It’s cold up here on the mountain. We had our first frost night before last and this morning I lit the first fire of the season. Yesterday would have been the day but I left home very early to get to the Farmer’s Market in Santa Fe before they opened. I love driving through the pitch black of morning, well before dawn, to arrive at the market just as the sun is beginning to light the sky.
To wander and watch farmers unload their precious bounty, literally the fruits of their careful labors, gives me more joy than these words are able to express.
There was something extra special about yesterday. Companionably cold and crisp, everyone was bundled up against this new nip in the air. We all know winter is on its way and we’ve been promised a lot of snow. I, at least, yearn for a long winter of it. Some of my favorite days are those when I am snowed in. I find the silence and the beauty of freshly fallen snow especially inspiring and there is just something wonderful about not being able to go anywhere no matter what seemed pressing the day before.
Fall is the season I find most wonderful at the market, lush with pumpkins, squash, beets, turnips, potatoes of every hue, radishes, carrots… their sumptuous colors begging to be painted.
And then there are the fresh chilis…
This is the time of year in New Mexico when they are harvested and roasted in big steel mesh drums over open fires.
Yesterday the market was rich with the warm aroma of their firing, their staccato crackling and popping adding regional notes to the music of what I imagine any market day, anywhere in the world, might sound.
And then the sun appeared, just tipping over the mountains, lighting the tops of everything. Pure magic.
Particularly compelling to me are the farmer’s children. I watch them help their parents with many of the tasks of unloading and selling what was harvested from their fields not long before. And I hope these experiences might lead them to choose this way of life for themselves one day.
For I believe it is a good life, to be a local grower on a small farm, one that offers both reward and hardship, with seasons lived close to the land, dependent on it for their survival (and, in the whole, our survival as well).
This sort of kinship with the earth can foster a desire for its care and the possibility of a deep understanding of the balance of nature, intrinsic knowledge more of us could do well to remember.
For as Chief Seattle wrote, “… the earth does not belong to man, man belongs to the earth. All things are connected like the blood that unites us all. Man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.” I believe many small farmers, like the people I met yesterday, know this.
Imagine, just for a moment, a world in which our leaders had been entirely dependent on mother nature before they came into power. How might things be different? What would life on this planet look like now?
“If wishes were horses, beggars would ride…”
Love to you all,
Jeane
What a glorious Farmers Market!! Beautiful setting of the courtyard:) Bravo my dear. Thanks for your joy filled effort and time to share this with us. XOXO
It really is a glorious market, Grace. You would love it. I try to get down there every Saturday during this season and I simply had to share. Thanks for being there to receive it. XOXO
Your gift of color and blue sky is appreciated dear. We are bracing for the second onslaught of a huge storm off the coast. High winds and a lot of rain. Thanks for sharing Jeane!
Ah, yes, it’s easy to take our sunshine for granted. Thank you for reminding me!
HI! Not feeling well today so I am skimming through , but have to say – absolutely beautiful photography!!
Thank you Alison!
Hi Jeanne, We were up in Truchas yesterday for the High Road Art Tour – stopped in at Bill’s gallery to see your new work. Love it! Next time you’re in Santa Fe, let me know, we’d love to see you. We’re happily settled in our new home here in the high desert. xxoo, Suellen
Oh! I’m sorry I missed you! You can always have Bill call me and, if I’m here, I’ll come right over. I’m so happy you love the new work. Thank you. It’s been a magical season of painting for me–moving my focus away from running a gallery and writing the blog–to just getting to the easel again as my full time job. I feel paintings that were within me for a long time were able to find their way out because of it. It’s been very rewarding and important work for me. Now the shift is toward winter and I’m eager to see what happens to my work.
Welcome, welcome to New Mexico. I’m thrilled that you’re settled in your new home. I know that’s been an intention for sometime.
I am in Santa Fe somewhat regularly now getting acupuncture, but I’m usually so focused on getting back up the mountain to paint when that’s done. But I would love to see you. Could we coordinate meeting at Hand Artes the next time you come? Or…
However we do it, I look forward to seeing you soon.
xxoo back, Jeane
Lovely again!!
Just couldn’t resist posting some of yesterday’s photos 🙂
love to you Jean!! Just gorgeous photography, and now I want to find a farmer’s market and look for this beauty! and I am thinking you just painted pictures with this photography! Absolutely beautiful paintings !!! thanks sooo much!! Alison
You’re absolutely right, Alison. I haven’t yet found my way back to painting since returning to NM after caring for my ill mother. That took more of a toll than I understood. So these photos ARE my paintings for now. But I’m feeling the artist promptings to get back to the big canvas that was started before I left for the NW. SOON I think…
I just finished a painting I promised to someone in Tennessee of their father that died and I am going to try to start another one tonight! I mailed that out today! I am always nervous that things do not turn out like I envision, but I am proud that I have finished it. It needed 2 seconds to finish it and it took about a year for me to pick it up and do it!! I think it is some form of ADHD!! I terribly want to do paintings that I have planned in my head but I procrastinate and do it even when I have allotted the time for it! I Hope you paint again soon, but being with your mother is more important than even the Mona Lisa!! It is something you will cherish forever. Though , in my case there are memories I need to not talk about, and not think about – all related to the hospital! So I focus on all the wonderful memories of our lives growing up, and as adults together! So, don’t feel guilty, and the photography is really just magnificent! Many people have been telling me to do some work related to photography – and I am starting to realize I shouldn’t feel guilty when I do photography, but not art! (but I really also want to do the Art!!)
I can totally relate to your difficulty in getting to your paintings. I am trying mightily to get to the easel right now. It’s the perfect day for it: snowing outside, the animals snuffling in their various beds, a new canvas just delivered to my wonderful Hand Artes Gallery. So I’m finishing up a bit of communication and then to the easel it is. Please be gentle with yourself and the struggle. You are not alone.
Thank you so much. I have started my next painting and almost finished but again life stops me! Having problems at home with my family and need to make major decisions to make it better!!so … I will need to figure it all out ! Hard to paint in the midst of sadness and disappointments and decisions !
I think one of the things that makes art special is the enormous strength it takes to make it: to rise above the daily or extraordinary struggles, the sorrows or even the joys, and get ourselves to the easel, the camera, the wheel, the loom, and find the heart to open ourselves enough to the creative spirit that our art can be born. I think it’s been exactly the same down through the centuries. No one has found an easier way. And it’s all individual. We must find it within ourselves to do.