Friday, August 03, 2007
My Sister, the Revolutionary
I took a vacation day today in order to try on dresses. Let me 'xplain. My sister is getting married in September and she has asked me to be her matron (gack! that word! so old!) of honor. I'm honored to be asked. Of course, this means that I need a dress. She bought her wedding dress a couple of months ago and has been after me to come try on dresses so that she has this part of the wedding figured out. We've been so busy this summer that I've had trouble finding time, so I finally just took a day off. My sister also asked my daughter to be one of the bridesmaids, so she had to try on dresses too.
We did the dress thing and went back to my sister's house. She and her fiance (a really fabulous, kind guy) have a house in the country, where they've been moving more deeply into farming. It started with a garden and progressed to chickens and now pigs. I can't believe how much pig poop stinks. Yech! They have three pigs, Grizzly, Priscilla, and Wilbur. Grizzly has another name - W.D. It stands for Wedding Dinner. (Alright, go ahead and get all Charlotte's Web on me.) When we were finished looking over the pigs and chickens, making special note of the one-legged chicken who had accidentally stepped into a trap, we went to the garden.
I love my sister's garden. She's got a wide variety of veggies, including broccoli, spinach, carrots, peas, beans, potatoes, tomatoes, peppers, corn, lettuce, the ubiquitous zucchini, and kohlrabi. She also has berries and watermelon, and I'm probably missing some other things. Most years the garden is a riot of production and we can wander through picking what we like. It's a personal farmer's market; it's all organic and they don't water it. In the spirit of my Yard and Patio Revolutionaries post, I asked if they saved the seeds. They do and they've found that the seeds they've saved actually work better than store-bought ones. I asked if they thought the seeds had evolved to deal with their soil and growing conditions and they thought maybe so. How cool is that? My sister and her soon-to-be husband are already Yard Revolutionaries. My sister also does her own canning, which is one of those old-fashioned tasks I previously mentioned. A dying art, really, but not in my sister's household.
We did the dress thing and went back to my sister's house. She and her fiance (a really fabulous, kind guy) have a house in the country, where they've been moving more deeply into farming. It started with a garden and progressed to chickens and now pigs. I can't believe how much pig poop stinks. Yech! They have three pigs, Grizzly, Priscilla, and Wilbur. Grizzly has another name - W.D. It stands for Wedding Dinner. (Alright, go ahead and get all Charlotte's Web on me.) When we were finished looking over the pigs and chickens, making special note of the one-legged chicken who had accidentally stepped into a trap, we went to the garden.
I love my sister's garden. She's got a wide variety of veggies, including broccoli, spinach, carrots, peas, beans, potatoes, tomatoes, peppers, corn, lettuce, the ubiquitous zucchini, and kohlrabi. She also has berries and watermelon, and I'm probably missing some other things. Most years the garden is a riot of production and we can wander through picking what we like. It's a personal farmer's market; it's all organic and they don't water it. In the spirit of my Yard and Patio Revolutionaries post, I asked if they saved the seeds. They do and they've found that the seeds they've saved actually work better than store-bought ones. I asked if they thought the seeds had evolved to deal with their soil and growing conditions and they thought maybe so. How cool is that? My sister and her soon-to-be husband are already Yard Revolutionaries. My sister also does her own canning, which is one of those old-fashioned tasks I previously mentioned. A dying art, really, but not in my sister's household.
Labels: chickens, daughter, dresses, garden, pigs, seed savers, seeds, vacation, wedding
