Sunday at the farm

It is how summer days should be: a cool shaded outdoor spot, tables covered with casual, colorful cloth, dishes stacked.

Maybe two pans of spring vegetable frittata. Maybe some chicken sausage on the side. And bowls of fruits. And a rhubarb coffee cake, drizzled with rhubarb compote.





Your friends should be there – at the farm, escaping for the week-end, with their dog, maybe. And it’s good to have at least one daughter there, with her friend, to vary the ages a bit. Two daughters would be over the top great, but one is good too.





At some point, someone on the porch will fall asleep. I’m guessing the farm man himself. People that live and breathe the outdoors get sleepy after big meals. Others will continue eating, or taking pictures, or telling jokes. He’ll snore just a little.





But eventually someone will propose a walk. It’ll likely be the cook. Cooks like to get out of the kitchen for a spell after they’re sure everyone is well fed.

The friends have to leave – it’s a long drive to the city up north. The daughter and her friend will leave soon, too – it’s a long drive to the city down south. But they humor the cook and they take that walk and they’re rewarded with a field of lupine and a view toward fields of gathered hay.





Yes, Sunday at the farm. It’s best when there is food with friends and family. Really it is.

summer days

The living is pretty good, if not easy. And yes, the flies are starting their heat-of-the-day buzz. How did it get to be this green, this pungent, this idyllic, this quickly?

I’m up early. The garden to check. New plants to water, six more that came in the mail, revisit the ones who have been prone to wilt, note bugs attacking my tomato heirloom. Ed’s caulking the porch, getting it ready so that I can paint it tomorrow or the day after.

Breakfast. Outside, of course.





Isis, the cat, hides. Karma, the dog explores.







After, I tell my visiting friends -- follow us to the market!



(photo credit: dianalouisa)


And they do. To the downtown market, where we meet these guys...





Yep, the younger daughter’s in town. One daughter at the market one week, the other the next. Funny how that goes.

We sample sweet stuff, spicy stuff, cheese stuff, bread stuff...





I buy asparagus, oysters (mushrooms; we’re in the Midwest, remember?), one more plant, just one more...



Early afternoon. I join Ed by Lake Waubesa. He’s checking out a used partly inflatable two person canoe. He needs me to assess its wobbliness (I don’t like tippy boats). We take it out a bit and talk about its potential to take us down adventurous rivers in far away places.



photo credit: dianalouisa


Not bad. Okay, okay, we can do this. We'll navigate it down the river in a few weeks, okay. (Gulp. More on that later.)



Late afternoon. My visiting friend and I take a walk along the lake. So quickly! The summer came so quickly! Like a season that grew up from infancy to adulthood at the blink of an eye lid.


 


Or, like your baby kid. The one who now eats cheese bread with you at the market.


A sandhill crane screeches and guards her young.





Calm down, quiet, we'll not bother you.



Evening. We go in to town for dinner. Second time to the city in one day!

We’re at Underground Kitchen – a place that, too, has ties to my law school friends (one friend's daughter’s partner is one of the an owner/chefs). Such good foods (and drinks! try the no. 44!), from beginning...





to end.





Superbly intoxicating stuff. Or, is it that the predinner drink was superb and thus intoxicating and all that followed was a rollicking run of good flavors and seasonal ingredients?



My visiting friends, Ed and I, walk down State Street to the Memorial Union terrace.


 



The younger daughter is there with her friend. The sun is setting. The Union chairs are packed and so we sit at one of the decks, jutting out into the lake.





A superb sunset.



You’d think that this is where I end the day. But no, the sun has long disappeared, the night stars are visible, and there we are, walking up Bascom Mall to visit the Law School. My friend hadn’t been back since she graduated in 1986, a year ahead of me. You have to think how heady this all is: my law school pal and me, walking through hallways together now, 25 years later, with lawyer daughters grown (her daughter, too, is a law school grad), and landlords, or is it traveling companions, or in her case, husbands at the side, walking now through the office rooms and class rooms and spaces that were just so different then, when we were both starting out.

