her able hands

I’ve got nothing. Camera still sitting in bag with uncharged battery. The three photos I took last week came out too dark because it was so close to dusk and in the back yard. Things are moving fast around here and I’m sitting with a huge life-changing decision for probably one more day and then I have to give an answer. Yes, I’ll stop working here and come to work there, as long as it’s not a drop in pay—but understanding that I’ll likely be working more at least in the beginning. Or no, I’m going to keep doing what I’m doing for a little while longer.

See, my neighbor is starting a small restaurant in an old sub shop, a turnkey operation, and he’s looking for someone to help manage it. Two someone’s actually (Cheril and I are in talks and both weighing the load against our lives to see if we can carry it comfortably). It’s daunting because the desired goal for startup is fast (3 weeks!) and we have some requirements for what we are willing to put our energies into: healthy food (at least half vegetarian, fresh, seasonal/local on the menu, organic whenever possible, sustainable waste management and meaningful interaction with the community — beyond mere profit.

Those are all things much easier to do with a restaurant but his idea is to use this space as a testing ground and to build a blueprint that can be franchised. That’s a major challenge implementing even half of our philosophical requirements, but he seems to think we can make it work. We have to make our decision today and if its yes begin immediately working on a simple menu.

I’m at 99% yes even though I have some reservations about certain details. I think this will be an incredible opportunity for me to learn how to and how not to do things in preparation for me starting my own kitchen garden catering business in the future.

My biggest question this morning? Can I deal with likely having even less time to work in my gardens this year? And if that’s my most pressing concern, well, I suppose I’m ready to move on.

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First of all, thank you so much for your thoughtful comments on my last post. Much food for thought, particularly in Joe’s comment. It’s interesting that Joe picked up on the Tyler aspect of the post because that’s the part that I most wanted to write more about, but I stopped doing the mommy blog thing for a reason. I felt like I crossed the line saying anything at all. But now I want to follow up on a few of those thoughts. But that’s for another day after I let it percolate a little bit more. Today I’m thinking more about my blog as a whole.

For a couple of months now, I’ve been annoyed by the fact that most of what I write about, I’ve written about before, and how I’m so very bored with my bloggy self. Then yesterday I read Becca’s post about blogging in time and the challenges for a long-term blogger to make the cyclical nature of things work well.

Time goes forward–2008, 2009, 2010–but it also cycles–spring, summer, winter, fall, spring, 4/16/08, 4/16/09, 4/16/10. That’s the beauty of it. Blogs are essentially temporal: the two things that make a blog a blog are the computer and time as the organizing structure of the post. The topical blogger and the narrative blogger can, I think, take better advantage of this nexus of the progressive and the cyclical. [emphasis mine]

That last line has popped into my head a thousand times as I wonder just how I can take better advantage of that in my own narrative efforts. Each season rolls around again and the idea is to record the progress, both internal and external. What’s happening in the gardens, in the kitchen, with the family, inside of me. What new ideas we’re playing around with in our heads and in our hearts. But I so often now feel as if I’ve already said it all, or that there’s no new way to say it to make it a slightly different story.

I don’t want to stop blogging, but I do think I’ll be posting less story over the next few weeks and working on some photography instead. Things are shifting here and I don’t feel the need to write about any of it. Quite the opposite. I feel the need to hold it inside and keep my attention on the vision of this new life unfolding. To stay in action as much as possible during the transition because I have so very many balls in the air, or pots on the stove, or seeds in the soil. Actually, I’m managing all of these things while working full-time and it’s a little crazy-making. It’s also short-term, I can really feel that. I think looking at it all through the lens may help clarify my vision some, and give me a chance to learn a bit more about this camera I’ve been toting around for three years and still only using the automatic settings.

So let’s end out this gorgeous week (goodness this weather has been spectacular!) with a little list love, and then I have to go make lunches and get us all up and out the door so I can go hang out in the cubicle farm for another eight hours. (I take a break every half hour to close my eyes, breathe deep into my body and see this other life in action—this life of working with food and gardens and people.)

• The squirrels did not, in fact, dig up all of my Fava Beans and Peas. They’re almost all up about an inch now, and I have a newfound hope for the harvest this season.

• My peppers and eggplant are finally beginning to poke through the starter mix after 22 days. I really need to seal off the light stand with some plastic to create more of a heated room in there.

• Three bags of plant splittings that Cheril gave me in the late fall somehow survived the winter, even though they spent it sitting out in plastic grocery bags. They now have new homes in the perennial bed. I have no idea what they are.

• Turnips, radish, arugula, spinach and chard are all up.

• I forgot to take the lids off of my winter sowing containers on Tuesday and fried most of the seedlings. Hand smack to forehead. So much for my masses of Lupine and Delphinium. Boo.

