beauty is pain

Today was one of those beautiful summer days that are so flattering to the world. My bike ride home from work was stunning in the warm evening light. Here are a few photos of it... I feel so lucky to live a bike ride away from so much beauty.

An evening garden

This isn't Jordan's Farm, but Maxwell's - which provides some of our tasty strawberries, arugula, and basil

Maxwell's

...and some casual llamas on my route home. If these are your llamas - they brighten my day every morning and evening!

While days like this make our town look nicer than ever, it does NOT have the same effect on vegetables. In the heat, lettuce wilts; beet greens whine and Swiss chard languishes pathetically. It takes a surprising amount of running around - spritzing veggies with cold water, returning them to the cooler when they need to crisp, replacing the ones customers buy, keeping the display tables well-iced - to keep the farm stand looking exactly the same.

The vegetables do look darn good when they are properly cosmeticked. Colorful, piled in luxurious heaps, sparkly with little drops of cold water. Like pebbles on the beach, most vegetables look best when they are glossy with water. Our eyes know that pebbles belong in the sea, and when we take them home we can never quite replicate their natural, oceanic loveliness. The funny thing is that vegetables are naturally dirty. Smeared with mud or caked with sand. For some reason our eyes want to think that vegetables, too, are sea-things, that wetness is their most natural state.

first week

Friday marked the close of my first week at Jordan’s Farm. Like any first week, it’s been a storm of new faces, unfamiliar routines, and a few tricky customer questions. But I think I’m beginning to settle into life here: for the past few nights I’ve dreamed about spinach. In my first week, I’ve washed and packed so many bags of spinach and lettuce that leaves march across my eyelids as I sleep, and when I see a wilted leaf on the street I feel the urge to pluck it up and toss it in the compost bucket.

Week one has been about getting the lay of the farm stand. It’s a sweet building with wide, open front doors that let in delicious breezes—a perk most cashiers certainly don’t get. When I arrive in the mornings, Susan has already arranged the day’s vegetables beautifully. One of my jobs is to keep them looking “gorgeous,” primping and preening them with a spray bottle of cool water and invisible waves of affection.

After a cold spring and a damp, chilly week (“You should have been here three weeks ago,” my coworker Jamie told me, shivering at the memory), summer is finally starting to assert its presence. I'm looking forward to my rookie season.

Rachel and some good old salad-packing