beingness

Welcome to the garden.

Elderberry saved from the farm I work at, where they regularly mow it just as it is about to ripen because, and this is incredibly difficult for me to understand, food is not important to them. They've grown up in our garden and will, at some point, be transplanted out. But this year, this is where these are. Sometimes vines, sometimes trees, sometimes whatever, is in the nursery of the circle garden.

The cabbage about to head, the onions doing well, compost in the back there.

Two tomato plant survivors, Italian drying type, which, when we bought the seed several years ago, was supposed to be a determinate but is anything but. These two plants will likely make a forest, and besides that, we can root the suckers for more plants.

The first extra cute cucumber.

Potatoes, hilled.

This would be the largest part of the rectangular garden. The full width would be marked by that wavy row of sunflowers about 3/4 of the way up the photo, and scale shown by the man hoeing at the top. The red corn is at the bottom. You might notice how weedy it is. It gets weeded out a row at a time. Then there are sunflowers, potatoes, more sunflowers, and the white corn. With some melons and such at both ends and other odd places.

And that picturesque row of sunflowers from another angle. White corn to the left, potatoes to the right. That corn right there has not been hilled yet.

This corn right here has been hilled, and beans planted in it. Squash to be added soon.

So, as you can see, this is a lot of what we've been doing. Things are, generally, going well. Everyone has his/her projects/passions and everyone has the things we all do together, or for the benefit of the family, or whatever. Not that there are any clear lines like that. But if one were looking for camaraderie, well, there'd be no better place to find it than in our garden with us all down there.

A sister once commented that her garden was full of weeds. Our garden is full of weeds. But all the food plants need is a small advantage. Maybe I've said this before, but it doesn't have to be perfect. In fact, perfect gets in the way of, well, pretty much everything. The garden is perhaps the least affective place in the world and is thus the most healthy place in the world too.

milking from the POV of a stranger and the story of Anastasia

We entertained unexpected guests last week, unexpected to me at least. Let us just say that the newness of their eyes looking upon our doings gave me the gift of some fresh perspective.

We'd been sitting in the kitchen for some time, sharing some food and tea. The boys were in the living room immersed in their common interest and the rest of us were just trying to pass the time politely if a little stiffly. But finally it came time to milk. There is no getting past that.

"Ok, let's milk," I said to the gang. "You all come on and watch," I encouraged her and her daughter. And then I saw with what fluency we did so. Four of us go milking together, and each of us has a job, and each of us knows what the other jobs are and how to fill in if need be. We check what is going on with each other in undetectable ways, silently, with looks or code words or body language. I go in the field to get the cows and the other people are posted where they will be needed. Then everything moves over to the milking stand. And then we milk.

The most interesting thing about milking is the conversations we can have. Mostly it is silence; everyone sort of in his or her own thoughts, but we'll also talk about stuff. I couldn't really tell you what, but I do know it is this sort of time when things really get shared, when the temperature gets taken, when you have some real idea of what is really going on inside others. Real intimacy. It is quantity time plus having constructive endeavors wherein we rely upon each other.

And then, rather suddenly, milking is over and one child takes the milk and the rest of us fall into places for putting the animals up for the night, and the milk disappears into the house and the animals are put up and given hay and water, and that flows into getting the goats and feeding the horse, and then the milking stuff gets washed.

My point is, I guess, that my kids know how to do all this stuff, and that we also know how to work together to get it done, and that such knowledge is an unusual, even a remarkable thing. And yet even this visitor, who watched us do this, quizzed us about the whole homeschooling thing.

It isn't that I mind. The quizzings don't, by and large, come from a place of suspicion but of honest curiosity. And honest concern too when people find out we don't do formal music or algebra or anything else. What about holes? The conventionally schooling don't always know to put it in so few words, but almost always one of their concerns (once you get past socialization) is what if they (our kids) don't learn all the stuff everyone else does.

Of course, my first external, verbalized response to that is that everyone else doesn't learn it either! I mean, really, how many people do you know who don't know who Odysseus is, or where Japan is, or how to solve a quadratic equation? I was surprised at how many people I knew who didn't know these things, people who have been to college or sent kids to college.

My first internal, never verbalized, response is, 'Did you notice that your kid doesn't know how to milk a cow? Now that's a hole?' But I don't say that, of course. I'm comfortable that our kids could raise a garden, care for animals, manage to get food from both those things, build a passable shelter, and stay warm in the winter without much infrastructure, if it came to that. May it never come to that.

But this time, this time when asked about holes, I had a story to tell. The kids recently saw a nondescript animated version of the story of Anastasia. It wasn't well done in any sense of the word. And yet.

And yet it started a discussion that, yes, indeed, there had been a real Anastasia, and when I was a child myself, there were still old women in the world claiming to have been her. It led to discussions of Russian history, intermarriage in the Courts, and hemophilia. And so many other things (how did people live, what views did they have of their world, why was Rasputin loved . . . and hated?).

One of the things that occurs to me when I think about this is how our children gain perspective with facts. What I remember most about school, all school, was regurgitating facts for tests without having any real perspective about it or what it all meant. And I had very involved parents. But I had, basically, no perspective and I rather hope that my kids do.

