2 things:

Remember those beans I had in my meager garden this spring? (http://danielaisenbrey.blogspot.com/2011/06/watersundirtfood.html) Well they've run their course, and I was able to collect a handful (metaphorical, not literal) of dried beans/seeds from the pods that I left on the vines to dry out.

Tennessee Cornfield Beans

Clearly not enough to make soup out of, but the Tennessee Cornfield bean is a semi-rare heirloom variety, so I'm glad to have these seeds to trade/plant next year to propagate tasty, non-Monsanto varieties.


In other news, I finally made it out to the Smokies Sunday morning to catch the Fall color before it slips away from me. Unfortunately everyone else was too, rendering the drive back a frustrating ordeal.

I've been wanting to shoot more water-related stuff in the park, so I opted for the Little River Trail, a stone's throw from Elkmont campground. This area was a popular vacationing destination prior to the establishment of the National Park, evidenced by a smattering of abandoned cabins and resort cottages, most of which were built in the 1920's, and some of which had been in use up until the 90's.

Leafy bacon.

I just cooked up the sweet potato greens we harvested from Beardsley before digging up the potatoes themselves.

They tasted like seaweed.

And a little bit like fish.

It was gross.

When the guy at our Farmers & Chefs event cooked them they tasted like leafy bacon...

Guess that's why I'm a farmer and not a chef.

You don't even know what's going on with this picture. Fast Break.

The endless summer.

Peppers! Guess what? They're perennials. Yup, you heard it right. If you protect them from frost, both sweet and hot peppers will grow and produce fruit for years. One local farmer and pepper guru has a 4-5 year old pepper tree that he claims produces as much fruit as 18 first-year plants!

So this winter the Noise Temple will be festooned with Doe Hill Golden Bells, Sweet Chocolate Bells, and some other Bell I don't know the name of. These plants are all coming from Beardsley, where the greenhouse also features a handful of the same. Why pull up and throw away perfectly healthy plants?

I'll try to keep you updated on the peppers's long journey through winter.

"Gentle Jesu, Mary's Son, be thine the wounds that heal our wounding. Press thy bloody scars to ours that thy dear blood may flow in us and cleanse our sin. Be thou in us and we in thee that we and thou may be a woundless one at last."

Reading Godric, by Frederick Buechner. Only 20 pages in and it's gone from ruthlessly snide to devastatingly poignant and back again. Looking forward to the next 150.

"Laugh till you weep. Weep till there's nothing left but to laugh at your weeping. In the end it's all one."

Sneedville camping trip

Tent city, first night.

What is camping without excessive amounts of bacon?

We did not eat fish.

35 degrees is better around a fiery blaze.

Who knew you could do that with a deep-fryer?

This afternoon Beardsley played host to a handful of local farmers and chefs as they rubbed elbows and had a free-for-all cookout with farm fresh local produce. Every once and awhile this kind of workplace benefit crops up, and I'm just lucky to have been present. Ryan and Jessica from Organacism Farms put the whole thing together, and even though Mother Nature didn't cooperate, there was a great turnout of representatives from farms and restaurants around Knoxville.

Imagine (you have to imagine since I didn't get any pictures) a throng of salivating foodies huddled under pop-up tents, waiting to get a bite of deep-fried cornish game hen, doused in fiery Aji Dulce hotsauce. Or sauteed sweet potato greens picked minuted earlier from one of Beardsley's raised beds. Or roasted fig leaf wrapped lamb belly, beer-battered white eggplant, oyster mushroom powder-coated deep-fried hard-boiled quail eggs...

Basically these guys were just going crazy with an array of meat, produce, and a deep-fryer. Lucky me.

In other news, here are some tunes I've been frequenting lately:

I say "I think" 6 times in this post.

I've come to realize that this blog has become 90% about things I do, and 10% about things I think. This is strange, because I feel like in my life, I only do about 10% of the things that I think about. For every human interaction I engage in, I've probably simulated 10 interactions. Some people would probably write that off as introversion, but I don't really think that's what the whole introversion/extroversion identity is about. I tell myself and others that I'm not an introvert because I start getting loopy without other people around. Being an extrovert and being gregarious aren't synonymous. Not in my book at least.

So yeah, back to the whole "doing vs. thinking" thing. I think I can chalk up the discord to my perceived reception of the various blog posts. It's easy to throw together a write-up of my latest project and say, "Hey, look at this thing I did!" and post it on Facebook, because I imagine those posts have a more universal appeal than a "I feel like/I think that/I believe in" post. When it comes down to it, I think my primary motivation is to entertain viewers, or just pique their interest and rack up those precious pageviews. I think I can pretty confidently say that little views-over-time graph on the blog stats page doesn't directly correspond to my self-esteem level, but the influence is definitely noticeable.

Man. Even just two paragraphs of this actionless character development is pushing the limits of what I perceive to be the interest level of my audience. Then again, most of the people that actually read these either have a familial obligation to love me or just choose to do so of their own volition, and so they're probably in for the long haul.

I read my friends (I say this, even though "our friends" is probably more accurate for most of you) Levon and Ashley's blog pretty religiously, even though it intimidates me a little bit. He's found that perfect blend of doing/thinking content, and it probably doesn't hurt that he's just a good writer. Also, I would think that his life is just a more colorful story and lends itself to being told easily than my day-to-day goings-on. Of course that probably has a lot to do with attitude and perspective. At any rate, I imagine he has to cut details out of his posts, while I usually have to embellish mine to make them substantial.

So I guess instead of desiring a more interesting blog I should work on having a more interesting life. Or at the very least recognizing that my life is interesting. I mean, you did read this whole thing didn't you? You deserve a picture.

My dad (on the right) was a hipster before you.