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

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

Spring gifts

Stock image

I was about to call it a night when Jason turned to me on the couch and said, “Want to see the baby lettuces?” Tired as I was, he looked and sounded too sweet to refuse.

He has them in the basement under grow lights. Poking out of the potting soil, reaching for the light, are the tiniest lettuces possible. Just wee green slips. Baby broccoli and lots of herbs, too. The oregano is so small you have to squint to see it. And lots of kale. Seed trays are the first sign of spring for us. Here are a few more favorites:

BIRDS SINGING

Everywhere and all the time. Isn’t it a relief to hear them again?

MOSS SEASON

The moss is never more brilliantly green than this time of year. Any place it grows takes on a mysterious and enchanted appearance. Unless it’s your roof.

HOME IMPROVEMENT PROJECTS IN HIGH GEAR

We had all winter to make home interior tweaks but as usual we waited until now. Maybe it’s because the clock is about to run out on such projects, when farming takes over in early spring. Or maybe the promise of good weather has us motivated to tackle all that needs tackling. Right now, we’re making a few inexpensive but big impact changes to my office, including green paint. And Jason taught me how to refinish my desk.

EGGS

Hurray! The chickens are laying again. This is a big deal since we go through about four dozen eggs a week. The ladies are relishing rolls in the dust on sunny afternoons. It’s nice to see them in the yard giving their feathers good shakes.

SYRUP MAKING

We put in about 10 taps. When conditions are right, we’re getting about 10 gallons of clear sap a day. It takes about 40 gallons of sap to make a gallon of maple syrup. Our goal is two gallons of syrup for the year.

TUNNEL WORK

Jason mowed inside the Big Tunnel the other day and worked up the rows. He seeded carrots, cilantro, radishes, and spinach.

BACKYARD BASEBALL

The weekend was extra warm. After an all-around great day, I was doing a few things in the house when I spied Silas and Jason playing catch in the back yard. Silas will be a minor leaguer this spring. He missed out on T-ball altogether thanks to the pandemic so Jason’s been working with him on the basics.

On this particular evening, the sun was setting behind them, and with no leaves to block the glow, they were both outlined in gold. I watched them as a warm breeze blew through the screen. Thank you, Spring, for so many gifts.

~ 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

Game for 2022 - Our holiday recap

Hairy vetch still blooming in the Big Tunnel in January.

Jason’s final day of work was before Christmas. Since he normally takes vacation days between Christmas and New Years, it didn’t feel odd to have him home these last few days.

We watched out the window for him on his last day. When the headlights cut through the December dark, Silas and I started waving like high-speed windshield wipers.

We didn’t have anything special planned. We’re the worst at celebrating things sometimes. We did, however, have a bottle of champagne Jason bought last summer to mark the end of the CSA season. That we finally got around to drinking it several months late is evidence of our weakness for celebration. Jason did have an extra-special Christmas gift for me that he and Silas managed to keep secret for weeks and they opted to give it to me then.

After putting Silas to bed, I curled up with my champagne refill beside Jason, and we enjoyed the Christmas tree lights. The couch in our living room could have just as easily been the edge of a skyscraper. This night felt exhilarating and frightening. Don’t look down. Just look out. Our new life officially started.

A few days later, it was Christmas. Since we’re vaccinated, we hosted a few small holiday gatherings with family and friends. For one night, my best friend and her family stayed with us. They have two boys about Silas’s age. Silas’s Christmas wish from Santa was that everybody stay healthy so the boys could be together. Even though it was damp and dreary, they played outside for hours, then huddled around to play Minecraft at night.

The grownups played board and card games. I’ve never been one for games. Actually, for most of my 36 years, I didn’t like playing games at all. (Aren’t I fun on paper? A frugal, caffeine-free, vegetarian, minimalist who hates games.) Maybe it’s the social isolation of the pandemic, but it felt incredible to have fun and joke together. I laughed harder than I have all year. My mother, who loves games (she made an Arcade Day for Silas once in her living room), seized on my newfound mirth and immediately scheduled a family game night.

A few days later, I had the chance to visit with a good friend who was in town. We made a moms-only trip to French Creek Coffee and Tea, and it was so nice to sip and chat in peace.

For New Year’s Eve, the weather was warm, so we spent most of the day working on the farm. Everything was frozen in time up there after an autumn that went completely haywire. Cleaning old messes and putting things away was a proper end to the year. Later that night, we put on, “It’s a Wonderful Life.” As much as I love the end of that movie, I couldn’t stop my eyes from closing about two-thirds through. Jason and Silas watched the ball drop while I snoozed. Tucked snug in my bed felt like a good way to ease into 2022.