And since perspective is the place where you look from, I'm thinking the place of milking and gardening provides a really useful view.

Garbage Out, Garbage In

We don't actually produce much garbage but still, it has to go out sometime. This time, it got from the house to the can rather quickly.

Even the flatter parts are sled negotiable . . .

. . . sometimes with "paddles" (sticks) for speed and steering.

And this is how supplies get back up the hill when the road is impassible. It seems it is always dark by the time we get to this part, but it also seems that we always have fun doing it and that a party always ensues.

Happy Halloween!

studies in cultural juxtapositions

We got up and had a leisurely breakfast and went to pick blueberries but it was closed for ripening but being who we are (that is, always leery of rules for rules sakes although respectful of those with sound reasoning behind them) we stopped anyway and husband went to see if there were enough berries ripe to pick or not. Being as there were eight people milling around, we attracted the attention of a person who was working cutting the briars out of the berry field. He came out to see what we were doing and to run us off. When he came out, I asked him if there were any berries. He said no. Behind him was husband, fresh from walking around the field. “What about you?” I said, “Do you think there are any blueberries ready to pick?”

“Oh, there are plenty of blueberries ripe for the picking,” he said.

And you could see that fellow’s face grimace. He was irritated. If he'd a had hackles, they would have been raised. We weren’t going to be easy to run off. How dare we? Dead, awkward silence. I looked at him again. “What do you think? Would she kill us if we picked anyway?” I asked.

He looked up at me, his eyes flashed electric brown, and he said, “That’s my mama!”

“Oh,” I said, “so she would kill us then?” Pause. “We think the world of Mrs. Grullo.” Smile.

And everyone relaxed and we started to take our leave. I don’t know quite what started the next part of it. Some offhand remark, no doubt. I think he mentioned that he’d like to have a cow to milk and I of course said that I’ve milked a cow every day now for six years, and goats before that, and my daughters (who were talking to his daughter who had brought with her a ring neck snake) milk the goat now and that’s when things really loosened up! And it turned into this free flowing conversation telling tales and jokes and stories and family history and now he’s keeping his eyes open for a milk cow for me, and mine can run with his bull after I dry her off (instead of become a beef). We must have stood there for over an hour, with name introductions coming only at our departure along with hearty shaking of hands and an agreement to meet up later in the week.

Then we decided to go catch part of the Virginia Highlands Festival in Abingdon. Now, this thing is big and popular and old -- shoot, I remember coming to it with my mother when I was a child and everything was held on the Barter Green and Martha Washington Inn lawn. Now I usually avoid it, trying not to go to or through Abingdon at all for anything during the three weekends and two weeks that it runs because it totally and entirely gears itself to being a more-money-than-you-have-sense, come-in-from-out-of-town-and-immediately-be-an-expert-on-the-local-arts sort of crowd. Except I do like to catch the photo and art exhibits, and sometimes the arts and crafts booths.

Walking around the arts and crafts area, I admired one painter in particular, and one raku stoneware person who had this copper glaze she’d developed, and there was a leather dress for $500 and some wooden bowls that I told my husband I wanted some wooden bowls and utensils myself, except actually had done, not like those at the fair and done by machine. Then there was this turned wooden bowl booth. That’s all the guy had; perfectly round, perfectly turned wooden bowls and pepper grinders. And, as we’d done with the other wood booths, husband started talking to him about the wood and how they keep it from checking as it dries and the like. The wood turner immediately starts in on how this is all local wood “from right here in Abingdon” but it is obvious that he himself is not. Finally he admits he’s grew up in Pennsylvania. Which is fine. But he has this edge to him. It is like he is trying to be nice but he just doesn’t know how. When he starts telling us how he gets his wood, husband reciprocates by telling him about some trees we have here that were downed by those huge winds in April. I realize that husband is offering this guy to come and get some of this wood. It is the very type and condition that he has just told us he uses. And there I am, watching this interaction, and when we left his booth I said to husband, “That guy didn’t even know you were offering him that wood.”

That’s cultural -- those two men, the one of the blueberries and the one of the wood turning -- being so different. It is like one speaks the language and one does not. And the thing that gets me is that it is not a language that cannot be learned -- it is just that most people who come to live here don’t believe it is a language worthy to be learned.

We both shook our heads and took our leave of the wood turner without introductions or shaking hands or arrangements to meet up later. We moved on to the photography exhibit which was manned by old hometown folks I’d known all my life, who remember being young children themselves and going to see my grandfather preach. Roots are not grown in one generation and the truth is that without real roots, there are no wings either. There were only two ridiculously pretentious entries into the photography contest; most of the entries were actually quite good. One pictorial piece in particular called “Ma done sold the farm” was excellent. And a portrait called “Kenny” I particularly liked. What the judges had awarded “best in show” probably really was and that is nice.

