corn wars

Last night – it was so beautiful! A sunset, from the helm of a boat on lake Mendota. (A Tormach company cruise; it’s a tradition.) Unfortunately, my camera, my baby really, has developed a serious problem. I'm left with using my phone for photos. So all you get is this:





Today I spend a long while talking to camera fixer-uppers. Once again, my sweetie pie, my wonderful Sony Nex, is going in for surgery.

In the meanwhile, I have a backup option. A reliable little point and shoot which has done a lot of work for me over the years. But this morning, as I zip toward the market on Rosie, I am thinking more about food than photography.

It is the season for corn.

And now that I am living in a farmhouse, I am especially having thoughts on how to store good foods for the winter. Because really, winter is an awfully long season. Yes, sure, I’ve already frozen lots of raspberries, peaches, rhubarb, tomatoes. Those are all from the garden.

How about corn? There’s so much of it around right now and it is splendid! Shouldn’t I shuck, clean and perhaps de-cob some corn for the winter? To throw into soups, to mix up with chili peppers for a winter saute... Corn! Let me pick up as much as Rosie can carry.





I sort through the corn and I say to the farmers – I know, I know, I should not store them in their husks. I’ll clean them the minute I get home!
You’ll what?

Oh, remove the husks now. For better flavor later!

Don’t do that! We never take off the husks until just before cooking. You’re reducing the shelf life!

But the other day, the farmer said...

All we’re saying is that our corn keeps better if you store it with husks. Unless you’re freezing it?
Oh dear.
Who is right on this?





Market's done, one more stop at the grocery store and now Rosie and I are home. Her crate is brimming with foods, and my backpack is full and I have, too, a bag between my legs.

At the farmhouse, Ed comes out to greet me.

I’m going to freeze some corn today...

On the cob, right?

No no, I’ll take it off and bag the kernels.

Why would you do that?

For soups, for winter...

Keep it on the cob! Don’t make work for yourself!
Oh dear. Another set of opinions.

I turn away from the corn for now. We have other items on the to do list. Off we go on Ed's motorbike, to pick up paint at Home Depot. Lemon yellow (with the lovely name of Caribbean Sunrise) for the exterior of the farmhouse. Sort of the color of young corn...

At home I de-husk and freeze. Some on, some off the cob. When you don't know what you're doing, do a little of both.

Outside, Ed gets ready to roll on the Caribbean Sunrise.

waiting for the bird

Nearly every morning, we eat breakfast in the company of a hummingbird. He likes the cosmos and the prairie spiderwort. I like my muesli and berries, these days with a touch of honey. And I always make the comment that I ought to scurry out and take a photo of our breakfast friend. But he’s quick to feed and quick to fly away and so I let it go.

But in celebration of the fact that I do not have to be on campus until noon, today, I decided that it’s now or never: the bird shall be photographed.

Of course, when he showed up, once I picked up my camera and went outside, he was gone.

And so I positioned myself outside, camera ready and poised (I do not have a tripod so I served as the tripod) and counted the minutes.

I made sure the camera was in focus.





I switched weight between my left foot and right foot because it was tedious to stand still for so long. Then I sat down on the ground. After a while, I stretched out on the woodchips, camera still in hand. The flowers look pretty from a reclining position.





But after some seemingly long period of time, I got up to leave. And I saw him then, hovering, uncertain, then quite certain – that he wanted to be anywhere but here.





I’ve photographed humming birds before and challenging that it is, I managed to pull it off. Not today. Today, you’ll be thinking, the bird won.

But I don’t really agree. I got a good half hour on the ground, in the sun, doing nothing much at all. Bliss.

ten points

Step outside. What a beautiful morning!





I set out and I have this to say about today:

1. I motor-bike to work and pass a terribly sad road accident on John Nolen Drive. Oh, why are individuals such feckless drivers? Be careful out there!