• I have a couple of people who want to buy vegetables from me this year. I’ll make no guarantees on quantity, but will be good practice to get the succession planting schedule in rhythm.

• My brother is considering coming to Kent State to do his graduate studies in ceramics. I know! I might actually have family I understand in town with me in a year. Holy mackerel, Andy. I need to not get too excited about that one because he also might be going to Osaka Japan to apprentice with a master potter. His future is wide open, as Mr. Petty would say.

• Last night my neighbor asked me if I’m pregnant. That’s two people in two months. I really am going to need to learn to chew and spit when testing cupcake recipes. And make time to get vigorous exercise in every day again. And do about five thousand crunches a day, to boot.

• And tell Chris to not bring home any more Corona. No matter how warm it gets out, I need to step away from the icy cold beer.

Happy Friday peeps…here comes another weekend. What’s on your plate?

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One of the most magical things about blogging all these years is the amazing people who have come into my life. People I would have not had the opportunity to meet otherwise because they live in other regions of the country and the world. I’ve also made connections with some remarkable folks who live just about right in my own back yard, but just far enough away and traveling in a different enough circle that we likely would not have crossed paths.

Jennifer, The Baklava Queen is one such almost neighbor, and I’ve enjoyed some lovely email exchanges with her about blog posts, local grain mills, baking and gardening. I’m so happy she took time to write a post on her own blog as a contribution to the Able Hands Photo Project.

“…the philosophy behind the project (at least for me) has a connection to how I approach cooking and preserving food and sharing it with others. Work has so often become a nasty four-letter word for many of us, but there is so much that we do with our hands to make life easier for others or to create beauty or simply to do what we each feel is needful in our own lives. Work can and should be a joy and full of meaning, and that’s what I try to practice in my kitchen as well in other aspects of my life.”

I love this. Check out her link in the quote, which is to another of her posts about the time it takes to make and eat local foods and fresh meals daily. Reading that has me thinking about my role as the keeper of the kitchen and how that has changed for me over the years from one of exclusion to inclusion. I used to hate having anyone in the kitchen with me. I couldn’t think straight or focus on my work, so I would shoo everyone out to play while I worked. But then I would get so spiteful and annoyed at the lack of help and at the sound and sight of the rest of my people off having fun while I toiled away in the kitchen.

Gawd, I was so bitter all the time. I still get that way sometimes, because everyone else has something just as pressing to do as getting food on the table. I sometimes resent the fact that I’m the only one who does any planning for meals — something that has to happen daily, and can get a little boring and uninspired. And sometimes, I just don’t feel like it. Sometimes I’d so much rather sit and read blogs or a good book. But those are pizza nights.

I have learned that if anyone’s hanging around in the kitchen while I cook, they’re fair game, but I’m struggling with the dichotomy between my two kids and the way they regard work. Lila is happiest if she’s given a task to help with and gets so frustrated if we forget to include her in our work unless she’s off playing with a friend. If there are mushrooms to chop for dinner, she’s my girl working the paring knife with precision. If Ty’s the only one around? It’s hardly worth the heavy sighs and leaking air. Ty is a teenager and I don’t know if I need say anything else about that. But I see other teenagers with much stronger work ethics and I wonder if I dropped the ball somewhere along the line with him. I think I did. I think we all did, the grown ups in his life. I think we have all handed much too much to him. While we don’t do that anymore, we missed the opportunity big time during his formative years.

I think when he was Lila’s age, I made every effort to distract him with play or entertainment so I could get my work done quickly, efficiently and without having more mess to clean up in the end. I didn’t know how to deal with “mistakes” he might have made. I wanted things to be as close to perfect as possible. I’m pretty sure that the subtext my lovely young man has absorbed is “why bother? It’ll never be good enough anyway.”

If he saw me working, it was seldom joyfully. More than likely he picked up my frustration and my hurriedness. I know we’re supposed to improve with age, maturity and experience, and I have. I have much more patience this time around (not perfect, but greatly improved). These two kids have very different temperaments and proclivities. But they also have had two very different mothers, and obviously two very different fathers.

I try now with Tyler to talk about my work in a meaningful way, as if chasing behind the damage done, trying to gently, inconspicuously show him how good work can be. How important it is to balance the work and play, to not allow the need for entertainment to take us away from caring for and shaping our homes and our world into a better place. I tell him why I cook the way I do, why I grow food and preserve it, why I write. Why I clean the bathrooms and mop the kitchen floor every now and again (so our feet don’t stick to it and hold us in place so we can be devoured by the ants attracted to the sticky film from the constant cupcake baking frenzy). But it’s difficult and I worry he’s not getting it, or that he’s getting it much too late so that it’s just words bouncing off and him seeing me do my thing and he’s thinking, well good, so let her work. I’m going back to my game.

