THE LOCAL Nashville, TN

NOTES FROM AFAR: DORSET, ENGLAND

A WeekonaDorsetFarm WRITING AND PHOTOGRAPHY BY JENNIFER JUSTUS

"'"""'"'"'"'"'''''"'''''''"'''''''''"''''"""''''''"'"''""''''''''''''"'''''''''''''''''"''''''''''''''''' WHEN LIFE GIVES YOU A FURLOUGH, go foraging. Such became my credo when the newspaper I work for announced that employees would need to take a week off without pay. Despite the job worries, I couldn't have been more elated. I wanted to slip out of town. Take a break. Learn something new. I wanted to clear my head about a major relationship decision and gain perspective. But I also knew I needed to do these things on the cheap.

T hankfully, I had discovered Worldwide Opportunities on Organic Farms (WWOOF), a network rhar marches up organic farmers with volunreers who agree ro get their hands dirty in exchange for room, board, and lessons in sustainable living.

So after just a ten-dollar WWOO F membership fee, I combed through pages of farm descriptions from a long list of countries. Opportunities ranged from working the weekend with a family on a goat farm to a mandatory two-week stay

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at a full-on commune. I chose Monkton Wyld Court, where guests stay in an 1848 neo-Gothic rectory in Dorset, England, near the Jurassic Coast. I suspect, partly, that the gray of the place I imagined in the English countryside matched my mood about love at the time.

The best thing I knew about traveling, though, was that regardless of mood, it made the tiny details of life glow brighter- amping up wonder and enthusiasm. I stepped off the plane in London, for example, and snapped pharos of HP Sauce on restauranr tables as if they were artifacts in The Smithsonian. I stumbled upon a farmer's market and marveled at moldy cheeses and tubs

of olives, shiny and flecked with garlic, tarragon, and thick curls of lemon peel. T hen, on the train ro Dorset, I watched as the city grit gave way to rolling green hills.

Among the newness of it all, the loneliness I'd felt at home traveled with me to England like a solitary rain cloud from a cartoon. I tried to

work it away by tromping through the woods at Monkron in rubber wellies, digging for Zen in the garden, hacking down bamboo in rhe pond. And soon learned that only in the kitchen did the sun come out.

After a day's work, I followed the heat of the ovens and found three women around a sturdy

/DECEMBER.JANUARY 2013

old farm table piled with greens. "What's going on in here?" I asked. "We're talking about Brussels sprouts," said

Sophie, the young English cook. " ... and boys," added Beatriz, a volunteer

from Spain . "Well ," I said. "What can I do to help?" I peeled and sliced potatoes and chopped thin

rounds of leeks for soup. After a while, Beatriz, whose Spanish sometimes translated to English in a endearingly odd way, slipped me a small brownie as a snack and welcome gift: "Little chocolate square," she called it in a whisper.

From that day on, I worked my way into the kitchen daily. I grated fuchsia beets and carrots fo r salad like confetti . I clipped herbs for maki ng round loaves of bread and helped put together farm-fresh vegetarian meals like lentils with balsamic onion alongside hunks of white cheddar.

The kitchen in the cool March air became the warmest place for me figuratively and literally. Clotheslines made from wooden rods on a pulley system had been rigged to hoist our laundry high above the stove. My jeans took on th e earthy aroma of roasted beets, which co uldn't have made me happier.

We had wielded saws and shovels, knives and our bare hands. We broke bread with simple meals. We had low-key nights and turned in early. And as the week wrapped, Beatriz offered parting wo rds on our work in her parched-together English. "We made beautiful party," she said. I knew exactly what she meant.

In the end, I noted that I didn't have to travel thousands of miles to be warm in a kitchen. But maybe I'd needed to travel that far to realize it. Though I didn't leave England with a solid relationship decision, I knew the kitchen-even back in Nashvi lle-would be the place to keep sorting it out.

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jennifer j ustus is author ofThe Food Lovers' Guide to Nashville and food culture reporter at T he Tennessean. She has written for Southern Living and Food Netwo rk Magazine, and her work has been featured in editions 5 and 6 of Cornbread Nation: the Best of Southern Food Writing. A graduate of Boston University, she created her own

food writing curriculum with courses in journalism and gastronomy, a cultural study of food founded by j ulia Child and jacques Pepin. Prior to journalism, j ennifer worked in qualitative research studying the emotional connections we make with food. She blogs at 'a nasty bite," (anasrybire.blogspor.com) an expression her grandmother gave to a simple meal.

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