A Life Like This One

thankful

We're easing back into the world today, welcoming the advent season and smiling over a week spent 

:: eating and laughing and playing games with family and dear friends

 

:: enjoying the sweet handmade reminders of what fills us with gratitude everyday

  

:: waking up with a dusting of snow on the ground, 

 

:: and also, knowing we're ready for plenty more to fall

  

:: re-entering jigsaw puzzle season

 

:: picking a tree up from our friends' farm-- even if (or for Justin, especially because) it meant not cutting our own

 

:: And taking a moment to pause and open our hearts and minds to the light and joy of a season I love so much.

 

Thankful.

I'm sitting in my rocking chair, watching the giant old pine in my backyard sway like a grass hula skirt in the wind.  The rain is steadily pouring down, as it has been, for almost two weeks.  Noah is curled on the couch, reading Harry Potter (again).  Max and Lizzie are flopping around at his feet, unaware of any world outside their giant pillow and blanket nest.  It's a lot to be thankful for.   

Early yesterday, while the kids built train tracks for Lizzie (she now has Noah and Max's old sets, and they are getting so much use again!),

 I sat reading a notebook of my favorite poems, including this one, by Mary Oliver::

The Swan

Did you too see it, drifting, all night, on the black river?
Did you see it in the morning, rising into the silvery air -
An armful of white blossoms,
A perfect commotion of silk and linen as it leaned
into the bondage of its wings; a snowbank, a bank of lilies,
Biting the air with its black beak?
Did you hear it, fluting and whistling
A shrill dark music - like the rain pelting the trees - like a waterfall
Knifing down the black ledges?
And did you see it, finally, just under the clouds -
A white cross Streaming across the sky, its feet
Like black leaves, its wings Like the stretching light of the river?
And did you feel it, in your heart, how it pertained to everything?
And have you too finally figured out what beauty is for?
And have you changed your life?

(from the Paris Review, 1992)

Like any good poem, those words danced in my head, colored my thoughts, rose my awareness for the rest of the day.  And as I glance back through the week, it brings so much deep appreciation for each little moment, for each spoken word, for each breath, falling leaf, and song from nature.  So today, I'm giving thanks.

I'm thankful for

:: my brother helping carve pumpkins with Justin away.  

And also, for the fact that my children know well the dirt in which those pumpkins were grown.

:: technology, as strange as that seems, because of our ability to talk and see J while he's gone.  And also, for the way it allows me to sit for a moment, and watch my children light up with joy.

:: Noah, so suddenly grown up

and also, the way he still makes a face-- the same face for 10 years-- when first touching pumpkin guts. 

:: For Max, and his exhausting and wonderful energy

and the way his laughter is so full you can almost see it spill into the air

:: For this girl and her bossy nature

and mothering ways

and also, for corduroy dresses, stripy tights and red shoes.

:: But perhaps most of all, for how we celebrated yesterday's gift of hours of blue sky and sunshine with lots of silly outside play

And also,  a walk in woods with a good friend, a babe on my back, and boys that ran ahead only to still come home behind,  because they had to pause in discovery of  a woodpecker.  I love their awe and reverence for something as simple and complex and connected as the sound of a bird's beak against bark. 

Following our rhythms

Sometimes, following our rhythms is as simple as taking a good look in the mirror

and knowing we need a day to watch the way light dances

and the way our children play

 

or ponder.

Sometimes, it means having the rest and space to whip up a last minute (or last seven minutes) reminder of home for a weary traveller who is on the road, again, for five days. 

The idea-- a family heart with special pocket for love notes-- came from Amanda Soule's wonderful book, Handmade Home.

And sometimes, it means being quiet and grateful for the moment, knowing there's lots to look forward to in the coming days.

Here's to following your rhythms, whatever they might be this Wednesday....

A movie, a cow, and some applesauce.

I am standing in the middle of the livestock barn at Pond Hill, our go-to farm of choice, watching small birds swoop from rafter to feed trough, and back again.  Sunlight is wavering across the hay floor and the birds make faint black shadows as they fly.  The sheep are out to pasture.  The geese are tormenting people somewhere else.  The barn is quiet, save the flapping of wings, and it makes me think of a novel, though I'm not sure which one.

