NOFA-NY NO-WAY

Gold Heart Dicentra

Today winter kept me from attending the NOFA-NY conference in Saratoga Springs so I'm feeling a little more need for the sight of spring than usual.  Instead of feeling blessed by the beauty of a new blanket of snow I spent the day angry at the treachery it creates on the roads and cursing myself for not getting a hotel in Saratoga Springs rather than committing to driving back and forth from Hudson (it's only an hour!) each day of the three-day conference.  Tristan did a lot of cursing also, since the conference hosts an awesome children's program that he enjoyed immensely yesterday. 

The theme of this particular conference (NOFA, the Northeast Organic Farming Association, holds several throughout the season) is soil.  Soil's significance in agriculture is obvious, but the mismanagement of soil should be hugely important to EVERYONE as it contributes tremendously to pollution and climate change.  As a gardener, it is practically my religion; the soil is everything.  It is teeming with life that we've only just barely begun to understand.  It is a medium for gestation and nourishment and for communication between disparate species.  Unfortunately organic agriculture is just as guilty as conventional agriculture when it comes to exploiting the soil.  Some of the voices at this conference give me hope that the tide is turning.  Soil appreciation and conservation and even CREATION should be foremost on the minds of anyone that grows food.  The challenge of creating a farm from scratch with minimal disruption of the fragile ecosystem of the soil is something I had hoped to hear discussed today but FUCKING DIDN'T, THANKS WINTER!!

TAKE THAT!

Yesterday I had the privilege of falling in love with seeing Jean-Martin Fortier speak about his incredibly tiny-but-successful farming (but really just French intensive gardening) operation outside of Montreal.  His book, The Market Gardener, was a huge part of making me believe that I really could manage a farm, just using the experience and skills I've gleaned from maintaining (or sometimes not maintaining, at least to my neighbors' satisfaction) my own extensive and diverse backyard garden.  I worked up the courage to tell him as much but before I could get more than a few words out Tristan, in a very symbolic gesture, placed his person directly between Jean-Martin and I, disrupting nearly all audio-visual contact.  Thanks, Tristan.

You're welcome, Mom.

I was also able to hear Hugh Williams of Threshold Farm here in Columbia County talk a little about his biodynamic methods, i.e. maintaining a closed system on his farm, using external inputs sparingly and maintaining and creating soil fertility with careful management of his cattle herd and grasses.  As he spoke he would occasionally digress and allude to the magic and intrinsic synergy of the soil and the animals and the plants left to their primal ways and it was incredibly inspiring to me.  He seems like quite a magical man himself, and I'm so anxious and hopeful to speak more with Hugh and his lovely wife.  And to get their advice on fruit tree pruning because when I see their orchards I'm faced with the reality that I just don't have a clue.

Tristan and I met so many lovely people yesterday in addition to the speakers above, and it pains me to think of what we missed today.  We'll hopefully make it tomorrow, but even if we don't our experiences yesterday were so fantastic and reassuring and motivating that it's hard to feel regret, exactly.  We're on a path that continues to feel right.  We're met with support and encouragement everywhere we turn here.  And occasionally we meet cute Québécois and that's even better.  If I prayed I'd be praying for more of that.  Those of you that do, please get on it.

Parks & Kitchens

Tristan began a class at Kite's Nest today.  I was concerned that we'd have a hard time getting involved with other homeschool families in New York as the regulations are so different from those of Iowa, but my fears are allayed as of this morning.  The kids that showed up for Tony Kieraldo's RE-SOUND class seemed just as spirited and friendly as Tristan and their parents were likewise very kind and welcoming.  It was such a relief.

I continue to unpack and struggle to find a place for everything.  I wrestled with our new electric piano this morning and await my dear friend (and broker, and landlord [yes, really]) to assist me in completing the assemblage.  I'm also trying to find the patience and compassion to cope with the kids upstairs and their incessant noise.  Learning (or re-learning in my case) the courtesies involved with apartment-living isn't easy.  There must be some middle ground.  But I feel like I couldn't be further away from it right now.

