Where did we go?

We’re right here! But, if you kept up with news of the farm, you may have wondered.

For the busiest folks, I’ll sum it up with a single line: We had a good year at the farmer’s market, and a great year at… well, life.

If you have a little more time, here’s a recap of what we’ve been up to, and a farm update. But first, please allow me to explain my hiatus.

After keeping this journal for several years, I took a break from it this year. Although it’s been incredibly fun, regular posts require a lot of time, and I needed to use that time in a different way.

Some of you may know this, but to others it may be a bit of a surprise. I’ve been a screenwriter for about 15 years. I write “specs.” Sometimes solo, sometimes with a partner who lives in Maryland. Spec is an industry word for a screenplay that nobody asked you to write. It’s a script you’re trying to sell, or use to attract a manager or producer. After years of shoehorning screenwriting into the nooks and crannies of my life (nap time… at 5 in the morning… during PJ Masks), my schedule, headspace, and finances allowed me the incredible opportunity to write full time.

This past year, I wrote and rewrote, and cut my teeth pitching. I pitched projects to more than 50 managers and producers, and had a fun ride as a finalist in the PAGE International Screenwriting Awards — a contest that draws about 9,000 entries. In the science fiction category, my script made the Top 10 out of 500 scripts.

It was a thrilling year, with one learning curve after the next. And 2024 is shaping up to be just as exciting.

So — yes! I’m still here. We’re still here. Life just continues to evolve.

Our biggest news this year isn’t farm related.

After nine wonderful years with our little guy at home, the time had come to send him to in-person school for the third grade. The decision was a combination of factors — a mix of what was best for him… and for me.

As summer clipped along, we all had big feelings about the change. It’s been the three of us at home together for the past few years, and, of course, Silas has been at my side for almost a decade. Letting him go, it hurt.

But first, let me back up a bit to May, when we returned to the farmer’s market at the lovely Meadville Market House.

This was our first season without the CSA. Since we no longer needed to provide produce for approximately 50 families a week, we scaled back the amounts we grew, especially when it came to greens. We still planted an abundance of kale, but only a limited amount of lettuce in the spring. With the sale of greens no longer financially necessary, we decided to ease up.

A more relaxed farm season helped us take two wonderful trips this summer. One was to visit with Jason’s family in Alexandria Bay, on the Saint Lawrence River in upstate New York. The other was hiking the mountains and waterfalls of Shenandoah National Park. This park has more than 100 drivable miles along the Blue Ridge Mountains. You can cruise through the park at 35 mph and pull up to incredible vistas along the entire way. The mountain experience left an impression on all of us, and we’re planning to explore another range next year.

Here are a few photos from our trip to Shenandoah National Park, in Virginia. These were taken on Hawksbill Summit, Shenandoah’s highest peak.

The hikes were awe-inspiring to Silas. We want to see as many national parks with him as we can.

Hi! It’s me on a mountain.

We’ve never been so sad to see a summer end. I cried harder than I have in decades the first morning that school bus pulled away.

It wasn’t long after the tears dried up, that we were beset with constant school-borne viruses. It was so bad we had to end our farmer’s market season two weeks earlier than intended. (This first year of in-person school has been a doozy. Silas is recouping from his eleventh sickness since September.)

Apart from the parade of illnesses, Silas has successfully transitioned into school. Any chance he gets, he makes it known to us that he prefers school at home, but there are perks to regular school that even he can’t deny. It’s helped tremendously that he has a very kind teacher who has nearly 30 years of experience. Art and tech are his favorite classes, and he loves all the fun that happens around the holidays.

We sure do miss him, and we can’t wait for Christmas vacation to start. (Neither can he!)

Jason will take a few days off around Christmas, too, but he’ll have to hit the ground running in January, with grant deadlines looming. He stays busy in his “hobbit hole,” as we call it. His basement office is a cozy, windowless room with an ornate door that’s rounded on the top. It was built by my uncle, and looks exactly like something you’d expect Bilbo Baggins to pop out of.

Kidding aside, I’m so proud of him. His intelligence and conscientious manner have made him an asset to many worthwhile regional projects. (For those who don’t know: Jason is a grant writer and project manager. The company he created, Spark Community Capital, will have its third anniversary next year.)

But what about the farm? Ah, yes — the farm!

Here we are at the farmer’s market.

In the spring, we’ll reconfigure the layout of the gardens. There are sections we no longer need, and we’ll till those under. This will let us brush hog those areas. They’ll be more sightly and less of a haven for varmints.

