I love when libraries and agriculture overlap!

And it happens fairly often, actually! Many libraries have accompanying community or library gardens – such a great way to bring in new patrons to the library and bring existing library patrons into the garden. Cool stuff, yo.

If you’re in Western Mass – the Springfield Public Library is holding a series of talks about starting an urban garden. I guess I’m no longer urban anymore (whomp whomp…I still haven’t fully copped to the idea that I don’t live in Somerville anymore) but it still seems interesting.

Urban Gardening

More info here.

Our original story

I am updating our blog to reflect our current realities and reflecting on how and why we started this to beginning. I am so glad we chose to blog (even if it wasn’t all too often) and I am excited to continue writing about the intersection of librarianship, food, agriculture, love, and life.

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This blog is a personal exploration space for the act of going with our love, quite literally, to the fields.

After two years of Liza being a full-time grad student and full-time library employee, it is time for a little adventure. Mike and Liza have long discussed the impending graduation and “September 2010″ has been the source of many a daydream. Maybe we’d live in London? Or Guam? Or hike the Appalachian Trail? The possibilities seemed endless. And suddenly this past winter – September 2010  a short six months away – the perfect plan fell into place.

Mike is a preschool teacher September through June and spends his summers working on a garden and teaching about agriculture and meditation. A couple he knows through the summer program happens to own a large patch of developing land in Mexico. Baja California Sur, specifically. And they need a hand (or two) developing it.

So we’re going. Liza will have her masters in library science at the end of August, which means it only would have been a matter of time before leaving her paraprofessional library assistant position. We are taking a leap and moving together to Mexico to garden and learn and eat avocados for a few months before returning to the States and, inevitably, those pesky student loans.

This blog will be a space for us to explore a developing relationship with each other, agriculture, food, our relatively new professions (librarianship and early childhood education), and the unexpected. We want to be accountable for the tremendous opportunity we have to do this – accountable to our supportive friends, family, and professional colleagues – accountable for approaching the experience in a thoughtful, relevant way.

This blog is another way for us to practice resurrection.

Lent

I have been avoiding blogging lately. I think about posts I could write all the time but whenever it comes down to it, I can’t make myself. I feel this bizarre sense of obligation to update and that makes me not want to do it. I am on the computer most of the day at work and I spend so much of my free time doing computer-related activities for various organizations (InterFuture, I’m looking at you) that when it comes to keeping a personal blog, I just can’t seem to commit. Even though I like it! It forces me to write! It is good for professional development! Etc.

Any of you internet folks feel this way ever? It’s the same reason I gave up Twitter. How do you make yourself do the extra work for your own, personal social media presence?

Anyway. On to the topic I actually intended to write about…

Today is the first day of lent.

I could not be less Catholic if I tried. Less religious, in general, even. I am an atheist. Despite that, I have an attachment to multiple religious-based holidays…not for the spiritual element, but for the practical purposes that they have served for humans for hundreds of years. Christmas, for example – a great way to spend time with family and friends, a day to look forward to during the darkest, coldest time of year. Without Christmas, winter (in New England, anyway) would suck much more than it already does.

So if you buy my logic up to this point…

Another religious tradition M. and I have been talking about recently is lent. Lent is about Jesus, sure, but it was also about finding a way to make provisions last during the leanest time of year. If we all lived off of totally local food, March would be the hardest month in climates like New England. There would be absolutely no fresh produce yet and the storage of winter vegetables and grains would be growing slimmer and slimmer. April – and fresh food again – is just around the corner but getting through late February and March would be tough business. So for practical  reasons, people cut things out of their diet, using spiritual growth as a tool to manage the reduced diets.

Humans have been doing this for thousands of years in different cultures (things similar to lent exist in practically every religion). I like the idea of participating in lent in my own way, not only as an excuse to live a healthier/more pure lifestyle for a set time period, but also to know that you are struggling to do so with many other people around you, with a history of billions of people at your back.

