Greenjeans Farm

I woke up this morning and thought about death, and about how inevitable it is.  I thought about never laughing with my husband Jeff in the morning or talking to the dogs and cats, having that first cup of coffee, or brushing my teeth or washing my face again. I thought about our children and their unique personalities and humor and the love that surrounds our family like a force field.  I think I am fortunate to have so much in my life.  I’m sure our spirits will all go into another place when we die, but I am very happy in this place!

This scared me, so I started to cook!  Hey, when in doubt, live.  And when in life, eat!  I think that is behind this compulsion of mine to grow things.  What is more connected to life than food!  Maybe wine!  When you cook there is concentration, abandon, artistry, industry, creativity and in the end you get to eat it and it becomes a part of who you are!  How many other things in your life can you eat! 

We’re busting out of the greenhouses this year!   I’ve run out of trays, thanks to my dear friend across the valley Barbara who keeps giving me her saved seeds!  We have more heirloom vegetables than ever and I’m busy trying to figure out how to mark them in the big garden so we really know who they are.  The ornamentals are coming on strong.  Gotta get stuff in the ground! 

We are kind of in experimental mode this year!  And it is WAY fun!  That’s the way I like it!  Jeff is still trying to deal with the rain and the cold and the soil but I am looking forward to that first fresh pea and potato salad with chives and sour cream dressing!   I am also looking forward to the unusual that you can’t find in the grocery that have the taste that you could have had 100 years ago!  Some of the great gourds from last year are turning into fairy houses with a little carving and paint!  We are doing a fairy garden at the bottom of the bottle tree!  Stay tuned for that one, I’m going to let the Morning Glory run its course there!  

I think it’s going to be a great year, and we are really ready for it!    We are going to take it as it comes, and if you wish, please give us your email address and we will let you know when things are ripe and ready!     

“We wake up in the morning - old hat, think nothing of it.  We might even grumble at the early hour, or the cold floor, or the rain.  But what a miracle that we have another day at hand!  We have another opportunity filled experience to embrace.  Where is our gratitude?  Start the day with gratitude, and feel that gratitude lift us above any seemingly annoying little non-issues to appreciate all that we have, and all that we are.”

  -Lissa Coffey

I have been practicing a couple of disciplines this new year, so far…..   I am not really great at discipline, as anyone who knows me knows!  Each morning I get up and the first thing I am trying to put in my mind is gratitude!  No negativity or worry.  Just what makes me happy to get up this morning?  What about today makes me grateful, gives me strength and makes today more special than yesterday?  It might be as simple as “It’s not still Monday!”  Or “I get to plant radishes!” Or I’m going to sing those Ipod songs in the car all day while I have to drive!   Or I found these fabulous Dinner plate Dahlias!  Cheap!   What ever it is, it is meant to cherish and enjoy!  Hell, I am the kind of person that can even enjoy dirty fingernails! And I love the smell of manure mixed with dirt!     

Today it was the rain!  How fresh everything smelled!  I could see the rain feeding the roses I planted on Saturday with the  stinky egg shells and coffee grounds I saved, and the buds swelling on the fruit trees in the waxing moon!  Also knowing because of the humidity I don’t have to water the green houses until day after tomorrow gave a welcome break.

And when it comes right down to it, we have soup made from our weekend  meat splurge and biscuits and butter and milk and left over key lime pie!  Life doesn’t get much better than this! 

Tommorrow it is the plants.  They are my real focus this year…..     

September is almost gone, I am staring at a bushel basket of basil, a bushel basket of tomatoes, a bushel basket of beans, a bushel basket of crooked neck squash and thinking I would rather write tonight.  The wee hours of the morning are better spent on putting things up when it’s 100 degrees at 2pm.  It’s cool and quiet then, with nobody running in and out of the kitchen.  I have a reverence for food, and if I can’t give it my whole attention I would just as soon give it away or leave it out in the garden. 

My mother’s family was a German/ Irish bunch.  And my fathers family French / Norwegian!  At the Hellwig’s and Weller’s there was always cabbage, root vegetables, potatoes and roasts, good substantial meals.  At the Sorensen’s and DeSelle’s, you could bet on fresh fruit and cream and wonderful roasted things with delicate herbs.   I loved it all.  From the Raspberries and cream my Pa DeSelle used to feed me for breakfast, to the wilted cabbage and wonderful spice cookies Aunt Memo used to make us.  All my relatives were either directly from or one generation away from Europe.  AND I had an Italian Uncle Frank who was my best uncle!   They all came to the United States to make a life and they all ended up on the west coast! 

