Blog

  • Throw Yourself Like Seed

    Suddenly, bizarrely, I find that people are reading the things I write, that I am no longer screaming into the void, holding conversations with myself. How strange! I feel hesitant, somehow this affirmation makes me afraid; my confidence falters, my voice trembles.

    Again to my father’s binder. What strength can I find there today?

    THROW YOURSELF LIKE SEED

    Shake off this sadness, and recover your spirit;
    sluggish you will never see the wheel of fate
    that brushes your heel as it turns going by,
    the man who wants to live is the man in whom life is abundant

    Now you are only giving food to that final pain
    which is slowly winding you in the nets of death,
    but to live is to work, and the only thing that lasts
    is the work; start then, turn to the work.

    Throw yourself like seed as you walk, and into your own field,
    don’t turn your face for that would be to turn it to death,
    and do not let the past weigh down your motion.

    Leave what’s alive in the furrow, what’s dead in yourself,
    for life does not move in the same way as a group of clouds;
    from your work you will be able one day to gather yourself.

    Miguel de Unamuno

  • Farmgirl Susan is My Hero

    I have been faithfully following the saga of Farmgirl Susan at Farmgirl Fare for a while now. I was so taken with the Walden-esque romance of her story: at the age of 26, she sold her bakery cafe in California, packed up her life and moved to a 280-acre, 140-year-old farm in Missouri. Not only does she blog about her farming experiences, complete with beautiful photography, in a way that totally allows you to vicariously and enviously live the rural life, but she also blogs about food, in a way which makes me want her to be my best friend so maybe I can eat dinner with her every once in a while.
    And she has a blog about her Kitchen Garden. She is a busy lady.

    Set aside an hour or two to meander through the archives, it is the most delicious and rewarding experience.

    Although not entirely representative of her body of work, I would like to first direct you to her piece chronicling the discovery of two coyotes on the farm. This post really affected me- the immediacy of her grief and her sense of failure and powerlessness; the vicious beauty of the life cycle; the awareness that this world doesn’t belong to us, that we are just a part of the incredible landscape of Nature.

    I’m off to the farmer’s market! Have a good Sunday!

  • Morning Muir

    “All that the sun shines on is beautiful,

    so long as it is wild.”

    -John Muir