You Say Tomato.....

Tomatoes have to be one of the most versatile vegetables that can be grown in a garden.  Pulled off the vine while green, you can have yourself a green tomato salad or fried green tomatoes.  Once ripe, they can be eaten raw, sliced and used to transform a bacon and lettuce salad into something amazing, they can be tossed into stews, cooked down into sauces, made into ketchup, dried, canned, or juiced....and that juice can even be added to a little vodka to make the perfect Bloody Mary. There really is no end to the uses of a tomato.

Late August and all of September brings a bounty of tomatoes.  The small seeds that I dropped into the dirt sometime in late February are now well over 7 feet tall and produce, on average, between 60 and  80 pounds of red vine-ripened tomatoes every week.  Imagine for a minute just how many tomatoes that really is....that is 2 big bushel baskets filled to heaping and then another half of one spread out in a kitchen or on the front porch awaiting processing.  This particular week, it was well over 120 pounds to process.

I remember a point in time, when I was living in LaCrosse, oblivious to farm life and all that goes with it, and I heard an episode of Prairie Home Companion where Garrison Keillor was talking about all the tomatoes in the house in August and every horizontal surface being completely covered with them.  I remember thinking, why would anyone have that many tomatoes?  What can you possibly do with that many tomatoes?  I can honestly say....it happens.  Everywhere you look in my house on the days after picking, there are tomatoes - sorted by level of "doneness" so that the ones that are softest and least likely to survive the next few days intact are used up first.

 My Friday nights lately, instead of being reserved for a date with my husband, are all about picking tomatoes.  I walk out to the tomato patch with a bushel basket in one hand and every time I think, 'oh, there will only be a few more tonight.'  I start with the plant that is off on its own because the tomatoes on that one are the easier to see and get to, and when I suddenly realize that just this one plant has already given me 10 pounds of tomatoes and I still have 22 more plants to go, the sense of panic sets in.  I usually spend the next hour bushwhacking my way through tomato plants that reach well above my head and are the home to many helpful (although frightening) creatures. It is a little like gardening with Audrey II from the Little Shop of Horrors.  Tomato plants don't always carry their wonderful fruits on the outside of the plant, so in many cases I am reaching blindly into an overgrown tomato cage in search of the glimmer of red that I can see from the outside - often I am rewarded with a beautiful round, smooth tomato and at other times, I find my fingers sinking into the rotten mush of a tomato that has succumbed to the worst of all tomato deaths in which their insides liquefy and are held deceptively to the vine by the skin alone.  There are those tomatoes that are on the edge of being too far gone to deal with - these are set aside in a separate pile for the pigs (and if you ever need to make a pig really happy....rotten tomatoes is the way to do it.)

As one bushel basket fills to over flowing, I start setting out small piles of tomatoes at the edges of the tomato jungle to be picked up with the second and third baskets that I usually send a kid to fetch.  I consider my weight lifting workout for the night to be carrying all the heavy baskets, one at a time, back to the house where I heave a sigh, take a shower to wash off all the iridescent green "tomato dust" and go to bed, because dealing with all those tomatoes suddenly becomes an extremely daunting task that can only be tackled after a full night's sleep.

The next day, the tomato take down starts.  30 pounds are washed, cored and pureed for marinara.  Combined with onions, basil, oregano, thyme, honey, garlic powder, and various other spices, they are boiled down from roughly ten quarts to six over the course of roughly 5 hours and then placed in glass jars that have been sterilized in boiling water for 10 minutes. When the jars are filled and lids are in place, the marinara is canned in boiling water for 35 minutes.  There is a lot of boiling going on every Saturday night at my house in the fall.  The temperatures have come down a little from mid summer, but in my kitchen, the heat and humidity are incredible.

So, that is 30 pounds  down....50 or so pounds to go.....

I grow the Amish paste tomatoes.  So named because they tend to have more "meat" to them and less juice so they are good for turning into sauces and paste.  I have tried a few recipes for making paste, but finally this year struck upon one that is not only easy, but actually doesn't take three days to cook down.  12 pounds of tomatoes with bad spots cut out - boiled slightly, run through a food mill to remove skins and seeds and then boiled down with a little olive oil added.  After it has been reduced by about 1/2 (from roughly 8 quarts to 4) it is poured it onto a shallow jelly roll pan (or two) and baked in the oven at 350 for about two or three hours.  Then we reduce the heat to 250 degrees and stir it until we can form it into a mountain in the center of the pan and it more or less holds its shape.  This tomato paste will fill 2 and 1/2 jelly jars (2.5 cups). Twelve pounds of tomatoes down to roughly 20 ounces.  This is 20 ounces of the most concentrated tomato taste you can imagine.  I happened to take a little finger full for a taste and the taste buds on my tongue could only register "tomato" for the next two hours.  I would can it for future use, but its use is so immediate that it isn't worth canning it - it lives in the refrigerator overnight and then it gets used for pizza sauce.

