Ode to Tractors

daphne on October 17, 2009

Aren’t tractors cool?

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I mean cool, cool.  Not as reusable bag cool or hybrid car cool, but just good old fashion cowboy cool.

Even without the husky cowboy, I mean.

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Now I know what you’re thinking.  You’re wondering what I am doing talking about rugged old tractors when my forte is clearly feeding children healthy foods and raising awareness about treading softly on Mother Earth.  Well, back off.  Stop painting me in such a small corner.  I am so totally versatile.

And I happen to like tractors.

So do my children.  See?

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Not only is Kira giddy with her cornstalk, but Acadia is clearly enjoying the tractor, eating kettle corn, and entertaining thoughts about broccoli.  You can’t hear them, but trust me when I tell you that they are also in the midst of a discussion about re-engineering that tractor to run on popcorn.  See?  Tractors:  Fun for the family and good for the earth.

And we do have tractors to thank for the 497 pounds of potatoes that we are in the process of eating our way through, day in, day out.  Potatoes.  All thanks to this guy.

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That’s the Flipping-potatoes-out-of-the-earth tractor.  Otherwise known as, well, as something else probably.  Anyways, thanks to Flip my girls have been enjoying homemade french fries every single night.

So yeah, tractors are cool.  So is Tori.  She’s the reader that  successfully identified my trick picture as a chicken, and submitted what she claims is a more accurate depiction of a cow.  You be the judge.

Cow?

tori cow pic

Or not cow?

Very good class. It is a cow.  I like cows.  And I like tractors.  That’s just the way I roll.

I am especially fond of my own tractor.  Which we loaded down with multitudes of gourds, a twelve foot stalk of corn, and 758 pounds of pumpkin.

Hi Ho Silver.

Away.

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Cabin Fevers

daphne on October 12, 2009

Ahhh, Monday.  Delightful wonderful peaceful Monday morning. Two children, up and out of the house before 7:30.  And my sentence has been lifted.

I’ve been under lock-down.  House arrest. For eight eternally long days.  No, you’re right. I shouldn’t exaggerate.  Why just the other day I was allowed out to bolster our stock of Children’s Tylenol and decongestants.

I wouldn’t dream of complaining.  Nope. Not me.  After all it’s just the flu.  The feverish, coughing, whining, icky flu.  In the scheme of things, it wasn’t all that bad.  At the very least it is over.  And just when a shimmer of bright lining hovered within reach, when sanity seemed possibly to be lurking around the next bend; just when it seemed safe to let the children venture out of each other’s company and into the world at large, this happened–

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You can’t hear it, but that’s the sound of Mother Nature laughing as she dumped snow all over my plans to air out the children.  By which I mean dangling them by their germy little ankles in the branches of our glorious autumnal trees where a gentle clarifying breeze might blow on through.   Breathtaking, right?  As in, they will be so busy gulping in lung-fulls of fresh air that they will have no voice to complain that so-and-so spit on me when she brushed her teeth and SHE TOUCHED ME and ahhhhhhh, I’m so over house arrest.

Breathe in. Breathe out.  I can do this.  If Mother Nature throws me freezing temps and whiny children, I just have to reach a bit deeper into the old parenting tool box.

And so we made a cozy fire.

And drank hot cocoa with little marshmallows.

And I let them make their own baguettes.

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Before you toss too much credit my way, I should confess that this bread is not only delightfully tasty and good at distracting unruly children, but it’s also unbelievably simple to make.  It’s a one-bowl, no kneading kid-pleasing kind of recipe.  I got it from my Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day cook book.  Don’t be alarmed; I’ve come a long way since my initial attempts based on a hastily transcribed recipe from my mother resulted in that Not-So-Consumable Crusty Shards of Glass Bread.

Here is the basic recipe.

And just 20 minutes later, we had our warm, aromatic results.

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I also had two smiling children, mouths so full of homemade bread that their ability to bicker was drastically reduced.

And like the softly whirling, sparkling twinkle of the fresh falling snow, peace, sweet, silent peace, at last descended upon our home.

Hay is for Horses, Not Bras

daphne on September 29, 2009

Some of you may have gotten wind of the fact that I’ve got a hankering to be rolling around on the farm with a rugged cowboy.  It’s a beautiful fantasy.  Freshly harvested vegetables pose in a photogenic basket. The scent of fresh hay crushed beneath my back. The vivid blue of the sky peaking through cracks in the old wooden ceiling of the barn.  Somewhere in the distance a rooster cackles.

