Take the Honey and Leave Your Money

As a follow-up to yesterday’s posting, “Thank a Farmer,” I wanted to share another small family farm experience that I happened upon recently.

Atop Petit Jean Mountain in central Arkansas sits a red barn, home to Petit Jean Farm, where the Martsolf family processes raw honey produced by bees feeding on local plants and flowers.  Buying a few jars, I’ve enjoyed delicious honey on my toast every morning since.  But, it’s the WAY I bought them that caused me a moment of pause, then a trip back to the car for my camera.

 
  When a member of the family isn't around, they trust customers to take what they need and leave the money in the green and white checked can!

Trust, the simple confidence in people to be honest.


Driving down the mountain, I wished that the goodness this family expected of others could be bottled and distributed worldwide.   At least as I unscrew the cap each morning, I'm reminded to do my part.

Thanks, Martsolf family!


           

Thank a farmer!

Picture my dinner plate. . .  corn on the cob, green beans, baked chicken breast with lemon and dill, and slices of tomato topped with basil.  Biting into each one, I experience a curious sensation – flavor.  Flavor that wakes me up and says, “Pay attention.  Do you realize that you didn’t add any salt, pepper, sugar, butter, olive oil, or anything else that shakes out a jar or pours out of a bottle?”  I even feel healthier as each bite enters my body.  No pesticides. No synthetic fertilizers. No preservatives.  No cooped-up chickens.

If I have a question about anything I’m eating, I can email or call the farmer directly. All products are grown or raised within 150 miles of my house.  And I don’t even have to leave the comfort of my couch to shop.

What’s my secret?  For folks around Conway, a town about 12 miles from our house in Greenbrier, it’s proudly shared public knowledge.  Conway Locally Grown!  Just drive by the local Episcopal church between 4:00 and 6:00 on Friday afternoons, and you’ll see people entering with empty bags and exiting with bulging ones.  That’s the pick-up point where customers, like me, get our orders filled for fruits, vegetables, eggs, meat and dairy products, all grown on small, family-owned farms. 

The process begins on Sunday evenings when the online farmer’s market opens, and I quietly sip my cup of tea while scrolling through the pictures and descriptions of the weekly listings.  Let’s see.. . .  what do I need this week?

1 dozen Peaches and Cream Sweet corn

2 pounds Arkansas Traveler Heirloom tomatoes

1 pound Kentucky Wonder pole beans

1 seedless red meat watermelon

1 dozen pastured brown eggs, organically fed

2 chicken breasts, organically fed and pastured raised

1 bunch sweet basil

1 pound purple hull peas

Stop!  That’s quite enough.  But what about that arugala, those zephyr summer squash, the blueberries, cantaloupe, new potatoes? 

I feel empowered with each click that adds an item to my cart, empowered that I am making a choice to support a farmer in my “neighborhood,” a farmer who respects the land using sustainable farming techniques to protect the environment and the health of the people who eat her foods.  And I feel grateful for these principled, hard-working individuals, couples and families who get up early and sweat through hot Arkansas days, battling weeds, bugs, rabbits, deer, and uncooperative weather conditions as they honestly and humanely care for their crops and animals.

One of my favorite writers is also a  farmer, Wendell Berry.  In one of his poems, The Man Born to Farming, I gain a glimmer of his insight into the farmer’s passion. 

“The Grower of Trees, the gardener, the man born to farming,

whose hands reach into the ground and sprout,

to him the soil is a divine drug. He enters into death

yearly, and comes back rejoicing. He has seen the light lie down

in the dung heap, and rise again in the corn.”

As the farmers fill my tote bags with their products, the “thank you” I offer is not only for the food but for the courageous lifestyle they have chosen, which fills me with hope for a healthier earth filled with healthier people.  

If you haven’t already found a farmer’s market or local produce stand near your house, I encourage you to do so! 

Please share any of your experiences buying locally in the comments section.  If you want to recognize a farmer, add his/her name for us all to celebrate.  I’ll start with two in my family who taught me all I know about sustainable farming and started me on my journey towards support of local farmers . . . daughter Elizabeth Alexander and son-in-law, Ben Goodwin. 

Fireworks - What To Do?

“What do you sell that’s not scary for 3-year-olds?” I ask the lady behind the counter.  I decide not to add, “and grandmothers whose favorite firework is a sparkler.”

With two days left before the Fourth and a visit from our grandchildren, ages 3 and under, I need gentle, glittery, happy fireworks that cause no hands-over-the-ears or hiding-behind-adult-legs kinds of reactions.  No sudden pops, cracks, explosions or even medium-sized poofs.

Just deciding which fireworks stand at which to shop is a major decision.  I counted 8 of them today within 10 miles of our house.  Assuming that they all carry the basic assortment of fireworks, what beckons me to pull off the road and buy from one and not the other seven?