2. Three classes: I teach three classes today and one of them is really a class and a half;

3. I appreciate the warm sun in the afternoon and the espresso at the end of the teaching day;

4. I visit the Fitchburg Farmers Market and contemplate making a beet chocolate cake, as suggested on the website of the Westside Community Farmers Market, but then decide that’s not too fair and it’s too fattening anyway;

5. I take the political quiz on Ann’s blog and come out placing exactly like Gandhi (with a score of -5.75 on the Left/Right continuum and -3.33 on the Authoritarian/Libertarian continuum -- which is odd because it seemed that on the issues spotlighted on the quiz, I had very few very strong opinions – as if anyone could have talked me down on any number of points, if only they’d put some substance behind the rhetoric);

6. I refuse to cook dinner, pleading utter exhaustion, then change my mind and cook anyway;

7. I vacuum the couch four times as Isis keeps coming in and going out in the restless way that a cat does when the weather is in the way that it is today;

8. I learn from a farmer that it is better to take the husks off your corn before storing it in the refrigerator;






9. I watch Ed work on sanding the paint off the farmhouse and feel only a tinge of envy, but it is short lived as the sound is exactly as one you would expect to hear in a dentist’s chair;





10. At the market, I buy something called “European plums” and almost decide to make ice cream with them, but, upon tasting one, determine that it tastes just like my (Polish) grandma’s plums and she never made ice cream so maybe we should just eat the plums and forget about messing with perfection.

so hot...

Wednesday is not a ride good-old-Rosie-girl day. It’s a get off your butt and get moving day. My first class starts later than usual. I can bike!

Cool, but lovely. Warming up by midmorning. Looking back over my shoulder, I see the clump of trees that hides the farmhouse, bordered by late summer sunflowers, waiting for a market day harvest.





I cross the Beltline -- the highway that seals off the city from us rural types. And then I bike past Lake Monona. Ah, the lakes. Here’s me showing off with a photo from the seat of Mr. Red: we got lakes, people, see???





But the ride back, after work, is different. A stop at Trader Joe’s means that I then go past lake Wingra... or some run off from that body of water. I want to think -- pretty! But if Lake Monona felt choppy and perky on this windy day, this bit of water feels stagnant and rather sad.





It gets worse: I veer off the short stretch of bike path and now I have to mingle with traffic all the long way along Fish Hatchery Road. Bumpy road, strewn with pebbles and broken glass. There is a bike lane for a while. All of six inches (or so) wide. Flanked by numerous cars. Tell me – is there a worse combination? And I have a pack full of foods and even though it’s 69 degrees outside, I am sweaty hot by the time I reach the Oasis – our best ever café on Lacy Road.

Ed is late – he had detoured to Home Depot to look at the various paraphernalia needed to scrape and paint the farmhouse. That would have been a lovely stop to make together! I miss Home Depot! But, only one of us is retired, with ample time to journey through the aisles of sanders and paint application materials. I am the observer this time, giving unnecessary advice from the sidelines, expecting none of it to be followed because, well, I'm not there.

At least the last stretch of the road – the one connecting the café with the farmhouse – is pretty. Full of sweet golden rod now. The flowers of early fall.

so cold...

A student tells me – it’s the coldest September on record!
Enough that it’s a brutal slap in the face early in the morning as I’m riding Rosie to school today. I am so very grateful to Ed’s motorcycle friends (and by extension, my friends) who gave me their rider jacket – that little thing sends the wind flying elsewhere! (I can’t believe I’m using the thinsulate with it already. Forty-two degrees on the thermometer outside and that's before you factor in the wind on the scooter.)

I am trying to get up very early so that my evenings are free of work. It’s awful to make such deals with yourself because when you then do get up very early, by evening you’re dead to the world. Who cares if your plate is clean of work. Your plate has also slipped to the floor while you doze on the couch,

Isis and Ed continue to enjoy retirement and I wish them well. I’m not jealous. Who needs free time. Hard work builds character, my mother always said. (Or was it Lenin?)

I took a “first day of school” photo before I hopped on Rosie this morning. Not of me setting out – couldn’t do that, and Ed was too busy pulling a warm quilt to his chin (after sweetly rising to eat breakfast with me). But of the farmette – to remember what it is that I come home to in the late late afternoon. Hi farmette, bye farmette, see you later, farmette, I’ve got great minds to stimulate. Or something.





It is evening, I am home. Hi tomatoes, good night tomatoes.

faces of labor

If I said I cooked, cleaned and worked today, would it seem that I had an unspectacular Labor Day holiday?
If I added that the day was crispy splendid, that the meal was a pleasure to prepare and that cleaning the farmhouse made it all spiffy and ready for the year ahead, wouldn’t that sound like a day well spent?

All in the telling. Fact is, I had a wonderful day. My daughter kept me company while I baked and Ed fixed a dented John Deere. I rolled out the buttermilk strawberry scones, made the dough for the apple frangipane galette (apples from our tree) and prepared the strawberries for the frozen strawberry yogurt.





