The Sticks

Well, the first urban farm exchange was a success! On Friday afternoon, a guy showed up with seven beautiful organic eggs from his backyard, four green, three brown. I should have taken a photo of them, fried to perfection on gluten-free toast Saturday morning. They were about the same size as regular eggs, but after I'd eaten two I felt extremely full. I'll bet the fat and omega-3 content of these eggs is higher than what I get at the market.

I felt like I was the director of an extremely small-scale CSA as I went out to the garden to decide what would be good for my end of the trade. I wanted some variety and bulk, but I needed to plan carefully; give away all the beets and that's, well, all the beets. Ditto the carrots, some of which are too small at the moment anyway. I ended up with a big leafy mixed bunch of carrots (we have two varieties, one a gorgeous blood-orange and one standard) and tiny baby red beets (the beets are not doing that well, so I'm erring on the side of pulling them early so we can use the space for a more content tenant); a bunch of chard; a small bit of oregano; a half a punnet of raspberries; and a bag of salad mix, heavy on the arugula, which I have been munching all spring. The produce looked good in a Priority Mail box I found in the garage, and I felt proud. And when I first held that egg carton in my hands I had this surge of excitement. Nay, giddiness.

Last week, B. and I raised the question of whether we should consider moving to what I affectionately call "the sticks." I am starting to picture myself easily in a little house with a yard and chickens, space for L. to run around, maybe an extra room in which to write. I grew up solidly in the 'burbs, or actually, in a place that strikes me as very rarified, very New England: a small town outside of Boston, with old houses and a town square and a train station. But my dad, who is also fond of the sticks, took us there often, and we spent summers hiking and on the ocean and in all sorts of sticksy places. So I'm not unfamiliar. I had a great childhood in these places. As an adult, I have been pretty solidly urban. My major reservations about moving to the country:

1). Lack of cultural opportunities for me and my kid.
2). Lack of diversity.
3). You have to drive everywhere. Not a big fan of the car. Nor is L. He actually gets annoyed when I pick him up from daycare in the car instead of on the bike, and my weak protests ("It's freezing out!" or "Mumma's really tired today, Bunny!") fall on unsympathetic ears.
4). I really do believe that, for reason #3, the city is the smarter environmental choice. Greater density and you don't always have to drive.
5). This is the biggy: all that space. Me and a kid and all that space. Since L. was a week old I have relied on coffee shops, public parks with park benches, and other urban trappings to keep the both of us sane. I'd say my momming relies heavily on community and the kinds of resources you get in the city. Out in the country, you're making your own community, and you have different resources.

Nonetheless, I fantasize about the country, as those of you who have been reading me for a while now know (here's an old post about The Simple Life).

Two bloggers I know live with kids in the sticks. The first is Laal, my friend from college, who lives on a micro-farm outside of Paonia, Colorado. You can read about her sheep-wrangling, garlic-growing, and house-building here. I love reading Laal's blog because it gives me this window into life with kids in a very different place than where I live. The other one is this mom, also from Colorado, who writes here. I don't know her personally, of course, but I like her blog a lot: great photos, light tone. She makes it sound so easy!

Today, Saturday, L. is off with his dad. I keep getting texts like "we're at breakfast!" "We're going to the beach!" Meanwhile I'm holed up in a coffee shop, about to tackle a freelance editing job. I seem to be procrastinating.

And yes, you're thinking, but wait--isn't it Tuesday? It is, my friends. More peeps read blogs on Tuesday, I'm told, so I'm saving this as a draft. I'm trying to build readership. If you like what you're reading, share me. Thanks.

And here, some photos of chickens and kids and gardens...

A girl named Leila with a chicken named Chichek:






Leila with RayRay, the Boss Hen:








Our garden a few months ago:







And now!

Abundance

Well, it's day three on Mommingblog and already I'm having the urge to write about something that has nothing to do with my child. Or does it?

I'm from the East coast, and while I love the East coast, and think about moving back there often, one thing I would really miss about Northern California is the abundance of delicious food. I'm one of those types who wants organic vegetables and meat and eggs in her life, and we're lucky to live in a place that has a very small gardening space. When we initially moved in, I think we pictured a tomato plant and a few heads of kale.

But after attending a lecture and presentation by urban farmers Novella Carpenter and Willow Rosenthal, who wrote The Essential Urban Farmer, I realized that I could plant my 6-foot-by-3-foot-bed to full capacity.

Witness: we now have collard greens, chard, Chinese broccoli, a small crop of green onions, a Lilliputian field of salad greens, a tomato plant, lots of parsley and arugula, a cucumber plant, two pots of squash, some anemic beets, and a miniature field of carrots which we have begun to harvest!

It occurred to me that the yield we might get from this small urban garden would be enough to trade. So I promptly put up an ad in the "barter/trade" section of our local list serv, and two--TWO!--people want to trade organic eggs for whatever we've got in our garden. And, in putting the offer out there, I also received:

1. An email from a woman who said she too wants to trade for eggs, and to let her know if we have too many (yeah right) because she has Meyer lemons; and

2. An email from a woman asking me to come by and help her with her garden.

The latter is sort of funny, since I am very much making this up as I go along; to #1, though, I responded, "what if we traded Meyer lemons for preserved Meyer lemons?" My husband B and are I eager to make some more of the delicious, salty, tangy, outrageous preserved Meyer lemons we made last year. It got to the point where I was eating them with every meal, in hummus, in lentil soup, in my pasta--yowsers. But we don't have any lemons. And this woman said yes.

I'm kind of an old-fashioned person and an old-fashioned mother, and I love that L. is growing up with this kind of abundance, and this kind of community, around him. In fact, just this morning, on his way to the bagel shop with his Dad, the neighbor stopped him and asked L. if he wanted to pick some boysenberries. The father-son team returned home with two punnets of fuschia melt-in-your-mouth berries. I think we'll enjoy them for dinner--along with a bunch of carrots, a few anemic beets, and a small salad.




--Susie

The Drunk Midget in the House

Recently, I read Tina Fey's hilarious book Bossypants. Ms. Fey has a five-year-old daughter whom she references in a chapter called, I think (I promptly lent out the book), "There's a Drunk Midget Running Around My House." Without stopping to think whether that might be offensive to certain society members, I laughed heartily. Like the Angel in the House, the Drunk Midget is misunderstood and frustrated. Unlike the Angel in the House, the Drunk Midget is...your kid. (Is he or she an angel? Be honest, now...)

And so, herewith, my newest blogging venture: Momming. Because that's what I do. My other main venture is writing, which you can read about here: www.susiemeserve.com and here: popcorntheblog.com.

Thanks for reading!