The Weekly Bushel #18, 2008

The Weekly Bushel

#18, 2008

Howdy,

Fall is here! Although we've got a bit of an indian summer right now, fall is in the air. Some trees here are starting to turn color, nights are much cooler, and the sun is setting much sooner. What that means for you is fall vegetables. We'll have a steady supply of cabbage, roots of all different kinds, spinach, and lettuce will make its return. Enjoy the beautiful weather.

This Weeks Share

• Chard
• Cabbage
• Lettuce Mix
• Bell Peppers
• Hot Peppers
• Tomatoes
• Eggplant
• Melons
• Parsley

Today is my birthday! Whooo!

Birthdays are always a sobering time for me. They are when I reflect on my life up to this point and what is in store for me on the road ahead. I've learned not too long ago to not make regrets about the past and not to be anxious or worry about the future. However, I can't really help myself on birthdays. I reflect on what got me to where I am now. If a few key things didn't happen to me when I was younger I don't know where I would be now. Maybe stuck in a cubicle, who knows?

I think I was influenced by nature at an early age. My family had a three acre woods behind our house that I spent a good portion of everyday in. My brother's and I would run around in the woods until we were gasping for breath, our little reddened brows wet with the sweat of exertion. That was our fun, running around chasing each other and throwing crab apples at one another. Climbing trees and exploring streams and adoring the wonderment that surrounded us. We would pick wild black berries by the bucket full for my Mom, but most of them went into our mouths before my Mom got them to make jam.

One by one, however, we left the woods. I was the youngest brother so I suppose I was the last to leave. We learned how silly it was to run around. Running was work and work was not fun. Besides, there were better things to do. There were friends to hang out with, video games to play, TV to watch. There were things of value to accumulate. What is the value of a tree? What is the value of finding a salamander? If things of that nature had any value then the market would have provided them for us. Later there were cars to take care of, making our previously well worked legs obsolete, and jobs to work to provide money to pour into those cars. And the woods sat there, it would no longer hear the thunderous foot falls echoing off of the ancient oaks. The trees would no longer feel the gentle embrace of a child climbing it.

I loved that woods, the way, I think, every child loves the places that he or she is free to explore when they are young. I thank my parents for allowing me that fredom to play in the woods. With todays ultra safety conscious, germ-free style of parenting how many kids are deprived of this?

I never fully left the woods, I always had some sort of presence there. Even in High School when I was troubled I would walk alone in the woods. It welcomed me back without any animosity toward my absence and I would feel calmed and refreshed after walking back. I never thought about it before but the walk back was always the hardest. True, it was uphill but, it was almost as if leaving this sanctuary was physically difficult because it was where I belonged.

My parents sold their house last spring. And, as is the case with most land over a couple acres, it was subdivided. The woods would be a perfect place for a house. After all a house has value. What is the value of a tree? What is the value of finding a salamander? When my parents were walking the land with the real estate guy my Mom stumbled across a morel. We'd never seen morels in the woods before and I had only become aware of these amazing little mushrooms a couple of years earlier. The woods offered up one last excitement to our family. Perhaps it was its way of saying goodbye, or perhaps it was the only way it knew how to show that it was forgiving us for what was about to happen. My Mom reacted to the morel with as much excitement as us kids would have reacted to a toad or a snake when we were younger. She picked it with zeal and basked in the joy of finding her first morel in the woods. The real estate guy looked at her in puzzlement. Why would this woman get so exited over a mushroom when she was about to make so much money selling this land? He must have left the woods a long time ago.

Some of the woods is still there and I think about it sometimes. I want to go back and visit but I think it would hurt too much. And how could I explain to these new owners why I was trespassing?

We've all left the woods to some degree or another. Some of us look back fondly on it but comfort ourselves by saying it is romantic sentimentality. And some of us have forgotten that the woods even exists. I will never forget it and I'm trying real hard to walk back in. And never again will I make that uphill climb out of it.

Sincerely,

Casey
LotFotL Community Farm