Edible Tulip

Ever Dream of Giving IT ALL UP to Shovel Manure?

I grew up as an anomoly in my suburban landscape. While others braided their barbie's hair and attended Sunday School, I broke into abandoned buildings and escaped out my window in the middle of the night to skulk around under brushes. And my Ken, the barbie doll, was a cowboy in chaps. The freedom gave me a rush. Even at seven years old. To say that I spend much of my days trying to attain that same armour of defiance and possibility is an understated reality. It's all I do. It's a huge part of why I got a dog. And possibly the link to why at such a young age I latched onto words, both written and read. If you can't physically dwell in isolated places then you might as well plant your mind there instead.

It's been 3 1/2 years since I have been working in my office job. The longest stretch of paid work I have ever done. I am shocked at how stabilizing and comforting a 9-5 job is to so many people. Not because there is anything terrible about it but because it completely fucks with natural rhythm.

And what better way to get back onto a cycle dictated by lunar pulls and seasonal manifestations than work on a farm? I subscribed to The Caretaker Gazette a few months ago. While cleaning out one of my many boxes full of many emails and letters and scribbling from many years I found a print off of the caretaker gazette that I had tucked away in 1999. It still exists. And it's in an exciting web accessible format now so I get updates almost daily of the most ridiculously alluring yet far fetched sketches of life I have ever read. If I could do one of these for a year stint for a decade the books I could write...

An example from today's updates, excerpted from The Caretaker's Gazette. I love how cleanliness is one of 4 desirable traits to muck and butcher.

SMALL GOAT DAIRY FARM in Northern California needs a long-term worker apprentice. Rent trade for 3 1/2 days work. Work includes milking twice a day, managing a dairy herd, vet stuff, harvesting and butchering, fencing, mucking, barn maintenance, walking goats, making cheese butter, yogurt, washing equipment, etc. Seasonal wage work available or you can have a part time job on the side. Experience great. Not necessary. Person needs to be a strong, early riser, attention to detail and cleanliness MANDATORY. No drunks or druggies. This is a HUGE responsibility. Also, fun and a good deal. Start this summer.

Goji Power

I can always tell when a food becomes a "superfood" and has been "trend spotted" by the buyer for a grocery chain because it gets showcased right out front where you can't help but knock into the display as you push through the entranceway. I became almost irritated when my festive winter afternoon play date got whored by the grocery industry and marketing maniacs - POMEGRANATE OVERKILL. I still don't drink POM juice prefering to unveil the flesh of my beloved's girth through frustrating, with tears of flesh and red soaked fingers. Pomegranate seeds are excellent in salad. The perfect foil to the peppery taste of arugula and the earthy must of hazelnuts. Goji berries, the latest, if not nearly tired, centrefold for the whole foods population. That they come from Tibet is to their advantage in North America at least. Eating a superfood from a mountaintop most of us will never climb in a country swathed in an almost mystical unattainability brings us closer to enlightenment. Just maybe. It beats having to market a dried berry from say Sudbury - "Despite being covered in nickel dust, bears still love these tender dried blueberries, and so will you!" I typically stay away from food fads. I eat so healthily and so consciously that while I am open to trying new things from afar and at the same time shifting my habits to suit sustainability, I prefer a low on the food chain, farmed close to home mentality. That said, I ate some goji berries that my mum gave me and liked them enough to toss them into today's salad of spicy lentil sprouts, chick peas, goat feta, living watercress, endive leaves, sunflower seeds and crunchy, chewy, slighty sour tasting gojis.

Goji berries grow on vines in Tibet and Mongolia. They are a complete protein with antioxidants, and an extremely rich source of amino acids and carotenoids. They are oblong, the size of a peanut, and taste like dried cherries.

Weekday Evening Grace

My mother was always surprised at my expressed desire to have children “but you like to spend so much time by yourself” she’d say. I had no idea how rabid I am/was about my personal time and space until I got a dog and a full time job. I realize a job gives people a general framework to exist within, a place to go each day, a coterie of coworkers to chat with, a desk to call home. And I realize that first time mothers always remark on how nothing TRULY existed before having a child, their lives rendered almost innocuously self absorbed before the tiny creature helpless and waving limbs needing to be bathed, wiped and fed made these woman for the first time feel responsible for something other than themselves. I get that. In a way. But I also think that carving out space, existing in a realm for how ever short or long it is granted without expectation and demand, suspending action to unconsciously contemplate is still my favourite way to savour moments. A cabin on a river in a forested glen is not where I am anymore and I need to adjust my thinking to stop rejecting the now and supplanting my vision with greenery and stillness when I’m in the midst of a burning spot of pavement with wafts of greasy restaurant food and rotting garbage filling the air as cars stand idly stuck in traffic with the bass pumping. I rebel and reject my environment constantly because it threatens the quiet and natural beauty that helps me think and resonate.

As I’ve mentioned before getting a dog helped force me to be outside in my urban environment and it gave me moonlit -40 below solitary walks. Fearing being eaten by my own rapacious mind, I too, like those first time mothers, sought to GET OUT OF MY OWN HEAD. Get outside. Make connections. Live in harmony with whatever exists around me. But it is hard to change one’s constitution. And I am constantly overwhelmed with this new arrangement. With a creature who watches my every move hoping it leads to something for him – food, play, affection, walks. Having spent many years of my life as an urban hobo – rambling from job to job with a satchel on a stick – avoiding career in order to grant myself perpetual motion, I have held a job for 3 ½ years, the same job, in 35 y ears of living, that’s the longest I’ve ever done the same thing, the longest relationship I’ve nurtured. These years while banking money have also felt the least self nurturing, the rhythm of life a job demands, short circuits allowing for randomness to play a role. I have spent so much of my life remaining open to serendipity parachuting me off someplace, to moments swollen with potential, to ideas that cloud out chores and responsibilities I guess I’m finally exhausted of routine. When you begin to reject the framework of your life then it’s the beginning of some sort of metamorphosis. I’m certain of that.

That whole preamble leads me to share what does make me feel grounded and that’s food. Beautiful, colourful sustenance. A typical weeknight includes making dinner for my dog with ground beef from my local butcher kneaded with chopped parsley and carrots topped with cod liver oil, apple cider vinegar, kelp powder and maple syrup; washing a variety of vegetables for the week’s worth of salad – corn on the cob, asparagus, sugar snap peas, dandelion leaves and a variety of lettuces; and preparing fruit to take for breakfast – baggies of cherries, tupperwares of chopped up honey dew and canteloup, raspberries and blackberries and blueberries. The excitement of my day at the office are my meals. Now that is not surprising.