New Market's Got the Goods!

The new Farmers' Market in Carbondale's historic downtown district was quite the success.

The growers, most of whom raise their veggies organically, were generally pleased with the market and the chance it offered to sell their goods, with plenty of customers who were very happy to oblige them.

[Caption: Adam K. of Clear Creek Farms serves up some organic sweet corn, along with a sundry of other goods on Saturday at the Carbondale Mainstreet Farmers' Market.]

The Plot Thickens

Late April

Early June

Late July

It's hard to believe that a mere four months ago we began this plot with a bunch of flat, gray dirt. Now we have a thick, lush garden that would make Adam and Eve green with envy.

In fact, despite the early rains and extended cold; and despite the ferocity of a several high-velocity Southern Illinois storms ... most of those growing at Hickory Lodge Park Community Garden have managed to coax a lot of fresh, whole goodness from the clay-laced soil of Carbondale.

Each community garden plot is approx. 25x25-feet ... a space that could probly be found in many folks' front and/or backyards. So imagine for a moment if, rather than growing and mowing boring old grass ... the average lawn jockey would plant and raise a diversity of vegetables instead.

Hmmmmm, ya think?

Compost Happens: A Poetic Meditation

The Excrement Poem

by Maxine Kumin

It is done by us all, as God disposes, from

the least cast of worm to what must have been

in the case of the brontosaur, say, spoor

of considerable heft, something awesome.

We eat, we evacuate, survivors that we are.

I think these things each morning with shovel

and rake, drawing the risen brown buns

toward me, fresh from the horse oven, as it were,

or culling the alfalfa-green ones, expelled

in a state of ooze, through the sawdust bed

to take a serviceable form, as putty does,

so as to lift out entire from the stall.

And wheeling to it, storming up the slope,

I think of the angle of repose the manure

pile assumes, how sparrows come to pick

the redelivered grain, how inky-cap

coprinus mushrooms spring up in a downpour.

I think of what drops from us and must then

be moved to make way for the next and next.

However much we stain the world, spatter

it with our leavings, make stenches, defile

the great formal oceans with what leaks down,

trundling off today's last barrowful,

I honor shit for saying: We go on.