tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-56779522010-02-25T15:54:15.404-05:00Up!taken out of context, i must seem so strangeCaitlinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09415867194311899999noreply@blogger.comBlogger547125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5677952.post-12012066082373045012010-02-24T18:57:00.002-05:002010-02-24T19:52:51.538-05:00(aye, and the snow<br /><a href="http://www.vianegativa.us/2010/02/banjo-proverbs/">shall inherit the wind</a>,<br />and the wind<br />leave her with nothing.<br /><br />and sorrow<br />shall inherit the sky,<br /><br />and i the shovel.)<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5677952-1201206608237304501?l=kat.uprush.org' alt='' /></div>Kathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00221787143416367893noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5677952.post-36141052384636638862010-02-22T19:05:00.002-05:002010-02-22T19:29:17.041-05:00He holds the knife behind his back,<br />holds the chicken gingerly by her beak.<br />He looks up at me<br />deep breath<br />looks down at the chicken.<br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Okay missy</span>.<br /><br />She's upside-down in an orange construction cone.<br />She was easy to catch, slow, sick.<br /><br />He looks up at me,<br />looks down at the chicken.<br />Knife steady but still,<br />behind his back.<br /><br />Wind chills my fingers<br />wrapped firm around her legs.<br />I can feel her heartbeat.<br />There is a scar on the bottom of one foot.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Okay missy</span>.<br /><br />Deep breath.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Okay</span>.<br /><br />He looks up at me, shakes his head.<br /><br />The knife handle is warm from his hand.<br />The light is failing, cold night coming on fast.<br /><br />Deep breath.<br />The blood runs hot into the bucket.<br />I can feel my heart beating.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5677952-3614105238463663886?l=kat.uprush.org' alt='' /></div>Kathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00221787143416367893noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5677952.post-56125135605217255502010-01-31T09:57:00.002-05:002010-01-31T10:11:40.889-05:00Because that's how things are, the thaw last week preceded the coldest temperatures of the year for this week. With both heat lamps on in the chicken house, it got down to six degrees in there; as long as they have enough to eat, they won't freeze, but they can get frostbit. Egg production has dropped a little with the cold temps, but now that we're past the molt we're getting a pretty steady dozen a day. We're in the position again of needing to find some more egg customers - we were selling three or four dozen a week last summer to a restaurant that since has gone out of business, and now our regular customers can't keep up! In the meantime, I guess I'd better get back in the habit of baking lots of cakes and making lots of pasta. One day I'll post my "how to use over a dozen eggs in one day without anyone realizing they've eaten that many eggs" menu.<br /><br />(cross-posted to <a href="http://www.gildrienfarm.com/blog.html">the farm blog</a>)<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5677952-5612513560521725550?l=kat.uprush.org' alt='' /></div>Kathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00221787143416367893noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5677952.post-77705596872195612252010-01-26T10:42:00.002-05:002010-01-26T10:57:03.345-05:00Thaw.<br /><br />Hard rain scours away the snow, leaving the fields sodden and stripped. What doesn't melt entirely turns to ice overnight. The chickens scurry outside to stretch their legs and wings; they do not like snow, which covers up the compost pile and chills their feet. The deep bed of straw in their coop has reached nearly a foot deep. With a quarter-bale added every few days, it'll be deeper before the true thaw comes.<br /><br />After going to California for Christmas, I went with J to Florida to visit family there. I'll be returning to California next week to mark and grieve my grandma's death. I feel as though I'm missing winter, though I'm sure there will be plenty of it left on the other side of February; still, I miss the feeling of hunkering down, burrowing in, of settling the body and mind for the long, dark cold. Bitter though it may be, I've come to love winter. And lovely as it may be to swim in the ocean in January - grateful as I am for the opportunity to do so, and to see all our far-flung relatives - I would almost rather stay home, wrapped in a wool blanket, sipping my tea.