words versus action; appearance versus substance; work versus progress; speaking the truth versus being honest; experiencing versus getting involved; commitment borne from dependence versus commitment borne from shared enthusiasms and strength....just a few comparisons that are running through my mind these days.

what would be really funny right now is if i were to go into a manicurist's shop and ask to get my nails done. i've scrubbed my hands. really hard. with soap, and water and even various exfoliants. but these hulk hands of mine seem to be forever green and dry and scraped up from the hours upon hours i've been spending tucking tomato branches into one another, trellising them securely to hold up the ripening jewels that are cascading down their stems. my right index finger is the worst...it's starting to crack and every little crease is filled with dirt that just stays.

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it reminds me of the gillian welch song called 'red clay halo'..."and it's under my nails and it's under my collar, and it shows on my Sunday clothes. I do my best with the soap and the water, but the damned old dirt won't go..."

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i'm glad i'm not looking for any dates out here in hoopa because my shower today was in the trinity river and i've started to regard deodorant as optional. but i guess humboldt will do that to you! 

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i've been sitting a lot lately with the question: what next? i can already tell that this experience will have been a life-changing one. to be working outside and with such constant variation is so rich and fascinating. each night, we go to bed looking at one farm, and the next morning, we wake up to a new one. the squash have expanded; the flowers that were closed at night are now fully open, their vibrant colors accenting the herb garden; the peas have gotten a little plumper and juicier; the carrot stalks have stretched taller; and the long beans have spiral climbed up a few more fractions of an inch. no matter how sour i am about not getting enough sleep or my coffee turning out too weak because i can't master the french press, i am constantly distracted into happiness by the plants and their dynamism.

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and so, what next? i want this lifestyle to get woven into the fabric of my being, not just a colorful piece of string that i hang on my wall as decoration. i don't want to forget how it feels to be connected with the land and the flora and the dawn and the moonlight and the rumbling current of great rivers. i can't fathom not having these connections, honestly. 

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i had no idea even one month ago that i was being called to such a threshold of such beauty and meaning … 

sunday night. yaaawn! an end to a long week and an eventful weekend...and it all starts again in nine hours! and to think that i thought that life on the farm would be leisurely :)

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today i did a few things i've been meaning to do since i got here: i shared music with my cabin mates, sketched the cherry trees, sifted through recipes for inspiration...and best of all, i got back on my bike! the gearing is still a little screwy, but it's ride-worthy. it felt so good to be on two wheels again! one really gets to know a place well when on a bike...all the things that fly past when in a car are more clear when pedaling past...i found the hoopa library, and i noticed lots of little side roads which seemed like interesting avenues to explore.

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this evening, amie, her sister laura who's visiting, cameron and i discovered that ray's grocery store is, driving, an "mmm bop!" away. mmm bop as in that terrible but catchy song by hanson. god only knows why i have that tune on my ipod, but i do, and it's damn funny. we got some fixin's for a junk-food dinner (yes! we do that here sometimes) of veggie burgers and chips and brought them home for a cabin-side picnic. we embellished the meal with farm-fresh stuff like lettuce and onions and it was delicious!! i got the baking itch earlier in the day and so we had chocolate cherry cupcakes for dessert. i'm not gloating, but the kids all loved them and i felt pretty damn proud. cocoa cupcakes with flecks of chocolate, filled with a cherry compote (using the cherries WE picked!), dolloped with vanilla buttercream and topped with a cherry and shaved chocolate. mmmmm! after dinner we showed the newest wwoof'er, jonathan, around and got sprayed by a skunk on the way home. wragh! but the sunset and the sliver of the moon high in the sky were too pretty to let that ruin our walk home :)

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this past week was a full one. a few days were pretty long, but there's such a sense of accomplishment after a hard day's work here. unlike most other times in my life, i don't find that i'm haibitually writing here in hoopa. i've resorted to making bulleted lists and jotting down keywords to record moments when i'm too fatigued to string my thoughts together...so, with those notes as my guide, this week, in a nutshell:

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i slept in not once, but twice! curse me. my alarm on my phone clearly isn't working and two times i've woken up at 6:59 instead of 6:30. granted, it's a short commute (a one minute walk, tops) to work so i can immediately throw on some clothes and run into the fields...but still. i've asked my cabinmates to knock on my door from now on to drag my aged butt outta bed :)

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on monday morning, i was out in the kale picking for the next day’s market. at 7:15, the greens are still covered with dew and our pants get wet from the knees on down. we’re bent over, fingers still warming up and toughening up after a night of rest. we don’t talk too much that early; most of us are still waking up: coughing, sniffling, bundled warmly, watching our breaths disappear into the chilly air as we pick the leaves. tuesday morning i chopped down tall stalks of dill, pruned small nests of thyme, and helped to hoe the second succession of squash and the eggplant. i cooked up peanut noodles and cabbage salad for lunch; in the afternoon we all went over to the biondinis and worked like mad. we zip tied all of the trellacing to the posts; we hoed the summer squash (these feel like the longest beds we’ve got on the farm); we planted peppers – dig, drop, cover, push, that’s it! fast! we didn’t get done until 8:00 that night and i was exhausted, but we made good progress.