But it was already time for the exhibit to be locked up and so we voted for our favorites and walked back across the viaduct . . . under which a train was passing at just exactly that moment. It was switching some cars out on a side rail and we stood there and watched the whole thing, including getting to see the brakeman switch the tracks and getting to see the tracks actually move, and we talked about the guy who invented the coupling system that saved so many lives and what it might be like to work on the railroad and how big those cars really are and how scary and not like Polar Express it is like when you can’t see the engine or the caboose and the cars start moving right beside you.

And then we came back home.

In the land of not make believe

the strawberry forest

falling down the gooseberry hole

and potatoes, hilled once then mulched

And in the land of what productive gardens really look like:

onions and spring cabbages amongst the weeds

and a favorite photo because so very much in growing in this -- an old lettuce bed about to be cut back for probably the last time, some bush summer squashes of various and sundry varieties, some young brassica plants of some sort, some cucumber seedlings, some volunteer potatoes (soon to be harvested), and probably other things too.

And in the land of good and plenty:

big onion forest

peas, peas and more peas (three beds of them going all the way back to the fence row)

carrots!

blueberries in prayerful abundance

and a new perennial bed with . . . raspberries and yes, those are figs in those pots!

In the interest of updating from a month ago:

the chicks have grown a good bit.
We haven't lost any (knock wood) but a cat did claim a couple of wings. The cat is in lock-up and the chicks in the infirmary recovering.

this spinach bed has been completely cut over two or three times and is trying to bolt and still it tastes good.

And just because I like them:

the pillars of mercy and justice

a favorite hen named Snowflake

and because it really is important that a boy eat his spinach, and because this does it for him

doing and being are one

When we were finishing up the planting of the corn, that old song “Family Affair” started playing in my head. Pretty much everything for us is a family affair.

The day finally came around to get the corn planted. First there were the plowing and the disking days, of course. Then the potatoes got planted, about 170# of them. Then it set in wet again, and busy-ness and commitments and things we had to do besides, and the corn was just a tad late for us. Not that it matters all that much. A lot of times stuff planted early sits there and doesn’t grow much while it is cool but when planted when it is warm it really takes off fast. This is why sometimes in the summer when we are trying to stagger things being ripe by planting things every two weeks, stuff not planted at the same time will mature at the same time anyway. Seeds don’t actually obey the seed packets you see. But still, it feels antsy when things are late getting planted.

The day to plant the corn had been anticipated; the “I think we’ll get to plant it on Thursday,” sort of anticipation. And the day before, “I think we’ll call all hands to the garden tomorrow for the corn.” And again the morning of, “If we thaw some chicken and make some deviled eggs, we can gather salad from the garden and have a big chef salad with grilled chicken after we plant the corn.” So everyone knows it. And everyone has seen it done and done it before so they know the work, know what to do.

Everyone made sure they ate something for lunch. Lunch for us usually isn’t very formal but a picking out of which leftovers you want so you don’t starve before supper. Breakfast and supper are more formal in that we make something and we eat together. Not that we don’t eat lunch together, we usually do. And not that in the hot part of summer, we don’t have dinner in the hot of the afternoon and snack for supper, we do. I guess maybe you have to be part of this family to understand how it flows and works like a well-oiled machine.

Husband went to the garden first to start the preparations. Before long the kids actually got antsy and said, “Isn’t it time to go down now?” Yeah, ok, let’s go. Boots on and bathing suits under clothes. A big jug of water. The big tomato plant we’d wintered in the window sills. A bucket and knife to graze for the rabbits. Food for the dog. Ready. Set. Go.

In the garden, husband had started laying off the rows. The girls placed the seed while eldest and I covered. I should have remembered my gloves because I got a blister on my palm from the rough handle of the shovel so I switched to the hoe. Youngest had a job but I was so busy with mine, I don’t remember what his was. I don’t know how many rows there were, each of two kinds of corn (bloody butcher and hickory king), but a lot. Because we grow a lot of corn. It takes about a pound of corn to make two big pones for our family for supper, and it takes about 2 ½ ears to make a pound which is a little over one corn stalk per meal and we’ll figure on eating it every day. That’s how we plan on feeding ourselves. And we’ll try to grow at least twice that much. We’ve had several good corn years but if there’s a failure we want to have enough in storage to see us through. Think of the seven fat cows and the seven lean cows.

We planted the sunflowers too, lots we hope (we have no idea what the germination will be). The potatoes are mostly up and it will soon be time to hill them. Before ten days or so we’ll need to make the thread net over the baby corn plants so the crows will leave them alone. We harvested lovely lettuce and spinach and garlic and onions for the salad, and I toured the rest of all that is growing. The kids swam in the creek.

I asked the kids at one point, “Did I make you come to the garden to do this, or did you choose to come to the garden to do this?” Because, you know, I hadn’t really asked, I’d just coordinated with “It‘s time to go to the garden now” thing. They looked at me like I was a crazy lady but then said, “Because we wanted to plant the corn.”

No doubt that it helps that they know where food comes from. And that isn’t the store.

And it rained on the just planted corn last night! Even now the thing-that-is is stirring, swelling, growing, moving from a kernel in an ear to making an entire plant with two more ears full of kernels. It produces something, is productive, and thus is a model for me in my own life, doing and being.

