Grateful for the Bountiful Harvest: A Season of Thanksgiving

As Not Seen on TV: I live in New Jersey, which is the "Garden State."

I paid a visit to Abma's Farm in Wyckoff in September, one of the many wonderful farms in our state. My soul feels much more content when I visit farms on a regular basis. This past weekend, I feasted at Demarest Farm in Hillsdale on some specials - butternut squash ravioli in alfredo sauce, string beans, and a pumpkin scone with apple cider before it soon closes for the winter season. The apple and pumpkin picking masses are now gone, and business seems so quiet compared to the packed supermarket parking lots.

At Abma's, my farm to table lunch feast of pumpkin soup, a pretzel roll and hot cider with cinnamon.

Fresh donuts from their bakery.

Fresh herbs to delight the nose and tongue. These are nature's best perfume and really are a gift. I have a little wooden pumpkin I got at a garage sale in our kitchen that says "Give Thanks" on it and a little thrifted book beside it, "A Gift of Herbs: An Illustrated Garden in Miniature" by Peg Streep.

It's hard not to feel cheered here.

It is a very cold, rainy day as I write from the comfort of my home in New Jersey. I'm thinking of minor complaints, like the temporary discomfort I'll feel in the cold while walking the dogs. But the farmers read the weather for their livelihood. As Daisy so wisely said on Downton Abbey, "No farmer's his own boss. He takes his orders from the sun and the snow and the wind and the rain."

I do not want to silently be a witness to the transformation of Thanksgiving into yet another shopping holiday. This is the season of gratitude following the harvest time. I am remembering and have a grateful heart for our local farmers who march on against the tides of big agribusiness, and all the farmers who produce food for our plates. Thank you farmers.  I loved how Laura Ingalls Wilder in The First Four Years put it despite struggling with multiple crop failures and hardships,

"It would be a fight to win out in this business of farming, but strangely she felt her spirit rising for the struggle.

The incurable optimism of the farmer who throws his seed on the ground every spring, betting it and his time against the elements, seemed inextricably to blend with the creed of her pioneer forefathers that "it is better farther on" and only instead of farther on in space, it was farther on in time, over the horizon of the years ahead instead of the far horizon of the west....

Manly was coming from the barn and he was singing:
You talk of the mines of Australia,
They've wealth in red gold, without doubt;
But, ah! there is gold in the farm, boy -
If only you'll shovel it out."

 

How much better it is now versus then is an age-old subject for debate, but I don't think it's better how disconnected we are from our food supply since few of us produce much (or any of it). How much are the retail shoppers thinking of where their items are produced? Is all this materialism better?

"Give us this day our daily bread." One of the few possessions salvaged from a fire during the early years of Laura and Almanzo Wilder's marriage was a plate they purchased for their first Christmas with this prayer. I don't think of it as much in the religious sense but as gratitude for the food we receive.

Let us also remember the forgotten farm animals. I don't consume meat (chicken, beef or pork), but animal by-products are in my diet and once in a very blue moon, fish. Pigs living as they should, basking in the sunshine. I'm so saddened by factory farms conditions most animals have to live in. In a passage in her 1913 novel, O Pioneers! (Part 1, The Free Land) Will Cather seemed to be giving modern generations a warning. Alexandra consults old Ivar, seen as eccentric by some but with so much wisdom, for the elders often have so much of just that to share, if we only listen.

"We have a bunch of hogs, Ivar. I wouldn't sell in the spring, when everybody advised me to, and now so many people are losing their hogs that I am frightened. What can be done?"

Ivar's little eyes began to shine. They lost their vagueness.

"You feed them swill and such stuff? Of course! And sour milk? Oh yes! And keep them in a stinking pen? I tell you, sister, the hogs of this country are put upon! They become unclean, like the hogs in the Bible. If you kept your chickens like that, what would happen? You have a little sorghum patch, maybe? Put a fence around it, and turn the hogs in. Build a shed to give them shade, a thatch on poles. Let the boys haul water to them in barrels, clean water, and plenty. Get them off the old stinking ground, and do not let them go back there until winter. Give them only grain and clean feed, such as you would give horses or cattle. Hogs do not like to be filthy...

That evening, after she had washed the supper dishes, Alexandra sat down on the kitchen doorstep, while her mother was mixing the bread. It was still a deep-breathing summer night, full of the smell of the hay fields. Sounds of laughter and splashing came up from the pasture, and when the moon rose rapidly above the bare rim of the prairie, the pond glittered like polished metal, and she could see the flash of white bodies as the boys ran about the edge or jumped into the water. Alexandra watching the shimmering pool dreamily, but eventually her eyes went to the sorghum patch south of the barn, where she was planning to make her new pig corral."

