The Farmer de Ville Chronicles

Pictured here: a late November night when I went to get something outside. It was grab-the-camera time, but a good writer could paint the picture for you without an image.

There is something about the glowing moon, haloed by the climbing clouds, and the pagan orange-red windows that speak of hearth and warmth under a winter sky. A hill, a tree behind the house that looks like a crewcut, and the half-lit porch, as small as a telephone booth, with its railings that still might beckon you in.

Electrical wires? Meet starry sky. Nothing wrong there.

Moods are like weather, and it's true that mine have been getting sunnier. But today—for no reason I've been able to fathom—has felt like my soul is humid, on the verge of rain. Or verge of tears. I'm not sad, I'm just watery. Largely from the living blessings that are in our midst: Logan, singing constantly and reporting dreams about beautiful flowers; my ex-husband moving back home with his boys, so that Logan has "cousins" (generationally speaking, they are his "uncles") to play outside until way past Adult Dark—they obviously have night vision. And just good things to eat from The Little Garden That Could.

(I wonder if it ever occurred to me before today that gratitude inside is so much more important than what anyone is wearing.)

This blurry photo: "Buena Vista Social Club" music at a birthday party on Friday. Best food, best company, I love the implied energy.

Anyway, that's just a weather report with farm updates to come, but meanwhile let me introduce you to A Certain Farmer. I came across a link at Edible Oregon, reading the blog of Zoë Bradbury: "Diary of a Young Farmer," and the link was signed Farmer de Ville.

Now, anyone who's seen "101 Dalmatians" knows that Cruella deVille is just one tiddlywink away from "Cruel Devil," so I immediately suspected a multi-layered sense of humor. Or it could be his way of saying, "City Farmer."

The subtitle of the weblog, "Lessons on the Good Life from Oregon's Renowned Hillbilly Bon Vivant" kind of stopped me in my tracks, too. I mean, I think saying, " 'Tana' as in banana, Montana, and Santana…and now Tana Be Nana!" is a mouthful. Does the good farmer have a business card with this tagline? Is "renowned" a joke, or is he really some wealthywealthywealthy dropout from the DotCommunity whom everyone but me, of course, recognizes. (Either he will laugh or get nervous.)

I can't say much except that some of you will be so glad you found this spot on the internet, and some of you will just try to wipe the bugs off the windshields of your monitors after you visit. I hope you're like me: voices this unique are rare in the world of blogature. I ain't much of a tour guide, because his subjects are so diverse that he might actually have multiple personalities—of course, I'm kidding. I don't know enough about some of the things he says, but Montenebro cheese and reindeer cheese quiche make me click to the next post.

Delve in. Dive in. Go swimming. Go hunting. Go foraging. You won't find him, but you will find his words, and they nourish the soul and the heart.

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: “…I have an image of a lace curtain before a brightly lit window, and in my imagination, I’m describing it to myself, ‘this is made up of spaces where the light is blocked, and of spaces where the light shines through… this thing which we call lace, it is both of these spaces, and it is neither…’.” — Farmer de Ville, the last paragraph from Love & Sobriety in Downtown Rimini

Thanks for listening. Go listen to a farmer now. Go listen to two: Zoë Bradbury's horses are powerful.