It makes Noah, who is half-sitting in the tire swing that dangles in the middle of the barn, think of something very, very different.

"The cows aren't here."

He is staring at the large empty stall where Farmer Jimmy's cows come in from the fields.  I crane my neck to see the fields on the other side of the barn, away from the sheep that are gathered around squash treats left by the ever popular farm rocket. No cows.

I have often thought about what I would say if one of my kids ever noticed a thinning of animals at Pond Hill. I've thought about the cycle of life conversations or the blessings of a free-range small farm, or about what friends who raised chickens told their own children.  And yet, I felt completely panicked in that moment.  Maybe it was because he noticed, and I didn't.  Maybe it was the way he spoke so softly, as if telling me a secret he didn't want to be true.  

Or maybe it was because I had just purchased a beef roast from their freezer.  

Gathering Noah up in my arms and resting my chin on the top of his head, we stood together, in silence, looking at the space where the gently brown cattle normally stood, hopping to get a feed treat from passersby.  

"I still love it here," my sweet boy said later, as we drove down the curvy dirt road, away from the fields and farm store.  

A few weeks ago, I saw the movie Farm Inc. I've been wanting to write about it everyday since, but there was so much in it that I couldn't get a handle on how to explain with any justice what I saw.  The image of that day in the barn has stayed with me, however, asking in its own way to be written too.  And standing beside my husband on Sunday as he made applesauce from freshly picked apples, I realized that these moments in our days-- the ones where food intersects with other parts of our lives-- are the best way I can relate why that movie struck me so.

I walked into Food Inc. knowing, in many ways, what to expect. In college, some of my best friends were vegan and I was a vegetarian and we all had a penchant for watching documentaries that exposed the underbelly of things like enormous dairy farms or chicken houses.  And in some ways, Food Inc. was like a refresher course in the horrors of mass market farming.  

In some ways.  Mostly, it grabbed my attention on much different levels than it would have in my angry, justice-rallying college years, even with the fact that conditions for livestock have plummeted dramatically from the awful movies I'd watched just 10 years ago.  Sitting through a whirlwind tour of meat and poultry production-- as well as a mind-boggling and straight-from-a-Hollywood-type-conspiracy world of corn and soybeans and greed-driven corporations in cahoots with the government-- I felt like I was witnessing the core of what's gone array in our culture.

Food is so accessible to us-- in drive through windows, isles of the grocery store-- and it can be purchased for so very cheap.  Big businesses in the industry all seem to share the common believe that people want food that is inexpensive, so their dollars are freed up to purchase more important things.

More important things?

Please know on the spectrum of the whole foods movement, my family is not anywhere near perfect.  We devour z-bar granolas like they are going out of style.  We eat pita chips from a package and we covet Trader Joe's peanut butter cups.  We get pizza from a restaurant in town enough that they know our orders when we walk in the door.  And when I went to Food Inc., I could not let the smell of movie buttered popcorn go unnoticed. A habit I doubt I'll ever break, by the way.

All that being said, we do eat as locally as possible, through CSA shares and frozen Pond Hill meats.  We frequent the farmer's markets, try as best we can to eat with the seasons, and freeze summer goodness as treats to last throughout the root vegetable months.  Leaving the movie theater that night, I felt a renewed call to pay attention to what we put in our mouths-- but not just because of the nutritional value.

We spend time at farms in our area because there is so much simple fun to be had, 

and also, because seeing my children make connections from farm to table (or farm ovens to mouths) is something I take great joy in witnessing. 

Also:: I want to be aware of the act of eating. I want our mealtime- often harried because I (shamefully admitting here) almost always make meals for J and I and separate meals for the kids-- to be a central and sacred part of family life. I want to feel gratitude for the food I am preparing, and more importantly, I want to feel gratitude (and see the face I'm thanking) for the hands that helped raise and harvest said food, because after all, isn't that the basis for community at the deepest of levels?