There was always someone cooking up a mess of beans.  There was always someone putting up a batch of jam or jelly.  There was ALWAYS someone trying to make me try yams in a way that would not make me throw up!

Then there were the neighbors, Hispanic, Eastern European, Texans!  As kids we used to run around to each others houses eating our way through the day, until the street lights came on and our mothers started calling us home.   Summer was always the best time for food.  In my book it beat out Thanksgiving!  Everybody had the same stuff on Thanksgiving! 

“Happiness isn’t having what you want, but wanting what you have.”  This is our family motto.  These words are in a frame in my kitchen above my stove and have been since my children were toddlers reminding me and them to be happy every day for the people and things that bless and add to our lives. 

In the summer months it seems like I spend my days in the kitchen.  Cutting, Chopping, Canning, freezing, drying, sweating, more canning.  My husband Jeff harvests and drops baskets in the kitchen and putting it up is my responsibility.  There are times when I wilt to the floor when a new basket hits the door, but I have that farmer mentality; “do it now, it’s ripe, it’s at it’s peak, what else could I possibly do with a tomato, basil, corn, a cabbage?”  Later on in December and January I thank myself for doing something with that tomato, basil, corn, cabbage.  We make the best Marinara on the west coast!  And Jeff makes the best spaghetti ever!  And then he makes Chicken with the sauce!   And there is nothing like homemade red or green tomato catsup or relish. And then I have my friend Barbara call me to let me know that her sourdough starter is ready and she wants to share!  Good I’m doing spaghetti on Sunday!  Another neighbor has a bottle of wine, and another wants to do sausage! Another has Abolone that she wants to trade for beets!  (go figure)   I am famous for cherry and peach wine!  Tastes great on a January night in front of a fire!    These are the things your life is made of.  It’s the cookies at Christmas and the caramel apples at Halloween.  These are the things you take to your grave!   

Some of the happiest moments come in the most odd times and carry you through your day if you open yourself up to the world around you.  It can be as simple as getting up before sunrise, grabbing a cup of coffee and listening to the frogs and crickets and then as the sun starts to come over the hills the birds and roosters and cow symphony.  A flash of a smile from a teenager that “used to be your baby”.  How rare!  Having a real baby wave at you in the grocery store, then turning down another aisle and having an old woman wave at you from the motorized cart and ask for some help grabbing some garlic! How could a life be better? 

All I’m saying is live in the moment you are in.  It is a whole lot better than regrets or what if’s.  No worries about what you want because it will happen if you live in your moment. 

We have had three children graduate college this year.  It has played havoc with the CSA.   Both of our oldest boys graduated as Jurist Doctorates and my Daughter as an Ag Major, and we have a high school student who is well on his way to college.  They all have jobs and life is good.  The past three weeks in the middle of May which is my planting time has been a little nerve wracking on me the planter and organizer.  Lots of friends and parties and kegs of beer and graduations!  Do not get me wrong, I enjoy being a mother and I can party with the best of them.  But as I said before I am a planter and an organizer.  I planned my family.  3 years apart worked for me.  It didn’t work for them.  I like to think one can plan.   They all came to it in their own time and we have one more to go!   But to me it is like opening up a gift every day of the year to be able to talk to and love your kids.  My most fun times were when they were all 3 – 9 years old.  All of our children are way on the other side of that, and they are still totally fun   Each has a gift that is unique and a total surprise.  Each interaction means something.  If I could leave my kids with 10 to do’s in life I think this would be It. 

