MASON JARS, MARKETS, AND CHALK. OH MY!

This is a work in progress -- one of the final projects in Junelle Jacobsen's Farmers Market class. Which doesn't mean it's too late for you to take it. That's the great thing about these on-line classes. You can sign up for them whenever or wherever. Plus, you usually have access to the tutorials and videos for at least a year, so you can do the projects at your own pace. I will be sad for this class to end.

This project is almost like doing a mosaic, only we're using tiny bits of colored paper and photographs from farmers' markets to fill our canning jars.

I started with a layer of black gesso this time, rather than the usual white, so I could come back later with a white pen and do some "chalkwork" writing and scribbling.

Speaking of farmers' markets and canning jars and chalkboard signs, have you noticed how those three things are everywhere you look these days? Have you seen all the posts on facebook lately about people who are growing their own vegetables, raising goats and chickens, canning and preserving and baking? Do you realize that just ten short years ago, this was almost unheard of? For anyone under 80, that is! Small family farms, and thus farmers' markets, were a dying breed. The only canning equipment to be found was in antique stores, and the only chalkboard easels were outside of French cafes.

What launched such a dramatic change, do you suppose? Well, I suspect a couple of books by Michael Pollan might have had something to do with it. For me, it was reading this book by Barbara Kingsolver, when it came out in 2007.

Yet another "foodie memoir" that helped launch a revolution!