Farmers Market and Summer Goodness

It’s Saturday afternoon on a beautiful sunny mid-summer day. It’s not too humid and there was a lovely breeze outside this morning that I’m so glad I got outside to enjoy. Living in Minnesota with it’s cold winters makes me savor days like today even more.

Farmers Market and Summer Goodness

I got up early today to go to the farmer’s market in Hopkins and brought home spring mix, sugar snap peas, carrots, green beans and cucumbers. Then I picked black raspberries at home. Jon and I wandered around the back yard talking about changes we want to make in the landscaping there to make it easier to care for as we get older.

My favorite farmers at the farmers market are from Dancing Gnome Farm in Stockholm, WI. They raise everything organically (though they are not certified organic producers). I’ve been visiting them at the Farmer’s Market for several years—starting when they first began farming and offering vegetables at the Farmer’s Market. Each year they offer more vegetable variety and quantity. This year they doubled the size of their booth and it’s always a busy place!

In a couple of weeks Dancing Gnome Farm is hosting an open house with farm tours. Depending upon weather and what else is going on in my life that weekend, I may go visit the open house with my camera. I’ve wanted to photograph a small farm like this for some time.

Local Connections

Besides the wonderful fresh foods I find at the farmer’s market, I love making lasting connections with the people who grow the food I eat.

I love going to see the same farmers year after year at the farmer’s market and getting to know a little bit about them. John, a regular seller at the Hopkins market is known for having the best squash and melons each fall. If I want a sweet melon, I ask John to pick one for me. I’m never disappointed with his picks. John talks to me about how his crops are doing and he shares information about the new varieties of squash or melons that he’s planted. You don’t make connections like this at the big box grocery stores.

Summer Abundance

At home I’m counting my blessings as I enjoy an abundance of black raspberries (and a few blueberries) this week. I’m picking almost a quart of raspberries each day. I anticipate a few more days of the black raspberry crop and will then be looking forward to my red raspberries ripening. There are a lot of berries set on the red raspberry bushes but they are not nearly ripe yet.

I also picked my first cherry tomatoes of the season and a small bunch of sugar snap peas from my container garden this week. I’ve got parsley galore, a small cilantro plant and some dill growing. You can take the woman off the farm but cannot take the farm out of the woman.

Young Dreams

When I was young I thought I wanted to live on a small farm and raise fruits and vegetables. I had a sort of “Earth Mother” fantasy about living self-sufficiently on a small farm. There was nothing I loved more than buying and reading Mother Earth News and dreaming about living close to the earth. Jon and I even bought the book Five Acres and Independence back when we were first married. Jon’s vision and self-knowledge was greater than mine back then and my dreams of a small self-sufficient farm were never realized.

With the benefit of 20/20 hindsight I now know that it’s really a good thing we never tried farming. Neither my husband nor myself could have endured the day-in/day-out hard physical labor. Growing up on a farm I saw how very hard my dad worked every single day. You have to love it a lot and be strong and healthy to succeed as a farmer (and also have some good luck with enough rainfall at the right times but not too much).

My small container garden and berries in the back yard are perfect for me. I don’t tire of the care that they need and I love the taste of a few home-grown fruits and vegetables.

Hoping Flooding Ends Soon for Minnesota Farmers

My thoughts are with all of the farmers in southwestern Minnesota and northern Iowa who have had way too much rain in the past few weeks. It must be disheartening to see the rain damaging and ruining crops and property. Though we often believe we are in control, nature cannot be controlled. Weather and other forces of nature are fierce at times. I feel blessed that we have been having enough rain but not too much here this summer.

Black & White Photography Play

The photo above is of a peace lily flower from a plant I happened upon at Menard’s this week. We went there to get a larger plant pot for my Christmas cactus which needed to be re-potted. When I saw the peace lily I couldn’t resist the beautiful blooming plant. I hope I can keep it growing and get it to bloom again.

I made numerous photos of the flowers on this plant, experimenting with different views and angles. The one above is my favorite. It was perfect in black and white.

Here is a photo of the front of the same flower.

In my photography work I am starting to create more black and white images. It’s surprisingly different editing black and white photographs than it is working on color images. I still have a lot to learn about working in B&W. I haven’t yet learned how to pre-visualize scenes in black and white. I’ve been playing with a setting on my camera that lets me see in black and white. It’s a very useful tool to help train my internal vision to “see” in B&W.

Healing Images

This coming week I plan to meet with my dentist to show him a video I created called North Woods Spring. The video consists of images from my time living near Ely March – May 2017. I’m hoping to get the dentist’s office to use the video on monitors they have in each treatment room to help patients relax while their teeth are being cleaned or repaired. It is my dream to have my art used to bring beauty and healing to people in places like dentists offices, hospital waiting rooms, etc. Wish me luck in my meeting.

Visualizing My Photos

I’ve been playing around with some of the ways to visualize my photographs in my Fine Art America Gallery. While you can order my photos on everything from a T-shirt to a shower curtain to a mug on the Fine Art America site, I like seeing what my images would look like as framed prints or stretched canvas.

Here are couple of views of my images from Fine Art America (note that the white forward/back arrows in the photos are not functional, they were present in the screen captures I made):

Pretty cool! It’s hard for me to visualize what a photograph will look like framed and hanging on the wall. I have to admit, seeing my photographs framed and displayed in this way is very gratifying. I work so closely with my photos for so long and with such a critical eye that sometimes it helps to step back and see the images as if they were created by someone else.

In case you are interested in buying prints…

One other note about my Fine Art America gallery. Anything one orders from the gallery is printed and shipped by Fine Art America. I also have another gallery on Zenfolio where I print and ship all orders. The sizes of these prints are limited to the largest size paper my printer can handle. I also work with a local printing company to created high-quality canvas wraps for me. While I enjoy the exposure my art gets on my Fine Art America site, I prefer to print orders myself. That way I make sure that my vision is being faithfully represented in the print. I love the magic of seeing a print emerge from my printer. It satisfies the maker in me that wants to create something I can hold in my hands.

So that’s the news from me for the week — a meandering stream of consciousness filled with gratitude for ordinary blessings and summer abundance.

May you walk in beauty.

Impressionist Pond View During Rainstorm

Vertical Panorama of Minnesota’s Champion White Pine Tree

New Life – Budding Maple Leaves in the Lost Forty SNA