Oh yeah. It’s hot.

Thing is, much as I may covet a good old fashioned roll in the hay, I never have, actually, rolled in the hay.  And given my current circumstances I probably never will (though if I can get my hands on a hat, Halloween is looking promising.)  While I am ensconced in my life here in the suburbs,  I’ll just bet that somewhere out there someone is rolling in actual hay with an actual cowboy.  So to that lucky lady I must ask:

Doesn’t the hay make your boobs itch?

You see, recently I had the good fortune of experiencing hay in my bra, not from a wild romping in the barn with this guy,

but from the stomping about at Monroe Farm during harvest day, picking basil and carrots and pumpkins and strawberries.   Here, the carrots pose artistically, fresh from the earth–

And the sweet children, with the largest pumpkins they could find upon hearing that said pumpkins would have to be hand carried twenty-seven miles, uphill, in the snow, to the car.

You’d never know it from the handful of fresh strawberries and my cowgirl-ish good looks and cheerful smile–

but trust me, already the hay had worked its way in. And I was one heck of an itchy cowgirl.

I never would have guessed it, but it turns out that hay in the bra can make one feel a tad cranky.  That being said rules are rules; they may seem unfair, they may be difficult to understand, it may even appear to some as though they were made up on the spot out of poking discomfort but I assure you that on the farm rules are made to be followed, and that has nothing whatsoever to do with itchy lady parts.

Take for example this gem that came screeching out of my mouth towards the end of a delightfully long day:

NO! I said no and if you pick up one more grasshopper I will take it and saute it and call it dinner. Do not touch your sister’s grasshopper!  NOT one more grasshopper AND I MEAN IT!

If you think I’m crazy, that’s ok.  City slickers don’t know what it’s really like down on the farm.  Besides, I was just looking out for this guy

Poor Jiminy, he’d already lost his jaunty top hat and cane and I could barely make out the words to his exuberant show tunes.

With the grasshoppers set free and the time for liberating hay from it’s hiding place drawing near, it is time once again for a gratuitous picture of a cow. Those of you who have been around a while know that prior to my infatuation with cowboys, I had a thing for cows.  I’ve even been know to throw in a gratuitous picture of a cow, or two here at the Greener Biener.  It’s been a while, so here you go, one gratuitous picture of a cow

What?  You’ve got a problem with my picture of Bessie?  Perhaps you think you could do better chasing down a wild cow for a photo session with hay in your bra?  (If so, send me your successful picture and I’ll post it on the site, no jealousy, no hard feelings. I promise.)

Happy Birthday, Baby

daphne on September 25, 2009

Oops, that’s not my birthday baby.  Here she is.

Lest there be any confusion, her name is Acadia, not Lorax.  But boy oh boy does she speak for the trees.  If by speaking for the trees you mean throwing down on the lawn and kicking and screaming in protest of a few defenseless branches.

Sweet Acadia.  She doesn’t always manage the birthday with a smile.

Even the Mardi Gras beads didn’t make up for her extreme displeasure over my choice of birthday restraint back in her earlier fling-self-from-rooftops days.

Last weekend we moved some things around in the yard, in preparation for the big backyard birthday blow-out.  We are also weighing options for a still-hypothetical garden relocation project.  Maybe, just maybe the soil on the sunnier side favors the production of girl flowers?

In the heat of the preparations a large plastic climbing object was moved across the yard.  A couple of overhanging branches were cut to make room for playtimes free of eye-pokes.  A couple of branches.  Cut a couple of inches.

The planet patrol lost all control.  Her face turned red with rage.  She stomped her feet.  She clenched her fists. She announced that she WOULD NOT STAND HERE ONE MORE MINUTE AND WATCH US KILL THE TREES.  Then my dear little Lorax flung herself on the ground and cried her heart out.

Eventually the heart-heaving sobs quieted, but she continued to mope around, forlorn, staring at the mistreated grass and communing with the flowers that somehow had the misfortune to fall under the evil reign of her own parents.

Sweet sensitive soul. In her haste to castigate us she overlooked the fact that she claims as parents two of the biggest tree hugging hippies one could find.  Never mind that we committed to diligently recycle and compost and carry reusable bags.  No sound arguments would make it through whilst the sap on her friends’ wounds still oozed fresh.

