A Bag of Onions

Posted by Holly at August 7th, 2008

I feel I should spend a few moments talking about peas, those sweet green pearls in their own environmentally safe wrapper and the current stars of our garden. I always heard you were supposed to plant your peas by St. Patrick’s Day but that was when I lived on the east coast and barely thought about planting more than a pot full of anything, let alone anything edible. I planted peas once on the windowsill of my kitchen on East 80th Street. It was a ninth floor window facing south and also was catty cornered to the dining room window so I could actually monitor the progress of my pea vine when it began to wind around the corner. In two years I doubled the yield of my crop from one pod to two. I guess it doesn’t really count as a crop.

I guessed that invoking St. Patty’s Day as pea-planting day had something to do with weather conditions. Now, on the west coast, I rely more on my farmer husband to stick his finger in the air and tell me when anything should be done. Our peas went in considerably after St. P’s Day. In fact, this year, the whole garden went in way later than intended because, through May and some of June it was COLD here. So it was iffy, in my mind anyway, whether we would eat anything locally grown.

Ah, nature. Everything, pretty much, took hold and even seems to have doubled its intention and is growing with gusto. Once the peas started to appear as little elves with their happy, plump leaf-arms waving about an inch above the ground, I got busy duplicating a trellis we had seen at the home of a friend. She wove twigs around sticks in the ground so the pea vines would have something pretty to climb upon. I loved it and immediately realized I could use our Curly Willow twigs that had once boasted lovely green leaves and out of which I had formed an arch in the opening between the living room and the hallway. I had to get rid of some them when it turned out they had aphids and the aphids were pooping (or spitting or reproducing) on top of the books in the shelves on the living room side. The now denuded twigs were still sitting outside the house with no apparent job so I conscripted them for the trellis, using bamboo stakes. It looked great Jim pointed out that the friend had only a few pea plants whereas we had a lot so my twigs wouldn’t go so far. He added red twine, the kind he uses in the big baler that automatically scoops, gathers, ties and spits out hay into rectangular packages in the field. Some of the pea vines are now shoulder high so it’s a good thing they have more than my six inches of twigs.

Here’s the thing about picking peas. I go out there and see that velvety green with little white flowers emerging from little caps, little peaky, elfin hats, lots of lacy tendrils and a beautiful curtain of green leaves in perfect shades of green and I think, hmmmm, not many peas today. Then I spy a pod, hanging like a dangling earring and I think, ahhhh, at least one or two will show up. Then, suddenly, there are four hanging there. Every day I wonder how I can look at a spot, think there aren’t any peas and all at once discover there are many. They hide. Maybe they have stage fright for the first few moments before they go on stage.

Sometimes I feel like a giant in the pea patch. Even though the vines reach my shoulders, they are delicate plants so, bending between the rows to see the pods on the bottom, or reaching over the trellis, I take care to be gentle with them.

Peas are old fruits (truth-be-told, they fit the description of fruit, not vegetable). I have learned that they used to be called pease and date way back, maybe to the Bronze Age and some have even been dug up on the site of Troy. I have been trying to figure out the rhyme Pease Porridge Hot and I don’t think I would want to eat pea porridge. Pea soup is another story. In the days when my late husband was so sick, when we were living in a magical place on the Hudson River and still close to my roots, all of my family still lived in New York. Thank heaven for them because I could not have managed those difficult and sad months at the end of Don’s life without them. My mother and father and grandmother were there every weekend and my mother stayed through most weeks. My grandmother’s family role, among others, was out nutritional nurturing and she cooked restorative meals for all of us as we kept our vigil. I think we all knew, but didn’t want to believe, that the restorative nature of the food would hold the family together but couldn’t save Don. Still, she made his favorites and mine, pea soup a constant and welcome meal. It was what I ate the night of the day he died and I can still look down into that bowl and remember how comforting that particular shade of green was to my aching eyes; how the soup felt in my mouth, so warm and thick with the remnants of solids that dissolved on my tongue in a very pleasant way; and, that something could still taste good to me. It was almost as if that lovingly prepared and served bowl of soup let me know I still had a future – although I didn’t even want one at that moment.

It’s been years since I tasted that pea soup of my grandmother’s - or anyone’s that can come close - and yet, here I am in my future and excited when I make my way through the rows of peas looking forward to their beautiful appearance, albeit brief, on our table, grateful for their promise fulfilled.

Posted by Holly at August 5th, 2008

It is hot. The cats are barely able to move around and I would so love to help them take off their furry coats for a while. It is 95*, as I am told by the flashing temperature icon on my computer.

Jim is up in the pasture baling the hay he cut and raked in the last two days. Yesterday he came in looking like a rust man, covered by the good red dust of the fields. He always says he’s whipped when he comes in but he’s usually pretty sociable after he’s washed away the dust and revived under the shower. At least he is as long as I can get a few calories into him as soon as he does come in. He approaches snarky otherwise. It makes me remember how I was often reminded that I needed a boost when my own blood sugar dropped – “Holly,” my late husband would say, “you need to eat an apple.”