Such a night. June night, warm with the smell of lakes and the sound of someone starting a motor on a boat again and again and again until eventually it kicks in and sends the little thing chug chug chugging up Lake Mendota.

company

Company’s coming for the week-end.

I should not really say “company,” – it’s so retro, no? My parents used to say, when they were in the diplomatic circuit – we’re having company for dinner. It was never fun company. I would step in and be introduced as the child, and company would ask how old I was, and how school was going, and after answering both, I’d retreat to watch TV in mother and father's bedroom and eat a Swanson’s TV dinner on my lap. Like I said, retro.


My company this weekend is actually such close friends that you could say it’s really like family, but still, I prefer to think of it as these two (plus dog) urban folk who are driving for hours (all five hours) down to spend a few days in the fresh air of rural Wisconsin.

So, time to snip into the lilacs again...





... plan a good menu, and greet them as they drive up the dirt road and walk up the brick path. Hi Karma!





Hi friends!

routine

The sun is setting now – I can see it, but I haven’t the inclination to go out and photograph it. Yawn. Another sunset.

The orange color announces itself out the west-looking window. I can see the flash of color, through branches and bushes.

Comings and goings. The sun is up, the sun is down. One daughter returns, then leaves again. Other daughter coming up for a brief moment, to return home soon after.

And through all this, we, Ed and I, are the ones who stay home. Comings and goings, sunsets, sunrises – it’s all distant. Remote. We’re up, sometimes very early, sometimes out immediately, sometimes working hard for hours before a breakfast at 10 or even 11.

Today was like that. Ed is ripping the porch up and nailing in treated boards. I’m weeding and grading, weeding and grading.






Yesterday was (for Ed) a biking day, today is (for us) market day. So there is a difference between Wednesday and Thursday. Good thing, or I’d get terribly confused as to where I am in the passage of time.

June 1st

As I have said before, for me, June 1st will always be International Children’s Day. I grew up with it in Poland and I continue to recall it, in the same way that I recall July 22nd as post war Poland’s national holiday, and May 1st as Labor Day. It seems that by switching countries, I have gained a number of memorable dates. I've added Thanksgiving and Fourth of July. Sort of like an expanding family adds birthdays. Curiously, I have, at the same time, shed quite a number of birthdays to remember. A classic case of winning some, losing others.

So perhaps it is not surprising that I behaved like a child today, given the date.  I failed to meet my self imposed grading deadline. It was to be June 1st, even though I knew that it would be a struggle to finish this early. It was more than a struggle. It was not to be.

It may have worked, had the days been less radiant, less beautiful. Had I not told myself again and again  – these are the best, the very best days on the farmette, when you can still enjoy the outdoors, when you can plant and watch things grow (as opposed to wilt, shrivel and retreat). No bugs, no office time, plenty of sunshine – bliss!





And, of course, Ed and I are still struggling to make progress on farmhouse projects. The porch is now finally under attack. Rotten boards are torn off, new ones are cut to size. I have to paint what’s there, Ed has to measure screening material and eventually nail it down. It’s a huge undertaking.






One adult element of this day is the evening on the town with my older daughter.





It's good that I am out at the farm. It's great that the farm isn't too far from either daughter's more urban home.

the law

1. movers
2. shakers
3. buyers
4. bakers


It was a day where I contemplated the way the wind blows. Actually, there was a lot of unexpected wind. Gusts of it. Plants shuddered, then wilted (it was a hot day – and you’ll get no complaints from me on that). Those who worked hard at tearing down rotten porch boards wilted as well.

But really, the day was dictated by legal matters.

First, (or third on my list above) was the final stage of the condo sale. I get a phone call early: Nina, the buyer wants to know....blah, blah, blah... Sure. Here’s the scoop. I provide answers, tired answers. I’m done with the place. But the new owner is still signing, obligating himself, wondering. Still, I’m done. And indeed, within minutes, I get an email – congratulations, you are no longer a condo owner!