But I keep at it. Remind him to do his chores. Invite him to help me with projects. There’s always work to be done and opportunity to talk about it.

So how do you think about the work you do?

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If you’re on flickr, I hope join the Able Hands Photo Project Pool and share your photos of hands at work, rest and play.

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This is the new playground, set up in the spot where the rickety old death-trap once stood. You can see him just slouching over there in the yard all sad and rejected and looking even more dangerous than before now that the new kid’s in town.

You know that phrase, NIMBY (not in my backyard) that people toss around in regards to building that they don’t want to look at, or high tension wires, or landfills, or nuclear power plants? When we decided to buy this house, we had to consciously let go of a bit of NIMBY-tude. I mean because we moved from acreage to city and gave up the view of many trees and open sky to look at the back of a McMiniMansion type home. The houses aren’t very attractive and are the first thing you notice when you go in our backyard, especially when the leaves are off the trees. Of course, if that house ever sells, those poor people have to look at our toy-littered, trash-day furniture covered back yard. But if they have little kids, they’ll be happy enough to let go of their own NIMBY attitude because my backyard has become the epicenter for fun and adventure in the neighborhood, as well as for growth and renewal. I’ve been walking around for days, giggling like a little girl and shouting, “Yes, please! Bring it to my backyard!”

You can sort of see the open land behind us, to the left of that house. That’s the west edge of the five acres that are going to be turned into a gated senior village. There’s no way to stop that plan now (and it looks like a fairly sane plan), but other things are swirling around in the atmosphere here. Big things, but smaller than my initial ideas, more manageable scale things, more of a scale that I can take my time, learn and then expand. I don’t mean to be cryptic, I’m just not supposed to talk details with anyone until it’s finalized. But I do think it’s safe for me to say that if it goes through the way it sounds like it will, (I’m told it’s 99% a done deal), I’m going to have a half acre of open land on which to plant and teach and hopefully make some dollars. Half an acre of open, sunny land, in sight of my own home.

Needless to say, I’m trying not to count my chickens and all that, but I do think the last two weeks have been a trip in the river of life, and for once I have completely surrendered to the current. I’ve asked many questions, stated what I want, listened to stories and advice, taken action where it felt right, and otherwise waited and envisioned this scenario (or one very close to it) with all of me, in every free moment. New people have come into my life, people who might turn out to be excellent partners in whatever this venture turns into. Other people who might need my help in a part time, paid capacity. Things are lining up to make it possible for me to be at home.

I feel like magic has been going on under the surface of that river where I can’t see it, but I can feel it gently move me in new directions. Sometimes it’s so scary to feel that tug out in to the middle where the water moves faster and my instinct is to start paddling for shore. But then I remind myself that shore isn’t working anymore. That living in the relative safety of the shallows is making me sick and unhappy. That I’m ready. I’m ready to live my life and earn my living in a meaningful way.

The guy who wants to do a land contract for the house contacted Chris yesterday and they hammered out the terms. Chris goes to see Titus, The Octogenarian Barrister today to get the contract drawn up. They want to move in two weeks from now. We’ll be holding the mortgage for three more years, but they’ll be paying most of it this year, a little more next, and then full the third year. See what I’m talking about?

Also, I attended the second (my first) Akron E4S (Entrepreneurs for Sustainability) event last night. The topic was building a sustainable local food network and industry, and was very well attended. I met beekeepers, CSA owners, landscape designers, writers, large scale farmers, two guys who are starting a distribution program to get local food from the grower to restaurants, the man who runs the Countryside Conservancy, people who work from grant foundations, a woman who manages a Cleveland farmers’ market and is starting a beautiful new glossy magazine on local foods, a chef who uses a lot of locally grown food, and many, many more. My head hurt when I got home, from the hundreds of ideas ringing in the space between my ears.

I forgot how much I hate driving at night, and a forty minute ride on the highway that’s mostly under construction, with my head pounding and my night blindess made for a stressful journey back to Kent, and I slept like a coma patient last night. My dreams were all about organic food, interesting people, writing about gardening and farming and the people who make it all happen, and feeling connected and successful and alive. My headache is gone this morning, and the sun is shining. So we’re meant to get some snow on Sunday…okay, it’s April in Ohio. That’s not a big surprise. My tomatoes and peppers are almost all up, the broccoli and brussels sprouts need transplanted this weekend, and I need to get another half dozen flats of culinary herbs and medicinal herbs started.

Onward into the season!

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Very productive evening and I even managed to get in some photos just as the sun was going down.

Will post more with details later.

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