We’re blessed here with apples, peaches, plums (although only a handful this year), wild berries and, of course, all those gorgeous vegetables growing their mopsy heads in the garden. We added a few things this year: eggplant, Brussels sprouts, leeks, spinach; oh, and jack-o-lantern pumpkins that are already the size of basketballs. Those are in addition to cucumbers, squash, peas, beans, lettuce and our soul satisfying tomatoes. All those babies are out there stoking up the sunshine and daily watering. We’ve been eating out of the garden for a few weeks, now; but, I have to say, it still surprises me that it takes so long into the summer before you get anything out of the garden up here in Oregon. Oh, well, never mind. It’s all delicious when it’s ready and we’ll have lots of food we put away for the damp, grey fall and winter.

I can’t even begin to tell you what the grapes look like. It’s a jungle out there! They are, in Jim’s word, vigorous. The trellises are heavy with the weight of the vines. They all seem to have thicker vines this year than last and the leaves are big and green. The grape bunches are almost hidden in the abundance of leaves. The vineyard is like painting a bridge: as soon as you get finished at one end, it’s time to start over again. The only difference here is that it’s usually a different task you start in on. It’s daunting to me and I only occasionally help out. I can’t imagine how Jim gets out there every day to separate vines that are growing the way they want and not the way he wants, disengage their strong and resilient tendrils that seem to have personalities and mean to thwart the best intentions; how he prunes and ties and coaxes the best out of his grapes. I can’t imagine how he is going to do twice as much once the new vineyard takes hold.

I think he’s happy, though. I think he regards the heat and the sweat, the swaying energy of the tractor under him as his tools and his badges of the work he does, which is partly to feed the horses, feed us and make wonderful wine; but, also partly to protect the land and use its resources well, without depleting it. We were working on the wording for a description of our vineyard today to be used in regional marketing and he questioned a phrase I had – simple and elegant – asking if that wasn’t contradictory. I tried to explain that I thought elegance was clean, pure and simple in the sense of uncluttered, unfettered. It is exactly how I see this farming life. I see in the cycles of the year the direct results of almost every action. Here there is no time for office politics or jockeying for positions of power; here the earth determines the power and we are allowed to turn its bounty into things that nurture the body and soul.

To me, it doesn’t get much more elegant, nor is anything else as simple as that.

Posted by Holly at July 31st, 2008

Where is the cleaning up the desk Genie? And the creating a perfect garden one; or, at least a perfectly beautiful garden even if it isn’t perfect. And where are the cleaning the house, doing the laundry - ooops, I’ll have to get up, now, and transfer the hours-in-waiting wet stuff to the dryer - and the dinner Genies? How is it that, with no daily, exterior job, I still never have time to get everything - sometimes, anything - done? Part of the answer is that my day, the part I devote to stuff I do and Jim doesn’t, ends when his day ends. When Jim comes in at the end of the day, it’s time to get food into him and we do like to cook together. It means, however, that at about 5 PM I’m pretty much done in the office, if I’ve even spent a good day here. Usually it’s like today: I spent the morning weeding before it got so blisteringly hot, sneaking in a few email conversations; phone conversations to make appointments or check on stuff we’ve ordered for the winery; paid a couple of bills; wrote some thank you notes; scooted around the web looking for various things like the best sites to sell antique books, new places to put this blog; sorted through the piles on the desk….

My revelation came a couple of days ago. In my previous life, the one in which I had an exterior office, I often didn’t settle in to the work at hand until 5 PM, after most people went home. That’s when the daytime flow stopped and there was concentrated time, at least a couple of hours. Not that my desk was much neater; it wasn’t, but my life certainly felt a lot more organized. I attempted to explain this to Jim the other day, when it hit me. He wasn’t especially keen to hear it, though; so, after repeating that I had this revelation three times and then asking if he had actually heard me, he grudgingly answered he had but it ended there. So he never heard my unspoken suggestion that I might be more productive if I sat here for a couple of hours in the evening.

I think I might have had a deeper insight into the women’s movement if I had led a life that kept me working in the home from the beginning. Oh, well, no more time to complain as our dinner will take a little forethought, four kitties are sitting here and looking pointedly at me and a dog is languishing near the kitchen door knowing his empty dinner bowl is on the other side….

Posted by Holly at July 5th, 2008

Maybe here is how to do it. I’ve just washed the kitchen floor again. When I lived alone, before I was married, I swear I didn’t have to wash a kitchen floor more than once every two weeks. Okay, I did work outside of my home every day and rarely cooked except once in a while for company so the floor didn’t get much use. But still. I do it here more than twice a week and, truth be told, it could stand it every day since we both track in dirt, mud and hay strands. But, since I do do it, I just figured out a new pattern that leaves me off in my office while the floor dries where I can do any number of things of interest solely to me like play Mah Johng on the computer or … write! Oh, the cleverness of me. Please, let it stay a little damp and grey out – as it is now because, after all, it is July 5th in Oregon – so the floor takes a little while to dry.

I am sure, if I had been married into this life 40 years ago, I would have invented the consciousness raising movement on my own; not the equal pay for equal work part, though, because Jim’s rate of pay is way too low for this kind of labor. I’m not complaining; although I realize it sounds dangerously like that. Really, I am just an observer and commentator on my current life, which, curiously enough, is filled with aphorisms deriving from the farm.