Oh, and desert was blueberries frozen from last year, and fresh cream whipped that was as yellow as the buttercups the cow lays down in.

another song about rain

After four years of drought, rain is always blessed. When it comes in the form of two warm fronts with temperatures into the sixties after we’ve been frozen to bits with lows in the teens for a week, it is even more welcome. No matter how inaccurate it might be, I love a weather forecast.

But this is also what days of rain mean to us.

Even if it rains four inches, it will takes days and maybe weeks before that makes it to the springs, if indeed even that is enough water to refresh them. So water must still be hauled. But at least we could still haul water in the rain. Wood is another story. Wet wood just doesn’t burn well. At the same time, with higher temperatures, we really don’t need as much wood, at least not to stay warm. Ah, but the end of the warm and wet spell will bring a cold spell, so we do need to tend to the needs of the parlor stove so we aren’t suffering through cold when that happens, and have enough wood for the cook stove until then.

This is how you have to think: ahead.

I have blogged before about the importance of asking yourself, “What do I want to do in this moment,” and doing that. But I also acknowledge that sometimes you’d better want now to be warm four days from now. All or nothing philosophies always, always fall down. Many times, whatever you want to do in this moment will suffice just fine (and all the more so for those of you with store boughten lives, ah but those lives can disappear in the blink of an eye, and are in fact now in the act of disappearing), but sometimes you’d better just go ahead and want to do in this moment what actually needs to be done in this moment. I am a person who believes most strongly that we always have way more choices in this life than we ever think we have, but I also know that sometimes you don’t have a choice at all -- except in how you choose to respond to it.

And so we said, you know, we need to work really hard on these things. And we did. We cut wood and split wood and stacked it in the house and in protected areas and gathered smaller wood and kindling and twigs to start the fires with. We hauled water. So what that we didn’t get the house entirely clean, and we didn’t get the Christmas tree yet, and we had canned soup for supper.

Beyond being thankful for the rain, I’m thankful that my kids know how to work, know the rest that comes to the truly weary, and that they know the rewards of producing some directly used something every day -- they help to cut the wood one afternoon and the next morning they stand by the stove getting warm; they pick blueberries in August and enjoy them with breakfast in December; they help to plow the potato patch in the spring and help to plant the potatoes and then to hill the potatoes then, now, magically dig up some earth and find caches of glorious potatoes that they then wash in the creek and that will become a french fry supper.

Life waxes and wanes. Best to be prepared for it. Much more pleasant to ask one’s self, “What do I want to be doing in this moment?” when one isn’t shivering cold from lack of dry wood.

Rhythm & Roots

We rely on a spring for water. After four years of drought, we don’t have any. Our creeks still ran even in the driest part, so we didn’t have to worry about the livestock. And the garden has a pump that pulls from a branch just below it. But the springs that fed the house water system have been dry for months now.

We decided to design a water system around those springs because they never went dry and it was a lot cheaper than digging a well and we could do it ourselves. For many years, they ran year round. The only problem then we ever had was if a pipe that ran from the springs to the cistern would get plugged, we could sometimes run the cistern low before we noticed. But the springs, they ran.

I don’t remember which year was the first that we took to bathing in the creek in late summer but it was sometime in the late 1990s. The springs still ran as I remember, just not enough to allow us to wash clothes or to bathe. We could do dishes and flush. And in late summer, bathing in the creek is really a pleasure, not a chore. We became used to late summer conservation of water. After October the water would returned full force.

But this year, for the first time ever, after four years of severe drought, the springs went dry. Bone dry. Not a drop, not a drip. And it is December and they still are not back (although they are beginning to be wet on the bottom!). We have been on water conservation in the house since at least June. Since the springs went dry, we’ve hauled water from the garden pump to put into the cistern so that we can still wash dishes and sponge bath ourselves. Then we save that water to flush with.

Now it is so cold that the pump in the garden is frozen. So we’ve taken to getting water by the barrel out of the creek and hauling that to the cistern. It is actually easier to do this so that we might well be able to haul enough extra water for everyone to get to take a bath. The reason it isn’t our first choice is that the little branch below the garden is the cleanest water that we trust the most.

I wrote all that, really, to get to this:

Husband and elder daughter had business in town today. It was also today that we realized we were going to have to resort to the creek method to get water instead of the garden pump so the routine of how to do that would be new to us. After sending husband and daughter off, the rest of us bundled up and went to work. It was cold today. The truck was already in the front but the barrel was up here so we walked down carrying buckets and rolling the barrel. Every cat on the place went with us. Younger daughter and elder son dipped fifty gallons of water out of the creek one bucket at a time and I tipped it all into a barrel in the back of the pick-up. Younger son helped sort out the buckets and herd the cats.

While I said this before, it was cold today. And working in water was even colder. But there wasn’t a complaint. The sun was shining. The cats were funny. Daughter found it easier to dip without gloves on and son found it easier to tote without his coat on and I froze for them. The kittens evidently hadn’t been to the creek before and rock hopped and batted and sometimes made mistakes in their calculations. Noses and fingers turned red.

We had the best time.

