A Garden Update

My August garden has been one of my very best, excluding the tomatoes of course, ‘cause they didn’t survive much past June. This year has been one weather extreme after another. A wet spring led to a very dry spell, then what seems to be several inches of rain every other week. The weeds have taken these weather patterns as a challenge to be as lush as possible, and the vegetables, well a lot of those have seen better years.

As we head into the final week of August the third planting of corn has turned into the very best planting of the year. The first two were stunted by the early summer lack of rain, but this third round has produced a bumper crop, one that will mostly go into the freezer for winter luncheons and Sunday suppers. The squash died weeks ago and they haver very bunch been missed. Usually a stable in my summer cooking, I have had to turn to using cucumbers and cabbage in creative ways to fill the zucchini and squash sized holes.

The broom corn and zinnias have created walls around the garden and help hide how badly the deer ruined the sunflower rows before the electric fence went in. Cantelope and watermelons continue to produce, as the guards and pumpkins wait for their time to replace their summer glory with the vines of fall.

The garden this year has been a welcomed task. A joy filled task as opposed to last year’s garden that often times felt like perpetual defeat. This year saw a scaled back garden size and next year looks to move towards a hybrid between raised beds, standard in ground planting, and the use of landscaping fabric for better weed management.

Like every year the August garden is one that I dream of all year long. The garden in a way becomes an overgrown forest. The morning glories and foxtail fill everything with a spirit of abundance and recklessness.

A Decade in the Making.

I never intended to have ten years of feeling jaded. It just kinda happened. I can pin point all the moments the excitement for living faded and died. I can see it in the photos. I can see it in my eyes. For a solid decade I didn’t feel like putting pen to paper, or typing a story or really doing much of anything. I felt like I was in a dormancy and my prayer was that one day my love for Americana, small businesses, and slow living would return…but for a while I needed time away.

For the past ten years FOLK has in many ways been resting, knowing that when the time was right it would return, and I would return with voice and passion. Older and wiser and with a whole lot of life experience to authenticate the stories, the narratives, and the lifestyle that we share.

For a while I could feel my love returning, but I knew it was something I couldn’t force or fake or push to try to get to return quicker. When the time was right, my voice, drive, and love would return. That has happened. A few weeks ago I graduated college after fourteen years. It was like a light switch was flipped in my soul. It is hard to describe, but for over a decade I simply wanted to finish college, but the timing wasn’t right. In December I graduated and in that moment it felt like it was then time to let FOLK breathe and return to life. For years I’ve gone through the motions, learning endless lessons from successes and a few failures. Each noted and lessons learned to carry into the future. I know what 2023 will bring here at FOLK and I cannot wait. I know I should make a list here of teasers for what is to come, but I won’t, cause that only invites failure…instead I will take one day and one task at a time. A collection of work will be built with each passing day in the year, things I’ve longed to do for the past decade.

It is funny how much I’ve watched others in the past decade. Friends have built vast businesses and viral personalities. I simply sat and tended my garden. I watered and weeded and watched my garden patiently. I plugged away at my little house know that is what fed me and grew me and would eventually relight my passion for Americana and for FOLK.

It is hard for me to put into words how I felt for that decade, but basically it was…why try, why bother to put anything into words, it would just go out into space and never do good or never get read. I believed that to my core. I just felt totally apathetic about everything and I knew that wasn’t my true nature, but for those years it is how I felt. I felt as if anything I did would end up ruined, so why try at all.

In the past few months though I think I felt a little light inside me saying, you know what you’re doing, and it is time. I could no longer fight or argue with my friends when they’d tell me I was an expert on Americana or I knew far more about life than I let on. It was the opposite of fake it til you make it…it was be the silent person in the corner and do nothing.

At this point I am rambling, but it is sorta cathartic for someone that has tried to write for years but simply couldn’t A friend told me I was one of the most fearless people she knows. I laughed when she said it. I thought if she only could hear the self conscious voices in my head. For now though those voices have taken a seat. The garden has grown and is ready to share.

In the past week I have gone through our complete archives. Every story. Every photo. Every trip. I have poured over past lessons and conversations. I’ve pondered meetings and encounters and advice I was given both good and misguided. I’ve looked at where I was at 21 and who I was back then. I’ve looked at who I’ve grown into. I could write volumes on the lessons of everything I’ve seen. I could write lessons on everything I learned from just living this life, but for now….