We appeased her by letting her plant flowers, however many and wherever she thought best. It turned out the flowers felt they should be randomly scattered strategically placed in beds all over the lawn.

And with that the Lorax was back in business. She grabbed hold of that big old shovel and set right to work restoring balance to the planet.

She set sister Kira to task too.

While the irises were busy contemplating the next stop in their total domination of the yard, I questioned Acadia about her birthday wish list.  Turns out that there are, in fact, a couple of things that might make her stony facade break into smile.  They are, not necessarily in this order:

  1. Clothes for her dolls.
  2. A horse.
  3. And a promise on behalf of her parents to leave her leafy large friends alone.

Smash it! Mash it! Turn it into Juice!

daphne on September 20, 2009

There was an old vibrantly stunning woman,

Who lived in a shoe the suburbs,

She had so many children melons,

She didn’t know what to do wanted to hurl them off the roof for a satisfying splat.

Watermelon has never been my favorite fruit. It’s ok.  It’s fine in a fruit salad if someone else has cubed it and dealt with all the wrangling of the thing and the resultant sticky elbows. But frankly a 20 pound piece of food represents more of a commitment than I’m willing to make.

Thanks to the CSA, I was at my watermelon-y wits end.  I didn’t know what to do.  I was sighing and mopping my brow and wringing my apron strings when all over a sudden help arrived–

Yes, ladies it’s true. I was at a loss until Jack Lalanne came along.  Not in this form, exactly. Climbing that mountain barefoot and naked and waiting 50 + years for my melon distress would have proven too much even for that manly man.  Nope, this is the form that Jack Lalanne took when he came to my rescue. My neighbor’s Jack Lalanne Power Juicer—

While I was absorbed with the complex assembly of Mr. Lalanne, the girls and Dave determined that, based primarily on the fact that our actual apple tree didn’t fruit, the “not crab” apple tree could play the part of a real apple tree this year. The fruit was beautiful,

but despite the new marketing campaign it still tasted like bitter dirt which in my book is a dead giveaway.  That, and the greenish tint to its hard flesh. The children were not deterred.

Acadia quickly put on her cowboy boots, a halter top, and a wrap-around skirt and clamored up the ladder. What? It may not be a real apple tree, but we would never consider wearing anything less to a harvest.

As it turns out the tart “not crab” apples provided a nice balance to our juice plans. Here, some of the fruit awaits it’s fate–

The girls, along with Mr. Lalanne, made short work of 50 pounds of watermelon and 100s of “not crab” apples.  At the end of the day our melon problem had been solved. No more melons.  However, we now had a bit of a juice problem.  Gallons and gallons of juice.

There was green juice

And pink juice

And green juice with a pink stripe

And pink and green juice with penny loafers and little alligators with their collars up.   Wait, wrong decade. For a minute there I was transported back to seventh grade.  That’s just how powerful Jack Lalanne can be.

We drank some juice.  We sent some juice to the neighbors. We spilled enough on the floor that Kira may remain routed to that spot for a couple of years.  We filled pitchers and loaded up the fridge.  Then we pretty much hit the juice wall and so we froze whatever we could fit into ice cube trays.

And muffin tins.

And plastic cups.

And toilet paper rolls.

And old dolly heads.

Green Beans are good for you, M+Ms are good for me

daphne on September 14, 2009

I realize that the following admission might call into question my rightful ownership of the domain Greener Biener (it IS pronounced bean-er,) as indeed it is true that no green beans were consumed by me in the making of this site.  Green M+Ms? For sure.  Green Beans? No thank you.

I was not a kid who fluttered with thoughts of a perfect wedding, nor did I trace the names of my future children onto my notebooks.  The stuff of my dreams was heftier:  One day I would be the boss of my vegetable domain.  I would choose which healthy stuff to eat and which to show the door.  It would be glorious.

When I grew up I would not eat green beans.  No one could make me.  So there.

In those early dreams of a bean-free future, I didn’t figure on joining a CSA as a ploy to convince myself to sample otherwise ignored vegetables.  Nor did I factor in the possibility that I’d be surrounded by a bunch of green bean-eating traitors.

Yesterday I had a day.  The kind of day that should only be concluded with a dinner of red wine and M+Ms.  But it was not to be.  For there was a family to feed and daughters for whom an example must be set.  Apparently there was also a husband who thought it’d be cute to add green beans to an otherwise innocuous spinach salad.

