Getting to Know Boulder

Hi Everybody! I hope you are all doing well. Here on my journeys you’re all in my thoughts. As I learn of this new community – its habits and comforts and irritations – I think of my community - all of you – at home.

It has been a busy three days. Let’s see, where to begin. First the really rough overview.

Thursday July 2 – Weeding at the HBG farm. Processing and preparing the day’s harvest at the

restaurant for the cooks to prepare dinner with.

Friday July 3 – Making granola at HBG, then watering, weeding and caretaking the restaurant grounds. Processing and preparing the day’s harvest. Serving at the HBG ice cream social. Watching the Boulder Talent Show.

Saturday July 4 (today) – Harvesting and weeding at the farm. Harvesting and preparing garnish (culinary flowers and herbs) at the restaurant. Preparing the HBG float for the Boulder 4th of July parade. Riding the float in the parade. Going to the Boulder 4th of July potluck dinner.

Details. I almost don’t know where to begin. This is just going to be mostly all over the place and not necessarily in chronological order. Most importantly you should all know that I am writing this over a chocolate chile cream pot at the restaurant (naner naner)!

Many of you know that one of the big reasons that I wanted to come here was to learn more about community, to explore the idea of community. Well, I am remembering how uncertain it can feel to be new to a community or outside of a community, how one needs to go lightly and with humility. There are moments of comfort and excitement in meeting all these new people, and moments of feeling very out of place. This is good: to remember what it is like to be new and to rebuild and build anew skills in connecting.

HBG has two main locations in their operation, the farm and the restaurant. The farm is about 3 miles south of the restaurant and is about 3 acres in size. It is organic and a no-harm farm in keeping with the Buddhist principles of the owners. That means no pesticides and no killing of critters. I have spent about half of my time in the past few days at the farm weeding and harvesting. It has actually been great to get my hands in the soil. The produce is so incredibly good – sampling is encouraged. I have had amazing sweet-peppery French radishes, tender and peppery arugula, crunchy snap peas, tangy purslaine, peppery and tangy arugula flowers, and on and on. The farm manager is the brother of the restaurant’s owner. He has a sixth sense for farming.

When I’m not at the farm, I’m at the restaurant. There are gardens on the restaurant property. My work at the restaurant has involved landscaping and weeding in those gardens. I’ve also had the pleasure of washing and prepping the produce brought up from the farm. That is a very satisfying task, because the produce is beautiful, so it is aesthetically pleasing. There is more sampling of the produce at that point.

I also get to pick and prepare flowers and herbs for dinner garnish. Oh, and yesterday morning I got to help make their homemade granola in the kitchen!

The days start at about 7 am with the farm crew. We meet at the restaurant for breakfast together. I am growing to really like this part of the day, the easy conversation and collegiality of the morning over coffee. At 1 the farm and restaurant crew reconvene at the restaurant for lunch. We get a combination of leftovers and whatever the breakfast cooks prepared for us. It is a fun surprise to see what the breakfast cooks came up with as a fun lunch treat. The normal pattern of the latter parts of the day probably have not yet emerged, as the past few days have had holiday celebrations. Let me tell you about those celebrations.

Every year HBG throws the town an ice cream social which is followed by the Boulder Talent Show. Nearly all 200 residents of Boulder show up. I got to serve at the ice cream social. It was cool to serve ice cream to people I read about in the HBG cookbook. I had to restrain myself from saying, “Hey I saw you in the cookbook! You’re that gentle cowboy!” 200 ice cream sundaes later I was “slimed” with fudge and butterscotch sauce.

The Talent Show. Any description surely will not capture it. Picture your minds-eye view of a small town talent show and you might begin to get close. There appears to be a lot of talent in Boulder! Almost every one of the 200 residents performed. I was particularly touched by the man who asked us all to remember all of the people who have talents which are so important and wonderful but not easily displayed on stage, such as the man who plows the roads in Boulder even in the middle of the worst snow storms. Then he proceeded to do an amazing musical performance. My favorites: The Amazing Muscle Girl. The Amazing Muscle Girl is a 5-year old whose talent and act consisted solely of doing 21 pushups on stage. Reportedly she can do 53 pushups, but perhaps was nervous on stage.

Tonight I actually am driving the ¼ mile between the restaurant and my room, because a mountain lion was spotted here last night. Boulder and its animals! I’m heading back there now (I’ve finished my chocolate chile cream pot – aren’t you jealous)! I still have to tell you about the 4th of July.

4th of July. It was really hot today and I spent the first half of the day at the farm weeding and harvesting. In the afternoon we decorated the flatbead for the HBG entry in the Boulder 4th of July parade. Yes, it included a chicken coop with live chickens and aubergine garland spread on bales of hay. As a long standing member of the Boulder community, I was IN the 4th of July parade on the HBG float. About half of the town is in the parade, if not more. The rest of the town came out to watch.

After the parade I had another new experience: carrying a frightened chicken back to its home, talking sweetly and gently to a chicken, trying to sooth it. Then on to the Boulder 4th of July potluck dinner. Yes, again all 200 residents were in attendance. There was a speech by a community member about . . . well, about community. I couldn’t believe it: I came to Boulder to learn more about community and here is a community member giving a speech about community at a community event at which all community members were present. The speech started with Jamestown in the 1600s and ended with Boulder, UT in the present day. The speaker talked about Boulder as “new small town America,” one that embraces multiple religions, politics, lifestyles, and people. He was down on suburban America though. Then there was music. There are many very talented musicians in Boulder.

Boulder is indeed a much more diverse community than I previously perceived. At the talent show I was so surprised by the many people of obviously different approaches to life. The people seem to respect each other and truly form a community. I am very interested to see deeper beyond the surface to see if there really is community through the diversity and hopefully I will have the opportunity to do so.

My first reflection was that Boulder will involve animals. I have two more reflections. Second, for those of you who know Northern Exposure, Boulder may be the Utah version of Ciceley, AK! Third, Boulder will involve many musicians.

That’s all I’ve got for now – and it was a lot! By the way, my internet connection is slow enough that it takes a really long time to upload photos, so I'm not going to do it now. I'll try to add photos tomorrow.