There I was, standing by the side of the road, minding my own business with my thumb in the air when a car pulls up and this blonde orders me to get in.
Not recommended.
So I do. I don’t know if she’s a guardian angel or a kidnapper, but I figure I’ll chance it. She says her name is Angela, which I take as a good sign. If she grabs my wallet and kicks me out somewhere in the wilds of Virginia, hopefully it won’t be too far from a train station.
Okay, that’s not how it really happened. I think I’ve been reading too much Daniel Silva.
But I did in fact find myself in Angela’s car Friday morning, heading northbound from the Little House by the Vineyard. Angela is a friend I met the day before last Thanksgiving in the Cary, NC Amtrak Station. I guess that’s where the bit about hoping the mystery Angela would kick me out near a train station came from. That, and the fact that the plan was for the real Angela to drop me off at the first Washington area Metro station we came to, where I would hop on* a Yellow Line train, transfer to the Red Line at Gallery
Place and head for Maryland where my daughter would pick me up and whisk me off to her place, snuggled in the foothills of the Allegheny Mountains. There I would spend a pleasant Labor Day weekend away from the arduous labor I struggle with daily at Union Grove Farm, home of seedless, thin-skinned Muscadine grapes and the latest in regenerative farming techniques.
(BULLETIN! BULLETIN! BULLETIN! As of Thursday, September 5, Union Grove Farm grapes are available while they last at the Weaver Street Markets in Carrboro and Hillsborough.) We now return to our regularly scheduled programming…
Of course, since the most arduous work I do personally at Union Grove Farm is to write these columns, and the weekend is still going on, I guess, technically, that part of the plan isn’t working out very well. But otherwise, I’m having a fine time here with Amy, Doug and Griffin.
I first met Angela the day before last Thanksgiving, like I said. She was traveling with her mother**, to Alexandria, VA, to spend the holiday with her son and daughter-in-law and I was en route to Amy’s. Just like now, except Amtrak has become I-95, which is much more crowded and doesn’t have a snack car.
We got to talking, hit it off well, and exchanged email addresses. Since then, we have enjoyed many adventures, including the Symphony, the Art Museum, and several moderate-to-severe restaurants.
There isn’t a restaurant on the premises of Union Grove Farm (yet), but we do have a snazzy new coffee and donuts food truck. Blue Heeler Coffee, run by Meredith Sabye,is named for the breed of dogs favored on the farm by Greg Bohlen and others. I can’t tell you from personal experience how good the coffee is, since I never touch the stuff, but everybody says it is really good. And they have the fancy types that are organic and sustainably grown and locally roasted, so you know this is a high class place that cares about coffee and their customers. I can tell you the mini-donuts are excellent, as I have touched quite a few donuts over the years and these are yummy by any measure.
Greg is the owner of Union Grove Farm, and Bandit and her friends, siblings and cousins (about eight in all at last count) lead a carefree life, as being Blue Heelers, they don’t have to do any real work, such as writing funny columns with little commercials for Union Grove Farm tucked in, or even herding the sheep, which is done by Sophie the Wonder Dog, who is a Border Collie, not a Blue Heeler.
Bandit, the senior Blue Heeler at U.G., hard at work.
You can meet Sophie, various and sundry Blue Heelers, the sheep, the hundred thousand worms who work there and many other marvels simply by taking the tour. Please do. I’m telling you, you’ll have a great time on the farm!
(Roger Nutter once asked me who counted the worms. I told him I did, but I cheated. I knew how many we had paid for when we bought them and used an algorithm I made up on the spot to estimate how many baby red wigglers they would have produced by now, compensating for the number who would have died in that time and the number the worm dealer no doubt shorted us in the first place. So don’t tell me we don’t do science and math here at the Little House!)
IN OTHER NEWS, my latest book, Time and Poetry, is now for sale from Dorrance Publishing. If you haven’t already purchased a copy, order one now. If you have, order another one.
And on a sad note, Smokey, the longtime feline companion of my dear friend, Kay Laney from Maine, has passed away at the age of thirteen. He was a good cat and will be missed.
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*I don’t really hop anymore, but you get the idea.
**Angela’s mother, whom I call “Intrepid Prairie Woman” had flown from Bloomington, Illinois to RDU to hook up with Angela for the train trip to Alexandria. She was recently feted at a big banquet in the state capital for her volunteer work on behalf of AMVETS. Intrepid indeed.