We’re also redesigning the sections that we’ll continue to plant, and rethinking the 125-foot long beds. The extra long beds were necessary when we were growing CSA-sized quantities, but now truncated rows will be more manageable.

Kale and Swiss chard growing in the Big Tunnel this spring.

And we’re yet again rethinking how we approach the farm. The goal was to become self-employed. We achieved this, although ironically not through farming. While this has been wonderful for our family, it’s left us unsure of how to proceed with the farm.

And the question was raised this year: Do we proceed?

Do we want to?

Ultimately, we decided the answer was yes. We’re going forward with Season 10. But that brings me to how we’re rethinking the farm. Our mindset for this year will be that we’re growing again for us. We’re approaching this season less like a business, and more like, well, a garden. We’re trusting our instincts and listening to our hearts. Anything else has never really suited us.

Jason plants garlic for next year.

I’m not sure how much you’ll hear from me here. There are only so many hours in a day, in a year, in a lifetime. I don’t regret how I’ve spent mine in the past nine years, but I do have a strong sense of how I want to spend the next decade. Merry Christmas, friends. And may you make excellent use of your hours in the new year, too.

~ Stella

How I found relief from costochondritis

About five years ago, I developed a dull ache in my chest. At that time, I was farming and doing overly intense workouts. I figured the discomfort would go away in time. But instead, the pain went from dull to an inflamed sensation that worsened at night. It became so painful that I couldn’t take deep breaths. I (stupidly) didn’t seek help, and kept telling myself it would get better on its own.

And while the pain would lessen in the winter, as soon as a new farm season rolled around in March, it came back in full force. It took me two seasons to finally tell Jason. (For me, telling someone meant having to admit to myself that I had a problem.) When I finally did come clean, he felt terrible and immediately sought answers.

What I was experiencing was costochondritis. It’s an inflammation of the cartilage that connects the ribs to the breastbone. Pain caused by costochondritis can mimic a heart attack or other heart problems. Medical websites say it has no apparent direct cause, and treatment focuses on easing the pain while you wait to get better. It’s more common in women. Some medical websites classify costochondritis as “relatively harmless,” but while it may not be dangerous, it sure makes a person miserable. Even when I wasn’t having a total flare up, the dull pain remained and my breaths were shallow. When it was really bad, it felt like I was suffocating and made me panicky.

All of our research wasn’t turning up any relief. Since everything we read focused on costochondritis being a chest issue, I focused on my chest, doing chest-opening yoga and stretches. But none of this helped, actually it made it way worse. Visits to the chiropractor helped with other issues, but did nothing for my chest.

Then, Jason found two online physical therapists: Bob and Brad (Bob Shrupp and Brad Heineck). One of them has costochondritis. To explain the problem, they compared the ribs to rusty bucket handles — that rust needs to be worked off. They also confirmed that chest-opening exercises seemed to do more harm than good. Two of their videos turned my situation around entirely.

Here they are:

Video 1

And this one, which truly unlocked relief for me:

Video 2

Around the 10:50 mark there’s an exercise that gave me my breath back. You stand with your feet about hip-width apart, and raise up your elbows — fist pressed to palm — and swivel. I did this every morning, and noticed improvement after just a few days! After all this time? This was what I needed to do? Thirty seconds of simple motion!

I’ve been doing this exercise regularly for about three years now, especially after a day of weeding or heavy lifting. The pain still flares up now and then, but the swivel motion eases it, and lets me breathe normally.

~ Stella

Time for a new chapter

We have four lists hanging on our fridge. They’re lists of what we’re planning to put in the last CSA shares of the season. We’ve made these lists for eight years. In that time, we’ve packed weekly produce shares, June through October, for more than 300 households total. That’s close to 6,000 shares.

After eight years, we’re opening to a fresh page for the farm, and our family, and doing so means it’s time to end the CSA. We’re grateful for everything the CSA helped us do, and we’re also excited for the future.

We’ve found ourselves in the fortunate position of no longer requiring the CSA to financially sustain our family or farm. If you’ve followed our story, you know that Jason left his full-time job in December. He started his own business as a grant writer and project manager. To our complete and joyous surprise, this business was immediately able to support our family.

And while this was wonderful news for us, it did upend our year. This was supposed to be the season when we farmed full time, with Jason’s new business operating on the side for added financial security. To keep ourselves sane, we decreased our farm workload in the ways that we could. This meant focusing on the CSA, while drastically scaling back retail sales, and only attending the farmers market when it did not put too much strain on our week.

Next year, we’ll be doing the reverse. We’ll return to selling to local outlets, and we’ll be regulars again at the farmers market.

