After dinner, I thought about my good fortune at being born in the right place at the right time. I rubbed my full belly and thought about how grateful I am for all those wonderful childhood Thanksgiving dinners, for my brothers and their wives, for my beau-buddy, Bob, and our continued good health, for the 2023 Tesla Y headed our way, and for how nicely the North Carolina climate suits me.

I penned the following ode to summer back in August, sitting in my back porch rocker, barefoot and scantily clad.

Before breakfast, before yoga, and sometimes before tea, I flip flop across the yard in a black cotton shift. The woods echo with random calls: roosters, frogs, dogs, the undertone of 3-M rock crushers grumbling beneath the occasional swish of tires on the dew-dampened asphalt of the Moncure Pittsboro Road.

I check the garden fences for sign of deer entry, check the birdbath, the ripening cantaloupe, and the cucumbers. I pull a few brown turkey figs—red and drooping on their tethers, barely past plump—and pop them into my mouth. Grass clippings collect on my feet and soon I look as if I’m padding across the lawn in fuzzy slippers.

On some days I’ll bring in a few roses, or eat some sun gold tomatoes, or snip a bucket of red peppers. The bugs don’t bother me, nor does the heat to come. I like the way the skin on my arms will shine, glistening like bronze, so much more alive then in the dead of winter after they’ve turned pale.

I dip water from our blue rain barrel, sluicing grass from my ankles, pouring it down over my legs. I slip out of my shoes and get the sturdy bottoms of my feet, the water warm as a lover’s kiss. Sometimes I plunge my arms into the barrel up to my elbows or shoulders, hanging over the curved lip like a spider monkey, smiling like an idiot.

“I love this so much,” I tell Bob. “It’s our swimming pool.”

I think of a picture I saw recently of adults hoisting cocktails, enjoying a waist-high soak in a $10,000, 10’ x 20’ mini pool and it occurs to me we could have one of these if we wanted one. But then I think about the chemicals, the filters, and the pumps and decide to stick with the rain barrel which only needs tipped and drained a couple of times a year. Even that chore—me with my torso inside, dabbing at the bottom sludge with a long-handled dish brush—gives me a certain kind of pleasure.

In the afternoon, I dodge the outdoor heat to play in the kitchen. I make summer salads and roasted pimento sauce to serve over pasta, boil sweet corn to go with sloppy joes, and caramelize onions, garlic, and summer squash, then smother them in molten parmesan.

It’s all spectacular and comforting: the bright gold finches bathing in their clean water bath, the warring hummers, and the cicada chorus. I enjoy visiting with friends on the porch, barefoot with a cold glass of ginger ale, our stories flowing languid and easy. I relish Sunday dinners eaten on our front porch. The road is quiet because the truckers are at home with their families. And I love the way afternoon clouds billow blindingly white, then turn into buttered popcorn after the sun slips behind the Leyland cypress.

I hope it never gets cold. I wouldn’t mind if the lawn stays green all year round, or the rain barrel never ices over. I don’t care if I never again have to zip up a jacket to take out the compost after dinner, or wear socks to bed.

And now here we are, we made it to Thanksgiving weekend and we’re hiking at Jordan Lake Dam in the sun, mostly unzipped, ogling blue herons, cormorants, and bald eagles. Lapping up the warmth. Lucky to be alive. Lucky to have each other.

She picks up the blue-handled knife and hesitates before slicing this perfect orb in half. It feels like a beheading, or the end of an era. She quarters it and cuts a notch away from each piece at the stem end.

Pulling down two monkey dishes, she fills them with slices. She puts a wedge into her mouth, and using her tongue to trap it between her molars, begins to mash it up. The flavor is magnificent.

She goes to the window and looks out at the tree that bore this perfect fruit, golden leaves at its feet, branches naked and sprawling. Exposed. She looks away in embarrassment. Didn’t those branches have leaves a few weeks ago? How we change from one season to the next.

Searching her memory, she finds images from the day her husband — the man who promised to grow old with her when their hair was still thick and dark — planted this tree. She finds an impression of him digging the hole, and tries to remember helping him place the sapling, gently, into that hole.