50 pounds minus 12 pounds.....now I am down to 38 pounds left to deal with....

Pizza, like spaghetti, is made and eaten once a week at this house so you can imagine how much tomato sauce we can crank through in a year.  This year's pizza sauce is also a new recipe.  Last year, I made some sauce and froze it to be used throughout the winter, but since freezer space is at such a premium, I had to come up with some way to put this in a jar and keep it.  The one problem I have with new recipes is the, "what if it is really terrible" problem.  It can happen - you make a huge batch of something and it turns out tasting terrible, but it is really hard to just throw all that good produce out and start again. It requires some amount of taking a risk.  I also worry about the, "is this stuff really safe to can?" problems that are inherent with canning tomatoes - the pH of them has to be low enough to prevent unsafe bacteria from flourishing.  To most of my tomatoes that are canned, I add citric acid to help ensure that the pH is low enough and then, the best test that I have found to determine if it is good or not, is to smell it.  If the seal is good and if it smells like fresh tomatoes when you open the lid, then it is likely just fine, if it doesn't smell right, then toss it out.  The pizza sauce, besides using up another 12 pounds of tomatoes, has numerous other herbs and spices than the spaghetti sauce (which is good, because it takes me a week to pick and dry enough basil to use in the marinara recipe), but it too has to sit on the stove for hours on end to reduce down to a sauce consistency, and then be placed in boiled jars and then boiled again to seal.

38 pounds minus 12 pounds ....26 more pounds to go...

These remaining tomatoes, if I have any energy left in me, are blanched, skinned, cut up and frozen for making chili in the winter months.  When the freezer is full and we have enough marinara and pizza sauce to last all year, the tomato processing goes into phase two....

Phase two is salsa and ketchup - these are largely up to my husband, because by this time of the season, I have seen so many tomatoes that the mere thought of blanching or skinning one more tomato can almost make me cry.

I am very torn, sometimes, about how much fuel it takes for all this cooking to take place.  How much energy am I using to process this bounty into a form that can be used all year round?  But, when I take into consideration that all the tomatoes come from my garden....organic/vine-ripened tomatoes that, on average, cost about $1.25/pound (that's roughly $100/week)...not to mention the cost of the herbs and onions that I grow myself, and each time I make a batch, I am getting roughly 12 meals for my family without having to drive a car to a store to purchase and they will not require refrigeration to store - the math usually works out in my favor.  The one thing that doesn't get taken into consideration is my time spent blanching, peeling, cutting, chopping, mixing, cooking, and canning.  This gets to be quite a considerable chunk of time in which nothing else gets done around the house or gardens.  I have been so distracted with tomatoes at various times that I have completely missed the harvest of other vegetables in the garden - even as I am writing this I am reminded of the carrots that have been left in the ground so long that they have now reached the mammoth proportions of being as long as my forearm and as thick around as well.  The last carrot that I pulled from the ground was used for carrot sticks in my girls' lunches for a week, made an entire carrot cake (that takes 3 cups of grated carrot) and was used in tomato soup - there are about 45 such carrots still out there in the garden, and I don't dare even stop to think about the beans.  Thank goodness those are two crops that can wait a bit to be harvested. Tomatoes are no where near so patient.  When a tomato is ripe, it needs to be eaten or processed within a few days.

There is definitely something to be said about a vine ripened tomato.  Most of the tomatoes that are found in the grocery stores were picked when they were green.  They were held in controlled environmental conditions until they were shipped, then they were exposed to ethylene so they will ripen and, due to consumer pressure to have only perfectly red tomatoes, the genes of the commercial tomato have been selected so that they will be a lovely, uniform, red color, but lack in taste.  The thing that makes a tomato taste so good are the sugars that develop as it ripens naturally.  It is a trade off - good looking/no taste or unevenly red and blotchy/great taste.   Those green-shouldered tomatoes that they sell at the farmer's markets - those are the good ones.  Give them two days in a sunny window to fully ripen and then you will have an amazing tomato.  The other thing to consider, if you are looking for organic tomatoes, is that they don't always look perfect.  They have cracks in the skin, they have scabs on the tops by the stem, they will have areas where a grass hopper took a meal out of one side....in other words, they aren't always pretty, but this is only skin deep.  As the tomato adage goes,  beauty is only skin deep, but tastelessness goes all the way to the bone.