I’ve switched from being beholden to a bank to being beholden to a Landlord. (Who is, at the moment, ripping rotten boards off the back porch.)





Later, I hear from a friend who had hired movers who basically lost or damaged much of her movables. I think about the options available to those who have been poorly served by one company or another. Basically, if you have time, you can accomplish a lot. There is, after all, The Law. (Contracts, first semester.) If you don’t, you can’t.





And late at night, my Landlord receives word that the judge who presided over the New York court case (October, 2009) that required his participation has finally handed down an opinion.

We read it carefully. It’s an interesting and not unreasonable piece of legal analysis. There were so many complicated issues at stake. The judge took note. In fifty-five pages, she provided a thoughtful perspective. One that certainly should make Ed feel proud that his role in the tangled mess was diligent, honest and, well, faithful to those who needed someone to do good work for them. So, I guess I’m glad I’ve entrusted in him Landlord duties from now on.





All day long I grade exams. I feel I ought to be tough. Because today, it’s just a quick answer to a basic and predictable law school question. Tomorrow, someone’s well being will be on the line. The bread they learn to bake today... Oh, alright, bad metaphor. Sometimes it’s all about the rhyme.

see-saw, porch and morning walk with cat

What’s see-sawing is the weather. From a cold foggy Sunday to hot sunshine today, gray skies turned brilliant blue, with a wind whipping the sticky air around so that everything feels suddenly vey very warm. If this doesn’t feel like a summer day then I don’t know what does. And blessedly without the mosquitoes.

I’m up early. I can’t resist it.






A morning walk around the perimeter of the farm. With Isis, looking awfully cool strutting along the brick path to the farmhouse door, then, too, in the tall wet grass that grows madly and competitively everywhere.
















...and back again. To settle in on the porch.





Oh, it’s an outdoor eating day alright. Breakfast – oatmeal, fruits (including the much talked about rhubarb compote), honey, frothy coffee. A good beginning.











Ed has a never ending catalogue of chores around the farmette (plant the remaining tomatoes already, clean up the place where we compost – because the number of trips I make to the pile is actually quite large, and most importantly: start hacking away at the rotten wood that currently is what defines the porch. The maybe soon to be screened porch. The porch that has so many problems and yet offers so many good possibilities if done right, in the months where the bugs are too horrible to confront without protection.





I, however, am physically inactive. I sit in a chair that has a half-rocking sway to it and I read exams. My goal is to be done soon. I cannot take lovely summer breaks yet. I cannot.


I listen to the sounds on the road that runs past the farmette. Sundays are the noisiest by far. We are a shortcut to the boat ramp onto the lake and the number of happy people speeding by with radios on and trailers hauling heavy boats is significant.

That’s them. I stay with my papers.

...Until the light grows golden and the breeze cools the air and I light up the grill – on the porch still, same old porch – I’m stuck to it today, for our own brat-fest, alternative indeed, with chicken spinach and feta brats piled high with sauerkraut and mustard, and roasted veggies and salad greens and all the good things that spell summer. Ed says he's never felt so suburban. Me, I feel all-American. Our images are very predictable.






We, up in the northern Midwest, are a happy people when the days explode with summer warmth. Even those stuck on the porch grading papers.

decisions

You get more cautious over time. For example, it takes me a while to work up the courage and enthusiasm for moving to a farmhouse of an occasional traveling companion. Make that landlord. Or something. It's true, too, that I'm going to hesitate about forging ahead with projects that involve others, even if “others” means animals. Isis continues to have limited access to the farmhouse, I continue to be skeptical about raising chickens or goats or pretty much anything that lives and breathes.

And, too, we’re both hesitant about turning over some of the land at the farmette to truck farmers.

Our neighbors have done it. On two sides we have Hmong farmers growing market crops now for the third summer in a row. But these are vast stretches of farmland and the owners live a ways away. Then, across the road, a few hundred yards west, a neighbor (is he a neighbor if he lives a quarter of a mile away?) contracts directly with five farmers who grow beautiful rows of the most in demand market crops – peas, berries, asparagus – just at the side of his home.