Jim lives and breathes by the weather forecast during haying season, listening to the computer voice forecast on the car radio many times a day and tries to figure out when he can be making the hay, not only when the sun is shining but so that it will sit out there in the field while the sun is still shining so it doesn’t get wet, moldy and rendered unusable for the original intent of feeding the horses. I wonder why he grows the hay, actually, instead of buying hay while the sun shines and save himself the anguish and frustration of the pesky weather and the vicissitudes of old equipment that falls apart frequently.

Also not complaining, I wonder why there needs to be an early bird to catch a worm. And there are. They start their singing just about when dawn is arriving which, at this time of year, is before 5 AM. I assume they are catching worms and I understand Jim’s urgency to get out of bed and into the vineyards because there are a lot of them to prune and trim and train and cajole into producing lovely grapes. Farm work revolves around the amount of light available and I get that. After two plus years of marriage, Jim sweetly brings the thermos pot of coffee and leaves if for when I do wake up because my brain does not gather itself into a thinking sphere until several hours later.

We did get up together every two hours for two weeks and then once a night for the next three weeks while we feeding the filly foal who was so sick. The only way I could really make it work was to put my clothes on the floor next to the bed not only in the order of which I would put them on but also in position. That way, with my sweat pants set up accordion style, for instance, I could muster enough cohesive thought to get into my clothes, out to the barn and perform the rote tasks involved in mixing the formula, filling the monojet syringes, and mixing up the medicines we gave to Ellie until she was strong enough to hold her own and began eating her feed.

It was a revelation to see dawn every day from that direction. My only previous experiences with dawn were returning home after a night of stepping out to jazz clubs when I was dating a NY newspaper jazz writer.

So here it is the Saturday of the July 4th weekend; day of rest today (if you’re of my Jewish faith) or coming (if you’re of Jim’s Catholic beliefs) and I’m feeling a little guilty sitting here and writing this because, by now, the floor in the kitchen is dry enough for me to go out the door, into the garden, take the hoe to the weeds and distribute used hay on the aisles between our 50 plus tomato plants to keep the weeds down. Don’t tell Jim, I did sneak in 45 minutes to watch the end of an old movie on TCM while I was making the bed and putting away the laundry….

Posted by Holly at June 24th, 2008

I did think I would have more time with less to do in it once I left the workforce. Now I think I want to go back to work simply because I probably used my time more efficiently with a job outside of the home; in this case, farm. It does seem as if I never just sit down to read something or write something without the looming, sinking feeling that there are a thousand little tasks that need to be completed that will, truly, run out of hand if I don’t do them. None of them tasks I wake up in the morning just dying to do, either. I mean, really, who WANTS to empty the dishwasher (again; didn’t I do that just yesterday?), do the laundry (again; didn’t I do that just yesterday?), iron (again; didn’t I do that just six months ago….)?

And my to do list is much shorter and less urgent than Jim’s. It almost seems like, for him, before he can actually DO anything, he has to fix the thing with which to do it. Today, he came into the kitchen clutching the tip of a grease gun and a little zerk through which he could no longer push the grease. He needed the greased zerk so he could run the mower to cut the hay, quick before it starts raining again, wets and rots the hay before it can spend five days strewn on the ground drying. Determining he needed a new tip, new grease ( a case), new zerks and a new hub for the gear box on the wheel of the 469 haybine - what am I talking about?? - I went off to the local John Deere store to acquire said items.

Usually, my initial trip with my list of things needed, meant to save Jim time by my going so he can fix something else he needs to do something else, uses up time because there is always some one thing or more wrong with what I get. Partly it’s because I don’t intuitively know what I’m looking for; partly it’s because Jim says “go get me a sawsall blade, it’s about this long. I need one for wood and one for metal” and it turns out there are 20 or 30 different sizes and shapes and some are for wood, some for metal but some are for both. We spend a lot of time on our cell phones when I go off to buy supplies and equipment. Today wasn’t too bad except I got the wrong size hub for the gear box.

Finally, though, Jim is out there on the mower and I am heading to do any of the following:

load the lunch dishes in the dishwasher; hand-wash the pot
set up a pea trellis using bamboo stakes and curly willow twines
water the wild flowers and sunflowers I planted
remove some of the garden debris from a couple of days ago before I start a new pile
cut the heads on the tons of parsley that has gone to seed
dead-head the iris down the driveway
pressure wash off the floor of the teahouse so I can treat it with oil and protect the wood

Probably shouldn’t be sitting here writing this but it is really the one thing no one else will do unless it’s I.

Posted by Holly at May 19th, 2008

Surely someone is thinking about how to manufacture vehicle fuel out of weeds. And, if not, then the scientists and innovators working on these projects have not spent sufficient time in a garden or even tiny plot of dirt including those that exist in the cracks of sidewalks. Weeds are everywhere and they are relentless.

