First, we want to give a big thank you to all the volunteers who came out to help harvest this year’s flax!  We were definitely a little on the late side, so we’ll see what comes of it, but either way we all spent a gorgeous Sunday morning on the beautiful contours at White Oak Farm.

Today, I came home very tired from a day at the bakery training new staff, after a weekend spent baking and harvesting, with an equally tired toddler.  Needless to say, I was not super excited about making dinner.  A little over a month ago I somehow lost both my Ergo and my wrap (Ack! horrible timing!)  Tonight, while I sat on the kitchen floor nursing Ella while shelling cranberry beans for tonight’s soup, I decided I couldn’t take it anymore.  We went upstairs to my sewing room, I looked through the fabric shelves for a piece long enough, and presto – a new, yellow polka dot wrap.  I cranked up some old-school Indigo Girls,  got the chicken roasting in the oven, and suddenly, all the tomatoes on the counter needed to be used, and I was okay with that.  Excited, even.  So I made a big pot of calabacitas with our tomatoes, and some corn and zucchini from our share with The Kitchen Garden.  I added a bunch of other random veggies to a pot with the cranberry beans, which I suppose could now be called minestrone.  And now, we have food for a few days, or possibly some to put in the freezer for the winter.

August and September can certainly be overwhelming, with the harvests suddenly pouring in, and the students and faculty suddenly pouring back into Amherst, but it is a busy time well spent.  Sometimes, like when canning tomatoes, I will think, What on earth am I doing?  Am I completely insane?  But then February comes, and I pull a jar of tomatoes from the shelf, open the lid, and breathe in (and taste) summer.  My summer, from my garden, or a neighboring farmer’s garden, and vitamins and goodness no can of tomatoes on a grocery shelf could ever capture, no matter how “gourmet”.

We often get asked, how do you do it all?  In part, we don’t have a TV, and we don’t lead an expensive lifestyle, where we have to work long hours for high pay to pay our bills.  But mostly, the answer is that we choose to make time.  And it’s so worth it.  Which I don’t mean as a judgement on anyone who doesn’t currently garden, or can, or whatever . . . I mean it is an invitation.  Give it a try – you might not like it, you might love it.  I’m off to tuck into our dinner, and then seed some pasture for the sheep and horse – here’s wishing you a delicious, health-filled dinner as well.