by Sarah Frey

Sarah Frey is a phenom who started her business at age 15 with a “melon route,” selling her and other local farms’ melons to retail stores. Now she heads a multi-million dollar corporation, wholesaling local produce with an emphasis on melons and pumpkins. If you’ve bought a pumpkin not grown locally to you, from a big-box store, it’s probably from Frey Farms (and she thanks you).

The story has a bit of that vibe of, “OMG can you believe my awful childhood, how did I survive!” The Frey kids are numerous and grow up in poverty. (There were five them when Sarah was growing up; she bills herself as “the youngest of 21”, but that counts the progeny of her parents’ previous marriages before she was born.) But the siblings are loving, everyone gets through the hard times, and Sarah is making money hand over fist while still in her teens.

I share Sarah’s love of pumpkins – I agree, they just make people happy, and we should try to use them more than once a year for carving. I love memoirs, farm memoirs, and memoirs of how people became successful. But I had some issues. I get the melon route at age 15, for one thing; I get a lot of the precociousness. But I DON’T get how she secured a $10,000 car loan at that age. Come on.

And it may say something negative about me, but I couldn’t get over Sarah’s model-perfect, angular and perky face peeking out at me from the inside author shot:

…or the scenically posed picture of her with a busload of pumpkins on the cover. Or her hoisting that watermelon with her perfectly coiffed blonde hair, spotless white t-shirt, and cute tight faded jeans on the back cover. There’s a shot of the author as a young girl with one of her brothers, sitting on top of a ram. That’s adorable. This is a memoir of your childhood – we want childhood photos! We KNOW you’re gorgeous now; one vanity shot would suffice. (  )

Yesterday:

Did you stay home today?  Yes 100%, but had a repairman come into the house too

What local business or charity did you support?   Maybe none?

What’s for dinner? Pie empire pies

Today:

Did you stay home today?  Picked up Beatrice, strictly outdoor; will pick up some food somewhere

What local business or charity did you support?   TBD

What’s for dinner? TBD, I’m leaning towards Agave Mexican in Williston

What I’m musing about:

I’m unduly excited about expecting a kiddie in the spring. You’d think we hadn’t already birthed 22 kids on this farm.

Since I got my original birth certificate a couple weeks ago, I really seized on one tidbit – my middle name. So she didn’t just name me Tania. She named me Tania Marie. Sometimes I roll that around in my mind like a yummy piece of hard candy in my mouth.

I don’t exactly know what food we’ll have for Xmas. On Tgiving morning I really enjoyed making that pumpkin pie with Xopher contributing. I’d love for us to make some special dessert together. I was thinking coconut cake because he’s very fond of that. Coconut custard pie? I’ve never made that. Many years we’ve made rum cake – but it makes a huge amount even when we DO have company, no way can we make that during quarantine for two.

by Hope Jahren

Just a long litany of all the grim statistics: the population growth, the food waste, the melting ice, the fossil fuels, you name it – want to see statistics about every possible way we’ve messed up, this is the book for you. It really did almost nothing to inspire me. The “How We Got to Climate Change” part of the subtitle led me to expect more of a narrative arc. That, plus the word “Story” in the title, I guess. The second part of the subtitle, “Where to Go from Here”, constitutes only one measly final chapter. I need more hope. (  )

Did you stay home today?  Less than a minute inside Mama Pho. Walked up my hill and ended up helping one of my aged neighbors put a cover over his car. Outdoors but both of us maskless and it make me nervous.

What local business or charity did you support?   Mama Pho

What’s for dinner? Mama Pho… I didn’t love the pad thai as much as last time; time to move onward through the menu.

My co-worker/manager/friend gave me this book because it was written by his pastor. It was very Bibley. But I gave it an honest try.

(I don’t get why Christians spend so much time studying the Old Testament. Jesus did away with all that. He replaced it with one commandment: Love Thy Neighbor. It doesn’t require much study.)

In spite of the Biblical talk, I think his main message was Unity, and I can certainly get behind that. The Christian way of phrasing this would be to say we are all members of one Body of Christ. Not much different from the visualization that helps me get along: we are all just One Big Thing. For me, that encompasses the whole biosphere. Literally just One Big Thing. So yes, I got something out of it.

Did you stay home today?  Popped into the front of JCAT to get my pickup. < 10 seconds

What local business or charity did you support?  United Way, JCAT, Phoenix Books – that takes care of yesterday, today, & tomorrow

What’s for dinner? JCAT, I get the Chicken BLT every time. Side salad if it’s a weekday, sweet potato fries only if it’s Saturday. I have very few rules left from WW days, but minimizing fries is one of them.

by Virginia Postrel

Virginia Postrel writes here a sweeping overview of all aspects of textile production, something I understand normal people seldom think about.

It’s a unique book in that Postrel barely inserts herself into the story at all – no “My Year of Trying to Learn Spinning, Weaving, and Other Fabricky Things” this. She might begin a chapter or section describing her attendance at some textile-related class, or getting food poisoning in India while researching some dye method, but then poof – it is quickly no longer about her at all. Refreshing!

Not that I wouldn’t want to hear about Postrel. Long ago I enjoyed a book of hers called THE FUTURE & ITS ENEMIES, and I used to read REASON magazine when she was editor. I listened to an interview with her promoting this book a short time ago. She learned to weave & spin, too, as part of her research. She was fun to listen to.

But the book jumps all over. The chapters are: Fiber, Thread, Cloth, Dye, Traders, & Consumers; and within the chapters themselves she also does a lot of jumping. I would have preferred more depth and more narrative arc, somehow.

My favorite chapter was “Dye.” I love this observation: “‘Any weed can be a dye,’ fifteenth-century Florentine dyers used to say. But that’s only if you want yellows, browns, or grays…” Ha! That’s always my complaint about natural dyeing with things you can find in Vermont: all I ever got was yellow.

And her dye class in India: “Rinse and dump, rinse and dump – tub after tub of water gets hurled into the yard. To my drought-trained Angeleno eyes, it seems like a disturbingly thirsty process.” I’ve often thought how different my hobbies might be if I lived out west – the washing and the dyeing of fiber uses tubs full of water. Happily, I live in a place that dumps snow during the winter in ample amounts that I feel perfectly happy pulling all the water I like out of our well all summer long.

It also seemed to me that the book was a bit Eurocentric. I wished there had been an exploration of how they made calico in India – instead, all that’s discussed is how it changed fashions and spurred competing industries in Europe.

There are copious pictures and a beautiful cover. I would recommend jumping around as the interest takes you. (  )

Did you stay home today?  100%

What local business or charity did you support?  None yet – I’d better get on it

What’s for dinner? Pasta, nature’s most perfect food