Farmers’ Market Musings

The hitch in my giddy up
A few years ago, before I knew what it was like to have a back injury, Marilyn Engle called early in the morning on the opening day of the market. “We can’t make it today,” she said with sadness. “Tom’s back is out. The car is loaded for market, but we just can’t make it.” We kept their stall space open for them, waiting for their return, until we finally had to accept the change.
I had no idea what it was like to have one’s “back out” until my back went out a few years after Tom’s injury. Yesterday, just as I was gaining steam to dive into multiple projects post Farmers’ Market season, my back went out again. The spirit said, “Build a green house” and the body said, “No. It’s time to slow down.” There is no end to the list of useful things I could be doing, but they will have to wait.  At the moment, physical movements require focused breath and concentration. I can sit at the computer desk, but must remember to pause, breath and focus on standing and walking regularly, or else risk being locked in one position.
I find myself walking like my dad, who after many years of packing cantaloupes in his youth, driving tractors, and channeling water with a shovel, finally arrived at the time when he would say, “Can’t do that today kids – just don’t have the get along in my get go.” So I am settling in to accepting the peacefulness in focusing my breath, and realizing the meditative time I have been trying to carve out of my busyness has been granted via the injury.
Thank heavens, it happened this time of year, after Thanksgiving, after the last market, after the Growers’ Dinner, and just before the Winter Solstice, and just before Christmas. Thank heavens my housemate is a Florence Nightingale. She and the osteopath, the physical therapist, and the acupuncturist have seen me through this recovery before. Thank heavens the Affordable Care Act will cut my monthly premiums in half.
It is a good time of year for me to take some time to listen, to reflect, to refrain from trying to reinvent the wheel, and to let the poets, such as Christina Rossetti (1830-1894) do the work of capturing the spirit of the season. I think it is interesting that Christina was so confident about the second and fourth lines of the second stanza, but she seems to have some doubts about the angels in the third stanza. In my humble opinion (that would be IMHO if I were texting my nieces and nephews) I am wrestling with the mystery of those lines, yet I am certain that angels always “throng the air” whenever a baby is born, and especially when the birth happens in a stable.
In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone;
Snow had fallen snow on snow, snow on snow,
In the bleak midwinter, long time ago.
Our God, heaven cannot hold him, nor Earth sustain;
Heaven and Earth shall flee away when he comes to reign.
In the bleak midwinter a stable place sufficed
The Lord God incarnate, Jesus Christ.
Angels and Archangels may have gathered there
Cherubim and Seraphim thronged the air
But his mother only, in her maiden bliss
Worshipped the beloved with a kiss.
What can I give him, poor as I am?
If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb;
If I were a wise man, I would do my part;
Yet what can I give him – give my heart.
Gustav Holst set the poem to music in 1906, while he was living in the village of Cranham in the English county of Gloucestershire. I read that Holst was influenced by the English folksong revival, which makes sense, because I think the tune is in my DNA. The house where he wrote the Christmas Carol is now called “Midwinter Cottage.” I might have missed this visit with Gustav and Christina, if it had not been for the inconvenience of this midwinter hitch in my giddy-up.
Mary Kelley is the manager of the Healdsburg Farmers’ Market. The market is currently closed for the season.