Hello, good people of the CSA! It’s been a bumpy ride the last few days, and I find myself feeling frazzled and almost short of breath, making me wonder if I should really be trying to communicate via the written word. Everything is quite lovely today, really, so it’s kind of irrational. Maybe I can use you all as my talk therapist? Excellent. (If not, enjoy the photos as you skip down the page to the Box section now! )
OK, so there are little things; lack of sound sleep for a few days, due to Widget being struck deathly ill by a mysterious condition known as Hemorrhagic Gastroenteritus. This of course happened late Saturday night when no regular vets were open; bloody vomit and worse constantly until the morning, when we rushed her into the emergency vet over in Blaine. She spent the night in the doggie hospital and is now recovering nicely – although we must wake up at 2 am to dose her with her two medications.
And then, once I’m awake at that near-3-am hour, all manner of fears and anxieties loom up like the shadow monsters from below a child’s bed. Things not so little. Things that make me question everything, make me go digging around, seeking a safe bedrock beneath the foundations of my life. For whatever reason, at that hour, my happy thoughts, my belief in something meant-to-be and magical about existence … those things sleep soundly, incommunicado, as the rest of my mind struggles to find equilibrium among the churning waves of worry. Living like this – off the grid, making pennies, no prospects of financial security, with Winter’s frigid claws reaching out … it is a bit intimidating.
Especially with a baby. It took literally years to follow my strange but steady intuition away from the city, the job, the money, the house, the familiar. But that process is apparently never truly finished – and must be re-examined, re-processed, renewed in the light of new circumstances.
I know none of us have any certainty, really. No one knows what will come, what is the best path forward, if their deepest intuitions are foolish, or even madness. But it’s harder to shush the demons when you’re laying awake next to your sleeping baby boy, system flushed with fierce love and renewed doubts and fears.
All that said; I do believe in what we’re doing. I don’t know for sure that it is our path for evermore, but it seems to be what is meant to be for now, at least. It doesn’t come equipped with a business plan, a retirement plan, or a safety net. It’s not rational, it’s out of step with most everything we learn to do in our culture, and there is no amount of spinning my wheels at three-thirty A.M. that will reassure those parts of my mind that still cry out for such life rafts to cling to.
I think this is the best possible life for us right now – I love that Otis always has us with him, that he is growing up on the farm, with the sky and the seasons, travelling and planting and harvesting and watching us work with our hands and hearts to wrest both meaning and a living from our days. And I cannot imagine it any other way, really – in spite of the moanings of the four A.M. boogeymen.
This is the Que Sera, Sera life we are called to live, and meant to lead. Facing fear has always been part of it – and, I suspect, always will be. I guess this is where I learn to live words that never meant all that much to me before, words like Courage and Conviction.
Hey, you know what? I feel better now, simply having written that out. Sometimes we all just need to talk things through a bit.
I’m grateful for this opportunity to have these fears, and write these words, and feel these things.
Thank you for being part of it with us, and I hope you know that you are wonderful, and loved, and that you make the lives of your tribe immeasurably better just by being there, being yourself, and experiencing this wild and wacky existence alongside the rest of us in your own inimitable way.
May we all sleep soundly, tonight!
In the Box
Sweet Corn – some new friends of ours at the Farmer’s Market let Kristin come out and harvest a bunch of their surplus sweet corn in the rain yesterday, so that we could get some to you in spite of the wind storm that wrecked our crop. Eat it as soon as you can! The longer it sits around, the more of the sugars convert to starch – so the best eating time is NOW!
Cabbage
Edamame– either boil, salt, and snack on them – or boil, shell, and enjoy in a stir fry or something!
Fennel – would be good roasted with your carrots, or cooked with sliced sausage, or eat it fresh! The bulb and the fronds are both delicious!
Broccoli – the fall planting! First harvest from our new patch.
Tomatoes
Peppers – assorted sweet peppers
Carrots
a Melon – in addition to your box!
My train of thought as I read this: “Oh this is so raw and beautiful, I have to tell Gabe that he should write more in this state FENNEL!!”
And the really strange part is I hadn’t even read your blog yet when I sent the guestbook post tonight. Sounds like you needed the boost instead of me today, amigo. Keep the faith, man. You’re doing the right thing. Don’t ever give up and believe in the vision. I didn’t even realize the date until it came up on the top of the post…and I’m a firefighter. That’s how busy life has become. Irony, it seems, is not without a sense of Fate…opposite of The Matrix…but somehow it all works out if you believe. I’m finally discovering that these days, thanks to you. =)
Gabe, I enjoy reading your “ramblings” every week. Maybe you could write a book? You are a gifted writer!