So, the next time you see someone by the side of the road selling bushels of tomatoes, consider stopping and buying 20 or 30 pounds from them, then break out the recipe books, or look online for ideas to transform them into whatever favorite red sauce you can imagine, but be forewarned....you may become one of those crazy people that finds themselves with tomatoes on every horizontal surface of your kitchen ....it's been known to happen.

The Honey Flow

I think it is safe to say that the drought has gotten the better of me this year.  Although it has been pointed out to me that my attitude toward this whole drought thing has been less than stellar, my only comment is that my optimism has wilted right along with most of my flowers.  But there was a ripple made in the stagnant pool of drought frustration recently when I pulled in our first honey from the bees.

I have checked them several times throughout the summer and would often find them crowded on the sill of the hive in a small swarm attempting to fan themselves and the hive to keep it cool.  Initially, I had regretted putting one of the hives in the shade of a tree, but then as this abnormally hot summer has progressed, I have rethought that position and have noted that, of my two hives, the shaded bees are clearly the more comfortable.

It fascinates me to visit the hives.  My entire childhood, I was afraid of bees, worried about stepping on them while they were busy patrolling the dandelions and the white clover, instructed never to go too near a hive.  Now I find myself sitting on the palates upon which my hives stand, a mere inches from thousands of bees that are busily going about their business.  They dodge and swoop around me as I peer at them and I have occasionally been accidentally run into by one or more of them on their way to or from the hive.  Like any Midwesterner would, I apologize for being in their way and kindly move aside. They don't sting, they don't get angry, they just keep on working.

I have bemoaned the loss of the flowers and watched as the clover has sadly dried up and wondered what the bees would find to eat, but they are clearly more resourceful and optimistic than I am these days.  I set out yesterday to crack open the hives and see how they are managing things on the inside after hearing stories from some of the other beekeepers in the area that noted that they had had the entire comb within their hives melt down in the heat.  Not that bees can't handle that sort of devastation, but it takes them a while to clean up and rebuild.

I happened to have the foresight enough to take along a few empty frames and a deep super just in case.  The first hive that I opened, the one that I typically think of as the weaker of the two hives, had finally filled both levels of supers up with comb and were putting down a substantial amount of honey in all of the upper frames.  I had to break into the bottom super to find the brood of bees and be sure that they were doing well.  The size of the hive had clearly expanded and there were any number of bees that were very unhappy with the general ruckus that I was causing them.  It takes some amount of control when being mobbed by several thousand bees at once, not to swat at them or get anxious.  Bees are a very intuitive lot - they respond almost instantly and as a single organism to slight changes in mood and surroundings. I have watched them milling about on the outside of the hive and a bee will twitch differently and the whole group changes its dynamic simultaneously.  When I am busy trying to move bees aside so that I can get a grip on a frame, I will notice subtle differences in the tone of their buzzing and can tell when I have angered the lot of them. I don't work with a smoker because, for the most part, the bees are fairly tolerant of me and don't attempt to sting....that doesn't, however, mean that they aren't unhappy with me.  I find myself humming the Winnie the Pooh "I'm just a little black rain cloud" song and that seems to quiet both myself and the bees down a bit.   I did have one bee yesterday, however, that was especially upset with me and she kept throwing herself at my mask repeatedly long after I had put her hive back together and moved on to the second hive.  No amount of explaining would dissuade her from her attempts at driving me away.