So why not hand over half the farmette land to farmers? Why not? Oh, so many reasons. And so we mull and consider and ask questions.

It’s a good day to think and speculate.


A day that begins with a heavy fog advisory.





I take the bike out just after sunrise. It’s quiet on the country roads. I watch turkeys pick on the cornfields and deer reach for the young leaves on overhanging trees.


The fields and meadows are still now. Except for the occasional bird.






Afternoon. We visit our “neighbor” and talk about turning grasslands – easy, free flowing, prairie like and pretty grasslands – into farmland.

I set standards – he tells us. No garbage. No heavy machinery. Gotta have insurance. I give water, I provide shelter for their tillers. You have to want to do this for reasons other than collecting a fee.

Yes, we understand that.We're not going to get into it for the money.


In the afternoon, we go to my condo. I don’t want to go inside, but I forgot to hand over the mailbox key. Ed volunteers to take it upstairs.

We run into my condo neighbors – and maybe I never mentioned this, but they are my all time favorite neighbors ever. And I have had, in my life, a lot of neighbors. I come upstairs, because visiting with them is worth it. We talks farms and wine and dogs and, well, stuff. Ah well... you can’t continue to live in a place because your next door neighbors are superb.


It’s late. We approach the farmette from the backside. I often see deer here and this time is no different.





I tell Ed – if you cut into the fields just to the south, past the truck framers’ huts, you can get a sense of what they grow and how they tend to the land. Ed swings the old Geo into the dirt path. It’s a wet day and the lane is slick with mud. I have no traction – Ed says. We are nearly spinning in the fields. Trying hard to not harm anything. Clumps of mud hit the windshield. Hard going. Another thing to add to the list of considerations: how to get close to the farmed land.


We’re home. Isis is there, in the driveway. Earlier in the day, I’d seen a chipmunk attack a squirrel right in that spot. The squirrel won. Maybe, in the end, Isis won. He seems in control. Doesn’t deliberate, hesitate, mull things over. He just is. One can envy that.

to farm or not to farm...

I’m on Capitol Square early. The original Madison farmers market. I am making the circle (can you make a circle around a square?) with my daughter before she takes off for the east coast. My younger girl is already a thousand miles away. Memorial Day week-end creates travel opportunities. Not for me though. Not right now. I'm here in Wisconsin, where the flowers are too brilliant to let go of just yet.










At Matt’s stand I meet an Ocean commenter. It’s terrific to come face to face with someone whom you sort of know but not really, even as you sure as hell like and have always liked his writing (and I don’t mean only that on Ocean). Hi george h.!





A good start to the day.


All other waking hours I spend toddling between exams and Ed’s land. I weed one space, then another and another. Whatever muscles are used for pulling out stubborn growth are going to be well developed by the end of the season.

I attack the asparagus patch, completely overgrown by, well, everything.
I grade exams.
We transplant offshoots of the lilac.
I grade some more.
The hostas: we transplant those as well.
Anthills on the raised bed, quack grass chocking flowers.

Ed tells me – go write your novel. (I’m not really writing a novel, but I get the point. I am spending an awful lot of time, too much time improving his land.)





At the café, Ed is thumbing through a local newspaper. He shows me an article that describes the work of an organization that helps immigrant or otherwise disenfranchised people with farm talent and an interest in organic farming in Dane County. Maybe some of the acres of the farmette could be put to good use by these people? Ed and I walk the land and consider the possibilities. Maybe. He makes the initial contact. I’m hopeful.





In fact, overall, I’m very hopeful.

week-end

The beginning of Memorial Day week-end. One of three – the others, of course, being Fourth of July (which isn’t technically a week-end, but so often feels that way anyway) and Labor Day – that are, in my mind, quintessentially American. In a good way.

And they wrap summer, snugly and securely: school ends after one, the grill is in full swing on the second, and school begins again after the third.

The best, the beginning of summer, is also the saddest of the pack. Celebrate, commemorate, remember, look forward.Ufff!





