We Need Your Best Advice

HANK: Think of a farmer. Got a picture?

Okay. And because this is our dear Jungle Red, the image in your brain may not be a man.  But—it might be.

My wonderfully talented pal Wendy Tyson has been thinking about this. 

And of course, this is the perfect week for it. Then again, every week is the perfect week. Until the most perfect week, sometime which I hope is soon, when we never have to discuss it again.

Fighting Farmers and Other Ladies Who Launch

By Wendy Tyson

I just launched my second Greenhouse novel, BITTER HARVEST. The series, which lives on the cozier side of mystery, features environmental-lawyer-turned-organic-farmer Megan Sawyer.

Megan returns to her roots in the small, historic Eastern Pennsylvania town of Winsome to revive her family’s organic farm and turn an abandoned storefront into a natural foods shop and café. She’s joined in her quest by a motley crew of friends and family, including her spirited eighty-four-year-old grandmother, Bonnie “Bibi” Birch, who knows how to knead dough and shoot a gun. Farming is hard work, and getting not one but two businesses going takes all of Megan’s resources. She hits headwinds, of course—not the least of which involve murder.

Megan has pulled herself up by the bootstraps. She’s an Everywoman of sorts, a modern-day food warrior bent on showing the world what regenerative farming can do. To that end, she fights the good fight every day, struggling to keep the sign up and the doors open. Battling injustice? Simply part of the gig.

I recently engaged in a heated conversation with a man who was touting the attributes of “self-made men.” “They’re all across the country,” he said. “They started businesses, often from nothing. They’re what makes America great.”

His statements, made with the fervor of a true believer, gave me pause. Not because of the political nature of his responses (and no surprises, this was in the context of a political discussion), but because he made it quite clear by tone and intonation that he wasn’t using “men” as a gender catch-all. He meant Men.

“I agree that self-made men and women deserve recognition,” I said. “There are plenty of women who have sacrificed all to start a business or champion a cause.”

Crickets.

I was working on my third Greenhouse Mystery at the time, and the conversation stayed with me long after it should have. Perhaps because I’d seen some of this guy’s easy dismissal occur in my own books, in the townsfolk of Winsome: the zoning commissioner who refused Megan’s permits (he was bludgeoned to death in chapter three, by the way), long-time family friends who characterized Megan’s efforts as sweet or cute, and the young Chief of Police who felt Megan had set herself up to fail. But for Megan, as with so many real-life women, the threat of failure was never an excuse not to commit.

Eventually I realized that the conversation hit a nerve because the fictional backlash Megan encountered isn’t so fictional. I heard it in my counterpart’s condescending tone. I read it in the articles and opinion pieces condemning the peaceful women’s marches. I see it in the faces of people whose contempt for the opposite sex is thinly veiled beneath colloquial attitudes and old-fashioned platitudes. I, a lawyer and author who never saw gender as an impediment to success, was suddenly reminded of sexism’s insidious nature.

In many ways, Megan is fashioned after the strong women in my own life. Women who launched themselves at the world, often quietly succeeding in the face of great adversity. My great-grandmother was such a woman. She arrived in America from Italy at age eleven and found herself married to a practical stranger five years later. She didn’t speak English, was not wealthy, didn’t wear the right clothes, didn’t practice the right religion—and she had to feed a family of eight during the Great Depression. 

Nevertheless, she persisted in learning the language, understanding the culture well enough to buy and sell houses for a profit. She was a house “flipper” before it became fashionable. Self-made? Absolutely. Unsung? That, too.

Of course, strength is not confined to one gender. Nor is perseverance. Nor is the term “self-made.” There are amazing men out there doing amazing things. 

But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t recognize and celebrate the women who’ve sacrificed to better our world. Megan’s a fighter. She fights proudly alongside the other female sleuths of our time, outsmarting bad people and seeing to it that justice prevails. But like many of her fictional counterparts, she’s fashioned after real-life heroes.

HANK:  I think of all the new babies being born—my little nephew Silvio, just two weeks old. Debs and Hallie and Roberta have new members of their families. 

Dear Reds, who is the newest member of your family? Or the youngest person you know? What would you wish for them? What advice would you give them?

And a copy of BITTER HARVEST to one lucky commenter!