I can see how people have a zen attachment to pulling them up and out. I do feel huge satisfaction when I get their roots to come up in one piece and when I finish a section and see how ordered it is, how the desired plants seem to breathe better and hold up their heads a little higher. I have to approach it in sections because if I look at the entirety of any area we have, let alone the farm as a whole, it is overwhelming and I immediately go inside and start to read my email. If, however, I just get down in there and start pulling, pretty soon I can let myself look around and see that something has been accomplished. This inspires me; for the next few minutes anyway.

Just that little section is so revealing. It just looks like dirt and weeds at the beginning but, quickly, the earthly inhabitants start scurrying as their homes are disturbed by all the yanking and rolling. Ants begin to flee; the longer bugs with the armor that looks like an anteater start utching themselves through displaced dirt to find new cover; bees that seem to have been silent suddenly start buzzing thrillingly close to my head. I believe the bees are checking out my activity to see if I pose any danger to them. There aren’t as many worms as I would have expected if ever I had thought about it. The ones that are there are usually very small and don’t make me jump. Now and then a big one shows up. I saw one that was about a half inch in diameter just yesterday. Worms and snakes probably have gotten a really bad rap but it works. They are slimy and seemingly without charm. Still, there is something remarkable about the ingenuity of their bodies to burrow and squirm.

Above my head, on the opposite end of the charm scale, the birds sing away, gentle bell tones on a still day. There is the occasional surprising sound. I looked up this morning to see who was hammering on one of the birdfeeder posts only to realize it was a blue jay pecking the floor of the feeder. It was loud. I thought it was the woodpecker we hear outside of our bedroom and, sometimes, in the chimney. That bird is so loud we did think it was someone hammering on the outside of the house.

The people-produced sounds are infrequent here compared to a city existence. Regularly, trucks from the rock quarry above us run up and down the road and, since the sound buffer of the berry plants is gone, we hear each one. I can tell if they are heading to or from the quarry and I can judge their distance from the turn to our driveway by the pitch of gears changing. It’s not unpleasant. Today I heard a plane overhead, very high and very loud. Seemed like it was traveling slowly, too, as the sound hung in the air.

Unfortunately, some of the weeds are quite beautiful. The one Jim calls retch and I call kvetch, is lacey with a tiny purple bloom that looks like a miniature iris. This one shows up as a circular weed – it’s amazing how many are circular – and sends out its runners from one middle point. Finding the middle often results in a whole bunch of the stuff de-entwining from its plant host, the one you want to grow without a weed companion. I think we should actually encourage kvetch growth in the working areas on the way to the barn where not much planting is going to occur and where the term hard-scrabble comes to mind. A carpet of lacey green with small purple iris-like blossoms might be just the thing there. I know, of course, it would take hold and be everywhere it isn’t already so that’s not a workable idea.

Another one is what I was pulling out this morning. It looks a lot like the alfalfa Jim grows up in the pastures for the horses. It’s a soft feeling leaf with a tenderly beautiful green color. Never mind that it is just everywhere in the freesias and tiger lilies and will eventually overtake them. I pulled out a lot of it this morning but I know it is only temporary as it is impossible to get the entire root system out.

Talk about roots, those really prickly weeds that are plague in the rose garden have thick, hard roots that hang on to the earth as if they were fending off an enemy. We put shade cloth down over the rose garden, cutting out holes for the rose plant. I could hardly believe the vigor of the weeds growing sideways under that cloth heading directly for the holes. The cloth had bulges. I spent a good two days pulling out those weeds – and a lot of other ones under there – only to go back the next day and have new bulges. How do they grow so fast?

That latter is what led me to think about them as fuel. I Googled weeds as fuel and discovered there is something called jatropha that is gaining a lot of attention as a biodiesel. The list of countries in which jatropha can grow is pretty big – nearly 110 and all over the place – Africa, Asia, North and South America and Australia. Puerto Rico is on the list. Maybe if they put together a huge jatropha industry they will be granted statehood. And, maybe, then they won’t want it.

Anyway, it has heartened me to know that there are solutions to our terrible crisis of the environment. A segment on a recent CBS Sunday Morning taught us that the LED has tremendous possibilities for a future lighted by solar energy.

None of this will be aided by my rigourous weeding except that it makes me think about it. Just like getting the job done one small weedable section at a time, I am reminded that I can help by recycling one more can, leaving off the lights one more hour, combining my trips and saving gas, and in a million other small ways that might just add up.

Weeds unite and help to power the world.

Posted by Holly at April 30th, 2008

First of all, I sat down to write about our Passover Seder and looked out the window to my left to see the dogwood blooms - a deep fuschia color this year - contrasted against a steely sky that has just sent down a shower of hail stones. It is April 29th and we are still suffering the slingshots and arrowheads of winter. In fact, on the day of the Seder when the sky was, again, sending down hailstones, I thought about the ten plagues to be enumerated that night and wondered, as I have so many times, is this a message from God? Will there be some kind of admonishment on the next plane of existence that we didn’t pay attention to what he was trying to say to us? On the theory that it could be possible, I would also have to say back to him that I spent a lot of time here on the early plane wondering why he had to talk to us in parables and signs. Why didn’t he just say it outright?

