A Garden Update: End of the Season

I am never a fan of the end of the season, but I realize it is necessary, and in many ways is a metaphor for life. The end of the season comes with the overgrown beauty of the untamed, but with the knowledge that that freeze and frost will soon bring it all to its knees. The return to the earth is a beautiful one, but one that is filled with sadness. Soon the ground will be bare and uncovered, dormant, at rest for the cycle to begin again.

I roam the garden each day, especially in the golden light of the warmest hours of the day. I notice the small changes of color, of remaining growth, of the breakdown of the once mighty stalks and blooms. I still find beauty in it all, even if all the zinnia blooms have been harvested for seed.

The gourds continue to dry, but soon must be taken in to the barn so they can properly dry. My goal is to have five giant bushel gourds for next year’s displays. There will be two dozen loofas to turn into sponges for Christmas time gifts. I believe gardening should be a communal thing. I grow an abundance so that I can give it away. I believe a fruitful life is parallel to having a garden that produces an excess.

The tobacco sticks, used for staking the tomatoes and for fences, are slowly removed so the bush hog can come through. My fear is if the garden is left totally to its own it will be a mud filled mess come spring. I envy those that can left their garden winter on its own, but soon the technologies of man will be used to clear the garden in a way that’ll ensure an early spring planting….one that I will soon begin to prepare for.

An Attempt at Blogging...Here Goes!

I’m not good at blogging. I’m good at story telling, but that implies you’re around my dining table, or perhaps on my porch. We’re rambling and ranting, telling of the old days, the glory days, or the days yet to come. Blogging though, well it feel like talking to a wall. They say there is value in it though, especially if you’re as good of a story teller as I am. Especially if you have the wide range of experience and friends and contacts and lives lived, like I have. Perhaps that sounds cocky, but it isn’t, it is the result of a life well lived. My greatest strength in life is a fearless spirit that always wants to roam. I crave experience, connection, and conversation. I do not crave the monotony of the day to day, the laborious life does not appeal to me in a way I wish to share. I believe in a strenuous life, but one that is lived humbly in one’s own garden with one’s nose to the ground. I believe in tending one’s garden first, for how else will you have the fruit of the spirit necessary in which to live.

I have never been good at blogging. It is hard for me to feel like I have stories worth sharing here, it is hard for me to believe that anyone will read what I have to say, but I am told I should write anyways. So I will.

For a very long time I have had extreme burnout, crippling burnout. The year before the tornado I saw myself finally come out of that, only to go right back in as I navigated reconstruction, repairs, and the stress that came with that. I wasn’t feeling very inspired. In reality I was just depressed, and it felt like a slingshot after the amazing year I had had before. Loneliness crept in on top of it all, and in the two years since I truly felt like I had nothing worth saying. However I kept living, I kept exploring, and I kept documenting the journey. I knew eventually I would return to life and to my passions of story telling. Perhaps I might even develop a new found love of blogging.

I did write and photograph a book during those two years. A task that I shouldn’t put lightly. It was a great undertaking. A task that forced me to muster all my confidence both for my words and my ability to use a camera. I had pages to fill. The result was a beautiful book, one that I am very proud of, and one I hope you own. It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. I simply didn’t have the confidence in myself to create it without great delay.

Now life has settled down. Construction is almost complete. Most days I do feel like getting out of bed, even if today was a day I did not feel like it, even though I did. I sit here at my window desk, a country Carrie Bradshaw if you will. I ponder out the window, the leaves continue to fall down. Life has returned to the farm. Bon Ive plays over the speakers in the other rooms. A candle burns, a candle I poured myself, after learning how to make candles a few moons ago. I sit here pondering the future, pondering the past, and wondering what will I have to say…

Late Autumn at Orchard Beach: An Essay

The light was perfect that day, a perfectly overcast day in early November, the first week of November, the very best week to visit New York City if you ask me. He asked if he could show me Orchard Beach, his favorite beach in the City. I’d never been there before and agreed that we must go. The map said it was out in the Bronx, a stretch from where we were at some corner flea market in Bushwick. I’d bought a box of of transferware, the pattern just felt right. A memento of a very good week, perhaps the best week of the year to visit this city. The pattern was made of brown leaves and ivy, a reminder of the changing and falling autumn leaves. The beach would carry those very same shades.

