a summer salon at fairy-tale farm
Just inside the gate at Fairy-Tale Farm last night, the first summertime salon was commencing,
with beautiful glass jewelry and buttons,
treats and a bright, slightly herbal punch,
and jams and produce for the urban farm market part of the event—all in keeping with the organizers’ wishes: “Our intention is to grow a farmer’s market for the DIY community who doesn’t make enough to sell at the Farmer’s Market.”
Karsten showed my wonderful friend Margaret and me the rest of Fairy-Tale Farm,
and as we were about to venture beyond the fruit trees and the hives,
Karsten’s lovely wife Debbie, wearing a dress I covet, serenaded us and asked that he let the chickens out,
and so Karsten did, explaining about the laying cycles of late in this coop, fronted with a repurposed circus board,
as the ladies went scurrying into the yard,
and gently, he lifted one who likes to stay in the coop out.
There were a few new beautiful blue eggs,
and more of the farm to see—some new things growing where tables for underground dinners used to be set up,
and you will find you are surrounded by circles, the most special being the circular area in the center of the garden, just large enough for one table (what you can’t see in the photo are the girls sitting in that circle, perhaps holding forth in their own club, surrounded by string runners for peas and tall, swaying plants).
Heading back to the salon behind these two noted open source software advocates, I noticed the table set up for collage work with seats of orange pillows on hay,
and smiled at these two in the foreground, clearly intrigued by something (capturing a chicken?) off to the right as the food table busied,
laden with cauliflower of a Madhur Jaffrey recipe to go with basmati rice,
near pan bread with lemon cheese and apricot chutney, two sizes of biscuits, butter, and jam.
Margaret and I agreed that the biscuits were made with a great starter (Margaret has expertise on biscuits and the deep level of commitment it takes to start and build communities, the same way bread requires proofing),
and the maker of the excellent jams encouraged sampling,
as someone left, smiling, with his arms full of basil,
and the grower of the basil, her hands full of sweet peas,
let me try one of her alpine strawberries (these are also known as fraises des bois and they are magic).
Margaret and I found a little bench tucked away behind the collage table to catch up from our travels,
and as we left this wonderful place full of the sort of people that make Santa Cruz exactly where I want to be this summer, a maker of pastel marshmallows appeared,
reminding me of the colored marshmallows at the markets in Nice last week (more on those adventures tomorrow) and of how makers and markets all over love to share why they make what they make…
Update: July 2, 2010: Karsten posted on the urban market, explaining the concept and detailing the makers and musicians who came with clear passion. He also said some really nice things about this post (thanks, Karsten!) For more on Fairy-Tale Farm, follow their site.
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Posted by Kristen Taylor on Friday, July 2nd, 2010, 11:44 am * Filed in flowers, Food, garden, Market, Santa Cruz. * Tags: cruz, fairy, fairy-tale, farm, kristen, kthread, santa, summer, tale, taylor. Follow responses through the RSS 2.0 feed. Leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
July 2nd, 2010 at 11:08 pm
Great post! I Miss Karsten & Debbie and wish I could have joined them that evening, but I live too far away to participate these days. Thanks to your great photos, displayed so large, I am able to enjoy the evening from afar.
I posted about the Summer Salon & Urban Farm Market on Love & Trash
http://loveandtrash.com/2010/07/building-genuine-community/
Karsten commented today, mentioning your post. I’m glad he did, I look forwarding to reading through you blog!
Cheers!
July 3rd, 2010 at 11:03 am
Thanks, Father Mayhem! So happy my photos could show some of the fun we had–it is all about connecting us, no matter how far apart we are. Karsten and Debbie are delightful. I’m reading your post now, sure that we’ll overlap on topics again in the future :)
July 7th, 2010 at 3:54 pm
[...] morning I woke to a wonderful blog post by Kristen Taylor (@kthread), who came with Margaret Rosas (@mrosas), Quiddities chief and fellow Santa Cruz open [...]