Last night My friend stacey and i went out to La Center Washington for an Herb Class. I had no idea what i was getting myself into and in the back of my mind i thought, sheesh am i really driving all the way out thereon a monday night in the rain blah blah blah. I went and of course it was incredible.
Stacey has been living in Washington now for almost a year and is systematically searching the whole of south west Washington for everything that makes it special and the transition from Portland, wonderful. The best part about this is that she is finding success! We went to a blue cheese making class that, in Portland would have cost us $100 and in Battleground cost us $15 and included a great lunch!
SO, back to last night. We took our final turn down a dirt road that wound itself through the trees and, I am completely serious, through the shade of the trees we could see the sun shining down into a clearing that was the Vinnedge farm. As we pulled onto the property we were greeted by Maggie’s husband and the biggest blueberry bushes ( i think they were trees). We had the opportunity to wander Maggie Vinnedge’s gardens. We are talking about 7 acres of wonderlands here. I have never seen such immaculate paths and beds in my life and at the same time, there was a wildness about it that i loved.
The Urban Farm School hosted a group of people to an evening of lecture about all variety of herbs, a tour of Maggie’s gardens, incredible snacks and an herbal bath project. Maggie has every kind of herb imaginable and if it wasnt growing in front of me, she had grown it in the past and knew all about it. I went home with a new sense of what my own garden’s potential is (and my brain is about to pop) all sorts of seeds for herbs i tasted, loved and had never heard of, and the wisdom of a generation of women who dont mess around with their callings to the sew from the earth.
And then there was the food. I was ravenous! i hadnt had dinner and i thought we were going to discuss the medicinal purposes of lavender for 5 hours. I was going to start chewing on some random leaves i found but didnt want to discover they were a mild sedative or diuretic.
At last, we got to get up, stretch and begin grazing. My god, Maggie went to no end. We had fresh sugar snap peas stuffed with roasted pepper hummus, apple cakes, Swiss chard frittata, fig port marmalade, bee balm pesto, fennel corn biscuits, mustards, honeys, anything that you could pull out of your garden and stick in a jar with fruit compote. We had fresh blueberry juice, lemonade with lavender, bee balm tea. Her ice cubes each had a flower embedded into it. Seriously, this was incredible. I also heard that Maggie loves to share her recipes so i am working on the pesto and the fig port marmalade right now. She also inspired me, again, to start canning and create my own combinations of magic.
What a treat. Urban Farm School has something going on here and i cant wait to find out what it is. I signed up to host my own class about winterizing the chicken coop and putting the garden to bed for the winter. Stay Tuned!