Pretend you’re in the car with me, seeing the following display of signs and “come-ons,” and you’ll quickly see my dilemma. . .

*JAKE’S FIREWORKS

LOWEST PRICES GUARANTEED!  NO SWEAT SHOPPING!  (Air conditioning definitely earns some major points on a 91-degree day.)

*CHEAPER THAN JAKES! (How is that possible when Jake said that his prices are guaranteed to be the lowest??)

FREE ITEM W/PURCHASE

2-CENT ROCKETS

*MEGA FIREWORKS!

BUY 1 GET 4 FREE!

*FIREWORKS – 70% OFF

CREDIT CARDS ACCEPTED

A thin, 15-foot (give or take a foot) inflatable red firecracker, with yellow billowing fingers and a matching flame coming out of its head, dances in front of the fireworks tent as an energetic supply of air shoots through its body.  (Looks like a creature that might pop out from behind a headstone in a cemetery on a dark, misty night.) 

*FIREWORKS – MORE BANG FOR YOUR BUCK!

COMPLETE AERIAL DISPLAY – ONLY $34.95

 Uncle Sam raises his inflatable right arm to salute the passing cars in hopes they will experience a wave of patriotism and stop.

And that’s just 5 of the 8 businesses vying for my dollars.  How am I to choose?  Turned off by the spooky, contorting firecracker, feeling less than patriotic towards the plastic Uncle Sam (who looks more like he’s leaning over than waving), and deciding to avoid the “Jake Price War,” I stop at MEGA.

The lady behind the counter kindly points out the most child-friendly items.  I select old-fashioned sparklers, “rainbow” sparklers, a couple of fountains that spray multicolored sparks, “snakes” that grow when lit, and some confetti cones that spew. . . confetti.

“What about the BUY 1 GET 4 FREE deal?” I ask. 

  

She walks around to the front of the counter and motions for me to follow her outside the tent. “You see those vertical letters at the end of the word FREE?"  she asks. 

“Those are letters?” I say squinting until they come into focus.  “ I thought it was an exclamation point.”

“I’m afraid not,” she explains.  “It says S E L E C T I O N S.  Only a few of the fireworks are part of our selections.”

Lucky for me, at least the confetti cones are in the select few.  Paying her the grand total of $7.35, I leave with my bag of mellow fireworks, mentally crossing MEGA off my list for next year.  Perhaps I'll brave the freaky firecracker stand or see if Cheaper Than Jakes really is cheaper.  What a slice of Americana!  

May it be a happy 4^th of July, whether you’re an American celebrating it as a holiday, or a citizen of another country, especially my friends in Russia, who are perhaps spending a relaxing day at your dachas.   

Tea With Emerson

            

Ralph Waldo Emerson very kindly accepts my invitation for a cup of tea each morning around 8:30.  He sits across from me at the island in our kitchen looking distinguished in his black suit and matching cravat, which barely covers the top button of his neatly pressed white shirt.  His penetrating eyes, framed by dark brows, search my face wondering what I have gleaned from today’s meditation. 

“I read it twice,” I say.  “But I’m not sure I totally understand the part about….,” and the discussion begins, in my head and the pages of my journal. But unfortunately, not in the presence of the man himself. I’m 128 years too late.

His serious expression faces me from the cover of my copy of Meditations of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Into the Green Future, which lies beside my teacup and half-eaten piece of toast.  I bought the book earlier this year when my friend, Marian, and I visited Concord, Massachusetts, where Emerson lived for close to 50 years.  Reading one of his mediations has been part of my morning routine since I returned to Greenbrier a month ago.  With our house surrounded by acres of nature, I wanted to think more deeply about Emerson’s larger view of Nature, how it touched and shaped his life and beliefs.

If Mr. Emerson were to join me, I am confident that he would say, “Let’s take our cups of tea outside and sit on your front porch or wander among your trees,” reminiscent of times he spent with his contemporaries wandering the meadows, rivers, trails, hillsides or pond called Walden.

“Yesterday afternoon I went to the Cliff with Henry Thoreau.  Warm, pleasant, misty weather, which the great mountain amphitheatre seemed to drink in with gladness.  A bird’s voice, even a piping frog enlivens a solitude and makes world enough for us.”

-       Meditation # 17, World Enough for Us

Just think of it! Emerson and Thoreau sitting together on a cliff. Do you wonder whether Henry knocked on the Emersons' door, or perhaps walked right in and said, "Morning, Ralph, want to take a walk?” 

