Monday, June 13, 2011

Wonderful Wedding Weekend

Exhausted but exhilarated is an accurate description of how I feel this morning. I don't have any photos to share but details keep zooming through my mind's eye and heart as I reflect on all the joys we felt during the past week's activities.

We shared a lot of love and food over the weekend, with as much as possible of the food coming from our local farmers and producers, so a wide section of our community was involved with the 'wedding wows'. :-)

We now know that we can easily and comfortably feed 32 people at a sit-down meal in our barn and that we can enjoyably entertain a large number of people at an 'open house' in our farm home's large rooms. Funny thing though, even with our big open house, our kitchen was always filled with people (I think many of them were waiting to be first in line when the rhubarb scones came out of the oven!).

So now my husband and I are entering the 'after June 12th' phase of our life. We are disorganized but moved into our farm, both boys are now married and I have two daughters - woohoo - I love it!!, and our 'city house' is in the process of being sold.

I think today we can finally start 'just' being garlic farmers. So, I need to keep this post short because it's time to get organized and ready to harvest our garlic scapes to sell at three local farmers' markets starting tomorrow (Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday afternoons). Whew!! On Friday morning, we'll have time to look at each other and again, enjoy the feeling of being both exhausted but exhilarated!

I'll end with the grace I read at the rehearsal dinner. I tried, but I was not able to read it with wanting to cry tears of both joy and happiness in addition to gratitude at being present for my older son's wedding.

As we begin this meal with grace,
Let us become aware of the memory
Carried inside the food before us:
The quiver of the seed
Awakening in the earth,
Unfolding in a trust of roots
And slender stems of growth,
On its voyage toward harvest,
The kiss of rain and surge of sun;
The innocence of animal soul
That never spoke a word,
Nourished by the earth
To today become our food;
The work of all the strangers
Whose hands prepared it,
The privilege of wealth and health
That enables us to feast and celebrate.

~~ John O'Donohue, from his book To Bless the Space Between Us

"Cultivate your life - you are what you grow - inch by inch, row by row"

Diana Dyer, MS, RD

4 comments:

Kateri said...

Congratulations on your son's marriage. And now I'm excited for you as you settle down to being "just garlic farmers". When you are ready, and things have calmed down enough we do want to have you and Dick out for dinner. Maybe a weekend in July or even August?

Kateri said...

I just reread my comment--that should have said "over for dinner" as in dinner at our home!

elaine said...

Congratulations! The wedding sounds like it truly was exhilarating as well as meaningful. I do hope you have "just been" garlic farmers for the past 10 or so days.

Such a beautiful grace. Thank you for sharing it.

Cynthia said...

Love the blessing! Sounds like the wedding was beautiful...