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 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! 

It dawned on me the other day, I’m getting old!  It’s probably already dawned on me, but I’m getting so old, I probably forgot that it dawned on me!

I am in good physical shape and healthy.  I try to manage my vices, but thoroughly enjoy them!  I simply cannot imagine getting old and NOT enjoying it. I’m almost on the back side of the 50’s.  It’s easy to keep your body in shape and your muscles toned when you are a farmer.  And I truly like getting up at 3 or 4 and going to bed by 7 or 8.  My husband is full time farm and men always grow old gracefully, I have a day job so we can do this, but there is always something physical you can do here that stretches your body and your mind at the same time.

The problem is the FACE!!!!!  When you look in the mirror and try to stretch your face back toward your ears and you don’t have enough fingers to pull back all the places- that is a tell tale sign.  It makes me wish I would not have scoffed at sunscreen as a teen, or thought that baby oil would give me a great tan. I grew up in Washington State, but we were all still trying to “be California girls”.  Gallons of Noxema, which I don’t think they even sell anymore, and then Vaseline, ICCCCCCCCCK.   Trying to pull back all the places just makes you look like an alien, so plastic surgery is out.  Botox is not an option because I use my face to communicate!  I still keep looking for and spending money for that dewy fresh moisturizer that will take 10 to 20 years off my appearance, when I really think it comes down to olive oil.  I think about gaining 5 or 10 pounds, but wonder how I would get it from my butt to my face!   

I placate myself by telling myself that I have smile lines and they are a part of my personality.  True I do smile and laugh a lot, but sometimes I look at some of those lines and think, “I’ll tell people those are smile lines….”  In my heart I know that some of those lines are “worry” lines, and some of those lines are “putting up with things I hated lines”.   Spent way too much time doing that!    

The fun thing about all this, is I really do not care!  My face is like a fly I can swat at.  It bugs me I can’t look like my 24 year old daughter, but she is beautiful.  I couldn’t look like Christy Brinkley either!  It keeps coming back, but it’s not important enough for me to stop everything else in my life.    

There is nothing I hate about my life anymore and age has given me the ability to put “things” in perspective.   I am grateful for an almost grown family.  I am happy where I am in this place that grounds us and feeds us each day, not just our bodies, but our souls.  I’m madly in a love relationship for 20 years now, with a fabulous man who is my best friend and love of my life.  I can get up in the morning and NOT do my hair, and NOT wear makeup and go outside and feel good because it’s cool and damp and yesterday was so darn hot.  I can wear what ever I want, or what ever I don’t want.  You only have to spiff up for company, or work or if we’re going somewhere.     I am finally, the beautiful me, and I have wrinkles on my face!    

It’s almost like riding a bike for the first time, or driving your first car! 

You can bet I will be one of those little old ladies with no filters in the end.  Probably scaring children showing them how I can pull my face back with all my fingers!       

As a farmer, there is nothing I like better than rolling around in the dirt.  My knees are always dirty and I am constantly cleaning my nails.   I have better things to do than remembering to take my shoes off before I come in the house.  I fully expect to mop the floor and turn around to see muddy paw prints within five minutes.  More than one time, I’ve stepped on a slug inside my house that has come in by way of the bottom of the kitchen door in his nocturnal wanderings.  Our dogs jump up on the furniture.  It never fails to rain right after I wash the windows, or our neighbor decides to plow in a windstorm.  Our son Joey has a thing about leaving his nose print on the bathroom mirror just for fun (and because he is 15), and our water is so hard that it turns the sinks yellow.

This is not to say we are slobs, we vacuum, sweep and dust every day.  Dishes are done, counters clean, Zud has become my best friend.  I have just ceased getting angry that dirt happens. 

It took me a long time to get here.  Growing up with my mother for a mother, bless her heart, the quintessential 50’s housewife. Cleanliness and order were the most important things a home could have.  I used to get in trouble if I put my hands on the wood work. In my mothers kitchen there were two huge picture windows that looked out on the neighborhood and Mount Rainer in the background, if you ever drew with your finger on a steamy window in my mother’s kitchen you were grounded for a month. Our dog Tiker was never allowed in the living room.  Naturally I took these values into my adult life.