Marian and I climbed not a cliff, but a ridge, Author’s Ridge, on a frosty morning in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery. Enveloped in February grayness and swirling snowflakes, we were the lone visitors searching for the graves of these famous friends and their equally renowned neighbors.  Bare branches, aging gravestones and a feeling that the Headless Horseman (though not really associated with this Sleepy Hollow) was lurking close by on his velvet black horse, gave our quest a slightly spooky quality.  That feeling was soon replaced, however by a sense of awe as I stood among a community of authors whose words have so often translated into emotions, actions and inspiration in my life.  Walking by the names, “Henry D. Thoreau,” “L.M.A.” (Louise May Alcott), “Hawthorne,” and finally “Ralph Waldo Emerson,” I marveled at the fact that persons possessing such insightful and far-reaching thinking shared everyday lives, down the street, across town, or beside a pond from each other.

“Today’s meditation, what are you thoughts?”  Mr. Emerson asks in a tone resembling a teacher who has discovered his student daydreaming in class.  I reread it. . .  

“. . .[I] found a sunny hollow where the east wind would not blow, and lay down against the side of a tree to most happy beholdings.  At least I opened my eyes and let what would pass through them into the soul.”

-Meditation #2, The Noble Earth

I open my journal to start a reflection, as if dutifully beginning a writing assignment, but just as quickly close it.  Heading out the front door into a couple of acres of oak trees, I reply to Mr. Emerson’s question,  “Excuse me, sir, while I find a comfortable spot beside a tree.”    

Snake Sighting

If I were President of the United States and had been whisked away when my secret service agents were taking a coffee break, my kidnappers would only need to know one thing to make me talk.  Since the possibility is zero that I will ever occupy the White House and have access to anything as important as security codes or the key to the presidential china cabinets, I feel secure in giving away the secret.  It’s snakes.  I am totally terrified of them! It makes no difference whether they are poisonous or non-poisonous, long or short (although there’s more to be frightened of the longer they are), colorful or bland, silent or rattly.  They create an equal amount of adrenaline-rushing fear that causes me to run, scream, fling my hands in the air. . . in short, transform a calm, genteel woman into a crazed, out-of-control lunatic!

Where did this off-the-radar phobia come from, you may wonder?  Ask my children.  Whenever I begin my “snake story,” they shake their heads and say, “Yes, Mom, you’ve told us this before,” in the same tone I used with my grandfather when he repeated one of his “when I was growing up” stories for the 35^th time. (So, if they’re reading this posting, I advise them to skip the next paragraph.)

Once upon a time, when I was at the impressionable age of four, my mother and I were taking a bag of trash to a barrel across the yard.  Venturing away from my mother’s path, I stepped over a long, fat, brown stick, which as you’ve probably guessed, was no stick.  No sooner had I said, “Hey, Mom, look at this cool stick,” than she scooped me up and dashed back to the house.  My grandmother, visiting from her farm, grabbed a hoe, strode out to where the stick lay, and proceeded to whack it and whack it and whack it.  The sight of that wiry woman, in her shirt-waist dress, raising the hoe handle high in the air and bringing it down with such determined force on the contorting snake, is etched forever in my memory.  Not only did she kill it, but hooked it over the end of the hoe, then hung it (or what was left of it) on the fence. What a woman!

When we first moved into our house in Greenbrier, surrounded by 5 acres of woods and snaky-looking underbrush, I went to the local farm supply store and bought a container of Snake-A-Way, granules that snakes supposedly don’t like and won’t cross.  I was prepared to sprinkle it around the perimeter of our house, when our son-in-law, Ben, astutely pointed out that snakes might already be positioned within that perimeter.  Did I really want to take the chance of discouraging them from leaving?  Mumbling about the accuracy of his logic, I goggled other possibilities, then decided on the least scientific solution of the bunch. . . Boots!  Black, up-to-my knees, thick-soled, rubber boots.  And slow, deliberate steps while scanning right, left, ahead for anything that resembles the long, slender, coiled or curvy body of the dreaded creatures.

Having gotten wind of the fact that there’s a snake-hating woman living in our house, who goes crazy at the sight of one of their kin, snakes have chosen to stay away. . . until last Thursday afternoon. I was sitting peacefully on the window seat, looking out the upstairs window of the study, composing a perfect sentence for my memoir, when I noticed a stick - a long, black, shiny stick - lying in the grass below.  Suddenly the stick disappeared, then reappeared a short distance away, slithering slowly from the edge of the flowerbed across a patch of dirt, to the bird fountain, through the hostas plants, into taller grass, then out of sight in the snaky underbrush at the edge of the manicured lawn.  With a window, screen, roof, porch, steps and another 50 feet or so separating us, I was able to hold off the craziness and stand, instead, holding my breath, unable to move. 

 Knowing that he’s out there somewhere, maybe with a few of his buddies, all I can say is that he’d better keep his distance or I might grab my hoe.  Who am I kidding?!!