Wendy Tyson is an author, lawyer and former therapist whose background has inspired her mysteries and thrillers.   Wendy has written four published crime novels, including Dying Brand, the third novel in the Allison Campbell Mystery Series,which was released on May 5, 2015.  The first in the Campbell series, Killer Image, was named a best mystery for book clubs in 2014 by Examiner.com.  Wendy is also the author of the Greenhouse Mystery Series, the first of which, A Muddied Murder, is due to be released in spring 2016.  Wendy is a member of Sisters in Crime and International Thriller Writers, and she is a contributing editor for The Big Thrill, International Thriller Writers’ online magazine.  Wendy lives with her husband, three sons and three dogs on a micro-farm just outside of Philadelphia.

The Farm Next Door

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: Last year, my dear friend and next door neighbor (Hi, Roxanne!) decided to up stakes after seventeen years in Maine and return to her native Colorado, based on some totally bogus "reason" like being closer to her grandchildren and aging parents, as opposed to me, her friend, ha. 

Anyway, it turned out it was not a good time to put an 1837 house in an historic district on the market. Months ticked by, no one made a credible bid, and so Roxanne and her husband made a fateful decision that directly resulted in my delicious dinner last night: they rented their house. To a foursome of young farmers looking for a place to live with arable land attached. Which is how our neighborhood got a farm, over a century after the last commercial agriculture happened here.

New farms or revived old ones have been cropping up in Maine these past few years. I've seen it in upstate New York, too, decades after giant agribusiness drove scores of small family farms out of business. The desire of consumers to eat locally-sourced and organic foods, to have a wider array of meats, vegetables and alcohol than show up in the typical supermarket, has made previously unsupportable plots of land potentially profitable.

Which brings us to our new neighbors, Bumbleroot Organic Farm. The kids (as Ross and I call them, because we are SO OLD) came in with a plan for a viable business using three acres of land, which sounded unbelievable to me until I actually saw it planted. They lease a little less than an acre from us (I've had to tell Ross no, they aren't tenant farmers and he is not now Lord of the Manse) the same from the folks on the other side of them, and the rest from Roxanne's formerly unused back field. 

Folks, I have never seen a farm so Instagrammable in my life. The young farmers are cute, the growing plants in their orderly rows are lovely, the tiny farm stand at end of their drive is marked by a chalk sign and everything seems to be continually bathed in soft Maine sunshine that's like God's Own Filter.

And OMG the produce. I've long been interested in trying a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) share, but most of the area farms and fishermen distribute theirs in Portland, which is less-than convenient for me. Plus, I'm cheap, and balancing my desire for fresh and organic against the undeniably higher cost usually resulted in me going for the lower priced carrots.  But I have to tell you, after receiving the first two of our CSA boxes, I am sold and will never go back.

First, the stuff really tastes better. Not to dis all the hardworking folks out picking lettuce in California, but the greens we've been eating (this early in Maine's season, our share is mostly leafy greens) are so...flavorful. It's like the difference between eating fish sticks and fresh fish.

Second, the types of produce in the weekly box are not necessarily the veggies I would have selected at a market. We've had two types a kale, for instance, a green that I have so far used more as the punchline of a joke than as a part of dinner. (Have you heard of the Brooklyn mom who named her children Quinoa and Kale?) (For reals, there are probably kids with those names running around. Dressed in organic, cruelty-free cotton rompers.)  

At any rate, getting kale and Hakurai turnips and broccolini forces me to try new recipes and find new ways of using fresh vegetables in our family meals. Which, frankly, I haven't done well with in the past. (I admit to a lot of canned peas. I'm sorry.) The results have been delicious. I feel a bit like I did as a young person when I got introduced to the then-new concept of microbrewing. All it took was a couple of bottles to know there was no way I'd ever go back to drinking Schlitz. (I'm not sure it it was actually Schlitz. But it was certainly whatever mass-produced stuff was around.)

In other words, having a CSA share is fantastic, and I plan to get one next year, and the year after that, providing the kids farmers do well. Bumbleroot is off to a great start - along with the farmstand, they are selling at the Kittery Community Market and the Saco Farmers Market. They're sourcing for a cool new restaurant, MK Kitchen, in Gorham and best of all, they sold out their entire offering of CSA shares before the first veggies came out of the ground.