The beach, a place that was man made, back during the Robert Moses years, was a wide curved swath of land, part sand from New Jersey, part landfill from the old days of old New York. The island and the forests and the bay around the beach and its extensive parking lot, this week home to a circus, promising to be the best you’ve ever seen, is where the true magic was. He took my hand and led me into the woods, old worn foot paths guided our way. The colors of the late autumn leaves made everything feel so alive. The City has a way of holding on to the autumn color long after the Hudson and the Catskills have marched towards the winter months. Geese and ducks filled the waters just beyond the cattails and the weathered reeds. The landscape had a way of creating a soundtrack to mix with the crunching of leaves underfoot. The crashing waves echoed over each foot step and the hushed mumbles of our voices. We walked together as one, arms covered in jackets, intertwined with each other in a way The Judd’s sang about in Young Love. We’d pause for me to take these photographs. I wanted to remember every view of this day. In my mind these images would tell the story of perhaps the beginnings of my next great love.

A Garden Update

My August garden has been one of my very best, excluding the tomatoes of course, ‘cause they didn’t survive much past June. This year has been one weather extreme after another. A wet spring led to a very dry spell, then what seems to be several inches of rain every other week. The weeds have taken these weather patterns as a challenge to be as lush as possible, and the vegetables, well a lot of those have seen better years.

As we head into the final week of August the third planting of corn has turned into the very best planting of the year. The first two were stunted by the early summer lack of rain, but this third round has produced a bumper crop, one that will mostly go into the freezer for winter luncheons and Sunday suppers. The squash died weeks ago and they haver very bunch been missed. Usually a stable in my summer cooking, I have had to turn to using cucumbers and cabbage in creative ways to fill the zucchini and squash sized holes.

The broom corn and zinnias have created walls around the garden and help hide how badly the deer ruined the sunflower rows before the electric fence went in. Cantelope and watermelons continue to produce, as the guards and pumpkins wait for their time to replace their summer glory with the vines of fall.

The garden this year has been a welcomed task. A joy filled task as opposed to last year’s garden that often times felt like perpetual defeat. This year saw a scaled back garden size and next year looks to move towards a hybrid between raised beds, standard in ground planting, and the use of landscaping fabric for better weed management.

Like every year the August garden is one that I dream of all year long. The garden in a way becomes an overgrown forest. The morning glories and foxtail fill everything with a spirit of abundance and recklessness.

A Decade in the Making.

I never intended to have ten years of feeling jaded. It just kinda happened. I can pin point all the moments the excitement for living faded and died. I can see it in the photos. I can see it in my eyes. For a solid decade I didn’t feel like putting pen to paper, or typing a story or really doing much of anything. I felt like I was in a dormancy and my prayer was that one day my love for Americana, small businesses, and slow living would return…but for a while I needed time away.

For the past ten years FOLK has in many ways been resting, knowing that when the time was right it would return, and I would return with voice and passion. Older and wiser and with a whole lot of life experience to authenticate the stories, the narratives, and the lifestyle that we share.

For a while I could feel my love returning, but I knew it was something I couldn’t force or fake or push to try to get to return quicker. When the time was right, my voice, drive, and love would return. That has happened. A few weeks ago I graduated college after fourteen years. It was like a light switch was flipped in my soul. It is hard to describe, but for over a decade I simply wanted to finish college, but the timing wasn’t right. In December I graduated and in that moment it felt like it was then time to let FOLK breathe and return to life. For years I’ve gone through the motions, learning endless lessons from successes and a few failures. Each noted and lessons learned to carry into the future. I know what 2023 will bring here at FOLK and I cannot wait. I know I should make a list here of teasers for what is to come, but I won’t, cause that only invites failure…instead I will take one day and one task at a time. A collection of work will be built with each passing day in the year, things I’ve longed to do for the past decade.

