I Heart Farms

Wordle, and an Awakening to Organic

Pictured here: my visit to "Wordle.net" produced this themed art of my own words about loving farms. Go try it out. You can enter a URL for your weblog, or any text you want. I used custom colors and a friendly font. Experimental play is the key. Make your own.

And now for something harvested after planting the seed, in a hostile climate, many years ago. It gives me hope for my (or your) relatives who think everything we do is crazy, expensive, or "too California."

Some time back, we shared a holiday meal with Some Family Members. While these people are good and funny and fun, they are essentially afraid of real food. My offering one Thanksgiving of an organic turkey with an herb crust and shiitake mushroom stuffing was greeted with skepticism: the turkey skin was discarded (to the dogs) from some plates, and few would even try the suspicious gravy or stuffing with the shiitakes. 

UCSC Farm Apprentices Urgently Need Help

Pictured here: one of the new greenhouses at the UCSC Farm, recently finished. This photo was taken when they were empty. "People who live in glass houses should get dressed in the basement."

This post should have been made a few days ago, but I've been involved in The Wedding of the Century, as photographer, best friend, mother of a bridesmaid. All on a weekend where Bob had to be out of town and childcare was kind of spotty.

I'm publishing this letter as it went out to the Friends of the UCSC Farm & Garden. The upshot is that the "Seconds" (second-year apprentices who live, work, teach, mentor, and cook on the farm) abruptly lost their housing on the farm, in a great old barn, and they need help.

Since this program is one of the strongest in the country, and this class in particular has been pronounced "one of the best ever to go through, in forty years" (not to belittle earlier classes! Sometimes things just gel), I really would love people to find a way to help, however small. Read on for an explanation and ways to participate.

What I've seen: the Seconds are a handful of young people who've been chosen for their tireless energy, their ability to collaborate with and support each other, and because they are somehow carry the golden gene or whatever it is to fit into a system where nothing is ever done, and yet can persevere each day with strength and gratitude. I'll try to get up there soon and show you some of their faces. You might want to adopt them, except they're too old. To be adopted. But not to run a complex farm with more facets than a disco ball.

NEVER Buy Glacéau Water, or "My $1000 Paperweight"

A few weeks ago, it was perishing hot: this was on the day the big fire started in Bonny Doon. I was with my daughter at the downtown farmers market, and a friend asked me to pick up a bottle of cold water for her. Since the heat was staggering, and my own refillable bottle was empty, I got myself a bottle, too.

I hesitated when picking out a bottle of Glacéau Stupid Smart Water, but it was the coldest one on the shelf, and that's what I sought. The hestitation came from an earlier incident, when I put a closed bottle of their water in my giant tote, and the top slid open just enough to leak water. My make-up bag got wet, and some receipts, but it was nothing fatal.

I drank about half the bottle as we walked up the Pacific Garden Mall, and made sure the cap was "closed" before I slipped it, in an upright position, into my bag. Twenty minutes later, I felt something cold dripping on my leg, and my heart sank.

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.

I Heart Farms

Pictured here: some of the artwork produced by Teresa Kurtak when she was still a farmer here in Soquel.

This is just the quickest of notes to say that ANYONE who has my blog listed as a link on theirs as "Small Farms" or "I Love Farms": it's "I Heart Farms."

As in "www.iheartfarms.com."

If you could please update your links to reflect that, since I have my new domain set up, I'd appreciate it.

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY (apropos of nothing): "Your wrinkles either show that you're nasty, cranky, and senile, or that you're always smiling." —Carlos Santana

Thanks for visiting.