This farm reset will open up time and energy for long overdue personal and professional goals, and allow us much more time with family. It will also allow us to retool the farm. We’re drawing up plans for an entirely new farm layout (one of the benefits of a business built of soil!), and rethinking what we’ll plant and how much. There’s a new, exciting energy flowing into our lives.

We’re grateful for everything the CSA gave us. It’s because of the CSA that there’s even a farm. And it gave us the confidence to make the leap to self-employment, a decision that has changed our lives in the most fantastic way. Along the way, we’ve met people who will be special to us always. We’ve finished Part 1 of the farm’s story. Time for the sequel.

~ Stella

Best laid plans

If you know what they say about “best laid plans,” then you’re wiser than we were last year. We thought we had 2022 all figured out, and then it unfolded in a completely unexpected way from the start.

We’re happy to report that the unexpected turn of events this year has been a true gift to our family. Last year, Jason started his own grant writing and project management firm. Basically, he's continuing to use the skills he acquired during his decade in local government, but in the private sector on his own schedule.

This was supposed to be a side gig — just something for added financial security. As soon as he left his full-time county government job in December, his new business took flight — and it hasn’t touched down yet. We even recently completed the steps necessary to make me an employee of the business. We definitely did not see that coming.

To keep ourselves from going crazy with work this year, we’ve scaled back how much we harvest and sell. While the CSA remained unchanged from last year (about 50 families, 18 weeks of produce), we decided to step back from online sales and regular farmers market appearances. We LOVE setting up a stand at the Meadville Market House on Saturday mornings, but we could not maintain that level of time/physical labor every week this season. We skipped the past few Saturdays to catch up on the farm and enjoy family time — and just breathe! FYI: We do expect to be at the farmers market this Saturday (July 30).

We’re learning to set boundaries with the farm, and work in general. This season, our farm priority is the CSA. Beyond that, we’re not doing anything if it stretches us too thin.

We definitely didn’t see this plot twist coming, but we’re glad it did. We’ve been 100 percent self-employed for seven months now. Our new business has given us financial freedom and freedom when it comes to the farming choices we make. We’re still busy making plans for 2023, of course, because we’re planners. But we’re remembering to factor in enjoying life and our family and friends in those plans.

~ Stella

Spring so far

It’s been a blur of baseball, cyber school, farming, and other work. So it goes with spring.

It’s Silas’s first year playing ball. Grandpa Gary mowed a ball field at the farm. We’ve had a lot of fun helping Silas practice and watching him play. By extremely lucky circumstances, I get to watch my 7-year-old and my 74-year-old dad play ball.

The photo above is how every season begins — with Jason starting dozens of seed flats. If you follow along, you know Jason quit his full-time, off-farm job in December. He also started his own company — a grant-writing and project management firm. We were both surprised — OK, stunned — at how quickly this took off. Another one of life’s plot twists. It’s been great for our family, but it’s re-shaping our year. We’re also going through the formal process of officially making me an employee of the new business. We’re still figuring out what a “typical” week looks like during the growing season, and trying to rein in the number of hours worked.

So this winter and early spring, Jason ended up poking seeds in potting soil late into the night once more. We thought days like that were behind him, but we were wrong. We were mistaken to think this new life would neatly click into place, but we’re figuring it out.

This garlic was planted last autumn. We’ll harvest mid summer.

The night Silas scored his first run!

First market of the season. You’ll find us every Saturday at the Meadville Market House at 9 a.m. We’ve been loving our market Saturdays. For one thing, the Friday harvest is so much easier and more enjoyable with Jason and me working as a team. The Market House has been a bustling place Saturday mornings. Opening the doors and at times seeing people milling all around has been awesome.

Down to the last chive. Someone came along and bought it.

Notice the change in attire from Week 1 to Week 2.

The Big Tunnel after Jason straightened it out and I put straw down thick. Green onions, oregano, spinach, broccoli, and radishes were growing earlier this spring. The empty rows now have tomatoes, peppers, and cucumbers.

Here we have garlic, kale, broccoli, and lettuce. You may notice the lack of landscape fabric. We learned last season that fabric is a no-go for anything in spring, and unwise year-round for any crop voles find delicious and we hold precious — like lettuce.

The onions are doing terrific. We put down thick straw and planted directly into it. We won’t worry about those anymore until late summer.

Above is a photo of the tomatoes and peppers we planted Memorial Day weekend.

Hope you’re enjoying spring. The CSA will likely start in the third week of June. We’ll send out plenty of notifications beforehand. We’ll probably open our online orders around that time, as well.

