Home is Wherever I’m With You, Part I: Coming Back

Posted on December 30, 2012 by wagnere1

12/30/12, 7:30am (Most of this was written in real time as I wandered through Philly yesterday)

I am sitting in Chapterhouse, a coffee shop in South Philadelphia, drinking a Dominican Mocha and eating pizzelles from Sarcone’s Bakery, and my brain is have this strange, double life, mashed up meeting of worlds hemorrhage.

I finally got to see The Silver Linings Playbook last night, which is a move that is particularly dear to me because the author of the book, Matt Quick, was a Collegian editor, writing man from La Salle whom I’ve met with his writer wife before. I wrote a book review of Sorta Like a Rock Star, his kick ass young adult book that came out a couple years back. This couple gives me hope and brings me home to the a place that was so defining to me as an adult, and seeing the Philly skyline on the movie screen may mean nothing to everyone else, but it got me, right down in the pit of my little college girl, writer, big dreamer heart.

So I got up at six this morning, dressed in the dark, and drove down. As I rounded the bend on 76 and the skyline came into view, even on a gray, unassuming morning like today, something in my brain stilled. Some part of me that was and is always moving in high gear just…calmed down. It was weird, but it was most welcome.

I searched for free parking down off Washington and began my trek through my old lands. I haven’t been here for some time, and I guess overall I did spend a lot of time in New York City over the past eight months. But Philly is the one that feels like my city.

But I know I have been gone. I went searching for Benna’s coffee shop – the dream of one of their Open Fire steamers hasn’t left me since last May – but the storefront appears to be a young, hip website design company now (unless I got lost and went to the wrong intersection, which is highly possible. Even when I lived here I was always losing track of Benna’s). I walked through the Italian market, mouthwatering at all the cheap produce the vendors were setting up, and laughing at the burning trash cans they always set up in winter. Derek loved the thought of a farmer’s market full of smoky burn barrels. I hope he has the chance to come see them and get a good laugh.

But I feel like I have one foot in the city and one still stretched out across the state lines at Keith’s farm. I ripped open the bag of pizzelles before the door to Sarcone’s closed behind me, and as soon as the mild taste of anise hit my tongue a dozen memories flashed into my brain. Hanging out in the herb beds up in the 09 field in my first couple weeks, planting anise, the smell and taste of its purple flowers.

This has been happening constantly. And most of the time, it’s okay. I keep walking past stores in the Italian market with garlic in my bag and a half sheet about Keith’s farm and the garlic and my forthcoming farm, but I keep panicking and walking past. I am sitting in my old coffee shops but instead of working on papers or trying to write mediocre fiction or working on something for Child Advocates, I’m researching tax-exempt status forms and IRS paperwork for new farms. I haven’t adjusted to not seeing my farmers constantly and continue to have some pathetic minor dialogue with them in my head when I make a joke no one gets or the like.

And then Sara walks in.

—

Sara has known me for longer than almost anyone at this point in my life. We met at the PA Governor’s School for the Arts, RIP, the summer before my senior year of high school. I was a scared little fiction writer who from the country who had never left town, and she was the Philly artist since the day she was born. She has been with me and supported me through the toughest, most defining moments of my life, and she is the person who sees my best self. Because that is who she is. She lights up the room, or the coffee shop, or the subway station, and then she lights you up, and you want to be that smiley, playful, loving person she draws out of you. She was the first person to show me this – back when I was 17 and awash with kid emotions – and she does it now, still. I can tell her anything and she can assess and process me and my next tentative moves about men, about my family, about my farm and about myself, in a way that is as efficient as a seasoned therapist with as much love as anyone who has ever loved me – which is why she is and has always been my wife.

She is an incredibly grounding, beautiful person. When I am lonely or upset or ecstatic and in love with my life, I just want to talk to her. So that is what I did. And things that have been so very hazy for me in my personal world for the past few months have sharpened in clarity. The one foot stuck in Keith’s farm is slowly rising to join the rest of me back here, in this new era of my life.