When I hauled the truck up to the cistern, found the old hose, and tried to siphon the water out, I quickly gave up. I laid it down and went to check to see how low exactly the cistern was. 37 inches down. And daughter hollered, “Mom! It’s dripping!” and sure enough, it was so I took my end of it over to the tank and let gravity do its work.

Fifty gallons gives us about a day and a half of regular conservation use water. A little later I will go down to make sure it siphoned all right and also add a cup of bleach to the cistern. I will move the truck so the sojourners can get all the way home undeterred. I will finish the cheese and make a fresh loaf of bread and sweep the floors and dream of a bath. The kids will do their chores and resume their lives and dreamings. The sojourners will return with some treat for us probably.

We’ll feed the fires and stand around the stoves and warm our bums.

And tomorrow, we’ll do most of it again.

Not Quite Life on the Farm

aka the Horse Show

There was a Pony Club Fun Show to be held at the barn. The owner of the barn offered my girls the use of a pony if they’d like, and the lady who ran the show this year heard this and offered her two minis for my girls’ use. The minis are too small for them to ride, but they had options to show them “in hand”.

The Pony Club is an organization to basically get kids “started right“ with horses -- you know, good, responsible, safe horsemanship -- and the fun show is an informal and fun and very inclusive fundraising sort of event. One of the classes is a costume class, and it being this close to Halloween, that class was an obvious place for the girls to start. They took their Halloween costumes and expanded them to have ponies as accessories: the witch sort of girl in a cloak brought her pet spider-pony with her, and the elfin huntress carried her bow and brought a pony with antlers who’d been shot through with a magical arrow.

The other class the girls entered was the in hand trail class. The lady who set up and judged trail loves trail and set up an obstacle coarse that was just beautiful. The local gun club donated their target animals and she used lots of brush and, well, let me just tell you about it. Trail is done one at a time. First you entered the arena, came to a halt, and checked your horse’s left front foot for a stone. Then you both walked up to an obstacle with an orange hunting vest and a foam target gun in holster hung on it. Lurking behind this in brush was a “fox”. You put the vest on and got the holster and attached it to your belt. Then you walked over a “bridge“ (raised wooden platform), then forded a “raging river” (a blue tarp with water on it). In the corner were two “turkeys” to investigate. Then you picked your way through a “downfall” (poles and brush set as low obstacles to walk through), then up to a water tub with “fish” in it. A “raccoon” was getting a drink of water from the “pond” but nonetheless, you had to fish until you caught a fish, then release it. The next obstacle was a lane to walk through that happened to have a herd of deer very near it. You walked your horse through the lane, then backed up the entire length of it (about ten feet), then continued through on the course. The next obstacle was tall brush that you had to walk through, and as you might imagine, a horse could feel trapped here, or squeezed. Especially since the first sight on the other side of the brush was two “bear”. The assignment here was to take out your foam target pistol and shoot the bear! Then trot back to the entrance in a controlled manner, halt, ground tie your horse (basically, drop the lead and have the horse stand as though you were holding him), and walk around your horse. After you were finished, you were to collect the “dart” from the bear and put it and the safety vest back in place for the next participant.

There were three divisions of trail; novice mounted, intermediate mounted, advanced mounted, and open in hand. This meant that my girls competed against everyone else who did in hand on a strictly equal basis, no matter age, experience, or anything. It is traditional that everyone in the costume class gets a ribbon, but the trail class is not so coddling.

Now, I’m not a big fan of competition, especially not for competition’s sake. I believe there are other far more useful ways to relate to the world. But many horse competitions started from things people did with horses because they were useful to do. This trail class really showed how “broke” a horse was, how trustful and responsive to his handler he was, how much he’d been exposed to before, how he had been handled and trained. My girls took ponies that they weren’t that familiar with (they worked with them on two different days before show day) into an event that they knew very little about and handled it all with aplomb. I couldn’t have been more proud of them.

And the rest of the family got as much a kick out of it. I wasn’t sure everyone would even want to go to the show. Shows drag on and on, the day was supposed to be cold and wet, and there were lots of things on our own farm to capture people. Yet elder child said when asked, “Of course I want to go! How often does a brother get a chance to watch his sisters compete in a horse show?” Younger was just as excited. Husband wisely took a book.

At the show, the girls and I were largely busy. The ponies were to be used by other children in a couple of classes so we wanted to make sure to get ours in, and have the ponies ready for the other classes on time too. And there was a silent auction to check out, and friends to talk to and cheer for, and noses to pet. The boys oriented quickly. We did the trail as soon as we could get ready for it and everyone watched. Then younger found another child with a Nintendo and watched over his shoulder. When he wasn’t doing that, he very uncharacteristically went around and talked to everyone. “Hi, what’s your name? My name is ____.” And when he’d see someone with a ribbon, he’d give them the thumbs up and say, “Good job!” with his infectious grin. Other child wandered amusing himself. Husband went back to the car to read.