I cooked potatoes and chopped tomatoes (from our plants) and prepared the shrimp for the salad on the side. The corn was terrific, the brats were my favorites (with chicken meat and hot peppers).

And let's not forget the people. My daughter, her friends and so too, by extension, my friends. Ed behaved, Isis kept to the side, the cool air added a touch of autumn to the evening.





Such a good finale.

Now, let me tuck the last dish away and pull out pages of notes. Fall's here. I have three classes to teach tomorrow.

not elephants

The sky cleared, well, mostly it cleared...





It was time to get the farmette ready for fall. Brush removal, yes, that.  Weeding, lots of weeding. Pruning too. All day long.





And in pruning around the pear tree, Ed discovered these:





They grew! The wine caps grew!

Ed, it’s been raining. There are mushrooms everywhere. How do you know they’re your mushrooms?

They totally fit the description and I planted them here!

They could be different, poisonous mushrooms.

They’re wine caps. Let me cook them!

Cook one. Just one.

(Five minutes later, Ed’s outside, frying pan in hand.)
Try it!

You try it.

I did. Have this piece.
(I do.)

We should wait for 24 hours before we eat more.

Why?

To see what happens.

We don't eat any more today, even though I know that they are good mushrooms. Once, a long time ago, a doctor, one of my favorite doctors, told me I did not have some dreaded disease. How do you know, I asked then. How do you know?
Well, if you hear hoof beats and you’re in Wisconsin, you think -- horses. Not elephants.

So, the tree didn’t fall during the storm, the bear didn’t maul, the moped stayed steady. And the mushrooms? Eight hours later, still breathing. Wine caps. How about that!

thunderous

Listen!

Go to sleep.

No, it’s a storm! It’s out of control, I’m sure it’s a tornado.

Go to sleep.

We have to go downstairs!

Mmm.

I’m going downstairs.

Mmm.

The lights flicker, the wind is powerful. The trees are bending – I can see it well, the lightening is nonstop, like flashlight photos, one after another. The farmhouse has trees on two sides, but the nearest are pines. Can’t worry about pines. Their limbs aren’t heavy enough to come through the roof, into the bed.

I go downstairs and huddle in the mudroom, flashlight and phone in hand. Essentials to survival. My laptop isn’t too far either. Life’s work on it. Can’t lose that.

And then it passes.


In the morning we survey the damage. Limbs down, yard cluttered with the post-storm debris. My landlord seems unfazed. Have to take the John Deere and the chainsaw out. Maybe later.





We have such different personalities.

It’s Saturday – market day, but it’s raining hard. We opt for the Westside Community market: compact and condensed. All the essentials are there.










Back at the farmhouse, Ed snoozes on the couch with Isis, I work.

the meal deal

Well, maybe it’s time for the schedule of work to click in. Summer’s great, but is it possible that we’ve become too relaxed about life?






Our eating habits are unraveling. There is still a phony regularity to the enterprise: we have breakfast together on the porch, but oftentimes, Ed’ll pass on breakfast eating. He'll munch on a blueberry and we'll idle through the next half hour watching butterflies. And lunch? It comes late. After we put in hours of work. We’ll go to the café, say at around 4, I'll bring my own sandwich. No one makes PB and J as well as I do.

But the really big issue is dinner.

It's evening. I get up to start dinner prep. Ed gets up to help himself to five portions of watermelon. I lose my desire to cook anything at all since within minutes he’ll say – I’m stuffed. What a surprise. And so I downgrade the effort. I do, for example, this:





True, they’re garden tomatoes and it’s market corn and the Trader Joe’s smoked salmon has omega this and thats, but still, it’s not what I call a solid dinner. It’s not warm, for one thing. That’s summertime for you – you throw things together from the fridge and pretend you have a meal.

Come next week, free time will be very very precious again. The weather will deteriorate, the butterflies will be gone. To Mexico maybe. Lackadaisical habits will disappear. And invariably, I’ll work harder at putting together more focused dinners. Which will be a good thing.

rosie in the morning

I toss in the usual morning way. Because I should be getting up soon, I am especially feeling comfortable in bed. As if staying there is the most wonderful thing, as if I could do this for hours, as if getting up belongs to another time, another place.

One eye open. I glance out the window. Ah, the mist rising last night has found a home for the morning. I can see wisps of it.

I should go out and take a photo.

