WHAT'S NEW THIS WEEK:
The barn is fully up. Next step, we have to build the interior and hook up the electricity.
All offerings remain as described below.
One year ago today! (Photo by Victoria Cox)
| Not One Single Thing Hey all! It’s Victoria.This week was my one-year anniversary of arriving at Turkana, and, as is almost always the case in adulthood, it feels like simultaneously more and less time has elapsed. Looking back over the last year, it feels nearly impossible to take a full account of it. When I’m standing on the front lawn, wrapped in a cozy sweater and smelling the warm, complex rot of fallen leaves, it seems like no time at all has passed. Conversely, when I’m upstairs sweeping the spiderwebs out of the corners, it feels like I’ve spent far more than a year on this particular activity already. When a friend asks how the year has gone, I’m left at a loss for words, as all these different measures of time collapse at once: it was very good in parts! Some parts were really brutal! It certainly all happened! But I don’t have a word that gets across just how much this year really was. Except maybe “Heterogeneous”.Chimamanda Adichie talks about this in her 2009 TED talk (still the standout of the medium) “The Danger of a Single Story.” I’ve been thinking about this piece almost constantly for a decade now (another measure of time that seems impossible), and it hit home for me again this week when my hometown, Sevier County, Tennessee, was in the national news for shameful reasons. At a meeting about protecting Second Amendment rights, County Commissioner Warren Hurst said, among other spurious things, that it was “ugly” to have “a queer” running for President. Of course, one commissioner's regressive homophobia is less of a totalizing force than the entirety of Western colonialism that Adichie examines. Still, these statements operate around similar fault lines--Flannery O’Connor knew this when she said “Anything that comes out of the South is going to be called grotesque by the northern reader, unless it is grotesque, in which case it is going to be called realistic.” I feel a similar pressure in response to this event, a flattening of the reality of my home for people who would never have heard or thought about it otherwise. Sure, there were people who applauded Hurst’s statements. There were also people who walked out. He doesn’t represent me, or my family, or our thoughts about things, but in a very literal, political sense, he also does. We may or may not be related. I’ve heard a few calls from non-local citizens to boycott the local tourist industry as a result, including Dollywood, as if Dolly Parton isn’t an outspoken icon of queer acceptance and/or literal saint of whitetrash liberation. I’m frustrated by this seeming inability to separate a person from a place, the parts from the whole. My present from my past.This week, I was a bridesmaid for one of my dearest friends, celebrating a truly beautiful union in a gorgeous venue. It was also the week of my stepfather’s memorial service, which I couldn’t attend, and my last week of work for a job I wasn’t ready to leave. I went directly from a painful exit interview to the wedding rehearsal, which was a delight. I took six trains in an 80-hour window. I danced in gold cowboy boots. What was it, except for a lot of everything?The last thing Troy and I did before we left for the wedding was usher all the sheep into their brand-new, just-finished barn. We had hoped to have a sort of formal barn-warming, maybe a dance on the new concrete floors before the sheep had a chance to christen them with manure? But a rainstorm was coming, and timing was so tight, and we had to get everything else done. The construction trucks rolled out, the stormclouds rolled in, and Troy and I ran to fill the new barn with hay before it got wet, and sheep before they got chilled. It was a mess, and it was also a miracle. We can’t insist that anything is just one thing.Except Dolly Parton. She’s objectively just perfect.Note: If you’d like to make a tangible anti-Hurst statement, please donate to Queer Appalachia, the STAY project, and/or the Knoxville Abortion Doula Collective |
| WHAT'S AVAILABLE THIS WEEK Raspberries, sorry, season is over Peppers - season is over Tiny hot matchbox peppers, $5.00 a string, dried and quite decorative. Oasis turnips, $2/bunch Rainbow Chard - $3/bunch Leeks, $1.50/each Honey nut squash, $2/each Kale $3/bunch, two different varieties, deep blue green straight leaf (Lacinato) and curly. Collards, $3/bunch SORREL, $2/BAG MINT: $.75 a bunchEGGS: $5/dozDecorative Tennessee Dancing Gourds, 4 for $1MEATS: We keep some on hand, but it helps to order ahead in case we need to retrieve from our stash in the big commercial freezerGEESE: One remaining, about 8.5 lbs. $10/lb.ROASTING CHICKENS - Nice fat Freedom Rangers, frozen, largish (4 to 7 lbs, a few smaller), $6/lb.LAMB: Riblets $8/lb, small and larger leg roasts $14/lb,PORK: Loin pork chops, $12/lb (2 to a pack, btwn 1 and 1.5 lbs), Jowl (roughly 2 to 3 lbs each), $12/lb, Spare ribs and country ribs $7/lb baby back ribs $8/lb fresh ham roasts (2 to 3 lbs), $12/lb picnic or Boston butt roasts (roughly 2 lbs) SOLD OUT smoked bacon, $12/lb Kielbasa $8/lb |
| FARM PICKUPS:Email us your order at [email protected], and let us know when you'd like to pick up your order. It will be put out for you on the side screened porch of the farmhouse (110 Lasher Ave., Germantown) in a bag. You can leave cash or a check in the now famous pineapple on the porch table. Regular pickup times are Saturday and Sunday from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. and 4 p.m. to 5 p.m., other days by arrangement. If you have questions, don't hesitate to call at 518-537-3815 or email. |
Helena and Sofie nuzzle each other affectionately. Photo by Troy Spindler TURKANA FARMS, LLCGreen E-Market Bulletin August 2, 2019WHAT'S NEW THIS WEEK: Cucumbers continue...
Turkana Farms, LLC, is a small-scale producer of heritage breed livestock and a wide array of vegetables and berries on just over 39 acres...