Sulphur Creek Farm

Yet another murmuration. Party. And so on.

2012-01-14T09:13:00.000-08:00

Below is, in it's (somewhat erratically typed) entirety, the message I found in my in-box last Thursday, Tom having stayed up very very late sipping wine with JodyTheComputerGuyJugglerSpelunker.

By the time I got home yesterday, I was forced to park in one of the more-uh-cattle-intense parts of the pasture. Devender, Kabir, and the Oaxacans had worked all morning pouring a suddenly-available four yards of concrete for our shed extension, Tom had made chicken soup for a sick Oaxacan on the crew, and the party was well underway.

We had a fine time--friends old and new, the last of whom left sometime after 10 p.m. Tom allowed as to how he had decided that, at this event, he might let himself drink a bit too much, and, in retrospect, he did an excellent job. This tiny wedge of the universe has exceptional people on it--you've gotta love our low threshhold for entertainment...

This Friday @ about 4:15 Pm we are having a nonexclusive viewing of one of the Grand Phenonomona of the Greater Scottsboro Environs, The Great Sulpher Creek Murmuration.

For those of you unacquainted with such granduer a murmur is the pleural for a flock of blackbirds & a murmuration is a large flock of blackbirds,. starlings included,that participate in magnificantly wonderful aerial flockarity proir to roosting, in this case , in a large grove of bamboo.

The scene is greatly influenced by 2 or 3 Sharpshinned Hawks acting as "hosts" with the effect of enhancing the aerial dynamics of the flocks, and adding to the overall avian extravavagansa.

This will be a fine experience in the visual, spiritual, auditory,and for the less fortunate tactile, senses.Hats and not so fine shirts may be in order for the latter.Some olfactory sensual treats are an occasional, feature and should be appreciated for their organic & soil enriching qualities.

To avoid adding the gustatory to complete the sensory pentad light H'orderves will be served indoors.

Cocktails of appropriate variety & quality will be offered.Any contribution to this will by no means be considered offensive to your hosts.

Hosts of admirable social elegance & high energy would offer a well thought out culinary finale to the evening.Lacking these attributes, we suggest that such guests as are interested may consider a communial feed at the very good riverside catfish restaurant in Ashland City or some other ethnic restaurant in Nashville.

For those interested in the Sulpher Creek Farm that would like a tour, such will be very informally availiable at 3 pmish.

We are most recepive to any guests you may wish to bring.

We look foward to seeing you.

Tom & Brenda & Rachel

Early Morning Bus. Music. Books. Murmuration.

2012-01-05T03:00:00.001-08:00

There is something clarifying about delivering daughter to Greyhound bus station at 4:30 in the morning--one is whisked nonstop downtown like a VIP on empty roads with blinking yellow lights to a glass box packed with humanity. A polite man in a white cowboy hat and bear-claw earrings offered me his seat, next to a woman hunched protectively over her boombox. We installed India beside an Amish boy and his black-bonneted mother at Gate Number Three, a door in a short row of four which all open onto the same small patch of sidewalk where the buses are nosed in.

Last night Tom and I were at Ann Patchett's new bookstore, Parnassus, to hear Barry Sulkin's guitar duo, Heavy Mellow. Definitely a Bells Bend invasion of Green Hills! We caught up on all the news--orchards, who (JimTheArtist and Heather) has moved into the neighborhood (Sandra's apartment and Ayla's little studio), who is buying property, easements for road and water access, and how many birders have visited the cranes in Hiawassee (two thousand). Tom ordered up several copies of the new Iliad translation to share with Mike and Jimmy. Though our shared peregrinations around the globe hardly constitute an odyssey. (And everyone's Penelope was along on the trip--none of us much into staying home to spin.)

India and Rachel threw a LastNightHome cocktail party--hot spiced rum cider (I think) and a viewing of the murmuration, our swirling flocks of blackbirds who circle, settle, flare back into the sky and eventually fall like tiny grenades into the bamboo to roost at dusk.

Like the birds, I plan (or maybe they don't actually plan--maybe they just do) to circle back, to the holidays in my case, and record a bit of the Farm doings over the last few weeks. But now--literally, alas--off for the root canal. Tooth Number Five.

Christmas Letter. Yes, it's old-fashioned.

2011-12-11T18:06:00.000-08:00

Dear Family and Friends:

Although to the world at large this is the Christmas season, for us and the gang at Bells Bend Farms this is the end of our third CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) season. We had 85 happy families as members this year, and also sold produce at a local farmer’s market. Our absolutely splendid crew of workers, friends, neighbors, and volunteers have made boredom an impossibility, especially on Tuesdays, our potluck dinner night.

We harvested our first hops, and Yazoo Brewery made a limited edition of Bells Bend Preservation Ale, celebrated at our First Annual Hops and Square Dance Festival. Yazoo’s winter charity run is also scheduled for our neighborhood next week.

Tom’s retirement continues to be punctuated by the acquisition of machinery, most recently a much-needed pickup truck. I’m still fulltime at Vanderbilt, and have had a couple of art shows and poetry readings on the side, with work at Sunset River Marketplace in Calabash, North Carolina.

We had a spectacular trip to Turkey with a little side trip to Paris this fall. Tom had a memorable massage in a bathhouse that opened for business in 1539 , and came home with a bag of lovely Black Sea rocks (if you have to ask, you’ll never understand), in addition to the memories of hundreds of eagles and falcons circling overhead during fall migration. And so much more.

Liz has started grad school at the University of Chicago, studying literature, which will, of course, improve her barista credentials.

Rachel is in the middle of the med school applications process, and continues to work at Beaman Park, supervising volunteers (Vandy frat boys!) and assisting with environmental education.

India, after a term in Ecuador and a summer doing geology in Wyoming, is a senior at Beloit College—geology and the school paper seem to be her main interests these days. Or so we hope.

We’re going to have fresh carrots, beets, radishes, and greens throughout the winter—come on down and have dinner with us!

From Brenda, speaking for Tom, Liz, Rachel, India, and all the beings, sentient or otherwise, who have roamed through, eaten, dropped by, slept, danced, harvested, hoed, picked guitar/banjo/mandolin, barked, tunneled, washed dishes, laughed hysterically, swum, purred, and cackled over/on/through Sulphur Creek Farm this year…and Merry Christmas to you all!

the week that was. another one. "gotta get my baby heads"

2011-12-04T14:07:00.000-08:00

So let's see: Sunday the beach/Thanksgiving crowd (well, really Tom and Rachel) return. Monday a spontaneous shrimp-fest. Weird pics of Tom's Black Sea Rocks brought home from Turkey, along with the Black Sea plastic doll arm, which triggered the appearance of the Sulphur Creek Very Strange Doll Head and Related Stories. (Tom's immortal line: "gotta get my baby heads"...)

Tuesday: Potluck at EricTheFarmer's. Wednesday: Gathering of the HopHeads--Tom, Keith, Eric, Joe, and Peter--to plan where to put new cables to expand the hop crop. Thursday: Farm dinner.

Friday: My most challenging monthly day-long clinic, lunch talk, inpatient rounds, signout. Raced over to Scarritt-Bennett for the opening of "23 Years", a very interesting show about war which features a large group of my drawings. Eventually home for the end of Rachel's birthday dinner.

Saturday: big batch of greens and slaw cooked up with Sidney for the Nashville Occupiers.

Quite a week. Maybe you had to be here.

Actually not all that different from most weeks.

(And thanks to Shea Sulkin for the photo and a good bit of the hysterical laughter around Monday night's dinner table.)

The Day After: Loony

2011-11-25T09:16:00.000-08:00

A beautiful day in Hickman County, where Martha and I painted Sharon's horses (literally, as it happened: one nipped at my cadmium orange and proceeded to spread it over one leg, lips, and side--our scrubbing turned it a sickly pink), and had the perfect Thanksgiving dinner and Lick Creek walk.

We just knew that the ThanksgivingAtTheBeach crowd was truly bored: nothing to do but walk and read. Called to confirm and crow a little in our superiority, and heard this:

Here's DiAnne's pic of the little loon that Rachel and a couple of other heroic beach-walkers rescued from illegal gillnets on Sunset Beach yesterday. Nipped Tom, but practically purred for Rachel, I hear, and wanted to follow her around.

Loony found a nurturing home with a Brunswick County bird rescuer, who thinks the prognosis for eventual return to the wild is good.

If THAT hadn't happened, they would have been bored. Without me. Really.

Thanksgiving

2011-11-23T14:41:00.000-08:00

I've been abandoned for Thanksgiving-- Tom, Rachel and friends heading out for a coastal vacation, while I tend to the home front.

Dinner the other night with daughter and three of her farm friends--gorgeous food, with brilliant raw beet salad, greens, and the cutest little carrots. A fine time, though I am aware that the discourse alters a bit with Mom at the table. Too bad, can't help it, a function of experience, space and time, it'll happen to you too, just wait.

Baked a honey cake to take out to Mike and Sharon's Hickman County farm tomorrow. We always lay bets on how many dogs will be there (I'm guessing ten right now), whether BridgerTheUgliestDogInTheWorld will be as curmudgeonly as ever, and whether TeddyTheBestHorse will be in top form. The (attack) geese have been retired, but the peacocks are still around.

Current political debate is wearing us all down. We really do need a day of pure get-together-and-enjoy, bad jokes and old stories, and tomorrow will be it. Hello to the farflung fam, love to all (take that, Newt!). Hope to return, rejuvenated, waving our Sheila B. flag: Quit Your Meanness!

Home-grown.

2011-11-19T06:26:00.000-08:00

A couple of weeks ago I was dropping off my entries for the Tennessee Art League juried show (third prize in oils, by the way), and an Australian couple came in. Chat led to a long discussion of what to do in Nashville, and Sarah, the receptionist, and I wound up printing up a long list: gotta go to the Station inn, have to see Hatch Show Print, the Parthenon is really a bit bizarre but a must-see, eat at Margot's, oh, yes drop by Meg's at ARt and Invention next door. The Farmer's Market. The library for a walk-through. Belle Meade Mansion for its luxurious public rooms and small family quarters. The Bluebird if you can get a seat.

Eventually I told them a bit about the farm, and pulled up the farm square dance video on YouTube. At this point, I realized I could possibly be playing into the Nashville = HeeHaw (not that there's anything wrong with that!) stereotypes, and--yes, salvaged the whole scene with a biting critique of postmodern deconstructionism.

Not really. But I did get to thinking that, while we talk a lot about eating local, what we all are really doing is moving towards eating local, art-ing local, entertaining local, dancing local. Some of us are reading local and writing local and banking local, seeing our own homegrown Nutcracker with the kids, and (we hope) buying books at Parnassus, Nashville's new local bookstore. Although our electronic world allows us farflung friendships, we are friending local as well.

And supporting our own local Occupy--TeClaw and the Hogslop String Band are hosting a square dance tonight at 9! Be there--the People's Plaza/War Memorial Plaza/Legislative Plaza. Whatever you call it, it's ours.

Aussies welcome. State troopers, too, if they want to dance.

Today. Only.

2011-10-22T12:30:00.000-07:00

So much has happened over the last few months: hops festival and square dance, benefit for Jeff Poppen (who is fighting a Tyson chicken operation that will drain into his spring), our trip to Turkey, art show at Martha's studio, Bells Bend farm day, life and death, here, in Libya and Syria, on Wall Street and Nashville's own Legislative Plaza. So much forces me to slow down and get small. So. Today.

It's just me, almost. Tom is reuniting with his highschool class of 50 years ago. Breakfast with Rachel, including the perpetually-these-are-really-the-last tomatoes, for what is likely the last of this year's tomato sandwiches. Really. The morning ritual of dog food, cat food, koi food, one last pink water lily. Walking to Kathleen's to talk about the neighborhood web site--one of those golden fall days. Kai--bless his heart!--is working on the greenhouse. A great blue heron flaps ponderously in, ratcheting it's tripod legs down to light on a tree stump, folding its pterodactyl wings.

Roses and clematis are re-blooming, the zinnias are as fierce as ever. At Kathleen's, spectacular dahlias are tilting at the breeze, and she has volunteer dill coming up on the pathway. Her old dog is sleeping in a patch of sun. A vulture is just visible, spreading its wings as it sits at the peak of the forest.

The swee'gum tree is brilliant, crimson and bronze, and faded green, dangling its decorative little balls. Doris is getting a jump, it looks like, cables running from her car to a pickup truck parked in the driveway. The little cemetery beside her house has been freshly mowed, and when I get home, so has our own yard, and Eddie and Patrick are just loading up mowers and trimmers. I'm always fascinated at the transformation of our ratty dandelion leaves, ancient fescue, and faded violets and crabgrass into what looks--for a couple of days at least--like a real lawn advertising the tidiness, thrift, and dedication to maintenance of its proprietors. (Well, in a way I guess we are: we are certainly dedicated to the maintenance of Eddie and Patrick.)

It's a rich, blooming, lush world, and the Japanese turnips and little radishes are coming in. And so much more. As so often is the case, the small things are adding up one by one to a big thing: an autumn day at home right here. Rachel's off to guide a hike (looking for nuts) at Beaman Park, Peter came in to use the computer, Kai is rummaging around for a hacksaw. I'm going back outside.

Loss.

2011-10-09T08:56:00.000-07:00

Our community, and Nashville at large, is mourning the loss of Minda Lazarov, cook, neighbor, activist extraordinaire.

Minda was the well-connected, well-informed, energetic neighborhood strategist during our fight against big-money developers. It was hard to say no to Minda, and I am here to testify that sometimes it's been hard to say yes!

Without Minda, Sulphur Creek Farm and Bells Bend Neighborhood Farms would not exist. Three years ago, as we gathered, exhausted from our years of phone calls, letters, planning commission meetings, and metro council meeting, but also jubilant about our improbable defeat of a $4-billion development proposal, it was Minda who suggested an organic farm--a positive step for our area.

Like zombies, we all nodded enthusiastically, and then looked blankly at each other. What next? What uncharted journey had we started?

Within two months, Jeff Poppen had helped lay out gardens on four properties, compost was accumulating (100 tons of the stuff), and 11-foot poles were appearing in our front pasture to build the 8-foot deer fence. Volunteers showed up on two sleety days to set posts and stretch fencing. We still didn't have a farmer, and weren't at all sure how this was going to work, but we pushed ahead.

And then we got a call from EricTheFarmer, at this point EricTheAboutToGraduate, who had grown up right here, wanting to help with the farm.

Three years later, the whirlwind continues: volunteers, square dances and potlucks, kids camped out in spare rooms,tractors, workshops, Bells Bend ale, and on and on.

Minda, we miss you already. As Rachel said, tearfully, "We're all going to have to step up now".

Thursday Dinner

2011-09-16T07:22:00.000-07:00

Thursdays Tom and I (and often DiAnne, bless her sweet self)cook for the farmers, and whoever drops by. Last night I stopped to shop at the shed on the way up to the house--picked up tomatoes and butternut squash. Pulled up some carrots from our garden by the kitchen.

Made roasted butternut soup (with roasted carrots, peppers, onions, an apple, orange juice, and whatever else was orange and within reach), filled out leftover pasta salad with the tomatoes, and Tom heated up some Scottsboro barbecue and made slaw--as always, with too much celery seed.