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5677952-7770559687219561225?l=kat.uprush.org' alt='' /></div>Kathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00221787143416367893noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5677952.post-13564893373530945202010-01-24T18:22:00.002-05:002010-01-24T18:25:00.998-05:00Ten thousand dead<br />in Haiti, all forgotten<br />when my mother's mother<br /><br />the ground from which sprang<br />the ground from which I sprang<br /><br />ceased, finally, to tremble.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5677952-1356489337353094520?l=kat.uprush.org' alt='' /></div>Kathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00221787143416367893noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5677952.post-1011049154524398492010-01-22T15:18:00.001-05:002010-01-22T15:18:51.933-05:00the tears rise as from a pool<br />splashed by the stone of death.<br /><br />they rise, peak, arc<br />and fall. the stones fall<br />erratic, one and another, and<br />though there was only one death<br /><br />there seem to be many stones.<br />there seems to be no end of water.<br /><br />outside, the snow falls.<br />the night gathers its velvet and cold.<br />i wish that i believed in heaven.<br /><br />death stoops to choose another<br />stone. heavy. smooth.<br /><br />it skips.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5677952-101104915452439849?l=kat.uprush.org' alt='' /></div>Kathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00221787143416367893noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5677952.post-90345511818665159322010-01-08T10:20:00.002-05:002010-01-08T14:41:05.192-05:00The snow falls and falls. We spend a full day in shoveling, clearing space around the greenhouse and the drive. We spend a day snowshoeing up a mountain, through crystallized trees and a flat white sky that encases us so completely I begin to think we are inside a snowglobe, and not in the world at all. Then on the hike down, the clouds lift just an inch above the horizon, just enough to let a stripe of liquid sunset light strike through and stain the whole mountainside orange.<br /><br />In California over Christmas, I sat outside in a T-shirt in the sun, looking out over the greening hills, and I longed for Vermont and snow. For the tiny tracks of mice and rabbits and the stories they tell. For layers of wool and mugs of cocoa. For the snug feeling of being inside while the world whirls and freezes outside, and for the steam off my skin at the top of the mountain while the world whirls and freezes around me. And for the tightly-held dream of springtime, the thrum of the seasons that insists: You are alive.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5677952-9034551181866515932?l=kat.uprush.org' alt='' /></div>Kathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00221787143416367893noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5677952.post-68470433313494778342009-12-19T18:03:00.002-05:002009-12-19T18:16:22.671-05:00three bowls of soup.<br />hot. fast.<br />the woodstove<br /><br />isn't coming.<br />put on a hat.<br />pull up a ladle.<br /><br />are you ready<br />for the longest night?<br /><br />& the long, long cold.<br />i am.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5677952-6847043331349477834?l=kat.uprush.org' alt='' /></div>Kathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00221787143416367893noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5677952.post-9362016929801412822009-12-19T08:26:00.002-05:002009-12-19T09:30:05.480-05:00Last night, in the haze of almost-sleep, I thought to myself that I should take an internet vacation this weekend. Yes, I said to myself, that's a good idea. Step back from the screen and into the world. Do some writing, and do some hiking, maybe even sledding.<br /><br /><br />At dawn this morning I was outside chasing a chicken. I don't know how she got out of the fence (well, I suppose she flew; what I don't know is why) and I don't know when, except that it was yesterday. I saw her tracks, yesterday, in the garlic field, which is near the chicken yard, but all I thought was, "Hey, neat bird tracks!" Usually when a chicken gets out of the fence, all she does is pace around trying to get back in, which is what Sylvia was doing this morning; I don't know where she was yesterday when I was admiring her tracks in the snow. What else I don't know is how she survived the night without freezing or even - as far as I can tell - frostbite, since it was at least -2 and probably colder with the windchill. Even with the rigged-up oil-pan heater we use, their water was frozen this morning.<br /><br />Sylvia is a silver-spangled hamburg, a small black-and-white spotted chicken with big dark eyes, blue legs, and a rose comb. She's the only one we have of that breed, which I think may have been a mistake. It's a smaller breed than all the others, who we chose for their meatiness in addition to their laying ability. She came along because she's the only white-egg layer and because she's so pretty. But as the smallest hen, she seems to be at the bottom of the totem pole by default, and often gets picked on and chased away from the best treats. I think maybe if we had two, they could at least band together. Maybe not, though; the subtleties of chicken politics are beyond my meager comprehension.