It occurs to her that humans have only one spring, one summer, one fall, and if they’re lucky — or not, depending on your perspective — one winter. Unlike the trees, humans do not drop their leaves and grow back new ones. Instead, they continue down the same linear path from cradle to grave.

She sets the other dish next to her partner and watches him reach for this last slice of summer. “Is it spring yet?” he asks on cold mornings. “I hate winter,” she says, tugging on a pair of black fleece loungers.

It’s worth mentioning that Clyde has been part of our household since he was pulled from a mountain of discarded clothing in a Habitat for Humanity sorting room fourteen years ago. I was pawing through a box of romance novels when my fellow volunteers placed him, with his paunch and nonchalance, in my arms as if placing a cherry atop a peak of whipped cream.

I want to thank my parents and five brothers for staying alive through 2020. I also wish to thank the American people for choosing hope over fear by voting for an administration that will address climate change and the pandemic with measured forethought.

I am beholden to my friends, near and far, who have kept me intact with their quips and insight: to Haruka who routinely appears on my laptop screen from Japan to Cathi in Colorado for making me laugh and sending art supplies, to Steph in New Zealand for our ongoing email conversation of fifteen years, to Sharyl, Shelley, Amy, Zoila, Nauzley, Carolyn, and others who share their secrets via email, snail mail, text, and phone.

I must give a nod to Big Tech for making social distancing easy and fun. My compliments to Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime, Zoom, Messenger, online shopping carts, curbside pick up, the United States Postal Service, UPS, and Federal Express.

Finally, I am grateful for my trendy mask collection, especially the black one with the sable-soft ear loops, and for the folks I encounter while picking up the mail who smile with their eyes, nose and mouth covered in a show of I-care-for-you-solidarity.

And to the doctor who sat facing me in a darkened cubicle after the power failed and administered a flu shot by the light of his cell phone.

Thanks to all of you I find myself standing here, clutching my prize and beaming over my good fortune. May my luck hold out for another year, but regardless of what is to come, nothing can obliterate this moment of glory.

Happy Thanksgiving to you all!

It’s Thanksgiving, a holiday with many meanings here in the United States. Around the world, expats spend weeks sourcing ingredients for their traditional meal. For most Americans, this day remains an honored ritual of sitting down to eat with family. At some point we will pause to reflect on those things we are grateful for: our health, prosperity, progeny, and luck. Few face the holiday without a tinge of guilt for the gluttony it represents – gluttony at the expense of the original inhabitants who were swept aside to make way for our American Dream.

This morning, our lawn blushes green between patches of hoarfrost and russet leaves. The oaks have shed half their leaves and what remain are shimmering gold. Cold-weather crops dominate our garden: sturdy collards, cauliflower, broccoli, and kale. Tiny lettuces have arisen from seed in the tote behind the feathery asparagus patch. The roses are still in bloom and the azaleas have decided to join them.

It’s turned cold. North Carolina cold. 40 degrees Fahrenheit feels punishing after the coddling 65-degree days. I took advantage of the sun and harvested all 130 pounds of ginger and turmeric. I raked leaves to blanket empty garden squares, and perched on an aluminum ladder to wash windows. I took a pair of old washcloths and rubbed black mold from the daffodil siding and spinach-colored door on our back porch. I painted a weathered joist with auburn stain and seal, doing my best to rub out the black patches before immortalizing their lava lamp shapes with fat brush strokes. I lay in the hammock and talked on the phone, swept leaves from the tree house, and went walking with my friends.