Sara is also an artist in the whole sense of the word. I am writing this portion of this post lying in her bed (I loiter here a lot. Her family tolerates me, to the point that they all asked about the farm when I walked in, and I love them for it), which has an instant, calming effect on me. Her walls are painted with sunflowers and trees and poetry, every nook holds a plant or a candle or an old air conditioner or a guitar or a clay sculpture. And we have this thing about her shoes. When I start new chapters of my life, Sara retires a pair of her worn, paint-covered Converse and bestows them upon me, sometimes filled with hand-sewn dolls and teddy bears, or, as in the case this holiday season, with a pot of basil to plant in them. This is a weird, quirky thing that we do as strange, silly women, but it is impossible to articulate what this means to me since the last pair six years ago. This is the ending of so much, and a shiny new start on even more. And she has almost more excited for Wagner Farmstead than I have since its outset, and that feels good.

—

I leave Sara’s and catch a ride around the block with Jess, who drove in for lunch, aka bottomless mimosas.

This Jess is a gal I met about a year and a half ago, right as I was starting adulthood in Philly, whose presence and attitude also helped change the course of my future. I was just starting to work at Child Advocates and looking for some new scenes when I signed up to run with Back on My Feet (and if you read back to the very beginning of this blog, you will see how this program made me who I am), and Jess and Sarah and Scott and Erin and Caitlin and all the runner guys I met helped me become this confident, loving person I had forgotten about during a college. And running with these guys gave me the strength to take the plunge on this whole adventure in the first place.

Scott and Sarah, my other lovely farmer/runner friends who grew up near the farm.

Jess is hilarious and sweet and interesting and interested and practical, and a million other great things. It was great to see her and catch up.

—

And then I arrived at the home of my old, dear friend Nate Adams. We watched some West Wing, grabbed some dinner and then headed off to see The Hold Steady, who may once again be my favorite band of life. If you like rock music, and guitars, and positive jams and narrative stories about druggie kids in the Midwest, you would and will love The Hold Steady. Watch this, and this, and this, and then you will understand. Craig Finn is the happiest frontman in rock music, and this kick ass rock has been a part of my history and growth for six years now. The show was awesome, and it was great to share it with someone who has always been on the ground floor of my life and has supported me and this insane endeavor from the start.

Do you need a best man? Rock star? Great friend? Secret agent? Constant chore? Here he is.

To come back to this city and see this band and spend time with such excellent and admirable people was the perfect real beginning to my time back in Pennsylvania. And tomorrow, in Philly Part II: The New Year’s Sequel, it will continue again with Olivia Biagi, my college love of my life and the girl who wrote an article for the La Salle alumni magazine about my farm adventures.

And here is that hilarious nugget, for those without Facebook.

In the new year I know I will have to knuckle down and start my planning. These things aren’t just going to fall into place. But for these few brief days, just to rehash the Keith’s farm experience with the people who matter and dream big dreams with the people who care about the adventure is all that I could ask for.

-Farmer Liz

Needed a farm picture in here somewhere. Cutting watercress at runner Sarah’s childhood home.

On Moving Home, Christmas Garlic and Real Person Life

Posted on December 27, 2012 by wagnere1

On Sunday I finished packing my car, stuffed any remaining crevices with raw milk from Freedom Hill Dairy for the last time and garlic cloves from Keith (yep, I even filled my boots with them), had a brief cry with Flavia, hugged Keith, Matt and Kobe goodbye, and moved home.

I realized on Christmas Eve, one day later, that I would not be able to settle down. Also I needed a repair foundation service because the foundation was in a really bad shape.

On Christmas day, I coerced Glenn into helping me oil his rototiller, and with the help of my cousins Greg and Allen, we tilled two 40-foot beds in the lot next to my house. That night after the rest of my family left, I went out with my headlamp, my mom’s soil knife, a yardstick and a boot full of garlic, and planted 200 cloves in the first bed.