As Justin bopped around the kitchen chiseling away at the huge pile two bushels of apples creates, I felt the warmth of family and food.  Noah was dancing to the radio's beat as he worked the apple peeler.  Max was ready-steady with the food processor, waiting to hit on when the next bunch of steamed apples were ready.  Lizzie was perched on a stool, ready to lick cinnamon from the wooden spoon.  

The next day, as the kids and I sat around the lunch table, we talked about the experience of picking the apples. We laughed about Noah and Justin's hand versus apple peeler race and about how tiny the wild apples were when we peeled those too.  Our food had a story.  And we ate it with the kind of love and feeling that comes with a family's shared history.  

Which brings me right back to that empty stall at Pond Hill Farm.  How can we expect to feel reverence for food when we have no idea where most of it comes from anymore?  Even though I have long bought organic meats, I'm not sure I felt any sort of empathy or connection to the animal that had died so that I could make beef stew.  But now, now that I have a relationship with our local farm, now that I see these animals several times a week, I feel the weight of their absence.  I understand the responsibility I have to them-- to be humbled and grateful for the food I am putting on my family's table; to see our meals as more than just a pit stop between activities.

I know it can feel overwhelming, jumping on the locavore train.  Food Inc. did a beautiful job of giving simple, everyday opportunities to change the way we eat-- and thereby change the way corporations do business, because the reality is, there are so many families so focused on trying to get by, that the McDonalds drive through truly feels like their only option (another topic altogether, I know). 

Later this week, I'm going to offer up some of my favorite, simple, and very, very inexpensive fall recipes.  

They are all freezer-friendly and can be stretched a mile, many adapted from my staple cookbooks like Feeding the Whole Family, The Art of Simple Food, and Moosewood Cookbook, books I've learned about through friends that changed the way my family has dinner.

Here's our applesauce recipe-- the easiest thing on the planet, but so darn good.

Justin's applesauce

Peel and core apples. 

Steam apples in a steamer basket in a pot of water until nice and tender

Mash (if you like chunky sauce, which my clan is very clear they do not) or stick in the food processor and blend until smooth.

Optional: add cinnamon to taste.

Here's a few other website resources to check out::

The Food Inc. Movie website

Eat Well

Local Harvest

Slow Food USA

And other good books on the subject include::

Coming Home to Eat: The Pleasures and Politics of Local Foods, by Gary Paul Nabhan

Anything by Michael Pollan *** Including his new junior edition of the Omnivore's Dilemma for Kids-- which just came out on October 15...Noah will be starting it this week.

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbera Kingsolver (I'm told, again and again, that this book is a life-changer. I haven't read it yet, but my friend Sus raved about it, and well,  that's enough to include it here).

quiet. kind of anyway.

I don't have a lot of words this week.  We've just been lolling around the house, soaking in time as a family and simultaneously trying to fight the crud that has somehow made its way past the wall of vitamins and Emergen-C I've put up (sigh. sniffle. cough.). So today, if it's alright with you, I'll just share a few photos of our week. I've got some posts on my work with rhythm, and some homeschool-specific stuff in the hopper for next week, and knowing me, I'm sure what I've lacked in word counts these past few days, I'll more than make up for in what's to come;).

Since Justin's return, we've been doing a lot of sitting at the kitchen table, celebrating the fact that he made it home in time for autumn's peak.

We've stocked up for a weekend full of cooking fall's best foods (now if we'd only stop eating them long enough to accomplish any of said cooking....)

With several pockets of sunshine, the kids have been playing a whole lot outside.

And inside, for that matter, as the boys discovered with great hilarity that moving fast in front of slow shutter speeds produces ghost-like images

"just in time for before Halloween! Which is only, like, two weeks shorter than just in time for my birthday!" Max would tell you.

My favorite parts of the week, of course, center around the evening fire.  Loading up the floor with pillows and our hands with books, we have fallen easily back into our cold weather habits.

