown meal: the last of the cheeper eggs with market tomatoes and mushrooms, pan friend new potatoes with onion, a solid salad with farmette cucumbers, and of course corn. Fantastic, memorable corn. 

Are we ever sleepy tonight! Totally zonked, in the best of ways.

With love...

in the moment

I know the buzz words -- strive to "live in the moment." Who hasn't heard that sage advice! But I'm no master at intentionally putting it into practice. Like with most everything, I don't train for stuff that doesn't really bother me. (This is unfortunate, I know. We'll talk about it another time.) I move along without reminding myself that I need to "pay attention to my surroundings." Or that I need to "focus on the small stuff and feel gratitude." Perhaps it's because farmette days are already full of that: I spend hours paying attention to my surroundings and I write endless posts about small stuff. And ask me when was the last time I did not feel gratitude! I could improve: anxiety and stress are there, waiting all the time to invade my space, but for the most part, I haven't felt their threat strongly enough to hurry up and get good at practicing mindfulness and living in the moment. The day will likely come when I will need that skill set, but thus far I've coasted on a lot of luck and a love of hobbies (gardening comes to mind) that force me to stare beauty right in the face for hours on end. Good enough!

Not knowing much about mindfulness, I was, therefore, shocked today when, in the middle of the parking lot of Bill's Food Center in Oregon Wisconsin, standing next to Ed's motorcycle, I had a feeling of such profound happiness that I wondered if I still had the leftovers of whatever they pumped into my veins at the clinic yesterday.

Why? And why there, of all places? Too, why were we even at Bill's Food Center in Oregon Wisconsin? All good questions. Let me try to deconstruct the moment:

I had spent an unreasonably long time this morning cleaning the lily stems. Two and a half hours! At the end of July! That's just too long! I thought we were on the downhill path, but clearly the lilies proved me wrong. Was it a record? I don't know. I did not count the snipped heads because I'm getting to that place in the game where knowing how much I still have to do is discouraging. Best to just proceed and hum various songs in my head. Like "Nymphs and Shepherds" (Purcell) while working these girls:

Or "One lovely summer evening" (it's a Finnish song I learned back at the UN School -- "Ol' Kaunis Kesäilta") while working in this field:

What? You cant find the song or the lyrics? Ask a Finnish friend to sing it for you. Here's an English translation of the lyrics:

One lovely summer evening while strolling down the hill (repeat)

I met a lovely maiden the memory linger still (repeat)

The kantele she played and her song was sweet and clear (repeat)

That song I'll always cherish and in my heart hold dear (repeat).

Okay, I got sidetracked here. It happens when songs and poems waft through your head on a garden walk.

I took photos of course, because, well, the blooming season is so short, and the beauty is so profound.

(Not to be forgotten: the nasturtium that always remind me of Monet's Garden in a pot that to me is straight from Garden Majorelle in Marrakech)

(oh, those colors!)

(Big Bed)

Breakfast was at 11. Pretty late, even for us.

I already feel the depth of serenity during a breakfast on the porch, so you might say I'm primed for contentment every time I dig into a bowl of fruits and oatmeal or granola across the table from Ed, but then, I seem to have taken it a step further today. I suggested we head out to Stoneman's Farm to start buying our summer corn. We drove by yesterday and the sign said they'll be selling it on Friday. Today is Friday. 

We get on the motorbike and ride the four minutes to Stoneman's.

The family is there, the kids are running around in their ever cute yellow t-shirts sporting the family logo (Stoneman's Famous Sweet Corn), but there is no corn.

We sold out already today. This from one of the family members shooting' the breeze in the driveway.

The sign in your driveway now says "soon." When is soon?

We're hoping to start on the bi-color next week. Once that gets going, we should be selling pretty regularly.

Oh, the bi-color! It's worth waiting for, even if their season is off to a late start (like my flowers!). The Stoneman family (which really is the Oppermann family, as the Stonemans have passed on and the farm is now run by a grandson and his sibs, with the help of their spouses and parents and in-laws) get up every morning at 6 and start picking. By 8 they are done for the day and most go off to their regular jobs while a couple remain to sell the corn. It really is a family affair! 

And the corn? Oh, the corn! It's heaven. They plant Honey 'n Pearl -- a variety that's harder to grow and has a lower yield than what you'll find elsewhere, but the taste is simply sublime.

Still, we wont be eating it today. I check my phone to see if there's a farmer's market nearby. Madison has so many of these markets in the summertime, but I guess Friday is not a popular day for it because I come up empty. This is when Ed says -- call Bill's Food Center in Oregon (some ten minutes up the road from the farmette). They sometimes have local stuff in their produce. Maybe they'll have someone's corn.

They do. Eugster's corn. I mean, it's not going to be Stoneman's, but it will be local and very fresh. With corn, eating it within a day or two of picking changes the experience from simply "good" to "exquisite."

So we motor our way to Oregon and it is such a pretty country road!