<br /><br />At any rate, by the time Sylvia was securely returned to the proper side of fence and coop, I was cold and hungry. I'm accustomed to drinking my coffee while checking email and reaping the night's collection of blog posts, and habit had me several pages in before I remembered my determination of the night before, and by then I wanted to write this post. And since writing was part of what I was supposed to do with my non-internet day, that seemed alright. Justification works!<br /><br /><br />This post about <a href="http://www.vianegativa.us/2009/12/workspace/">workspace</a> at Via Negativa inspired me this morning, at least in part. If I were to take a picture of my workspace, it would be a picture either of the kitchen table or the living room couch, which is where I'm parked now. We have a very nice desk, also in the living room, which originally furnished J's grandfather's podiatry practice. I have written on that desk perhaps four times, even though I always set it up with the idea that it'll be a good writing space. Now, of course, it's cluttered and unusable - the printer lives there and the new landline phone, and the charger for our cordless hammer drill, and the farm clipboard and some other papers and sundries. The kitchen table often gives way to a likewise mess. My lap, however, is - unless occupied by a kitten - almost guaranteed to be clear. And the laptop fits so tautologically well thereon.<br /><br />So I write wherever I happen to sit myself down of a morning. But - and this, really, is the point - many mornings, and many days, I do not write at all. Even now, when I am again unemployed, when the farming season has (chicken chasing nonwithstanding) drawn to a close. With some full days of nothing else to do, I do nothing.<br /><br />In my murky musings last night, I thought to myself that I should be writing my book. Which book is that? Any book, really, but there are two most on my mind: one, a country-living guide for the city-born homesteader; two, something about food and Zen and wild and farm and love, perhaps in the <span style="font-style: italic;">Pilgrim at Tinker Creek</span> tradition. The first I've been working on a little, slowly; the second has only been simmering, but for a long time.<br /><br />Without structure, I become ineffective very quickly, and I so far have proven a poor hand at creating structure out of none. I end up circling my goals, pacing the strange and fearful boundaries that keep me from them, and often, I think, fleeing blindly and squawking from the very things which might best actually get me inside that damn fence: a routine, a commitment, and, maybe, a real space in which to work.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5677952-936201692980141282?l=kat.uprush.org' alt='' /></div>Kathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00221787143416367893noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5677952.post-2543440226214789392009-12-16T19:07:00.002-05:002009-12-16T19:18:18.841-05:00The kitten was gone at the vet's all day, getting spayed. Her absence made itself felt, all day, a quietness and also a lack of suspense. Nobody to pounce on your feet as you step out of the bathroom. Nobody to pull the pom-pom off your hat as you sit reading on the couch. Nobody to race madly and full-speed around and around the living room, and nobody to dive between your legs just as you take a step. Nobody to investigate the faucet while you brush your teeth. Nobody to stalk you in slow-motion all the way across the room. And nobody to hop on your lap when you sit down. Nobody to nuzzle your chin. Nobody to lay on your chest and fill you with purr-reverb.<br /><br />She's home now, groggy and wobbly but doing fine. The vet said she was "spicy" and "a handful," and looked apologetic when explaining that we're supposed to keep her quiet and inactive for ten whole days. Ten days! Wish us luck.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5677952-254344022621478939?l=kat.uprush.org' alt='' /></div>Kathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00221787143416367893noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5677952.post-2194999893502710632009-11-29T09:09:00.002-05:002009-11-29T09:47:31.653-05:00It's funny and a little amazing how the kitten has transformed our home. Her bright energy lights the place now, even when she's asleep. She's full of mischief and the requisite curiosity. She likes to help - with laundry, with sweeping, and with making the bed especially.<br /><br />She is so thoroughly herself, so full of her own desires and goals. I suppose that's obvious, but it's somehow easy to forget when you've lived without a pet for some time - that they are creatures complete unto themselves. Cats especially, who keep secret their unfathomable motives.