Having Justin back means having grown up conversations again. It means comforting hugs. It means having an extra pair of hands during those transition times like going to bed, so that I have even found myself getting to sit on the hearth and relax before drifting off to sleep.

That, my friends, all adds up to one happy (albeit annoyingly sick) mama.

Falling into fall

Hello Autumn.

We missed you. A bit.  

Yesterday was spent doing a lot of celebrating the change in seasons.  We hunted for the first fallen leaves. We scoped out our neighborhood pumpkin patch.

We talked about all that we have to look forward to:: birthdays and festivals, fireside family reading and long mornings in warm jammies, first snows and hot soups.  And as much as there is to look forward to, we didn't want summer slipping away unnoticed.  So when evening rolled around, we packed a picnic (so not in my meal planning plans, but that's okay) and headed to the beach. 

for what might be one of the last lake-side meals of the year (it seems, according to forecasts, that Mother Nature is well aware that fall is here).

I'm ready to trade in my sandy toes for my sand-colored shoes,

yet, I'm also soaking in any opportunity to see this

(because that's as far as we could brave tonight, except Justin...but he's got that fur).

We ate our dinner.  We talked about our days. We hoorayed homeschooling-- and late school starts-- for enabling us to reap the benefits of the empty beach on a perfect fall night.  We ate the promises of the new season (don't worry-- she only bites the parts with no skin).

The boys played 

and I sat back in a beach chair and watched, feeling so full to the brim with life.

And when the clouds parted just in time for a stellar sunset, we paused.  And Lizzie, in her infinite toddler wisdom, watched the glowing orange orb setting and whispered "bye bye. Hm-Hum (her version of 'amen')." 

photo by justin

farm fresh

My flip-flopped feet were dusted over with dirt and flecked with wood chips.  My face was warm from an afternoon in the sun, and Max and Elizabeth had fallen asleep in their carseats, identical in their open-mouthed dozing.  We’d just spent three hours hanging out at our favorite local farm, carousing with sheep, oooohing and aaaahing at how big the piglets have gotten, and strolling around to see what nature will be bringing forth next on her harvest list.

  When I’m out alone, just picking up our CSA share or grabbing some fresh flowers, I sometimes get waxing on about the cycle of life and rhythm of nature and rawness of a small, organic farm.  But meandering around with the kids, I realize that in addition to all those grandiose things, being connected to a place like Pond Hill is just plain fun. I mean, in addition to the dirt and the animals and the food, there's a perfect tire swing

 

and giant checkers

and huge windows to play rousing games of "catch that fly."

The owners of the farm are a young family— with one wee one Lizzie’s age and another due in just two weeks—and watching them turn their passion into a viable business has being nothing short of inspirational.  From the hayrides and “squash rocket” to the lunch diner serving fresh iced tea in ball jars and the world’s best grilled cheese (with homemade parmesan crusted bread too::yum!), 

they find ways to draw in the masses.  They raise awareness too, with educational programs and “farm tokens” (like boxtops you'd save for schools, except to get them, you must buy local foods). 

I’ve always been pretty mindful about our family’s food choices,

(once a year, I swear)

 but I’ve not always been tuned in to eating locally.  There were lots of years where produce was thought of as a grocery store aisle, as much, if not more, than a fresh-from-fields treasure.  When I joined a CSA that required participants to work several hours a week, I think I really began to understand what it means to have a deeper connection to the land. There is something so natural and right about digging into the soil to pull loose a beet or pry up a potato.   Pulling garden weeds often feels like prayer. Eating a meal grown close to home, harvested by hands we know—these things make food matter.  It turns cooking into an entire process, one we share as family and community. 

 

When we started gardening a community plot, I remember feeling this deep urge to teach my children about carbon footprints and the 100-mile rule and the real food movements.  Of course Max fell into a pile of manure, and I remembered all beautiful plants are grown from tiny seeds.  So I let go of the lectures. I let them learn to explore the way a farm works all on their own. And I think they’re getting the hang of it, and then some::

 “Mom,” Max said, hanging his head upside down from the tire swing. “I found a quarter.  I’m gonna go feed the chickens.”