Then Eric showed up with this gorgeous basket. You can't see the lovely little potatoes underneath. Arugula and our very own Shitakes!

Arugula under the pasta. DiAnne made a green bean casserole (every bit from scratch, with our own green beans), and brownies turned up with Mark and Stephanie, a strawberry pie with Elizabeth and Raina. (Though Raina, true to her 18-month-old self, mainly wandered around, climbed on chairs, and said "no!", both tentatively and definitively.)

And tonight, maybe risotto with the mushrooms. Arugula omelet for lunch?

Yo-Yo. Rollergrrls. Moon.

2011-09-12T06:50:00.000-07:00

Yo-Yo Ma in the incomparable Schermerhorn on Friday night: an all-Dvorak concert, and the Nashville Symphony is terrific!

Saturday night went to see the Nashville Roller Derby--a wonderfully gritty evening in the old Municipal Auditorium, with Rambo and Maiden America skating on a flat concrete floor, families and friends hollering from the sidelines. This is just plain fun, once you figure out what the jammer is.

Sunday: DiAnne's melt-in-mouth green beans and meatloaf, a full moon sailing between the trees, and our first-of-the-year Victoria bloom--an armful of gorgeous floating in the pond.

This morning folks are gathering to help put up our hoop house, which has been a bit of a skeletal embarrassment since we got the supports up months ago but haven't made much progress since. Until today. PortaPotty in place. Cumberland River Compact literature out. I dropped off a pot of veggie beans.

Really. You gotta love Nashville, don't ya?

Scottsboro 55th Barbecue

2011-09-04T16:50:00.000-07:00

Blazing--that would be the wood fires all night long under 95 pork shoulders, tended by shifts of our neighbors. And that would be the day of the barbecue, tagged at 101 on the Lewis'Country Store billboard.

Our local Community Club has been doing barbecue on Labor Day Saturday for 55 years, and anyone and everyone who has ever lived in or around the area seems to show up--country band, a bit of sedate boot-scootin', and really good barbecue, beans, slaw, cornbread (the kind that looks like a stout pancake), kid's games, yard sales.

After rounding at the hospital, I served 'cue for a couple of hours, then scrubbed up a considerable pile of pots and pans, and the steam table. My fellow dishwasher was Linda, just retired from 39 years as a Metro bus driver. Miss Nancy worked on cornbread, George O. managed the cashbox.

Tom pulled pork for a while, but our real hero is Jim, who took the midnight shift and then worked most of the day as well. One guy drives from Knoxville each year to help out--grew up on Bull Run Road, and painted the Club and installed the swings for his Eagle Scout project twenty-five years ago.

I've lived out here since 1983, but am still a newbie by CC standards. We enjoy the overlapping generations and shifting groups that mark this as a real community, not an artificial, pay-to-get-through-the-gate simulacrum.

And, by the way, George tells me he's taken up pipe smoking. Burning holes in his pink shirts.

That's all the news for now.

Hops! It's Harvesttime. Buy Yazoo!

2011-08-19T06:02:00.000-07:00

Came home yesterday to hops harvest: Keith's second year crop looks really good. Tom hoisted someone with a machete up in the tractor's front end loader to cut the strings and bring the vines down.

By the time I arrived, folks were gathered in front of the shed (ok, around the beer cooler) pulling the flowers off the vines--fragrant green thumb-sized stacks of petals. Yazoo plans to use the hops fresh for a small run of Bells Bend Ale.

Rachel looked very distinguished, decked out in a hops version of a laurel wreath. Linus and Lila Hall from Yazoo Brewery, and their two blonde daughters, were on hand, along with Keith, George, India, Amelia, Holly, Natalie, Eric, Peter, Joe, Jim. Tom presiding. Along with Lulu and the dog flock.

Martha brought homemade sherry as an aperitif, and we had 18 around the table in the Church of Outdoor Dining.

First hops harvest! And our thanks to the good folks at Yazoo, whose products have promoted social interaction (and some fundraising!) at the farm for many years.

I'll try to get some pictures for you. Now all we need is rain!

What a Blast!

2011-07-04T06:48:00.000-07:00

Last night at neighbor Phil's--the immaculate estate on the corner with the pretty iron gates and precision-planted seasonal flowers out front--a spectacular fireworks show.

Glistening with sweat in the steamy still evening, we reflected the crimson, cobalt, golden, silver show overhead, booming around the hills. Stars, swirling pools of silver, yellow arches ending in emerald points, and those weird afterimages that sit on your retina like fluorescent branching coral.

Later, I stood at our upstairs window watching our own fluorescent night stars, our lightning bugs, as they silently blinked their way up into the trees.

A couple of days ago Tom and I went to the Frist Museum to see a weirdly schizophrenic pair of exhibits: Andy Warhol downstairs, with movies from the Factory, Edie in her eye makeup and invisible cape of fate, and the other denizens of his clubbing New York world. Upstairs, the Shakers: rag rugs, rocking chairs, a brown dress. The trailing voice of downstair's Judy Garland followed me around as I looked at the careful buttonholes on a dark deacon's coat, "Somewhere Over the Rainbow".

Our Fourth ( well, actually, our Third) was a bit like that: Warhol showing off at Phil's, and the Shakers admiring the fireflies.

We love it all--thanks, Phil, the Frist, Andy, and the fireflies! And Tom, who brought the six-pack.

Sadness on the Farm. See Last Post.

2011-06-07T11:36:00.000-07:00

While down in the large hole with the septic tanks (see last post), Tom slipped, cracked a rib, and had to be lifted out of the pit in the Caterpillar bucket. He has been properly medicated and is doing reasonably well, though still a bit ginger with the sudden movements.

We also lost our longhorn's beautiful newborn calf, cause of death unclear. Like her last baby, this one was strikingly white, with dark brown patches along the side, and she moped disconsolately around the pasture for the next few days. All other herd members are healthy and well--

Our final small loss: our aged but brilliant--think a tiny gem of carmine, cobalt, and yellow-green, with vivid violet thrown in--Gouldian finch was found toes up in his cage. He must have been at least twelve years old, maybe older, and his cheerful pointless chirping wove a pleasant backdrop to our kitchen days.

A couple of weeks ago, I laughed all day long about the sign I found that morning on his cage: one of the potluck kids, dismayed that the bird was nameless, had christened him "FALCOR". Maybe the burden was just too much.

Tanks. But No Tanks.

2011-06-07T11:24:00.000-07:00

You might have been wondering what the gigantic concrete boxes in the front pasture are--they have been sitting there for weeks. Short answer: septic tanks.

And now for the rest of the story.

After months of dinnertable consultation with Devender (who, in his defense, is a water engineer), Kabir (engineer of some kind), Zach (master's in heavy equipment wizarding), Keith (architect), Jeff (the Barefoot Guy), and whoever else came along (DiAnne, George, Ellen, Joe, EricTheFarmer) about a suitable design for water storage--something that would be cheap, hold lots of water, and work on the property--Tom and his minions came up with this: dig a really really big hole in the ground and bury six really big really cheap septic tanks, all hooked up to each other, a pump from the creek, and a pump out into the pasture.

And so, eventually, by fits and starts, it came to pass. The heart of the hole has been there for a long time. These last two weekends we also had a giant Caterpillar digging machine, and Kabir dug out the hole, smoothed it down, and slowly lowered each 13,000 pound tank into place, with Tom, Devender, and Keith assisting.

Guys driving by in pickup trucks stopped to admire the whole works, and I was dispatched at the end of the day to the Lewis Country Store's Beer Cellar for refreshments.

I think that PeeWee the Oaxacan soccer player, is going to help with patching leaks and carving holes in the concrete to put in the connecting pipes, and, at some point, we will have an underground reservoir for those blistering and rainless days in August.

Coincedence? Poland?

2011-05-15T10:17:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago, we gathered in a circle, as is the way of our people, for a pre-potluck poem and blessing. I read a wonderful poem by Szymborska, and when I apologized for not knowing the correct pronunciation several hands pointed to a small stranger, saying "Gina's from Poland--she will know".

I later discovered that Gina is actually from Nashville, but currently lives in Poland, actually in Krakow, not too far from the aged poet's apartment. She told me how revered she is, and that she--Gina--sometimes hangs out at the coffee shop where Szymborska is known to frequent, hoping to catch a glimpse of her, though with no luck so far.

Coincidence? I think not.

As Barry said the other night, towards the end of a lovely evening dining out in with the LIttle Marrowbone Society in the Church of Outdoor Dining, as the fog slowly wrapped itself around the bamboo--"This just isn't normal"...meaning, I think, the neighborhood, our farmers and interns around the table, talk, dogs, pond.

I think it is simply further proof that the reins of the universe converge here in Bells Bend, maybe right at Sulphur Creek. Not sure who is in the driver's seat, but we're along for a helluva ride. And with blessings and poetry and one degree of separation--well, maybe two--from a Nobel prize winner in a small apartment in Krakow, how bad can it be?

Spring Rush: Peonies, Roses, Exquisite Taste

2011-05-10T13:59:00.001-07:00

The hot hammer of summer has suddenly hit, after a long, cool spring. The pool is open, the garden is drying out. Our tiny bluebirds are fledging, with little hints of blue in their miniscule spiky feathers.

But mostly I just want to rhapsodize about my driveway bed: daffodils and hyacinths and lenten roses give way to iris and candytuft, then dianthus. This year the clematis jackmanii is a seamless drift of lavendar, hundreds of blooms draped across the fence and rosebush. The rugosa rose did its untidy pink thing, and now Tom's grandmother's white climber lights up the morning,a symbol of North Carolina tidiness and virtue, compared with the trashy-looking (that's why I like it) Fourth of July--a blotchy pink/red/white variegated rose. There goes the neighborhood.

The alliums, still a few iris, and the tiny Fairy rose are all out, but nothing, absolutely nothing can compare with the glory of the peonies. Double handfuls of clear pink, pale, magenta, white, ruffled, nodding--the perfection of the ideal of an aspiration to beauty. Almost makes me long for a calm room, polished table, lace, a bit of silver, crystal bowls, pale walls, drapes--almost, for a couple of days, anyway.

Most days, though, give me a messy farm kitchen, dirty boots just inside the door, Lulu under the decidedly unpolished table, newspapers scattered around the green chair, and one of those little Fourth of July blasts of color in an old Coke bottle, next to the pile of seed catalogs and some round wire things that go in the pond filter.

And the driveway bed at least twice a day.

DinDin, Spring 2011

2011-04-26T13:06:00.000-07:00

We are warily anticipating a huge 13-yr cicada bloom this spring, with all the tin-pan clanging buzz that accompanies this wonderful and bizarre phenomenon. This batch is known as Brood XIX, and, according to Cicada Facts, consists of at least four species, all sounding like the cherubim and seraphim I've been thinking about lately. That is, the names--neotredecim, tredecim, tredecassini, tredecula--sound like angel species. I'm pretty sure no non-fallen angel would claim the chainsaw mating call. (Maybe no non-fallen angel would claim ANY mating call, however melodic.)

Until they drive us out, we are still attending the Church of Outdoor Dining. I thought that watercress and redbud salad was the perfect early spring dish, but mid-spring has its own contenders. How about our own bamboo shoot green curry over rice, with garden lettuce salad and just-picked asparagus? Besides, it's just so damn pretty--all those pale greens.

That was dinner a couple of nights ago, when Virginia, Martha, and Tom helped DiAnne plant her zinnia bed, and the Rachels showed up to help cook. Breeze rustling bamboo, a trill of windchimes, an undertone of fountain with small accents of koi lipping their kibble...A tiny peace, about to be invaded.

Also found a recipe for cicada snacks, supposedly tasting "like avocado" when still white and tender. Think we'll settle for just the din, and skip the cicada dindin.

For now, sticking to bamboo and lettuce and anticipation...let me know if you are a braver soul from a culinary point of view.

All You Need Is Love

2011-04-23T05:47:00.000-07:00

Still knocked out this morning from last night's entertainment: Neighbors Barry and Minda, in their alternate personae as the Beatles Fan Club and Research Group, hosted a Bells Bend fundraiser. Don Henry and Bill Lloyd did a stand-up-'n-shout turn as the Fab Four, assisted by an audience which knew all the words, could impersonate the ocarina, and supplied, near the stairs, an impromptu rhythm section.

And, the final touch for the idolatrous masses--Fred "Too Slim" Labour, telling the tale of rumours of Paul's untimely death, largely fueled by imaginative details supplied by a comic article he wrote as a U of M sophomore for the school paper. "Then they wanted me on a television show with F. Lee Bailey, to get at the real truth..."

All of this at the far end of the potholed and rutted lane serving our neighborhood rustics as a driveway.

This morning, cracked clouds, masses of purple clematis suddenly out, Eric and Whitney load up the tent, tables, and harvest for the market, and I'm on the road, headed for the hospital, singing "Hey, Jude"...

Don and Bill, Too Slim, neighbors, friends, Fab guys all--sentimental as it may sound, there is really nothing else to say except that sometimes joy does break through--glorious, whacked-out, and childish as it always is. Thank you.

The Sound of Angels

2011-04-15T18:15:00.001-07:00

It's been cold and rainy these last few weeks, so the Tuesday potlucks have wound up in our kitchen. Since it's always a school night for me (we say that now-retired Tom and the farm are on "full wife-support"), I usually head upstairs, abandoning about twenty kids, with their attendant plates, crumbs, beerbottles, and dogs, just a little bit after the banjos, dobro, and fiddles get going, along with a little hollering and footstomping. From upstairs, the music is pleasantly mesmerizing, a nice transition to sleep.

It reminds me of an afternoon when I was 9 years old, and my brother and I were, as usual, messing around in the woods behind our house, digging holes, floating twigs down the ditch, and climbing trees. We heard, at first faintly, then more strongly, lovely, far-away music, music with no rational explanation, coming from beyond the trees and pastures. We looked at each other speculatively, and I, for one, really, really thought that maybe, just maybe the magic predicted in church was actually happening and this was, just maybe, genuine angel music--that the barrier between Northern California and heaven had broken down, and the music of the spheres was leaking through. In our prayer-drenched world this seemed perfectly logical, and, in fact, we could think of no other explanation.

We crept from tree to tree towards the melody, which grew louder and louder, and finally revealed itself to be nothing more transcendental than our distant neighbor, a retired band director, playing his French horn on his front porch.

Since then I've been deeply sceptical about anything relating to real-life transactions with cherubim and seraphim.

However, when I came downstairs the next morning, to find the kitchen spic and span (well, above its usual standard, anyway), all dishes, pots, pans, leftovers scrubbed and stored, counters wiped down, bouquet restored to the table center--well, the idea of angelic presence seems pretty compelling.

Thanks, kids--you're too good.

Hops, Hope, Charisma

2011-03-26T18:38:00.000-07:00

I'm finally understanding why people like to come to Sulphur Creek Farm--I thought it was the food, me, the implicit invitation in a big and messy house, music, nature deficit disorder. But now I understand.

It's actually pretty simple: TomTheHusband and LuluTheMastiff are charismatic megafauna.