<br /><br />At night she burrows down between us and purrs herself to sleep, but once walking to the bathroom I saw her in the moon-lit square of the sliding glass door, staring out into the darkness, silent. She is a great devourer of crickets and spiders, but when she finds a ladybug she will sit primly with her tail wrapped around her paws and watch it, following carefully when it crawls out of her sight. She comes when called only if she has nothing better to do, but she comes running to the door to greet us almost always when we get home.<br /><br />And somehow, it feels like we're a family now, rather than just a couple. Obviously she isn't a baby, and she's too autonomous and also too sharp to be a very good stand-in. But she is very small, and very sweet when she isn't being possessed by wild cat-spirits. And I do love her, from the bottom of my bottomless heart.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5677952-219499989350271063?l=kat.uprush.org' alt='' /></div>Kathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00221787143416367893noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5677952.post-26313814932422671292009-11-28T09:57:00.000-05:002009-11-29T09:08:33.260-05:00Mostly I have the same dreams. It's always been that way - probably 60 or 70 percent of my dreams recur at least a few times. They don't bore me, because I have so many of them, hundreds still even if they go into reruns. Some of them are so common I know immediately that I'm dreaming; some of them are nightmares from which I've become quite skilled at waking myself. Some only repeat twice or three times, with months in between. Once I dreamt the same dream every night for two weeks.<br /><br />And then sometimes, I have new dreams every night. It almost makes me uneasy, not knowing where I'll be when I fall asleep. Often times, even if the dream itself is different, it takes place in one of a handful of familiar landscapes - there is a dream version of my childhood home, of Tassajara, a dream mountain where I hike and where most flying dreams begin, other houses, rivers, kingdoms. Sometimes I resist waking because the dreams are so intricate, so brocaded with meaning and detail that I hate to leave them. Sometimes they seem brighter and more substantial than the day that follows. Sometimes I wonder if they aren't more real.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5677952-2631381493242267129?l=kat.uprush.org' alt='' /></div>Kathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00221787143416367893noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5677952.post-73195131413938739072009-11-26T12:58:00.003-05:002009-11-26T13:16:16.583-05:00For the hills outside the window and their ever-changing colors and the ever-changing clouds that hold them. For the chickens dustbathing in the late-November sun. For the chicken I will eat with my true love tonight. For my true love, and the eyes he has that see into my fears and hopes and lies and dreams, for which I am rarely thankful at the time. For my own eyes that see and hands and arms and legs that grasp and lift and hike the hills. For the kitten who tries to help me fold the laundry. For a warm place to sleep at night and a belly full of food. For a winter's worth of squash and potatoes, rutabagas and carrots, tucked away. For the family whose love I've never doubted. For knowing what I want my life to look like, and for a life that already looks very much that way. For a good book and a cup of tea. For good soil and soft rain. For blueberry pie and pumpkin spice cake and coffee stout and love. And love. And love.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5677952-7319513141393873907?l=kat.uprush.org' alt='' /></div>Kathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00221787143416367893noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5677952.post-31487642370258370102009-11-22T10:39:00.001-05:002009-11-22T14:28:15.554-05:00It is thoroughly November. The gaudy pagentry of October is well behind us now, and the serene, clear beauty of snowfall yet to come. Fields of sod cling to their green, but the trees have abandoned everything. The hills have retreated back into themselves.<br /><br />Soon everything will be pen-and-ink, drawn starkly by the snow. But not yet. November is a muddled pallette, a great watercolor bleed of sepia, soil, and sky. The edges all smudged (the bright leaves turning back to dark soil) and feathered (the bare braches shading into bone sky).<br /><br />Our new field is soaking wet. This valley all used to be the <a href="http://www.lcbp.org/Atlas/HTML/nat_geology.htm">bottom of the sea</a>, and the bottom of a great lake, and when the waters pulled back they left many and heavy deposits of clay. Rain two nights ago left water in the plow furrows which stands still today. Another spring like last spring - wet and cold and wet - and we may not be able to get into the field in time for first plantings.