Which of the four sons would I have been had I asked any of those questions at the Seder?

For the third year in a row Charlie and I were the only Jews. We were nine at dinner this year: the Evans family (with 10 month old Finn who found the Afikomen early in the evening), our neighbor Dave who grew and ground the horse radish and Father David. Quite a group.

Passover is the best of the Jewish holidays in my opinion and that of many other Jews in the world because of the food. It was only upon entering into this mixed marriage relationship that I discovered that Gefilte fish and Matzoh Brie’s may be an acquired taste. It’s true that the fish has a distinctive odor so I always try to make mine a couple of days in advance of the Seder so the house clears out. For my first Northwest Seder, over two dozen years ago, I wanted to make my own fish so I called my grandmother to get the recipe. My dad was on the extension phone writing down what she told me. I wrote it down on my end of the conversation, too. My dad asked for clarification at a couple of points in the recitation and, finally, at the end, he was so intent on getting it right that, when my grandmother said to uncover the pot halfway for the last half-hour of cooking, my dad asked which half of the pot! We laughed over that for years and years.

When he sent me his hand-written version, he wrote at the bottom: “You think it’s easy?”, referring to the difficulty of transcribing a method of cooking used by so many grandmothers around the world - measure by eye, test texture by hand and add flavors by tasting. It’s the same recipe I use today only, as I learned that year, it’s impossible to get the Brooklyn version fish in the Northwest. So now I use sole, salmon and halibut instead of whitefish and yellowfish, whatever they were. Amazingly, it still smells the same.

The menu was a little different, too. Instead of roast chicken and brisket, we served deliciously broiled salmon (marinated in orange juice) and Boeuf Bourguinon that Jim made. Everything else was traditional.

I confess that I don’t clear out all of the chametz from my house anymore. Instead, I sell it to Jim for $1. That makes commingling with a non-Jew much easier. I sold it to him on the morning of Passover while we were standing at the sink brushing our teeth. I could see he thought it was amusing but also wanted to do it for me. I bought it back a week later, no interest.

This year, I decided on a centerpiece that was a little different than the usual flowers. This was partly because there was nothing in bloom in the garden, it was so cold, save a few small flowers. Cindy brought me beauties and I used those in a pretty vase on a side table. The real centerpiece was the Red Sea parting made possible by the clever use of those little hand-help personal fans and some sheer red fabric, formerly a curtain. It worked very well.

The Seder was delightful. Charlie led it, everybody read their appointed parts. Charlie and I recalled family moments for everyone including how long it used to take to get through the Seder. That, of course, was in the days when there were 25 at dinner each night of the two Seders and also when my grandmother would buy 100 dozen eggs for the duration of the holiday. Two of her Passover specialties, breakfast treats, required many eggs and we all clamored for them every day. One is the Matzoh Brie mentioned above. This is Jewish french toast made with broken up matzoh. It’s fried just the way you would bread french toast but with a lot of cinnamon. I think it is delicious and, along with matzoh farfel cereal, my favorite breakfast during Passover. The day I made one for Jim, the last day of the holiday, he politely and silently ate until he looked up and said “Is this how leftover matzoh is used up?”

Oh, well. He isn’t perfect.

Next year, if not in Jerusalem, at least more Jews at my table.

Posted by Holly at April 30th, 2008

My orange cat, Koufax, loves me. He sits in my lap, relaxed into the crook of my arm; so relaxed that it doesn’t even seem as if there is any weight on my lap. He doesn’t weigh very much, it’s true, but he is so comfortable in my arms that there is no resistance. Every now and then he reaches up with his tensile front paws in a big stretch. Honestly, he strokes my hair or my cheek. Then he reaches up with his mouth and kisses me…two little kisses with only his lips and one nibble. His six toes on each front paw make it feel as if he really holds hands.

He should probably have been named Campanella instead of Koufax because his paws do look more like catcher’s mitts than a pitching glove. He was named by the Brooklyn-born father of the woman I got him from who got him as a kitten. Her dad was a Brooklyn Dodger fan and, maybe because of his sandy color, named him Koufax for that famous pitcher. It’s quite okay with me. I even taught him a baseball trick involving sitting on command and then waiting, with a tempting pile of catnip in front of him, for me to say four words: ball, ball, ball, strike. On strike, he was allowed to have the catnip. This he did for years until I moved on to other pleasures and stopped practicing with him. He’s going into training soon, though, now that his nemesis Gemini, the dog, is learning how to read (he lifts his paw when I hold up a piece of paper that says PAW on it. Lots of doggie cookies are involved.)

My son will tell you I owned Koufax even before I saw him once I heard that name, being a die-hard Brooklyn Dodger fan myself, still waiting for them to return to their proper home. There are a lot of us. I once worked for Prospect Park in Brooklyn, the park that Calvert Vaux and Frederick Law Olmsted considered their masterpiece because of the natural terrain with which it was endowed. There’s a statistic that one in every seven Americans has roots in Brooklyn and I once had the idea that if I could raise $1 – one dollar – from even one tenth of those people, it would yield millions for the park. I used to float the idea whenever I was at a party or in some public social gathering and I would come back to the park with a fistful of dollars from enthusiasts. Once, on a Friday night at my crowd’s usual hangout, Sardi’s, I went into my shtick about the $1 and the park and one friend said he would give me five single dollars if I would dedicate them toward rebuilding Ebbets Field.

