A few Floyd Co. highlights



Many of the ol' homesteads are now used as hay barns

A thrift store 4 turns and 20 minutes from anywhere.



I'm not sure whether to be frightened or reassured.

Greens Garage: an organic/local food store on a gravel road which runs completely on the honor system.



Vitro Yoyo out on Shawsville Pike, also home of Boogles' Pro Wrestling Camp.

 

Last Days of Farm Life

 

 

 

 

Letters from Home: Learning Contentment

I have a fat envelope of letters and postcards from many of you this summer. I looked forward to getting those letters this summer like a 5-year-old on Christmas Eve. Thank you so much. Your wit and love helped me through the low points and the lonely times. If I may without boring all y'all, I'd like to share an excerpt from a letter my dad sent me right before I left the farm on contentment which I found particularly timely on one afternoon when I just wanted to leave:

"Not even much of a gay time with customers at the cash register [Dad works at the local grocery store]. But most days are so. And there is perhaps more to learn and to grow in by these kind of days. How to be satisfied takes a lot of learning in many different places. Perhaps that's why I think a clear eye is so important; beauty has it's place in every satisfaction. A hurried mind and impatience makes us blind."

Thanks for that reminder, Dad.

Going hoarse and finding my voice

The dove descending breaks the air

With flame of incandescent terror

Of which the tongues declare

The one discharge from sin and error,

The only hope, or else despair

   Lies in the choice of pyre or pyre--

   To be redeemed from fire by fire.

   Who then devised the torment? Love.

Love is the unfamiliar Name

Behind the hands that wove

The intolerable shirt of flame

Which human power cannot remove.

   We only live, only suspire

   Consumed by either fire or fire.

--T.S. Eliot (from "Little Gidding")*

My dad sent me an email two days ago prompting me to write. Why haven't you written recently on the blog? he asked. Some of my friends in college would write poems every day, it seemed, for every little thing. I don't do that. It takes me a long time to gestate thoughts into language. These days, I'm getting ready to leave Floyd, which has been my home for the last four months and a kind of new birth for me into the world after my own intellectual gestation of the past 16 years of schooling. I'm getting ready to leave and my brain is too crowded to easily sort idea from idea and peck them out into sentences and paragraphs. It's hard for me to write when I'm unsettled. (Consumer warning: Yeah, this post is going to be total naval-gazing. I'm sorry. It's the end of the summer. I promise to post pretty pictures next time.)

Last week, I talked to Betsy for a while about how hard it is living alone. Days pass and I say few words to anyone. I get out of practice having conversations; the sound of my own voice becomes strange. I get used to the little non-causal explosions of thought that erupt in my brain without organizing them into linear thoughts. In the absence of speaking, I feel like I've lost my voice. Writers talk a lot about having a "voice," of course, but that conversation with Betsy was the first time I thought of that abstract writerly "voice" in terms of the experience of speech--the string of words which ties our lives together, individually and corporately. Being by myself this summer and keeping my voice inside my head so much, I feel like my personhood has somehow been sort of diminished. I often find I don't know my own mind before I have a conversation, and in the absence of other minds this summer, I've been at risk of loosing mine.

I have had many wonderful conversations in the fields with my coworkers, I don't want to sound like I've been a complete Cistercian, but there's been a lot of silence--good silence, time to wait for myself to grow up, time to finally take note of the changes within myself particularly during the past four collegiate years which have not allowed much time for contemplation. I've needed that. But I also need community. If you know me at all, you know I'm pretty obnoxiously, neurotically independent and having to be independent this summer has made me realize how much I love other people, how much my personality doesn't exist unless it's in conversation with another.

It's been constantly amazing during this past summer how at peace I feel when I'm with others. After I bought my car, there were a few evenings I drove all the way to Blacksburg (45 minutes) just to sit in the library or Starbucks until they both closed. I'm sure the other patrons would have been completely weirded out if they had known how greedily I listened to their gossip and arguments over physics homework. Back at the farm, solitude in the evenings oscillates between unbearable loneliness and complete contentment. I didn't knew before that it's possible to experience both emotions almost simultaneously. Is that what adulthood is like? Shoot. I didn't sign up for this.

But the summer's over, folks. The calendar has announced and passed the first day of fall and the colors as I drove down Allegany Springs Road for the last time on my way to 81 on up to Marieke and Betsy in the D.C. area. (Fast fact: Northern and southern Virginia are really totally different. Also, I can't drive in traffic or parallel park without almost causing accidents. Don't tell my mom. She'll worry about me.) This week, I helped dig 1,500 lb of sweet potatoes in 4 hours with Nii Anang, I learned how to feel trees, I cut and split 3 cords of wood, and I found two baby possums in my trash wrapped up in greasy plastic (they are totally gross, not cute). We wound up the irrigation hoses and planted winter cover crop and the last of the lettuce. I'm done with Seven Springs Farm and the season is over. It's been so lovely--the people, the land, the work. I can't imagine a better place to have accidentally ended up as a confused college grad. So thanks, Floyd County, VA and all my new friends. It was an honor to have known you.