We are right across the street from a little park in the middle of Hudson.  I laid in bed for hours last night watching dogs poop there.  And watching their owners actually pick up the poop.  IS THIS HEAVEN OR WHAT?!?!!

For other views of my apartment feel free to Google "boxes" and "clutter" and "partially assembled electric piano".  Enjoy!

The Dog Show

Nothing has changed since yesterday.  I am still unpacking.  I think the boxes made babies in the night.  Maybe it's the loud music from the kids upstairs that gets them all frolicsome and before they know it.. !!!

I was talking to someone on the phone this afternoon and trying to explain how we already feel comfortable and at home here in Hudson, despite having spent a total of perhaps 10 days here in our whole lives.  And the reason, I think, is that we've been fortunate to have met some of the most wonderful, kind, playful and generous souls.  Like our friends Dini and Psyche..

We could only be happier if we had more kitchen drawers.  Please cherish your drawers, people.  Don't take them for granted.  Love them up, clean them out, think about what the fuck you'd do if you didn't have them.  I might begin publishing a daily devotional on the glory of kitchen drawers.  Submissions welcome.

Hudson, NY

We live in New York now.  I am still unpacking.  Tristan is still being babysat by YouTube and the kind folks that create and upload LEGO instructional videos.  My thighs hurt from traversing the rough terrain of my apartment floor.  I love the floor; it really is beautiful and has tremendous character, but my goodness. 

A few things I've learned during this move:

1)  label the box in which you've packed your underwear
2)  don't bother transporting sweet potatoes across the country in freezing weather
3)  ask about the number of drawers in the kitchen before signing anything

There is a great bakery just down the street.  I'll probably be 200 pounds and diabetic in a month.

If anyone knows the answer to the problem of heavy mirrors + brick walls, please share.

An evening with Machine Head at Irving Plaza is sold out GODDAMNIT!!!  Poor Tristan. 

Don't we all.

Merry Christmas!

December 23rd, 2014

Tonight my Santa paid me a visit.  Though he still believes, I think Tristan is beginning to understand the broader concept of Santa Claus.  I hope that in carrying on this tradition with him I've fostered a life-long belief in magic and altruism.  And I hope that that's why he's dressed in his Santa pajamas and filling my stocking this night before Christmas eve.  It's about selflessness and anonymous giving, not just milk and cookies.  And carrots.  I hope.   

We are spending this Christmas in Iowa because I'm not ready to disrupt the intrinsic naivete that I've nurtured in Tristan all these long years.  I feel obliged to protect this inherent hopefulness and blind faith in magic and goodness and infinite youth and a life without loss.   I want to keep him innocent forever.  Or at least for just one more Christmas.

In January we're leaving.  Not forever; the logistics are chaos and explanations too tedious but suffice to say we'll be back to this house, though it will no longer be our home.  We'll be slowly displacing the earth from our deep roots here over the coming year, eventually tucking them into the still foreign soils of the Hudson Valley. 

Tristan is eight years old.  And I can't help but think back to the Christmas when I was eight, when everything was a shambles.  My dad had been killed in a car accident a month before, and my mom still lay broken, in body and in soul, in a hospital bed in his den.  My mom's eldest son (from a previous marriage) had left his family to care for her and play Santa for me.  Why his own family and children didn't deserve the same I'll never know.  And I'll never know how to feel about it.  It was a miserable, muddled, confusing end to a childhood that had been until then idyllic.  Everything was suddenly in such sharp focus, and no child should have to see life and its inevitabilities so clearly. 

I tell myself that it's only a coincidence that I'm about to drag my son away from the only life he's known, just now, when he's eight, but it probably isn't.  Not entirely.  Our traumas mark us for life.  That which we were subjected to becomes instinctive, reflexive, and maybe we're all designed to subject our children to the same.  But this unbelievably clear recollection of Christmas when I was eight also gives me solace and strength, because I know what Tristan can take.  He's not going to break. 