In the meantime, if you’re in the Meadville area, come see us on Saturday mornings.

~ Stella

Connections to the past

My mother’s mother was entirely Polish; her name was Esther. Esther’s father sailed from Poland to America, where he met his future wife, who was also Polish. (My mother’s father was Lithuanian.) My grandmother could speak and read Polish. When she gave us the Polish word for something, she lowered her voice, like the sounds were coming from deep down, and she’d punctuate the lesson with a big, proud grin.

My mother moved away from her Ohio family long before I was born, and I didn’t feel much connection to her Polish ancestry. When we’d return for weddings, I’d scramble out of the way to avoid being swept up in the fearsomely fast polkas. (Polka, by the way, isn’t actually a Polish invention. My indifference in acknowledging this fact is proof of how removed I am from my Polish roots.)

But a few years ago, I started following the site, Polish Your Kitchen, out of curiosity. It was fun to read the recipes, but most of them were either meat-centric or more complicated than I was willing to tackle.

Then, I came across Anna’s recipe for zupa fasolowa (fah-soh-loh-vah), a hearty Polish bean soup. I was curious to try it, so I added vegetarian bacon and marjoram to my grocery list. It had been awhile since my cupboard was stocked with marjoram. Apparently, it’s a traditional Polish seasoning.

When it was time to make the soup, Jason helped, and we invited Silas to drag a chair to the counter. When Silas was little, he used to drive me crazy with always wanting to help in the kitchen. Now, sometimes I’ll ask him to help, and he’ll say, “That’s OK,” and keep playing. But tonight, he wanted to be included in this mom-and-dad activity, plus he was highly curious about this fake bacon we kept talking about.

While Jason diced carrot and onion, and taught Silas how to cook (fake) bacon, I chopped potatoes. Everything smelled so good, and we had a warm fire crackling. Silas was chatty and precious, standing on his chair and stirring the pot. I just felt so damn happy.

You know when you’re cooking something, and you just know it’s going to be delicious? That’s how I felt, and a sample taste proved me right. This soup’s combination of smokiness and allspice makes it warm and cozy. I’m proudly adding this Polish zupa to my repertoire.

I also learned a good tip from Anna’s recipe. To thicken your water-based soup with flour (and keep it clump free), separately whisk together cold water and a few tablespoons flour, then add it to your cooked soup ingredients.

Here’s my zupa fasolowa.

History has been on my mind lately.

Earlier this week, the snowpack we’ve had since early January was coaxed to slush by warm southwest winds and sunshine. We finished up school early so we could enjoy the novelty of deep snow and balmy breezes. Even Luna was panting by the time we reached the farm.

Inside the high tunnels, it was hot enough to strip to a T-shirt. We took down the rest of the tomato hooks, and then relaxed in the sun. Jason and Silas tossed a ball the length of the Big Tunnel for Luna, and I rested on a bucket.

After a few minutes, head-to-toe warmth in February had me under its spell. I sank down on a straw-covered row and closed my eyes. When Jason and Silas left for home, I stayed. It felt like I was on the beach, with the wind like waves and the whipping plastic like sails. Last season’s straw had been soaking up the sun all morning. I’ve never had a spa treatment, but I don’t think they could do much better. It was one of those rare moments of luxuriant rest that come only in solitude, especially if you’re a mother.

Lying there, my thoughts turned to who else might have set foot here. Who has passed through this place? I’m approaching middle age, and it has me thinking often about those who came before me and those who will follow. This stage of life has that effect.

Before it was our farm, there were hooves that pressed the grass into the earth. My parents’ horses. But this equine fact is the extent of my definite knowledge of this land. It’s only been in my family about 30 years. However, there are ruins that provide a major clue to its history.

An old homestead lays at the bottom of the hill. A foundation remains from a home, and there’s a stone springhouse guarding a still prolific spring. You’re guaranteed to find broken crockery in the trickle that leads from the springhouse. Judging from the towering heights of the apple trees in the old orchard, they were likely planted by that farm family. Surely one of them tread where I lay.

I don’t know when the land was cleared. But it must have been woods at one time. Perhaps a tree grew exactly where I lay, and an ax man braced himself in this spot.

And before that, perhaps a leather-wrapped foot stepped softly here, heading downhill to what we know as the East Branch of Little Sugar.