Although they were entered as two separate entries, both the girls got a second in the costume class. No matter what the ribbons were, their costumes were the most creative and unusual there. I mean, a knight in shining armor and a princess on a unicorn are pretty common ideas, don’t you think? But a pony dressed as a spider or shot through with an arrow? How unusual! So it was a good opportunity to stress to all the kids that even when you compete, it is all about how YOU feel about it. Ah, but in the trail, one got a second and one got a fourth. In the OPEN class! It took me awhile to impress on them that they’d competed against every other horse they’d seen go in hand, and some they hadn’t seen, and they’d done that well! This wasn’t a costume, “let’s make sure everyone goes home with a ribbon” class. They’d really done well.

Now, some people have called me a hypocrite for participating in this, what with my ranting and railing against waste and falsity. Certainly, a horse show could be said to be a waste and a falsity but I do not determine that our participation in it was either. And I don’t allow other people’s judgments of my activities to be the measure that I use. I use my own measure. Which is the very thing I say other people should do when they accuse me of judging them.

And you should have seen the Divine Ms. D compete on her Adonis! And her husband with her ribbons across his chest hanging from the pockets of his shirt! Our barn’s own Mr. Ed won the beginner division championship. And there were so many more! Harley in dressage suitability, Gabby as a pumpkin with her scarecrow handler, Heather in the instructor’s class (“please reverse, drop your stirrups, then rising trot“), Zu getting thrown in warm up and coming back to place second in equitation, Charm showing her charming self.

Real Life

I had to laugh today: My kitchen felt like Alecto’s on a Sunday.

I’m used to having a lot going on in there, mostly because multitasking at it is how you can get it done. Nothing in itself takes up much time, but most of everything in the kitchen involves waiting, so if you can combine the waiting, well, you can get a lot done.

So I had two quarts of cream warming on the counter to make butter. I had two gallons of milk warming in a double boiler (two stock pots actually) to make cheese. And a pint of cream and a quart of skimmed milk in a pot of warm water actively making sour cream and yogurt. I had my mother’s old stainless steel pressure cooker on the stove to soak the dried lima beans that would be for supper. Since we had a larger leftover lunch planned, I was only fixing a pound of beans for supper. Usually we do two pounds, but with a large lunch and a generous portion of corn bread, a pound should be enough. And we've the sheller set up trying to get through shelling all of last year's corn before this year's is harvested, which means I don't have to shell the corn before grinding it for cornbread at least. We have I don’t even know how many quarts of apple leavings to make into jelly in the fridge so I’d put on my agenda to try to do as much of that today as possible. I only cleared out about four of the quarts and one lonely pint but at least it was a dent. And it was about eleven pints of jelly in the end. I think to make the apple mint, though, I’m going to have to take the apple leavings and then heat them again with chopped mint to get a strong enough mint flavor, so what one batch was today was Apple Hint jelly. Ok, so that is butter, cheese, supper and jelly going. And dishes, always dishes and floors to sweep. And on the counter a bowl of apple quarters in salt water to slice up in my spare time to put in the dehydrator. Gosh but I do love dried apples. And did I mention that we are on water conservation, have been for months now, so all the water from washing dishes (which wasn’t five gallons for the whole day) is dipped out of the sink and into buckets for flushing with?

All this while husband is back up on the mountain to get another load of apples. One daughter is busily and happily sewing her Halloween costume. One son is on a Pokemon adventure. And the other two children are mostly engrossed in their current books. The garden has escaped two nights of frost advisories and has lots of good looking things to mature if it has time. All among other endeavors.

What I think I never convey well enough is the pleasure in all this. Like the other day on a town/library day, we had a zillion stops to make, and things to get, and not enough money to eat out, and, you know, things that would seem to be problems to handle, and what we had was an extremely pleasant outing and a welcome homecoming.

Impermanence

Impermanence is something we’d get a clue about if we could see in geologic time, but mostly we can’t. I look at my mountains, these ancient Appalachians, and I know they were higher than any others, that maybe they’ve risen and been worn away several times, but what they mean to me is simply home.

I was driving home after working and riding the other day with my eyes peeled for any signs of purple in the blackberry fields. I saw no purple but an old, abandoned house stood out to me there in the middle of one potential berry field. Who built it? Who lived there? That house is not far after a new McMansion with a Hummer out front and, I kid you not, cattle and a cattle pond enclosed with cattle panels for a front yard. How long until that house is abandoned and in the middle of a blackberry field?

I thought of the Nearings, those homesteading icons, and their famous ten foot wall around their first garden in Maine. In their books they decry the impermanence of field fencing and tout the solidity of their stone wall. For something like 14 years they and many of their visitors worked to build this wall. Not long after it was finished, they built a new house with new gardens and sold the old . . . and the new owner promptly knocked holes in those ten foot high stone walls. Their “permanent” wall was effectively gone.

But I also remember a quote from Scott where he says the sum total of his accomplishment in life is to keep a little bit of soil from washing into Penobscot Bay. As I bring truck load after truck load of horse manure onto our farm, I think of that as a permanent improvement too. I mean, it isn’t strictly permanent but I daresay it is more permanent than anything we delude ourselves into believing is lasting.

