Who What Where Why etc.

"I come from a family of journalers and letter-writers. One year I tried quiting the practice but I found my thoughts became boring and repetitive." So said Dalva, lead of a novel by Jim Harrison. Mr. Harrison is a moving novelist of the rural experience in the norther Plains and the Upper midwest; I don't know what he'd think of applying those words to blogging. But a few farming friends (Thanks P!) planted the idea of this web log in my mind, where the soil was already rich from exemplary blogs kept by friends (see the sidebar. Also, soil/plant metaphor count: 1).

After working as a day laborer for two summers at a farm in Paradise Valley, Marin, I am now the hired hand on a one-and-a-half acre plot of land in Nambé, New Mexico. This farm (garden?) is a side project of a couple who work full time, so I am here to do whatever I can to make the soil more healthy and grow some food. An inexperienced farmer -- never managed a farm, only ever done what I was told on a given day -- I now get a birds-eye view, thinking about this plot of land in time as well as space I count myself very lucky and blessed for the opportunity.

So this blog a place for ruminating, gestating; chewing cud or the fat; composting things (thought that's just about the most overused simile in the whole food discourse. I'll put up the epic Gary Snyder passage that actually does it justice). A place for applying those good Wesleyan critical faculties to lived life, and for comparing and contrasting a new place with other homes I've had.

The first night I spent here I felt very lonely, but the more I have worked and thought here, the more connected I feel: to home, to history, and to people important to me. This is a way of sharing those connections.