cool harvest

well, the belly dance hafla was quite an event! i'll try and post some photos soon. a bunch of awesome musicians came out; they set up middle eastern-style and rugs and cushions on the floor. there were a bunch of drums, and Crow who was playing oud, fiddle, guitar and a drone-box thing. i played fiddle for a while, Crow asked me to tune down a whole step since everything is in the key of C! it was so hypnotic playing that way, it felt really good. an afternoon of music interspersed with bread-baking and meditation.

but.......there was distant thunder by late afternoon, and when i finally got down to the barn at 7pm for the evening milking, the storm was starting to blow by. treating sick cow and 3 very rambunctious calves meant that the darkness and storm were closing in at herding time. it was exciting and a bit alarming to be hooking up electric fences while lightening flashed in the sky! i biked home just as it started raining.

now its monday lunchtime, we just finished a 4 hour, all harvest garden shift. giant, gorgeous rainbow chard, okra, squash, zucchini, eggplant, way too much corn, and roma tomatoes for salsa. it feels really good in all the usual cheezy sorts of ways to be doing lots of gardening, but sometimes i wish i could relax a little bit more on garden shifts. i always worry that i'm not working hard or well enough.

10 more buckets of apples appeared in the kitchen yesterday, so its good that the applesauce train is chugging on! today is thankfully grey and cool, but the rest of the week is supposed to be in the scorching 90's.