When we bought this land we were entranced with it. We walked over it and memorized its features, including the ebb and flow of the creeks. And then we moved here and had kids and began major gardens and built a house and the seasons came and went and the creeks ebbed and flowed. And the creeks changed. At first I was flabbergasted. They were still beautiful but were they my creeks? Of course they were, but they were first of all themselves, and second mine only if I take the time to know them in that season.

I know where the foundation, really only a scattering of stones, is to the log house my grandfather was born in in 1898. What lasts is his love of horses and his wife’s frugality and cooking that lives on in me. We live on the side of a different mountain than he lived on, but we live much the same life.

So I suppose my question is, what is permanent and what isn’t?

My mom died last fall. Her body was impermanent, but her self? Her voice certainly lives in my head, and it would seem many other things, in me, my kids, her friends.

Speaking of impermanence, sadly today one of our cats was killed on the road . . . maybe a mile from where we live. He was a tom cat, obviously. Thinking of one cat as the favorite seems to me as immoral as thinking of one kid as a favorite, but this cat was born on Halloween and came to live with us on Christmas eve and was the one who broke his shoulder and if one of us was sick, he would come and lay with that one until they felt better and he was just special. We are thankful that we found him and that he didn’t just disappear and leave us wondering what in the world might have happened to him but oh gosh, we will miss him.

But the other side of that is that two weeks ago we had three kittens born.

Dogwood Winter

It is official: we have salad from the garden. Tonight it was a lot of spinach and some lettuce and some arugula and broccoli rabe (which, I swear, is what we hillbillies call common mustard). The first night we managed lettuce from the garden, it was just lettuce on pork sandwiches. But oh it is such a treat to have fresh greens again. We also had a good mess of lambs quarters just the other day -- they wouldn’t have been big enough if they hadn’t been weeds in the greenhouse.

We also have another mess of morels that we’ll probably fix tomorrow, maybe with some of the squash that we still have from last year. And we had a really good rain so there should be more morels. Oh, rain, how I bless rain. It will make the turnips and beets and other things in the garden do nicely.

There are, it may be, so many good things to eat in the world and none of them without signification.
an essentially truthful bastardization of Paul in I Corinthians 14

With our cabrito tamales tonight we had not only salad but flan. There are plenty of eggs and milk. We eat, you see, not by saying “What would you like to eat,” but by saying, “What do we have?” and by that we eat better than anybody, I swear. We try to grow plenty of hard corn and potatoes because with those around, you always have something to eat. Add some dried beans to that. Milking the cow gives us not only milk but butter and cheese and sour cream and yogurt. Having the chickens gives us eggs (most of the year at least) and some meat. Extras of potatoes or milk or what have you can also produce more meat, usually either rabbits or pigs.

We buy most other grains but I try to keep us stocked ahead. But it doesn’t end with buying something. Before I spend a couple days playing around for pay at a horse barn, I try to make sure that we have at least one loaf of bread made for each day I will be working. There is a process of thinking, planning and doing for ahead of time. In general not waiting until the last minute: Thinking not only about what the next meal is going to be, but the next year’s worth of meals.

I have been thinking about what it is like to have somewhat older kids. Mine now range in age from 8 to 16. I laugh when I say that I spent my thirties pregnant and nursing, but it is true. We knew, before we had kids, that kids need parents and so we committed to being that, to being there with them (not just for them). We have never used babysitters, or parental substitute devices like automatic swings or pacifiers. My kids frankly pacified on my boobs, and most of the time they sat on my hip. In all the pictures of me in my thirties, I have a baby on a hip.

It was a lovely time. It was a close in time. Intense but oatmealish. I always knew it wouldn’t last, that being present in that time was vital but fleeting.

Now is a lovely time too. The kids can largely take care of themselves in the rudimentary ways but need parents perhaps even more now. I have a much larger and longer range, and so do they. There can be more variety but still a lot of intensity. Everyone has interests, passions, quirks. Of their own.

Mine is that I am continually amused by the animals. Which is perhaps another reason I’ve so enjoyed being a family.

It is supposed to get cold enough that we need to bring the tomatoes and peppers, that are still in flats and pots, inside.

Valentine's Pictorial

Stance and Form
Originally uploaded by Contrary Goddess.

First, I chopped a tree down. There are more photos of this of flickr if'n you're interested. I didn't do it ALL by myself but this is something I've been wanting to do, to know that I could do. And it is thrilling. I was sweating. It was cool.

For supper it was

Cabrito stromboli
Originally uploaded by Contrary Goddess.

cabrito stromboli, made with the loin from the white wether. The kitchen was really rocking as I made the crusts (it takes six big stromboli's to feed our family, which is the equivalent of two loaves of bread for the crusts), husband made the filling, and daughter made

WW butter sugar cookies
Originally uploaded by Contrary Goddess.

whole wheat butter sugar cookies using lots of red dye!

A great time was had by all.

All for One

Nothing in this family is done alone. We’re all a part of everything we do.

Take me going to work. I only work two days per week but the day before my two days begin we’re all getting ready for it. At home without me here the rhythms change and everyone’s chores expand some so everyone is aware of this the day before. I try to make sure that laundry is mostly done, dishes are mostly caught up on, and that there is lots of bread made. Husband has usually come up with a meal plan since that will be up to him.