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i wrote, after that day, "I’m really falling in love with the rural life. Living where I do now is amazing. The removal with sporadic inclusion. Proximity to nature. I love all the meaningful work that there is to do. I love the river. And the dynamism. And the connection with the land. And the people it draws and how it effects..."

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wednesday was a harvest day and we didn't really stop. i started picking chard with cameron, talking about relationships. then i picked chioggias with amy and we talked about dunkin donuts and sandwich shops in the midwest. then we picked peas, in solitude. it’s hard to talk through those tall rows of shoots...you can hear the others humming and sniffling, but it’s quite an effort sometimes to keep a conversation going, so we usually pick away in silence, sorting through the things on our minds. after that i helped nathan clean the squash, a task which i find to be really calming. the little pattypans and zephhyrs bob up and down in the cold water in the sink, waiting to be polished up all nice-like with clean white rags for the market :)

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the rest of the day was spent, for the most part, picking cherries and herbs. all in all we picked well over 180# of cherries; climbing in the ladders, reaching for the couplets and triplets of deep burgundy fruits which were hanging delicately off the woody branches, saving the cosmetically damaged cherries for ourselves or popping them into out mouths :) stomach aches from too many cherries. after that, i helped linda bunch basil…the smell of that herb is intoxicating. i made little bouquets out of it, twisting them together with a rubberband, then chopping all of their stems off evenly. i decided that if i ever do have occasion to marry, or carry a bouquet for some reason, i would like my bouquet to be made of herbs...i can't imagine anything better because then i can actually USE them afterwards :)

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in the evening, we pitted all the cosmetically challenged but edible cherries and ate a delicious pesto that linda made from our garlic and our basil. MMMM! i cracked open the cassis lambic that i bought last week and grady and cameron made floats out of blackberry ice cream, chocolate ice cream and lambic! like i said, we're not always super healthy here :)

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the weekend was extra special because my girls maddie and sam came to visit. i had such a great time. their stay was short (less than 24 hours), but we packed in the laughter and silliness and mild debauchery, like we always do :) we met in arcata yesterday morning, sam coming up from oakland and maddy down from portland, and we tooled around the city for a bit, stopping for lunch at a delicious spot called wildflower. the girls had their bikes with them, so they rode for a bit while i searched for a sketchbook and looked in vain for high-speed internet so that i could blog about the past week :)

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this weekend was the oyster festival in arcata, so the town square was packed with artisits and food purveyors and drunk folks; we took it all in until the police told us to dump out the drinks we brought from home...then it was clearly time to go :) we jumped in maddie's car and headed north to trinidad and patrick's point state park.

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maddie went to school at humboldt state near eureka, so she knew some great spots to show us. we got to some hiking an biking trails and she let me ride her lil' bike while she walked belah (her doggie), and it felt so damn good to be back on a bike! sammy and i rode through the redwoods, the sun warm on our faces and the wind rushing past and cooling us down. the experience of riding a bicycle is unparalleled...it's only been two and a half weeks since i was on a bike, but it feels like it has been forever!

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that evening we headed back to hoopa and i got to give them a little peek into life on the farm. we drank some ciders with cameron and talked...then the three of us moved into the great big tent under the cherry trees where we giggled ourselves to sleep on the brand new air mattresses that grady and linda bought for the tent. fancy camping, i tellya! the girls both left rather early the next morning, and i was sad to see them go...

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so, in a nutshell, life is busy and full and wonderful up here in hoopa :) stay tuned for further posts and check out the pixx on flickr!

Enough already. It’s time for me to share a recipe. I’ve been eating like a queen and this is the fairest thing for me to do. Everyone here on the farm is talented in the kitchen, without a doubt. Working day in and day out planting, cultivating and harvesting the vegetables imparts great appreciation for each zucchini cut and each beet tugged from the earth; one cannot help but to be inspired to cook well while picking basil tops or snipping lacy bits of dill out of the herb garden. Soon, I hope to put up recipes for Linda’s dill roasted potatoes and goat-cheese and herb-stuffed beets…

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In the meantime, though, a recipe of my own. I patched it together from a few sources and baked it for Cameron’s 23rd birthday party which was here at the farm on Sunday evening. Everyone here is so supportive of my obsession with baking and they taste my desserts at any and all times! I’d never used mandarin oranges in a cake before, but Linda suggested it, and boy, was she right! The cake was delicious. Maybe it was the oranges, maybe it was the carrots which were freshly-harvested, maybe it was the touch of maple in the frosting, or maybe it was just the company and the beautiful evening that we had for celebrating.