I actually own Campy’s autograph and Sandy Koufax’s on a little fold-out card, about 5 x 7. It says Your Dodger Pals on one side and Your Other Pals on the other. Campy and Koufax are on the Dodger side, numbers two and three. Above them is Ramon Jackson. On the other side is Carl Furillo, Johnny Colon, Henry Mandell and Gladys Gooding – the only person to play in Ebbets Field, Yankee Stadium and the Polo Grounds. She played the organ at the games. I don’t really know who Johnny Colon or Ramon Jackson are and Henry Mandell is not a ball player. He was the president of the Men’s Club when that organization at Union Temple, the reform synagogue in Brooklyn at which I grew up, hosted an annual Orphan’s Breakfast that my dad ran. The words in these sentences are archaic today, a throw back to a time that was both more peaceful and more opaque, in which we didn’t think about labels the way we do today and were careless in the way we categorized people. Still, the intent was sweet – give a breakfast to support a bunch of kids who lived communally because they had no families; bring the kids together with everybody’s heroes, the Brooklyn Dodgers. Sam Levenson, the great comic – and another Brooklyn kid - used to MC the breakfast.

Still waiting for the Dodgers to come back to Brooklyn gave me the opportunity to root for the team in whichever city I was living. In Seattle it was the Mariners. In New York it was the Yankees (or, the Mariners East). I’m back to being a Yankee fan, now, since I live in a state that doesn’t have major league baseball. How can that be? It’s a shocking absence, in my opinion.

I love baseball. It carried rules for life when I was growing up about working hard to excel at something, about fairness and how you were chosen to be on the team according to your ability and not everybody got a chance to play and it didn’t scar us for life. I learned about courage with the Dodgers and Jackie Robinson. Baseball is remarkable for creating memories of a childhood. We – or, at least, I – recall sweet moments with my dad who would patiently explain to me that, yes, the players on the opposing teams were really friends off the field. Something I think about whenever I see two players, today, on opposing teams exchange hugs before or after a game. Baseball crosses genders. In 1955, the magical year, my mother was the only mother who had a transistor radio when we all played on the street after school and the moms watched from their bench position. My mother wanted us all to be able to listen to the games during the year that was finally Next Year. I once commented that there seemed to be more women at Mariners games than men. I looked it up and, statistically, Seattle does have a high population of female sports fans. Growing up, there was a woman who lived on the ground floor of our apartment building, with windows facing the courtyard, who rang a cow bell whenever a Dodger hit a homerun. I wish I actually remembered what that must have sounded like the day Gil Hodges hit four of them in regular innings in one game in 1950.

It might be spring on the farm today – finally after a long and wet and cold spell - and I might be headed up into the vineyard to prune grapes, but I can tell you I wish I were at a ball game. I’ll be listening to the sound of the crack of that bat in my head all afternoon. And, later today, Koufax goes back into baseball trick training.

Posted by Holly at April 23rd, 2008

Wow. This was definitely a grape day. We have grape days and horse days on the farm and this one was spent in grape activity. First, it’s the middle of April and it’s freezing here. Reminds me of one of my favorite Jame Thurber passages, paraphrased here: The world’s at sixes and sevens…middle of July and the dogs are sticking to the sidewalk. Except it’s the opposite: middle of April and it’s so cold the buds on the trees are barely able to lift their little hats. We went to a Chehalem Mountains Winegrowers meeting last night and, while talking about how all the vineyards will be full and fruity in September for a planned event, someone said that was if we ever got bud break! Jim has had to prune the entire vineyard in cold weather. I helped on the only really nice days we’ve had. Clever.

I’m throwing around these terms quite professionally now, if I do say so myself, and I learn new ones all the time. Yesterday the word was ratchi … the spine from which the little grapes hang. This is something you don’t want to get into your pressed material in the early stages of winemaking but, not to worry, they separate pretty nicely with a destemmer. We’re way far away from that part of the process with the 2008 grapes. It’s so cold we may not see bud break, leaves and actual grapes for a long, long time. You always think a season or so ahead or behind of where you are, it seems. All through the winter, as Jim was pruning the vines, he was thinking not only about the number of branches and possible bunches he would get this year, he was trying to make decisions about which buds would become next year’s new arms. God, it was cold up there in the vineyard where the wind comes out of the west and there no trees nearby to cut its billowing path. I was glad to be up there, though, the couple of days I could stand the weather because it makes me feel a part of things. Jim has taught me how to prune - on the top arms you want the buds that are pointing upwards and will eventually cuddle up to the upper grow wires. Obviously, then, on the bottom you want the buds that grow downwards. If only the plants could read that page in the book and direct their buds accordingly. The vines and branches, however, are pretty, well, viney with twists and turns so an up bud may not necessarily look like that in real life. Nonetheless, I have learned how to make the choice and gamely nip off the unwanted buds, cutting through them on a diagonal so the node doesn’t push out another bud. Still scary stuff, however. The thought of ruining a plant is like an undercurrent in my mind at all times. We hit on a nice rhythm the last few times we were up there together with Jim doing the right side of a plant and I the left. That way didn’t feel so terrified. Still, I do a certain amount of talking to myself when facing a plant, repeating the rules to follow - top/up, bottom/down; every other bud; leave about four inches between them; four or five buds on an arm and on this side. Watch the ones near the crook as one of them will end up being next year’s new arm.