1. Say your rosary each morning.  This is something fundamental that I know. 
2. Laugh every day. The world is full of funny stuff.  Even if it is just your cat or dog, or you.  It’s a lot of fun to laugh. 
3.  Love somebody alot, Sex is good!  A friend is better.  Know someone who loves you for all your warts and whiskers and loves you just the same. 
4. Wake up early and enjoy the morning! Take your time getting to work, eat breakfast every day,  but be there on time!
5. Never turn down a great cup of coffee, ever.
6.  Shut up a lot, nobody really wants to know what you think. 
7. Listen, and ask, you learn a lot more that way, if you engage people in what they know.
8. Pay your bills on time.
9. Don’t be afraid when the wind blows, sometimes an umbrella turned inside out can become a great pea trellis
10. Don’t sit around at work if your work is done.  Go home and do something that is constructive to your life.  But work enough hours in the meantime to make your money’s worth. 

I am so proud of our children, they tend to exceed expectations always! 

I did a smart thing earlier this year and managed it in a very dumb way.  I transferred my banking accounts to paperless reporting via the internet.  I patted myself on the back for not wasting all that paper and helping to reduce both ours and the banks carbon footprint, marveled at the way you can categorize your expenses right on line and print off the neat little reports, and went on my merry way.  Each month I received an email from the bank reminding me my paperless statement was available on line.  “That’s nice”, I would think to myself, “it’s ready”.  It really wasn’t necessary to do anything, I’m paperless right?  And I can check my account on line anytime I want…..  My little three ring binder where I would usually put my statements and check copies stood empty all year save for the first statement and the pretty reports I put in it.

Then day before yesterday I sat down to do my taxes.  Pretty straight forward here, income from my day job and Jeff’s part time endeavors and the farm.  Expenses tracked via statements, check stubs and receipts.  I quickly realized I had no statements saved or printed, no pretty reports, no categorization.  Eight hours, a stiff neck, a good ol’ excel spread sheet and a bottle of wine later I had captured the year, completely run out of black ink in my printer, and our taxes were 99% done! This year I will remember the stiff neck and the entirely wasted day  and send myself little annoying reminders regarding due diligence. 

The interesting thing that happened as a result of all this is I categorized not only the expenses for the farm, but every expense we had over the past year.  Some 1200+ transactions.  I am not much of a budgeter and we tend to live feast or famine, we are very frugal and always live well, but I’m into effortless these days and preparing for worst case, and let’s face it, when you are a farmer, some months are better than others.  Please indulge my feeble attempt to explain my utter disregard for saving money for a rainy day here. 

I took the total of every expense and divided it by twelve to get our average monthly expense. (I would love to say I always knew these figures in the back of my brain, but that would be a lie) I then compared the expense against our average monthly income after taxes insurance and house payment.  I then added in our projected refund from our taxes and portioned that out on a monthly basis.  Sure we will soon have money in our savings, but over the course of the year that will go out and not come back in.  We were still 200 dollars a month short!  At this point I panicked!  I can’t demand a raise!  I am lucky to still be working!  I could sell 20 more CSA shares….. but where would the time come from?  Jeff could get a full time job, but who would take care of the farm?  And there goes the CSA!  We could give it all up and move into town into one of those “Bank owned houses” that are now selling for about ¾ of what they are worth, totally not an option.    

So I sat in my wine induced eureka moment and thought of ways to shave it off the expense.  

I looked at the phone bill, and realized we don’t really NEED call waiting or caller ID or long distance for that matter. And we have a good ol’ fashioned answering machine.   We all have cell phones which combined are cheaper than our ATT bill.  However being in a rural area we do need basic local service for internet.  -75.00. 

Our electric bill has been the bane of our life for the entire time we have lived here.  We heat our home with wood, but somehow our electric bill is always huge.  We do have a hot tub that we enjoy most mornings and we do not wish to give that up.  We have to run 2 freezers and refers to preserve and keep the harvest.  I have given up fighting with PG&E and am going to put us on an automatic payment plan that averages your expense over the course of so many years.  -25  at least. 

Then I had to look at our grocery bill.  We love to eat, and eat for fun and enjoyment!  It is our entertainment, we don’t get out much.  Jeff is a fabulous cook and I am a fabulous eater and a food junkie.  Food to us is wealth.  And our expenses show it.   Food is the bulk of our expense other than our house payment.  I made the commitment to myself to save 400 dollars a month on food BANG, just saved it.  I know there is room in there, and we have all the veggies and fruit that we need from the summer, that is as long as we keep the PG&E going to keep the freezers running.  Thus the Toni and Jeff challenge.  Oh yeah baby, there will be more to say on this topic!