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Farm Fresh Carrot Cake

Cake
2 ⅓ C whole wheat pastry flour, sifted then measured
1 C unsweetened coconut flakes
1 C walnuts, chopped
¾ C crystallized ginger, chopped
3 ½ t cinnamon
2 ½ t baking powder
1 t salt
½ t baking soda
2 C sugar
1 C vegetable oil
4 eggs
2 t vanilla
2 C grated carrots
1 - 8 oz. can crushed pineapple, drained
1 - 8 oz. can mandarin oranges, drained
½ C raisins

Maple Cream Cheese Frosting
2 - 8-oz. packages cream cheese, softened
½ C butter, melted
2 C powdered sugar
½ C maple syrup
½ t vanilla

Preheat the oven to 350ºF. Butter two 9” cake pans.

In a food processor, process ⅓ cup flour with the coconut, walnuts and ginger. Set aside. In a medium bowl, whisk together the remaining flour, cinnamon, baking powder, salt and baking soda. Set aside. In a large bowl, blend together the sugar and the oil. Add the eggs to the sugar mixture one by one, mixing well after each addition. Add the vanilla and mix well (if using your hand and not an electric mixer, make sure to just whisk it all up really well for a minute or so, thus incorporating air and lending to a fluffier cake!). Next, add in the flour and spice mixture and blend it all up until all the flour is moistened. Next, add in the coconut mixture and mix it all together well. Stir in the pineapple, raisins and mandarin oranges. I’d say mix again, but you get the point. Just make sure it’s well mixed!

Pour the batter equally into the prepared pans and bake about 30 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in their centers comes out clean. To make the frosting, use an electric mixer to beat together the butter and cream cheese. Sift in the powdered sugar and add the maple syrup and vanilla. Mix well. The longer your mix, the fluffier the frosting will be. If you desire, add more powdered sugar.

Since I baked my cake in two 9” cake pans, I layered the cake with a thin coating of frosting in-between the two layers. I frosted only the top of the top layer of the cake and decorated it with walnuts and piped carrots (which I made from extra frosting mixed with a bit of strawberry jam and turmeric to get the orange color). I then took tiny mint leaves and used those as the carrot tops, but be creative! There is a lot of other greenery in the garden or on the farm that will do.

Mmm!

I've posted more pictures, by the way...

i'm back! after a week in the great wide open. i'm currently sitting in a cafe, this time with dave and cameron, in old town Eureka :)

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last weekend was f-u-n. post-blogging, nathan, amie, dave, cameron and i went to arts alive, a once-a-month arts festival in eureka which is lots like the art murmur in oakland. free wine and food, art, conversation and general good times. i was then introduced to the shanty, a eurekan bar with a spectacular ping pong table, ample tunes on the jukebox and plenty of beer. we shared several pitchers, played some vicious games of ping-pong, traded silly and embarrassing stories and made general fools of ourselves. it was a great way to get comfortable with my farm friends :) dave kindly shared with us his home near the intersection of home drive and home drive (i'm not kidding) in cutten that evening, all of us scrunching onto the few bits of bed that were to be had. in the morning, frighteningly, there was no toilet paper...not a good thing considering a few of us drank PBR the evening prior. needless to say, things got moving fast that morning and we were outta there in record time :) we stopped for breakfast at the chalet...for me, the highlight of the joint was the flavored coffee creamers they had! i'm addicted to those and hadn't had one in a few days, and i was just giddy to put those chemicals into my body again :) sadly, i'm not at all kidding!

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on sunday evening, cameron took me down to the river...the trinity river, that is. it happens to be a five-minute walk away from the farm through tomato fields and blackberry bushes-gone-rampant. i cannot wait until the wild blackberries are ripe...i've been looking thru the chez panisse desserts cookbook and lindsey shere has a recipe for wild blackberry curd...mmm! can you imagine - wild blackberry and lemon curd tartelets? with blackberries collected in our hands after an afternoon spent floating in the trinity river, hawks circling overhead and osprey diving into the water for their lunch?

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the river is...simply, breathtaking. we sat on its banks for an hour and a half just watching the flowing water and the life surrounding it. i collected a handful of tiny rocks...each one eith its own story to tell, cameron watched a snake slither slowly from the water into the trees, and daisy found a few good sticks to chew on. i can't wait to get down there and into the water...the flow is mildly rapid and trees and hills of green line the banks downriver as far as my eyes can see.

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as you can see, there is much occasion for reflection and appreciation of my surroundings up here. i find my breaths to be longer and deeper, my mind to be more focused in the present, and my needs to be less than anticipated, but more than fully met. lest you think that it's all fun and games on the farm, though, i'll tell you something...my first full week work here was pretty darn hard!

