Friends, (a live recording of Drive By Truckers plays as this is typed from 9/26/08 Austin City Limits)
Last night I went to an annual "Poor Taste Christmas Party" at a friends farm. I walked in to their old farmhouse about 4 hours behind schedule and it was loud, warm, welcoming and a lot of ridiculous jokes about the gift exchange that was about to start. Everybody was in full costume and half lit. I ended up with a framed picture of Jeff Daniels from Dumb and Dumber. I can't wait to hang it in the bathroom in the barn, between the Caddyshack painting and Jackson's Automotive annual swimsuit calendar. I slept in my truck after long conversations with my BFF about life in your 50s, kids and family and love and what it;'s all about. Woke up at 7 and headed back here before the rain.
Anyway.
In other news. We just dismantled a huge walk-in-cooler (actually you could drive into it) that was built in the barn about 5 years ago exclusively for Napa cabbage and daikon radishes that I grew for the amazing pickle company Number One Sons in Washington DC. They closed shop a couple years ago and there really hasn't been anyone to fill that void since. They had the best fermented kimchi, daikons, and pickles of all kinds in the western hemisphere.
But taking down that cooler felt great because it opened a huge space in my beloved red barn. The possibilities are endless but I'm thinking woodshop. I just took down two 125 year honey locusts in the yard this past year as well as a black walnut and I've been getting them milled into large table size slabs which are drying in the driveway in the front of the barn.
Thanks for supporting the farm this year. The CSA has been operating at about 40 members, the ESF Farmstore has been picking up and the Mount Pleasant market has been growing each year. Each year for the past 4 years I have been intentionaly putting less land under cultivation here. This scale-down is driven by a desire to have an off-farm life and open up time blocks to create the wood shop which will in turn make the farm store a better space as I intend to grow it through flower and plant sales and hopefully the world's next best pickles if I find them...