All the possibilities suddenly spooked me, and I sat up, wanting to sever the connection between the ground and my thoughts. Imagine all that may have transpired in this spot? Could there have been incidents of great personal significance? A death? A birth? Or perhaps it was an ephemeral encounter. Just a hunter traversing the woods. Those kind of thoughts get you thinking about your own fleeting time walking the earth. And who will touch this ground decades from now, or centuries? They’ll never know that I kneeled here to pick peppers and cucumbers, and had some of the happiest moments with my family. And they would never guess that I laid on a bed of straw and wondered about them.

~ Stella

Kicking caffeine: from withdrawal to 6 months later

Yes, that’s a lemon, not coffee. It’ll make more sense later.

I started drinking coffee around age 9. In my parents’ defense, they brew coffee so weak you can see through it. But ever since, I have loved - no, worshipped - coffee. My first solo outing as a kid was actually to a coffee shop. We were visiting my grandparents in Ohio, and there was a place a few blocks down the street. Little Stella slapped on her snap bracelets, stuffed the pages of her notebook-paper novel into what was no doubt a sparkly folder, and proudly walked downtown. It was an afternoon of pure bliss, and coffee and writing (productivity, actually) remained neatly zippered together in my mind for more than two decades after.

But I started to doubt the benefit of my relationship with coffee earlier this year after investing a lot of time into learning about women’s health. The most influential voice was Alisa Vitti, founder of Flo Living, and author of Woman Code. Her life’s work is helping women sync with the four phases of their monthly cycle.

In her lectures and on her website, she advises women to quit caffeine. While I followed many of the recommendations in her book, and was happy with the outcomes, I let the caffeine warning fall on deaf ears because I absolutely did not want to give it up.

As the months passed, Vitti’s advice showed me how delicate a balance eating and drinking can be, and this pushed me toward suspicion when it came to the psychoactive beans that had started all my days for the past 27 years.

Vitti’s main argument against caffeine has to do with blood sugar. She writes on Flo Living that drinking coffee before breakfast (as I usually did) can “sabotage your blood sugar.” Vitti’s been saying this for years, but her assertion is now backed by research published in the British Journal of Nutrition.

Unstable blood sugar is detrimental for a long list of reasons. In the short term, when we begin the day with a spike, it sends us on a rollercoaster of moods and cravings for the rest of the day, Vitti says. It also sets off a cascade of hormone imbalances that have a big impact on a woman.

Vitti puts it this way:

“The problem is when blood sugar rises too high, as is the case when we eat a lot of sugar or, according to this new study, when we have coffee before breakfast. Blood sugar surges and so does insulin, and those spikes interfere with ovulation, which messes up progesterone production and contributes to one of the most common, and most troublesome, hormone imbalances: estrogen dominance.”

And on top of that:

“Overexposure to sugar and insulin can also contribute to fat storage and weight gain, and that can make estrogen dominance even worse. Add all this together with the synthetic estrogens we’re exposed to in the environment, and you’re set up for progesterone deficiency, estrogen dominance, and symptom-causing hormone imbalances. Hormone imbalances are why women in their reproductive years experience problems like PMS, acne, bloating, infertility, heavy or irregular cycles, and other hormone issues.”

Caffeine also spikes cortisol (the stress hormone) production in women, Vitti says, and this also leads to multiple issues.

After learning all of this, I began to accept that coffee might have me trapped in a vicious cycle.

As writer Michael Pollan explains in his book, This Is Your Mind on Plants, the main reason that morning cup of coffee feels like throwing open a sunny window to the day has less to do with caffeine’s stimulant nature, and more to do with how that first taste is actually relieving our first withdrawal symptoms. Pollan abstained from caffeine for three months and wrote all about it in his book, along with an illuminating history of coffee.

When we eat or drink caffeine, the caffeine molecule fits in a receptor in our central nervous system. By taking up this position, it blocks the neuromodulator that would naturally link up with that receptor. The particular neuromodulator that caffeine disrupts is called adenosine. Adenosine, when able to bind with its receptor, has a sleep-inducing effect on the brain. Throughout the day, adenosine builds up in our bodies and prepares us for rest. Actually, it pressures us to rest. So when caffeine swoops in and binds with adenosine’s receptors, it interferes with our desire to sleep. Spend even a few minutes researching how sleep works, or go a few hours without it in a night, and you know exactly why this is problematic. Caffeine insidiously presents itself as the cheerful solution to our problems each new morning, when it’s actually the agent of all the chaos.

Vitti would add that caffeine’s tampering with sleep also throws a woman’s hormones off kilter, leading to a wave of problems.

But as with just about any health matter, the more research you do, the more confusing and conflicting the information gets.