With cool, rainy weather for New Year’s Day, we worked in the Big Tunnel, unclipping the dead tomato vines and taking down the hooks. It’s a peculiar feeling to walk along the tomato rows this time of year. The sungolds have dehydrated into orange paper lanterns. Many of the bigger red cherry tomatoes are still plump, but pinched at the top like tiny coin purses. As we unclipped the vines, we breathed in sun-dried tomatoes with an occasional whiff of rot. Mother Nature, after giving birth to another growing season, is in her postpartum again.

Jason had what felt like his “first” day today. I’ll write more about our new hybrid schedule soon. I’m honestly still wrapping my head around it, and so is he.

With such a dramatic shift in our lives, I wanted a fitting resolution for the new year. For most of my life, I’ve been someone who checks off her to-do list with an almost self-righteous vigor. In my defense, it was often necessary to keep our farm and family running. But I want to put my checklist approach away. Try something new. In short, lighten up. Maybe I’ll despise it. Maybe I’ll love it. I’m game.

~ Stella

The watermelon picnic

On a sunny, warm September evening, Silas and I rode up to the farm to pick beans. He had on his trademark look - a straw hat on a thin rope, with crimson trim and a red plastic sheriff’s badge in the center. It’s a part of his favorite outfit - his “cowboy shirt,” a button-down, brown, imitation corduroy material and blue jeans that are three inches too short.

As he climbed out of the truck, he looked over his shoulder at me from under his hat, and said, “You know where I’m going.”

“Raspberries?” I guessed.

“No, to look for McChunkys.”

Milkweed McChunkys - our nickname for monarch caterpillars. They feast on milkweed, then spin their cocoons under the leaves. In the caterpillar stage, they’re striped black and yellow, and as September passes, they take on a delightful plumpness. So, they’re, you know, Milkweed McChunkys.

Every time Silas saw me carrying another bucket of beans to the truck, he’d check to see how much longer. “Almost done,” I’d say, and he’d wander off again. He’s a patient kid.

Unable to locate a Milkweed McChunky, he eventually turned his attention to the watermelon patch. He carried over a little melon, and asked if I would “supervision” him while he cut it open.

Silas has used a knife since age three. When you watch both parents use knives all the time, and your best friend is your grandpa, who is always using his knife, the fact that you don’t have a knife starts to irk you early on.

One time, when he was four, I looked up from chopping kale to see him meandering my direction. I remember his slow, weaving route, and how he clutched one hand with the other. Oh, no, I thought. He wasn’t crying, though, so maybe it was nothing. But as he drew closer, the tension in his face was clear.

“Buddy, did you cut yourself?”

He nodded, his eyes welling up.

“Let me see, honey.”

He held up a little bloody slice on his finger. Enough to smart, but not serious. When I told him we’d go home and get a bandage and that accidents happen to everybody, the dam finally broke and he burst into sobs in my arms. I do believe that more than the pain of the cut, he feared having his knife privileges revoked.

Starting around age six, he began whittling sticks and bamboo, and my patience. He likes to sit and do it on the porch steps. After passing him for the sixth time, and watching a small branch transform into a punji stick, finally becoming more dangerous than the knife, I have to take it away from him. He gives in willingly, knowing he’s just made something no kid should have.

He’s always had a good sense about the knife, which is why he asks me to “supervision” him with a melon. I do dislike watching him cut a melon, but I have to admit that he’s careful and he knows the limits of his own strength. He understands that if he’s having to try too hard, it’s too dangerous.

After he shared the little watermelon with me, I suggested he go pick raspberries. Jason planted raspberry varieties that ripen in waves, so we have September berries. Silas said he’d wait for me to pick berries. I sighed, thinking how this would prolong an already late evening.

As I continued plucking beans, he chattered about getting a picnic ready for us. “Oh, that’s nice,” I would say, only half paying attention and trying to avoid the thorns in the beans.

When the beans were finally done, he led the way to the berries. We walked down one side, and up the other. It took awhile, since the little fellow would not be rushed during this activity, which to him is a sacred ritual. And besides, he waited ages for his bean-picking mother.

By that time, the sun had dipped below the trees, and I wanted to go home. Hopefully, he’ll forget about this picnic of his, I thought.