Larger than life and twice as charming, memorable, lovely, and kind, both with wonderful public presence (Tom's blessing "Lord, Lord, Lord", and Lulu lying against one's feet) and private loyalty.

Although, in my opinion, somewhat less charismatic when both are wedged onto the battered red couch watching North Carolina win yet another, Tom welded onto the action, waving a beer, and Lulu drooling rhythmically with her snores.

Before today's game was hops-planting--I came home from hospital rounds to an empty bean-pot, and at least eight bean-stained bowls. Tom, Jim, Keith, Keith's friend, Sumter, and maybe Joe spent most of the day in the drizzle, laying down mulch, planting hops, and hanging string vine supports. Jeff came to fix the shower, and Kabir stopped by to raid the fridge.

But for me, just a nap and a little down time with my megafauna, whom I love even when, temporarily I'm sure, those charisma scores hit rock bottom.

(Good thing for megafauna charisma that Carolina is winning. Trust me on this.)

Springiest Eats

2011-03-23T18:20:00.000-07:00

Well, Eric, Alyssa, Whitney, Peter, Kevin, and--I think--Caleb have taken advantage of the few clear days to plant all the seedlings from the greenhouse: onions, lettuce, kale, celery. Rain has put things about 3 weeks behind schedule, and is rolling in again tonight.

But oh, those lovely days: redbud, the gorgeous allee of blooming Japanese cherries along Murphy Road, wacko daffodils of every kind, frogs ratcheting their hoarse voices through the night, and stars, calves, and, of course, weeds. Even they--the little square-stemmed things that thrive anywhere anytime--have small purple blooms and are magic when carpeting the fields outside the juvenile detention facility off Briley Parkway.

And this has to qualify as best eats of spring: Sulphur Creek watercress salad with redbud blossoms.

Of course, we are having the first asparagus tonight, a Benton's bacon/spinach salad, and roasted beets fresh (though a bit tough) from the garden.

But still: watercress and redbud.

Spring. Daffodils. Frisbee team. Taxes.

2011-03-11T19:11:00.000-08:00

Home from Texas. Missed a potluck. Peter and new WWOOFFer Alyssa are here, and there is much joy in Mudville at the impending return of Kevin. Almost as much mud as joy hereabouts...

Although the redbuds were out in Texas, all we have here are the daffodils. Heck, with daffodils who needs redbuds?

All hands except these working on a new section of deer fencing--the peas will be above-ground in a few days, tasty and tempting.

These busy today with taxes, laundry, organizing poems, grocery shopping, supper, pimiento cheese! All girls will be home for an hour or so around dawn: India is bringing a dozen frisbee-ites traveling back to Beloit from tournaments in Georgia through our kitchen for breakfast.

Spring is when a young man's fancy turns to love, it is said. Will not here detail all that an older woman's fancy turns to, but there is much to be said for the simple pleasures of surviving to see another spring, a vase of daffodils on the breakfast table, and a kitchen full of daughters, farmers, poets and enthusiasts.

And purple martin experts. (Tom's doing a lecture at Bells Bend Park tomorrow on the subject.)

Quit Your Meanness

2011-02-27T15:04:00.000-08:00

Sheila B.'s contribution to the union rally!

A Saturday in the Life.

2011-02-27T14:40:00.001-08:00

So this is how it goes on yesterday, a typical day around here, though lovelier than most, recently. Just to highlight the isolation of country life.

Up. Coffee. Rachel comes down from upstairs bedroom, ready to tell 65 volunteers at Beaman Park what to do. Peter appears from downstairs.

I spend morning in office at Vandy doing paperwork. Lunch with friend. Tom goes to pro-union rally.

When I get home, Manuel has come over to dig bamboo. Tom and Eric advising, the latter popping his new suspenders. DiAnne and Shorty are laying out flower beds. Kabir calls--will stop by to get Tom to pick up hay.

I go to Bells Bend Park for afternoon constitutional. Meet Joe and his canines, Ink and Molly, and walk along together. Three students in oldfashioned dresses are making a video for an art installation in California. Young father is toting baby in backpack and trailing after toddler who is using his wooden sword as a walking stick.

Carlos is on the river trail, and we stop to talk about Nan Madol, the Venice of the South Pacific, Bhutan, and botflies. And PhDs, and Tsibilisi. And Easter Island.
Around the corner another teen film crew is stacking gear in the trail and working cellphones.

Wave to Tony in Nature Center, and drop by Sharon's to leave her muffin-toter. Grandbaby belches over my shoulder and dogs fetch sticks.

Home. Steve and Jill have stopped by with a wonderfully bizarre Belgian frame containing a fine bird print. Tea brewing. Chat.

DiAnne arrives. We head out to dinner.

Kits, cats, dogs and wives--how many have arrived? Just another day in paradise--this backwoods corner of Music City. And it's not even farm season yet.

Dog Days

2011-02-19T13:22:00.000-08:00

Sadly, Lulu, our lovely little "teacup mastiff"--small for breed at only 135 pounds--has been diagnosed with osteosarcoma, an incurable bone cancer.

Everyone in our farm family has been enchanted by her not-very-bright but indomnitable brindled dogness, generally manifest as a large kitchen obstacle, occasionally shouldering the dinnertable as she struggles underneath to sit on our collective feet.

She is less charming when dealing with intruders onto what she views as her turf, but as far as I know has never done anything more lethal than bristle and growl, loudly and efficiently.

I often nap with her on her couch--leather upholstery now held together mostly with red duct tape--lulled into semiconsciousness by her snores and dreamtwitches, and she leans protectively into my knee as we walk down the driveway to fetch the newspaper. She has been limping more and walking less as the knot on her front leg grows, but still races out, about as graceful as a freight locomotive, to greet the dawn and roar at passing coyotes at midnight, and watches over the kitchen with sad eyes and the usual trail of affectionate drool.

Martha's little dachshund Rudy is gray, half-blind, and in Pampers, and DiAnne's fastidious Basenji Shorty is beginning to stagger, her tightly curled tail slowly unwinding.

I think we all are old enough to just hope that the people who feed us and walk us and curl up with us on our couches will love us for even our unlovely shortcomings when we too unwind, and not intervene too much when the inevitable end approaches. And that we too will march out, or stagger out, or limp out to meet every single dawn with some trace of this magnificent unthinking joy.

And, at least a few more times, be out at midnight yowling with the coyotes.

Valentine's Day Redux

2011-02-16T17:26:00.000-08:00

My own Valentine's Day display included, as you now know, a dollar book about Raymond L. Dittmars, a rattlesnake card, and cooking dinner for a random assortment of folks I found gathered around the kitchen table.

Even stranger is the spring courting display of the woodcock, also known as the timberdoodle and the Labrador twister--currently featured at Bells Bend Park and your local venue.

There were about twenty of us wandering the park's open spaces this evening under a rising full moon. The buzzy ground calls were all around us, follwed by a musical chitter made by the wingfeathers as the male woodcocks spiral upwards to 300 feet, then fall zigzagging back to earth. Actually seeing these elusive birds is a bit difficult in dusk and early evening, but it was a beautiful night, moonshadows trailing behind us,with the faroff howls of a pack of coyotes a mournful accompaniment.

Valentine's Day

2011-02-15T14:40:00.000-08:00

I and this blog have been in hibernation, along with our compost piles, rosebushes, and farm shed (please don't ask what happens when a bachelor fridge hibernates), but are now rousing to face the new year.

Last week, trapped in town by our 3-inch blizzard, which just happened to arrive at rush hour and iced over instantly, creating peri-Vanderbilt gridlock (reports of two hours to GET OUT OF THE PARKING GARAGE!), I strolled around the honking cars and past Bookman towards Fido's and supper, and there it was--on the $1 sidewalk table no less--a biography of Raymond L. Dittmars, Tom's boyhood herpetological hero. (As in reptiles, not STDs.) Perfect.

And I thought my rattlesnake-in-heart-shape card was so romantic! But, of course, Jeff Poppen and EricTheFarmer and a nice couple-who-want-to-farm were gathered around the table talking about barns (garden vs. cow), garden placement (public vs. not), and ions (the importance of calcium, potassium, and silica), and, of course, I heard bits and pieces while putting together dinner: our own carrot and winter squash soup (fab, if I do say so myself), roasted just-picked brussels sprouts, roasted potatoes, and sausage from Jeff's own pig--technically, I suppose, an ex-pig at this point.

All in all, an excellent day, if a bit unpredictable. But isn't that really the point? Of living?

Poem: Potluck: Moon

2010-11-10T15:14:00.000-08:00

We have continued our tradition of Tuesday evening farm potlucks, even with the colder weather, though it may be time to quit for the winter. Our tradition has included, in addition to the blessing (usually eloquently delivered by Tom), the reading of a poem. We want our farmers to be cultivated, as well as the farm.

Last night I read one of Gary Snyder's poems. I don't always like them, but every once in a while that translucent simplicity is just perfection. As I read to the hungry circle, I watched the moon, a thin golden crescent, just above the hills. Overnight, somehow, this description arrived. It's all mine, though I hope maybe Gary Snyder in one of his lucid and not too sentimental moments would like it too.

Potluck on Sulphur Creek

November moon: an empty bowl,
shining in reflected light,
dragging darkness behind
like an old coat,
a beggar’s cup,
balanced on the hill.

Come. Join us.
Here, sit here. This is my spot
by the fire pit.
You can borrow my good friend and
this plate, this food the work
of many hands. The sweet potatoes
grew right over there.
Someone has a banjo. There’s a guitar,
and at least one dog.
The creek has stopped to listen.
Tom throws a log
on the fire. We lean in
to the circle of light, watch
the beggar’s cup moon
tip over the hill, still empty,
don’t mind the darkness
it left behind.

Come. Join us. We
have plenty.
It is not much, but it is
everything.

Sorghum on Sulphur Creek

2010-11-03T05:47:00.000-07:00

Neglect a blog for a couple of weeks, and see what happens...right-wingers take over the country. I'll try not to let this happen again. Meanwhile, let's think about something sweet.

"Did Dr. John ever get that second quart I left him?" The rangy gray-haired man, sporting a Santa Gertrudis belt buckle, leaned over the counter at the nurses' station. The husband of a patient of mine, he had just established that "Dr. Tom" was in fact related to me, and that he and his wife were enthusiastic members of the Dr. Tom fan club. (I benefit from the fringe good will!)

He was talking about sorghum, and no, Tom had not gotten the second quart, and yes, the half-empty quart on our kitchen table was from the James farm in Russellville, Kentucky.

It was a slow day at Stallworth. Here's what I learned about sorghum from this man who is obviously a master.

About half an acre of sorghum cane produced 350 gallons of juice, which boils down to about 40-50 gallons of syrup. But not easily.

After many experiments, he found the best way to grow sorghum is to start the plants in a float bed, trays of cells floating on water, a technique used by tobacco farmers. He then plants them out in precise rows using his tobacco planter, and keeps them weed-free. When harvest time comes, he walks the rows and cuts off the leaves and tops with a pocketknife. A few days later, he hand cuts the cane and piles it on the back of a truck. ("Some folks just crush it, leaves and all, but that just in't right. It'll spoil easy.") The cane must spend at least two weeks stacked, in order to maximize the development of sugar, but can spend a couple of months without harm, as long as it doesn't freeze.

Then he runs the cane through his crusher (bought second hand in Florida and so powerful "you could feed a couple of guys into it if ya wanted to"). The juice goes into a metal tray he custom-built--8 feet by 4 feet by 18 inches deep--which sits on a double row of concrete blocks with the fire built between them , and cooks down. Different impurities and chemicals rise to the surface at different times in the process, and have to be skimmed off--"made my skimmers out of pie plates with holes punched in the bottoms".

I'm not sure how long the juice takes to cook, since I was so distracted by the complexities of decanting a tray of boiling hot syrup measuring 8ftx4ftx18 inches. Not to worry. "Made one corner a little bit lower and have a spigot there", so the syrup can just be drained off into clean buckets, cooled, and poured into the stainless steel honey tank he bought for just this purpose. It, too, has a spigot, and he can fill quart jars at his leisure.

No sorghum this year, due to his wife's very serious health problems, but we hope we have those under control now, so maybe next year will be back on track at the James farm.

What a smart farmer knows: this man and his wife are encyclopedias of Kentucky agriculture. The Japanese designate masters of traditional lore as "national treasures"--I would nominate him in a skinny minute. Santa Gertrudis belt buckle and all.

In the meantime, Sunday biscuits with sorghum.

Weddings: Now and Then

2010-09-27T06:08:00.000-07:00

Well, it all went off without a hitch...except one. As intended.

Katie was lovely in a hot pink silk frock (stitched by sister Molly, who also performed the ceremony), the weather was that one gorgeous day on the cusp between summer and fall, both of the margarita machines worked spectacularly well, and no one fell in the lily pond.

Casey (and Tom, Brooke, Rachel, Amy, Joe, and Zach) produced a pig that was succulent, tender, faintly lemony, melt-in-mouth wonderful--barbecue like candy. Casey is likely not yet recovered from his all-day-all-night-all-day stint at the pit. What a guy. What a crew!

DiAnne's flowers were unbelievably gorgeous: a luxurious mix of wild and garden flowers from the neighborhood.

The young folks danced (I presume--the house was pretty much acting like a woofer-amp, vibrating to the bass) until near-dawn. When I got up for coffee and the newspaper there was a large pile of humanity bedded down on mattresses in the living room, which eventually sorted itself out into daughter Rachel, visiting Massachusetts mariners Joe and Amy, Jason, and Seth, who is two months into a bike trip to Seattle.

Ran into Milwandt while picking up the paper: he was cutting young loofa squash off our fence for dinner. Gave me a wild persimmon, a bag of pastries for the kids' breakfast, and a gigantic pale green squash, variety unknown to me.

Things are so different and yet the same: Twenty-seven years ago this week Tom and I got married on that very same front porch. DiAnne did the flowers (and painted Tom's waterlily tie that went so well with his white linen suit), Jill and her All-Boy Band sang for the reception, and Katie, who was about three, ran around in a little white dress with a circlet of flowers in her hair and ribbons trailing down her back.

She was darling. Still is. Thanks for marrying her, Leif.

Weekends. Students. Weddings. Wet Squirrels.

2010-09-24T14:21:00.000-07:00

Last Saturday morning at seven here is what was going on at Sulphur Creek: I was heading to the corner store to track down George West (I was pretty sure he'd be at breakfast at the Round Table) and confirm that he was going to talk to my busload of Vandy students at eleven. (He was there and was.) Brooke was cutting a few more flowers for the market. Eric was in the study running off copies of the "Bells Bender". Kevin and Evan and Lulu and Ollie were breakfasting at the shed. Tom was on the phone confirming the arrival of a couple of soccer players scheduled for yard work.

The bus of Vandy students arrived right on schedule, and toured the farm, talked with George about farm life, whooping cranes, Vietnam and the meaning of life, and also with Barry about the endless complexities of preserving a small patch of land from bizarre and destructive projects--from the several versions of a dump (on land that was steep, rocky, and wet), to 2000 houses (on land accessible only by a single narrow road), to a city to be created ex nihilo. We rescued a box turtle from the road, and pondered the reproductive possibilities of the osage orange. A productive morning, overall, I thought!