On this Thanksgiving Day, I drag a bulging bag of gratitude into the sun for examination. In it, I find:

• Bob, a man who continues to love and support me despite my age and cynicism
• Three daughters, five brother, and two parents, alive and reasonably healthy
• A roomy, dry home with a modest mortgage payment
• Retirement, a long-awaited event which has turned my life into one big game
• The mechanics who keep our three old cars on the road
• My health, still running on all eight cylinders with minimal leakage
• Friends old and new: loyal companions, sincere, supportive, and entertaining
• My New York Times subscription, for painlessly putting me back in the know
• Our deep freezer, stocked with roasted peppers, peanut butter cookies, and other delights
• Neighbors who would drop everything and come to my aid should I fall off a ladder or choke on a cookie

The life Bob and I have engineered for ourselves is so spectacularly fine that we marvel at it every day. Luckily, we were born at the apex of American prosperity between the Great Depression and the slow slide into corporate rape beginning in the 70’s. Our families gave both Bob and I enough of a start to put us on our feet, but not enough to prevent us from developing a healthy work ethic. We worked steadily for forty years, for big corporations and small, family-owned businesses.

We paid our dues and lucked into a couple of corporate windfalls. At the apex of Bob’s career, we followed our hearts and jumped off the tread mill. We reinvented ourselves as serial expatriates, highly-employable for our skills and mobility. It was the things we decided not to do that set us free: to stop owning and rent instead, to not make any more children, to give away our last pet, and most of our belongings. We chose instead to value experience over security, stewardship over ownership, relationships over toys, and to live frugally, to garden and cook and eat in.

For this I am grateful. I need look no further than our yard for spiritual guidance, inspiration, and meaningful work. This morning, I have a clear vision of the world outside my window. I know where I am, how I got here, and thanks to whom.

First and foremost, Bob and I are thankful for Emily, Tyler and our first grandchild Nolan Trout who turns one week old today. Welcome to the planet little Nolan!

Second, I’m thankful for delicious Thanksgiving memories going all the way back to Nana granting me the honor of decorating a giant basket with fruit, nuts, and animal-shaped hard candies.

Third, I’m thankful for all the glorious advice I’ve gleaned from the many people who have passed through my life. Much of it came from the older folk and I’m excited to pass it down.

Life is simple if you’ve got a good work ethic, healthy moral compass and respect for the natural world and all its creatures, including your fellow human beings.

It’s the externals that make life complicated. Our many possessions impede movement and clutter our minds. We’re bombarded by media promoting a culture of selfishness and waste without consequences.

Here are a few tips to help navigate the dark waters of our time:

1. Leave some surfaces clear of stuff – an empty horizontal space is an invitation in the same way clutter is a rebuke
2. Make sure everything has a place and you know where it is
3. When you’re done with something, put it away
4. Close the gate or door behind you unless you found it open
5. Take an extra moment to leave things nicer than you found them
6. Don’t waste food, water or words
7. Give yourself idle time without screens to think and create
8. Spend as much time as possible outside
9. Walk in the woods
10. Learn the calls, colors and habits of the birds in your yard
11. Be nice to others, even when you are unhappy – it will make you feel better
12. Share what you have and others will share with you
13. Listen to what people are saying and imagine being in their shoes
14. When you see someone working, give them a hand
15. Always take the high road, pettiness makes you feel cheap

These fifteen lessons have served us well. May they do the same for you.

Wikipedia describes a dividend as a payment made by a corporation to its shareholders, usually as a distribution of profits.

As children we were taught to give freely of our time and energy and so we did. We were also taught to expect reciprocation and fair treatment from others. What we didn’t learn was what happens if you live long enough in one particular place.

Shortly after my sixteenth birthday my parents moved for the eighth time. We had lived in one place for seven years where I felt at home and accepted, even though I had arrived there as the new kid on the block when my peers were already nine years old.

It was a sad day when I said goodbye to my two best friends. We wrote letters but lost touch when I began moving around the country. This was long before cell phones and social media. I left home within a year and fled town the next year to drift west, catching rides with my thumb and sleeping on floors.

Bob also had a socially fragmented childhood. His family moved to West Africa when he was nine and he was packed off to boarding school in Switzerland a few years later. After graduation he picked a university with mountains and stayed put for twenty years. He was better than I at keeping his friendships intact and routinely talks on the phone to his school mates from Ghana, Lugano and Colorado.

After Bob and I met we started flying again, living for a year in one spot, six months in the next. We spent four years on Maui and then dove back into our travel spree.