In Bill Bryson’s fascinating book, The Body, I noticed that he has only one line about caffeine. Caffeine “slightly counteracts” adenosine’s effects, he writes, “which is why a cup of coffee perks you up.” Even if this is true, I certainly drank a lot more than a single cup in a day, so my reality likely leaned toward Pollan’s more alarmist findings.

For most people, the quarter life of caffeine is about 12 hours. That means that 25 percent of the caffeine you consumed at noon is still coursing through you at midnight.

And then there’s research that supports coffee’s possible health benefits. At first glance, these studies may seem to let coffee off the hook, but Vitti points out that the information we have about coffee’s health benefits is derived from mostly scientific research that focuses on men.

Ultimately, I decided to try Vitti’s advice. I went cold turkey in August 2021. Here’s a daily journal of my withdrawal experiences, and an update on six months later.

NO-CAFFEINE JOURNAL

DAY 1 - Started the morning optimistic about my caffeine-free adventure. I drank two cups of caffeine-free tea, and ate a big breakfast. I did a few chores and then made lunch. Then, at 1 p.m. EST, the ground split open under my feet, spewing forth hellfire. That’s how it felt anyway. I was tired to the bone and had a pounding headache. The light through the windows hurt my head and I was in a fog. The world literally didn’t look right, and that was the weirdest part. There was an actual blueish haze everywhere. After a nap, the headache was so bad I made myself a damned cup of coffee and took an ibuprofen. The headache eased, but I remained super sluggish. These are all common caffeine withdrawal symptoms. Caffeine withdrawal, I later learned, is actually included in The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (the DSM-5).

DAY 2 - The cold turkey approach was clearly a no-go, so I had two cups of caffeine-free tea before breakfast, and one cup of caffeinated coffee with my meal. I drank it quickly and didn’t tote my mug around all morning as I usually did. I had a slight headache and felt a little tired. I made a point to stay hydrated and took an ibuprofen.

DAY 3 - No time for lollygagging with tea this morning. Needed to beat the heat and dig potatoes and pick tomatoes. One cup of coffee with breakfast. (Jason had bought black cherry coffee - my favorite!) No headache or brain fuzziness. No need for ibuprofen. Energy was high.

NEXT THREE DAYS - I kept the single cup of coffee with breakfast routine.

DAY 7 - I made myself a 3/4 cup of coffee with breakfast, took a few sips, then forgot about it. I probably only drank a 1/2 cup.

DAY 8 - Skipped coffee altogether. Around 3 p.m., I was extremely tired. It was Saturday, so I took a long nap.

DAY 9 - Skipped coffee again. Made myself a golden coconut milk tea (recipe below).

THE FIRST FEW MONTHS…

The list of potential caffeine withdrawal symptoms is a real bummer. In addition to temporary headache and fatigue, there are some truly dispiriting ones, like decreased focus and motivation, and a loss of confidence. Those were the three that freaked me out. As a writer, concentration and the desire to move projects forward is critical; plus, I need to live in a bubble of delusion that convinces me what I’m doing is worthwhile.

In those first few months, Pollan captured exactly how I felt in his own description of life after caffeine. He said he felt “like an unsharpened pencil.” He wrote that “this new normal world seemed duller to me. I seemed duller, too.” That was me to a T.

I do have an addendum to these first couple of months. This was far from my best year, so I don’t know if my sudden depletion of joie de vivre was thanks to a lack of caffeine, or just life in general kicking me in the pants. During that same time, I also ended up with a virus (not Covid) that led to bronchitis, and was sick for about five weeks, so my low energy could have just as easily been from illness than lack of caffeine. Bronchitis and no caffeine; I was barrels of fun.

My biggest fear was that cutting caffeine would permanently impact my creativity. A little research ahead of time would have assuaged this concern. Since caffeine withdrawal did decrease my motivation and made me feel duller, the matters became conflated in my mind. In other words, no coffee, no think-y.

HOW ABOUT NOW?

It’s been six months since my last sip of caffeinated coffee or tea. In the mornings, I drink hot lemon water (it’s seriously refreshing), or sometimes decaf with a small amount of cream. Most decaf coffee actually does contain a trace amount of caffeine. Decaffeination removes around 97 percent or more of the caffeine in the beans. For comparison, a cup of decaf typically has about 2 mg of caffeine, whereas a cup of regular coffee has about 95 mg. When I do drink decaf in the morning, I drink it with breakfast.

Jason still has his morning psychoactive cup, and he buys the most delicious smelling local beans. I enjoy the aroma of the coffee each morning, but I don’t feel a longing to brew any for myself.

