This weekend

This weekend included the following only-in-Maine activities:

• Shabbat in the Wild on the land of a shamanistic couple who led singing and drumming in their hand-built yurt (a beautiful round structure with a skylight and woodstove), followed by a snowshoe hike through the woods on their vast land with stops for songs and prayers and a potluck Tu B'shvat (tree festival) lunch afterward back in their farmhouse, with apple-pear juice they pressed themselves. Three different folks brought kinds of coleslaw, for some reason. And of course there were lots of dates and figs and citrus fruits in honor of the holiday. We met some really cool people.

And then today

• A CSA (community-supported agriculture) fair. They're happening in towns all over Maine today, and you go and get info about all the different farms in your area offering this amazing option of getting fresh produce, eggs, flowers, bread, meat, etc. straight from the farm throughout the growing season. We have a CSA we love (a kind of famous one--there's a documentary film about it and a cookbook from it) in Illinois but even with Chicago as big as it is, there are only a few CSA options there. At the Belfast fair alone we met at least six or seven different farm families (all about our age, with kids the same age) offering amazing-looking CSAs. We don't know how we'll choose! (Here's one typical website.) But it was a great opportunity to meet folks for our oral history project and we got a lot of names and are going to try to start setting up interviews next week.
• A make-your-own Valentines workshop at the arts center sponsored by the cohousing community that we've spent a lot of time with. Beautiful art supplies and decorate-your-own cookies were great activities for Willa, and a guy was there playing guitar and took all of her requests. The local photographer who took a picture of Willa at the Martin Luther King Day celebration we went to that was in the paper also took plenty of her today, so she may well show up in the paper again!