Having assured myself that the shaded hive was doing well, I moved on to what has typically been my larger hive.  This group has completely filled the two initial supers and is now starting on the third.  I removed the top super (the one that they are only getting a start on) and launched into the second (or middle) super.  I found healthy capped brood in the middle of the super and then chanced to check some of the other outer frames in the box.  Honey! Capped, finished honey!  I pulled the first full frame up out of the hive - weighing roughly 20 pounds and full of unhappy bees, this is not something that you want to drop - I was completely amazed.  Capped honey is beautiful, but brand new clean white honey comb that is full for the first time is really beautiful!  I set the frame down and peered into the hive on the other side and was rewarded with a second full frame of capped honey on the other side as well.  I pulled this one out as well and set it next to the first frame full of honey and then went to get the empty frames that I had brought along. There were several more frames of mostly capped honey, but the bees use honey as their main food supply for feeding the young bees and always need to be left with enough in reserve to maintain the hive.  I put the empty frames in the hive in the places of the full frames and then quickly and apologetically brushed the bees off the honey filled frames back into the hive before I spirited them away to my green house which doubles as the "honey house". 

Walking with a loaded wheel barrow while still wearing most of my bee costume to the green house, I attracted the attention of my 7 year old and she came skipping over to see what I was up to.  She is a honey lover herself and was willing to run to the house to get a few of the necessary items I would need to clean and prep the centrifuge that I had not even bothered to examine yet, thinking that it would be at least the end of the season, if not a full year from now, before I would need it.  With a crescent wrench, some clean rags, a hose and a little dilute bleach, we had the thing up and running in no time.  A large knife was obtained from the kitchen and the top beeswax seal on the honey was removed and saved in a pan.  In general, it takes 10 pounds of honey to make 1 pound of beeswax and it is worth its weight in gold, so I wasn't going to loose a bit if I could help it.  A little balancing of the centrifuge and ten minutes of spinning and a beautiful stream of golden honey came pouring out of the spout at the bottom of the centrifuge.

 Honey is one of the easiest food stuffs to work with.  It is ready to eat in its natural form, does not spoil, and can be used in just about everything.  The only thing that I had to do in order to put this honey in jars was to strain it a few times through several layers of cheese cloth.  Seven pounds of honey later, the now empty frames of beeswax were returned to the bees and the empty placeholder frames removed.  They will take one look at the devastation that I caused to their comb and start again to clean it, repair it, fill it with more honey and cap it once again. In trade off for my providing housing, food through the winter, protection from the cold and a little water for the hot summer months, these tiny little beings supply me with potentially endless supplies of the most natural sweetener known to man and they will pollinate many of my flowers and crops. I am pretty sure that I am coming out way ahead on this deal, but it really is a fairly symbiotic relationship although, technically, they would survive just fine without me.  I do, however, speak on their behalf when the crops are being sprayed with potentially toxic chemicals that threaten to completely wipe out honey bees all together, and in that small way attempt to pull my weight in the relationship.

 More and more I see these types of relationships in nature and for many of them, man is thought to not be an important link in the symbiotic chain, but we are perhaps one of the most important players in symbiotic relationships - we have to protect them.  "A chain is only a strong as its weakest link." as my brother used to remind me (typically while he was pointing out that I was, apparently, the weakest link) - but it is very much true.  Our job as humans, and as links in the chain, is to protect the other links in the chain, the bees being sprayed, the shrimp being covered in oil, the cattle, chickens and pigs being restricted to tiny lots or confinement units.  Sadly, we humans are often the weakest links and fall far short on our jobs. 

So, the next time you pull out the honey jar and take a teaspoon full of honey, think of the little beings that worked themselves literally to death to bring that to you.  Each worker bee, in her short lifetime will produce only the equivalent of 1/10 of a teaspoon of honey, and to produce a pound of honey, bees will fly the equivalent of twice around the world and visit roughly two million flowers.  And that is just the honey.  The value they represent in their ability to pollinate crops and further provide us with food, eclipses the value of the honey alone.  The next time you eat a fruit, vegetable, or even have a cup of coffee....thank the bees.

When it rains.....

I have reached a point in the summer.  That point where it is too hot, too dry, too busy, too much sun, too many crops to keep up with - in short, I have hit the summer wall.  It is a point that I personally think of as the "freeze point,"  or that frame of mind that I find myself in when I think, 'if it were to all just freeze now, I would be okay with that!'  This year is especially bad, however and my best efforts to ride out this pessimism are not working out so well.

I need a good thunderstorm to break up the tension a little and water my gardens, ...but it doesn't and then I get upset with the weather (generally an exercise in futility if there ever was one), and then I get mad at people because we are at (or past - depending upon my level of fatalism on a particular day) the tipping point of climate change and it will all only be a slow, hot, depressing decline from this point on with all the media outlets and government officials talking about it, but people in general essentially doing nothing about it.