Western Time Diary: Berkeley, California

One of my favorite scenes in the 1967 film The Graduate is when Simon and Garfunkel's Scarborough Fair comes on as Benjamin drives to see Elaine at school in Berkeley. I can almost smell the greenery of the forest he is driving through. Tori Amos gave a feminine voice to Scarborough Fair, another favorite.

Berkeley was a date of serendipity. We were there the last day of the semester's clothing swap.

I have co-organized clothing swaps at my workplace for several years, and the secondhand market is near and dear to my heart to help keep items out of landfills, not support low wage labor, and empower ourselves financially. I would rather give my money to neighbors in my community at a garage or estate sale, a charity thrift shop or a main street consignment store.

Keep in mind this New York Times article, "Shopping, Before the Turkey Gets Cold,"
"Teenagers and college students can spend only so much time cooped up with their families on a holiday like Thanksgiving.

This year, some retailers are betting that this target spending group dashes out the door after dinner, perhaps dodging dishwashing or other duties, and in all likelihood ditching their parents.      

Destination: the mall.       

 

Teagan Marshall, 20, of New York City, said shopping on Thanksgiving definitely had appeal. As she stood in a Forever 21 in Manhattan, she added, “That seems like a good way to celebrate to me.”

Also consider an op-ed piece in The New York Times this month about the minimum wage by clothing factory workers in Bangladesh, $38 a month, with proposals to raise it to $68 a month. It is estimated that it costs $67 to feed a family of three. These factories supply stores like the ones that shoppers like Teagan will be patronizing.

 



Giving my money to the clothing swap instead: my Charlotte Russe peace sign shoes (how appropriate for Berkeley!), $2. You can read more about the peace sign history which I knew little about myself here.

Voting as often as possible with my dollars and actions for a reuse market. Good news to celebrate: you can support the America you want to live in today.

A peppermint tea at The Musical Offering, a classical music cafe just across from the college. I sat by Bach, and pondered classical storytellers from hundreds of years ago. I wish I had been taught about classical music in the course of my grade school or higher education. This is something I hope to learn about. What do you want to learn about?

We were lucky enough to get same-day reservations at the cafe of Chez Panisse on a Thursday at 1:30. Their $30 prix-fixe was vegetarian, so I went with that. Chez Panisse founded by Alice Waters and a group of friends, was, according to the website, named "in honor of Honoré Panisse, a character in Marcel Pagnol's 1930s movie trilogy about waterfront life in Marseille (Marius, Fanny, and César)."

A garden lettuce salad with Navarro grape juice. I loved all of the interesting non-alcoholic beverage options I kept finding in California if you didn't feel like imbibing. Usually it's just soft drinks or iced tea.

House made bucatini with chanterelle mushrooms, garlic, thyme and breadcrumbs, so simple but so comforting.

Cannard Farms grape sherbet with moscato d'Asti with raspberries, and elderflower nectar tea, all a garden delight for the senses.

Let's go to the farmers market. We're here on the right day, and Alice would want us to.

It's all organic!

There is nothing like in-season, local strawberries. Organic, even better.

Even apples have their stories.

A rainbow of flowers. I was proud to hold a bouquet of flowers on my wedding day from a local farm, Old Hook Farm in Emerson, New Jersey.

We stumbled on a Goodwill, and I found the perfect souvenir from the San Francisco Music Box Company for just $2.99. A touch of California, French living, fruits and vegetables, and the reuse market - all very me.

Key words to describe my California honeymoon I'd use: garden, zen, vegetarian feasts, national parks, trees, books, tea, history lessons and good living. All my most favorite words to start my married life.  Let the adventure continue...

 

Western Time Diary: Yosemite National Park

When the government shutdown was in the news, I couldn't help but feel for all the little businesses that depend on travelers visiting the national parks. We like to patronize these smaller establishments as often as possible when we vacation. For our Yosemite trip, we stayed at the charming Meadow Creek Ranch Bed and Breakfast Inn in Mariposa.

The adorable chicken coop. I felt like I was in a little Irish cottage.

A clawfoot tub invites a soak. There was brandy, tea, fresh coffee and dark chocolates in the room.

Two of my favorite words to describe a home (or in this case, a home away from home), invoked so often by Laura Ingalls Wilder, are "snug" and "cozy" (or cosy).

All the little details make a place homey to me.

A cozy and snug home for fine feathered friends to seek shelter from the elements.

Homemade blueberry and black walnut pancakes (black walnuts grow on the property), with fresh fruit (including figs, which we found so much more abundant in California), orange juice and vanilla chai tea.

The Meadow Creek Ranch served Mariposa Coffee, and we stopped by to take a pound home.

When driving to the bed and breakfast at night, we  pulled the car over and turned off the lights to take in the stars. Recalling when Laura and Charles, her Pa, on the premiere of Little House on the Prairie viewed the majestic starry filled night sky,

Charles, "Hear that?"