Sort of like life itself.






I branch out in my work beyond the space that abuts the farmhouse today. I attack the strips of land at the sides of the dirt driveway. In my mind, this stretch ought to be pretty. It’s the welcome sign: hey, glad you drove up! Instead, it has last fall’s dry leaves, long strands of crab grass and a heap of tarp covered dirt...

Ed, can we remove the heap of dirt? 

I may need it someday... 
Can we MOVE the heap of dirt? 
Where to? 

Anywhere, just not here!  

I’ll put it on my list.

There are exams to grade, a coffee to bike for, more weeds and crabgrass to pull out.





Memorial Day week-end. May you have a good one.

community

I make one last trip to the condo today. To make sure all is clean and ready for the move-in of the new owner. I note that someone has been there in the last couple of days (I have my way of knowing). The door is locked after and so it would have had to have been someone with a key. Odd.

Not surprisingly, I run into another condo owner in the elevator. So, after downsizing, you’re upsizing? -- she asks. But I’m not! When I took out a new policy for my worldly belongings, the sum total was very small. I was happy to note that. The premium was small as well. You have nothing of value? The insurance agent asks. No, really, nothing at all. Even as, it’s true, I am living in a larger space now.


At noon I hand over a check for a million dollars (or some such large figure) to the Title Company. It’s odd to be selling property and not only not getting any cash for it, but having to pay someone to take it away from me.

So I’m done with the condo. A place that was to be forever, but lasted only not quite four years.


Will the farmhouse be forever? The way the realtor shook my hand, the flowers she gave me made me think that she’s looking ahead. You’ll be back, she might have been thinking. And I’ll be here waiting to show you the next set of properties.

She would be wrong to think that way.





Ed pays a visit to a neighbor – a woman who once owned much of the farmland around us. She lives across the road, just next to where these truck farmers now work the land.





She is old and knows more of the history of our farmhouse than anyone else here. Indeed, she grew up in it. Let’s see... she thinks back. There were the Lalors – farmers, but he also worked at a gas station on Park Street. He was killed in an explosion there. His wife died soon after. Then we moved in – bought it off the court house in 1946. Yes, I’d say the farmhouse was even then at least forty years old.

So that makes it more than 100 years old now? I ask.
Seems right.


When I’m “in town” I go to the various favorite grocers and stock up. I don’t come to Madison very often. I’m learning that it’s not hard to shop infrequently.


And now it’s the afternoon and I am peddling hard to get to our favorite (and closest) café before it closes.

Just me today, I tell the barista (who is so often assisted by his dad, just because) – Ed regrettably has a conflict. In fact, realizing that he can’t go to the café, he said this morning – damn. That’s my favorite part of the day. I wasn’t sure if I should feel pleased or insulted.

I find out that the barista’s dad has spent a good amount of time in Italy. And so we talk about Italy – about how best to describe and distinguish an Italian from, say, a Greek or a German.

And somehow, very quickly, we get to the theme of community. And it’s clear as anything to me that the best thing about coming to this café each day is that we now know the proprietors and they know us. And we recognize the flow of the place and watch the last customers come and go just before the place closes for the day.


It’s after 3. I pedal just a short distance and I am at the Fitchburg weekly Farmers’ Market. I know – weird to have a market on Thursdays, from 3 – 6. But it’s fitting, too. A place to go to after the afternoon espresso.






And what a surprise – my favorite bakers (La Baguette) on either side of the Mississippi have a stand here!





Familiar faces and familiar breads and baked goods – so important to make you feel like where you’re living is not just a village without a post office (see previous post; note, too, the farmette in the photo below -- it's where the distant clump of trees is).






In the evening, I stir-fry shrimp, peppers and asparagus. Lots of local asparagus. After, just as the sun sets, we go out and work in our set areas. Ed dumps woodchips around the fruit trees, I plant a hollyhock I’d bought at the market. What’s a 100 year old farmhouse without hollyhock at the side. Not too far from the lilac.