Late night garlic party!

Yeah, it’s dark. That doesn’t stop us!

It is apparent that Mom Wagner is already concerned about my mental stability.

But with all this garlic sitting around, knowing some if it is in the ground was a huge relief. And the next morning, when everyone in the Wagner house woke up before 5am like a pack of freaks, Jess and Mom decided to join team Farmstead. We suited up, Jess in her second rate running gear and mom in her new muck boots, and went out to the farm where my uncle Butch has been piling pheasant manure for the field. We loaded up buckets and tubs in the back of Glenn’s truck, hauled them back and mom and I worked through the then frozen second bed to plant another 200 cloves and spread manure over both beds. So, 404 cloves in two days. A pretty nice haul for the Wagner women in the midst of the holidays.

The Wagner women working hard.

Mom Wags and our trusty sidekick getting our garlic maintenance on.

Christmas itself was a blast. All my aunts and uncles and cousins come to our house for a day of awesome, and everyone was excited that both Wagner daughters were home and in fighting fit. All of them offered me a couch or a room when I need a break from living at home, to which I am very, very grateful. The family got garlic and veggies and dried herbs, Mom Wagner got Carhartt hats and a Leatherman work knife, and Glenn literally got a mountain of meat from some of my favorite vendor neighbors, like a duck from Ben at Garden of Spices Poultry Farm, skate and tuna steaks from Blue Moon and Amanda and Mike’s incredible meat from Tamarack Hollow in Burlington, Vermont. Farmer Christmas was a huge success.

Christmas braising mix – it warms my heart to hear my family say they like kale.

Meat mountain! And yes, Glenn cut a Keith’s Farm-style Christmas tree, so I cleaned it up and gave it a home.

But now there are inches of snow between me and any more progress, and some of my friends are already concerned that I will snap without a task to do. But little do they know, there is always something to be done.

Now that I am confined to a house, I have been 1) forced to unpack (much to my mom’s enjoyment), 2) obligated to set up a bedroom workspace (which used to be reserved for bad fiction writing of the young adult fantasy persuasion, and then just fiction for pseudo-adults, and now farm plans and field maps), 3) coerced into blogging and listening to the last Pandora quickmix that Matthew left up on my computer before he left (not that I don’t want to blog, just that sleeping forever is so much more appealing in this icy wasteland of Pennsylvania – and the Mountain Goats just came up on this playlist, Matthew so good job), 5) moseying down to the Health Habits, the health food and supplement store where I’ll be putting in some hours to stay busy, and 6) perusing seed catalogs and using some of my sweet, sweet Christmas money to buy seeds.

So, as you can see, there is plenty to do. I just have to get it together and do it. Which can be easier said than done when you are a person who hibernates through the winter months.

But my family is excited, and it’s contagious. Everyone has some anxiety about Glenn and I functioning under the same roof, but on Christmas morning we showed each other that we might survive this. I was out running on the treadmill, he came in and got on his elliptical machine, and we ran side by side for half an hour watching Fiddler on the Roof (which, if you know anything about the musical, is one that Nate Adams refers to as “Daughters Will Kill You: The Movie”). So, you know, that’s something.

It is weird to wake up in my kid bedroom now. I’m having trouble adjusting to being around clean, non-farmer people who believe in taking showers daily and washing their dishes thoroughly. And though I had no idea this would happen so soon, I miss my Tomato Boys. I miss Keith and Flavia. And I’ll never be able to thank them for all they’ve showed me and done for me in the past eight months.

But I have a lot of catching up to do in my home state, and a lot of new adventures to begin. I can’t wait.

Christmas Farmer Liz – Yeah, maybe I wore this for the last week and a half on the farm. But with a Santa sweater like that, wouldn’t you? And sure, I look like a hot mess. But so would you if you worked three markets and were an emotional wreck right before the holidays. Womp womp womp.

-Farmer Liz

We Say Goodbye, We Say Hello

Posted on December 17, 2012 by wagnere1

One week left.