My favorite quote: George, describing yet another discouraging event for the Bells Bend Defenders--"I felt like I'd been slapped in the face with a wet squirrel". We've all had that feeling once in a while.

This weekend: Katie's wedding, so we have a tent, a stack of firewood, pig pit prep, Esme' running barefoot through the pasture grass, and various combinations of fathers, groom, friends, extension cords, cut flowers, tables, hay bales, and cleanup crews wandering around the front yard.

And I haven't even mentioned Joe and Amy, our mariner friends visiting from Woods Hole. Welcome!

turmeric. I knew that.

2010-09-24T14:19:00.000-07:00

Just couldn't get Blogspot to let me back in for some reason to fix it.

Okra. Cumin. Tumeric.

2010-09-17T16:00:00.000-07:00

Fall, but still hot, hot, hot.

Upinder, on the subject of her fabulous okra:

"It's easy--just take a few spices, and get Millwandt--he's very good at this--to cut the okra very carefully and put the spices inside. Then stack them up around the skillet, just a little oil, about as much as frying an egg, put the lid on and on stove. After a little, take the lid off and turn them over and cook some more. Done! Easy."

Whoa, there. "A few spices"?

Salt. Cumin. Maybe some citric acid "if you want a sharp flavor. Lemon juice adds liquid which is not good". Tumeric. "Tumeric is very good for you. Get some root--you can get it anywhere*--and cut a little piece"--she indicates her pinkie finger nail--"and chew it every day." Thoughtful pause. "It will make your teeth a little yellow. I put it in the back part of my mouth. Very good for you."

Maybe easy. Certainly extremely tasty. And, along with Upinder and Millwandt (resplendent in a lavender turban and an old Ralph Lauren t-shirt) and Sarah and Evan and Kevin and Dobro Dave and all the rest, a lively dish for a fall evening.

Thank you.

* Maybe anywhere. But not the Bordeaux Kroger.

Bookshelf: What isn't there because someone is reading it.

2010-09-08T05:56:00.000-07:00

Shed and farm denizens--Lulu, Ollie and Red excepted--are a literate lot, it turns out. Curious, maybe a little bored, I did a survey at last night's potluck. Nearly everyone was reading something. Here's the list--no guarantees about spelling, title correctness, or truthfulness. Maybe they're all secretly reading People magazine. And no, I can't seem to winkle out the secret of italicizing or underlining on this particular program. Just deal with it, people.

Alicia: Gardening with the Spirit of Place by Marge Hunter.
Evan: Autobiography of Malcolm X, and Emma Goldman's autobiography.
Kathleen: #1 Ladies Detective Agency, McCall.
Upinder: Jhumpa Lahiri's Unaccustomed Earth--"not her best", according to this reader.
Peggy: Living, Dreaming, Dying--about the Tibetan Book of the Dead.
Rich: Brewing Up a Business, and something called Kanban, which somehow has to do with Japanese manufacturing techniques and software. Go figure.
Ali: Napoleon's Buttons, subtitled something like "17 molecules that changed the world", and Caste War in Yucatan.
Milwandt: The History of Doubt. If you can believe him.
DiAnne: Yet another trashy bagatelle by Lawrence Sanders.
Devender: technical journals.
Sara: Let Us Now Praise Famous Men.
Jason: an anthology of Peace Corps experiences.
Jack (not to be confused, according to him, with Earthworm Jim): Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Also writing fiction.
Fletcher: The Easy Way to Quit Smoking
Lauren: Total Fredom by Krishnamurti.
Holly: "I'm not reading--I'm writing." Essays, journaling.
Jim: Lacuna, by Kingsolver.
Justin: Christianizing the Social Order and Scripture, Culture and Agriculture by Ellen Davis.
Eric: Sustainable Agriculture from Startup to Management, and The New Earth by Eckhart Tolle.
Hap: The Harvard Psychedelic Club, about the early Ivy League days of Timothy Leary, Andrew Weill, and Alpert.
Scott: The Value of Nothing by Raj Patel,and Slow Money.
Judith: The Bible. Really. Working through from beginning to end.
Anya: a novel called The First Betrayal, and Drood, about Charles Dickens.
Rachel: Magical Mushrooms and Mystical Molds.
And me: I've been mulling my way around a book called Composing Pictures, and reading short story collections by ZZ Packer and David Foster Wallace.

So there.

Thursday Dinner. Some Summer Farewells.

2010-08-28T06:35:00.000-07:00

Thursday night I came home from a very long day to cooks in the kitchen, putting a little extra twist on our usual farmers-eating-at-home Thursday night dinner--a summer farewell to Amelia, going back to college in Portland, and to India, heading off to Ecuador.

Casey and Brooke were the animating spirits--the rest of us chopping dutifully or just sitting around telling stories. ("So, yeah, I've heard the name--tell me who Will Campbell is.") Esme, a new 4, cycled between India's room, where mostly packing was going on, and the kitchen, where she sat on the counter eating bread and jam and dribbling the oil into her daddy's homemade mayonnaise fixings. DiAnne brought in a brilliant cluster of zinnias, perfect for the blue vase.

Homemade pimiento cheese toast, fried green tomatoes with Casey's mayonnaise, turnip greens (the best!), that fine ham from the Murfreesboro ham man, DiAnne's cauliflower, light little biscuits with sorghum, arugula and peach salad, "smashed" potatoes.

And our familiar crew: Tom, DiAnne, Rachel, India, Brooke, Casey, Esme, Eric, friend Laura who is visiting, Kevin, Evan, Amelia. Martha stayed home to take care of her ailing dachshund. We sent a mental toast to Buddy--we miss you!--and Dan and Evan, our reliables from last year. And Jeff the Barefoot Farmer, who has been tragically flooded out twice this year.

Our long table in the Church of Outdoor Dining was lit by a brilliant moon (and, ok, ok, lights), the white nightblooming water lily unfurled into its personal glory, and this long and complicated day tapered off into a long and complicated peace.

Tom did get called away on a neighborhood emergency, so we ate peach pie standing in the kitchen, and somehow a "massage circle" turned into a knot of about ten twenty-somethings, arms tightly wrapped around each other, staggering through the house like a drunken caterpillar towards the couch to watch "Ernest Goes to Camp", that perfectly silly Nashville-filmed confection (which, incidentally, features DiAnne and Martha's turtle props).

And then I had to get up at 4 a.m. to take India to the airport. And another full day of clinics and hospital work. Well, really, still, life is good. Not exactly minimalist, but good. And we're already looking forward to seeing India and Amelia again around Christmas!

Tractor. Seedlings. Hot. Hot. Hot.

2010-08-16T12:44:00.000-07:00

Here's an actual picture of Tom's new tractor--see background.

Obviously farmers have been busy, busy--lovely seedlings for fall crops, in spite of breath-grabbing mind-numbing soaking-sweat-every-day heat--high 90's, with heat indexes of 110 or so much of last week.

Hats off to 'em all: hope they keep theirs on. At least until it cools off a bit.

Tom. Retired. Retreaded.

2010-08-16T10:50:00.000-07:00

Back from the ritual Sunset Beach in August. But all those superlatives must wait for another day, another forum. The real news, of course, now not so new, is that Tom is really, totally, completely, without a doubt retired. No more Vanderbilt, no more VA, no more clinics.

No more dress slacks: it's suspenders every day all day. I have labeled his current state as one of "suspendered animation".

He quit on a Wednesday, and his new Kubota arrived on that Saturday--a large orange (non-UT) object squatting in our driveway. The spader is yet to arrive.

As the sole support of this operation at this time, I have registered small and tentative objections to this outlay, ladylike peeps of "Do you really think...?", and "What about...?" Tom points out, not without truth on his side, and not without justification (sanctification is a good ways off, alas), that this is indeed not a yacht, a small red convertible, or an expensive lady friend.

Anyhow, adjustments all around: suspenders, schedules, kitchen clean-up, and tractor education.

I'm envious. I think.

I Dig Bells Bend. Dinner

2010-07-29T14:34:00.000-07:00

Swim and dinner last night for about 30 young (mostly) archaeologists who are part of the field school down in Bells Bend Park.

I came home from rounds, did some shopping down at our shed--a tray of tomatoes, a basket of squash, some cukes, a little basil--and, together with Tom and Kathleen, turned out an excellent dinner, if I do say so myself, completely worthy of service in the Church of Outdoor Dining.

These kids have been digging in the near-100-degree heat for six hours a day, camping in the park, classes at night, and loving it! We just plain got a kick out of the enthusiastic burble around us, about archaeology, music, poetry. One young woman was telling me about her job as a contract archaeologist for the Corp of Engineers, moving from place to place, motel to motel for a year, "but I got to see so much of the country, and boy, do I know a lot about soil structure in the Southeast!"

Ashley, an almost-phD, rounded up the troops, and before I knew it, the dishes were done, food was put away, and the napkins and tablecloths were in the washing machine.

Dr. David Anderson should be justly proud of his crew--he's growing exactly the kind of slightly bizarre, more-than-slightly independent, deeply thoughtful people this country needs right now. We're just glad to have the chance to grow squash and potatoes to feed them once in a while.

Wow! Kudos! Over-the-top cliches! Awesome! Too cool!

Anyway, you guys come over any time.

The rest of you guys--readers--get over to the Facebook site I Dig Bells Bend. Not any time--right now! (I can't seem to get pix or link to work, but you know what to do.)

Barn Dance. Sunday. Breakfast. Gristmill. Grist.

2010-07-26T14:43:00.000-07:00

The barn dance was big--lots of people dosey-do-ing (how do you spell that?) and swing partners to and fro-ing in the steamy summer evening, with a caller, and a darn good sounding jerryrigged band with a washtub bass, fiddle, banjo, dobro, guitar.

Who knows when the festivities wound down? Not a creature was stirring when Martha and I drove off at seven Sunday morning to paint before it got too hot. But at noon half-a-dozen post-party twenty-somethings appeared in my kitchen, requesting leave to cook breakfast in an airconditioned space. (My car thermometer registered 101!)

What's not to love about breakfast for lunch, especially Casey's biscuits and bacon, especially when someone else cleans up?

Meanwhile, Tom, Devender, and Kabir headed off to translocate Will Campbell's ancient tractor-powered gristmill from his Mt. Juliet farm to ours. A risky mission successfully accomplished, along with taking Will and Brenda out to lunch--also a risky mission in some ways. My favorite part was watching Devender driving the new Kubota up the drive--a veritable symphony of color: lavender (turban), brilliant yellow (T-shirt), and orange (tractor).

I organized paper, blocks, and ink, and printed several blockprints for my beach gallery, Tom went to a farm meeting, and we sat around reading, writing, and 'rithmeticking in our checkbook until bedtime. Oh. DiAnne stopped by, and Jeff came by at breakfast time to bring food to the farmers. And Upinder and Millwandt dropped off a load of bread.

Just to give you an idea of an ordinary Sunday, day of rest. It's all grist for the creative mill. Good thing we have one now.

Peach. Counterpeach.

2010-07-24T11:38:00.000-07:00

"If this isn't something you're doing already, you've gotta start right now"--Casey pushes the peach, topped with coarse-ground pepper, across the counter at Tom.

It's a Sulphur Creek Saturday, and Casey and Brooke have stopped here for lunch after a morning slaughtering and processing Fletcher's chickens down the road. I took an emergency supply of extra ice down that way, and watched chickens transformed from fluffy white cluckers to tidy packages of prospective dinner, gutted and shrink-wrapped.

Early this morning I walked over to the potato patch and the dye garden, still--mostly--holding their own amidst the dry grasses and weeds. The potatoes have been dug and moved to the cave on Bull Run for storage.

Then down to the shed to help, at least a little, dividing yard-long beans into CSA portions, and scrubbing the stove and cleaning up a little. Five fully grown human beings working and eating around this small space does not make for pristine surfaces everywhere at all times...

We're scheduled for a heat index of 103 today, and that's just plain hot, even in shed shade and pretty early in the day. Plans are on for a potluck, band, and square dance caller for a barn dance this evening.

And now, Benton's bacon BLTs and Tom's field peas for lunch. Casey makes a good pitch for bacon cooked gently and not allowed to get crisp--and he may be right. Might be right about the peppered peaches, too.

Road Trip: The Sonic Bride

2010-07-19T14:28:00.000-07:00

When, in the course of human events, one gets invited to Huntsville to deliver a couple of lectures, one and one's newly retired spouse decide--Road Trip! Why not?
The Giant Blue Chicken awaits, a mere bagatelle of driving about six more hours to Oxford, Mississippi, and of course--we are called to the open road.

It's about three on this very hot Saturday afternoon at the Sonic Drive-In at some nameless crossroads on Highway 78 in northern Mississippi and we are ordering our coffee and a lime chiller. A young girl gets out of her car, incongruously dressed in a long black formal, trimmed in cranberry red. Two more come giggling from another car, and, curious, I asked them who they were--a choral group? "We're bridesmaids!"

I turned around and there she was--the bride--standing on the curb, hiking her white lace dress up around her knees. She said, "I'm getting married in about thirty minutes, and we just got hungry!" As they piled back into the cars with their sacks of cheeseburgers, I admonished her not to let the groom see her--"Oh--no one knows we're gone".

The Sonic Bride, a vision of young love, on the open road. We can only hope--for their future together, for no ketchup stains on the white lace, for better coffee down the road.

I Dig Bells Bend. Call for Gunga Din.

2010-07-08T19:48:00.000-07:00

Best part of today: first day of field school dig in Bells Bend. About 20 folks, profs mainly from UT Knoxville and U of Arizona, students from all over, and all rabid--in a nice way, of course--for paleoindian archaeology.

My very simple understanding is that this is the period about 10,000 years ago characterized by Clovis points, and just before that time. Our squash and potato patches are apparently not the only places in the mid-East with gazillions of points (which is interesting, and counterintuitive if you believe that we were populated by folks coming over the Bering land bridge, all the way over on the other end of the continent), but virtually no carbon-datable sites.

But Bells Bend looks very promising! Shane Miller, the young PhD student who seems to be at least partly in charge (even if he is self-described as "a bit feral" after the last six weeks, spent at the Topper site in South Carolina), calls this the "Holy Grail" of Paleoindian archaeology, and can begin to answer the really big questions about who came where when. Or so I understand.

Otherwise, other news: dry, dry, dry. And no Gunga Din. Until: the WOOFFERS devised a clever system involving a pump, tank, pickup truck and hose to keep things going until yesterday, when the pump/creek/soaker hose option finally came to fruition. Still working on the pump/creek/storage tank (septic tank seconds)/hose option. Which has engendered many (many many!) hours of manly conversation--Tom, Zach, Keith, George, Devender, Joe, Eric, and many more.

Meanwhile, I was in two gully-washers today, one downpour at Vanderbilt, just as I was walking to my car to come home, and one at the Nature Center in the Bend, just down the road, but not a drop on the farm. And the sky is clearing.

Go to Facebook and look at the I Dig Bells Bend site. There is also a web site. All with daily posts from the dig. And lectures at 7 almost every night at the Center.

