So, here we are on the road for our last group of summer art shows. I went straight from gathering my weeks’ groceries at the farmers’ market, eating tiny strawberries from our yard (approximately 4 per week!) and canning buckets of jam from blackberries we picked in the creek, 20 minutes away, to this:

It was late night in Toledo and there weren’t a lot of options.
This restaurant was overflowing with fake photoshopped signs of “their farm” while serving the same processed food as ever. Grrr. Why can’t they either actually change something, or embrace the kitschy fake food the way it is?

Oh well. As I type this, I’m sitting in the truck outside a fleabag hotel in Lancaster PA. And right across the street is a big corn field. As I watched, a man in a traditional outfit appeared, hacking off the corn at the fringes of the field with a machete. I could see the stalks nearby moving, and then a big chestnut horse popped out at the edge of the field, followed by another man and pulling some kind of harvester.

You can’t really see it, but in the middle of the field two horses are pulling a cart loaded with corn. I’m using my phone and the WordPress app today, so apologies if anything looks really strange.

One of my least favorite things about this country of ours is how as a whole, we have embraced and promoted mass produced everything. But one of my favorite things is how there is room here for a whole spectrum of choices, from Bob Evans right through my blogging and canning to the PA Dutch farmers.