I drove down  to Olivebridge today to see old friends, Kate, Sarah, and Farmer Thom.  Mickey rode shotgun, as usual, and I always love watching the way he sniffs at the air during our little road trips, trying to figure out where we are going by the smell of the air.

We got about five miles from our first Olivebridge stop, Kate’s house, when Mick started making high-pitched squeaking sounds, smelling Kate or her beagle (also named Mickey).

I lived in Olivebridge for about six months last year, in a crazy blue house that had been built from a bomb shelter kit. Apparently, 1950’s bomb shelter kits don’t call for very good plumbing or roofing or heat so it wasn’t the most hospitable dwelling and, anyway, six months into my tenure there, my boyfriend and I decided to shack up.  In Hudson.

The land the bomb shelter is on is beautiful though and Farmer Thom, the first former-urban-dweller-turned-Hot-Farmer I ever knew, lived next door.  Thom is a retired FDNY firefighter and an Accidental Farmer, having never made a plan to farm, but stumbling into it by starting a small garden and then, Presto, a few years later, he has acres and acres of delectable vegetables and the tending of vegetables rules his life.

Kate and Sarah live a mile down the road.  They are lovely humans and Kate, a wildly talented painter (Kate Paintings Here) is descended from a long line of farmers and teachers (actually, I’m totally making this up, but I THINK it’s true) and Kate was waxing wistful about  Olivebridge as it was during her childhood: working farm country.  Evidence out the window here, behind Wistful Kate, Big Mickey and Little Mickey. 

Sarah, Kate’s partner, a professional organizer who is always impeccably dressed and always on the go, had to go before I even got out of my car, but Kate and the Mickeys and I had a beautiful walk in the woods, then lounged around eating bonbons and drinking coffee and yakking for a while as Big Mickey tried to hump Little Mickey, who was absolutely mortified.

Then, Kate went to whack some weeds, and I went to visit Farmer Thom.  It was a fairly short visit, but Thom showed me a gnome, retrieved from the Olive town dump, a gnome I am slated to inherit when he is done scaring scavengers off from the strawberry hoop house. 

After introducing me to the gnome, Thom gave me a glass of root beer and then pointed out that here I am blogging about Hot Farmer Laura, as if Hot Farmer Thom had never even existed.

So now, the record is straight:  Before I ever met Laura Ex-Urban-Dweller Turned  Hot Farmer, there was Thom the Ex-Urban-Dweller Hot Farmer

Perhaps this is just more evidence that there is farming in my future.