Adventures of a Sun Seeker: A party in an oven

(This post is delayed, but it still must go on)

I cannot believe where I was Saturday night. I was at the finest party I've experienced since new years eve, and it basically occurred in an OVEN. The most topnotch artisan bakery around—which cultivates strong ties with nearby grain farmers to source their flour locally—was throwing a Farmer Formal, with instructions to dress in one's finest and come prepared to eat pastries and dance to a live band. I would not have been able to know of this party, except for a Farmer Thor (a master of grain farming and life wisdom) who invited me along. As part of my soils work I take small quantities of soil out of Thor's fields and count his weeds and the like. Thank you, fabulous Cornell job that not only allows me to play outside but also connects me to this rich social circle.

The party was not of skiing distance and the weather was not of biking, so Thor connected me with one Farmer Gentleman Kevin, who unhesitatingly fetched me from downtown. I entered a fairytale world when Kevin showed up at the mansard in a suit and cap, opened the car door for me, and whisked us into the snowy night off towards the little bakery in the big woods.

Each turn on our route was on a progressively more rural road, until I felt wholly how far we were outside my little accustomed playpen of Ithaca. Walking down the snowy driveway in the wind and the night, and hearing and seeing the little bakery pulsate with light and sound was something out of a storybook. Inside, the place was a tumult for all senses: heat, light, noise, beautiful people, and the inarguable heavenly smell of pastry.

Essential party ingredients were present: Leaves painted in shiny gold hung draped across the ceiling, a photo booth provided an activity and hilarity, there was a keg of fine beer, and platter after platter of buttery flaky pastry. Chocolate filled cream puffs in a towering landform. A stretching array of sourdough bread. A table-sized gingerbread house decorated with intricate piping. A woman in a elegant dress nursed a baby and milled among the crowd. A lack of horizontal surfaces meant golden beers tilted on the antique pasta machine. We ate and danced and sweat and then could eat some more.

The band played gypsy jazz and djug django and swing and I danced alone and with partners and in groups of smiling bopping faces. It was so incredibly hot, band and partiers all pressed into this space with the ovens going. Farmer Thor was dressed in a fabulously retro 1970’s brown polyester suit (“My friend found this ‘specially for me! It was 25 cents.”) and after a particularly vigorous dance I found myself smelling hot melt glue. Was someone crafting and left a glue gun plugged in? But then I realized it was Thor. His suit, acrylic heating up. We pushed outside to the cold air, Tractor Dan remarking it was like a sauna health treatment, alternating steamy heat with blasts of cold.

The cohort I encountered! It seemed like people were dressed out of The Great Gatsby, somehow, no magazine-popularized pretty or slick trendy or over-stated, but instead timeless elegance and quirky expressive. Furs. Sequins. Sparkles. Classy boots. Some dress plaid. Sleeveless gowns. I encountered the finest selection of intricate plant tattoos on women’s shoulders I’ve ever seen in one place. “It’s a calendula flower,” one explained to me. I found myself part of a red dress contingent, and we pushed in front of the photo booth to celebrate this. I wore heels which I never do and could survey the crowded beautiful space like a periscope.

There were shelved cooling racks of macaroons by the bathroom near the back, enticing plump mounds in systematic rows. By the end of the night macaroons near the edge were missing. But it didn’t matter, because at midnight after the band finished and we found ourselves drifting in residual delight, a handwritten sign and a stack of paper bags appeared on the cooling rack: “Take pastries home.”

I was buzzing with gratitude and appreciation the whole night: that this local organic bakery would put on such a fabulously generous affair. That these people give so much of their lives and passionately work this land, and that their yields stay local. That I am fortunate enough to live in a place where farming and farmers are celebrated.