Four children later and who knows how many dogs and cats we’ve had, I can honestly say I’ve learned to live with dirt.  We live on a farm for Pete’s sake!  There is not a single stainless steel or granite surface in our kitchen and the counters are tile, with grout that has to be cleaned.  To me, giving a whole day over to cleaning is like meditation.  When you clean your windows first, it gives you a totally different outlook.

The other day Jeff and I cleaned house together.  I agreed to wash windows, which of course leads to washing my paperweight collection and everything glass in the house!  Though I just wanted to go out and play in the garden, something drew me to cleaning windows. 

As I cleaned I noticed how many things I knocked over.  Things I brought home from my mothers house after she was dying.  Snuff bottles and carved eggs on little stands that she used to get upset about my children playing with.  Things that reminded me of her.   

We got to the end of the whole house cleaning experience and I noticed that though it was Jeff’s job to clean the rooms while I cleaned windows the dining room had not been cleaned.  I had a fit! 

He stood with me in our dining room and said in a low soft voice, “Toni lets take everything out of this room, clean it and then put it back.”  I looked at him like what are you nuts?  He then said, “ I don’t even like to go in this room, It’s your mothers room, and you are turning into your mother.”  I opened my eyes and I saw the shadow boxes I had taken from Moms house and the shelve.  Propped against the wall since last July when she died.  And all the Chinese goo gaws that she absolutely loved.  Filling up my dining room so there was no room to walk no room to grow.  I don’t love Chinese goo gaws and I have a very small house.

We took the shelves to storage and the goo gaws went into boxes for another generation to find. 

I read an interesting article yesterday, I found it on the get rich slowly site. http://whatever.scalzi.com/2005/09/03/being-poor/    This tugged at my heart!  We've all been around this block,and living there at one time or another or now.  Thank God for the blessings we have and the ability to raise our heads up to look at the sky!

An opinion from my son Nick who is a law student at Gonzaga:

I've got two you probably won't like:

Being poor is a cyclical problem resulting from generations of parents who have not properly pushed their children, taken care of their children and themselves, and demanded that there children get proper educations.  

Being poor is giving up on yourself and your children because one is (1) incapable of figuring out how to succeed because no one has ever shown them or demanded it of them, (2) being physically or mentally disabled without proper care and in such a way as to limit development, and (3) so used to being given the tools to barely survive by the state that one is not interested in working towards achieving a better life.

I am not quite a republican yet, but I don't care about the symptoms of poverty, but I care about the causes.  I have worked with and for some of the poorest people in Spokane County and the problem is three-fold: 

Not enough opportunity for growth and development.  Poorer populations see a world where other people receive opportunities they do not, and they give up.  They become satisfied with subsidized housing as long as there TV has HBO.  Then they have kids who grow up in an environment that enforces, every day, a declaration: you can not achieve what you want. 

Systematic exploitation of poor communities.   Ever since there were poor people and rich people the rich have determined new and innovative ways to screw the poor to take every last penny they have.  Examples of this are sub prime mortgages, rent to own furniture, and check cashing places.

Acceptance.  This is kind of related to the first one.  When poor people see they don't have anything, they get used to it and stop trying.  The difference is the responsibility for the first one, to a certain extent, rests with all of us.  This one, however, rests squarely on the shoulders of the poor communities themselves.  It is a generational problem and with each generation of SSDI and subsidized housing children learn, don't go to school or work, chill out at home, drink booze, watch TV, and don't worry about it.  Because if you try, you will just be disappointed.  

The point I am trying to make is if all the people who pointed out the symptoms of poverty spent that energy trying to fix it, even on the smallest of scales, we all good contribute to a better world.  The systems are in place to help.

<and I climb off my soapbox>

My Answer:

I totally agree with you.  It’s the “why try” mentality which is caused by generations of getting slapped down, and being expected to be stupid, and having the person make the fast buck on your back.  It is sitting in your living room because it is the most safe place you can be with your tv.   It is the (not so) “funny” joke at the expense of a childs self esteem when you should be building children up “OH Look you got a B”  “How the hell did that happen?”.  How did the abnormal become the norm?   It is all of us not being able to reach out a neighborly hand.  NOT a “helping hand”, but a caring neighborly hand. It’s buying a pair of  new basketball shoes for a kid who cannot afford them, no big deal and that kid takes that gift into the rest of her life. A freakin plate of Christmas cookies!  A bag of tomatoes.  Sticks that turn into roses!!    

