Summer's Return

Did the rancid aftertaste linger these long six months since my last, gloomy post? Forgive me, please. My extended writing coma was, in truth, unintentional, and I had originally planned on following that last rotten nut with something a little crunchier and sweeter.

But anyone in the Northeast knows it was a rough winter. I guess we say that every year, but I felt it with every stiff bone, frozen nerve, and depressed brain cell in my body this winter--it's an eighty-degree night in July, and I'm still talking about it! As you may have guessed from my previous post, the transition from farm life into, well, real life was stormy. Literally. It seemed as though every other day snow cemented my 45-minute commute into an hour-and-fifteen-minute slither through treachery. The gloom was all-encompassing. Anything beyond going to work, making dinner, and crawling into bed--like blogging--was deemed too unnecessary in this time of death.

But enough excuses. My slow food senses have now fully reawakened with summer, and for the past month, I've savored the effort to reverse my post-winter (disgusting) rate of toxicity. Where's the raw produce??

Oh, there it is. In our garden. Not in our absence of a yard downtown, but rather at the Ithaca Community Garden. Receiving our plot confirmation in March was my first glimmer of light: Spring is near! We wasted no time buying the seed-starting essentials and fashioning as best a set-up as possible in our studio apartment. After a month, a decent number of blank spots remained in our seed trays--our system has plenty of room for improvement--but enough heads popped to plant half the space in our 15'X 15' plot. With some supplemental seedlings from farmers' market vendors, we took care of the gaps. We've been watching with empowerment our first personal garden bloom during the past six weeks. Already we've harvested plenty of herbs, lettuce, and spring onions.

We'll still be enjoying bounty from the farm too, since Dylan is working a second season part-time. Jealousy pinched a little when he brought home the first pint of strawberries, and I remembered the glory of a bloated stomach after a day of endlessly picking/endlessly eating the fruit. But then I remembered the skin rashes from the micro-prickers on the bushes and the discomfort and annoyance of endlessly scavenging as fast as possible for just the right berries from inconvenient knee-high bushes, then the envy morphed into gratitude. I'm thankful that I may still delight in such organic pleasures without the pain. And I'm thankful that I still feel deeply connected by both memory and the work of my partner to the place that taught me about local food at its most fundamental level.

In truth, I value my exchange of the fields for the office. Much work lies ahead to strengthen the system that supports farms like this one. It just so happens that the reappearance of sun and heat coincided with my mid-point AmeriCorps evaluation in June (halfway done my one-year term already?!), when I could finally reflect with confident pride on how I've contributed to this overarching effort during the past six months. More to come.

Having wriggled the last lazy inclinations of hibernation from my core and having witnessed the sprouting of seeds--both literal and figurative--into adolescent life, it is now time, again, to write.

I'll continue with The Farm Book, but at some point I'll also be contributing to the new Edible Finger Lakes blog Edible Voices: http://www.ediblefingerlakes.com/edible-voices.htm. (For those of you unfamiliar with Edible publications, visit the following site to learn more about these local-flavored food magazines across the country: http://www.ediblecommunities.com/content.)