I am notorious for being an overly emotional human at all times. Especially unnecessary ones. I couldn’t tell you what side of the family I got this from, since they all think I’m crazy when I start crying during a Disney movie.

But here we are. And the last few weeks here haven’t been anything different. It’s like the end of a semester, but with more relief than a week after finals, more finality than graduation and more trepidation than I’ve felt before in my life. I am so excited for the next part of this journey, but I am so scared and sad as well.

Living with these folks for the past few months has taught me an incredible number of things about people.It’s been like a college dorm experience, living in my North Philly house with my old college roommates, and yet an entirely different beast altogether. Living together and working together was an incredible balancing act – one we all struggled with. And after Chelsea left, living with men became a completely new experience. I have learned so much about farming here, but I’ve learned a lot about trust, and the human emotional spectrum, and what it really does and doesn’t mean to be a man here, too.

It’s the night before I drive into the city for market for the first time –in Keith’s pickup with Derek, though, not the stick shift. So I’m sitting in the living room watching Mulan for some moral support. I guess you could say my time here was like that song everyone remembers from this movie – you know, “I’ll make a man out of you.”

This place and these boys (and girl) have toughened me up. I think I can hold my own with these men farmers – at market, on the farm, and at home. Maybe not in the kitchen. But you can’t win them all. Though despite what my cohorts may tell you, I can cook a decent meal without twigs now.

Coming here was a big leap of faith for me, as so much of these past eight months have been. And so onto the next one – Wagner Farmstead, ahoy. I thank Keith for taking this chance with me, and for the people who have come into my life during this adventure and those who have supported me all the way through. I went home to help my mom put up our Christmas tree on Saturday, and, as we do every year, we watched It’s a Wonderful Life. Which, of course, means we sat on opposite ends of the couch and cried for for the last ten minutes of the movie, but here we are. But that movie reminded me of something very important that I tend to forget from time to time:

“Dear George,
Remember, no man is a failure who has friends.”

I’m sure there will be more on this to come. But these guys – my brothers, my mentors, my tormentors, the source of my exasperation and exhaustion, my friends – I will never be able to thank them for all that they have done for me and helped me grow up to be.

You must be swift as a coursing river
With all the force of a great typhoon
With all the strength of a raging fire
Mysterious as the dark side of the moon

I am a woman. Hear me roar.

-Farmer Liz

Winter Is Coming….

Posted on December 2, 2012 by wagnere1

It’s December.

That means less than a month left on Keith’s Farm.

I’ve been meaning to sit down and write for some time now. But instead I’ve been hanging out with the boys, sleeping 9-11 hours a day, and pretty much shutting myself down for winter. It was a little easier to ignore winter in the city – there is still so much to do and see, and small walks in the cold lead to your destinations. Philly was great this way. But winter in the country was what destroyed me as a kid, and I feel it creeping up to do so again now.

The cold, foggy winter of Keith’s farm.

But there’s a lot of good things happening to combat these winter blues, too. Things are winding down on the farm – we took down one deer fence last week, and there isn’t much to collect in the way of greens anymore. We have a few tubs of braising mix, two and sometimes three of the hardier kales, waning tubs of mesclun, and collards. We are moving into a phase of just preparing storage crops for transit, which involves dumping them into coolers, loading the truck, and then throwing a small ceramic heater on the truck inside so everything doesn’t freeze. These are vegetables like winter squash, cabbage, carrots, the last of the celeriac and kohlrabi, potatoes and turnips. They live in the root cellar in the meantime. The days on the farm are so much slower and entail a lot less work, so now there is some time when those who are left here are hanging out in the last moments of daylight, and the rush from tomato season almost feels like a dream.

We store our crops in our root cellar.

Roots crops – what remains of our produce.

Veggie party in the root cellar!

What remains of our mesclun is living under row cover in one of the high tunnels.

