(agri)culture

Chyca's obsession with Winnie the Pooh started as a little girl. She loved everything Pooh so much that her adoration soon filled up her bedroom with stuffed Pooh bears, Pooh cups, Pooh boxes, Pooh everything. At night when she slept in her sea of Poohs she dreamt of going to the US where she would work enough to buy a life-sized Pooh bear for herself so that she could sleep next to it. But when the time finally came and she arrived in the US, her gigantic Pooh bear was nowhere to be found. She looked and looked but they simply didn't sell life-sized Pooh bears. Crestfallen but still determined, she continued on with her obsession and collected even more Pooh accessories than before.

Now years later, still toting her subtle Pooh bag, she describes this infatuation as a a thing of the past. She confesses that her fetish has subsided but she knows she will always love the idea of the chubby, carefree, happy-go-lucky bear that is Winnie.

I swear, being on this farm I have learned just as much about agriculture as I have about culture.

Warming and Swarming

Exhaustion. Today was the first day of real heat. And by real heat I don't mean the soft relaxing sun that comes at the beginning of spring, I mean heat that you can no longer enjoy. Bending over picking spinach, tokyo turnips, lettuce, sugar snap peas or whatever else it might be, the sun beats down relentlessly on your back, slowly covering your body in a thick layer of pure salt. Starting as early as nine in the morning, the intensity keeps climbing and doesn't stop until around 3 in the afternoon.

Bent over for a number of hours doing some flower transplanting, I was starting to feel like I was at my breaking point when all of a sudden I began to hear a loud and unfamiliar noise. It was like a thousand vibrations and suddenly the air seemed to come to life. My eyes finally left the crumbly dry soil I had been staring at since 11am and I looked up to see the huge swarm of bees that out of nowhere began to fill the air around us. Stuck in their cloud, we watched as they zoomed around in a frenzy, darting and swooping around. We imagined the queen bee somewhere amongst them but they turned circles around us and left us spinning before we could even begin to look more closely. After a few minutes, the swarm finally moved further away and we resumed work until we eventually forgot about them.

Hours later on our afternoon break, I lay down in the shade of one of the large walnut trees to escape the sun. I lay back to enjoy the breeze that was now starting to trickle in and at that moment I noticed one of the tree branches had an extra fuzzy mass covering it. I squealed and pointed upwards so that Rawley and Catalina could see where our new friends had chosen to live. Catalina was not so thrilled by the fact that they had chosen a spot so close to her work place but Rawley and I promised each other we will come back to visit often.

Bright lights

Last night I went to go see the Esparto High production of Alice in Wonderland. Today I felt like I was living in some sort of modern wonderland:

Pulling up to my oh so familiar driveway in Berkeley this morning I felt a sudden surge of emotion to see my faithful little yellow house waiting just where I had left it. I felt happy to have come back just in the nick of time to experience my favorite time of year at the Francisco house. Just like at the farm, all the flowers were popping and the green garlic that I had planted months ago resembled the plants I had just harvested the day before for the CSA boxes.

As soon as I arrived (of course only after showering my dog with infinite kisses), I quickly changed into my city appropriate attire so that we would be on time for our San Francisco tea party invitation. After a long day of chatting and then being stuck in the city's traffic we came home a bit exhausted only to see that I had left my car windows down and my ipod in the middle of the seat. These days at the farm I've become accustomed to leaving everything everywhere. As soon as the engine turns off, I toss the keys in the cupholders and fling my purse and ipod onto the passenger seat. I would never even think twice about leaving my brand new laptop sitting out in the backseat or my cell phone on the dashboard.

Similarly, Rawley said he was baffled when he came to Oakland last weekend for a backyard grill party only to find his best friend grilling eggplants over the coals. "Our eggplants are only four inches tall right now!" He explained as he wondered at the silly concept of those large purple lumps he saw grilling.

Secret

Every time I think I'm starting to know everything like the back of my hand around here, I find something I haven't discovered yet. Today while filling flats in the old barn, my big bro showed me where the barn owls live. My eyes searched the rafters where Rawley had pointed to and I finally located the serene being.

She sat poised at the very far end of the barn, next to an opening where the light streamed in. In the instant I saw her, it felt as though she understood everything. I stared at the creamy tan owl as though in a trance, watching her as she sat soaking up the day. It was stunning to look at her there by the window, her beauty and grace both absolutely hypnotizing. I felt her royal poise emanate and it felt as though I had been let in on a big secret.

paying the river

The deep green water rushed by quickly as tiny trickles of gravel occasionally fell from the menacing cliff face that dropped directly into the water. Digging my toes into the sand, I watched as the kids splashed in the water and the adults chatted around the sizzling grill. With the sun still high and bright, clouds of swallows flew at the cliff walls gathering bits of mud in their beaks to use for their nests.

We ate chili covered oranges and our faces grew sticky with the juice that dribbled down our necks. We jumped in again to wash it all off and lay back out in the sun for a few minutes to dry, lying on the warm sand as we inhaled the lush smell of the forest that mixed with the smoky smell of the carne that was azando.

After spending enough time at the picnic we drove with the kids to Guinda where the kids could play more easily in the shallower water. Standing up to our knees in rushing water, Mary and I held onto the kids as they dove around looking at fish and stones. Little Hector found the round stones and held them in his hand, calling them monedas. He threw each of them out to the river in payment for all the fun he was having saying, "here you go, sir" before tossing them downstream.