ah, the bounty of Oregon!

I am on the 6th and final week of the Zena farm summer program. I live at the farmhouse with 5 other campers, plus katie rigs, our RA. Despite some fairly large organizational shortcomings of the program, I have really liked living out on the farm. The stars are surprisingly clear and plentiful on fair nights, despite our close proximity to Salem. We do a couple hours of manual labor a day; shoveling compost, etc, which feels healthy and invigorating and directly useful.

We have also visited several small-scale organic farms in the valley, which has been one of the most impressive aspects of the program for me. To see people making a living by just growing vegetables and selling them at markets is...hmm, inspiring I think is the word. These farmers have such extensive and intimate knowledge about the land they live and work with, and the food that they grow. A farmer named Elanor said to us, as we commented on the gorgeous, green, lush landscape her farm sits in, "We are more interested in what this place is doing to us than what we do to it."

She and her husband were clearly very knowledgeable farmers, and probably could have expanded their production and/or income at the expense of soil health, water health, and wildlife, but that just wasn't their philosophy. I love meeting people who choose lifestyles immersed in nature over shittier but higher paying jobs. It is such a physical and visceral life, one that seems incredibly healthy and nourishing, and is very closely connected to the earth. cliche as that sounds, it's really true. It's not hard to see why some people choose it.

I've also been picking up tidbits of knowledge about wine lately, secondhand from Brian, who now works at Willamette Valley vineyards.

Did you know that manioc, cassava, and yucca are the same plant?

Aside from Twilight, what has everyone been reading so far this summer? I've been liking Walt Whitman's "Leaves of Grass" lately.