Three years later we settled down in Pittsboro, North Carolina, a place so community-minded they created their own currency which they aptly dubbed The Plenty. We had found our people and decided to take the plunge. Making a commitment to our new community, we began proving ourselves in the same way we have done everywhere else. “Always take the high road” is our mantra and we strive to give without expectations. It’s sobering to realize how many social capital accounts we’ve started and left behind.

After four and a half years in our new idyllic paradise we came unstuck again and found ourselves abroad. But this time we decided to keep the house and return home. I type that tentatively because the concept of home still eludes us. When you’ve been homeless these many years, it’s hard to say the word with conviction.

We returned a year ago and were immediately struck with how easily we slid back into step with the people we’d left behind. I picked up my phone and had a rolodex of tried and true resources at my fingertips. Around town we encountered twice as many familiar faces as not. How humbling it was to realize these seemingly unearned profits were coming from social capital we’d invested more than a year before.

When I shared this with my sister-in-law Darla I discovered she was well aware of social capital dividends. She lives with my brother John in a small town where her parents, their parents, her children and grandchildren have forged an incredible legacy of respectability. How amazing it must be to talk with someone who knew your parents or do business with someone you played with as a child!

Now it’s our turn. After all these years of investing in community we have finally arrived at the pot of gold. Everything is so easy these days that we feel like we’re coasting when in reality we are just not starting from scratch, not having to prove ourselves to a fresh set of people, not investing energy and walking away from the rewards.

For the first time one of our social capital accounts is distributing dividends and that’s something to be thankful for. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

Once again I face my lifelong nemesis, my inner over-achiever. I am determined to scale back my efforts before leaving Ghana lest I return to the States and throw myself headlong into my old life without taking time to consider my alternatives. Superwoman I do not need to be.

These past 16 months I’ve been living in a culture where time doesn’t really mean much. In Africa you learn quickly that most of your day will be spent waiting. This attitude towards time couldn’t be further from the culture of my birth where Time is Money and Every Second Counts.

Even so, it took me 10 months before I was able to scale back my To Do list. Looking back it seems ridiculous, but for most of my first year in Ghana I ‘earned my keep’ by working every bit as hard as I had back home. Despite being unemployed, I found myself working between six and ten hours a day.

Fortunately, Amy arrived in January and after months of working together in the kitchen and many conversations it became clear that I was over doing it and that I was driven by perceived external expectations. And so I woke up and throttled down, throwing myself instead into a few long-neglected personal projects.

Six months later, with one project completed, the second well under control and only two weeks left, I’m happy to report much success.  In addition to Amy’s insights, these other sources of inspiration have been immensely helpful:

I. Jennifer Radtke’s essay Riding the Demon in Lyle Estil’s book “Small Stories, Big Changes”

>Snip< Some people are addicted to drugs, some to TV, I’m addicted to work. It’s an addiction that gets regarded in our culture. And it is praised, which makes it harder to see it as an addiction. Addictions are things you do to avoid your life, avoid feeling your emotions, avoid being present. When I’m stressed about something in life, I work like crazy and think of nothing else.

Perhaps life loves us so much that if we don’t learn a lesson the first time it will keep throwing us that lesson again. Life believes in us and knows we want to learn this lesson and are fully capable of learning it. I had been working on my workaholism for years, but hadn’t quite gotten to the core of it. Life orchestrated the perfect trap for me and I fell right into it. I get all passionate about something (well usually about 10 different things) and terribly excited, plan a bunch of activities for the year and realize in the middle that I”m too busy and it’s no fun anymore. I’m committed and I push through and get burnt out. We expected the permitting process and construction for the new station to take less than a year. Instead it dragged on for two years. The roller coaster ride of fear and extreme work took their toll and I went past my edge beyond burn-out and into major adrenal fatigue.