<br /><br />Still, we craft our plans. The seed catalogues begin to arrive. Lots of people farm in clay soils. It will be alright.<br /><br />And November rolls along on its creaky wheels. The kitten doubles in size, then doubles again, and is still so small that she can sleep in the tiny wedge of space between J and I when we curl up together. The teapot begins warming up for winter duty. We pull the heavy boots and down jackets out of their boxes, put away the summer dresses and sandals and broad-brimmed hats. In our new greenhouse, we prepare the soil for winter carrots and spinach and beets. We wish for a woodstove. We put the sleds out in the shed, easy to hand for the first good snow. November is nearly past, and winter, oh winter is coming.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5677952-3148764237025837010?l=kat.uprush.org' alt='' /></div>Kathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00221787143416367893noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5677952.post-877467350443992722009-11-01T13:11:00.003-05:002009-11-01T13:43:10.554-05:00The first rule of combating <a href="http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/seasonal-affective-disorder/DS00195">SAD</a>: if it's sunny, go outside.<br /><br />Even if you don't want to. Especially if you don't want to.<br /><br />Go for a walk, go for a run, fork over the compost, rake some leaves, shovel the walk. Stand outside for five minutes on your lunch break and text your best friend. Just keep your eyes open so the sunlight can hit the back of your retinas, because apparently that's where it's needed.<br /><br />There'll be days this winter when the sky never really lightens, days of sleet and cold and dark. But there will also be clear, sunny days, when the snow makes for a brighter light than ever summer brings. When those days come, don't spend the whole damn time indoors. If it's sunny, go outside.<br /><br />The other first rule? Start early. Start now.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5677952-87746735044399272?l=kat.uprush.org' alt='' /></div>Kathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00221787143416367893noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5677952.post-46362311778048561052009-10-31T15:00:00.002-04:002009-10-31T15:47:17.683-04:00I don't like cities. I don't like being in them and I especially don't like driving in them. Too fast, too angry, too many turns.<br /><br />Work brought me to Boston for three days, and I didn't like it. To the point that I ate at the restaurant in my hotel each night rather than have to go back out into the city -- and considering that the best ethnic food we have in Vermont is <span style="font-style: italic;">poutine</span>, usually I'd go out of my way for some real Greek or Jamaican or even Italian food. But it was all too much for this country girl to handle, so I spent my evenings with my book as close to "home" as I could get. In fact, all the navigating and being honked at and getting lost and meeting new people completely exhausted me.<br /><br />So when I had an hour to kill in Concord, it was worth my five dollars to make the small pilgrimage to Walden Pond. To walk along the edge of the water, on a clear day in what was still October, with the geese veeing overhead. To pace out the markers at the cabin site, hardly larger than our chicken house (though with a better view). To think about Thoreau and simplicity and autumn and root cellars and land.<br /><br />I used to smirk at the knowledge that he walked over to Ralph's for dinner some nights, that he bought in flour and and took his laundry home for washing. But I have since lived in lonely places and small, and I have planted my own beans and hoed them, and I don't smirk now. Besides which, he never laid claim to hermitage.<br /><br />But a life apart, just a little ways apart. It was worth my five dollars and my time to be walking in the woods beneath the still-changing trees, the pond so bright, the geese so loud overhead. To remember that I am not the only one ill-suited to cities, and that it's okay to want to be out in the woods, alone, for a while.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5677952-4636231177804856105?l=kat.uprush.org' alt='' /></div>Kathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00221787143416367893noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5677952.post-88493788614134391592009-10-27T20:15:00.003-04:002009-10-27T20:18:36.790-04:00FYI: I've got <a href="http://qarrtsiluni.com/2009/10/26/the-atheists-art-of-prayer/">a poem</a> up at <a href="http://qarrtsiluni.com/">qarrtsiluni</a> for the "Words of Power" issue, which is shaping up to be quite as intriguing as I'd expected. So far I've particularly enjoyed <a href="http://qarrtsiluni.com/2009/10/21/an-irish-blessing/">this poem</a> and <a href="http://qarrtsiluni.com/2009/10/24/eski-cami-old-mosque/">these photographs</a>. Check it out.