Exactly how am I supposed to concentrate on preparing two lectures to deliver in Huntsville next weekend in the midst of all this excitement?

Fourth. Well, really the Third.

2010-07-06T12:24:00.000-07:00

The Little Marrowbone Repair Corporation did itself pround this year, with the third edition of Burning Banjos: People making T-shirts, cardboard boats for the regatta, fireworks, firework tower, decorating same, eating, drinking, wading in creek, making a dam, roasting goat (on a jackleg grill made from a tractor part), drawing pictures (that was me), wearing hats, admiring same, getting sunburned, playing/listening to Indian flute music, jazz, trumpets, spoken verse, good old country, and lots of gossip.

Incredible fireworks.

And all homegrown. A shoutout to Don Evans and his Corps, and Cheryl, who has to put up with it all.

I have to say in my modest, understated, elderly way: Our neighborhood is THE BEST! Over the top! Amazing! A colossus amidst the pygmies!

"If you burn a banjo, a lot of guitarists will come..."

Hops. Yazoo.

2010-06-22T05:52:00.000-07:00

Hops planting. Yes, it was 98 yesterday, but in the (relative) cool of the afternoon, the crew transplanted our hops, dividing rhizomes and winding the vines up the twine. We are hoping that we can baby them along--this is late in the season to be transplanting.

Keith Loiseau has been the animating force behind this project. Turns out you need really tall trellises--12 to 15 feet--which, a couple of weeks ago, meant some really, really tall poles sunk into seven-foot postholes (thanks to Keith, Zach, Tom, and I don't know who all), then cable connectors and guy wires. Then tying twine to the cable.

Then yesterday. We'll see how it goes.

My day looked a little different: hospital rounds, dental emergency, then home to count workers and do dinner for twelve. Nice to sit in the pavilion watching the fireflies rising in the meadow.

Thanks to Tom, Sydney, Eric, two Kevins, two Evans, Brooke, Amelia, Sabina.

And thanks to Yazoo Brewing Company, Nashville's microbrewery. Yazoo has been unbelievably supportive of local farming, and our fundraisers.

Bells Bend loves Yazoo, and we're planning on sending a few hops your way. Eventually.

Box Turtle Theology

2010-06-18T05:37:00.000-07:00

Our old friend, Mac Davis, understood the great questions of life from the point of view of the lovely box turtle: the universe is made up of towering blades of grass, rustling leaves, rivulets of warm water, and on rare occasions, the sudden appearance of a dry hot plain, populated by erratic roaring devils, behemoths designed to crush turtles, specifically, into nothingness. There comes a time in every box turtle's life when this hellish drama appears and must be negotiated.

This morning, just past the country store, a turtle teetered on the edge of eternity, on the shoulder of the road, looking across the five lanes. I pulled over, and so did good neighbor Keith. I imparted a few of the basic principles of Box Turtle Theology, as we imperfectly understand the creed. When I reached down, the turtle instantly pulled in legs and head, clamping upper and lower shells together, and looking for all the world like a charming jewelbox. Not an unreasonable reaction to impending revelation.

Then I, the Hand of God, instrument of salvation, put him up on the bank, pointing back towards his small kingdom of grass and trees, and I , the Hand of God, climbed into my dusty van, picked up the cooling coffee cup, and headed back to my own familiar world.

Consider this a small bit of hagiography, a nod into the eternal computing cloud for Mac Davis, through whom a bit of eternity, if only for turtles, has been revealed.

Pig-pickin'. Some call it barbecue. Whew.

2010-06-14T14:22:00.000-07:00

We are slowly coming out of barbecue recovery.

The Bells Bend Farms pig-pickin' was extraordinary. Fund-raiser for farming out here. Glorious afternoon, just beautiful beautiful tables with our own hydrangeas, striped grass and Queen Anne's lace in mason jars. It was just a lovely day all the way to the paper lanterns floating into the night sky and the luminarias transforming our driveway into an otherworld fantasy.

Shoutouts first:

Yazoo!!! Donated kegs. Wahoo!

Which brings us to The Riders in the Sky--purveyors of mega-wahoo and fantastic music. We couldn't have done it without you.

Hatch Show Print: We did our own invites, but Hatch donated the cardstock, all cut to size.

Syd: This girl can flat track down beer (as long as it's Yazoo, our very own), Porta-Potties, paper, envelopes, auction donations, people who can whip our computer into submission as detailed below, and on and on. Ice, lighting, you name it.

Casey: Pit-meister extraordinaire. (Of course, Tom was the meister-master, supervising preparations.)

Rachel Lawson: Caterer advice and fab beans. And more.

Max and Ruthie: Layout and computer-tending for invites.

Brooke: Gorgeous, as usual, as was her salad. Brooke was up from picking to pit. We couldn't do it without her.

Patrick: Firewood. Himself.

Jody: Street performer, good time guy, and he keeps our computer running too.

And all our usual neighborhood wonderfuls: Ellen--address-wrangling, tablecloths, tent gear, auction accessories. Sharon--cornbread and a delightful playhouse. DiAnne--flowers and rooster. Emily, Rachel, EricTheFarmer, Peter, Kevin. Becca, Joe. India--flew home for the event!

Artists: You know who you are.

The Slaw Sluts: You know who YOU are--responsible for handchopping cabbage for 180 dinners!

Amelia and Sabina: These guys not only helped before and during, they were up at the crack of dawn the morning after stacking chairs, clearing tables, and generally cleaning up.

Our gratitude extends to those who inadvertently entertain: Zach the Dapper Chopper, chopping barbecue in a starched striped shirt and Panama hat. Lulu, who couldn't decide which table to lie under. The gentleman with the deadly baseball cap, taking out flies one by one.

And Tom, without whom this event would not be--endless months of phone calls, negotiations, consultations about barbecue sauces (tomato or vinegar?), coleslaw, cornbread.

And me--I'll extend some self credit here: invitations, lemonade, ten dozen lemon bars, accounting, auction.

I hope I haven't left you out. If you're like me, you won't care much, at least for another few days, because you're still lying in the hammock with a bad book and a glass of tea, orthopedic shoes sitting side by side in the grass.

Happy Birthday, Brooke!

2010-05-24T09:48:00.000-07:00

Last night, a celebratory dinner for Brooke, the other half of our farm management team. We thought we'd have one more harvest of bamboo shoots--wonderful in a green curry--but the season is suddenly over, and the shoots are too tough to harvest. So it goes. We did have beets, my candidate for most underrated vegetable, kale salad, lettuce salad, and curry with tofu and chicken. Rachel baked a lip-smacking (though a bit tilted) carrot cake, and I made lemon bars.

Nothing would be too good for Brooke, though. She's our IT girl, the cat's meow, the best of the best.

In praise of girl farmers: Syd is here, chain-saw totin', tofu-eatin' Syd, working wonders in our overgrown yard. And Amelia and Sabine stopped by for morning coffee with Montana, one of last summer's interns, who brought us a megabag of dark-roast coffee from California, and some excellent wine.

Montana's been documenting Los Angeles rockabilly, which is apparently undergoing a worldwide renaissance. (Is it even legal to use "rockabilly" and "renaissance" in the same sentence? Where's Jerry Lee when you need him?) She tells me that there are even young Latinos playing "cumbia-billy", a hybrid mixing rockabilly with Mexican dance music. With its own dance moves. Who knew?

Girl farmers. Life wouldn't be right without 'em! Thanks for the coffee, Montana, and happy birthday, Brooke...

Farmers! Heroes! Rain! Read all about it!

2010-05-18T13:42:00.000-07:00

Glory be! Thanks to the dedication and hard work of our farm crew, Bells Bend Neighborhood Farms is producing for its second year! EricTheFarmer, BrookeTheAmazing, and Adrian and Kevin, our interns--I bow repeatedly in your general direction.

Read all about it at the website below. (I swiped Eric's photo for the blog.)

It's still raining.

http://www.bellsbendfarms.com/Newsletter-1-(group-2).php

Flood of Aught Ten: Hickman County

2010-05-16T05:30:00.000-07:00

Our friends Sharon and Mike live beside Lick Creek in Hickman County, in a converted dairy parlor off a graveled road. We drove out there for dinner last night. What we saw, like all flood destruction, is both hard to believe and hard to describe.

The concrete county bridge in front of their house had been partly cleared, but the bottom twenty feet of a tree, more than two feet in diameter, was still wedged into the railing on top of the bridge. A swimming-pool sized hole had been dug by the currents as the water rushed across the pastures and over the road. A forest of trees was piled like twigs alongside the now-placid creek. Sharon described the pinging sound as boards from their fences popped off one by one "like dominoes" and floated away. The surging floods tore down an old stone berm and dropped boulders the size of engine blocks two hundred feet away.

The mayor was stranded in his office in Centerville for four days, without cell phones, land lines, or radio. Hickman County, in the year 2010, a mere 50 miles from Nashville, was completely cut off. Finally someone found an old-fashioned ham radio operator, who could begin to get word out about conditions in the county.

Mike and Sharon have a spring-fed water system and a well, but the county water system has been destroyed--not just the processing plant, but miles of pipes have washed away. I heard an estimate that it would take three months to restore clean water. This is a poor county in the best of times, and people were barely getting by before this disaster.

Cheatham County, just down the road from us, had similar problems. Helicopters were dropping MRE rations and water to folks who could not be reached any other way.

Government response, both federal and local, has been timely and relatively efficient, though there is no way for a disaster of this size to really be managed. The volunteer response has been magnificent, and thousands of flooded houses have been gutted back to the studs. Gigantic mountains of household waste--sodden drywall, couches, and carpet--are accumulating everywhere.

And it's raining today.

Mother's Day: Daughter's Lament

2010-05-10T11:36:00.000-07:00

Fam,

Can I just express how difficult mother's day was? I spent time with 4 or 5 friends looking for mothers day gifts. Here's how it went down.

Flowers: Liz and India, you have no idea but the flowers at the farm are OUT OF CONTROL. I guess I could have gotten some really crappy flowers, just for contrast.

Chocolate: Thanks a lot, Casey Daley and Sandy Hepler. Can't get her chocolate.

Make a meal: Brooke. Kay. Enough said.

Plants: all my friends got their moms plants. Tomato plants. Blackberry plants. Somehow it just didn't seem appropriate.

I hope you enjoy the microbrewed root beer.

Love,

Your daughter in Nashville

Peonies:Reconstruction:Wall Street

2010-05-10T06:33:00.000-07:00

The familiar white van pulled up as I was leaving this morning, disgorging our local carpenters, JeffJ and Patrick, a replacement window, a ladder, and a couple of cups of coffee.

After our floods and a few steamy days of sunshine, the driveway flower bed is bulging with just plain gorgeous: clematis in a dense mat of lavender, roses, iris, dianthus looking like rickrack trim along the front, asters, and little purple balls of scabiosa. But mostly, mostly peonies--white, pink, dark magenta, extravagant.

Patrick's mother is 94 years old, and beyond growing peonies, but we offered to send a bouquet home to her. Patrick asked if I knew Mary Oliver's poetry, and particularly her beautiful poem about peonies.

Here's part of it: "...their red stems holding/ all that dampness and recklessness/gladly and lightly,/ and there it is again -/ beauty the brave, the exemplary,/ blazing open./ Do you love this world?/ Do you cherish your humble and silky life?..."

So here we are, looking at the culture wars from the Sulphur Creek Farm point of view: Pundits agog over a Wall Street awash with exquisitely educated bankers showing themselves to be rapacious, greedy thugs, while our neighbor, a carpenter, a thoughtful and literate man, goes quietly about the tedious business of restoration.

We used to call people like this "cultivated". Our farm, driveway beds and all, is all about cultivation, but I'm not at all sure we spend enough time on poetry. Or peonies. Sure as heck Wall Street don't.

"Peonies" by Mary Oliver. Look it up.

Flood of Aught Ten: Update

2010-05-05T14:51:00.000-07:00

The water level has dropped less than two feet--still six feet inside the football stadium, nearly burying the semi-trailers parked at the Gun Club, and, brown and grim, covering much of Bells Bend.

The Pulmonary Clinic flooded, destroying all the computers and pulmonary function testing equipment. We are doubling up with other Vanderbilt docs in their clinic spaces, and are seeing as many patients as we can. Meanwhile, I hear, the floor is being ripped up, walls are torn open, and everything is being emptied out of the clinic, just like is happening all over town.

Clean water may soon be a problem.

Our losses are minor compared to the losses of many. I don't even know how to begin to transmit my ongoing shock that three people could drown in Belle Meade, right at the shopping center, right in the middle of the ritziest part of town. At an ordinary intersection.

We are just a bit disjointed, trying to do the work put before us.

I have to say, Gaia seems to be striking back.

Go to the mainstream media for pictures and more stories.

Flood on Old Clees' Ferry

2010-05-04T11:17:00.000-07:00

My neighbor, Ella, sent me this photo of a house on the river side of Old Clees' Ferry Road (AKA Old Cleece's Ferry Road). My favorite evening walk is right along here, eight feet under--the Cumberland is about a quarter of a mile behind this house.

There were 9 feet of water in some of Vanderbilt's parking garages, 8 feet on Second Avenue downtown, and LP Field was flooded. And so far, it's just sitting there, until the Cumberland River slowly begins to subside.

The Flood of Aught Ten

2010-05-03T10:03:00.000-07:00

EricTheFarmer in our waterlogged shed. The water behind him around the compost piles is three feet deep and running hard.

Sulphur Creek: Whiffs of Hades: The Great Flood

2010-05-03T06:03:00.001-07:00

Today is a blazing morning, the sun burning through the misty trees. Yesterday, another matter.

It rained. And rained. Something like 9 inches in less than 36 hours. Sulphur Creek was raging, crashing over our bridges and creating rivers running through our pastures. Land on both sides flooded, with a heavy three foot-deep current gnawing away at our compost mountains.

Our tiny side creek, usually a meandering two feet across, roared over its little bridge and made its own river about 70 feet wide, running both into the creek and down into the driveway.

We spent much of the morning drenched, as we slogged around moving things to higher ground: buckets, tools, beehives.

Fletcher called, worried about his chickens. The creek was cascading over the guard rails by the train trestle, intermittently blocking the road into the Bend. The chicks were ok, but the neighbors living in their basement were not, and the boys helped them move their furniture upstairs.

The Cumberland at Clees Ferry was up nearly to the top of the boat ramp, and later, I'm told, flooded far up the road, including the sod farm. This morning I passed semi-trailers completely under water at the Gun Club, and our side of Briley is closed, along with White Bridge Road.

We are counting our losses: substantial for us, but small compared to others in the area. Mainly, all 240 shitake logs, representing a massive amount of work by Eric the Farmer and his buddies, are on their way to the Gulf of Mexico. Think cutting trees, hauling them out of the woods, cutting them up into 240 4-foot sections, and drilling and packing with mushroom spawn, then stacking and re-stacking. That work has all just floated away.

Our raging pasture river pulled down about a hundred feet of 8-foot fencing, and, of course, the farm road is pitted and scarred and scattered with twenty-pound rocks carried here from somewhere upstream.

