I’m thankful to have a job.  I’m thankful to be able to shape that job into a place I want to be, and my staff wants to be.  I’m thankful for excellent support and strong autonomy where I work.

I’m grateful for my family, my dearest friends, my dearest love.

I’m thankful for my home, my kitchen table, my sewing machine, for alpaca yarn, for the color pink.  I’m thankful for gorgeous vegetables, for the guffaw laugh of my friend Punky, for having four older brothers.  I’m thankful for NPR and my yoga practice and whipped cream from a can.

I’m thankful for the strength I’ve found to change my body and to change my life.  I’m thankful for what’s to come.  

Let me e’splain.

I get all worked up over finding new ways to cook vegetables, or really, any other food bits that I’m willing to eat.  (Which leaves out many forms of meat.)  And about a month ago, I coordinated a CSA program that operates right out of my own back yard.

CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture.  In a CSA, people basically “join” a locally-owned farm, pay a weekly, monthly, or seasonal stipend, and are allocated a box of organically grown, locally-produced, just-picked-that-day gorgeous vegetables.  It’s a terrific way to support local farms, to avoid the burning of fossil fuels to transport fruits and veggies from far far away, and to eat organically.  I’ve always been a wanna be “locavore” and a CSA allows me, at the very least, to only eat vegetables that were grown within a certain number of miles.  It’s a beautiful thing.

Strangely, though, there are no CSA programs in Napa.  All the land here is covered with grapevines or olive trees- or is wild and protected open space.  There are small farms, but none large enough to support a CSA.

So I did some research in the surrounding communities, and found a terrific farm in Sonoma county.  But it’s an hour and a half away, and the idea of driving three hours a week is not only impossible, given my schedule, but also sorta against the whole no-fossil-fuel burning thing.  I realize Sonoma is a lot closer than, say, Chile, where most veggies are coming from this time of year, but still.

So I contacted the farm, and suggested they consider delivering in Napa, if, say, I could cobble together a few folks to participate.  Turns out they had just become a supplier to the Napa Whole Foods, so they would be coming this way anyway.  And after a few email chains, I found ten willing participants.  So every season, those ten send me a check for 13 weeks; I send the checks to the farm, and the farm delivers 10 gorgeous boxes of veggies to my back yard once a week, where everyone comes by and picks them up after work.  

This week, the box had fingerling potatoes, apples, eggplant, butternut squash, arugula, mizuna, green beans, radishes, peppers, and I can’t even begin to remember what else.  Every week I’m challenged to cook veggies I’d not cooked before, and every meal is enhanced with these unbelievable greens (and reds and yellows and such).  

Of course, I live in California, so I’m unbelievably lucky.  We get winter vegetables here that most of the country can’t imagine, at least without a greenhouse.  I also have both lemons and oranges ripening on my very own trees.  Spoiled might be an even better word.  But I think such programs will only grow in popularity as people become more aware of where their food comes from, the fossil fuels it takes to move those foods, and as the nutritional benefits of organic foods versus “conventional” foods become more widely known.  I know I don’t want “baby carrots” (that come from regular bent imperfect carrots but that are sliced and diced and preserved in chlorine- yes, chlorine, that’s why they start turning white when the get a little old) that come in plastic bags that will exactly never decompose.

I don’t think these things are radical.  I don’t really consider myself a leftist commie socialist tree hugger.  I consider myself someone who does the research and wants to put only decent things inside my body.  Again, living in California makes this all the easier, but there are some 3000 CSAs across the country and there just might be one somewhere near you.

In case you are wondering:

http://www.biodynamics.com/csa1.html

And, well, if you are interested in starting your *own* garden come spring time, well, that’s another blog.

First and foremost, vacation has taught me that I really, really, really enjoy not working for a living.  I’m hopeful I can do that more often.  Once upon a time, I thought it would drive me crazy not to have a, y’know, “job” and all- that I needed “purpose”, “ambition”, “drive”, “meaning”, all that stuff.  But right now, I think I could spend a week perfecting my baba ganoush recipe, only to abandon it to perfect french bread.  Or, I could listen to NPR and knit all day.  I think I could do that, and be content.  

On the flip side, with the right company, I feel like I could follow my ambitions of five years ago and finally go to Africa in Peace Corps.  So, I haven’t entirely lost my edge; I’ve just found some solace and peace in a wee bit of nothingness in my life, as opposed to constantly craving crises. Or, at least, I think I could find that peace, given the opportunity.

Alas, I still have to go to work every day, and most likely will have to continue doing so- in one form or another- for another 30 years or so.  But the love I am finding in cleaning out closets, finding new uses for arugula, and tying colored ribbon around clean sheet sets is really revelatory for me, considering I’ve been a completely focused career girl for as long as I can remember.

I don’t know how age is manifesting in me, other than the typical ticking clock and the new crop of silver hairs my stylist fights with every time I get my hair done.  (Seriously?  Those things stick straight up.  They are thick, wiry, and stubborn, and my stylist has to use some serious goop to get them to lay down with the rest of my highlights.)  But I wonder if this nesting impulse, this love of hearth and home, of bubbling pots and clicking knitting needles and the sheer joy I feel when the yeast blooms for an impending loaf of honey whole wheat bread is all a result of age.  

Or maybe it’s more that I’ve finally found my talent when it comes to arts and crafts.  I’ve always been a wretched artist; even my handwriting is embarrassing.  But I’ve always wanted to create, beyond the written word or song interpretation, and now I feel like I’ve found my niche. Maybe it was a disservice that traditional Home Ec had been cut from the school day by the time I was in 7th grade (and maybe I did myself a disservice by insisting on taking Shop so I could make napkin holders) but this, like so many other things in my life, is a joy that has come to me later than expected.

But I’m delighted it’s here now.  And my baba ganoush rocks.