About a month ago, before the harvest explosion and all our visitors arrived, a dear family friend sent me an amazing surprise package of vintage aprons and fabrics.  She had been reading the blog, and was so tickled by my apron-making for the bakery, that she sent along some of the aprons made and collected by the women in her family, and a huge pile of wonderful fabric!  Some of the fabric you’ll see soon, in the grain bags we’re busy making for CSA shares.  I wanted to share a few of my favorite aprons here – the first one  Ella has been wearing at the bakery.

I love the fabric on this green one.  It’s hard to tell from the photo, but what look like pockets are actually dishtowels, sewn onto the apron.  Genius!

And this last one is what Ben refers to as “the naughty Valentine’s apron” – it’s sheer except for the red heart pocket!

Thank you so much Janis!!

Today, I took some time to drive down to Hadley to share a loaf of bread with Alan Zuchowski, made with some of the wheat he just harvested.  We’re very excited that Alan’s crop did very well, and makes great bread!  We’ll be using wheat from Alan at the bakery, hopefully to replace all of our whole wheat flour.  (Can you say local scones and miche?)  Alan comes from a farming family, and this year instead of drying tobacco in his barn, he’s drying wheat.

Just like with tobacco, Alan closes all those side panels every evening and opens them every morning to keep the dew off (he says it takes him about an hour and a half each time).  With the Valley’s whole tobacco crop failed this year (about 900 total acres), his neighbors have been wondering what on earth he’s doing out there,  opening and closing his barn as if there’s tobacco inside!  They would probably never guess that it’s wheat in there.

On my way home from such a wonderful visit, I drove past the construction for Lowe’s, right next to Home Depot, right across from the wonderful family-owned Hadley Garden Center.  Which got me all riled up.  Let us follow in Brattleboro’s footsteps at least, and do so little business there that both these awful mega junk stores close.  Which means that we’ll be left with their big empty shells, sitting on top of some of the world’s best farmland.  (Did you know that Hadley contains some of the best soil in the world?  Seriously people!  Let’s stop paving over it!)  As Ani Difranco says so well:

I am many things

made of everything

but I will not be your bankroll

I won’t idle in your drive-thru

I won’t watch your electric slideshow

I’ve got way better places to go . . .

Such as, out to to the garden to pick some green beans and tomatoes, for dinner and canning.  Hope you all have a beautiful weekend.