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5677952-8849378861413439159?l=kat.uprush.org' alt='' /></div>Kathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00221787143416367893noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5677952.post-86321883053334103042009-10-25T08:26:00.002-04:002009-10-25T08:54:27.176-04:00My friend M, after some months of un- and under-employment, got a job yesterday that combines two of his greatest passions and skills. It's not an overwhelmingly well-paid position and it isn't a permanent one either, but someone is going to pay him to ski and take photographs and those are the two things he'd do most all winter no matter what.<br /><br />After we finished the toasting and got down to the lasanga, I said, somewhat petulantly, that somebody ought to give <span style="font-style: italic;">me</span> the job of my dreams. We're expanding the farming experiment quite substantially next year - we should have a 20-member <a href="http://www.localharvest.org/csa/">CSA</a> and a spot at a market or two - and farming is <span style="font-style: italic;">the</span> dream and I'll be doing it. But I'm still going to need a paying job, and I'm going to need one pretty soon 'cause the ones I've got now are ending.<br /><br />And somebody ought to give me the job of my dreams. Which statement, however, does beg the question: what exactly would the job of my dreams look like?<br /><br />It's not waitressing, I'll tell you that. I'm a good waitress, and I'm sick of it. I'm sick, in fact, of the low-wage-retail-smile-all-day category all together.<br /><br />I know this is a crappy time to be picky about getting a job. But it would be really nice to find one that I can stay with and stay happy with. We won't be full-time farmers anytime soon, especially if we buy some land next year, which is what we really, really, really want to do. So I don't want another crappy job that I'm planning to quit as soon as I can.<br /><br />So the perfect job? It lets me work full-time in the winter and half-time in the summer (or, potentially, pays me enough in the winter to last all year). It pays enough. It lets me work either outside or with my brain or both. Learning things would be good. Not starting really early in the morning would be good. Food and nature and agriculture and animals are good. I like people, provided that I also do other things sometimes.<br /><br />I loved working in the vet's office - it had the brain-work and the learning and the animals and the sometimes people. Obviously I like farmwork, but generally it fails in the "pays enough" category, and also in the part where I need to work in the winter.<br /><br />Realistically, I'll probably take the first job I can get that fits "pays enough." But I think it'd be good to at least know what that perfect job looks like, so I'll recognize it if it happens to come along.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5677952-8632188305333410304?l=kat.uprush.org' alt='' /></div>Kathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00221787143416367893noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5677952.post-89655825462744406262009-10-24T11:13:00.002-04:002009-10-24T12:04:29.018-04:00The teapot boils<br />and boils but never whistles.<br />The rain comes cold and soaks the ground,<br />and all our lines sink out of true.<br /><br />November looms,<br />and the rain obscures the mountains<br />where snow has already fallen twice.<br /><br />At night I chant the tasks ahead,<br />an unconsoling mantra,<br /><br />but the trees are still blazing.<br />One is a bright and yellow flame,<br />a spark struck against its own black bark<br />and the slate-grey sky.<br /><br />I set down the sledgehammer,<br />push the rain out of my eyes.<br />Take another swing.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5677952-8965582546274440626?l=kat.uprush.org' alt='' /></div>Kathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00221787143416367893noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5677952.post-40442618589957345022009-10-19T13:35:00.002-04:002009-10-19T14:04:29.307-04:00Last night I made the first batch of winter-soup-made-from-summer-scratch. It may not really be winter, but it was 27 degrees last night so I think that's close enough. This is one of my go-to soups for as long as the ingredients hold out, and it's always extra-pleasing because not only is it colorful and delicious, but we've grown almost everything ourselves. The basic gist is this:<br /><br />From the root cellar: onion, garlic, potato, carrot, and celeriac. From the freezer: tomato sauce and chicken stock. From the pantry: black beans, canned corn, zucchini and red pepper relish. From the string hanging in front of the window: dried peppers. From the counter: the last tomatillos. From the garden: chard.