Good morning.
Next summer will be ten years of living on this farm. And all this time I have still been living in the city. I’m here, but the me I think of is still biking around St. Paul drinking martinis. I may never shake that self image, and I may never want to. Despite that mental distraction, we have opened up to where we live more in the last year than we have in all the previous ones combined. Our likeminded neighbors have shown themselves. We are meeting other parents through our kids. Most notably, we have been adopted by a circle of local potters who have graciously plugged us in to their social culture.
The potters have an acute power over me. They are the subculture of the St. Croix River Valley. And despite not being loudly present here, they are responsible for much of the national attention, tourism, and economic vitality of the valley. But their hold on me has nothing to do with those contributions—they are cool. They play wiffle ball on homemade fields with scoreboards and rough-hewn outfield walls; they have alter egos that mix spicy margaritas; they give stick & poke tattoos behind their hand-built kilns; they wear canvas aprons and clay-splattered pants; and they love to eat.
All the things we do on the farm are interesting and engaging to me. I am invested in what we do here, and I love and even enjoy the things we have done with and for the land over the last nine years. But it is the potters that have really made me feel like I could belong here.
Sundries
The little patch of prairie is 8 years old this year. One of the first things I planted was a compass plant. It has a deep root systems, among the deepest of the prairie plants, and I was excited to get it started and see how it did on the sandy dome of the south field. It took its time, as prairie plants do. Some years I wasn’t sure it was going to come back. Some years it had wide, antler-like fronds. And this year, finally, it bloomed. Yellow and sunflower-like, it bloomed!
I have learned so much about prairie plants, ecosystems, soils, and seeds from this project, but more than any knowledge or understanding I have gained, I value the expression of the plants. And when they bloom, it means something is right.
This weep-inducing baguette.
Shame, by Annie Erneaux, the third book I’ve read of her collection of memoirs. The story she shares, of a traumatic event in her family when she was 12 years old, is central to all the transformation, retrospection, and growth she goes through for the rest of her life. Her writing here is as objective and removed as ever, and somehow (no doubt why she has won a Nobel for it) her humanity and vulnerability crescendoes and swells throughout.
I made kimchi for the first time with the robust napa cabbages we grew and a trip to United Noodle.
The 1st Annual Taylors Falls Trail Running Club Labor Day Weekend Birthday Fun Run-Roller Blade-Skate-Nordic Roller Ski-Walk-Jog (TFTRCLDWBFR-RB-S-NRS-W-J, for short).
Tomato paste, tomato sauce, diced tomatoes, tomato chutney, and the like. Despite the weeds, the garden is providing plenty of fruit.
I’ve never met a ratatouille I was wild about until I met Clair DeBoer’s. Just an onion, an egg plant, a tomato, a zucchini, a red pepper, olive oil, and salt. What she does with it is unbelievable.
Spanish sardines from @amstoelb and @nswaggert
A Different Set of Answers, Part 2…(1)
In lieu of a complete and polished piece appearing in any given issue, I have decided to serialize a story, and to make an honest attempt to keep the installments coming.
After soup prep, the morning cooks went out to smoke. They were five, including the baker who came just to chat, and the waiter who listened for the front door. Alastair didn’t smoke, exactly. She held a cigarette and lit it and puffed. She inhaled. She blew dense tendrils of smoke out her nostrils. But she wasn’t really smoking like the others. She wasn’t really there. She didn’t know how to be. She wasn’t a cook, either, or a cyclist. She didn’t feel like a real person. There was more to being something than doing the thing. Out by the dumpster in her greasy kitchen clogs was the closest she got. She did this every day. No days off and she picked up shifts. Sema, the fry cook, called it Al’s Place, because she was always there. Months of this, and then years, until Alastair was the only constant. When ownership changed, she stayed. Thirty-four years old and a prep cook for six of them. She never asked for a raise. If the cooks went for a drink after their shift, she would go. If they didn’t, she would bike home. Everything was manageable this way. She could handle this. If everything was in the present, the future wasn’t real, and maybe the past wasn’t either.
meow,
Jake
Nice to hear about a group of folks like this in your home haunt!