As I opened my mouth to say, “Alright, buddy, let’s head on home,” I saw it. I closed my lips tight and swallowed the words. He’d overturned a harvest bin for a table, and flipped over two little buckets for seats. On the table, he’d laid out two tiny watermelons, two Roma tomatoes, and a clump of wood sorrel, roots and all.

“Ready to have your picnic?” I asked instead, incredibly thankful that sometimes my brain does move faster than my tongue.

We sat down on the buckets, and under my wary eye, he cut up his second watermelon of the night, slicing and turning over and over until he had four wedges.

“I picked you some wood sorrel because I know you just love it,” he said, using his best dinner host voice. It was true, it’s a tender, lemony treat I’ve enjoyed ever since my sister-in-law first pointed it out to me a few years ago. I chewed the sorrel and eyed the Romas, wondering if I’d have to eat a whole, plain tomato next.

But a few bites of juicy Blacktail Mountain watermelon, and a couple nibbles of wood sorrel made him happy, so we collected the tomatoes, dismantled the picnic, and me and the sheriff rolled through the tall grass for home.

~ Stella

Ghost in the pine

We’re still adjusting to cyber school, and a walk after Silas’s last assignment of the day has helped us both this past week. While I prefer a quiet, non-academic stroll, Silas has insisted on toting along our tree identification book, and stopping us every few feet.

I’m not sure if it’s me, or the quality of the guidebook, but I can never seem to help him zero in exactly on what kind of tree we’re staring up at. At least for now, he seems content with painfully general classifications. “Well, I guess it’s some kind of birch,” or, “Well… we know it’s a pine.” While he is interested in trees, I suspect a bid for my attention is at the root of the field guide expeditions.

On one such walk this week, we stood about a half-mile from home, under a towering pine, thumbing through the guidebook’s illustrations.

“Look!” Silas shouted as he pointed. The exclamation made my heart thud to my stomach, and that’s where it stayed as I peered into the forest, unable to see what startled him.

“There,” he said, pointing under the giant pine.

Nestled on a bed of brown needles, her legs folded delicately under her large body was a doe, chewing a mouthful of pine needles and staring at us. Lances of late afternoon sun pierced the boughs and melted to dapples on her tan coat.

“She has whiskers. I didn’t know deer had whiskers,” Silas whispered. He was right, she did, and I didn’t know that either. They twinkled silver in the sun and flicked up and down as she chewed and blinked at us. Here we had stood, with our book, in our straw hats, thinking we were studying nature, when nature was studying us.

Being that Silas is 7, he stared at the deer in complete wonder for just a few moments, then tapped my hand to get me to open the field guide again and get back to work.

“Well, I think it’s some kind of fir, Silas. I really don’t know,” I mumbled distractedly, not wanting to give up the eye-to-eye connection with the doe. 

With another woodland giant vaguely identified, we both looked up from the pages to the hidden den. She was gone. She’d made not a sound, and not a single bough even bobbed. Her pine needle bed was pressed into a cozy bowl. Only speckles of sun warmed the spot now. I was disappointed she was gone. That we’d missed it with our noses in the book. But she never wanted to be seen in the first place, and was surely relieved to be a ghost in the woods again. ~ Stella

The 1,000-pound day

Today was a 1,000-pound day. My harvest was around 320 pounds, and I hauled it from the gardens to the truck, from the truck to the washing station, from the washing station to the cooler, with plenty of lifting and shuffling in between.

Earlier in the week, Jason was recruited to help with the CSA harvest, but he had a long week of late meetings for his off-farm job, and not enough time in the gardens. My goal was to complete the harvest to free up his evening on the farm.

Today was one of the more tiring kinds of days, but … I took breaks when I needed. Came into the house to get a drink when I wanted. Took as much time for lunch as I felt like. No one told me what to do. I only took orders from myself. I was safe. If I felt like sitting down and feeding the bunny greens, I did. At some point in the afternoon, Grandma showed up on the golf cart and sped away with Silas, giving me an opportunity to work without a child in tow.

If you’ve ever read about conditions on many huge farms, and what the workers go through, than you know I should be grateful for just one long day with so much good fortune.

My original plan was to join Jason on the farm tonight, weed the kale and put down straw. But, I’m 5 feet tall, and half a ton is a lot. After taking off my wet farm clothes that stink like green onions, I remembered that I needed to pick spinach tonight. Dammit! was my first thought. Well, I can handle one more pound or two.

~ Stella