<br /><br />Do the onions and in butter or bacon fat or oil. Cumin and turmeric and a little cinnamon are nice, even if you didn't grow them. Add the other cellar veggies and the tomatillos and dried peppers, all chopped in to spoonable bits. (I like to follow <a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/0767927478?tag=debormadis-20&camp=14573&creative=327641&linkCode=as1&creativeASIN=0767927478&adid=13CQP34NZC30BE24PZEX&">Deborah Madison's</a> advice and have the soup water simmering separately with all my trimmings while I do the rest to make a little mini-stock, especially if I don't actually have any in the freezer.)<br /><br />Add the tomato sauce and stock, and simmer until the potatoes are about done. Oh, and soak the beans the night before and cook them separately. Then dump in the corn and its juice and the relish and its juice and the beans. When everything is warmed through and the potatoes are all cooked, add the chard, chopped up.<br /><br />Later on I'll add dried tomatillos instead of fresh, and kale instead of chard. Chives are nice to snip on top if you've got some. Chorizo would be a good addition, too, I think. We didn't grow any of that, but there's a turkey farm nearby that does. And some cheddar or sour cream on top wouldn't be amiss, either.<br /><br />Yum! Hope you all are staying warm, too.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5677952-4044261858995734502?l=kat.uprush.org' alt='' /></div>Kathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00221787143416367893noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5677952.post-3834804958682060962009-10-11T10:09:00.002-04:002009-10-11T10:17:12.233-04:00It's looking like a hard frost for tonight - between 33 and 28 degrees, depending on whose forecast you believe. Then another on Tuesday night, maybe even colder.<br /><br />On Tuesday night, we'll be out in the woods somewhere as part of a three-day backpacking trip to celebrate our anniversary tomorrow. (!) So today, before we leave, I have to gather up all the last remains of the peppers and tomatillos, and also try and wrangle a warmer sleeping bag than the one I've got.<br /><br />And then into the woods! The hills are bright with their copper and gold and the deep red and the tawn and bronze. I haven't been backpacking even for a night in maybe two years, and I can't wait. Horray for fall!<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5677952-383480495868206096?l=kat.uprush.org' alt='' /></div>Kathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00221787143416367893noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5677952.post-33088080117270879422009-10-04T08:20:00.002-04:002009-10-04T11:37:23.983-04:00This rain smells like autumn. This rain smells of leaf-fall, mulch-mud, wood-fire, and, though impossible, the sea. Even after the rain stops, the air hangs thick with mist and promise. When it clears, just for a moment, the hills across the valley shine in their sudden finery of copper and gold. Even where the leaves cling to their green, it is not the same green as it had been.<br /><br />We hike in the promise-mist. Scraps of gold and copper litter the trail. Above us, the canopy of leaves still green, but not the green it had been. A tired green, an ending green, even though vibrant still against the mist-bright sky. Even though green and no color else, the shades of fall can be sensed somehow in those leaves. Green that is really gold. Green that is really red, orange, fallen, trampled and turned already back to earth.<br /><br />Back at home, the kitten waits. She comes running, mewing, full of wiggle and purr. When I look at her, the bottom drops out of my heart. How can anything be so tiny? She is sweet and fierce and fearless, except she fears the road. When she tires of destroying paper bags and stuffed mice, she will climb the full length of my body to balance easily on my shoulder and purr and purr and purr. She will curl in the crook of my arm while I'm reading, and purr and purr and purr. She will wallow in the space between J and I, so thoroughly asleep that we can move her when one of us gets up and she does not wake, but continues to purr and purr and purr. How can anything be so small, so soft, so very tiny? The bottom drops out of my heart, and love pours out, and I am steeped, I am soaked, I am suffused with love and love and love.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5677952-3308808011727087942?l=kat.uprush.org' alt='' /></div>Kathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00221787143416367893noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5677952.post-67032199507992996542009-09-28T15:15:00.002-04:002009-09-28T15:25:36.215-04:00Oh, man. And you thought I was crazy about chickens?<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://kat.uprush.org/uploaded_images/IMG_1348-798479.