Garden Folk

 

A couple of Saturdays ago I got to be on the other side of the table at a Farmer's market event at the Oklahoma City Oklahoma Food Cooperative store. For the first time I was there as a vendor. Wow! What a beautiful day doing business the way it was done for many years at this location in it's prime. Getting to know these farmers and regular variety garden folk was really touching to me. Plants make people happy, pure and simple. And I got to give part of that happiness. I was there selling cards and garden seeds but I got to sit next to the plant people- those who know hospitality, heirlooms, and handshakes.

 

My newly found friends are amazing. My friend Dev Vallencourt and her husband Kip Francis at High Tides and Green Fields grows 147 different varieties of peppers. Pretty sure you will never see a tenth of that many varieties in any grocery store. She also was teaching me about some innovative (or perhaps wise, antiquated ways) she has begun to grow winter crops in hugelkultur method from Germany that creates so much heat by planting on top of old wood that she was able to grow crops all winter long, uncovered.

I met a young farmer, Samantha Lamb who was managing a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) endeavor on her grandparents homestead in the Medicine Park area. I met Michael Ruzycki who is farming and hosting a store in Choctaw, The Veggie Lounge who said he started because he was always amazed at how much leftovers his grandfather always had from his garden. Two other guys have started an event composting and zero waste company, Fertile Ground in Oklahoma City. Others, like Renrick farms are working diligently to provide more drought tolerant, native, and butterfly loving flowers. Double R farms  was there  selling pastured lamb and eggs and Barb was trying to figure out what growing things looks like in Oklahoma after living for years in Alaska. There was experience and there was youth, but above all there was energy. Urban Agrarian hosts an all local market five days a week and their staff was busily working indoors sorting crates of tomatoes and processing local foods from all over into a wide assortment of baked goods while the old dog swatted flies with his tail on the porch. While we sat in our store outdoors community organizers from a "Better Block" project had gathered and were literally painting the town- covering over years of neglect and breaking ground for new beginnings.  

And then there were the customers. The lady who got a "pet" fern. The radiant Reverand who had been healed from a stroke. Everybody who marveled over how strawberries grow. Those whose garden was an epic fail last year, but they were trying again because they were determined to get their eight year old to like vegetables. And then the lovliest of my day, a young girl who had just come from a workshop where she had made a planter box a few inches wide by about three inches deep. She was absolutely bursting to find a way to plant things. No one had showed her the dirt in her own yard. She was so enthusiastic she could have made seeds sprout just by sheer wish. "I just want to grow something I can eat she told me." So we made a deal and I sold her two packets of lettuce and peas... And, hopefully, a share of the garden.

I'm Not Your Wookie. I'm Your Wife.

So the snow stopped just short of us. There was some major disappointment here. But for something completely different...

Dear E,
Recently while the kids were running around the house playing Star Wars and assigning roles and you said "mom should be the wookie", I did have to politely and humorously remind you "I'm not your Wookiee, I'm your wife." (I'm also not your wench). 

Perhaps I overlooked shaving, but geesh! You must promise me you won't ever look at this site ever....(What?! You are doing that right now?! Okay. At least report back). So I'll indulge you and here are some ways you could have easily confused us. First of all, like Wookiees, I too value loyalty, morality, and monogamy. I hope we mate for life and look we had two three  offspring. I like being the co-pilot on this crazy ship.   I am also willing to endure moderately spicy food (check back soon for something on that front).

But perhaps the coolest resemblance is that we both really love trees. I too am a long haired aboreal animal. I fantasize about some of these actual grown up treehouses.

This one uses all repurposed woods and already has tin roofs that would be perfect for rain water harvesting. 

Modified from

http://cyntiafernandes.tumblr.com/image/38929889782

This one modified from Blue Forest Barcraft media would appeal to the hobbit lovers in our house with it's buttressed windows. 

http://www.mostbeautifulpages.com/2012/12/the-worlds-15-most-stunning-tree-houses.html

We'll call this one the Thomas Kincaid Treehouse.

Modified from
http://pinterest.com/pin/103160647686745806/

Could our sustainable house look a little bit more like these? The quickest way to this woman's heart may just be through a tree (yikes, that sounds painful).

So I may just have to get over my fear of heights, become much more adept at technology, and learning to fly things. I may have to get over being such a light-weight- especially since Wookie's specialize in home brews. But I don't really anticipate getting over this pacifism thing anytime soon.

 And also... P.S: Secretly, I have six breasts, but don't tell anybody that.

Love,

Your tree hugging wookie wannabe

**********
Grroooaaawwwr!  I would live in any of those tree houses.   Tree houses are amazing!  

Again, you really should read more of the Inheritance stories by Christopher Paolini.   The first book is basically Star Wars set in Middle Earth but then the world he creates grows in beauty and complexity with the subsequent novels.  The elves are especially fascinating, they make me think of you.  They kill nothing, but "sing their food" from the plants.  They also "sing trees" into the shapes for their houses so that you can barely tell village from forest.   It's like your ideal community right? 

So I'll get to work on that magic-house-out-of-a-tree thing… I should have it figured out by, say, our 30th anniversary 

I love my wookie.

E

Remember the chickens, in the study?

E,

This week I’m thinking about eggs and urban farm animals. Remember when I hatched chickens--in our study? Of course you do. Well, it seemed like a good idea... The local extension agency (bless them!) provides educators with incubators and eggs from one of those mega chicken conglomerates, they which shall not be named (see any resemblance to Lord Voldemort?). 

There was me with fifteen eggs and an incubator exuberantly ready to do what I had always wanted but never gotten to do. We plugged it in and dutifully added water for 21 days. Every day I anxiously checked the window. Were they turning alright? Would they have enough moisture? Would any live or would I have to break it to my children and all their friends that I was in fact a mass chicken killer? (Stop chuckling).  

The first day of cracks I sat immovably for hours. (I was equally transfixed only  at the New Orleans aquarium watching a father seahorse, belly heaving, wondering if I was about to witness birth). Birth is a crazy, slow and exhausting process. Slowly a beak; an eye; a pulse through a hole; a wing. Then, wonder of wonders, twelve little damp feathered peeping (and pooping) hatchlings.