Harvest Habits

Happy Fall.

Stream-of-consciousness with the urge to rhyme says something like:

Green tomatoes, rainbow potatoes, brown-edged leggy

herbs, flowers, dirt, HONEY, JAMS

spilling into

porches, counters, sinks, hands,

dinner plans,

wagons, buckets, entryways;

in the way on the way in and

fat instead of thin

and

so much like spring, reversed:

rush to dormancy and reserve.

Tradition: In our fall kitchen, 87.6% of garden goodies are mooched off neighbors.

This is achieved by keeping chickens -- too many and then more every year - because "life, uh...finds a way" -- and having too many eggs most of the time. NOT A TERRIBLE PROBLEM TO HAVE: This egg surplus, when not swapped for honey* and homemade jams and things, buys autumn garden clean-out rights amongst the neighbors.

The tradition is unspoken, unofficial. I didn't mean to grab at the debatably longer end of the stick in this deal, but here we are, drowning in Patty, Larry, Bruce, and Linda's literal fruits-of-labor, making green tomato salsas and lining up every single one of our vases in a stationary table parade to house, honor, and admire the late season blooms and their final transformations. Sometimes I take the parade to work. Sometimes people adopt a geriatric flower or two. An easy re-generosit-ing...an unloading of the burden of beauty. THEY MUST BE TOUCHED, THEY MUST BE SNIFFED, THEY MUST BE SEEN.

There's another tradition that feels a lot like mooching that was not intentionally formed upon my moving to Alaska and that is seeking out farm stories: visually, mentally harvesting other people's labor. Photographing all the farms, all the veg, all the flowers, all the sun shining through the electric green, all the fat rain and dew drops. Hearing farmers' stories and dropping those stories into a metaphorical vase for a slightly longer life.

Maybe I like to be garden-adjacent.

Maybe it's like a little private gift to my senses that I mask in actual purpose.

Maybe the urge to do this -- write and share farm stories -- is a weird, subconscious, wayward sprout from rural roots...which, much like my claim to neighbors' hard-won flowers and veg, has never felt fully legitimate. In Ohio, our house was surrounded by commercial farmers: corn and soy fields stretching on for days; we hobby farmed (at best).

Regardless, the ogling of veg and the picking of farmer brains, whether the end result of which is published or not, is now deep in my fall bones.

I particularly loved talking to Hilario this growing season and getting a peek at his farm-to-table experiments and practice (photos shared with permission):

FYI HILARIO'S SALSAS are available all winter long: every Saturday he is selling at Midtown Mall in Anchorage.

The point of all this is: to mooch is to love...or be loved. Or both. And sometimes there's nothing else to do when in the debt of other people's generosity but share it, ya know?

And sometimes, maybe that means just bravely sharing or re-sharing what you've got, whether that be stuff, knowledge, skills, experience, or creative expression. Someone, somewhere generously invested in or shared with you: maybe don't keep too much of you to yourself?

credit: artist Casey Landerkin

Another fall tradition: Markets! Also in my fall bones! My daughters and I had a good time at Zine Fair last year and we'll be there again November 22nd selling and handing out odds and ends. Last weekend, I participated in The Nave's Art Fair for the first time. A harvest of artwork: new, old; finished, unfinished; visual, auditory, tactile; functional, decorative; interactive, stationary; quick sketches, long labor; experimental, studied.

Free, for sale, and not.

I went, I saw, I bought.

I sold, I chatted, I mooched.

Come say hi at Zine Fair (smooch😘)

I'll be there doing my best to mooch, drop bad rhymes, and man horse fishman life horse.

__________________

ThRILLiNg BOnUs CONTENT

Some photos from Grow North Farm this past early June that didn't make it into the Edible Alaska article:

(If you can't tell, I was pretty beguiled by this otherworldly portal formed by the three tunnels)

(a peek at my young photographer friend in the lens reflection above: these are her photos below)

Ok, this last photo is not my young photographer's work, but just a quick shout out to Cecilia Lister who works at but also avidly supports in her own time the Grow North and F.I.G. gardens. She is pictured center gazing upon her wee babe. Cecilia also helped with the Nave Art Fair and was a joyful, supportive presence at the event. Thank you, Cecilia!

*I teach a few sections of Writing 111 every Fall and Spring semester at UAA - MatSu College. A major feature of this course is your standard research writing and evaluating source credibility, and although dubious examples abound, I'm always keeping an eye out for somewhat silly, weird, or especially convoluted examples that are off the beaten path. I was reading a book on honey the other day which proudly touted the oft-repeated story about how upon excavating Tutankhamun's tomb in the 1920's, pots of honey, wine, and olive oil were found. Honey, the book claims, was the only unspoiled of the three and archeologists tried it on the spot, finding it good as new even after thousands of years. I was in awe, looked it up, and found it repeated in several reputable-at-a-glance sources (like this one). This story, as it was told in the book and elsewhere, is indeed amazing and both true and not true....as are so many stories. Read more on this here:https://scienceblog.com/honey-recovered-from-egyptian-tombs-sealed-more-than-3000-years-ago-can-remain-edible-because-honeys-low-water-content-acidic-ph-and-bee-made-peroxide-chemistry-make-it-almost-impossible-for-bact/ and please feel free to send your favorite juicy, weird, half-true stories my way to share with my classes! addiestudebaker@gmail.com