Laura, "Hear what, Pa?"

Charles, "Stars. They're singing Hallelujah."

It's hard not to want to sing Hallelujah when seeing Yosemite.

   

  

 

 

  

 

 

Even in the busiest national parks, one can find moments of solitude. Hiking up to Sentinel Dome, we were the last two left to enjoy the views.

 

 

Ansel Adams capturing Yosemite's beauty so memorably.

 

 

Annie, at age 14, wrote here, "Yosemite is a place of timeless beauty that will never be affected by the greed and woes of humans. Here we can rediscover ourselves, others, and the bonds that connect us with everything. Here is where we realize the incomparable essence of nature."

 

 

 The author Willa Cather so missed the abundant trees of lush Virginia when she moved as a child to the Nebraska plains. Trees were so rare in the plains, she wrote, people would feel anxious about them, and visit them as if they were people.

 





We should treat them with sacred awe, for they are a life force.

I feel anxious we are not concerned enough about protecting our lands. For instance, there are so many ads on television from gas companies trying to convince Americans how good natural gas is. I said to my husband, if natural gas is so wonderful, why are these corporations spending so much time and money to convince people in feel-good commercials? Whenever I see warm and fuzzy advertisements from oil companies, I immediately question.


The film Promised Land portrays how natural gas companies get landowners to sign over their land to extract natural gas through fracking. Frances McDormand plays Sue and Matt Damon is Steve, who are trying to do just that. Sue tells an anxious mother about the better school her daughter can go to. "Everything to me starts with an education." An education is correct, but who is doing the educating? Those that seek to benefit?

When Sue and Matt arrive, a store clerk is so happy to see them. He says, "We can't sell the scenery, can we?"

I think we can (the parks experience is about scenery, but then the greater lesson is of stewardship), and it's time to introduce a word that has gone missing: conservation. Steve says, "Unless we talk about cutting consumption and so far that's a conversation none of want to have." We simply must conserve as much as we can. The land cannot give more. In J.J. Brown's  Brindle 24, a cautionary novel about fracking, it was wisely stated, "We had paradise. We threw it away." Let us not throw our paradise away.

The naming of Yosemite has a dark story with roots in the gold rush, according to Ken Burns' The National Parks: America's Best Idea. In 1851, a group of white men calling themselves the Mariposa Battalion were armed and looking for Indians to drive out of their homelands from the western Sierra Nevadas. Lafayette Bunnell, so awed by the landscape here, thought they name the place they came upon, and suggested Yosemite, which he thought was the name of the tribe they were displacing. In fact, Yosemite refers to people who should be feared. It means, "They should be killers." Watch the clip here.

"We signed a paper that said they could take the trees, signed a paper that said they could take the copper from the earth," said the old chief Bizhiki, disturbed, "We didn't say they could take the earth.

Who can take the earth?" - The Game of Silence by Louise Erdrich.

Erdrich penned a series of books, beginning with the Birchbark House, about a tribe whose main focus is Omakayas, a young girl living not long before Laura Ingalls Wilder. If you read the Little House books, they are a wonderful comparison, especially for children, as these are tribes the pioneers would displace. Disney adapted a film version of Little House on the Prairie, and there's a moving scene when Charles Ingalls passes the Osages. Their chief tells him,

"This land knows our stories. The wind knows the names of the children before they're born. But this should all be yours. Why do you think so? Do our memories matter less? Does our laughter not lift its way to heaven as yours does?"

In an interview, the mother of Tori Amos, who has Eastern Cherokee roots, was asked if she felt different growing up because of her background. She recalled not knowing a difference until she went to college and observed of her classmates, "They didn't have the same respect I suppose or love for the nature I was taught and for the animals and spirits."

Tori Amos recalls,

"As I was researching for this record [Scarlet’s Walk], a Native American woman came back to see me on the last tour and she said to me, “The people that hold the land and the white brother that owns the land must come together for the sake of her survival.

And I said to her,

"But so much has been taken from you and your people already."
 
There were tears rolling down her face, and she said “Sadly enough my dear the white brother only took the land. Now he needs to take more.”
 
This woman, older, no fanfare, but her commitment to building bridges to a people that has not integrated her stories, her people’s culture. She still is compassionate and holds a space by the fire. When you stop holding a space by the fire, then there’s no chance for the people that own the land to know what they really don't have access to. It isn't taught in our schools. Their culture is segregated. They are marginalized. Yet, they are still willing to share, even though they've lost so much. Yet still not pretend that agreements weren’t broken, that there wasn’t betrayal.

So I learned a lot in this woman's activism that she carried a torch and she carried a tomahawk but she carried compassion in her other hand."

 

I wish we had a modern day John Muir to advocate for the land. We need a space at the fire to talk about these issues. I hope to see you there.