And, as always, we do have blessings to count: Dinner by candlelight for a bedraggled crew (our own asparagus, lettuce, greens, a few pre-flood shitakes, the neighbors goat cheese, an excellent vintage box wine, some of Casey's dark chocolate), all dogs and cattle alive and well, the (working) generator, and our neighbors. Our main blessing. Zach is already up at Jeff's with his backhoe, repairing the cavernous washouts beside his bridge.

So, we are fine, but the Cumberland has not yet crested, and much has been lost in other parts of the county. Sulphur Creek has given us a whiff of the underworld, and we are emerging again into the light, ready to do useful work. Wherever it may be.

Bootes Redux

2010-04-16T17:26:00.000-07:00

Remember Bootes, the constellation called The Herdsman, relaxing after work with his pipe? Arcturus his big star? This afternoon, weeds piled along the driveway, I had another Bootes moment, this time leaning on the stirrup hoe, listening to the jays and doves and mockingbirds and Lulu crunching a bone in the background. The wind swept around the hollow, and I could just faintly hear a radio somewhere.

Now I have to wash the tablecloths for the farm's EarthDay booth. Nothing is ever as easy as it ought to be--this involves dislodging the cat, tacking in the glazier's points in the last couple of frames, moving all of the paintings that have covered the table the last week, packing up the framing toolbox, shaking off the tablecloths, and heading off for the washing machine.

Is there a constellation called The Laundress?

Genius

2010-04-15T08:31:00.000-07:00

Last night: a rocking show at the barn behind the Loveless Cafe at Music City Roots, and featuring the nameless young man who was in my kitchen last Sunday morning. Who knew? He was terrific (Luke Nicholson, if you must know), and provoked consideration of the nature of genius, an unholy--no, maybe it's holy--mix of obsession and talent.

Lots of geniuses wander in to Sulphur Creek Farm. Jeff, a farming genius. DiAnne, a woodworking genius. Luke. Buddy on his guitar. Tom has a genius' memory for sounds--get him to reproduce the plop of lard into the fryer in an East Tennessee diner for you.

But this week we have particularly relished the genius of Mark, from Red Boiling Springs, who can gather a sack full of morel mushrooms in an hour. What to the rest of us is perfect dun-colored camouflage to Mark is a brilliant neon. He thinks its because he's colorblind, but that just doesn't quite make sense.

Genius just can't be explained, but it can sure be enjoyed! In this case, sauteed in butter, with Amish noodles and watercress from Sulphur Creek.

(Picture thanks to Joe and Billie Little!)

Bootes, the Herdsman

2010-04-11T09:27:00.000-07:00

Yesterday: one of those glorious, bright cool spring days, with the peonies beginning to unfold tender purple leaves, and the dogs lying in a patch of sun on the porch.

After hospital rounds, I came home to find my kitchen filled with young cooks and kale and apple salad, guacamole, mint tea underway for the Shed Shower. And people came. And came. An old friend from Philadelphia, Nashvillians young and old, lame and leaping, musicians, storytellers, teachers, heavy-equipment masters, docs, layabouts, handymen, teachers with other people's children, newshounds and writers, woodworkers, deerskinners, chicken farmers, winemakers--we all ate, walked the garden, gossiped, watched the kids in the creek, and just enjoyed the afternoon.

The Shed Shower pretty much equipped the outdoor kitchen (donated stove, fridge, couch, chairs, pots, pans, canners, tablecloth, a copper skillet that would look really really good in MY kitchen!, benches). Thank you, thank you.

Then the bonfire, music, and blanched cabbage blossom salad. At one point there were TWO chocolatiers in the kitchen, tasting, talking fermenting, roasting, cocoa butter versus oil, chocolate liquor, and cocoa bean varieties being grown in Nicaragua.

I took my binocs down to the campfire to look at stars, and was astonished when a dreadlocked buddy of Rachel's bounded off to his car and came back with his apparently standard equipment of star book, map and laser pointer! Who grows these miraculous young? He showed me Arcturus and Bootes, the Herdsman, who is sitting smoking a meditative pipe, presumably surveying his flocks with a gentle and proprietary air in the cool of the evening.

Appropriately enough, Orion the Hunter was just wheeling down out of sight behind the hills across the road.

Yesterday that was me, Bootes, enjoying our rural kingdom of an evening, with a weak gin-and-tonic standing in as my metaphorical pipe. And this morning the glow still holds, even though Rachel, Casey, Mary Claire, Tom, and the other young man, the one with blond curly hair whose name I can't remember (but his father is a songwriter), unfolding from sleep into the kitchen, aren't exactly my flock, and my survey, over coffee, recognizes that proprietary is not the right angle here.

Unlike Bootes' flock, they are free to go. But also welcome back any time.

It's always something...

2010-04-06T11:06:00.000-07:00

This morning: As I'm heading out the back door for morning rounds, I hear loud and angry and X-rated shouting, the roar of a 4-wheeler in the far pasture, Ollie's frenetic barking ringing clearly above the din, and see our cows bolting in a tight group toward the back barn. A battered skyblue pickup truck roars up and a grizzled old man leans out.

Turns out he and his son--he of the 4-wheeler--are chasing their mule, which has galloped down Old Hickory from Bull Run Road, was almost caught with a bucket of corn over at Zach's, but then jumped the cattle gap and is now racing wildly around the back pasture, along with the cows, dogs, 4-wheeler, and son.

A police car blocked the front gate, the policeman looking bemused at the dust and noise. "I've been out here since six, trying to keep that mule off the highway", he said wryly, glancing at the halter and rope on the seat next to him. "Now they're roaring around back there tearing up your pasture. Doesn't look like that's gonna work too well. I've gotta say these aren't the smartest two guys on Bull Run."

The mule--a pretty red-blond--did finally get haltered and hauled away, but not before the younger man stopped his 4-wheeler for a few minutes, watching the mule, and said thoughtfully to Tom, "Ya know, maybe he's smarter'n me".

Every cowboy, fisherman, birdwatcher, and preschool teacher knows exactly how he feels.

Heaven, Indistinguishable from Spring

2010-03-27T06:20:00.000-07:00

Frosty, but clear and sunny. The Vanderbilt redbuds, flowering cherries, Japanese magnolias and other blooming whatzit trees have exploded overnight into fuzzy pink and white balloons. Our pastures are a tender green.

Last night--a chili cookoff at the community club, before the Friday evening dance, and I thought Brooke's veg chili made with Sulphur Creek black beans was just the best. I also finagled Miss Essie's Japanese fruit pie recipe, which is now scribbled on a napkin in the pocket of my raincoat.

At the park, afterwards, astronomy aficionados had their telescopes focused on our heavens: Castor, the Orion nebula, Saturn, and a green-tinged (due to optic filter) arc of moon silhouetted against black space. Bell's Bend is unusually fortunate in its dark skies.

This morning Tom, JeffJ, and Patrick started out to pick up the new (to us) greenhouse that has been donated to the farm, but got only just beyond the first bridge. I passed them on my way to the hospital: changing a truck tire, Jeff somehow with a bloody scratch on his forehead (but oriented, no focal abnormalities, and cheerful).

We also took in a friend last week, who appeared, distraught and in pain, on our back porch one night, temporarily needing the peace and quiet India's upstairs bedroom offers.

Eric and the farm gang have been working like dogs: up planting potatoes until 10 p.m. last Saturday night, but all in before the Sunday rain. (To say nothing about the beets, lettuce, and et cetera.)

Well, heaven can take many forms when you're busy and have friends with trucks in spring in a lively little corner of the world: spring peepers roaring down in the valley while you look at the far-off miracle of Castor's double star, trauma that's only minor, refuge in the shape of a cluttered little bedroom, a sharp blue sky, and a cluster of miniature daffodils. Even a taste of Miss Essie's Japanese fruit pie. But not too much.

Mushrooms! Mud!

2010-02-25T14:11:00.000-08:00

ETF's highly successful mushroom workshop brought 14 folks out to learn how to drill fresh oak logs, pack the spawn, wax, and stack--ours are stacked by the creek so next fall they can easily be soaked to trigger fruiting.

Of course, Eric and his friend Ben spent LAST weekend sawing down the trees, cutting them up into logs, and hauling them out of the woods. At one point, I hear, ETF harnessed himself to several hundred pounds of logs loaded into a (durable) kayak, to sled it out of the woods across the mud. ETF himself wound up loaded onto his futon for a couple of days nursing some seriously pulled muscles.

Nothing is as simple as it should be.

Sunshine!

2010-02-18T05:38:00.000-08:00

An explosion of light over the hill this morning--it's been a long time, and we eagerly seek out small signs of spring. In Europe, people would be taking chairs outside, to lean back against a southern wall and just sit in the sun for a while.

We still have a thin frosting of snow here and there: under the cedar trees, in the shadow of the bluff behind Billy Johnson's house, and tiny patches on the north side of every cow patty, a festive polkadot pattern across the pasture.

So--a bit of sun, and I am instantly looking forward to ripe tomatoes and zucchini. Yes, I know they are still months away, but a person can dream, can't she?

Art. Again.

2010-02-03T13:55:00.000-08:00

Well, since I did Don's portrait (see post about Movie Night), he did mine a couple of weeks ago when we got together to draw in his barn/studio on Little Marrobone Road.

So here it is. Proof, should you require it, that all is not farmwork out here in Davidson County's far West.

Winter Freeze

2010-02-02T09:29:00.000-08:00

We are slowly emerging from snow and a deep freeze: today is dreary slush with the constant dripping sound, from every leaf, gutter, and fence.

Our bedroom birdfeeder has become the focus of a cadre of fluffed-up starlings, cardinals, doves, and sparrows, who all sit motionless in the birch tree, staring at us through the window. The starlings--not my favorite birds, foreign bullies that they are--are particularly ominous, tiny thugs hunched in their black overcoats, metallic green glinting off their necks, those little yellow eyes focused unblinkingly, demanding only the best black oil sunflower seed. The cardinals, on the other hand, are positively ornamental, thoughtlessly cheerful, crests tilting back and forth curiously.

The ghost-cat--known only from unconfirmed sightings of a pale shadow slipping behind the old smokehouse--has actually been seen huddled under the vent on the back steps, but raced off as soon as the door cracked open. During the snowstorm I also caught a glimpse, white on white, a soft ribbon of life trotting across the disappearing grass.

Our old Kubota and Tom have been hauling round bales of hay to the feeder in the back pasture.

Inside, around the kitchen table, the endless discussions continue: which varieties, seed orders, hoop house or no hoop house, and if so how big, budgets, manure spreaders or no manure spreaders. Etc. Etc. These conversations, at least, are brightly perennial, even in a frozen February.

Author, Author!

2010-01-08T13:00:00.001-08:00

Just to be explicit, in case you didn't notice.

EricTheFarmer and I, bjb the chief dishwasher and walking satire on the concept of Earth Mother, are now sharing the blog. Just about all of the useful information dealing with food, harvests, and the actual running of the farm comes from ETF, along with most of the pictures.

Ruminations (apart from those directly connected to bovine digestion) on country living and anything trying to be cute are probably mine. Weather could go either way, as could comments on food/cooking/eating.

We hope you enjoy. We do.

bjb

Entertainment in our Neck of the Woods

2010-01-08T12:37:00.000-08:00

Movie night on Little Marrowbone Road--certainly one of Nashville's more elite entertainments! Our host, Vanderbilt's long-time gadfly artprof, ran 16-mm films in his barn while we boozed it up and ate Mean Bread. (An author doesn't have to explain EVERYTHING, does she?)

How to Survive the A Bomb, dating etiquette (the girl should tactfully turn away slightly when her gentleman escort pays for anything--the exchange of money is so indelicate, you know), and instruction in Baton Twirling from Roger, Iowa's oh-so-animated best twirler--just a few of the reels unwound for our delectation.

Let's see. We also had Halloween chocolates wrapped in fanged foil paper, glow-stick bracelets, dips and chips, and, of course, a final exam. I didn't do so well on the exam, as you can see, but our host liked his portrait and e-mailed it back to me. But I didn't win the Polaroid camera.

Farewell CSA

2009-12-20T12:41:00.000-08:00

These cabbages took forever to head up. We planted them the beginning of August and finally had just enough full heads to give them out for the last pick up. I love how striking they are. Just thought this an appropriate "title" picture for this post.

On Tuesday, December 15, we had our final CSA pick up for the year. It was a cold day, staying in the low 30s for the entire harvest (8am-2pm) and through the pick up (4-6pm). The wind pushed our cold, wet hands past the numb stage, and straight to aching pain. Even after several good freezes, we still managed to come up with a pretty nice harvest list for our last pick up. It looked something like this:
-Winter Squash (sweet dumplin or carnival)
-Sweet Potatoes
-Red Potatoes (still can't believe these stored so well...in a cave)
-Rutabaga
-Radish (chinese rose and daikon)
-Beets
-Carrots
-Chard (large bunches)
-Salad Mix (lettuce, mizuna, arugula, spinach)
-Celery (all you want)
-Amber Turnips
-Parsley (all you want)
-Garlic (all you want)

All this stuff looked pretty good washed, bunched, or bagged, and made for a nice end to the season. The salad mix was the only foolish idea I took on, and I only went through with it because it was the last pick up. Our row covers, the two keeping the lettuce warm enough to live in December, blew off Monday night, freezing almost all of the lettuce to a non-recoverable state. Realizing this Tuesday morning after putting Salad mix on the harvest list, I had to scrounge around to find enough small leaves to make it happen. I ended up robbing the super-late transplanting of fall lettuce, cutting the top growth off of the 200 or so lettuce plants that were to feed us this winter...
We cut all the Spinach, Mizuna, and Arugula and took it up to my house where we double washed, and hand spun the 50 bags of salad mix. Catie did most of the work, and it still took us hours. Never try to accomplish post-harvest-handling projects that you just aren't set up to do. Here's the hard & heavy veg table (things you don't want on top of greens). Wish I had a shot of the greens table.

Anyway, it was a fun pick up, despite the cold, and lots of folks gathered under the shed to hang out after getting their food. Several CSA members stayed for dinner after the farm pick up ended, and even some barefoot guy named Jeff showed up for dinner and a great end-of-season jam.

So the CSA season is now officially over. Where's the relief?! Now I actually have to start addressing all of the things that I planned to "get to in the winter".

What an incredible season, what incredible people...what a bunch of miracles.

(stay tuned for special Farewell Buddy addition coming soon)

The Season is Over*

2009-12-12T15:18:00.000-08:00

* = probably?

If it's not over, it sure looks like it. I believe it has stayed below freezing for at least two days now in the garden valley. I went into town last night to a going away party for a family in the CSA and checked the garden valley thermometer on the way out. Guess how low?

13 degrees by 8pm! I don't know how low it got, but I can bet it dropped a few more degrees by 5am. I knew our frost pocket here had colder temps than Nashville, but this is a pretty significant difference.

Most plants that can tolerate light-moderate freezes will recover in time with the warming daytime temps. In the field, the puddles on the ground have been frozen even during the daylight hours.