You should.

I should.

Go out and get your photo. Go, you like doing that.
I should. Toss, burry into the bed. Sigh. Get up.

Maybe I should take Rosie out. There’s a lot more distance that can be covered in case the fields just next door aren’t at their morning best.

We head east on the road. Nice!





The farmhouse is maybe a mile or two from a lake. I tell Rosie – we’re going to the lake!




Oh, really, if I could paint, I would, right here, right now.





Slowly we head back, doing a small loop back to the farmhouse. And now the fields of corn are so golden, so perfectly Septemberish.





The sun has broken up the ribbons of foggy air. But a few strands remain. Rosie and I pause and watch. How can you not.





Back we go to the farm.

It’s going to be a warm day. I’ll get going soon enough, but first, a few more minutes in a morning sleep, replaying the images from the morning ride.

my face is my windshield (Wednesday, continued)

Eventually, the sun recedes to the very edges of the farmette...





...Ed goes off for his Wednesday ride, and I take Rosie downtown for a burger dinner on the square with my daughter.





That is always a splendid way to spend an evening. But what I hadn’t expected was the further treat that followed the meal – a ride after the sun had just set. By one lake, then another – ahhh, magnificent.







And such colors! A sky doused with the hottest chili pepper sauce!







As I steer Rosie away from the city, I notice the evening bugs – the ones you typically catch on your car windshield. They don’t go away just because you’re on a moped. My face catches one, then another and I think – my, you have piercing body parts! Because truly, evening bugs are sharp!

Still, what a night! Rosie and I take the back way, so that we can creep up on the farmhouse quietly, away from the main road. And we are rewarded by a beautiful vignette – with a gentle mist rising from the warmed fields, overseen by the smallest sliver of a moon.





Rosie and I slow down and I think -- this is a good way to exit August.

when the day is through

We’re sitting on the porch, our feet up and resting on the ledge. The canvas chairs permit us to sway a little. An iPod is crooning some mild jazz, but really, the noise of the crickets is far louder. It’s nearing five and the shadows have crawled over much of the flower patch and driveway. I say to Ed – it feels like early fall. He answers – it feels like summer. He and I look out differently. I notice the movement of sunlight. He notices the warmth in the air. I am looking for an interesting photo. He is thinking of his bike ride in an hour or so.

It completely makes sense to me that people who have been around some should love a porch so much. Say you’re a parent: you’ve pushed your kids plenty. You’re not worrying about feeding them oatmeal anymore. You have more free time. Work is done for the day, now what? Read some spirited debate on the Internet? Forget it! Controversy is for the babes out there. You’ve heard the debates, the arguments, the nonsense. You know that no one is ever fully right. So, feet up, eyes out toward the sky. Crickets and a receding streak of sunlight are so much more interesting. We listen and watch and occasionally comment on what we see before us and really, we could go on like this for hours.

fresh run

I watch students cross University Avenue. The 1-Ls, the first year law students. A big deal day for them. How many times in life do you get to plunge into something fresh and new like this? Though maybe it’s not all new. And maybe you never really start afresh. You bring along your life into the classroom and then, at the end of the day, or the semester, or law school years, you pick up the essentials of your life again.

Me, I was distracted by my newborn at home when I was a 1-L. I thought about the law when I was on campus and then only about her, my tiny one, when I was off campus. Still, I took my work at school seriously. It was the last time I would be doing school. I wanted to do school with care.

And as I met with my 1-Ls today, I thought – they all care too. Ah, to do well by all of them! That is the goal.






I’m in my office again. Looking out on a green lawn, ridiculously being sprinkled today on this partly rainy day.





Later, Rosie and I do errands. We’re in town, so we do town stuff: picking up a bus pass (a symbolic gesture – there is no bus that comes within a mile of where I now live), a few groceries. Oh oh. It’s getting wet out there. Rosie and I battle the raindrops, all the way to the Oasis, where finally we meet up with Rosie’s garage-mate.





A good day.

another day, another season

I come outside in mid afternoon and notice that the sunlight is almost completely off the dirt driveway. It’s not a summer sun anymore. And even as I look forward to the changing seasons at the farmhouse, I know I’ll miss this easy season – of bare feet and warm fresh tomatoes. Of an open window in the bathroom so that I can listen to birds as I run the shower. I’ll miss that.

Isis has taken to coming in in the morning and, after sniffing in his usual nose-into-everything fashion, to jumping up on the window sill in the sunroom.





