post started yesterday evening...
So darling, my blog isn't dead, I'm still here, and by the way I realize that by pioneering you meant being able to identify wild mushrooms and the like. I'm sorry I didn't post yesterday. I set out to, and then got caught up with a bit of belated email correspondence with My Friend in Finland, which by the time I was done I was exhausted. So sorry, dearest. I know now to do nothing but write to you at the moment after five that I sit down with the intent to write to you.

Just a quick note now, after my post-Omi post. Up in the aerie, of course. I have no idea what's for dinner, though not for lack of cooking this afternoon. Yesterday marked my first visit of the season to the CSA. Crops (and as a result the first weekly pickup) were delayed by a week due to weather - hail and torrential rains followed by a moisture-leaching heatwave - severe weather, but perhaps no longer so atypical.

The CSA farm is located off the highway on which I incurred my speeding ticket a couple of months ago. I haven't been back on that road since, til yesterday, but found, maybe because I was sandwiched between a couple of speed-obeying cars, that I had no trouble keeping to 55. So why was I doing 73 that afternoon - for a moment - which is all it took.

What a haul from the CSA yesterday: thus all the cooking this afternoon. I got there just in time, before the skies opened up and the rains came pouring down.

I entered the barn where bins filled with the week's produce are kept, and read the blackboard that instructs what quantities shareholders (this year including us!) are to pick up, e.g., 1 bunch turnip, 1 small handful cilantro, one bowl salad mix, 1 head romaine, 2 summer squash, 1 broccoli, etc. (this image is from a visit last year). I made my way around the dim sheltered space, thunder rumbling, heavens about to open up, and drove back home in the storm, car tightly sealed, wipers sluicing madly against pounding rain.

I'm glad we're bona fide members of the CSA this year, it makes me feel part of the program, a reason to live here. I'm very grateful to D for all his hard work, and I think it means a lot to him too to be able this year to provide for the subscription. I sensed a note of pride and satisfaction on his part that I was able to go to the farm, and he was curious to see what I came back with.

So today I cooked or otherwise organized much of the produce, with great pleasure. Some chores weigh on me - housecleaning, weeding - but not cooking, not dealing with (with alacrity) such a bounty of magnificent fresh foodstuffs.

I whizzed up pesto from the most pristine "biodynamic" basil, garlic scapes (long, delicately flavored shoots), and parsley, along with the other customary ingredients - walnuts, EVOO, parmesan. Truly, pesto is one of my very favorite condiments, sauces, elixirs, ever - and this one came out extraordinary. And I made a pasta sauce involving a CSA head of kale. And a phyllo-spinach-summer-squash pie. So much work - that is, play! I donned apron over skirt and went about it all, and Wicked Witch of Cincinnati me was overjoyed and flew (on her broomstick) to the living room to crank up the stereo when Bob Schneider came on - Let the Light In.

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Sunday. Good morning darling. This post - to borrow from Mr. Schneider - oh what a mess I must confess. But I'll let it go, with very many kisses, and wishes to you too for a very happy Father's Day - love, Belle. XOXO

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P.S. More about the CSA here. Everything about the farm is very interesting. For example, the farm's founder & owner, who is Dutch, studied biodynamic agriculture in the Netherlands before emigrating here twenty years ago; the farm owns & cultivates land that was originally part of the estate of Martin Van Buren, the eighth President of the United States. The farm's website is excellent, including a very informative newsletter, written from this highly experienced and expert biodynamic farmer's perspective, offered weekly as the season unfolds and progresses.