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="http://kat.uprush.org/uploaded_images/IMG_1348-798034.JPG" alt="" border="0" /></a><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5677952-6703219950799299654?l=kat.uprush.org' alt='' /></div>Kathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00221787143416367893noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5677952.post-29736582781698679642009-09-24T16:53:00.002-04:002009-09-24T17:21:54.460-04:00On Thursday you will park in Lot A. On Friday, will NOT park in Lot A; you will be turned aside or ticketed if you try. On Friday, you will park in the muddy field behind the gym.<br /><br />On Thursday you will iron a shirt for what feels like the first time in your life, even though of course it isn't. You will think suddenly of ironing your wedding dress, which was almost a year ago now, and was the last time you held an iron.<br /><br />On Thursday you will forget and remember your schedule so many times that the very forgetting and remembering begin to feel comfortable. The schedule is written on a scrap of paper tucked inside the new, fancy calendar book that you bought for this new job, and which does also have things written in it. Still, you somehow prefer, almost viscerally, to write things on handy scraps of paper and stick them in the front pocket.<br /><br />You will accidentally iron in nearly as many wrinkles as you iron out, and you with think - not for the first time - that this is one of the downsides of women's liberation. You thought that also when your husband's grandmother sent you the set of silverware and a beautiful box to put it in and you did not know how the silver was meant to fit in the box.<br /><br />Surely, fifty or a hundred years ago, you would know by now how to do such things as iron a shirt and care for silver.<br /><br />On Thursday you will park in Lot A. You will fall asleep alone in a hotel room, sleep alone for the first time since you-can't-remember-when. Since long before the last time you held an iron. You will arrive to your destinations precisely on time, even though you tried to schedule yourself an extra fifteen or twenty minutes on either side of everything.<br /><br />You will speak in a high, sweet voice that is not entirely your own, and you will try very hard to speak the truth when someone asks you a question you can't answer.<br /><br />You will walk down the halls of high schools and universities and wonder if they can tell that you are not one of them. That they seem impossibly young. That you fill a space in the universe that an adult might fill.<br /><br />Fifty or a hundred years ago, you would surely have children of your own by now, or be a spinster aunt by now, your younger siblings well into child-rearing themselves. It is one of the upsides of women's liberation, you think, that there are no spinsters anymore. Still, on Thursday night, when the event is over and you are hungry, you will not walk down the streets of this college town, alone.<br /><br />On Friday, you will park in the muddy lot behind the gym, try not to get mud on your nice and professional clothes. On Thursday, you will park in Lot A.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5677952-2973658278169867964?l=kat.uprush.org' alt='' /></div>Kathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00221787143416367893noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5677952.post-33657237280915001892009-09-20T11:07:00.002-04:002009-09-20T11:42:29.715-04:00September flipped her switch, and the season slid into an almost strangely smooth transition. The last two weeks of August, hot and muggy and miserable, and then <span style="font-style: italic;">switch</span>, those cool nights and bright days. And now, two days out from equinox, the first frost. Right on time.<br /><br />Last night we filled the kitchen with armloads of garden salvage: all the basil, all the ripe tomatillos and peppers. The cilantro, lemon balm, and mint. (Our tomatoes were long blighted and gone.) A gallon and a half of salsa verde to can, cups of pesto to freeze in ice cube trays, and the bundles of herbs to dry for mid-winter teas.<br /><br />We covered the pepper plants, for this first frost was only light, and they may ripen a few more fruits before the next. Then, probably, we will pull them out whole and hang them to dry.<br /><br />I still never bought the bushel of corn I meant to can. It's likely too late, now. The pear tree needs to be picked, and the potatoes dug. The seasons will spin quickly from here out: soon a hard frost, then hard freeze, then winter.<br /><br />But the sun shines alluring outside, slanting already into afternoon. Get it while it lasts.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5677952-3365723728091500189?l=kat.uprush.org' alt='' /></div>Kathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00221787143416367893noreply@blogger.com1