Chelsea has been gone for weeks. It is strange living somewhere without any other females – Flavia is around, but only sporadically because she spends a lot of time during the week teaching in the city. But Chelsea sent me an e-mail from Africa the other day, and it was nice to read of her new challenges in adjusting to a managerial office job, and to read that she has finally finished watching The Wire. Jay has been gone for over a week as well, though I’m sure he’ll be around a bit before I move home. Mateo left during Wednesday market last week – for where, I am not sure. And sometime soon Casey will be shoving off as well. So Matthew, Matt, Derek and I are the ones left for seemingly the end of the season. Matt has moved into Jay’s old room, and Derek is about to take over Mateo’s cabin. We are downsizing for winter.

Miss Chelsea has moved on to save Africa.

Mountain Man Ready moves to a warmer climate – the house.

Our surplus of garlic is on the brain, now. With potentially Keith’s biggest garlic harvest still hanging out in the house basement and the root cellar, we have a lot to process and clean. Matthew and the boys make beautiful braids (a skill I lack pretty severely), and we’ve been selling piles of net and burlap bags. We have been selling a lot with an incorporated volume discount since Thanksgiving, but there is still so much to account for. Matt has talked Keith into asking Greenmarket for a Monday market spot as well, and it seems we’ve snagged it. I think I’m going down tomorrow with a downsized tent and a ton of garlic to try at our luck.

Garlic braids!

Me with my arch enemy, gartlic braids. I'm just not good at making artsy things.

Me with my arch enemy, garlic braids. I’m just not good at making artsy things.

Another exciting point as far as winter on Keith’s farm – Christmas decorations! Matt and Derek made some beautiful herb wreaths for the Saturday market that almost all sold. We have metal frames, and attach bunches rosemary, thyme and garlic combos to create these gorgeous little wreaths. Yesterday I went out shopping in Warwick and came back to Matt’s morning adventure – he went out into the woods, collected a bunch of conifer limbs, and created some giant garlands to sell from spruce, yew, pine and fir trees growing around the property.

Garland!

Very cool, right? And now at the end of each truck load we throw on half a dozen of Keith’s famous Christmas trees, wall trees and boughs – charming, Charlie Brown-esque litte numbers that are sustainable because they are just tops and big limbs from his massive trees. We throw the trees on top of the coolers and lugs, throw on the hand bailer, and head off for our winter markets in the city.

Bailing the first Christmas tree sold of the season.

Treeeeeeeees.

Christmas market!

I am excited at the thought of going home after a relaxing afternoon in the spa from http://www.haircrazesalons.com/ and getting ready for the next big adventure – and to visit my sister, and see my friends, and just generally unwind and sit back and think about this whole eight month journey. I’ve learned a lot about farming and a lot about myself, but when you’re in the thick of it, it can be hard to sit back and process everything. I am excited, but I am scared and sad and pretty regularly overwhelmed. Last night Matt said that the hardest part of all this is having to think of everything at once – planning a field map and deciding what plants to grow and working out a planting schedule for all of it – and right now, as I lie in bed feeling achy from the cold, it’s all daunting.

But I’ve got a family who is geared up and ready to help. I’ve got an uncle who has been delivering pheasant manure to the farm, a dad who found the perfect tractor (though she’s still nameless), cousins who are curious, supportive and helpful, and a mom who is impatient to come be a mom farmer. I have friends who are excited for me to be back and who already want up on these vegetables, whatever they happen to be. I have co-workers to help me plan and help me out in a hundred little ways – they make me laugh and hug me when the cold is too cold, they tolerate my cartoon movies, they cook for me. We all want to make the most of the time we have left here. And despite the snow and the ice, I am looking forward to December.

No, I don’t know how to drive this tractor yet. I’m just sitting on it.

–Farmer Liz

Farmer Liz

An organic journey in the Lehigh Valley

Monthly Archives: December 2012

Home is Wherever I’m With You, Part I: Coming Back

On Moving Home, Christmas Garlic and Real Person Life

We Say Goodbye, We Say Hello

Winter Is Coming….