Back to normal

It has been a hectic two weeks. Following our garden party, we both prepped for our first courses of the fall semester, cooked lunch and dinner for 160 people over the weekend at the Restoration Festival in Albany, NY, and weathered the tropical storm that left us without power for five days.

But despite no running water, internet, or lights for too many hours, the garden survived miraculously. Before we left for Albany for the weekend, we harvested any ripe or ripening tomatoes and stored them away in our deposito (knowing they don't like too much water) and we put extra mulch on our crops to prevent run-off. When we arrived back on the farm on Monday morning, every plant was in its place. Our backyard was a mini-pond, and the stream that surfaces only for the springtime-thaw was back running through the property, but thanks to all of our double-digging and mulching, all of our crops were spared.

So we've been off-routine for a few days, which is unsettling. But we have had some amazing community experiences. At the Rest Fest in Albany (a music festival whose proceeds go toward restoring historic buildings in Albany, in this case, St. Joseph's Church) we saw a collective of musicians, artists and friends pull off a two-day music festival in the middle of Irene's fury. Great music, seamless programming, fantastic church acoustics, professional volunteers, bailing out the flooding church, diverting drainage systems, fun times in the green room and getting to see my little brother pull-off such an event were some of the highlights. And on our local front, we had neighbors offering their freezer space, cold beers and generator-electricity to charge computers and cell phones. There's nothing like a community event to bring the community together, be it a planned celebration or one of nature's disasters.

Now it's back to normal... more blog posts, more planting, more fall-time prepping.