Since I don't have my mask with me (and Ed always has one in his pants pocket), I leave him to do the purchasing as I wait by the bike. And feel happy.

We ride back and the feeling lingers. The air is just perfect. Ed routinely reaches over with his hand and gives my leg a gentle rub (I think this is a biker's thing, but he has always done it and it always feels loving and kind) and I bury my face in the back of his shirt and I think -- we have corn, the sun is out, the flowers are blooming and I'm with this sweet guy who is so different yet, despite everything, he and I both find contentment and yes, happiness in our small life in this tiny corner of our beautiful planet. Small stuff, deeply felt. Is that what living in the moment is all about? It must be.

All this and a visit from the UPS man too. What a day!

In gratitude, I spend the afternoon clearing out stuff from the farmhouse -- a favor to myself, but especially to Ed.

With so much love...

Thursday

And what do you do every ten years, without fail? Attend a family reunion? Paint your home? Buy a new car? Go to Disney World? Wash the curtains? We do none of that. What we do sign up for, every ten years, is a colonoscopy. Mine was scheduled for today.

Anyone who has had this procedure, will immediately sympathize with me on the days leading up to it. Except if you live in Florida. It's totally not fair because people in Florida don't have to drink gallons of crap, they can just pop pills. Almost reason enough to move to that state, don't you think? Drinking gallons of crap is just no fun. Each time, I try to make it tolerable if not delightful by thinking up new ways of diluting the bottles upon bottles of ominous looking powder in interesting beverages. Each time, I fail. The powder  seems to thicken everything to the consistency of watered down jello. This year I went for peach water (organic!) and apple juice and at the last minute I added cucumber lime smart water. 

I will never again drink peach water (organic!), apple juice, or cucumber lime smart water with any amount of pleasure.

I had put off purchasing all these containers of powder, though I did splurge and get from Amazon some mango-flavored gatorade. It looked so gross, that I immediately put the whole carton of bottles in the mudroom. We'll give it away with free rhubarb this weekend. So out came the peach water (organic!), apple juice, and cucumber lime smart water.

When I did dash over to Walgreens to get the last of the needed prep stuff, I was told that it had just been recalled. Nationwide. But, no problem, the docs tell me. Just double the amount of other crap you're to drink. So, more cucumber lime smart water went into my basket.

All that was yesterday. This morning I was good to go and Ed and I set out for the clinic.

The people in the UW Digestive Health Sciences are really pleasant and very chipper. They make great small talk: I had a spirited conversation with one of the nurses as to whether or not it's good idea to keep your married name when you get a divorce. She also wanted me to help her with her basil-growing project (it was a bust this year), but I found this to be too challenging for bedside conversation. Still, she was delightful.

As was my doc. From what I remember. You tend to blank on much of what happens after the procedure. That's okay, Ed was there and he listened carefully for me, at least he listened when he was not having a Zoom call with his machinist engineer colleague in the bathroom so as not to disturb the docs and nurses coming in and out of my room. Every time he got up to move back to my room the toilet flushed automatically. I wondered what his engineer colleague must have been thinking.

We had a bit of a wait before the procedure because my doc found a problem in someone else's gut. I heard the word cancer, so of course, I wasn't going to complain about lying in my own little room (with Ed in the bathroom) under a warm blanket, pretending I was already sedated and enjoying the beep from the machine next to me that informed the world when my heart beat much too fast or far too slow. It seemed to do one or the other fairly regularly. I was given a very plausible explanation for this -- machines beep when you move. Okay. I tested that theory by snuggling comfortably under a toasty warm blankie. The machine settled down.

And finally it was my turn for the procedure. I always love the moment they start pumping you with relaxing sedatives. It's a good thing I never was into drugs. The stuff is positively intoxication, though I can see how you wouldn't get much done in life if you were constantly floating through the heavens admiring rainbows and soaring with swallow. Reality is much more prosaic, but at least it allows you to get on with things.

So all this took up maybe three or four hours of the day, but believe it or not, I managed to put in a solid two hours before heading to the clinic for lily snipping. Sure, it was on a very empty stomach, but lilies don't mind. They'll take your gentle touch no matter what the state of your insides.

Oh and lest I thought we were on a downward plunge in terms of flower count, today proved me wrong: 643 lily heads in the bucket, which is the second highest of the year. I don't really get why we had this uptick, but I snipped away and took some photos with my lesser camera because, you know, my main one is off off and away, hopefully in New Jersey by now. (Have you noticed how just about all camera repair places are in New Jersey? It's the kind of thing I puzzle over when I snip lilies.)

Today's beauties:

(Bold Beatrice cleans herself on the stump. Hmmm... come to think of it, I only think it's Bold Beatrice because this hen is bold. But, might another one be also bold? I cannot tell these girls apart!!)

(not all my lies are pink or orange or yellow...)

(though many are... and they all work so well together!)