It is funny how much I’ve watched others in the past decade. Friends have built vast businesses and viral personalities. I simply sat and tended my garden. I watered and weeded and watched my garden patiently. I plugged away at my little house know that is what fed me and grew me and would eventually relight my passion for Americana and for FOLK.

It is hard for me to put into words how I felt for that decade, but basically it was…why try, why bother to put anything into words, it would just go out into space and never do good or never get read. I believed that to my core. I just felt totally apathetic about everything and I knew that wasn’t my true nature, but for those years it is how I felt. I felt as if anything I did would end up ruined, so why try at all.

In the past few months though I think I felt a little light inside me saying, you know what you’re doing, and it is time. I could no longer fight or argue with my friends when they’d tell me I was an expert on Americana or I knew far more about life than I let on. It was the opposite of fake it til you make it…it was be the silent person in the corner and do nothing.

At this point I am rambling, but it is sorta cathartic for someone that has tried to write for years but simply couldn’t A friend told me I was one of the most fearless people she knows. I laughed when she said it. I thought if she only could hear the self conscious voices in my head. For now though those voices have taken a seat. The garden has grown and is ready to share.

In the past week I have gone through our complete archives. Every story. Every photo. Every trip. I have poured over past lessons and conversations. I’ve pondered meetings and encounters and advice I was given both good and misguided. I’ve looked at where I was at 21 and who I was back then. I’ve looked at who I’ve grown into. I could write volumes on the lessons of everything I’ve seen. I could write lessons on everything I learned from just living this life, but for now….

Lets Go!

Recollections 1: An Introduction (A Day in Autumn)

These are the recollections of days well spent, of trips that will live forever in the deep cavernous depths of one’s mind. Days that stretch on from the first rising of the sun to long past the purple hazy light of the long set sun. These days dance through the halls of memory and inspire the adventures yet to come. I am one of the lucky ones here on this earth, I get so many of those days. I don’t take that for granted, not for a single second, but it does drive me to document those days well spent with the most tenacious and tedious of detail. Journals to live vicariously through when you’re reading this on a screen or when I am anciently old and looking back on my very own past.

We search for the themes that carry us through this life. We search for those fibrous threads that link us to the humanities around us and to the souls of others. For me the landscapes often drive that quest. Be it driving down one lane roads, interstates, or the cobblestone streets of old New York the quest for new views drives me as much as my slow life on my little old plot of Kentucky land drives me to stop this writing and photograph that way the sun is rising against the October sugar maple leaves.

Twenty minutes later I have returned. The light continues to climb up the front of the house and flood through the windows. The light seems especially golden as the morning fog and copper leaves meet and light fractures beyond the screens and onto the white washed floors.

These are the memories of those days from the road and here at home. These are the journals of a life well lived, right here, wherever here might be.

On this day we drove somewhere through Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom and the central parts of New Hampshire, south of Mount Washington down towards Maine, I suppose. Time has a way of blurring the maps of the different days, but the landscapes and conversations tend to stand out. The camera roll says the day began with donuts, delicious donuts from an old fashioned grocery in Vermont. Lunch was pizza at a place near the Canadian border. As I type I remember we then went on up to see the border. We found a lavender farm on a hill that had vista like views of the Canadian landscapes across that manmade arbitrary line that divides us. From there we journeyed on as it began to rain, or perhaps continued to rain. The rain seemed to be ever present on that trip, but the clouds made for the perfect light to shoot photos of the landscapes with. We found lakes around curves that seemed to be formed between the mountains, we found creeks that flowed over long fallen rocks, we found tiny towns that time seemed to have forgotten, but we were lost in the quiet discovery of it all. Places marked on the map for future returns. The rain fell heavier as the day grew on. The Maine border brought pouring showers that persuaded us to stop for the night, and as I recollect the destination for the following day was to be Acadia out there on the coast.

