Our Local Organic Community Farm Gets a Gift, Vegan Snack Jars, and More Plans for Hawaii

My husband just finished building a beautiful, big pavilion (24 x 36 feet) for the Gifts of Love Organic Community Farm in Simsbury. This is an ‘in-progress’ photo. I’m very proud of him!

So proud of my husband right now. He recently completed a long-term volunteer project for Gifts of Love Organic Community Farm in Simsbury, a certified organic community farm dedicated to growing fresh fruits and veggies for Gifts of Love Food Pantry.

The pantry serves people in financial crisis - those who have lost their jobs, spouses, or health, and seek the basic need of fresh, nourishing, organic food as they work to get back on their feet. It also provides communities of color and those with chronic low incomes with healthful nutrition.

The farm offers organic farming education to young people at its Farm Summer School. I can’t imagine a better mission than teaching youth about the importance of growing their own holistic, wholesome, medicinal food.

This is about planning for the future, promoting food security and global sustainability, and improving the quality of the food we eat. It’s about providing clean food for whomever needs it. It also helps free us all from the clutch of corporate food and industrialized agriculture.

My husband built a gorgeous, 24- by 36-foot pavilion for the farm. He was really psyched about the build, and for months, showed me blueprints and plans and sought my opinions. He worked in sweltering heat to complete the construction in June. It took many months of planning and implementing, but it’s done now, and with perfect timing. It’s July, and the pavilion will get plenty of use its first season.

Tonight, the farm is having farm volunteers and their spouses over for a Farm-to-Table dinner feast. I’m really looking forward to the fresh food and fellowship! This farm is a great place, and if you’re in the area, check it out.

Today, I’m munching on a bowl of our own garden green beans. The bean bushes are producing lots of food now. Pretty much every time I leave or return home, I go to the garden and munch out on beans. Thank you, Mother Earth!

Yesterday, I picked up a watermelon and a golden honeydew, chopped them both into chunks, and layered them in Ball jars. They are a sweet, cold, refreshing vegan snack that I can carry anywhere. They’re super pretty and delicious, raw and healthy, so please try it!

A quick update on our excellent friend River. He’s doing very well: feeling better, eating again, and being his sassy self. He spent the better part of last week and the holiday weekend on his boat in Narragansett. This makes me impossibly happy. River is a pure spirit. I want to commune with him as long as possible. Both my husband and I love him.

We were talking about a life in Hawaii again last night. We keep going back to the same plan: breathe in/breathe out, sell what we have, get rid of the baggage, give our family and friends all our love, take the dogs, and go. Commit an act of faith.

I’ve lived and traveled everywhere in the world, from Scotland, England, and Ireland to Paris and Hong Kong, San Francisco and Los Angeles to New York City. Uprooting and starting new doesn’t daunt me at all. My Dad used to call me The Gypsy.

My husband, though. has never lived anywhere but in Connecticut, and there’s some jitters. But these ideas – the ones that won’t go away - are the ones we should listen to. We learn nothing except by going from the known to the unknown.

Live in peace.