The Work Party

Between running around New England attending weddings, working full time, and the seasonal work piling up, Meg and I found ourselves trying to keep our heads above the workload water level. The tried and true Symphony cure for drowning in your own work load is to throw a work party. Sometimes the internet works like a wand from Harry Potter, a few post here and there and the event is launched. Thanks Facebook, thanks Email.
Mother nature graced us with sun and good friends showing up around noon. We learned that: Kids are good at harvesting. No carrot or daikon went un-dug. Dogs love you up even while you work. Beer makes work easier. Burgers taste good after hauling compost, tiling up weeds, and mulching walkways.
All said and done: Put up eighty pounds of purple-nurpple kim chi( purple cabbage, carrots, daikons, red onions), turned over 400 feet of garden space, hauled a 1/2 ton of compost, failed at fixing a shovel, pulled all hoses, laughed, 20 people came together and connected over the spirit of stewardship.
The taste of community savored sweetly as the sun went down. It was just a bit too cold to flop over in a hammock and let out a breath of accomplishment, but sun pouring on a couch worked as a solid substitute. The day is a thumbnail sketch of how food, farming and families will be. It stands one of our favorite sayings upright: "Farming; its not poverty, its a party"

We have put away enough gratitude for the winter, and hope to provide the taste of some of it this winter to all that showed up and helped. We are counting down the weeks to the winter solstice, and dreaming to the sweet smells of fermenting kim chi of next years growing season.