Before the day to work dawns, the alarm rings and husband gets up to start the coffee and fire. I get up and go milk. I bring the milk back to him at the house and leave again to feed the horse. By the time I get back he has my breakfast done and I settle down to that. He also packs my lunch which is two pints of milk, a soda, a couple pieces of fruit when we have it, a couple cheese sandwiches, and a couple protein bars. I won’t actually eat all of this most days but it gives me a choice and something that I can always manage to swallow. Not eating can be a problem for me and managing to eat enough is a challenge.

When I get back home, things have miraculously gotten done. The equines have been grazed, some dishes done, supper fixed, sometimes even the floor gets swept. Plus all their regular chores. They dance on the porch for me coming home. How great is that. I kiss them all, milk, feed the horse, eat supper, and collapse into bed.

We had another incident recently that demonstrated how we all work together rather seamlessly. Our elder son has been in charge of cutting a lot of the firewood this winter. He’s done a fantastic job and it has been good for him too, but the other day he took a misstep getting a log onto the sawhorse and twisted his knee. Quick action was taken, it was iced, and he was largely ok but he was out of chore commission for several days. He also takes primary care of the chickens. And dogs. So there was a lot of slack to take up. His sisters split his animal chores and his parents took over the wood. My friend Laura used to laugh that our families ran like well oiled machines, especially compared with how most families don’t get along but this really shone a spotlight on it for me.

I suppose it sheds some light on it to know that one of our family mottos is, “All for One, One for All.” And we really mean it.

We Have Tales to Tell

I mean, really, it is such a good party, this whole Thanksgiving idea.

And I didn't need the sake or even the sushi. After about noon yesterday everything went swimmingly. And what didn't was ok, like I didn't end up having any bulgar after all, so I just cooked some soft white wheat and we've decided we like it even better in tabouli. I mean, after all, whole usually is better. And the pies, to die for. I love making holiday pies almost as much as I love eating them. And the bird, wonderful. Husband is the bird roaster, and the dressing and gravy maker. We had so much food we couldn't even put it on the table. A grand feast is a great thing.

With so many preparations, it was after dinner before the pig got his breakfast. All the women at the shindig came with me. They grinned at the cats vying with the giant pig at the trough, but when I dumped in the muck tubs full of leaves for his dry bedding, and he did his whirling dance as they fell on his back, well, I thought Aunt was going to bust something laughing. Then we hypnotized a chicken. Then we found acorns and hand fed them to the pig just past and below his giant big oinker nose.

And they told pig tales from their childhoods. Then back inside the children sat on their laps and showed them their scars and their grands told tales of scars they had had as children. And I mean, I only wish the crowd were bigger. I love the tales. It is really the tales that tell what life is, what family is, what is valuable and worthy and what is not, and in the end, that let us know we are who we are.

And telling the tale is probably exactly why I blog. Thanks to all of you for your reading and your writing, for your tales and your amens and your 'now wait just a minute's. So have another virtual piece of pie and we'll figure out where in the heck all these leftovers are going to go.

Preparations

How did it get to be Tuesday? And will all the cooking get done by dinner on Thursday? Or will the in-laws and aunts have to wait around chewing on nothing much until Friday?

Ok, it will all get done, although I've no doubt that it will be later than my father-in-law will like. He can have a few crackers to tide him over. My mom always fixed shrimp chowder for that purpose, but I'm not that elegant.

So, yesterday I finally cooked the cushaws for the pies. Today I'm doing bread and ice cream. Tomorrow the bread will become bread crumbs for the dressing/stuffing -- which we will have some of both, and some will be vegetarian dressing since one of the aunts is vegetarian. Also, tomorrow four pies (2 cushaw, 2 pecan) will be made, and all the salads (brocolli salad, corn salad, tabouli -- although the tabouli won't be finished until Thursday as it just won't hold). The big ol' bird is actually in a cooler defrosting, which I always hope it actually gets defrosted and it never entirely does so the last is always done that last morning in the sink. Who has a 20 pound hole in the fridge that she doesn't need for nearly an entire week? Not me. Thursday will be the bird, the dressing, all the veggies. The table will groan and be crowded and I absolutely love it.

It is the beginning of a whole bunch of parties. Sure, it is too late for a real harvest festival, but what the heck. Let the feasting begin!

Semi-Colon

Two and a half days eating with family but not at my home, and not my food. This has been the first extended family gathering not at my house in ages, at least that we've been a part of.

There are lots of things, but here is the biggest thing. Or the smallest thing. Three days eating. And not a bit of fiber the entire time. The only whole grain food the whole and entire time -- my chocolate cake. Imagine chocolate cake being the example of whole food! Not that stuff wasn't good, it was, very good. But processed. Very very processed and refined.

And cooking supper tonight -- beans and backbone, spinach, raw broccoli salad, corn gems -- what my brother called our "colon blow cuisine" -- I had this one thought. And I'm afraid it is indelicately put, so be forewarned:

What? Do these people sh*t three times a month whether they need to or not, or what?