I tend to become especially cynical when hot and frustrated.

I thought of making a quick list of all the problems at the top of my mind regarding the climate and farming, but quickly realized that the list was entirely too long and really didn't help improve my outlook much, but then I thought of my grandparents.  Farmers, the lot of them.  They lived through the dust bowl, the depression, WWII, and all of the fear mongering that followed with the Cold War.  If ever there was a case of "when it rains, it pours" problems piling up, this era would have been it.  I find myself wondering sometimes if they ever thought the end of the world was coming, and if so, how did they continue to get up every morning and affect some change?  Maybe the world was just different back then.  Maybe not knowing all the world news and hearing of all the horrors that are happening in far off regions made it easier to ride out your own problems.  Maybe not having access to as many people (many both more educated and significantly less educated than you yourself are) was beneficial to focusing on the present local problems.  I find that I have almost completely given up listening to the news and I have to stop myself from reading the asinine comments on the news articles that I do read - as filled with hate and fear as they are.

 I fully understand that this sense of dread about the environment and the food we produce and eat doesn't permeate very deeply into the populace at large, but there is a sense amongst many of us on this "survivalist bandwagon" that the doors of opportunities that my grandparents and parents had opening in front of them are slowly closing for us.  It is very sad to see some of the predictions of environmental disaster that were pooh-poohed by so many slowly coming true. It is like being told the Titanic was too big to sink....and yet she sits on the bottom of the Atlantic floor.

But what, exactly is one person to do? This is the most troubling question.  How is one person to make a difference that turns the world around from this horribly destructive course?  How does a person look her kids in the face and say, "Sorry guys, good luck!" How, then, do I wake up every morning and hope to affect any change?

I have to believe that small steps, repeated millions of times by people all over the world, together can change the way our governments work, our food is produced, our people are fed and our children educated.  The alternative, which has mainly been big business monopolies running the corporate food network (and the government), is simply not working - it is bankrupting our land and the people who live on it.  The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again hoping to get a different result.  It isn't working.  It is time to change.  Horton hears the Who, but until every last shirker, every last JoJo, is yowling and yapping, chances are we will not be heard.

Yap!

Living Without Air

Summer is here,.... definitely here. The time of the year when the humidity is so high that the haze just hangs in the air and you feel more like you are swimming than walking when you are outside.  I wake up in the morning and hustle outside in the pre-dawn to do chores before it heats up, sometimes dressed in only whatever pajamas I slept in the night before, and on these hot summer nights... it is a good thing that I live in the country without too many neighbors driving by.  We dress to fit the weather around here because living in a turn of the century farm house means...you guessed it, no air conditioning.   I know, I know....at this point you are all thinking, "Oh my God, how does anyone live without air conditioning?!"   Well, up until about 30 years ago, everyone lived without air conditioning.  It was a luxury - saved for large hotels and businesses - and now it is considered the "norm".  Unfortunately, the way we spend our cash on fossil fuels and energy, it will likely, once again, be considered a luxury before too long. 

As hot and sticky as it can sometimes get, I have never really longed for an air conditioner.  It was nice when I was pregnant in July with my third child and we were living in town, but I did just fine without it on the subsequent two pregnancies.  I, personally, can't stand the sound of motors and compressors running all night - even the fan is a bit too much noise at times - birds, coyotes, dogs barking, thunder, wind,....fine, just nothing mechanical.

And so, we live in the heat and this, in a nut shell, is how we survive.  We open the windows and catch the breeze. 


Dark, shady and cool - the perfect siesta

Timing is everything, however.  You have to open the windows at night - all the windows - on every side of the house, and if there isn't a breeze, you create one with fans until the cool night air seeps in and displaces the warm air of the day.  Then, (and this is key), in the morning first thing, you close the windows and the drapes.  It sounds a little counter intuitive, but after many summers of living quite nicely through days of high heat and humidity, I can tell you this works. 
We have also done what we can to be sure that we have plenty of shade trees surrounding our house.  Deciduous trees planted on the south side so that their leaves shade in the summer and allow sun in during the winter, and when the heat just gets too stifling, then it is time to pull out the hose and have a little water fight action to cool things down.

And as it so happens, just about the time that you are convinced you will not be able to take the heat and humidity for one more day, the horizon darkens and the haze takes on a new appearance of omminous clouds in the west.  You can feel the storm clouds building and rolling in until, finally, from the completely still, fetid air comes a blast of cool wind that brings with it a thunderstorm, the smell of ozone and a cool breeze.  That cool breeze I appreciate more than any air conditioner I have ever known.

