the life I picked

a bushel of gumption, an ounce of grace

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at the mid-fall very super beaver moon

November 18, 2016 by the life I picked

November’s moon is the beaver, and this year’s happened also to be the biggest supermoon since 1948. The beaver is also a sentimental favorite, near to our heart.

Here in Columbia County, some perfect clear skies to see this superduper moon, which was nice as it will be another few decades or so til we get one quite so close again. Though I didn’t get a photo, my favorite view was the morning before it was truly full, as it was setting in the hour before sunrise. On a cold, perfectly still and clear morning, it was indeed huge, simply gorgeous.

Though we are a few days into the waning moon now, this post has been about a week in the writing, as my head would end up on the keyboard more than above it. And the long lag since last I wrote….similar excuse…

We’ve been busy though, picking and preserving, tagging, selling, demoing. Cooking up quince, crabapples, pears, and ginger for some of the last best of the season’s flavors: Quince Preserve, Crabapple Jelly, Chipped Pears. No Quince Jelly this year, sorry to say, as the quince crop was all too limited, damaged in part by the same April cold that hurt the apple family.

New on the roster: Concord Grape Conserve: like our dense Concord Grape Preserve, but with the addition of walnuts and oranges. Chunky, sweet, citrusy, divine. Based on one of our old recipe cards, it’s a keeper.

img_3143 img_3150 img_3166img_3181img_3153 img_3172img_3179 img_3178In development, Ginger Preserve, a personal favorite, ready hopefully before Christmas. With the beautiful ginger we are lucky to have from Et Cetera Farm in Ghent, just up the road, we are fully inspired. We will keep you posted.

And in this season of giving thanks, we are grateful for the season’s harvest, for our farms and amazing farmers, for the beautiful fruit and supportive customers who make les collines as much a gesture of preserving love, as about the preserves themselves xoimg_3104img_3100 img_2113

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les collines at the autumnal equinox

September 25, 2016 by the life I picked

The fruits of summer are ceding to those of fall: Concords are in, crabapples very soon, pears, quince, apples; all ripe or soon to be. Summer turned to autumn Thursday, following the preceding week’s beautiful harvest moon….

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grace note of love

September 12, 2016 by the life I picked

In music, though often referred to as embellishment or ornament, the grace note is a pause between notes that is important, even key to pacing the rest of the piece. It is like the pause for breath in a recitation, or the words you choose not to say, or those that get edited out. For me as a writer, the silence has always mattered as much as the words. Rather than a searching for words to fill the blank page, writing for me feels more like sculpting, where from a big block of language, I chip and shape….

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at the sturgeon moon 2016

August 20, 2016 by the life I picked

This summer of spectacular weather continues. It’s been a little dry here, but not like western New York where there are some extreme drought conditions. Here in eastern NY it has seemed like a near-endless necklace of perfect days and cooler nights, with just enough heat to make it summer, and a bit of high humidity here and there….

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les collines at midsummer

August 7, 2016 by the life I picked

Our use of midsummer is not correct, but feels right: halfway between the solstice of June and the equinox of September. That’s what always made sense to me. Why would midsummer be at the beginning of the summer season? It is in fact astronomical midsummer, the longest day mid-way between spring and fall. Still, I like my way….

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burning it down

July 31, 2016 by the life I picked

A few weeks ago I was awakened before dawn by screaming smoke detectors. Like literally, they are the photoelectric kind that emit screeching beeps with a voice intoning “FireFireFire” in a way that makes you both want to run the hell away and take a baseball bat to them as you leave. They do the trick: no way are you going to sleep through….

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les collines at the buck moon

July 19, 2016 by the life I picked

We are at full tilt of high season now, in the midst of a really gorgeous summer. The weather, spectacular, just enough hot and humid to make it real; a bit on the dry side but we’re good with it….

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peace bridge

July 17, 2016 by the life I picked

Traveling across New York State to Toronto last weekend brought me to the Peace Bridge, one of three spanning the Niagara and up river from the Falls….

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les collines in Malawi

June 26, 2016 by the life I picked

The  bittersweet high point of our week came from this photo, taken some months ago before a gathering in Malawi where les collines Cider Sage Jelly (lower forefront, center!) was among the dishes of honor to be sampled. …

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Filed Under: daily grace, les collines

summer solstice 2016

June 21, 2016 by the life I picked

It is a beauty, full of summer weather, and with a full moon coinciding for the first time in many many years. They said 49 years on the weather yesterday morning, but I saw nearly 70 somewhere else. Anyways, a long time. …

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Tag I’m It

thinker dreamer runner writer
daughter sister mother friend
painter in food, gardener of words

high life, wild life, aiming for
a good life

never for money,
always for love

fractal traveler
Halifax Hateras Hyères
Paris Princeton Port Hood
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Williamsburg Williamstown
theme Guillaume

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hills & dales

pink quartz, red clay, blue
mist of God's hour

just an animal looking for a home

call the dogs in, wet the fire,
a rural life at last

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