The moral of the story is: support local farming. The food is demonstrably tastier (and of great variety) than the boring selection in the supermarket, the farming methods are healthier for the environment, and - as I can personally attest - community life is enriched by having small farms as part of the mix.

The Unsettling of a Mystery Writer @EdithMaxwell

JRW: A big farmgirl welcome today to our good friend, Edith Maxwell! She's had such interesting past lives--you'll love reading about how she's woven these experiences into her mysteries...
 EDITH MAXWELL: I’m delighted to be back on my favorite blog as a guest. Since I left my day job as a technical writer a year ago, I’ve been spending much more time with my characters and my stories. This is a good thing! I’m writing constantly and living my dream. There is a down side, however. Life just isn’t the same anymore.  

When I was an organic farmer twenty years ago and turned the compost pile, it didn’t occur to me to worry about whether a body part might surface in it. But now, what if I uncovered a foot in there among the decomposing leaves, coffee grounds, and broccoli being broken down by soil micro organisms and worms? I wonder what I’d do. Run screaming, most likely. But maybe I’d snag a second careful look and take notes. Or throw up.

Back on the farm I spent long hours in every imaginable kind of weather. I knelt to press a thousand cloves of garlic into long beds of compost. I hoed out weed after weed and then hilled up the clear soil onto the potato stalks. I harvested quarts of blueberries into a bucket slung around my neck, snapped off pounds of asparagus, cut perfect heads of lettuce well into the fall. I never imagined a killer lurking in the woods just beyond my fields.  

Now, though – without a moment’s hesitation I can conjure up all kinds of mayhem on the farm, even in my small home garden. And it’s quite unsettling. I met some pigs recently at the organic farm where my son works. They’re funny and make goofy noises, and made me laugh as they poked their snouts into the dirt to get grubs or dug into some kitchen scraps. I happen to know, however, that if they were hungry, from either temporary or long-term malnourishment, I would not want to be helpless in their pen with skin exposed. You wouldn’t either. 

And then you have your basic haystack. The old fashioned ones built on a platform in the salt marsh, like still exist in Newbury, Massachusetts. Or the new ones, with the hay rolled tight into a six-foot wide cylinder and then wrapped in white or pink plastic. They look like a good place to hide a body. And what about the classic New England barn, with all manner of old horse stalls and hay lofts? Just think what you could hide up there, or find, when you least expected it. 

Even local chickens, those sweet, tiny-brained, personality-laden birds that give us rich delicious breakfasts and tasty winter stews – that tiny brain can do some serious pecking. Chickens have been known to peck at their owner’s eyes. What if a victim was unconscious and trapped with an attack rooster? Or the hens had been fed a plant that made the eggs poisonous, or their meat? You get my drift.

I’ll keep writing about murder and mayhem down on the farm, but I’m a lot more wary when I’m strolling around one of the many local farms in my area.

And you, dear Reds and Reds-fans? Do you see murderous possibilities where others don’t? What kind of mayhem do you imagine lurks at your local farm, farm stand, or farmers’ market? Or have you heard of actual locally sourced murder on a farm? (Edith will be giving away a copy of 'Til Dirt Do Us Part to one commenter today...)


The produce is local--and so is the crime--when long-simmering tensions lead to murder following a festive dinner on Cam Flaherty's organic farm. It'll take a sleuth who knows the lay of the land to catch this killer. But no one ever said Cam wasn't willing to get her hands dirty...
Edith Maxwell writes the Local Foods Mystery series (Kensington Publishing), the Speaking of Mystery series under the pseudonym Tace Baker, featuring Quaker linguistics professor Lauren Rousseau (Barking Rain Press), and the historical Carriagetown Mysteries, as well as award-winning short crime fiction.

A mother, world traveler, and former technical writer, Edith lives north of Boston in an antique house with her beau and three cats. She blogs every weekday with the Wicked Cozy Authors. You can also find her on Facebook and Twitter @edithmaxwell

But I Don't Know Nuthin' About...

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN:  Yay, Edith. Is all I can say. Edith Maxwell, you know her, right? A stalwart here in the Jungle--funny and wise and thoughtful and one of the most centered and passionate people you could ever know. And now, her mysteries are out there in the world for everyone to read--look at that gorgeous cover! Are everyone here is cheering and applauding and so happy for her!