He’ll sleep there for hours unless I disturb him with kitchen noises. (He prefers to watch me cook, even if the cooking is only perfunctory – like it is at breakfast time.)

My daughter spent the night at the farmhouse and she said the words I have come to expect from visitors here: I sleep so well at the farmhouse! What is it about the place?

I know the magic. It’s the quiet, the sunshine, the lemon rug and the linen curtains. It's the ice cream, freshly churned and the just picked tomatoes on the counter. Evocative of a country serenity and of stress free times. The kind we don’t know much anymore.





Later, in the evening, I zip over to listen to music of Ernan Lopez-Nussa, a superb Cuban jazz pianist. He’s playing in a trio at the home of friends. Here they are -- the trio and the pair of friends in the background:


 


It's a maiden night voyage for Rosie and me. On a scooter, you feel the cool air seep in when you pass through the lowlands.

I had, earlier, put in another solid morning of writing, under-the-gun writing – I have so little time left!

I feel satisfied. Despite the travel or maybe because the periods of travel this summer, I was able to double the text on my book. If I edit throughout the year and put in as many pages next summer, I shall be done by the end of 2012. Maybe on December 12, 2012, just to give it a little symmetry. It will be a very satisfying day indeed. Even if it’ll be in the dead of winter.

apples

The last undemanding day of summer. I wrote furiously, as if there was to be no tomorrow. Five pages, delivered. A record for me.

In the evening, I put it down. I reached for the apples and pealed them, one after another. I rolled out the dough, cooked the crème patisserie and threw it all together.





It’s rare that I bake complicated pastries these days. It’s rare that I have last days of summer where words tumble like apples from a neglected apple tree.

rivalry

A bit of competition may be good for you, but when the competing entities are animal rather than human, it can get nasty. When a visiting dog leapt forcefully at a door behind which lurked a suddenly timid Isis, Ed decided that keeping the two animals apart for the remainder of the visit was a good idea.

That meant that Isis had to sleep in the farmhouse. You could nod your head and say – yep, I knew it, he’ll have you holding a "welcome, Isis" sign up at the farmhouse in no time. But, the circumstances were unusual. And it was only for one night, because Isis was feeling threatened, the poor thing.


Later, when it was time to head for coffee and, in conjunction, to the public library for our usual swap of viewing matter, Isis was again content, without hound nor stranger to scare the daylights out of him.

Unfortunately, at the library, we ran into a friend of Ed’s. Said friend of Ed’s happens to be taking care of a stray cat. And the question arose – might we want to help by caring for this homeless beast? She is as cute as a button, which is a good thing, as they’ve been calling her "Button." So should we spring a surprise on Isis and add a Button to the farmette? And will that mean that the farmhouse will suddenly have not one, but two cats constantly begging to be let in for movie time in the evenings? I haven't an answer just yet, in the same way that I don't know whether one day, we'll have chickens here.

The nasturtium looked especially stunning today. Vibrant. Almost red in their profound orangeness.





In other news, I think there is mild competition of another sort. My bike does not like all the accolades I throw Rosie’s way. When I pedaled to the downtown market this morning, I could sense a pouting resistance. As in – why does the moped get to have a special name and so much attention? To which I would respond (if the bike could really converse) – I gave you a name too, didn’t I? Wasn’t it something like Mr. G? Which I would then have to admit -- isn’t very attractive. So let me hereby change it to Mister Red which sort of sounds like Mister Ed which confers a nod to the person who influenced me toward more serious biking in the first place.

In days that I forget, I can call it “the bike,” because that’s what it is. As in -- today I took "the bike" to the market.










Still another note for Ocean: the farmette harvest includes, this year, apples. Lots of apples from one prolific apple tree. They aren’t the type to die for and they have an exceptionally short shelf life, but they are tasty enough and though we’ve ignored them, being somewhat overwhelmed by tomatoes and peaches, this afternoon I agreed to take stock of the orchard's shower of apples.










Tomorrow I’ll crank up the oven. Apple pastries by dinnertime. That's the goal.


Finally, let me note that this was the last August farmers market day and so you could say that it was the last summer market day. Given that I have orientation sessions with my students this coming week, I have to say that for me, summer ends now.

Am I ready to end the longest vacation of my adult life? Well now, work time can rarely compete successfully with free time. But, we'll see how it all plays out in the  days ahead.