 We had finished our lunch and our game of checkers. We’d talked to the sheep and cracked up at how very much a cow can pee (I mean, really)!  We’d watched the sparrows flutter from rafters to troughs, and back again, their shadows following on the ground.

 “Come on mom! Let’s go!”   Max grabbed my hand and tugged.  Lizzie, understanding at once, scooted ahead of us both, stopping just short of the coop.

 Getting his handful of feed, Max stood by the fence with a wide grin. He looked at me, and back at the pen, his fist still closed around the little pellets.

 “What are you waiting for?”

“You’ll see,” he said with a giggle, shucking just one tiny speck of food at the gathering group of poultry.

 

Soon the entire fence was lined with clucking, crowing, quacking winged creatures and Max tossed the rest of the food in, watching Lizzie shriek with delight more than he watched the birds. 

 

“I love seeing her do that,” he said.

Later, the kitchen alive with the sounds of this amazing sorta local band, Lizzie and I bopped around, cooking and prepping and planning for meals to be eaten soon, and meals to pull from our freezer on a cold winter’s night.

These sensory experiences; the sound a carrot makes when sliced, the fullness of basil in the air, are what makes cooking from scratch so very rich. It forces us to slow down (no soups cook extra fast just because you are in a hurry).  It forces us to stay present. It welcomes us into this sacred and slow tempo dance of eating, and living, well.

**A sidenote** The locally grown bounty can only do so much when it comes to turning cooking into domestic meditation.  Today, in my millionth slip as I try to not to take on too much, I was attempting to blanch beans and make two soups, while feeding and watching my own boys plus friends, and doing phone interviews for a story I'm writing for our local paper.  And, of course, the beach was calling. And we only had an hour.  Rushing to pack up the minivan, I remembered the towels, the skim board, the kids.  What I forgot to do? Turn off the stove, which was boiling a potato leek soup (what was that I just said about no soups cooking fast just because you are in a hurry?).  When I got home, the kitchen was hazy and smelled like-- I don't know, I've never smelled burned potatoes until today-- and my favorite stock pot?  It looked like this:

Sigh.  I chucked the potatoes into the compost, lit some candles, and endured an evening of bad soup and Mrs. Potato Head jokes from my clan. A good lesson learned:: All the tools for mindfulness can be there, but using them is a choice I need to make-- a choice that sometimes that requires trying to do just a little bit less. And that being said, I need to give myself more permission, as a vitamin D deprived northerner, to save the slow cooking for a rainy day or early morning.... or any time that doesn't leave a mind wandering to warm sand and freshwater swimming...

want to check out other folks talking about the locavore movement? visit this site.

Upon Returning

Today, Max and Lizzie both curled up with me-- one on each leg-- and rocked on the front porch. The air smelled like rain and felt like the after steam of a good bath. Weighty clouds hung lazy in the air as pockets of blue began opening around them.

We were waiting for Noah to return from sailing and stretching the post-nap wake-ups with the rhythm of the chair and the sound of its rocking against the wood boards beneath us.

It was quiet. It was unhurried. It was just enough time for me to listen to both children, their breaths and slight sighs. I noticed the way Max's legs nearly reached the ground as they dangled over mine. I smiled at how Lizzie's hair was indistinguishable from my own. We rocked and we watched the world without a place to go or a thing to do.

And that, my friends, has been our motto these last few weeks.

Where I live, the Fourth of July draws more folks into town than any other time in the year. We have parades and art fairs, huge fireworks and lots of friends from afar in town. It is a non-stop party, for the kids and adults alike, and by around July 7, we all very nearly fall apart.

So we go on stay-cation.


We hunker down, we hang out, we make last minute plans and plenty of trips to the beach. The laundry piles up and then dwindles down. The dishes get done in the morning, maybe. We eat with friends and we let bed time roll around when it seems right-- which sometimes means 7:30 and sometimes borders on 10 p.m.. For me, this deviation from routine can be tricky. I've been known to fret about what it says about my mothering or my ability to stick to the rules.