So of course, we had to invite her to tell you all about her new book--but instead, she's really discussing something...else.  Friday, we chatted about hockey here, and I said--whoa, here's something we've never talked about on Jungle Red. Well, today...something else we've never discussed.

On Farming and Birthing

              by Edith Maxwell

Thanks so much, Hank, for having me to visit! I wanted to talk a bit about how farming and attending births are related. Uh, howzzat, you ask? Well, hear me out.

A long time ago and a few miles away, I co-owned a small certified-organic farm north of Boston. I was the  farmer. I had two little boys who attended school and preschool. I had a (now-ex) husband who worked in Boston. I planned and planted, tilled and weeded, composted and cover cropped, reaped and sold. And then started all over again. I had left a full-time career working in speech recognition for a hi-tech (Kurzweil) company to be home with my kids while they were young.

At the same time I also taught prepared childbirth classes in my living room. It wasn't strictly Lamaze or Bradley methods, just trying to get couples comfortable with whatever might happen at the birth of their baby. We practiced relaxing. They talked about those weird pregnancy dreams moms-to-be (and sometimes  dads) have about their baby turning into a rat or losing the child in some dark hallway. We went through all the kinds of procedures that a hospital stay might include and what the physiological process of late pregnancy and birth is. And then we had doll-diapering races between the dads. In addition, I worked as a doula, hiring out as labor support. 

These were sweet and challenging times for me as a farmer, as a mother, as a birth support person, as a wife, even. For the first time in my adult life I depended on someone else for much of my financial wellbeing, farming and childbirth education not being all that lucrative. I loved growing organic vegetables and fruits, and I was good at it. I loved coaching nervous couples to learn all they could about this mysterious process they were about to go through and then trust their bodies to do the work, and apparently I was good at that, too. The hardest and most rewarding work was staying home with my own babies and trying to find something interesting to talk about with my husband at dinner that didn't involve poop or play dates.

Lately I've been thinking about the similarities between growing food and attending births. It's a real miracle to watch a baby come into this world. Women go down into death and bring forth life, every single time. Smooth progress can be interfered with by overly cautious care providers, by a slim-hipped woman with a large-headed baby, by fear, by malnutrition. My job as a doula was to intermediate between the couple and the hospital, explaining procedures to the couple, making sure the medical staff knew the couple's wishes,  helping the mom and dad feel comfortable.

 (Here's a picture of me with a baby whose birth I attended. He is now twenty and just finished his second year at Brown University!)

My job as a farmer was to intermediate between the seed, the soil, the weather, and my customers. Smooth progress can be interfered with by applying insecticides that wipe out beneficial insects along with pesky ones, by rainstorms that wash out the field just after planting, by neglecting weeds until they are bigger than the crop, by trying to grow varieties that don't flourish in this temperature zone, by a drought. 

Both jobs involve a kind of midwifery as well as an element of uncertainty. I'm glad I wasn't completely responsible for the births, and I'm also glad I now have a small backyard garden instead of a one-acre intensive farm. But as farmer and doula, I strived for smooth progress. And mostly got it.

I started writing this farm mystery during the winter before my last farming season almost twenty years ago. I didn't use any of the actual writing when I got going on it again last year, but I used the world I had set up: geek-turned-organic farmer Cam Flaherty, her small farm, the fictional town of Westbury, the chef and local-foods restaurant, and locally sourced murder. I added the Locavore Club and the plucky Girl Scout volunteer, and more. So far the series doesn't include any childbirth scenes, but you never know what might pop into book three or beyond!

Readers, what kind of unusual occupations do you like to read about? Are there any that stretch the imagination a little too much? 

Writers,what's the most intriguing part of your own past that you have worked into your books? Is there anything that's off limits?

HANK: And a copy of A TINE TO LIVE....to one lucky commenter! (And did I say--YAY Edith!) (And we won't even begin to discuss the connections between birthing babies and birthing books, right?)


*********************

Edith Maxwell writes the Local Foods Mysteries.  A TINE TO LIVE, A TINE TO DIE introduces geek-turned-organic farmer Cam Flaherty, a colorful Locavore Club, and locally sourced murder. Edith once owned and operated the smallest certified-organic farm in Essex County, Massachusetts.