I kid you not.  He added green beans to my salad.

Normally he’s a decent guy. A really good guy who pitches in and spends time with the kids and helps with dinner and all that jazz. He’s even agreed to dress as a cowboy for Halloween, so you know he’s got my best interest at heart.  Of course I was blindsided  by his staggeringly despicable bean transgression.

I did what any whiny toddler self-possessed woman would do. I wrinkled my nose and plucked the offensive things from my plate. Oh, I was sly. The children would never know that mommy gets dessert without finishing her veggies.

“WHO’S BEANS ARE THESE?” Dave bellowed, in a blatant attempt to rat me out.  I glowered at him, expressing with one evil eye how I felt about his egregious choice of broadcasting my action around the kitchen.

The kids remained oblivious.  Kira shrugged and munched contentedly.  Acadia dipped a bean in ranch dressing.  I played like I had already devoured my share.

But now they’ve got me rethinking this whole anti-bean campaign.  After all, the girls really seem to enjoy the snappy green things.  And they are loaded with all that good stuff that makes for heart-healthy, bone-strong little bodies.

Ahh, what the heck?  Let them eat beans.

But please, oh please, leave me to my M+Ms.

I Am In Love

daphne on September 2, 2009

I am. I’m in love.  It’s ok, my husband knows and while he doesn’t exactly seem thrilled, he is resigned to the fact.  It’s love, come on, what’s he going to do?  Well, maybe love isn’t exactly right.  It’s more like an obsession.  Nah, that makes me sound like a cowboy-crazed stalker. (Note, this is a plea for help: I am on the brink of becoming a cowboy-crazed stalker.)

Hey! I am not a stalker.  Now look what you’ve done.  Why do you have to go and turn this beautiful thing into something dirty?  It’s nothing. It’s no big deal. I’m just spending every waking hour shirking my responsibilities so that I can languish vicariously in the land of the great wide open.  Yes, the laundry is piling up and the beds are unmade but out there somewhere in the wild blue yonder a cowboy is rustling something and I need to be part of that.  You understand, right?   I am simply in love obsessed envious an enthusiastic supporter of The Pioneer Woman.

I love her love story.  I am intrigued by her recipes, and her retro-pictures and her incredible photography and…Ewww, yuck will you listen to me?  I’m in deep. Someone rescue me. Hank? Buck? Help?

Sigh.  Why didn’t I marry a cowboy?

Like Pioneer Woman did. She married a cowboy and damn if she didn’t just ride off into the sunset wrapped tightly in those deeply bronzed biceps of his.  And now not only does she have her hunky cowboy, but she’s got a life chock full of adventure to write about.

Me?  I can report on whether or not the children are eating chard. I can even get a little steamy talking about squash sex. But the likelihood of you logging in here one morning to reports of cattle wrangling and coyote howling are remote.  The chances of me awakening to the swish of leather chaps as I am whisked off for a romp in the hay beneath a harvest moon is, alas, nil.

Don’t get me wrong, no one reboots my hard drive like my sexy techie of a man.  I’m one lucky lady perched here on the plush lap of suburbia.  I just wonder what would happen if my guy rode up one evening on a stallion instead of a Maxima?  And what, oh goodness, if he happened to be wearing overalls instead of khakis?  Well, then we might have ourselves a steamy little story of our own.

Until then, I’ll be getting my cowboy fix by peering through windows over at The Pioneer Woman.

Giddy-up.

The Downside of Cool

daphne on August 20, 2009

Back when I was still knee-deep in needy newborns, it was hard to conceive of a day like today.  A day that loomed out there, somewhere in a future where children attended school all day and I would have hours upon hours of fulfilling self-reflection and silent contemplation.  Well, it’s here. Today is the first day in nine years that I loaded both of my big girls onto the school bus, not to return until 3:00pm.  Pass the bon-bons;  I’ve got six hours of silent bliss.  I will write a novel.  I will read all the editorials.  I will cook a meal the likes of which gourmets round the world will clamor to taste.

Or I’ll strip every bed and rip up the rugs and douse the entire house in bleach and lemon-scented spray stuff.  Anything that will increase my chances of breathing through my nose once again.

Don’t be fooled.  These are no ordinary allergies.  They laugh in the face of Benadryl, my trusted old friend that typically knocks me out faster than a blow to the head with a falling piano.  And the sneezes just keep coming.