The overarching sense of dullness eventually wore off. I don’t feel like an unsharpened pencil anymore, but I do feel like I’ve undergone some kind of softening. Not intellectually (that would be bad!), but there’s been a change in my overall mood. There’s been an internal quieting. Most noticeably, I’m less irritable, especially with my young son. Now, again, my life has calmed down from last year, so maybe less stress in general is the reason for these changes. I don’t know, but six months out, I’m not interested in finding out. To put it simply, I’m over coffee.

I’ve come to appreciate my baseline energy level. There is a sense of peace in knowing that the energy I have is a credit to sleep and nutrition and exercise, rather than a drug.

A FEW RECOMMENDATIONS IF YOU WANT TO QUIT

1.) Don’t go cold turkey. Ease off caffeine. This might take you a week or two or more, depending on how much caffeine you eat/drink.

2.) Have a go-to substitute drink, like caffeine-free tea or lemon water. Check out the golden coconut milk recipe below.

3.) Find yourself a quality decaf. I’d recommend a local roaster and whole beans. Remember, most decaf does have a small amount of caffeine. I spend a little extra money for the water process decaf vs. the chemically-processed decaf. A big part of my coffee habit was the comfort in sitting down with a nice, hot, creamy cup, and I found myself missing it most when I was say, settling in to call a friend, or on a rainy afternoon with a book. The decaf option fills this need perfectly fine.

GOLDEN COCONUT MILK

About 1 1/2 cups of water

2 tablespoons coconut milk

1 teaspoon turmeric

Pinch of pepper

Cinnamon, to taste

Nutmeg, to taste

Honey, to taste

DIRECTIONS: Heat water and coconut milk. Add turmeric, pepper, cinnamon, nutmeg, and honey. Stir.

~ Stella

1,008 CSA shares packed - time to turn the page to Season 8!

1,008 CSA shares grown on about 3 acres by 2 1/2 farmers (counting Silas). That was Season No. 7 at Plot Twist Farm!

The end of the year was an unusual one. We had someone in our care, and this, added to the fact that Silas and I have shifted our focus to cyber school, halted my farm work almost entirely, leaving Jason to finish out the CSA season pretty much on his own.

On Saturday, Jason and Silas delivered the last shares of the year. Afterward, we hopped in the car and returned the person in our care to their home. Party animals that we are, we celebrated the end of the season by collapsing in the living room.

But, Jason did have a little surprise up his sleeve, or I should say, hidden away among the farm’s seed stash. After briefly disappearing downstairs, he came back up with a small gray box. The appearance of this little parcel, even for a minimalist such as myself, was quite thrilling. What could it be?! When I lifted the lid, my usual disdain of earthly trinkets was replaced by delight at the sight of a delicate, gold-dipped birch leaf pendant.

He settled on birch after reading it was a symbol of new beginnings. It’s one of the first trees to come to leaf in the spring, and there’s all manner of interesting Celtic mythology surrounding birch. During the Celtic celebration of Samhain (what’s considered Halloween in the U.K. nowadays), bundles of birch twigs were used to usher out the spirits of the past year. As you know from what I shared last week, our minds are all about a new beginning now.

When a season draws to a close, I usually have a sense of relief. Then, a few weeks later, as we pull out the brown tomato vines and put away water sprinklers, I get the itch to start all over again.

But this year, the feeling of relief that ushered out the season has swirled with excitement for next spring like an internal cyclone. I’m not wishing away autumn and winter, because I love all the seasons and don’t generally hurry away any time in my life, but when I picture next year, with all three of us going about our farm work, happily tucked inside the fence, my heart beats fast.

The conclusion of this season was supposed to bring a close to this blog, as well. After writing sporadically about the farm for the past few years, last winter I committed to weekly posts to document the season. Now here we are. We’ve gone through a whole season together. But next year is a new beginning. It will be uncharted territory for us. There’s so much potential. So much to be gained and learned. And as long as I find writing about it enjoyable, I’d like to keep going.

As I finish this, I hear Jason’s chainsaw in the woods. It’s time to think about firewood and kindling and other cold weather preparations. The propagation tunnel is full of seedlings in bad need of transplanting in our winter gardens. When life is all about growing and creating, there’s always a new beginning just around the corner.

~ Stella

Two-thirds of the way through our best & perhaps hardest season

“The first week of August hangs at the very top of summer, the top of the live-long year, like the highest seat of a Ferris wheel when it pauses in its turning. The weeks that come before are only a climb from balmy spring, and those that follow a drop to the chill of autumn, but the first week of August is motionless, and hot. It is curiously silent, too, with blank white dawns and glaring noons, and sunsets smeared with too much color.” - Natalie Babbitt, from Tuck Everlasting

Doesn’t she describe the beginning of August perfectly? I’m behind the times with this passage, but an earlier draft of this post was written in the first week of August, at about the half-way point of the CSA season, but now we’re two-thirds through, and it feels like the Ferris wheel is on the downturn again.