The June Delusion

Deep in the gloomy hollow of winter, I picture June.  I imagine running outside with only flip flops on my feet rather than snow boots, I picture my kids chasing each other around the yard, riding bikes and playing in the sand box...I picture time on my hands to relax, to drink beer on the porch, to nap in the hammock.  And every year, I am completely delusional. 

I think how wonderfully unencumbered I will be to not have to run kids around to school functions, how much extra time I will have since the days are so much longer, I imagine the fantastic mini-vacations we can plan.  Again, I am delusional.

I find myself mystified by how May seemed to evaporate before I even registered its existence, and then I find myself standing in front of the calendar in the kitchen with jaw dropped open wondering how it could be the middle of June already?!  And what is even more worrisome is that there isn't an "unscheduled" day on the calendar until sometime the end of July. 

This happens every year, you would think that I would learn by now.  The kids get out of school and rather than being one organized, unified family of children, they spin off like so many pin balls in every different direction.  There are friends to see, camps to go to, parties to attend, 4-H to prepare for, jobs to do....multiplied by five.  I feel like a pinball flipper that just tries to keep them all in play, while simultaneously gardening and working full time.  

My days generally start before the sun is up and, with kids insisting that they stay up later since it is summer, the days end much, much later than they should.  My hands have achieved their "permadirt" status with dirt ground into the calluses and blisters from living in the garden.  There will be no end in site to the amount of produce to be picked, blanched, frozen, processed, canned, pickled.  And while each crop harvested is wonderful, it carries with it a boat load of work involved.  Throw into that a few vacations, a few parties, a few 4-H events and the summer is essentially over before my brain has wrapped around the fact that it is June.

That's not to say that I would change any of it. 

Despite the fact that most days start out with coffee and ibuprofen just to get sore joints and aching muscles up and functioning, despite the fact that I have been seeing roughly 20 out of 24 hours of each day for the last few weeks and seeing precious little of my bed and pillow.....I wouldn't change any of it.  There usually comes a moment in each crazy, hectic day when something small happens - a cold beer gets pulled from the fridge to be enjoyed for a few minutes on the porch, a kid learns to ride a bicycle,  a rainbow shows up after a storm, a fledgling bird suddenly takes wing, one of the cats comes to rub up against you and purrs while you're weeding....little things that implant themselves in my brain and are the fodder for my mid-winter delusionment.

I initially started this post as justification as to why I haven't written since the middle of May, but then again....there just hasn't been time....and I have been having too much fun.

The Dinner Table

There is a time in every day that I look forward to, and not just because I am a highly food motivated individual.  It is a time when everyone that is home gathers and eats dinner.  Breakfast and lunch are largely free-for-alls, but dinner is on a schedule.  It isn't particularly fancy or civil, - I am quite sure that Miss Manners would have a lot to say about my son's occasional lack of a shirt, my husband's ball cap and my daughter's elbows, but it is all of us gathering around to discuss the happenings of the day and issues that happen to come up.

Growing up in a home with a mom that majored in home economics and a 1950s era mindset in the 1970s, we ate all our dinners around the table as many nights as possible with the classic 'pork chops and apple sauce' for dinner.  Those were some of the best memories of growing up.  Not that any of the meals were especially memorable, but the feeling that sitting around breaking bread with people that you love and that love you - it was a comfort that fills the soul. The feeling of being part of a group, part of a family.  Knowing that if you weren't there, you would be missed.  Discussing issues, ideas, problems, and funny stories of the day.  No matter where people had been, how good or awful their day had been... we came together, if only for a short while, and shared our happenings.

My husband and I bought a second hand table almost 16 years ago shortly after we bought our first house.  We liked it because it was a very wide table and we could each lay our section of the newspaper on it and not get in each other's way.  Slowly, kid by kid, we have included more leaves and expanded our table. It is now covered with any number of scratches, crayon marks, and paint splotches because it is the main hub of creativity for the kids, but every night it undergoes a transformation and achieves its highest potential as a gathering place for the family to eat.