And then it only takes on evening of flipping through photos from the last few weeks to realize that these are the moments that are defining our lives. Little laughs and late nights, quiet glasses of wine on the porch and noise-filled evenings with friends-- this is the stuff of being, the joy of raising a family.

Just take a look:









These pictures make me realize that my children are so in-tune with stay-cation rhythms. They know when to speed up.

They know when to slow down. Um, okay, that might be a stretch.

They know when to go wild (as in, bumper cars a-la cozy coupe action)

and when to hang out with a board game or a book.

Nothing stands in the way of them living in the moment and they remind me of the bliss that comes with doing the same.

It makes you smile, doesn't it? It makes me celebrate the choices we make, big and small, that allow us to live in this place. It makes me look forward to what tomorrow will bring-- but more importantly-- it makes me soak in right now (soaked is a very literal term, as I've just returned from dinner via a friend's boat and am truly sopping wet. to. the. core. Presently am ringing out my ponytail. Thank you, Lake Michigan).

Crafting while we wait for the whole world to change (in less than 24 hours!)

Okay, just look what my Max made for a friend who is having a baby:



I mean, can you get any cuter?

My craft-driven resolutions are actually producing things. Okay. One thing.

But still.

I’m feeling very ants-in-my-pants today, awaiting the big, big, big day tomorrow. This morning, we gathered around my computer and listened to MLK’s famous speech on the steps of the Lincoln Monument.

The night before, Noah and I talked about Dr. King and the power of his actions, his words, his dreams. We talked about how Noah sat on the floor of the Lincoln Memorial two years ago, how at seven he had been awe struck by the writing etched into the walls.

“You whispered, ‘This was a great man, mama. I hope other great men have come here to see this,’” I told him.

He smiled, and nodded, as I went on to connect the dots.

I’m honestly too excited to say much more. We’ll be gathering at my mom’s tomorrow at noon (darn that no tv thing!) to watch history in the making. Noah will be home from school, and will no doubt sit beside me, holding my hand and saying something wonderful about change and hope and great men and their words.

2009, it is a wonderful year for beginnings.

Oh, and speaking of beginnings (nice segue, no?) I wrote about the beginning of my parenting resolutions for the year over here. And I mention Yetis, Luke Skywalker, and snowshoes, and if that isn’t a reason to read, I don’t know what is. Come visit. And comment, just because you are great like that.

I’ll be back tomorrow, celebrating. Big time.

locally grown

I have this image in my mind, of frolicking—yes, frolicking—through my mother’s large garden as a child. It looks like this: churned, damp dirt beneath my bare feet; the taste of fresh snapped green beans; the residue of tomato plants, rich and inviting, embedded in the grooves of my fingers. My mom is bent over her pepper plants, long brown hair hiding her face. She looks up as I skip past and smiles. There are morning songbirds and bees creating a background hum, an outdoor OM. I remember this moment as some sort of return to my family’s own personal 20x30 Eden in the middle of a suburban subdivision.

So when Noah let out an enormous groan, complete with shoulder sagging and watery-eyes at the very thought of having to head to our community garden plot yesterday, I felt a stab in the heart. And before I could begin to muster the long list of reasons why we should embrace growing our own food and supporting a local family farm at the same time—not to mention my rousing round of “it will be fun”-- Max chimed in “I am so not pulling any of those weeds.” Lizzie, everyday more aware of when she seems to be missing something, let out a hearty whimper/squirm combo as if to cry, “yeah, whatever they just said.”

Our foray into food growing started all right, with all five of us hoeing and raking and planting away early this summer. It lasted, of course, all of 15 minutes, until a friend of Noah’s who was also at the farm invited him home for a play-date and Justin started yelping that he had only agreed to come as “moral support” and Lizzie was sick of trying to sleep in the heat and wind and dirt and Max, well, he fell in a pile of manure.


“Look at me! I’m leaning in by the pooooop! I’m leaning in by the poooooooop! It can’t touch me!” Max sang (to the tune of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, I think) between giggles. He was standing near the healthy pile of dung that was left for community garden members to spread on their plots.

