Message from Sarah on Friday: “We need some help with the backpack children’s food program and some breakfast items for the bags.” She said they urgently needed instant oatmeal and Life Cereal Boxes for the volunteers to put in the bags that go to the school.
The backpacks, assembled on Thursdays for the 61 children of pantry families enrolled in the program, are picked up by the pantry families at the end of the school day. The bags are numbered, not named, to protect the children’s privacy.
Other items that might need support later as we go are peanut butter, jelly, juice, Granola bars, and fruit cups. State funding for the program is tight. If necessary, Sarah will put them on the list.
Thank you for your invaluable support. Your contribution truly makes an enormous difference.
I’m taking much of tomorrow off today, but I will keep posting this weekend’s request through Monday—blessings to you. The kids need this food; it’s meant to provide vitamins and energy.
______
P.S. The food pantry always needs the items below: Velveeta Cheese, Chicken Pot Pie, and Tide.
The backpacks are on the way to the Cambridge Central School.
You can access the constantly updated Cambridge Food Pantry Amazon Wish List using the links above or the green “pantry” button at the bottom of every blog post on this blog.
Below is a list of the items that go into the backpack children’s program for healthy food, vitamins, and other energy foods. Thank you.
I’ve been talking about needing rest for days, time to put my money where my mouth is; I haven’t had a day off in many months. My head is tired.
I need a day of silence and reflection, which did me so much good and transformed my life. Today is the day. I will be posting for the food pantry. The children of the pantry families need some help.
I won’t use devices, news, e-mail, work, or flower pictures (for the first time since April). I may continue this through tomorrow. I need some quiet and time to think.
I need a day off. Maria chewed me out last night for not being able to pause and take a deep breath. I needed to hear it. She reminded me that I need a day of rest once in a while. I recharge quickly and efficiently when I put my mind to it, which is what I need to do.
Creativity is demanding and fulfilling but also requires some room for thought.
Today’s only exception will be the food pantry’s appeal for help with its backpack program, which started Thursday. They need help getting two inexpensive things—Life Cereal and some oatmeal —for the backpacks for 61 children of food-deprived families to distribute to the high school. I’ll post that today and tomorrow, along with links.
This is important; those kids need those bags. Otherwise, I’ll see you tomorrow or Monday. I won’t be doing Flower Art today, which is hard for me to do but good for me to do. Thanks for sticking with me and understanding. Have a peaceful day yourself.
The current narrative of O’Keeffe casts her in the light of a significant feminist role model. She became labeled as a flower painter when her lifetime was devoted to the very modern idea of abstraction and the very modern idea of creating identifiable American Art…”Where I was born and where and how I have lived is unimportant. It is what I have done with where I have been that should be of interest.” – Vogue Magazine.
I am writing all day; I’ll take it easier tomorrow. See you then.
It is bursting with life.
Life and death are both beautiful in terms of the flower universe.
We met Cindy Casavant more than a year ago at the Cambridge Farmer’s Market; she introduced herself as “The Crazy Goat Lady,” and she even had a T-shirt that spelled that out. Maria and I took to her instantly. She is warm, funny, intelligent, and sometimes too humble. We both admire her and find her easy to know and talk to.
But I wouldn’t be fooled by that. She’s no crazy goat lady. When you grow up on a Baptist farm, you learn modesty.
Cindy has been steadily building a soap laboratory in the basement of her goat farm, loaded with potions, oils, sweet smells, and secret recipes. We bought some soap and have not used another since, and I will never use another one again as long as Cindy makes her soap.
(You can check out Cindy’s beautiful website and her terrific soap here. I love the smell, feel, and creativity that goes into her soaps.) As a rule, I don’t push things I don’t know personally. Her soap is the best I’ve ever had. She has worked long and hard to make it that way.
I want to help Cindy in any way I can; she is deserving. We talked today, and she told me that if anyone buys her soap, they can go to the checkout page and use the term “blog” as the code word, and buyers will automatically get $1 dollar off. I’ll try that myself. Her soap costs $6 a bar.
It’s a joy to see this work paying off. Dreams can come true. Cindy knows how to hope. That and hard work are powerful tools.
Cindy’s soap is selling, a massive leap for a hard-working and exhausted goat farmer working along with almost shocking business instincts to make a better and best soap.
She’s become a valued friend of ours. She and Maria act as if they have known one another all of their lives. I love talking with her. Anything is possible; this dreamer’s dream is coming true.
She invited us to come over yesterday and make soap with her, and we both jumped at the chance—no regrets. It might be easy to underestimate somebody like Cindy, as soft-spoken, polite, and humble as she is. It was fascinating to learn how she does it and all the ideas that went into it.
We were impressed by the research and creativity that goes into her work. We can’t reveal her recipes, but we can see the results. Her soap comes in a score of smells.
She offers all kinds of colors (she even uses Spinach powder in some), smells, and oils. She makes soap for sensitive skin and soap for men who shave with a brush.
She works with a raft of young and gifted farmers to get the best local ingredients for her soap. Unless you want the cheap corporate kind, it’s a lot more complicated than I would have thought. It’s very different.
She uses natural colors and oils, spinach powder, and a dozen other things she experimented with.
Cindy is so quiet it might be easy to underestimate her. That would be a mistake.
She’s the hit of more than one county fair this year. I see her getting bigger and bigger; it’s already happening.
Distributors are knocking on the door, and this is Baptist.
A farm girl from Washington County, N.Y., needs help with her wholesale and blog orders. She’s also put together a beautiful blog from her small basement in a small farmhouse, with 100 goats blaring outside at times.
I’m not promoting other people’s businesses, but Cindy is the real deal, and so is her soap. I’d highly recommend checking it out and trying some. You will never turn back to store-bought soap. Cindy is going places, and we are proud of her. We had a blast making our soap (it has to settle for a while before we can get it back). I made eight bars to bring home.
Maria put together a video that tells the story better than I could. I took some photos that captured something of the process. We don’t want to give any part of her recipe away. If you check out the soap, remember the $1 discount coupon. It’s “blog.” Enjoy the video.
Maria’s video.
Cutting her frozen milk bars, the foundation of her soaps.
Her labs reminded me of the Frankenstein movies, except they are bright, clean, and cheerful. This isn’t simple.
We melted the milk down, mixed it with some acid powers.
It then went through a blender.
We stirred and stirred.
My soap is out front, Maria’s in the middle, Cindy’s in the rear. The soap has to settle for a couple of weeks.
After the soap lessons, we saw her newborn goat babies. They were pretty cute. Cindy still loves to milk the babies when she can. Her soap business is getting very demanding.