The weather has told us that it's time to start rolling up the row covers, and planning how we can help plants grow again here when the warmer weather returns. This is all well and good, but don't we have one more CSA pick up? I'm hoping we can get enough thaw and recovery by Tuesday to give out some chard, kale, lots of celery, and the staple potatoes, sweet potatoes, winter squash and garlic. I'll also pull out the rest of the amber turnips, beets, and carrots. We'll also harvest baby lettuce, mizuna, arugula, and all of the spinach, which will make nice bags of salad-mix. We'll also have several types of radishes, kohlrabi, cabbages, and whatever is not frozen. It should be a decent harvest for the last pick up. ...last not including a few weeks of extension for the members who don't mind having their produce pre-frozen!

Eric

Fall and Winter Growing

2009-12-09T11:08:00.000-08:00

The fall has been my favorite growing season so far. Above any other reason, it's just easy. The time leading up to fall weather, however, is anything but easy and can cause plenty of worry if you let it. From about September through mid-October, every bug seems to notice the cold weather approaching and decides to invade the garden for one last hungry horrah. Not to mention the plants you must start seeding/growing in August (the hottest time of year)are adapted to thriving in the cool season (now!) If the starts and transplants can survive the wilting heat, the bugs will surly give them a good working over. If the plant can manage to be more leaf than it is holes until the weather significantly cools, you've got yourself a nice fall stand. I'll point out that this season we had remarkably cool and wet fall weather.

To maintain this nice stand, I try to do the following:

- Hoe out all rows as regularly as possible.
My tight row spacing in the fall married with the regular rain makes it impossible to cultivate with the small tractor. I like to use a stirrup or a scuffle hoe to take out weeds. If it's dry enough, I will do this even when it's not weedy. Disturbing the soil this way aerates the soil and plant roots, while killing any germinating weed seeds. This light cultivation also leaves a thin layer of "dust" on the soil surface acting as a mulch to prevent seeds from germinating...until it rains again.

- Roll out row covers when you expect the first frost.
Row covers can extend our season significantly by protecting the crops from nightly frosts and freezes. Row covers can be weighed down with large stones, pvc pipes filled with sand, rebar, posts, logs, etc. I also like Jeff Poppen's idea of weighing down row covers with plastic pots filled with compost. When it's time to remove the cover, just throw the compost onto the field and stack the pots. Using pvc or wire hoops to hold up the cover is another way to create a mini-hot house.

My row covers are made by Agribon and give me about 6 degrees protection. Agribon also makes a heavy row cover that gives 8 degrees. For the first several light frosts, you can cover peppers, basil, and whatever other plants you want to keep producing. When these rows of frost-intolerant plants are winter-killed, simply lift their cover and move it over to the beets, carrots, chard, whatever and get double the insulation.

- Manage Harvests
Things grow slow in the fall and winter due to the cold and lack of sunlight with the shorter days. I try to pay close attention to the growth of each crop, how fast it can regenerate after harvest, how it is holding up against the cold, etc. To give you some idea, crops that can typically be harvested weekly and rebound in the summer and fall (like kale and chard) take 2-3 weeks to recharge this time of year.

I also planted my fall/winter rows close together [about 12" - 18") so they could all easily fit under one row cover. This also makes it easier to harvest and hoe, while allowing you to grow 3 rows in what was only 1 row this spring and summer. I would prefer to mulch the paths separating the rows (I use hay), but haven't done so on every path for a few reasons.

SO, why do most people throw in the gardening towel sometime in August? I definitely relate to the overwhelmed feeling of "I can't go on" during the height of the season, but if you suck it up and get some seeds in the ground you're set. It's mid-December and we're having some of our highest quality harvests this year!

Winding Down

2009-12-04T15:06:00.000-08:00

This picture is a fairly accurate reflection of the mood around here. It's cold and wet and no one is doing that much work. There are things to be done here and there, but the garden isn't getting as much attention as it has for the last several months. The fall, and soon winter, garden is doing fine but the growing is slow due to cold, overcast skies, and the significantly shorter days we have now. Overall, a fall garden is pretty easy to manage once the plants get going. If all the seedlings can survive the bug-months of August, September, and even October, than it's smooth sailing. Smooth enough that I'm considering extending the CSA into winter for the members who have requested this. In fact, we've still got a lot of stuff out there. Here's the list:
-Bok Choy - Chinese Cabbage (nappa, michihili)- American Cabbage (purple, golden) -Celery - Swiss Chard (gold, magenta, green)- Fall peas - Spinach - Kale - Beets - Carrots - Turnips - Radishes - Broccoli - Lettuce - Tatsoi - Mizuna - Arugula - and whatever I'm forgetting. There are plenty of sweet potatoes, irish potatoes, winter squash, and garlic in storage, so we're in good shape there.

I was going through some old photos and found a few that really reflect just how much things have winded down since the summer...

Yeah, that's my living room. The other shot is from some day in August. Thankfully, things aren't that crazy and I'm even finding time to worry about next year.

There's also a lot of list-making going on. Here's today's, unedited:
-observations for fall (b. grass, bugs)
-battery for fence (12v)
-clean house/porch
-fishtank
-assign compost bin
-fresh manure - save manure tea?
-Rachel's Bday
-cover rows/double
-Ki/Nathalie order
-order for Sherry
-short mnt. - order for Sandor
-winter squash ravioli
-map of farm

We won't talk about how many things got checked off...

Freezin'

2009-12-03T08:12:00.000-08:00

I woke up Tuesday morning feeling unusually calm. Unusual because Tuesday is our CSA pick-up day and subsequently the craziest day of the week during the growing season. I wake up, rush over to meet the interns and Tuesday volunteers, scarf down breakfast, and go over the changes in the Tuesday routine. This usually consists of what needs harvesting, how much to harvest, how much harvesting each row can take, who will harvest what, and in what order (this changes with wet conditions, wind, frost, heat, ect.).

Winter is a time when everything contracts. This is said to be a good time to learn, retain information, and strengthen yourself for the next year. This Tuesday I woke up, thought just that, and felt good. I walked outside to a very heavy freeze and realized the season may be over.

I felt the total calm that you feel in the woods in winter, especially after a snow. No movement, no wind, just calm. I felt a strong sense of relief when I walked down the hill towards the garden, boots crunching on frozen grass and ground, without any urge to eat or speak. The relief did not come from the possibility that this could be our last pick up, but more from waiting weeks and weeks for this natural, inevitable change in seasons to happen.

Everything in the garden was frozen, even the plants under the heavy row covers. Brooke joined me, but we still did not speak, just walked and watched. Eventually I said, "if nothing recovers by 10am, we'll give out the last beets, carrots, turnips, potatoes, sweet potatoes, and call it a season".

By 10am all the plants were standing up tall and proud as if nothing happened. We harvested, ran the pick up, and checked off another week.

News from the Farm (CSA)

2009-11-29T14:47:00.000-08:00

Everything grows so slow in the cold! This week's harvest list is a bit smaller than it has been, but I need to rest a few things. We've now harvested the largest carrots in the field for the last two weeks, which comes out to about 1,400 carrots for all of you. Along with the beets, I expected the smaller carrots to fill out by now so we could harvest larger carrots until the end of the season. With the slow-growing, however, it looks like I'll have to rest the roots for a week until they get a bit larger. Also, the phrase "end of the season" seems to be highly relative, as most other CSA's have ended for the season. I'm curious to see how long we can keep the garden going and these cold nights are quickly answering that question. I'm also still figuring out the small frost pocket that the main gardens are in. Some of our frost-protecting row covers blew off Friday night and by the time I got around to covering the plants back up at 8pm they were frozen solid... Even with the 6 degree protection that the row covers provide, the tips of the plants still get frost burned. You've probably noticed that some of the lettuce has yellowish-brown leaf tips. This is only from the frost, and can easily be cut off when you get them home.

Also, a special thanks to Dawn Hazen for supplying the CSA with lots of fresh herbs this season. Dawn's daughter Amelia interned on the farm the entire summer, helped us with many projects, and eventually got her family to join the CSA. Thank you Dawn and Amelia!

Take care,

Eric

Last week's pick up:

Lord of the Flies

2009-11-29T09:03:00.000-08:00

When checking on our remaining collection of winter squash in the shed, I noticed several bushels of squash were filled with what looked like saw dust. I soon realized that these baskets were filled with squash chips, no doubt the product of some hungry rodent. Closer inspection revealed that the rat, squirrel, mouse, whoever had taken the liberty to taste several dozen squash.

Some squash just had one or two tooth marks. Hardly a taste for the rodent, but a gash large enough to send the squash directly to the kitchen. Our winter squash has stored very well, but one nick in the skin and you can forget it. As the picture shows, they seemed to like the Sweet Dumpling variety the best. Overall, 2 bushels lost.

Buddy and I moved the season's remaining bushels to my house to sort the squash. While sorting we noticed several hundred flies at the bottom of each basket, staggering around slowly as if they found their way into a batch of wine. Lethargic from the cold in the shed is more like it, but not for long. When brought into the house, the flies started waking up and launching straight up to the ceiling lights. I nearly went insane from the buzzing, but they all seemed to "disappear" by morning.

-Eric

New Field

2009-11-23T12:29:00.000-08:00

The new field backs up to George West's fence, so he just took down part of the fence to bring his tractor through to plow.

I walked up there Sunday with Martha. The field is beautiful, with a southern slope, and is already offering up old secrets--so far, a handful of points. This patch of land has obviously been crisscrossed by hundreds of hunters over the last ten thousand years, and, every so often, one lost an arrow or scraper right here, for us to find on this clammy, overcast morning in 2009.

On Sunday, though, there was just a cluster of guys, standing around talking, pointing along the fence row, bending over to pinch and smell a handful of dirt, and occasionally leaning back to laugh. George, Odle, Odle's friend, Tom, Jeff, and Eric. Riley was wandering down the furrows looking for those points, and the dogs were zigzagging haphazardly from smell to smell.

Farmers out standing in their field.

-Brenda

The new field is finally plowed! I spent the last three days with Brooke, Buddy, and our neighbors George and Zach working on the new field. First we "bogged" the one-acre plot, which essentially cuts up the roots of the grass with several large disks. After disking, we spread about 20 tons of composted manure on the field. With our manure spreader in the shop, we did this by hand. Luckily our neighbor Zach saw us, and came over with his bobcat, which saved us days of work. The field was then plowed with a two-bottom plow, which flips the soil over, leaving a mat of exposed grass roots. The plan is that the grass roots, exposed to several winter frosts will begin to die. The compost will not only help break down the dead grass, but will begin the transition to fertile soil, a necessary transformation for spring planting!

(field after bogging with manure spread [pre-plow])
This time of year in the garden, veggies don't need to be picked every day nor do they face the insect problems that they do in the summer. It is easy to forget about all the work that is needed for 1 acre, which is why I just plowed up one more...

(post-plow field)

Somehow, Thanksgiving is already upon us. I really do try to think of what I have to be thankful for each year. Above all, I am thankful for this farm--its plants, soil, cows, dogs, worms, and the people who help it thrive.

Thank you!
Eric

Out of Town, Out of Pocket, Out of Sorts, Out of Breath, but NOT--praise the Garden Gods!--out of Chard

2009-11-23T12:24:00.000-08:00

Current week's harvest:

Acorn Squash
Michihili Cabbage
Lettuce
Potatoes
Sweet Potatoes
Beets
Carrots
Celery
Amber Turnips
Radishes
Chard OR Kale
Mizuna OR Arugula
Garlic
Parsley

Deerskinners

2009-10-19T06:28:00.001-07:00

Liz, Rachel and Brooke are now helping Mike Flowers with his deer-processing operation. First lessons in skinning on Saturday afternoon.

First lesson: experienced people are really, really fast...

Second lesson: deerskinning is really, really hard work...

They came home with some small deer antlers for Eric to use for knapping flint. Brooke says she's going to tan her first hide to make a skirt. We'll see.

Another number to add to our growing stash of Scottsboro statistics (thirty pounds of garlic plants out to about 600 linear feet, 200 tons of compost, 8000 pounds of summer squash, 16 quarts of pesto, and so on): neighborhood deer-processing results in 140,000 pounds of bones each year.

Third lesson: sometimes there is nothing more to say.

Country Store

2009-10-19T06:24:00.000-07:00

On the neon sign down at Lewis Country Store on the corner:

New Fall Merchandise...

Scarfs, Hats, Purses...

Live Bait

Not quite haiku, but close. It's a pretty nice store, but we're still in the country!

Compost

2009-10-16T07:10:00.001-07:00

Jeff Poppen has been here the last couple of days, and, in spite of the rain, worked all day with Zach, our heavy-equipment-equipped neighbor, on compost.

One of the windrows is 225 feet long, 15 feet wide, 5 feet high--just to give you some idea of the scale of this operation.

They layered up fair-doo, old hay, manure, and woodchips, raking it all out and fishing out fair-trash. And dosing it with biodynamic juju preps. And it was all tucked in by the time Tom and I got home from the hospital after seven.

Zach estimates (and he is very experienced at moving large quantities of stuff) that we'll have more than 200 tons of compost for next spring's garden. (There has been some discussion about whether the wood chips will be completely broken down.)

We do give thanks for the gifts we are given, and so offer up gratitude to Jeff, Zach, other workers and neighbors who helped out, Glenn for wood chips, the fair's assiduous manure-producers, and the men who loaded, transported and dumped the 18 or so fairdoo dumpsters in our pasture. Even if there was a lot of trash mixed in. No thanks for rain on this particular day.

(Pic of Jeff on a fairer day last spring, talking about garden plan.)

Fall Planting: from EricTheFarmer

2009-10-15T15:43:00.001-07:00

Fall Planting!!!

-lettuce
-celery
-chard (three kinds!)
-spinach
-carrots
-beets
-kale
-collard greens
-bok choi
-tatsoi
-chinese cabbage
-broccoli (pac man)
-turnips (purple top, amber globe)
-radish (watermelon, chinese rose, daikon)

In storage:
-butternut squash, acorn squash, kabocha, buttercup, sweet dumplin, carnival, kushaw, old time tn pumpkin, jarsdale pumpkin, etc.
-potatoes!
-red onions!

Greenhouse Redo

2009-10-15T15:30:00.000-07:00

Justin on ladder. I thought we had weird fire dance pictures, but can only find this one of Liz and Tom looking startled by flash. Pre-combustion.

Greenhouse Redo and Fire Ritual

2009-10-15T15:20:00.000-07:00

Our neighbor Sean (a genuine red-headed irishman, complete with brogue and and infinite set of practical skills) re-roofed--well, re-plasticked--the greenhouse, along with a few volunteers. Justin, visiting from Atlanta, sent these pictures, and that is Justin up on the ladder, clicking in the zigzag wire clips into the rails.

Sean's greenhouse rites include the ritual burning of the cardboard tube that was inside the roll of plastic. The tube becomes a chimney, venting hot smoke, and then slowly turning, bottom up, into a column of golden leaves of ash and collapsing into itself. Another moment of bizarre magic. Perhaps enhanced by resident pagans Rachel and Buddy in a less magical moment of dance. Or not.

Edit: Bizarre. And strange. Or not. But it is only the greenhouse we re-plasticked, not a few volunteers. It's safe to visit...

Watermelon and Rain

2009-10-15T14:59:00.001-07:00

The incessant rain and gloom paradoxically reminds me of that day last summer when I was home alone, for a change, and went out to look around the garden.