But let’s backtrack a bit to the half-way point because there’s a clear shift in priorities on the farm at that mark. From March through late July, it’s all about seeding, transplanting, and upkeep. That five-month stretch is intense. During this time, Jason works close to 90 hours a week between the farm and his full-time day job. I clock around 55 hours for the farm, not counting time spent on my separate writing life. Let me put it out here honestly: the current system technically works, but it’s not at all our vision for our family and the farm in the long term. The set up of our lives right now is more about surviving the season, rather than thriving in it.

Around Week 9 of the CSA season, there comes a change almost overnight. It’s the half-way point, and time has run out to seed and transplant most things. And although we’ll continue transplanting lettuce and some fall and winter crops, the time has come to harvest. All of those pepper plants and tomato vines are living out their intended purpose.

Given the design of our life at this junction, there is no time or energy for weeding, or a lot of other tasks that aren’t deemed completely necessary. In the weeks ahead, given our current workload, we must use our strength for harvesting. It makes no sense to weed a parsley patch, when there are ripe heirloom tomatoes to gather. We’ll shift back to more upkeep when the season winds down in autumn.

It’s also that time when you realize summer won’t be here much longer. The other day, Silas and I walked down to look at his garden row. It grows beside a patch of sunflowers and zinnias. I knew they were all in bloom, but only because they sort of flashed red and orange and yellow as I drove by in the pickup every day. This was the first time I stood in front of them and really saw them, all full of beating butterfly wings and humming bees.

Now, let me tell you why this season has been our best, and maybe one of our most difficult. (It’s a toss up between this year and season two.) Here’s the cliff notes version of the farm’s history.

In the beginning, it was a little backyard operation. The next year, we relocated the farm to its current location, and did all farm work by hand. I was still working full-time, and the season was hard, especially for Jason, who sustained an injury and then a wicked case of shingles. In season three, I left my full-time job, and we bought the walking tractor. In seasons four and five, we hired a part-time helper. Then, in season 6, the pandemic shut down Jason’s workplace and he worked from home for an entire season. This freed up his commute times and lunch breaks, and frankly, more of his mental and physical energy, and also meant he could care for Silas while I was up at the farm.

This year, he’s back in the office full time, and we opted to forgo help. So it’s been a tough one.

At the same time, it’s been our best season for several reasons. Chief among them, of course, is the deer fence. The stress of that situation, and all the extra work it created in past seasons is over. There’s also the landscape fabric, and the straw, and the ability to draw on seven years of farming and business experience.

There’s another reason why each week of this season feels like another leg of a difficult journey behind us. A seismic life change is coming our way in 2022. I want so badly to tell you about it, but it’s still a little too soon. As Tom Petty sang, “The waiting is the hardest part.” This season has been one of the hardest because we’re waiting for something. A change is coming.

~ Stella

Um… those aren't potatoes

On Sunday morning, we were digging up red potatoes when the potato digger unearthed these soft, ping-pong ball-sized eggs. They’re the handiwork of a snapping turtle mama.

We’d unknowingly met the likely mother about two months ago. She was trapped inside the deer fence, and we had to use a shovel and wheelbarrow to gently relocate her to the woods.

Now, you’ve probably heard the saying “meaner than a snake.” Well, it could be meaner than a turtle. She was a fierce lady. When I tried to nudge her on the shovel with a hoe, she grabbed the metal in her curved, beak-like mouth and nearly yanked it from my grasp. And when we flipped her on her shell, to better scoop her up, she flipped herself upright with one powerful flop. She weighed around 20 pounds, and was tougher than a little armored tank.

The tractor wheels and tines of the potato digger had went over the potato row about three times before we discovered the nest. We planted the potatoes in the spring, and she must have slipped in and dug a hole for her babies right under our noses.

From what we read, when relocating snapping turtle eggs, you should move them as little as possible, and try to keep them oriented the way you found them. So don’t turn them. It has to do with how the embryo is positioned.

We transported about 40 eggs to a patch of woods down near the farm pond. We dug a hole, and then put soil and compost over them and tried to hide it with leaves. Hopefully, at least a few of them will get a chance to grow up and be as mean as their mama.

We’re wondering if this was the mother turtle. We relocated her from inside the deer fence about two months ago.

~ Stella