Lets Go!

Recollections 1: An Introduction (A Day in Autumn)

These are the recollections of days well spent, of trips that will live forever in the deep cavernous depths of one’s mind. Days that stretch on from the first rising of the sun to long past the purple hazy light of the long set sun. These days dance through the halls of memory and inspire the adventures yet to come. I am one of the lucky ones here on this earth, I get so many of those days. I don’t take that for granted, not for a single second, but it does drive me to document those days well spent with the most tenacious and tedious of detail. Journals to live vicariously through when you’re reading this on a screen or when I am anciently old and looking back on my very own past.

We search for the themes that carry us through this life. We search for those fibrous threads that link us to the humanities around us and to the souls of others. For me the landscapes often drive that quest. Be it driving down one lane roads, interstates, or the cobblestone streets of old New York the quest for new views drives me as much as my slow life on my little old plot of Kentucky land drives me to stop this writing and photograph that way the sun is rising against the October sugar maple leaves.

Twenty minutes later I have returned. The light continues to climb up the front of the house and flood through the windows. The light seems especially golden as the morning fog and copper leaves meet and light fractures beyond the screens and onto the white washed floors.

These are the memories of those days from the road and here at home. These are the journals of a life well lived, right here, wherever here might be.

On this day we drove somewhere through Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom and the central parts of New Hampshire, south of Mount Washington down towards Maine, I suppose. Time has a way of blurring the maps of the different days, but the landscapes and conversations tend to stand out. The camera roll says the day began with donuts, delicious donuts from an old fashioned grocery in Vermont. Lunch was pizza at a place near the Canadian border. As I type I remember we then went on up to see the border. We found a lavender farm on a hill that had vista like views of the Canadian landscapes across that manmade arbitrary line that divides us. From there we journeyed on as it began to rain, or perhaps continued to rain. The rain seemed to be ever present on that trip, but the clouds made for the perfect light to shoot photos of the landscapes with. We found lakes around curves that seemed to be formed between the mountains, we found creeks that flowed over long fallen rocks, we found tiny towns that time seemed to have forgotten, but we were lost in the quiet discovery of it all. Places marked on the map for future returns. The rain fell heavier as the day grew on. The Maine border brought pouring showers that persuaded us to stop for the night, and as I recollect the destination for the following day was to be Acadia out there on the coast.

Autumn Wednesday at the Farmhouse

Company is always welcome here, except when it isn’t, but most of the time it is. Usually we have a meal here each week. Usually it is on Tuesdays. We come together to plan workshops or events or to gossip or to simply have whatever is fresh from the garden that week. This week we had pumpkin soup, which is a recipe I have shared here on the website. It is one of my most requested dishes. A combination of basil, pumpkin, garlic, and cream create a delicious warm savory autumn pumpkin dish. Leftover pumpkin is turned into pies. Four pies were baked last night after all the company left. Wednesday was the baking day for the week. One day each week is reserved for baking bread. Typically eight loaves are made, four cinnamon, and four regular. Almost all are given away, but today at least one was for the luncheon table. Bread pudding was served, a variation of my traditional bread pudding (available here on the website) with caramel pecan apple butter (available here) added into the egg/cream batter. It was a hearty meal for all.

As I continue sharing the slow life here at Walton’s Creek it’ll be lots of short ramblings like these. Autumn is really progressing beautifully here, each day more leaves are in their glorious colors and the piles are starting to form on the ground. The back of the valley is especially beautiful this year. The tornado took the treeline out that divided the valley in half. Now the focal point is a beautiful grove of maples surrounding an old house high on the north western edge of the valley.

The day began with a few images of my favorite autumn pieces on the mantle and progressed to the most beautiful sunset after scattered showers. Today, Thursday, brings pumpkin pies and so much leftover bread.

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First Frost

The first frost of the season came, and went. It was early this year, two weeks earlier than it should have been. Today they’re calling for a high of 80 and we likely won’t see another frost for ten more days, more in line when the almanac historically says the first frost should come. For that those fleeting hours, two early mornings ago, the earth and land stood still and calm beneath the near dark of the early morning light. A thin sheet of glassy like ice frosted and tipped all of the once vibrant summer foliage and blooms. Those tender plants now wear the browned and dried battle scars of the first frost.