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when i say hard, though, i mean difficult in a deeply satisfying way. we have six people working on the farm now; last year at this time there were only two - grady and nathan. i cannot imagine how that worked. in fact, i've asked grady just that question and he answered easily and with a subtle grin, "it didn't." they were working extremely long days each day of the week, and they still had more work than they could handle. i can't say that i'm all that bummed to have missed out on that stage of life here at green fire!

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i am still working up to that grand post that's eloquent and descriptive and accurate...but for now, and especially since dave and cam look about ready to go, i'll convey the basics. a typical day starts at 7:00 am (waking earlier to brush teeth, pull on dirt-dusted pants or holey khaki cut-offs, and to boil water for coffee or tea). mondays and wednesdays and fridays are harvest days (markets are on tuesday, thursday and saturday), so those days have us pulling up lotsa veggies and washing and packing them...the other days are mainly task days where we take care of the *multitude* of other things that need to be taken care of on the farm. we usually work until about noon...whence we have lunch (each day, someone cooks...i've got tuesdays now! thanks, grady :)) and take a break, all in all, about a 2.5 hour rest...then we work again for about 3-5 hours in the afternoon/early evening. at night, we all make our own dinners, often cooking together, or sitting around and drinking wine or beer or listening to music. around nine or ten o'clock, our eyelids get a little heavy, and we all retire to our beds - grady and linda to their one-room cabin by the kiwi grove, nathan to his house on zikr field and cameron, amie and i to our three-bedroom cabin in the apple orchard.

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i've learned, thus far, how to harvest: zucchini and squash and pattypans (ya'll - appreciate all of these when you buy them from small farms (especially the organic ones)! they have the prickliest leaves and one gets what's termed a squash burn (read: itchy scrapes that flare up in pain) when you pick 'em), kale, chard, beets, carrots (what an amazing feeling to pull a big ole' carrot right outta the soil!), sugar snap peas (holy hell. these suckers are prolific on the farm thie year! sometimes we lose people in the peas and have to go in searching for them), basil (the smell, the smell!), dill (how fragile!), cilantro, mint (juleps, juleps, juleps...), garlic scapes and chervil; i've learned what it means (and i've actually done a lot of this, now, too) to cultivate and till and hoe and hill; i've helped to put up trellacing for long beans; we've planted tomato starts, peppers and beans; i got to cook and bake with ingredients *right* outta the soil and with eggs that were just laid...and so much more. grady, linda, nathan, amie and cameron are excellent teachers and i'm feeling more and more comfortable each day i'm here. i've asked to stay a bit longer...i'm not quite sure how long yet, but past the beginning of july, at least. there is so much to learn and do here - how can i leave??

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tomorrow is cameron's birthday party, and we've invited several close farm friends to come and help celebrate. nathan's dad is in town and they're going to catch some fish in the morning...so we plan to grill those up along with some freshly-harvested vegetables; i'm making a carrot cake with a maple cream cheese frosting; we'll have beer and wine and music, too...

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there are more pixx on flickr...have a look!

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"keep a fire burning in your eye, pay attention to the open sky.."

i have limited time to post today...i am sitting at a cafe in arcata with amie and dave (a new friend i've met at the arcata market). amie and i drove an hour or so west on Hwy. 299 from hoopa to arcata this morning after the morning crew of grady, nathan and cameron headed out for market, their trucks packed with the harvest (including three kinds of chard, kale, carrots, beets, zucchini, squash, mint, cilantro, garlic scapes, dill, sugar snap peas, lettuces, basil and probably more that i'm forgetting...). what a beautiful drive! we pulled into the arcata plaza just before noon, where the farmer's market was in full swing...

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i want to tell tales and share so much more, but i have to collect my words and present them in a way that reflects the richness of these experiences that i am having, so i'll hold off on storytelling for right now...rest assured, it's not for lack of stories to tell, though!

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already, my time on the farm has been invaluable. last night, we ended the evening by listening to amie, nathan and kjiersten (sp??) playing the fiddle, guitar and cello, respectively...my favorite was their rendition of 'the old crow medicine [show's]' cover of bob dylan's 'wagon wheel.' no words...

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tonight we're going to get some wine and go to an arts festival in eureka...and tomorrow is another day off! i think i'll get on my bike for a bit and explore...maybe bake a little in the amazing kitchen that looks out onto rows of cilantro, basil and dill...and i'll definitely take the short hike down to the trinity river and spend some time on the water :)

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BUT. i have put up pictures! i plan eventually to blog with the pixx interlaced, but in the meantime, just have a look at them...i want you all to share in this experience with me! (the link to my pixx is on the sidebar of this page under pixx)

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ok...i'm off with cameron to shop the arcata co-op for the essentials we'll need for meals this coming week...the essentials, that is, that won't come right out of the ground about ten minutes before we wash and cook them!!!