Swoop and Dive

Dane will be at Matthews.  Go early.
Maria will be at Charlotte.
We are not setting up Davidson - We will be back next week.

At Matthews (go early) Dane will have:
Beefsteak tomatoes
Heirloom tomatoes
White and Orange Sweet Potatoes
Small amount of summer squash
Kabotha Squash

At Charlotte, Maria will have:
Beefsteak and Heirloom and Cherry Sungold Tomatoes
White and Orange Sweet Potatoes
Unshelled Limas
Field Peas
Kabotha Squash

Three Skies and Dragonflies:

7 pm.  The sun in thinking about going down.  Shin deep in cool water, I bend down to pick a fat tomato from the bottom of a vine in our second newest field.  Cracked.  I throw it up out of the rows - away from Dane who is picking further up the field in the "dry" part.  We are getting out as many tomatoes as we can before anymore bursting of rain or tomatoes occurs.  It is quiet.  There are no neighbors running distant motors.  

There are three skies.  Hanging low, left-over rain clouds surround us in blue-grey.  Like an orphaned wispy fog.  Above, relieved/light/puffy clouds are glaringly bright with heavenly glow - pink, bright white, tinged behind with purple-grey.  Even higher above a deep and perfect azure sky is reminding us that this too, shall pass.  

Feeling the humidity, we sweat and work as fast as we can.  Insects are emerging as the sun descends.  In the distance, a cloud of thirty bats come out and start swooping and circling over our older fields.  First, they are 100 feet up and a couple acres away.  Then they get closer and lower until they are right above our peach orchard just above the field we are in.  Upon closer view, I can see that they are not bats, but I can not tell exactly what they are.  I ask Dane.  "Rain crows."  He says.  "They migrate now and for the next month."  "They might be eating insects."  They swoop and dive looking remarkably succinct and graceful against the three skies; wispy, heavenly and azure-blue.  "Look at that!"  I told Dane.  And at the level of peach trunks a hundred dragon-flies swarmed below the rain crows.  Eating mosquitoes.  Also swooping and diving, but in a smaller pattern.  

Clouds; rain, bird and insect.  Surreal.

Trish:

Trish is the Charlotte Farmers Market Matriarch.  She takes time to know every vender and has been there for more than many seasons.  She sells homemade crocheted, felted and sewn items.  Every year I go and investigate her display looking for what I am going to buy for Christmas.  Every year, she has something new and fun to look at.  This year she is making felted handbags with interesting buttons/earrings that she has saved over time.  Her use of browns inspires me.  She has baby items and all manner of hats and scarves for adults.  When I wear her stuff, I feel very VERY stylish.  

I am waiting for her to start making yoga-matt carriers - but with her schedule of having her hands busy producing new stuff every spare minute, she has not been able to work that in yet.  I know she will.  She was Vera Bradley before Vera was.  She puts a bible verse on every tag on every item.  

She sings.  She sings at Christmas at the stand and sells at the same time.   It is my most favorite Farmers Market experience to be near her when she sings.  My second favorite is to be near her when she tells a happy story.   Her eyes sparkle.  She adores children and comes to see Gregori every time I have him there.  I love Trish.  And her stuff is so good, I would buy it every year even if I did not love her.  But the love there, in her stuff, makes it that much better.    

Maria Fisher
fisherfarms1933@gmail.com
704-239-1719
FAX 866-302-4023
www.fisherfarms1933.com

"When will our consciences grow so tender that we will act to prevent human misery rather than avenge it?" - Eleanor Roosevelt