Small harvests

Even in a year like this, with so many disappointments, the garden still gives us a lot.  Here is some of what we've been harvesting, and what we've been doing with it.

We had a lemongrass plant that had lived in a pot for a year before we planted it in the spring garden.  We dug it up and cut off most of the roots, but left enough to keep it all together because there's no way we could dry this many stalks separately.  We hung it upside down in our unfinished shed a couple of weeks ago, and today, because we're expecting several days of heavy rains from Hurricane Sandy, I cut off the dry part.  First I trimmed and discarded the tips, then I cut a little over half the length off and took that part in the house. 

It will be the lower-quality part, but if we lose the rest, at least we'll have something, and by cutting it off I allow more air flow to the part that is still drying.  It's a lot of lemon grass!  We use it only for tea, because I have yet to find a recipe for cooking with it that doesn't require other exotic ingredients I can't find.

Then, while harvesting some field peas, my husband discovered that the sunchokes, which were right next to the field peas, are quite nice this year.  I roasted some in a covered bean pot with 1/2 cup water

for 6 hours at 200 degrees.  The skin turns black.  Then I peeled them, checked them for worms (I found 3), and mashed them with butter, salt, and pepper.

I made black sea bass (a sustainable fish) Hong Kong style, with all local vegetables.  Although they may seem like frivolities, I love being able to walk out to my garden and harvest ginger, walking onions (which I used as both scallions and as a substitute for shallots), cilantro, jalapeños, and other small but essential, potentially costly ingredients.

Lastly, the herbal tea harvest continues.  Today I harvested lemon balm, bergamot, and wild blackberry leaves, and added to those the leaves from yesterday's ginger harvest, and a bunch of mint I got in my box from The Farm Table.  I laid out individual leaves on paper toweling or cloth (I use single-layer cloth diapers), stacked four layers deep, in the oven with just the light on to dry.

I take my herbal tea-making pretty seriously.  It won't keep us alive, but it does have medicinal properties, and tasty hot beverages are important to keeping people's spirits up in both everyday and crisis situations.  I'm hoping to add some real tea (tea camellias) to my yard soon.

Working with Inspiration

My little soft-soled shoe business is failing.  Not for lack of demand, though if I charged as much as I should for them the demand would probably go down quite a bit.  I haven't finished a pair of shoes in a while.  I got stuck, waiting for materials to arrive and tweaking the pattern for the adult shoe before filling orders for it, and then I got too busy with other things.  Now, I'm having a hard time figuring out how I ever made time to do the work to begin with, and the guilty, obligated feelings I have about getting back to work are not helpful.  Even though I have not taken money from anyone, I still feel like I owe people the shoes I have promised them.  I was making 2 pairs a week for a while, and I thought I could sustain that pace, but I cannot.  I don't want to give it up, but I will not take custom orders again, certainly not more than one at a time.  

Part of the problem is that my son's needs, or my understanding of them, or maybe just my ability to meet them, have changed.  I have realized that he really needs more time out of the house and around other kids, and now that we have a car, I've been taking him to parks more often.  I don't "waste" the time by playing with him or just relaxing - I either knit, or I read something practical, but that doesn't help get shoes made.  I feel guilty for taking my kid to the park when I'm behind on shoe orders, then I resent my customers for putting that pressure on me (even though they are doing nothing of the kind).

I can't deny that a big part of the problem is that my inspiration has shifted.  I am learning that I'm more productive if I honor my inspiration.  I might want to knit all the time for a couple of months, then for 10 months I want nothing to do with it.  Recently I've been canning, which I had done very little of this year, and I've been cooking.  Even though I'm being productive, everywhere I look there are things that should have been done a week ago, or a month ago.  I simply don't have the time or the energy to do it all, no matter how badly I want to.  So I do the unavoidable things (like laundry), and with what is left, I do the work that inspires me the most at the moment.  

If I had stuck to making shoes I was inspired to make, instead of taking custom orders, I would probably be happy cobbling away right now, trying my hand at all different kinds of shoes.  That was the point, after all, to learn; I didn't expect it to be a profitable venture at this point (and it is not).  Maybe it's irresponsible to honor one's inspiration, and certainly it's undisciplined, but it is a luxury I will give myself for as long as I can afford it.