Thanksgiving: everybody brings something

Photo by Maeve Kim

Thanksgiving: 

everybody brings something

   We are looking back over the past year or so recognizing what folks in our community have given us or helped us attain.

   Gourds and grapes overflowing from a roadside stand find their way to our back door, a note of generosity cresting the offering. 

   Vegetables are a staple for us all year with a rare exception including on Thanksgiving. The best vegetables are those grown from healthy soil, tended by our own hands, pollinated by insects who do so free of charge. 

   Many ingredients are in the recipe for our soil, including a raised bed mix delivered by a Jericho Mason who arrives with a smile every time. We also purchased compost from the folks at Davis Farm (recycle and reuse locally). 

   We strive to improve the biological, physical, and chemical (ph, carbon, etc.) properties of the soil by, adding used coffee grounds from JCS, donated wood chips from blowdowns or cuts, and leaves from trees all across town. Donated wood pallets frame our leaf collection slowly working down to leaf litter, which will provide valuable nutrients to the soil. Donated compost bins also aid in the process. From these efforts and contributions, we get vegetables that are more nutrient-dense food (as we increase the percentage of organic matter which increases the nutrients in the soil). 

   The two bat houses on our barn, both built and donated to us, may well bring us bats and thereby guano to add to the recipe. Some of the scraps of wood donated to us went into bird boxes that surround our yard. The birds sing for us as we prepare the feast for the Thanksgiving meal. 

   A large owl box was donated to us as a kit we quickly put together with admiration at the skilled craftsman who brought it to us. Perhaps on Thanksgiving eve, we will hear a Barred Owl hooting call “Who cooks for you, Who cooks for you-all?”

   Sometimes the load is just too heavy for us to carry alone. A loaned pickup truck carried donated cement blocks, bricks, pavers, and wood chips for a vegetable garden expansion. Two-inch thick and ten-inch wide hemlock planks, locally sourced and milled, created our raised beds from which much of our food will come. 

   Folks have shared their labor, expertise, and things with us. Neighbor helping neighbor is part of the process of communal living. 

   Our tomato plants are supported like we are by a community member's donation of tomato cages. Our carrots would be rabbit food and our blackberry plants deer browsed, if not for receiving some fencing and stakes and 4x4's that neighbors donated.  

   When our garden skills were a bit inadequate - last year our zucchini crop failed, and this year our garlic crop would not keep a vampire at bay - in each case, community members came through for us and filled in the gap with donations from their gardens. We also received unusual pepper starter plants that will add flavor at our table.

   Our Thanksgiving basket is sprinkled with locally donated walnuts fresh off the tree - Though I have to say the process of drying, husking, and breaking open the nuts was as underestimated, as was the portion size that we ‘shared’ with the chipmunks who surely must have a fine Thanksgiving table indeed. 

   Local chickens contributed to the table as well, via roadside and farm-direct fresh egg sales. Oh, how dark and orange the yolks are. We enjoy observing the chickens that are visible at some of the locations we buy eggs! We like knowing where our food comes from!

   Flowers on the table - for what would a Thanksgiving dinner be without flowers to remind us of the beauty of nature, how close at hand she is, and how fragile she can become if we do not protect her habitat?

   Liquid refreshment consists of apple cider, thanks to our conservation and community-minded friend whose apple-press ground up our apples to a pulp then pressed out juice as golden as some of the fall leaves, fresh-tasting as the day the apples fell off the trees. 

   For dessert, raspberry jam with the aroma of spring and fall combined, canned for us. The jam helps to ease our winter confinement. Jericho maple syrup flows across the table in goblets sure to satisfy even the sweet-lovers like me. 

   I am sure I have missed or forgotten some of the bounties that fill our basket, brought to us from folks in Jericho, Underhill, and Richmond. Nonetheless, we are thankful for each of you, for your generosity, kindness, thoughtfulness, camaraderie, for sharing part of yourselves with us. 

   What will be the talk at our Thanksgiving table? We are often inspired by a diversity of discussion, ideas, and opinions to challenge our thinking, exchange ideas, drive creativity to solve problems, and constantly refresh our view of the world. Sharing our passions with others rings our bell and builds our confidence. 

   Support from community members buffers our determined perseverance and resilience. Acts of kindness and encouragement create hope and knowledge within us that we are not alone.

   Maeve and I bow our heads and hold each other's hands, thankful for each other, and together recall how much the Jericho and Underhill, and Richmond communities have filled our table, our minds, and our hearts. 

Happy Thanksgiving to all of you and your families

Bernie and Maeve

PS see Bernie's fall poem below.

A November Blessing 

by Bernie Paquette

Oh sunshine, where do you go with November in tow?

Do you follow the leaves of October

and drop low?   

 

  Do you languish

   as the roses, and green leaves, 

turn in or fall off in anguish?

   Has daylight saving time

      run out for you 

     with no one to turn over

       the hourglass?

If you did rise and shine

  frost would melt, yawns would cease,

we would praise you as divine. 

     Blue skies would no longer be cold

  bare limbs once barren, 

 would glow as your rays rush by.

    Mercury would climb the stairs 

instead of slipping down the slide.

   For now, 

  you settle with golden grace

over calm waters 

behind serene mountains 

  melting our hopes

   in a cold kettle. 

Oh, sunshine where do you go

 to another land

     leaving us here with snow? 

    We yearn for your return 

    as you fade away 

perhaps not to return until May.

Oh, sunshine where do you go

                  with winter in tow?