When the Frost is on the Punkin

BY JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY

When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder’s in the shock,

And you hear the kyouck and gobble of the struttin’ turkey-cock,

And the clackin’ of the guineys, and the cluckin’ of the hens,

And the rooster’s hallylooyer as he tiptoes on the fence;

O, it’s then’s the times a feller is a-feelin’ at his best,

With the risin’ sun to greet him from a night of peaceful rest,

As he leaves the house, bareheaded, and goes out to feed the stock,

When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder’s in the shock.

They’s something kindo’ harty-like about the atmusfere

When the heat of summer’s over and the coolin’ fall is here—

Of course we miss the flowers, and the blossums on the trees,

And the mumble of the hummin’-birds and buzzin’ of the bees;

But the air’s so appetizin’; and the landscape through the haze

Of a crisp and sunny morning of the airly autumn days

Is a pictur’ that no painter has the colorin’ to mock—

When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder’s in the shock.

The husky, rusty russel of the tossels of the corn,

And the raspin’ of the tangled leaves, as golden as the morn;

The stubble in the furries—kindo’ lonesome-like, but still

A-preachin’ sermuns to us of the barns they growed to fill;

The strawstack in the medder, and the reaper in the shed;

The hosses in theyr stalls below—the clover over-head!—

O, it sets my hart a-clickin’ like the tickin’ of a clock,

When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder’s in the shock!

Then your apples all is gethered, and the ones a feller keeps

Is poured around the celler-floor in red and yeller heaps;

And your cider-makin’ ’s over, and your wimmern-folks is through

With their mince and apple-butter, and theyr souse and saussage, too! ...

I don’t know how to tell it—but ef sich a thing could be

As the Angels wantin’ boardin’, and they’d call around on me—

I’d want to ’commodate ’em—all the whole-indurin’ flock—

When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder’s in the shock!

The Tent Giveaway!

GIVEAWAY! Back in the fall we started a tent giveaway. We have absolutely fallen in love with the Stout tent you saw at the farmhouse all summer and autumn. The plan was to give one away the first week of December, there had been two points of entry (The Tourists Welcome issue of FOLK and the Autumn market at the farmhouse) and we would have a third and final one here. Then the tornado came and took the tent in our yard away, and caused us to delay the giveaway. This weekend though feels like the perfect time for us to wrap up the giveaway and for you to enter!

What you’re entering to win: 1 Stout brand luxury tent—perfect for camping, glamping, or enjoying life outdoors. The winner will receive one of these beauties and will be the envy of all their neighbors. We can assure you that you’ve never seen a tent this well made. To enter simply enter your email address below. On March 1 we will add all of these entries to those from the first two points of entry together and a random winner will be selected.

PLEASE GIVE THE WALTON CREEK FARMHOUSE IG A FOLLOW

Ten Years of FOLK, a conversation

This month FOLK celebrated the 10th birthday! A cause for celebration! It has been a journey of highs and lows. I tried and tried to find the words to share, but they simply never came in written form, instead a video was made….

Entry 1: I Want to Live the Life of a Morning Glory

the concept is to write one piece a day, no topic, no goal, just to write, and to see where it goes.

I WANT TO LIVE THE LIFE OF A MORNING GLORY

I want to live the life of a morning glory. I want to slowly creep and crawl towards the sky. I want to weave myself through the gardens, the fencerows, and the corn fields. I want to flower under the cover of the morning dew, quietly awakening with the eastern facing sun. I want my colors to show in that cool blue glow of the dawn. I want the droplets to form and roll off my petals and my skin like they have since the stories of old. I want to cling to the summer months and fade into the cold. I want to grow and curl with each passing hour and day. I want to envelope the landscapes sharing my beauty with those that appreciate it, only to annoy those that don’t. I want to provide refuge for the creepies and the crawlies. I want to be close my blooms and retreat from the noonday sun. I want to reserve my simple grandeur for those hours when the world is is calm. I want to live the life of a morning glory, eternally growing, modest, stedfast, wispy and wiry, yet forever bold.