“Max, come away from there please. Come help Mama plant this spinach. I’ll tell you all about this thing called ‘carbon footprints’ and how we’re doing our part to slow ours down,” I yelled back, pausing momentarily to see my three year old only standing on one leg as he leaned ever closer the pile of poo.

“Carbon whats?”

He planted his bare foot back on the ground and tilted his head up enough so that he could find me from under the rim of his hat. I caught myself letting out a long, loving sigh, because even from fifty feet away, I could see the blue of his unearthly eyes matched the pale hue of his floppy sunhat. It never stops amazing me, how as mothers we get these unabashed floods of worship for our children at any given moment. I started to walk over, thinking of the best way to explain how we are slowly eviscerating our planet (without scaring the crap out of him).

“CARBON FOOOOOTPRRRINTS,” Max said in his best deep growl. He was marching (as in, sumo wrestler-style) in place next to the aforementioned poop. I recognized this move immediately as his ever-so-accurate impersonation of a dinosaur, and I actually started to think of how to explain the whole global warming/human impact on the earth and our environment thing from a way-back-when-dinos-roamed place. Seriously.

But just then, as my little T-Rex/cave man/sumo-wrestler went for an extra large step… You guessed it. He tipped a little too far to the right and plummeted directly into the manure pile (of course). Oh boy.

When he sat back up, I expected a flood of tears. Instead, I got a roar—his prehistoric playtime had not even missed a beat-- despite the fact that his arms and legs were smudged with brown and his dad was kneeling in the dirt, vacillating between chortling laughter and comments on how glad he was we brought my car to the farm.

I spent the next month and a half trying to talk to the kidlets about the importance of eating locally, of learning about the cycles of seasons and harvests and the blessings of being able to see our food in every stage, from seedlings to cooked meals on our table. I am passionate about this and feel like it is my matriarchal duty to pass along the understandings I’ve learned via Michael Pollan, Barbra Kingsolver and the whole locavore revolution. My children, for the most part, simply bemoan the fact that kale tastes no better from our garden than it does from our co-op, and in fact, as Noah points out, is perhaps worse after seeing the mass exodus of earwigs escaping the firm green and purple leaves as we harvest.

It took me until just this week (surprise, surprise) to remember that the best way to show our children something of abstract importance is to simply shut up and, well, show them. And so yesterday, I packed them up and drove to the farm. We got out of the car with the usual grumbles, but instead of heading straight to our plot to get in a hurried weed/harvest/healthy-eating-and-good-environmental-stewardship-lecture before the baby cried/the toddler wet his pants/the nine year old just melted, we went to the livestock barn and ogled the still-new piglets. We went through the farm store, feasted on fresh popcorn, and meandered down the raspberry patch lane. Eventually, we wound up back at the garden, where I got to work without a word. Within a few minutes, Noah sat beside me, picking at the leaves of a tomato plant while absentmindedly telling me about his newest Lego creation. Max was pulling a weed out of the ground (only to replant it over and over again). Out of the corner of my eye, I think I saw him snap, bite, and promptly spit out a green bean.

I tell this to my mother late last night, recounting with pride the possible progress on greening my children. She listens in silence, the distance between our two houses seeming bigger than it is, until she lets out a small laugh.

“Are you kidding? You had zero interest in that garden, unless it was to whine about coming to help me in it,” she said, after hearing me compare my idyllic vegetable growing youth to that of my thankless children. “You never ate fresh green beans or most anything else. I wasn’t growing peanut butter sandwiches without crust, and that was about all you wanted. By the way, I had short hair by then. Your memory is hilarious.”

Oh.

Maybe that’s the ticket: to let my children feel the dirt under their moon sliver fingernails, come to understand life through the cycles of plants and foods and the earth beneath their feet. It can be messy. It can be dreaded or even something just short of disastrous.

And yet, Max looked at me this morning, as I washed blueberries for his breakfast, and said, “did we make these mama?”

Yes, I think there is something to be said about planting the seed and just letting it….grow.