It's hard to leave and I'm going to miss forgetting when I brushed my teeth last or showered, I'll miss the fresh food which has totally ruined eating out for me. I'll miss talking about farming as a spiritual discipline out in the fields with Polly and learning African folk songs. Having to wear shoes every day is going to suck. But I'm so glad to be with friends again. I'm so glad I'm moving to a place where I'm going to have a wonderful spiritual community. (Warning to all my friends in Dallas: I'm planning on being obnoxiously social. Sorry.) It's nice to use this hoarse voice again.


*(Yeah, so if you're looking for a connection between the "Little Gidding" quote and this post... there's not really one. I just really love that poem. And you thought I'm some kind of deep and obscure English major? Ha.)

Gloves of Manhattan

Here are some pictures of gloves I've seen laying around in the street. My original intent was to make this a Gloves of Harlem feature, but I keep seeing them in Midtown and the Village, so I thought I'd broaden my scope. Also I keep forgetting to note specific addresses, so this isn't very helpful to people missing gloves. But I do what I can.

That one doesn't really look like a glove, but I promise it is. It's one of those plastic foodservice ones. 

This nice pink glove is my favorite of the bunch. I hope its owner can track it down. 

This one was a few blocks from Madison Square Garden, I think. 

The Top of the Blue Ridge

Last Thursday, I took the afternoon off because I had helped Ron build a retaining wall the Saturday before. By "helped build a retaining wall" read "I lugged 80lb blocks of concrete and it was really hot." I sort of got a pretty good idea of what the people who built the pyramids felt like. The plan had been to spend my Thursday in Roanoke, which I haven't explored yet, but I realized that I haven't seen much of Floyd and I figured I should know where I actually live before I go galavanting around. I ended the day with a gorgeous solo hike up to the peak of Buffalo Mountain, and I just want to share some of the pictures with you.

This is possibly the best junk shop ever. No hyperbole. 

Freeze-dried coffee. It's a big deal, folks. 

When I was asking around in Floyd about how to get to the trailhead, they said, "Oh, it's by Daddy Rabbits!" "Um, excuse me?" "You know, Daddy Rabbits." "Someone raises rabbits.... or this is a nickname for some old codger?" "No, no, no, it's a campground." "Gotcha."

I reached the top just before sunset.

Yeah, I live somewhere down there.

Magnificent Muffins

I like to eat--a lot. Luckily, I like to cook almost as much as I like to eat. This summer has been an unending feast of the freshest produce available, and I've eaten, well, a lot. I told my sister last night that rather than acquiring that lithe athletic figure that I've always sort of vaguely (and vainly) hoped for, I've settled into the strong and comfy build of a porky farm wife. Oh dear. Too much delicious butter, too many eggs, so many helpings of lightly steamed vegetables, venison stews, gigantic salads.... I've reveled in simple foods: beets roasted in olive oil, buckwheat pancakes with honey, squash mush (delicious) for breakfast, big ripe tomatoes eaten like apples, seeds all down the front of my shirt.

I have no regrets. None.

So that you can share in my guiltless glorying in food, I'd like to share what I made tonight--what I'm calling Magnificent Muffins, because I'm in a sportive mood and alliteration if fun. Bonus: these muffins are gluten-free. The precise instructions are courtesy of my scientific cooking methods.

Magnificent Muffins 

Ingredients: 

- A little heap of cornmeal

- A matching mound of buckwheat 

- One small grated zucchini

- Ditto, except a carrot

- Two pinches of salt

- A couple dashes of baking powder (baking soda has aluminum in it, and baking powder is more interesting anyway, because you have to  be clever and think of something yummy and acidic to react it with and get the bubbling action)

- An egg

- A couple sloshes of yogurt for the flavor and to make magic with the baking powder

- Some chopped basil (don't cut yourself like I did while chopping it)

- Some chopped parsley

- A liberal amount of feta cheese 

- Oh, and don't forget a glug of olive oil

 Directions:

Mix everything together with the least amount of care possible, preferably while listening to Fresh Air, and add a little water or milk if the yogurt and egg don't give the mix enough moisture--but they should. Add a splash of cayenne pepper if you're feeling bold, and pour into muffin tins you probably neglect to grease. Bake at some suitable temperature until a fork comes out clean. Pry out of the tins. You may end up with something that looks like a little fluffy mountain, rather than a muffin. If this happens, make a note above your stove remind yourself to grease pans diligently and enjoy the crumbs with a liberal amount of butter.