Slow Food Season

This is fast food at home- Ruby Hoop's Tomato Soup

"Entry level food worker-Chipotle." 

That's the job alert today.  Yes, a resume and a cover letter are required.  

Since when did fast food applications require cover letters and resumes?  Should I let them in on how I was Chuck E cheese in High School?  Yep, really.  It was a promotion,  fifteen cents an hour more than the $3 minimum wage.  I was paid to sweat, and tiptoe gracefully, while wearing clown shoes, in between toddlers and the occasionally over-zealous teen.   Come to think of it, on the average, $3 an hour is actually more than I earn farming-and sweating.

This is where I start whining so close your ears if you don't want to hear it.  It is high pitched and pleading.  "I don't want to work fast food.  I like slow food!"

Concord grapes!  The smell is amazing-sorry no smellovision

I like wiping my brow with gritty hands, and I like the welts on my wrists from a mysterious sting that the beans keep hitting me with.   I like the aching knees and the laser focus required for picking small green fruits from a sea of green.  I like digging for tubers for hours as if on an archaeological dig.  I love the science behind it all and the sheer "dirt-"iness about it.  Satisfaction is the ultimate reward from all of the muscle mashing, patient perspiration and yes tiptoeing.

In only a week, I will be unemployed.  The wholesale company that sold my crops is folding up like so many paper airplanes in a lecture hall full of teens.  Whoosh-shutting their doors smack dab in the throes of my largest crop.  Seriously, I have 400 lbs of Jerusalem artichokes just sitting in the ground.  That's a lot of money rotting.

Only 4 lbs Jerusalem Artichokes

"Seasons over!" I announce loudly across the garden.  As if the beans and tomatoes will stop - cease cell division, fruit falling, heaped and composting in place.  As if the ripe red raspberries will just wither into fruit leather.  As if the chickens and ducks will stare red faced holding the eggs in like a toddler determined not to "go".  The goats must have had premonitions, because they never did produce anything aside from entertainment which is needed now.

For 11 years produce has held center stage.  First, friends asked to purchase it, then we had a tent at the local Farmers market, and then we formed a CSA (community supported agriculture is where individuals buy shares in a farm's produce).  Finally, for the last 6 years all of this farm's produce has been sold to a wholesaler who provided food to restaurants.  For 11 years this brain has wrapped itself around the timing of crops, the productivity of the soil, the health of the animals, and the unique and fashionable morsel that the palates of the public and chefs will pine for.  Almost like chewing the same cud for 11 years isn't it?

Some things try to wrap themselves around my brain!

I have a BS degree in Medical Technology, and would love to work part time, but ultimately, I  might not be marketable here in this adorably po-dunk town just far enough from civilization.  There are plenty of jobs for bank tellers, nannies, Certified Nursing Assistants (a job I once did to put myself through college), and fast food workers.  I am not saying that I am above these jobs, please don't get me wrong.  I just want to dig deeply into new soil and plant a new seed while still tending the living organism of our home.   I want to be inspired by a new crop of ideas.  I want to buy into some local endeavor.  For at least 11 years, growing organic food, caring for the earth, feeding my family healthy and interesting food, and selling to the community has been the only view in this wonderland's looking glass.  

Wonderland?

The thought of not farming at least for our own nourishment is too harsh to entertain.  Yet, the thought of finding new buyers and starting over has an echo of "been there, done that."  Could this be Limbo?

Standing in our hallway, the transition zone of a home, I can't seem to decide whether to pick a little more produce for today's delivery, call it quits and shower, write a blog, or go hog wild and explore a career as an entry level food worker.  I'm a little stuck.  Must be quicksand below these feet. 

So.... I'm going to move one foot in front of the other.  This is me looking up phone numbers of local chefs.  This is me cold calling and trying not to sound desperate.  This is me peddling this year's final crop. 

Seasons change.  Progress is forward.  Have shovel, will dig!  Here's to new soil and a crop of fresh ideas.