http://www.ladybugletter.com Letters from Mariquita Farm Sat, 22 May 2010 14:30:00 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en During a Passover Seder feast a blessing is recited over two kinds of bitter herbs, Maror and Chazeret. In America, the bitter herb often used for the Maror is horseradish while Romaine lettuce stands in for Chazeret. Since a Seder is the ritual retelling of the liberation of the Israelites ... http://www.ladybugletter.com/?p=89 I’ve got a glass bowl in my cupboard with a handful of obsidian arrow points I’ve found over the years on the different farms I’ve worked on. No surprise there; the native Californians who made the Central Coast their home before the Spanish invasion chose to make their villages on ... http://www.ladybugletter.com/?p=88 Earlier this summer we harvested a block of sweet corn. I also grew two small experimental plantings of Indian corn; one an heirloom dent corn with pastel, multicolored kernels called “Earth Tones Dent,” the other a green seeded variety called “Oaxacan Green Dent.” Corn is pollinated by the wind, so ... http://www.ladybugletter.com/?p=87 Autumn isn’t far off now. It’s too dark anymore at 6AM for us to harvest so we’re now starting the work day at 6:30. The sun is bright and hot on our backs at mid-day, but the shade under the trees along the creek at the edge of the field ... http://www.ladybugletter.com/?p=86 When I was a college student at UC Davis a kid named Bill lived down the hall from me in the Pierce Coop dormitory. Bill had grown up near Pleasanton in a gated community with a golf course and his father was a senior executive with the Bank of America. ... http://www.ladybugletter.com/?p=85 At dawn the air is cool and still at the farm. We haven’t had rain for several months here on Mariquita Farm. The weather has been hot, so everywhere we haven’t irrigated the ground is dry. Where we have irrigated the mud bakes and cracks in the heat so that ... http://www.ladybugletter.com/?p=84 Padron is a town in Spain north of Portugal in Galicia on the Atlantic coast.  I passed through Padron in 1993, and stopped for lunch, but I didn’t try their world-famous peppers. I was with Julia, and we were on our honeymoon. We shared a plate of sardines and a ... http://www.ladybugletter.com/?p=83 I live on a farm so I wake up with the rooster. When the donkeys see the kitchen light go on they bray for hay, and then the goats and the sheep hear the donkeys and bleat and bah for attention. After coffee I feed the animals, and by 6:30 ... http://www.ladybugletter.com/?p=82 If FDA officials ever find out about basil’s intoxicating qualities they will want to regulate it. Actually, when speaking of basil, the word "intoxicating" misleads since it implies that the herb contains toxins; “euphoric” might be a better fit, since basil’s fragrance ... http://www.ladybugletter.com/?p=80 Five Quechua girls followed me down the steep cobbled street at a distance, giggling, until one of them got up the nerve to dash past and confront me. “Would you please come to my house for tea?” she asked. Her friends crowded around. They were thirteen or fourteen years old, dressed ... http://www.ladybugletter.com/?p=79