No Rich Man's Fat Horse Can Catch Me
I keep pushing the limits of my scooter as a pack mule. Yesterday I brought home over one hundred pounds of vegetables on it. You'll notice the really classy packing job I did using plastic bags? I tied those bags of peppers and tomatoes to the back of my seat using more plastic bags tied together. It felt a little Mad Max-y.
I wore the only diamond earrings I own, (ones my mom gave to me this spring), to go picking in. I don't wear them often because I only own one other piece of diamond jewelry: my mother in law's diamond wedding ring, and I guess I'm just scared to lose them. I don't wear the ring ever now for two compelling reasons: sadly-it no longer fits me now that I am so much bigger than I used to be, and the other reason is because it doubles as a lethal weapon (being equipped with four very sharp points on which I have gouged my leg a few times). In case anyone out there doesn't know it, I love diamonds, pearls, and platinum. (I don't own any platinum). I don't care for stones with color.It amused me quite a bit to wear diamonds for a field of tomatoes while listening to the last song on the Wilco album of Woody Guthrie covers called "The Unwelcome Guest"which is all about a horse named Black Bess on which a man who steals from the rich rides away from the noose. It's hypnotic in the classic folk song way. All about not stealing from the working man. There aren't very many song writers in any genre of music who can tell stories the way Woodie, Arlo, and Bob used to. What I love about traditional folk music is that it isn't always about true love, or broken love, or fake love, or sex. A lot of it isn't about love at all but about death, and poverty, and war, and politics, and the working man's life.
It's been hardwired into me to relate to the working man's story. I've lived it. I come from it. I don't descend from kings and princesses, or generals, or scientists. I descend from a long line of farmers, fur trappers, and in the last generation, middle class diplomats and teachers. I know that many people have a hope buried in their chests that somewhere in their family tree there is royalty, or VIPs to be proud of. I don't believe I've ever wished that or secretly believed it to be true. First of all, royalty has some serious issues with in-breeding. I'm not saying that no other communities are prone to this challenge, only that it is much more obvious and a KNOWN FACT that royal families have struggled with this. And also perpetrated it.
I have a kind of reverse snobbery and I know it isn't always an attractive thing. I try to put it in it's place. I have often wondered how much of our heritage steers who we are. I do believe environment can play a heavy role in a person's forming, but I also know that although none of my parents are farmers there is a very strong connection to earthiness and growing things in my family. My mom has planted an edible garden everywhere she's lived. I grew up eating a lot of home grown food. She didn't have to teach me the value of that. She didn't have to preach about it, and didn't. She just did it. When I grew up I became URBAN CHICK. I thought I was so different than my herb and vegetable growing hippie mom. I listened to Laibach and loved the hardness of the city landscape.
Yet, I ended up learning to bake bread, make shampoo, and without knowing it was connecting with the same roots my mom connects with, the ones we share. The second I had my own garden to play in it became the most natural thing on earth to concentrate heavily on growing food, herbs, and flowers. I discovered that I may love visiting cities, but sitting in the dirt with a trowel and the promise of abundance to come feeds something much more basic and necessary in my spirit. When I'm outside in my garden or chatting with my hens, I feel a sense of continuity, of time slowing down or perhaps it's just the edges of time blurring so that there isn't all that much difference between myself and the French farmers I am descended from.
Diamonds and dirt. That's me riding Black Sally to steal from the rich until they hunt me down and hang me. When I was six I wanted to be Cinderella. I was going to say I had the classic little girl desire to be taken into the glamorous royal family, join up with a big chinned hemophiliac prince, but in Cinderella we find the common girl. Always the common girl for me. The only thing that's changed is that now I wouldn't have a prince for a spouse for all the gold in the National Mint.
Food is better than gold. I eat no sweet peppers because they repeat on me. (I love that expression, it's such a genteel way of saying something makes you BURP FOR HOURS.) I do eat some hot peppers though, for some reason they don't disagree with me very often. At the farm I've been going to (Bernards) they have a really long row of the most gorgeous jalapenos which you can pick yourself. So I picked a bunch of them.
I put them on skewers and grilled them. Then after they cooled I put them in vacuum sealed bags (about six peppers per bag), sealed 'em up and put 'em in the freezer. I also picked a pile of ancho chillies and did the same thing with them. The farm also has eggplants (four for a dollar if you pick them yourself) and this is the only time of year you can get eggplants in season, so I grilled about ten of them and sealed up stacks of rounds of them for the freezer too. Obviously I made ratatouille as well.My plan is to finish up with these u-pick items by Sunday. I'll take a little break, then as soon as apples and pears become more abundant I will preserve a truck load of pears and a modest amount of apple sauce. That will conclude my canning season. Tomorrow another of my Lisas* is coming to visit for a few days. She's going to have to deal with the chaos of a house at the close of a very busy canning season...because today I am going back to the farm for more tomatoes, eggplants, beans, and some zucchini to shred and freeze. So there's no time to clean or pretend to be a neat and tidy person. I'll feed her really good food so she will be tricked into not noticing anything else.
Although, right there is the irony of having so much food around being preserved...food everywhere and nothing to eat. No lie. When you are in the middle of processing one hundred pounds of tomatoes, cooking anything to eat is almost impossible. Partly because in a kitchen the size of mine (postage stamp) there's no room for a flea to fix a blood sandwich. The other thing is the total lack of desire to cook. I'm already cooking. I'm cooking two thousand tomatoes and by the way, I keep almost plunging my hand into boiling water to retrieve my tomatoes from their blanching. Kind of scares me. Must remind self: my hand is not a spoon. (My other burn is mostly healed now, by the way.)
My house is a wreck. But I'm not stressed about it. I have a plan. A good one. I'll tell you about it later. Right now I'm going to get myself in gear so that I can pick and get back home in good time. I hope you all are having a fantastic Friday!
*It is apparently the Universe's plan to hook me up with every Lisa on earth. Except for the Lisa I deeply offended (yes, still feeling lousy about that. Not sure that'll ever stop stinging) I seem to get along with and love all the Lisas I meet. How weird is that? I collect Lisas. I just found out that someone else who I really admire in the Internet world is also named Lisa. Of course. The next time I meet a really cool woman, I think I'll just go ahead and ask "So, is your name Lisa, by any chance?"