Tace Baker, Edith Maxwell's pseudonym, is the author of SPEAKING OF MURDER (Barking Rain Press, Sept 2012) featuring Quaker linguistics professor Lauren Rousseau. Edith holds a PhD in linguistics and is a long-time member of the Society of Friends.

Edith has also published short crime fiction, most recently in the Fish Nets anthology and in Thin Ice from Level Best Books. A mother and technical writer, Edith lives north of Boston with her beau, three cats, and a small organic garden. You can find her at @edithmaxwell,  http://www.facebook.com/EdithMaxwellAuthor, and www.edithmaxwell.com

The Eggs and I ..or, not.

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN:  I know what today's post is gonna do. It's gonna divide us, instantly into the  "Gee, I wish I could do that" segment and the "Are you KIDDING me?" segment.

I know which one I'm in.

How about you?  Would you like the life of Judy Dailey? She's a debut mystery novelist who lives in Seattle, Washington with four chickens, a dog, and her husband, the writer Tom Argentina. A graduate of Bryn Mawr College, Judy earned an MBA from the University of Washington and a certificate in compost management. She has been a pilot, skydiver, spelunker, bicyclist, skier and night-time sailor. She managed a multi-million dollar grant fund for affordable housing. She handcrafts artisan salami, beer, and ricotta cheese. 

And now--she's a debut mystery novelist. Sounds good, huh? Sounds--terrific, huh? Well, read on. (You know I love you, Judy, but--chicken poop?)

JUDY DAILEY: The first year Tom and I were married, our lawnmower broke down. Instead of replacing it, in a burst of optimism we decided to tear out the lawn and start an urban farm on our city lot in Seattle. Our plan was to save money while eating high-quality, organic meals. Tom, a born scavenger, turned a tree house into a small greenhouse and a skylight into a cold frame. 

In February, I overnighted day-old chicks from a hatchery in Missouri (http://www.cacklehatchery.com). For several weeks, the chicks lived happily in a box on my desk while I dealt with rejection slips for an over-wrought mystery with a great title (Chewing Glass). 

The chicks turned into adolescents who fluttered out of their box and pecked the keys off my laptop. In a move that would occur only to a complete neophyte, I decided to let them free-range in our guest bathroom. I put down newspaper, food, and water , then shut the door. When I returned, it looked like a papier-mâché factory had exploded. Everything was covered with a goopy gunk that quickly hardened into cement.

Meanwhile, I’d left a voicemail for my sister, a much moresuccessful writer  I was in the middle of scraping poop off the ceiling (Yes, the ceiling!) when Cathy called back. I whined about rejection. She said, “You have to write about what you know.” I said, “Right now, all I really know about is chicken poop.” Thus Animal, Vegetable, Murder was born.

Compared to dogs, children, and husbands, chickens might not be the most intellectually stimulating companions, but they have one outstanding virtue. They do not have to be trained, bribed or coerced into doing exactly what I want them to do: eat bugs, fertilize the garden, and lay eggs. They don’t complain when it’s cold and raining, they’re never bored, and they don’t have outdoor soccer practice in November. Because we live in the city, we can’t have a rooster but no matter. The hens are perfectly happy and productive without him. And since this whole experiment started as a chance to save money, I can report that our organic, free-range chicken eggs cost about half of what they do at the supermarket.

It was a different story, however, for our vegetable garden. Even without paying ourselves for digging, planting, and weeding, our produce was just too expensive. The main cost was water. Despite Seattle’s reputation, we have almost no rain between the Fourth of July and October 1, the prime growing season. Rates go up during the summer, so keeping our plants healthy and productive almost tripled our water bill. Tom decided we needed rain barrels—and more rain barrels. Currently we store about 1200 gallons of water, and we’ve never completely exhausted our supply. As a matter of fact, right now Tom is trying to figure out how to flush our toilets with rain water from the barrels.

 

The secret to effective rain barrels? Put them on towers high enough so the water flows freely. And the secret to rain barrel towers? Plant beautiful vines to cover them so your neighbors don’t call the zoning police. We use flowering jasmine.

Pictures of rain barrels plus updates from my urban farm plus a monthly book giveaway can be found on my website.  I would love to add stories about your urban farming adventures. 

And a copy of Animal, Vegetable, Murder to one lucky commenter! 

HANK: See what I mean? Which segment are you?