Today was so cold and rainy that even Jim couldn’t stay up in the vineyard. So we bottled last year’s Chardonnay. Bottling is way more fun than pruning and most other jobs because you get to taste and can persuade yourselves, since you’re winemakers, that drinking wine at 9:30 in the morning is okay. Last year, we bought a bottler but not the mechanized one. It is a lovely table-top piece of equipment with five stems through which wine flows into bottles. The bottles sit on a ledge that, through adjustment into notches, regulates the amount of wine that flows into each bottle. Clever and attractive. The flow into the stems begins with a siphon. The first time Jim tried it was last summer when family from California was visiting. Family is Jim’s niece and great-niece who is 9 years old and who had a friend with her. We always have a wonderful time when Michelle and Kate are here and, with the addition of Maddie, it was especially fun. The weather, then, was great so no one minded being out and doing whatever there was to do. Actually, everyone in Jim’s family is pretty outdoorsy so weather rarely stops them from anything. I, on the other hand, was raised to think the outdoors is just a way to get from one tall building to another or as a valuable view from a New York City apartment. (That’s not entirely true; I spent countless hours in the Brooklyn Botanic Garden but only knowing the security of a tall building was quite nearby.)

Anyhow, on that bottling day last summer, Jim started the siphon the old fashioned way. Not quite having the hang of the new bottler, the siphon kept fading, wine stopped flowing, Jim kept re-starting and, because he thinks he is invincible, he kept swallowing the wine that inevitably ended up in his mouth. Winemakers learn early on to spit not swallow. He was so drunk by about 11 AM that morning that it was all I could do to walk him into the house without his falling over - we kind of goose-stepped our way in with Jim tilting dangerously in one direction or the other. Never was he completely upright. He spent the day in bed, was riotously funny, doesn’t remember any of it and was mortified to learn that the two little girls were collapsed in endless ripples of giggles on the floor outside of the bedroom listening to him rant and rave at length about nothing in particular. Later on, it was a teachable moment about the perils of overdoing.

On this bottling day, today, it was a more sedate and mature process. We did taste first, of course, to decide for sure that the wine was ready to be bottled.Neither of us swallowed. We weren’t tasting very much, however, and held our own. The Chardonnay was deemed ready so we went to work. Today I was the corker of the 180 bottles we filled. The corking machine is totally hand operated. It’s a tripod. Put the bottle on a little round holder on a big spring; push down so it’s positioned right under the cork hole; put in cork, pull lever down, feel the satisfying swerp as the cork is pushed into the bottle. It’s a Ferrari and the only one I am ever likely to drive.

This wine, 2007. we will drink and give to family and friends. We’re in the middle of the bonding process right now so we can sell wine as of the current vintage presuming we get bud break, I didn’t mangle too many of the vines and future bunches, wasps and birds don’t eat all the grapes, we don’t have continuing weird weather or any other unforeseen challenges and obstacles AND we have the courage to become commercial!

Last night Jim had a brainstorm about the name of the vineyard so we’ve renamed it A Blooming Hill Vineyard. It will, more accurately, be officially renamed once the paperwork is completed to undo the old name and assign this new one. I filed the paperwork on line today and got an email almost immediately telling me there was an error and I could file. I called. The name, they said, is already taken. What? Yes, there’s a vineyard called Blooming Hills Vineyard and this is too close. But that’s us, I told them, and we want to change the name. Oh, well, in that case you’ll have to fill out a cancellation form and then resubmit the new name form. Of course, there are fees to cancell and reapply. Okay, okay. It will be worth it. I like it - A Blooming Hill Vineyard. Has the ring of a new blog name, too, so maybe I’ll do a companion piece to A Bag Of Onions!

Oh, and did I mention that Jim is putting in a second vineyard below the house where blackberries were formerly raised? Yes. And those grapes will be ready to become wine when Jim is 82….Nice, for a little retirement hobby.

Posted by Holly at March 20th, 2008

It’s pretty exciting to see the piece I posted on the New York Times’ Runway blog a couple of weeks ago generating comment.  I’ve been getting a real mind-kick ever since and I was pretty ticked at the beginning that Jim went up into the vineyard to prune and forgot to turn on his phone.  Then I thought I was starting to be a little like The Flying Nun the year she won an Oscar and wept aloud that everybody liked her.

