It takes a village

 And so, after supper made of broth off the pork roast from a few days ago, the one I pressured absolutely plain (well, some green garlic and some salt) so as to call up the taste bud memories of a very favorite dish that my mother would make especially for me, three of us took to prepping the gooseberries for the freezer.  And it brought so many thoughts.

Like the other day I had SO MUCH to do during my one day at home in an absolutely brutally busy week, processing milk and eggs and prepping for a big pot luck (and when you are bringing a lot of people to a pot luck, you ought to bring a lot of food!) and feeding us too, still in the middle of that I thought about how much easier it is with more of us to share the work.  I might have been processing four gallons of milk, but I didn't have to milk.  And the milker didn't have to milk alone. And we can spend an hour in the garden and get four beds prepped for transplanting. Or two hours and get half the corn and potatoes planted. And I don't even end up with a blister.

That doesn't mean it is easy living with so many people (sometimes my heart is blistered, or my ego), but it probably is easier to survive.

This political situation is batshit crazy. Batshit. Record corporate profits go untaxed. It takes many people working cooperatively to afford housing. People screaming "freedumb" are hell bent on oppressing anyone not like themselves, while they identify a seasonal coffee cup as oppressing them.  

And "All Men Created Equal" is about to mean exclusively men.  Again.

I don't know what to say to you. Except, read Gooseberries. Thank the Gods for gooseberries.  Yes the real ones, out of which we will make fried pies next week in a wonderful quality time ritual.  But also the metaphorical gooseberries. How does the hard, sour gooseberry become sweet?

People think they can buy their lives, they can be divorced from their products.  People think they can be happy. But all we can really do is be ok to one another, not even kind.

Our gooseberries have grown wild and threatened to take over the whole place, and when they do that, they don't even bear. The only cure is severely cut them, mow them, beat them back. And making them sweet takes the village of cutting them back, picking them which their thorns demand a blood sacrifice to surrender their fruit, cleaning out the stems from a seeming million tiny berries, and finally fashioning them into the art of the pie, whether baked or fried.  Or once a chutney. And enjoyed en famille. EnJoyEd.