Week 21: Village Green Preservation Society

Preserving the old ways from being abused
Protecting the new ways for me and for you
What more can we do?

I haven't been telling some of the good news, because it's so easy to be distracted by the bad. So here's some good news:

1.) My parents' vegetable garden has had a bumper crop. Tomatoes canned for the winter, peppers turned into pepper relish, beans frozen for the winter, etc. Ate the latest zucchini tonight while visiting for dinner. They even have two pumpkins that survived--pumpkins have never really done well in the past, usually only one that makes it.

2.) Lansdale recently created a farmers' market in town, so that folks didn't have to trek all the way to Skippack or take the train down to Glenside. It's been in the parking lot of the shopping center just west of the town center; I think by next year they're building a permanent space.

3.) On the back of the Lansdale Farmers Market, it sounds like the communities of Lansdale, North Wales, Montgomeryville and the northern part of Worcester are banding together. Now, this is actually a pretty wide area--maybe ten miles in diameter. They're talking about petitioning Septa to increase their routes (Worcester doesn't have any connection to Septa). There's talk of starting a wind-farm, and getting PECO in on it.

The funniest thing I heard was from a couple of bar owners who've complained about the lack of beer in the area; so they're working with the Keystone Brew Supply store to start a local brewery. I don't know how much they can do at this point--it's so late in the season--but by next fall I guess we'll have some local beer being produced.

4.) Horses. Worcester has at least three horse farms, probably more. (There's also at least one sheep farm, but that's another story.) Well, the local communities are looking into getting them to breed a lot more horses. Let's face it--if we're not going to be running a lot of cars, there's always the Amish Way.

5.) Speaking of the Amish, there's apparently a move to get some Amish up here from Lancaster to basically teach us how to do what they do--that is, live without modern convenience (more or less--that's a very simplistic way of thinking about the Amish, but I'm not getting into that now).

So yeah, some things are OK. We're holding onto the house, at least as of now. While there's been some layoffs at the company, they haven't chopped off our heads yet, so there's still hope.

As for my folks, they're safe. The looters haven't been around lately, in part because Worcester's started a volunteer police force. They're a more visible presence now; and a couple of my relative (nephews, cousins, etc.) have joined. So while I doubt everything's going to be nice and normal, at least things are a little safer.

I'm writing this on the Autumnal Equinox. It's been a long, scary summer, but maybe the autumn will be better. It's starting to feel that way. But at the same time, I have to remind myself that yeah--it's autumn now. It's getting cold, and soon it'll be winter. And it's going to be a hard winter.

But for now, I'm just going to look forward to harvest, to Halloween, and to the work ahead.