So I got to thinking about the attitude that I might not matter because I live on a farm in Oregon; but, wait, am I not the same consumer Mizrahi, Martha Stewart and Moschino decided to launch lines for in places like Target (yes, yes, I know – Tarjay) and K-mart?  Isn’t fashion a business?  Aren’t the designers and retailers trying to turn a profit?  Doesn’t that mean they need the likes of me to buy whatever iteration of their work they put out?  Fashion/style/art may not apply to me because I live on a farm.  To be fair, farm Carharts got that little boost on Sunday in the lead article about in the NYT Style section about the young, hip partners who left New York City for the joys of the manure pile in Tivoli.  I’m sure the writer and editors were tickled to find such urban/exurban pairs on which to peg their story and get in on the earthiness without losing any of the NYT smartness.  Okay, so I didn’t know anything about living in the country, let alone a farm, when I first moved to the Northwest (the equivalent of going from NYC to Tivoli or to Mars, for that matter) and used to make mistakes like wearing sparkly ballet flats to go to my son’s Cub Scout events on the tops of little mountains) I did discover you can wear Carharts and pair them with boots like my ones with the polka dots or the little horses I wear now that it’s mud underneath my feet and not the city sidewalk. It is also true that the first time I did wear overalls (since I was a kid anyway) was the night before my wedding to Jim and then because he had been teasing me about getting me to do that.  I wanted to surprise him and wear them to a party in our honor thrown by neighbors in their barn (100 years old, historic, beautifully restored – the horses actually live outside so they don’t sully the beautifully hewn timber with poop).  When Jim saw me in my overalls (I also had on three-inch heels but they were in a thoughtfully chosen complementary black and pink country plaid) he decided to give me my wedding/birthday present right then, to wear with the overalls, diamond earrings.  Change demands new style.  Or is that style demands change?  I’m not sure but I am sure that the commerce of style, fashion and journalism is one reason the NYT is happy to send me my subscription to the doorstep of the farm in Cornelius.  (Thank heaven to the doorstep, by the way, so Jim can pick it up after giving the horses their nice alfalfa breakfast bale we personally grow in the pastures, moving 40’ pipes around to irrigate; which is often when I am happiest I have the boots with the polka dots.)

There has to be room for the likes of me to revel in the art of fashion and style even if I am unwilling to pay the outrageous price.  Going through my own head is the argument that great art means great prices but I’m not going to buy into that, either.  I was in the Portland Art Museum a few weeks ago where I saw, in the modern art wing, some fabulously interesting pieces and also some outrageous and cheeky works. The one that propelled me to unleash my own inner sculptor was a rectangular block of marble sitting on the floor in the middle of rice. It was called Rice House.  The rectangle  looked something like a building, maybe a rec-hall or dormitory like the horse wranglers used in old Westerns.  This was a solid block of marble, however, no inner lives depicted.  It happened, that at the time I saw that, Jim and I were having our bathroom vanities redone with granite tops and above the counter marble sinks, replacing the faux marble and the ornately carved gold-tone faucets with decades of dried toothpaste in the grooves (1970s taste and popular when the original owner built this house.  We love our bathrooms now, no more bending over when we brush; no more poorly aimed toothpaste on the faucets.)  I could hardly wait to get home from the museum so I could take a leftover corner we had of the granite and surround it with rice.  I used brown to complement the Moroccan colors in the granite, put it in the window in the stairwell and called it Rice Mountain.  It was a great piece of sculpture until the cats discovered how much fun it is to move the rice (sort of a Who Moved My Cheese comedy production) and spread it all over the place. I vacuumed up the rice, revising my artist’s statement as I went.

I’m poking mild fun, but it’s because we seem so seriously manipulated down the path of spending more to become fashionable and stylish. I want to think about fashion as art.   Some of it I love; some of it I hate; some is just too ridiculous to consider.  See the Style section on Sunday where underwear that reaches down the thigh has become part of someone’s fashion statement in Paris.  And, by the way, has anyone noticed that on the streets of New York, Florence, Paris or Cornelius most people are wearing drab-from-the-washing-machine clothing?  (Well, okay, maybe not on Cornelius’ streets although that underwear statement must have made a quick impression because there was somebody at our little Fern Hill Community Club annual spring event – potluck, a lot of corned beef from good old family recipes, a lot of casseroles, a lot of good old families present – because, in this crowd of mostly people who have had plenty of significant 0 birthdays and are comfortably retired, one youngish neighbor was wearing men’s boxers over green tights).  Even in the picture of the Beaux Arts café in Paris from where Bill Cunningham must have been observing the plumage, the people sitting there looked more like they were in an old silent and colorless film than in impossibly chic Paris.

The gap is in perception.  Yes, I live on a farm in Oregon – 40 acres, 4000 sq ft house

– where my husband breeds race horses and where we make Pinot Noir, Pinot Gris,

Chardonnay and Riesling in our little winery.    I may not fit the customer profile but

what I don’t want is for fashion and style to be held out to me as exclusive, not for

my ilk on the one hand and a temptation with the subtle message that I could be in

the inner circle, of course, if I chose to spend the money.  In ten thousand years you

can’t make me believe shoes, a sweater, a painting, an apartment is worth anywhere

near the prices attached to them.  I do completely agree with another blogger on the

site, however, about the quality and ethical difference in $15 and $150 pants.  My

Fred Meyer basic blacks are already pilling…