So what am I giving up this lean time of year? Sugar. M., too – his idea, actually. Only cane sugar and artificial sweeteners – honey and maple syrup are ok – which I suspect will be very easy at home but difficult when out. And at work, where candy and cookies and sugar-filled treats of all kinds tend to fill the staff room.

So how did we celebrate Mardi Gras (Shrove Tuesday in the UK/Ireland) – the day when you rid your house of the temptations you will be avoiding the coming weeks and indulge for one last night? We ate every last piece of chocolate in the house AND got a banana split from Herrell’s. Not a bad night. Not a bad night at all.

Real life starts tomorrow.

Tomorrow I go back to the 9-to-5 working life, something I haven’t done in a couple of years. I am excited (making money! Doing what I love! Working without the pressure of being in school! Meeting new people!), scared (what if I suck? What will I wear – all my clothes are still in boxes! Meeting new people!), and a little sad (goodbye, glorious freedom of the past six months).

Mostly, I am waiting in anticipation for normalcy. For having a regular schedule, coming home and making dinner, doing yoga, seeing friends, etc. It will take several months for this normalcy to appear and I am acutely aware of this (Christine’s honest opinion, which I love her for, “the next few months will suck. Suck a lot. But it’s fine”). And so tomorrow I will try to live what I would like a ‘normal’ day to look like – waking up on time, doing yoga before work, packing a lunch, feeling energetic through the work day, making dinner, speaking with a friend or two, chatting with Mike, going to bed at a reasonable hour.

Some times the idea of months and months of average days like this frighten me (ahh! suburban, coupled life!) but today I find it appealing in its simplicity. I think the crazy week of co-chairing the InterFuture conference and then moving is making me crave the basics. I appreciate the chaotic times and late late nights with friends when they are less frequent than the boring, normal days. The chaotic times have been more often than not for the past month and I won’t miss them as I recuperate for a couple of weeks.

On a side note – I am coming to Boston in a couple of weeks (Feb. 19th, I think?)! Boston folks (i.e. Kate and Kaitlin), I look forward to seeing you then!

Small town livin’

There are some pretty major life changes in the works. I did get that job I mentioned previously (yay!) and that has big implications, beyond the fact that I will be employed and no longer just hanging out.

For the past seven years, I have lived in Boston. On and off at times – I lived abroad for a year – but Boston has always been home base. I have lived there my entire adult life and it is where I came of age. It feels, in many ways, more home to me than my parents’ house, a place where we moved when I was a senior in high school. Mike and I were living in the middle of nowhere in Mexico but it felt like a temporary thing, always. An adventure, a dream, with a set end-date.

This job that I have gotten, and will start at the end of the month, is in a town about two hours west of Boston. It is not in a village or anything (it’s a metropolis compared to where my parents live) but it is not urban. I need to own a car. My commute will be a half hour drive each way. I’ve barely driven at all in the past seven years and haven’t owned a car since high school. I now am the not-so-proud owner (I claimed I was never going to buy a car ever again and have sheepishly had to eat my words) of an admittedly adorable Honda Fit but…buying the car was stressful. It’s a lot of money but more than that it served as a symbol of the massive culture shock I am going through.

Don’t get me wrong – I am beyond excited. The job is amazing, the perfect position for me, actually (well, in theory. Maybe I should work a week or two before saying that, ha!). Even with the car payment and gas and whatnot, life will be cheaper. Rent out there – wow. Mike and I found a really nice place (we’re moving in together – no big deal, just stack that giant relationship change on top of everything else, haha) for significantly, really significantly, less than what I was paying in Boston. And the place is huge! And we’ll have a garden!

So while small town living is no longer familiar, I expect I will adapt quickly. It is, after all, what I grew up with. I am psyched to be involved with my local public library (friends group, here I come!) and to get to know the area. Mike, however, is moving back to his hometown, which presents a whole other set of issues…