Feeling wonderfully wanton and wasteful (as well as alliterative), I smashed a watermelon on the ground and sat in a patch of sunshiny grass eating untidy brilliant handfuls of watermelon heart. Lulu the mastiff swiped a piece and huddled over it like a bone.

Of course, such self-satisfaction is inevitably short-lived. The calves pushed open the gate I had left unlatched and headed for me, watermelon, beans, peppers and celery, bent on havoc. Fortunately, Eddie and Patrick happened by and the three of us rounded them up and turned them back out into the pasture. Lulu was no help at all.

Like so much that we enjoy: a small messy handful of memory, delicious on a dark afternoon dripping with rain.

Kitchen Picture in Tennessean

2009-10-15T14:56:00.000-07:00

Charming article about Tuesday's cooking in our kitchen. Even a kitchen picture with Brooke, wine glass, Chris, Rachel, Kay, and Maddy.

http://www.tennessean.com/article/20091014/FEATURES02/910140369/1004/FEATURES

Brook and Pesto and Heresy

2009-10-01T06:58:00.000-07:00

This is homage to Brook, our animating gracious spirit, who seems to appear at all the right times to add a jolt of style to the farm and the farm table.

Here she is at last Saturday's potluck with butternut squash latkes--maybe not exactly like your grandma used to make in Brooklyn, but truly excellent.

It was a fine day, in spite of the stormy morning. Around noon the sun appeared and we had a sparkling autumn day, with bright-edged clouds scudding overhead and a little breeze.

After lunch and the garden tour, we made pesto, while Sean and a few volunteers re-roofed the greenhouse for the winter.

I'm not so hot with names, but I know Kathleen, the ricotta lady, came, along with neighbors Kathleen and Jim, and several other households. I know Scott, an ex-surfer from Santa Cruz, and Will, Long Hungry Creek Farm's resident leprechaun look-alike, were here, helping strip basil off the stems, and working on the greenhouse repairs.

Some of Julia's pesto didn't quite get the parmesan included (anyone who knows Julia will laugh affectionately at this point!) but is pretty good nonetheless.

My recipe, adapted from the Silver Palate cookbook:

2 cups washed, dried, packed basil leaves
1 cup pine nuts (get the big packages from Costco, although I must confess they are imports from China)--or walnuts
5-6 cloves garlic

Process above in food processor.

Add 1 cup olive oil slowly
Large pinch of salt
1 cup plus a little mixed parmesan and romano cheese

Process.

Pack in jars, using table knife to eliminate air pockets (pesto will turn dark exposed to air, though will still taste good), and cover with a thin layer of olive oil.

This will keep for months in your fridge!

How to eat?

We like it on fettucine. Mix pesto with a little pasta water to warm it up, and use some cream to thin it and help it spread around the pasta. I like a little yogurt, too, but Tom thinks this is pesto heresy. (But the only punishment heretics get around here is a little verbal needling, so heresy abounds.)

Or put it on grilled salmon. Or chicken sandwiches.

More Food and yet more Foodies

2009-10-01T06:23:00.000-07:00

Too busy doing--well, other stuff--to blog.

But a legendary Tuesday dinner, amongst all the legendary Tuesday dinners, last week. Chris, an IT guy who likes to cook--clearly a vast understatement for someone who appears in our kitchen with his own Sabatier knives in a rolled-up sheath--showed up. So, in addition to Kay's usual superb turnout, we had Chris' grass-fed steaks, grilled, topped with his own home-cured pancetta. Then, peach icecream and a lovely odd lavender/pear ice cream. (Plus, of course, Kay's peach pie.)

There was a reverent silence in the Church of Outdoor Dining. Prayer can take many forms.

We still think about Chris several times a week, when Tom, who has carefully hidden the homemade bacon from careless and underappreciative consumers, slips it out, and skillet-fries a couple of slices. Which are then savoured with that small-bite, closed-eyes, chin-up concentration usually reserved for an excellent port, really good chocolate, or, minus the bite, sampling the evanescent citrus aroma of a night-blooming cereus.

Chris, wherever you are, come back, come back. Bringing gifts.

(pix from Justin H.)

Farm Report

2009-09-14T14:40:00.000-07:00

News From The Farmer
The night I wrote last week's newsletter, we ended up with 5 inches of rain. We had five rows of plants in standing water (two inches deep), which made for a fun morning of trench-digging to drain the fields. Fortunately, most of the fall plantings pulled through, although several couldn't keep their leaves above the water and mud. The rain has been both a blessing and a curse throughout this unusual year.
I write this with dark clouds covering the sky, so we will try to get the rest of the lettuce transplants (over 400 plants) into the field before it rains.
On another note, this week I will be sending a lot of kale and collard greens to whoever wants them. They were planted a little early and did extremely well until the bugs realized this too. What we have now is a lot of great greens with a lot of holes in them. I actually read a study this spring claiming that greens with bug-damage are actually higher in nutrients...mmm. For those who don't mind the buggers, take all you can. I will cut back the entire row to encourage new, undamaged leaf growth
Other than that, tomatoes are on their way out, a new row of crookneck squash is coming in, and we are letting more and more of those super-sweet red Carmen peppers mature. I hope everyone is still enjoying the season, even during the harvest plateau, and is ready for lots of greens!
Eric Wooldridge -Farm Manager

Fairdoo Donor: The self-feeding goat

2009-09-14T14:37:00.000-07:00

Fairdoo

2009-09-14T14:25:00.000-07:00

Great excitement on the home front amongst the compost-obsessed! Through our neighbor Glenn's connections, Sulphur Creek Farm is the proud recipient of this years fair-doo--the bedding and associated excreta from the State Fair.

Carla sent pictures of the proud donors--including a hot chick and a self-feeding goat. Now they should produce quality stuff.

Watermelon Pickles

2009-09-08T10:44:00.000-07:00

The two Rachels ("little", our daughter, currently near six feet, and "big", her godmother, a terrific cook and overall foodie), Elaine, Liz, and Tom put in a couple of sessions this weekend on watermelon rind pickles. Tom apparently peeled a whole watermelon (is there a prize for largest naked melon?), and, when I got home from the hospital the kitchen was pungent with gingery smells, the countertop lined with jars being filled with crunchy relish and pale gold syrup.

Watermelon pickles are a bit weird--crunchy, sweet-sour, more on the sweet side. My personal best pairing was at Cochon in New Orleans, where their pickles (not as good as ours, either!) were a perfect complement to small servings of thin-sliced country ham.

The pickles are made from the white rind, so the green skin and red insides have to go. Somewhere. Tom took the cut-up "meat" to the ice-cream booth at our local Scottsboro barbecue (the 53rd annual!) to give away. The skin, I would guess, went to the "boys", Tom's worms on the compost heap.

Leftover syrup, with sugar and vinegar, cinnamon, and nearly-candied sliced lemons went, a little bit at a time, into the weekend's iced tea--much appreciated by those of us slapping mosquitoes as we sorted butternut squash under the shed yesterday!

The lemon slices wound up scattered across the lemon bars that I made for dinner last night.

Good to the last drop. Though I thinkwe might not see the last drop of this round of pickle-making for a long time.

Farm Report: Torrential Rain, Mushrooms, Pesto

2009-09-08T10:42:00.000-07:00

EricTheFarmer's current report:

As I type this, the rain on my ceiling is much louder than the click of the keyboard. At around 5pm today I started transplanting cabbage into the field, only to get about 20 plants in a row before the sky fell through. Two hours later and it's still raining just as hard. As you know, we've had a lot of rain this summer, but this one is flooding the entire yard. There are a lot of things to worry about on a farm, and having your fall plantings wash out from 5 inches of rain (and counting) is a bit unnerving.
Usually it's best to just focus on better things like...our shiitake mushrooms are fruiting! The white oak logs typically take a full summer for the spawn run (mycelium inoculation) to move throughout. After that you can force-fruit the logs by soaking them for 48 hours in cool water (like the creek). Well we tested two of the 50 logs and they are both now sprouting several large, beautiful mushrooms. I will make the shiitakes available to the CSA for a reduced price over the next several weeks.
Lastly, we all hope you will join us on Saturday, September 26th for a CSA potluck, farm tour, and pesto-making party. We are still working out the details, but please set that date to see the farm!
Eric Wooldridge -Farm Manager

People and Mutant Zinnia

2009-09-01T11:11:00.000-07:00

Pretty basic here: Tom, Rachel, neighbor Kathleen outside the fence. And Mutant Zinnia. You probably can't quite make it out from here, but this flower has four heads melded into one. A floral Siamese quadruplet.

Folks, life's really exciting out here...

Ellen's Cows

2009-08-26T14:40:00.000-07:00

Prettier than ours. And, for organic gardeners, manure machines.

Cows

2009-08-26T14:17:00.000-07:00

We have always had a few cows to keep pasture grass a civilized length, and as an excuse for fences, tractors, cattle gaps, and so on. Lawrence Smith has been our "cow man" since forever, and the arrival of his old blue truck engenders a stampede towards the barn. He knows every quirk of every cow, how much she cost, how many calves she's had and what they sold for.

We usually have a bull and have never had a speck of trouble. Our bulls have all been gentle giants, or at least gentle mediocre boy bovines--I'm not sure why, in the more than 20 years I've lived here with them, we've never had a single one that fits the stereotype of the pawing, charging, fence-destroying behemoths of legend. Maybe because they always live with the girls. At any rate, kids, cows, bulls, and donkeys have always coexisted peacefully around here.

Ellen's cows are both higher-class than ours--hers are Angus, ours are mutts--and more spoiled. They get hand-fed from a bucket, instead of a blue truck. But ours are art-lovers: one of our huge concrete sculptures mysteriously seemed to shift positions from day to day. Turns out our bull was in love, and pushed it around during the night. That's amore'!

Dinner

2009-08-26T13:54:00.000-07:00

Dinner in the Church of Outdoor Dining is usually a casual affair, but sometimes we pull out the ancient damask tablecloths from the highboy we inherited from Tom's reclusive-while-alive-but-now- long-deceased spinster second cousin (I think!). Tom finally actually bought a brand-new white tablecloth for the occasion here--a dinner to thank our good friend Sherbe and his wife Sheila and support crew for the gate they contributed to our fenced garden. And for everything else they do for us.

DiAnne's green-tomato gazpacho--made with Green Germans (an heirloom tomato, neither unripe nor foreign nationals)--is both exquisitely tart and exquisitely green. Food out here can't help but be beautiful!

Sherbe actually lived here on the farm long ago, in the late 70's, during the days of no air-conditioning and the famous outdoor shower. Perhaps these features were inextricably linked.

And no, I don't iron my tablecloths. Ever. Unless Johnny Hunt happens to be visiting. Then HE irons them.

Beach, Blight, and Barbecue.

2009-08-17T11:17:00.001-07:00

We're back at Sulphur Creek after family beach-time--greeted by a lush fence beaded with gold and green gourds, saffron squash blossoms, and those bizarre yard-long pale green tromboncini squash. The zinnias and sunflowers are brilliant. Lulu and Ollie obviously did not suffer from neglect in our absence--we were met by pretty blase' versions of welcoming drool (Lulu) and frenetic tailwagging (Ollie).

My flower beds are vicious jungles of cardinal vine, castor beans, and mosquitoes, and we, along with every other farmer along the east coast, are suffering from tomato blight.

This apparently is a dramatic epidemic of late blight, a fungal disease, closely related to the organism that caused the Irish potato famine. (We're evaluating passage to Australia, especially if we don't get that public health insurance option.) It spreads rapidly in cool wet weather, and has decimated crops all over the Eastern United States. Reportedly, even Martha Stewart's garden has been attacked!

We still have quite a few tomatoes , but overall our harvest will be much less, and we are picking them a bit earlier.

Dinner was fettucine with a fabulous marinara sauce left in our fridge by Brook, and our own squash and canteloupe.

We're glad to be home, looking at shed-building, the Scottsboro barbecue--put it on your calendar for September 5-- and discussing general plans for fall crops and projects.

EricTheFarmer: Report

2009-08-17T11:16:00.000-07:00

News From The Farmer
After about 5 months of spring, the summer is finally here and a lot is going on. After I finish writing this, I will climb onto George West's tractor and plow up enough potatoes to provide the CSA for the rest of the season. Half will be stored in my home-turned-cooler, which I've had to keep at a constant 60 degrees to keep our vegetables fresh until the shed is built. The other half will be stored in a huge cave down the street. The landowners won't let anyone in the cave, but they'll let us put potatoes in it (a basket of organic veggies sweetened the deal for them).
To ensure a steady crop of greens in the fall/winter, we are planting now. Obviously this is challenging, as we're planting cool-weather crops during the hottest part of the summer. Our first two plantings have been wiped out completely--first from too much rain, then from the heat. Regardless, we're still seeding and transplanting every day until we can get a few standing rows. We have also developed a rather worrisome squash bug infestation in the winter squash/pumpkin rows. The fruit just needs to hang in a couple more weeks until they reach maturity and can be stored. The list goes on and on, but I thought it important for our members to understand that the baskets, thankfully, do not reflect the immense stress and challenges of the season. On the bright side, we still have tomatoes when many do not, and we will not have cucumbers and squash for about a month! (don't get too excited--I planted another 1/2 row of each last week)...
Your Farmer, truly,
Eric

Food for the World

2009-07-30T10:26:00.000-07:00

Well, maybe not the entire world, but we are certainly providing veggies to a lot of Nashvillians!

This article in today's Tennessean is about EricTheFarmer and the Bells Bend cooperative's donations--1500 pounds of squash and cucumbers to Second Harvest last week, plus a weekly give-away at a Jefferson Street church, and donations to a number of other organizations.

http://www.tennessean.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/200907300210/COLUMNIST0128/907300348

Baby Farmers

2009-07-28T13:03:00.000-07:00

These baby Smiths' great-grandaddy Lawrence has been our "cowman" for many years, buying, selling, hauling in and out, and generally tending to the needs of our little herd. His detailed memory is simultaneously remarkable and inscrutable: "That little red heifer with the white tail and foot, you know, bought her a couple of years ago. Pregnant, had that big black calf, and the little one with the foot that wasn't quite right, sold them so she's paid for. Think I'll take her down Tuesday, prices looking good, maybe can find a couple a yearlings, not gonna calve this year. " We've done ok just taking his word for it.

Miss Nancy, his wife, was the crossing guard down at Wade School in Scottsboro for about 35 years, and is known around our house for her great good humor and those squash pickles. Miss Nancy called one afternoon many years ago, commenting on the blistering weather, and asked if her friends could come swimming. They came--about five ladies in dresses and pantyhose--and jumped fully-clad, panty-hose and all, laughing hysterically, into the pool. Pretty wild bunch.

Lawrence told me that he had never lived more than 5 miles from our place his whole life. His daddy was a sharecropper--the family even lived up in our own holler for a while.

Farm maintenance--and our survival!-- has only been possible these many years because Lawrence and his clan were out here. And, I must say, they have had the cutest grandbabies and now great-grandbabies I've ever seen. A couple of the Smith granddaughters were excellent bushhoggers in their day--could put a tractor across our pastures as well as anybody.