In a dream I saw a picture of my adrenal glands. They were black and burnt to a crisp. I slept 12 hours a night and took naps during the day. The rest of the time I sat around. I worked three days a week and spent the other four days resting up in order that I could work again. I remember teaching a biodiesel class once when I was experiencing complete exhaustion. I felt like a cartoon character with toothpicks holding up my eyelids. Slowly, over three years, my energy built back up. When you push your energy so low, it takes years to recover. I am thankful that I surrendered to the process and the exhaustion. I made it a priority to rest, sleep, rest, and sleep some more.

Not having energy made me look at things differently. I learned that I can be the idea person, but don’t need to carry out the ideas. As I enter my forties, I can be a mentor.

II. Robert Levine’s “A Geography of Time”

After taking a year’s sabbatical to study the cultural nuances of time, Levine prepared to step back into his life. As he walked up the steps towards his office at California State University he was suddenly awash in anxiety. So he did the right thing. He turned around and went for a walk to think about his reaction.

Out of that walk was born the resolve not to step back into his old shoes. To accomplish this he vowed to ask himself two questions before saying “Yes” to anything. 1) Do I have to do this? and 2) Do I want to do this? This simple formula made so much sense that I embraced it immediately.

III. My Mother

Two of my mother’s sayings have been ringing in my ears lately. “All things with moderation, dear” and “Pay the price.”

Surely, had I exercised moderation I wouldn’t be paying the price with my left leg. In January, after six months of “earning my keep”, I started having problems with my left foot. All that time on my feet had turned my varicose veins into painful reminders that I’m not getting any younger. I began wrapping my left leg in an ace bandage to mediate the pain and allow me to stay on my feet. Finally, in May I realized that I didn’t have to do this and I walked away from my role as housekeeper.

On August 11th I crafted a mid-year New Year’s Resolution, a personal manifesto to help me avoid falling into the “Over Doing” trap again.

Manifesto

1. No one can make my life complicated but me.
2. At 59, it’s time for me to mentor more and serve less.
3. I’m a lot happier if I don’t feel obligated to get involved in whatever the people around me are up to.

My manifesto seems to be working. I spend a lot more time doing what I want to do these days and sometimes that means doing nothing at all. At least once a day I resist doing something for someone that they can do for themselves. I buy myself time by saying “I’ll think about it” and later ask myself “Do I really want to do this? Do I have to do it? Is there someone else I can inspire to do it?”

Armed with my new skills, I soon return to the industrialized world where qualities like “stressed out” and “over-booked” are built into the culture. It is my fervent hope that I don’t get there and slip into my old over-doing ways. Wish me luck!

I’ve received many little nudges over the years, from Woody Harrelson’s 2003 movie, “Go Further” to recently released “Forks over Knives.” Lately, I’ve been admiring Jenny’s raw food choices when we eat lunch at the office and daughter Amy has been sharing gleanings from the Natural Chef program at Central Carolina Community College. But it was a series of conference workshops that supplied the push I needed to try on a smaller sized shoe.

Bob and I attended Carolina Farm Stewardship Association’s 26th annual Sustainable Agriculture Conference for the first time a couple of weekends ago. For years, we’d been hearing about the incredible local food movement synergy radiating from the conference. This year, the conference was being held in Durham so we decided to go.

We found the conference as exhilarating as advertised. Most of our friends and local food movement heroes were there; Jason and Haruka, Lyle and Tami, Jenny, Jennie, Kate, Carol, Stevie, Jessie, Tess, Hillary, John, Don, Jane, Jonah, Tasha, Anna, Adam, Betsy, Linda Watson, Eric Henry, Doug Jones. Two great days of hi’s, hugs and networking!

The workshop choices were impressive. So much so that the topic in the halls was usually, “Which workshop are you going to next?” and “Oh! I’d really like to go to ‘Fun with Mushrooms’ but I also wanted to catch Tony Cleese’s workshop”

Ultimately, I chose five out of fifty-six workshops and traded workshop highlights with friends during breaks and meals. I picked:

• Rob Bowers’ “Commercial Fruit Production”
• Will Hooker’s “Permaculture: A Sustainable Living Methodology for the Home, Garden and Community”
• Zev Friedman’s “The Forest Cuisine Project: Permaculture Farming for a Living”
• “Update on the Organic Bread Flour Project” panel with the local organic grains grower, miller, malter, brewer and baker
• Jason and Haruka Oatis’ “Growing Rice in North Carolina”

Now, this may all sound like rather dry material but I’m here to report that what happened was pure magic! My eyes were opened wider than I thought possible and I actually heard angels sing during some of the presentations. Seriously.