Autumn Wednesday at the Farmhouse

Company is always welcome here, except when it isn’t, but most of the time it is. Usually we have a meal here each week. Usually it is on Tuesdays. We come together to plan workshops or events or to gossip or to simply have whatever is fresh from the garden that week. This week we had pumpkin soup, which is a recipe I have shared here on the website. It is one of my most requested dishes. A combination of basil, pumpkin, garlic, and cream create a delicious warm savory autumn pumpkin dish. Leftover pumpkin is turned into pies. Four pies were baked last night after all the company left. Wednesday was the baking day for the week. One day each week is reserved for baking bread. Typically eight loaves are made, four cinnamon, and four regular. Almost all are given away, but today at least one was for the luncheon table. Bread pudding was served, a variation of my traditional bread pudding (available here on the website) with caramel pecan apple butter (available here) added into the egg/cream batter. It was a hearty meal for all.

As I continue sharing the slow life here at Walton’s Creek it’ll be lots of short ramblings like these. Autumn is really progressing beautifully here, each day more leaves are in their glorious colors and the piles are starting to form on the ground. The back of the valley is especially beautiful this year. The tornado took the treeline out that divided the valley in half. Now the focal point is a beautiful grove of maples surrounding an old house high on the north western edge of the valley.

The day began with a few images of my favorite autumn pieces on the mantle and progressed to the most beautiful sunset after scattered showers. Today, Thursday, brings pumpkin pies and so much leftover bread.

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First Frost

The first frost of the season came, and went. It was early this year, two weeks earlier than it should have been. Today they’re calling for a high of 80 and we likely won’t see another frost for ten more days, more in line when the almanac historically says the first frost should come. For that those fleeting hours, two early mornings ago, the earth and land stood still and calm beneath the near dark of the early morning light. A thin sheet of glassy like ice frosted and tipped all of the once vibrant summer foliage and blooms. Those tender plants now wear the browned and dried battle scars of the first frost.

When the Frost is on the Punkin

BY JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY

When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder’s in the shock,

And you hear the kyouck and gobble of the struttin’ turkey-cock,

And the clackin’ of the guineys, and the cluckin’ of the hens,

And the rooster’s hallylooyer as he tiptoes on the fence;

O, it’s then’s the times a feller is a-feelin’ at his best,

With the risin’ sun to greet him from a night of peaceful rest,

As he leaves the house, bareheaded, and goes out to feed the stock,

When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder’s in the shock.

They’s something kindo’ harty-like about the atmusfere

When the heat of summer’s over and the coolin’ fall is here—

Of course we miss the flowers, and the blossums on the trees,

And the mumble of the hummin’-birds and buzzin’ of the bees;

But the air’s so appetizin’; and the landscape through the haze

Of a crisp and sunny morning of the airly autumn days

Is a pictur’ that no painter has the colorin’ to mock—

When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder’s in the shock.

The husky, rusty russel of the tossels of the corn,

And the raspin’ of the tangled leaves, as golden as the morn;

The stubble in the furries—kindo’ lonesome-like, but still

A-preachin’ sermuns to us of the barns they growed to fill;

The strawstack in the medder, and the reaper in the shed;

The hosses in theyr stalls below—the clover over-head!—

O, it sets my hart a-clickin’ like the tickin’ of a clock,

When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder’s in the shock!

Then your apples all is gethered, and the ones a feller keeps

Is poured around the celler-floor in red and yeller heaps;

And your cider-makin’ ’s over, and your wimmern-folks is through

With their mince and apple-butter, and theyr souse and saussage, too! ...

I don’t know how to tell it—but ef sich a thing could be

As the Angels wantin’ boardin’, and they’d call around on me—

I’d want to ’commodate ’em—all the whole-indurin’ flock—

When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder’s in the shock!