Also being poor is being so self absorbed that you cannot enjoy the sun in your face.  And that has nothing to do with money.  Being poor is living within your self and not being able to experience the world or a bird, Laughing,  or a funny look on a dogs face or hearing the  unbridled laughter of children  or even the ducks across the street which is my most treasured music in the world.  Those are the poorest people of all.

I have one picture of you kids that I hold dear to my heart.  It was your high school graduation  day.  That is probably the most poor time we have ever had.  You were there in slacks and a nice shirt and tie and sunglasses.  Your brother Christian in jeans and a tee shirt.  Your sister in my old boots which at the time were the only shoes she had and a pair of who knows who’s boxers and a tank top, and Joey just enjoying a sunny day on the patio!  You are all (except Joey) standing there with your fingers down your throats like this sucks!  Look at you now. (two lawyers, an Ag Business major, and a 15 year old who is on track for college!)       

SOOOOOO I’m starting here with a commitment. We have produce, lots!  We have 4 paid subscriptions so far this year (we are actually at a profit so far, seeds and trees and all.  All we need for GJ is another load of Spy Rock and maybe some more potting soil!   ) We have plenty to share and feed us too.  Nobody should have to choose between paying a bill and eating and yet it happens all around us all the time.  I’m actively looking for people in that spot.  Not for self gratification, but because I can help.  I would certainly want some one to help me if I were in that position and people have when we were in that position.    You know I love to teach people about what we do here.   Our neighbors!  I am sure I will get a couple of wonderful recipes or growing tips out of the whole thing, and probably make a couple of friends!  We always have seed I have started that I do not plant because of room or variety constraints, so people can have them for their own garden if they wish.  It’s no fun to have all this and not share further than we already do!  And I’m not talking adopt a family, I’m talking having an open door (heart).   Open heart is going to become my new hobby.  Attitude of Gratitude.  Great, your mom is going to become a door knocker.  “Hey I have food, do you want some?” 

Love,

Mom

This year at Greenjeans Farm we are going to conduct a commitment!  We will give away a share for every share we sell.  We know there are families in our area who have to choose sometimes between paying a bill and food.  No one should have to have that worry.  We are asking Potter Valley residents to connect us with people who would benefit from our commitment!  No strings. 

One thing farmers know how to do like nobody else, is reach out to each other. 

I remember the first year we lived here in Potter, during the fall and winter we made the house livable, we had our first greenhouse (a growhouse sent from heaven which blew away in the storm the next year (another story)) and our first Christmas, and then we borrowed our friends Barbara and Skip’s tractor to plow up the area where the garden was going to go.  This was in March and we just couldn’t wait to get it all ready. 

Well March in Potter Valley is not exactly the best time of the year to decide to plow.  The Tractor got stuck, really stuck in the wet soggy ground.  I remember looking out the window and watching Jeff standing in the field waving his arms up and down out of frustration like he was doing jumping jacks.  I put on my rain boots and we tried the ol’ stick a board under the tire trick.  It didn’t work.  We stood and stared at each other trying to fathom how the heck were going to get that thing out, and how the heck we were going to pay for any damage we may have done to it.  Suddenly, like the cavalry arriving our other neighbors came up the driveway with their tractors and ATV’s and chains!  It seems they’d been watching with just a little amusement the scene at Greenjeans, and decided to help us out of our misery.  At the same time Barbara was driving into our driveway to see how we were doing with the tractor!  The neighbors got it out and Jeff drove it back to Skip and Barb’s.  Everyone got pickles and jam for their efforts and I will never forget the outflow of neighborliness for the newbees. 

I think this year will be much like that year.  Many of us are feeling a pinch, but with each other’s help we will get through it! I hope to be one of the "calvary" neighbors, but you never know...  No matter how hard you have it, you just have to look out your window!