[no appropriate segue available]

Also here are some photos from Christmases past!  Be merry!  Think positive!!  TAWNY PORT! 

Merry Christmas!!  HO!

Basilica's Buddha Booth

Basilica Hudson Farm & Flea

In the shadow of Christmas and impending real estate transactions I'm finding it hard to calm my mind enough to sit down and write.  But I did finally get around to unpacking the bags from our Thanksgiving trip to New York (yes, ten days is pretty much standard for me) and rediscovered a few of the tasty purchases I made at Basilica Hudson's Farm & Flea!

my festive kitchen

The Hudson Standard concocts syrups and bitters using ingredients procured from the Hudson Valley and everything I tasted at Farm & Flea was amazing.  We brought home the Pear Honey Ginger shrub (I've used it in a salad dressing that I'm eating right now!) and I so wish I'd picked up their Spruce Shoot Bitters as well.  Even though shrubs and bitters are easy to make at home, the prices of Hudson Standard's products aren't by any means exorbitant, so I'd err on the side of laziness and buy everything. 

Lady Jayne's Alchemy is apparently a one [awesome] woman operation housed "in a barn in the woods" in Old Chatham, NY.  Her Worcestershire Sauce is phenomenal but she also makes things like perfumes and cold remedies from plants on her property.  Eau de Creeping Charlie.  I am not kidding.  She is nothing if not resourceful, this lady.  I love her.

Flowering Heart Farm had myriad felted toys very carefully and cleverly made and displayed at Farm & Flea.  All hand-made and plant-dyed, Tristan and I really fell hard for everything but came home with just one wee bunny.  He'll be lost in Tristan's bedclothes in no time but isn't that what happens to us all when we're loved? 

And then there's this…

…which I almost certainly paid a hugely inflated price for and which will pretty much definitely mark the beginning of a stupid crazy collecting frenzy.  Being unfamiliar with these charming little Armed Services Editions I was rather intrigued, and whilst being enlightened by a thorough explanation from the bookseller (whose name I have forgotten) I was overcome with the feeling that this book was a personal welcome to New York from my beloved Walt Whitman.  So I bought it.  I am such a sucker. 

reflection is everything

Pool House Chronicles

I hate driving.  The only thing that I hate more than driving is flying.  Sure, one is active, one is passive (unless you're a pilot, I guess), but both modes of transport are just the worst.  Why everyone was looking forward to flying cars in the 80s I'll never know. 

I did a lot of driving and a little flying last week.  I am exhausted.  In homeschooling these past few days I've been especially encouraging of my son in mathematics so that he might work on future advancements in teleportation.  I'm ready to be molecularly deconstructed if it means I'll never have to get on a plane or the New Jersey Turnpike again.

In this haze of exhaustion and home-buying that I'm currently mired in, I keep forgetting that we had an amazing time in New York over Thanksgiving.  Our first destination after the Newark Liberty Airport was Manhattan Saugerties.  Saugerties is a gorgeous little village with this beautiful historic lighthouse on the Hudson River.  After stuffing our tummies to capacity with everything but turkey and napping contentedly we attempted to walk (which is the only way to get there) to the lighthouse at dusk on Thanksgiving. 

Did I forget to mention the snow?  There was snow.

It was unbelievably picturesque and eerily quiet and just sublime...

Holy crap, right?!

Which is saying a lot considering that WE DIDN'T EVEN MAKE IT TO THE LIGHTHOUSE!!  Either the tide or recent precipitation or both had flooded the trail just before we could reach it.

But it's just there, in the upper right corner!

There's a metaphor here about some mysterious obscured beacon guiding us toward our new home, but I can't quite find the words.  I'm having a hard time thinking of anything besides the possibility that I might be spending more than I'd like on this gorgeous property with a barn and a pool house and fallow land on which I'd like to establish a little biodynamic farm run by a cooperative of ladies that doesn't exist…yet.  Am I crazy?  I feel like I might be crazy.  Does anyone want to rent a pool house?