My waking hours are spent buried in a box of tissues, and I haven’t slept in days.  I swear last night would have been better if someone filled my pillowcase with freshly cut grass and a bag of kittens and then wrapped their fluffy little tails around my eyes as a blindfold.

I have been so busy ooohing and aaahing over the delightfully cool weather and the extra dose of lush rain that I didn’t stop to consider the consequences.  Something new is growing out there, and it does not play well with me.

The doctor gave me an appointment for next week, and extracted my sincere promise not to step foot outdoors until then.  In the meantime to rid my house of lurking pollen  I am dousing every inch with a bottle or two of bleach.  Cleaning isn’t really my thing, but if it will buy me an hour or two of snot-free sleep, I’m in.  And since I’ve only got a few hours left in this precious gift of a day nine years in the making, I’d better run and dump more bleach into the laundry and see about some dust monsters under the couch.

Yes, these are tears in my eyes.  It’s all this sneezing, of course.  It’s purely coincidental that this morning I bid farewell to my little darlings as they set out for first and third grade, so big and so grown-up already.  Of course my eyes are itchy and red.  Allergies or not, that is the price I pay for watching my babies morph into real people right before my very eyes.


Morning Glory Hallelujah

daphne on August 16, 2009

Eight years ago when I worked in New York City my morning commute included a subway ride across the river and a stroll across 13th Street.  Locks rattled as chains were unwound from storefronts preparing for the day, and car horns bleated passionately.  On warm mornings the scent of urine wafted out from neglected corners. One wall of a shabby brownstone boasted a tattered hand-lettered sign that read “Fresh Paint — No Sex Against This Wall.”  It was, in all likelihood, your typical Manhattan commute.  Until I got to the corner at 2nd Avenue.

Climbing out from the well of a basement apartment was a startling blue explosion of Morning Glories.  Hundreds of them, winding up out of the dank darkness and twisting around wrought iron banisters. Their faces stretched for the sun.  I saw them every day, yet they were always unexpected. I rushed along as rush hour demanded, with my head bent and my feet hustling, but when I got to that corner I had to pause.  I loved those incongruous blooms.

The walk to work that second week of September 2001 was utterly different.  The air was eerily still.  Shuttered shops didn’t open.  There was no drone of traffic.  No slurring of vagrants.  Everything was different, except that damned blue sky and the Morning Glories.

I planted my own Morning Glories for the first time this spring with no conscious thought to that terrifying time eight years ago.  I was thinking simply of the vivid blue petals.  I wanted them to unfurl each morning in my yard.  I wanted flowers to climb up and over my deck railing.  And so I planted the seeds, and despite a historical lack of success with growing flowers, a Morning Glory showed up.

I went to dump the compost this morning and there it was.  Bright and determined, rising up out of a clump of neglected dirt in which I had tossed the remainder of a packet of seeds.  And with the early sky blazing and the old familiar blossoms I was right back there on 13th Street. I sank down on the steps next to the vine. I felt like I was going to cry.  I rubbed my finger gently against the sole flower and took a deep breath.  I stared into the periwinkle petals and its lemony center.  It’s such a fragile, ballsy little thing.   I wiped a tear, and had to smile.


And the medal goes to…

daphne on August 4, 2009

Ahhhh….Home sweet home! After 45 days away, 6,519 miles traveled, 22 states visited, 3 time zones traversed I am chomping at the bit to get back to my garden-turned-overgrown jungle.  I cannot wait to resume CSA deliveries, fresh from the farm that is promising me eggplant and peaches.  I am ready to share the myriad of garden secrets and outrageous recipes that I collected on my travels.

But first things first.

Our road trip culminated in Des Moines, Iowa, which in addition to being a balmy 78 degrees during our stay was the gracious host city for the Junior Olympics.  A number of our most avid jump rope fans have made it clear that there will be no waiting for an official post.  And so, without any further ado, the results:

Kira rocked it, jumping as high and fast as her little legs would go.  She got off the floor after most events with a smile on her face, proud of her performance, and that was all that I had hoped for.   We were awed and amazed when she placed both individually and as a pair, even scoring a silver medal for her pairs routine.

Thanks to everyone who showered Kira with support, and in so doing helped me figure out how to manage my little champ.  And now, a snapshot of Kira’s events at the 2009 Jr. Olympics…