Haruka and I kept catching each others eyes and squeezing our hands during Will Hooker’s Urban Permaculture workshop. He told the inspiring story of how he and his wife transformed a tiny urban home and yard into a haven, playground, and food producing garden with fish pond, gazebo, arbors and more. Ditto with Jason’s wonderfully entertaining story of how he and Haruka were inspired by Japanese farmer and philosopher Masanobu Fukuoka’s to grow organic rice using the natural farming method.

Bob and I found the panel on Organic Bread Flour sobering. I had no idea how much work went into the growing and processing of grain and it made me question my flour-dependent footprint.

This is the same epiphany I had when I realized how many pounds of grain go into producing a pound of beef. I now realize how many man hours go into producing a pound of grain and how many more into a pound of flour! Surely, I can’t need that much flour to satisfy my protein and carbohydrate needs? Especially when much of what I bake with is unbleached bread flour, which by definition has had the protein milled out! Better I meet my nutritional needs with sweet potatoes and chick peas which I love every bit as much as seitan sandwiches.

And then there was permaculturist Zev Friedman, self-admitted wild food vagabond, who introduced me to the concept of an interconnected food web. He suggested we cultivate food groups that work together, observe and replicate natural patterns, and learn to harvest the bounty that already exists. Zev pointed out that Monsanto will never be able to patent all the seeds in the forests, making yet another case for reducing our dependency on corn, wheat and soy.

I love the way all of this information neatly ties in with the Occupy Wall Street movement. Just walking away from the established methods of food production and distribution absolutely requires we change the way we eat. We need to rethink our food patterns and learn to work with nature. We need to learn more ways to do for ourselves and decrease our dependency on the big corporations.

It occurred to me that our culture is at the same pivotal point as the Mayan culture was at the end of their empire. It isn’t a mystery what happened to this vibrant civilization that lay buried for centuries deep in the rain forests of Central America.

When population and resource demand got too unwieldy, the Mayans increasingly found themselves unable to weather drought and other natural threats to their corn crop. Those at the top continued to eat well while making heads roll down the sides of their pyramids. Many of the rest stuck around, hoping things would get better, too afraid of the unknown to leave civilization as they knew it.

And some of the Mayan people simply walked off into the jungle and created a new way of life. These were likely the ancestors of the resourceful and confident Mayans we worked with in Belize. Rolando and Nikki and their families knew how to get virtually everything they needed from the forests, from building materials, to medicine, to food.

As Bob and I walk away from the ambient culture, our footprints continue to shrink. Changes are already becoming apparent in our home menus. One step at a time, I am steering food choices towards whole and raw foods, choosing rice over pasta, salad over sauté’s, fruit over juice and chick pea patties over bread. Smaller footprint, here we come!

The sea foam is tinted pink as is the gull flying by with something big in its beak. I wonder if I will see a deer or a coyote in the long amber grass. The breaking waves remind me of a herd of galloping horses. Surging, jumping in arcs, landing with spray flying and somehow never reaching me.

Bob and I fly home tonight to begin moving into our own space at Oilseed. It will be fun to unpack our books, art and travel memories and place them around our new home. We will enjoy setting up areas for Tempeh and beer production, writing, relaxing and sharing meals with our friends.

I’m looking forward to starting work at Quiet Meadow Farms this weekend. The smell of horses, hay and grain; the sound of them grinding breakfast between their molars, watching their misty breath puff into the sky, feeling the warmth under their winter coats with my hands.

I’m also thinking about all the wonderful people in our lives – our family and friends, new and old, near and far; all of them so generous with their hearts, homes, time, food and ideas. But most of all, I’m thinking how lucky I am to have found a true and enduring love to share all of these wonderful things with.