Of course, there was no early breakfast. I'm no martyr: if I can't eat or drink, Ed can fix his own meal (though last night he dutifully sipped mushroom broth with me in the evening rather than looking for something to make for himself). 

And in the afternoon? When we finally get home? Ah! I'm told that we then ate a morning meal. But I have no recollection of it, nor did I remember to take a photo.

Because it is a most stunning day (cool, sunny, perfect), I stay out in the porch. Mainly I doze, enjoying the after glow of whatever they had given me to transform my brain into delightful mush.

But by 3:30 I am awake and Ed and I set out for out local farmers market.  Me for the flowers and the last of the blueberries. 

(Take a photo? If it's with the motorcycle... Okay!)

Ed's here for the cheese from Farmer John and the tortillas from... the tortilla guy!

I was a little concerned that I might topple off of Ed's motorbike going there and back, what with my wobbly limbs and mushy brain, but leaning into him on this most gorgeous July day was so wonderful that I soon forgot to worry. 

At home, I can once again eat anything I want. Well, they warn you that alcohol will make you drowsy (what's wrong with that, I want to know?), and fried food may make you feel sick (this would be true at any time of the day or year), but I have mushrooms and cheeper eggs and asparagus and cheeses saved up for my reentry into the world of regular supper food. And salad fixings. And they all taste wonderful, all the more so because we once again eat outside. 

And the flowers keep on blooming and the sun shines like it's making up for lost (spring) time!

It's a good day to be here at the farmette! A really good day.

Evening: Ed, that cat on the couch? Yeah... It's not one of ours, is it? No....

Well now... Okay... So who is he?

I don't know.

With love...

Wednesday

I have come to really like the arrival of the UPS truck. We don't get many deliveries, but when one comes, and the weather is superb (this would describe today), the delivery guy virtually bounces it over to our back door and he always has a nice word to say about life, about sunshine, and today about my flowers. Think how energetic you have to be to carry boxes over to people's doorsteps with a sprightly step! And then to mentally focus on your surroundings. And engage the recipient who is sitting comfortably on the porch in some pleasantry. Very energetic.

He's young and looks sort of bookish what with those eyeglass frames that you'd normally find in a movie parodying geeks and nerds. And he has kindness in his heart.

But, but, why was I sitting comfortably on the porch in the first place, instead of working in the fields or hiking with Ed in our local county park? 

Well now, I had work to do. The kind of work that makes me wonder how this would get done by those who actually have a real job, to say nothing of a family and a real job. The "work" consisted of sending my camera and my lens in for repair. It's full time work.

I've had enough cameras under warranty and in need of repair in my life that I know how tough it is to get them off to the shop. A once a year ordeal for me. You have to work through many phone calls and get many approvals and then of course you have to print out the paperwork, pack it up, realize that you left out one crucial piece of paper, repack the whole thing and ship it off. And today I had to do this twice: one shipment with the camera and another with the lens, purchased at a different time, so it is still under a different warranty.

I try to be very gentle with my cameras. To baby them. But the fact is, when I step out in the morning to snip lilies and feed the animals, that heavy camera is always, always dangling from a cross strap over my shoulder. So it gets to bounce and see quite a lot of the world. Every single day. And the time always comes when the shutter release sticks or the screen stops functioning or I hear grit in the lens or some such nonsense, requiring the long and tedious process of sending it in for repair. 

I was going to gripe about all this to Ed, especially when one of the insurance agents started giving me a rough time about model numbers that dont really exist, but then I thought my day could be a lot worse than sitting on the porch, looking out at the flower fields, and eventually greeting the very congenial UPS delivery person. 

But honestly, if you ask me about today, I have to say it was rather limited in scope: animals, flowers, the camera, the lens, and the UPS person.

I do have photos of the flower fields and I'm signaling this now: they are like Wisconsin blueberries -- nearing the end of their ripening season. Though my snipped lily count today was a pretty high 588 still, I see that this day's flowers are still majestic, but some of the stalks have nearly run through all of their unopened buds. They are done. So, we have had our grand peak lily week. In a few days we'll have settled down to simply having nice flowers scattered here and there but certainly not everywhere.

Okay, but today's show is still so very grand:

(Bold Beatrice is getting bolder: she's here on the secret path to remind me I should be throwing out the corn for them, not snipping spent lily heads.)

(I like planting lilies against a backdrop of phloxes, though this year the phloxes have really gotten to  be really, really tall!)

(Nymphs and shepherds, still going strong!)

(From the porch, looking out)

I have two anchor lilies in the corners of the big bed. These are nearly their last days of flowering.

(One to the north east...)

(One to the north west...)

Okay, okay cheepers! Your grub. (A rare sight where all nine are together...)

(And breakfast. Unusually big today. Pretty much the last really delightful thing I had on the books for this day!)

Oh, but I am done with camera mailing (and using my backup little guy for a good while going forward). And that is such a good thing!