Showing posts with label southern maryland. Show all posts
Showing posts with label southern maryland. Show all posts

Monday, September 29, 2014

Sweet Day Dreams

Sometimes I think I want to live on a farm.

The farm would be run on solar panels and heated by a wood stove.
And I would have so many chickens, dozens of chickens. We would eat eggs every morning in our great big, eat-in kitchen.

And maybe I would raise some pigs and have a few goats too. I would make cheese and yogurt, and top off my coffee with raw goats milk, straight from the utter.

And I would have blueberry bushes and blackberry bushes and an orchard full of fruit tress: peaches, plums, apples, pears, figs, nectarines.

And there would be a garden, though it would be the lazy man's variety, mostly stocked with dozens of varieties of tomatoes. And I would finally use my mason jars for something other than cocktails. I would learn to can tomatoes, and those tomatoes would be added to stews all winter long.

And I would plant a field of cutting flowers. And eight months a year, fresh flowers would adorn the table where we would eat our eggs every morning.

But then I wonder if that is actually what I want. I wonder if I would actually collect the apples and turn them into sauce.  Would I resent the goats that needed milking, the weeds that needed weeding? Would I miss the smell of the salt and sulfur? Would I miss afternoons on the beach and the knock of neighborhood kids at the door?

And so, I say in my spot, imagining fields of greener grass, grass that I am in no way responsible for. 

Friday, May 2, 2014

Beautiful Words


A few weeks ago I showed up for the play part of a work/ play day on my friend Becky's new farm. People were finishing up projects as the sun started to sink into the horizon. My camera only had juice for one shot, which may have been for the best because everything about the scene was so damn beautiful that I would have ruined the moments clicking away.

I first met Becky in an English class at college. She was so cool and beautiful that she was a little intimidating. She is still just as cool and certainly just as beautiful, but she doesn't intimidate me much anymore. I thoroughly enjoyed the evening on her farm eating a burger while kids ran around  playing ghost in the graveyard. She is a part of an amazing community over in Charles County, diverse and thoughtful and fun to be around.

This past week Southern Maryland got days and days of rain. As I was getting irratible in a house with kids who needed to get out, I focused on my own problems and annoyances. Meanwhile, Becky wrote something beautiful.

You should go read it.