A favorite thing is when my kids have friends over and we all sit down to dinner together.  It doesn't really matter how many people cram into my house, we always find enough leaves to extend the table as far as we need to.  Sadly enough however, sitting down to a family dinner is an oddity to many of my kids' friends, but they all take to it very quickly.  There are no cell phones allowed, no books, no toys.  You are expected to say "please" and "thank-you" and to ask for things to be passed to you.  Seconds are always allowed as long as everyone has been able to have firsts.  After the ground rules have been established, these kids take to family dinners and we have a blast.  You never know where the discussions may lead you - sometimes I ask the friends for some good blackmail material about my kid and that generally leads to very interesting stories and much discussion.  Sometimes we angle toward politics or religion.  There was one crazy night where the entire meal was devoted to coming up with silly jokes involving names such as, "What are the names of those two guys by the window?"....."Curt 'n Rod".  As I said, it isn't always sophisticated, but I learn more about my kids from the time spent eating dinner together than any other time time of the day.

I made a point the other night of keeping track of the flow of conversation...it went something like this:
Babies - new one in the family
Elizabethan collars for dogs
Fixing Washing machines
Vegetarianism
Medical field and what a complete mess it is
The definitions for the words 'meme', 'truffle' and 'sudoko'
The difference between a "truffle" treat and a "truffle" mushroom
Google's search engine verses all the others and what makes them so popular
High School computer classes and free college credit
College
Peccadillos
Cards and Gifts
Writing Cards
Interspersed with crazy giggling
The thought that we remember the past as being better than it actually was
South Dakota honey

What the segue was from one topic to the other is, at this point, completely unknown and often times there really wasn't one - someone would simply throw out a question or thought that popped up.  There are many times when my sister and brother-in-law come over for dinner and the conversations will extend well beyond dinner and involve a bottle of wine (or two) and the oldest kids sitting around trying to understand the complex threads of discussion that we sometimes end up having about government, religion, wars, economies, history, education, literature, societies.  We joke that we can solve the world's problems over a meal, but in all honesty, that is how many problems do get solved. 

It makes me wonder how problems will get solved when, for many, there are no longer meals that are eaten together, but in front of the television instead.  I know too many families where this is the norm - dinner hastily prepared and eaten in front of a television screen- often alone, based on the stories of many of the kids that visit our house. I know that most of them are generally good kids and happy, but I can't help feeling sorry for them never having this experience of togetherness with their family.  We have lost much in our society that is good, but I sometimes think that this is the worst.  I know that not every family is lucky enough to have jobs that allow them to be home at mealtime every night, but I also know that we find time for the things that are most important to us....what does that say to our kids when we can't find the time to sit down and share part of their day with them?

The Zen of Moss Roses

"If we could see the miracle of a single flower clearly, our whole life would change."   ~Buddha

I have a flower garden plot right outside the door that I consider to be my Zen garden.  It is fairly small, in relation to the rest of the flower and vegetable gardens at least, and it contains one of my favorite flowers - the Moss Rose.  Every year for the last four or five years I have had Moss Roses here and, despite being listed as annuals, they reseed themselves vigorously with their tiny grain-of-sand sized seeds.  What this means, however, is that I have to be exceptionally aware of what these tiny little flowers look like when they sprout.  So this area outside my door starts out each year as a bare patch of dirt and slowly weeds start to sprout up and then, with all the same faith as the proverbial mustard seed, so do the Moss Roses. 

While the rest of the flower garden is growing to knee high and blossoming with flowers, this plot of dirt takes its time and looks mostly like an abandoned lot of patchwork weeds.  If I were to take on trying to make this section completely weed free and beautiful all in one day, it would be overwhelming in every sense of the word.....this is how it became my Zen garden.

It happens often that I am completely overwhelmed by life.  Too much to do, too big of a mess to clean up, too many problems in the world, ....., not enough time, energy or enthusiasm to take them all on.  I will despondently stand on the top step of my porch contemplating the indirect proportion of stuff to be done to my level of energy and slowly sink down on the steps in apathy....which puts me in very close proximity to my bare, weedy plot of moss roses. 

These tiny seeds have been washed out, grown over, walked upon by several errant children....and yet they are here.  Slowly growing, changing, and blossoming despite their challenges.  And so, while stewing in my wretched mind set, my fingers slowly start to pull at each little weed that surrounds them and I carve out a small square of weed free area that then extends into the next weed free area and, one listless moment after another, I slowly clear an area that allows the moss roses to become the gorgeous flowers they are.

What often happens while weeding these minuscule little seedlings is that I stop thinking of all that is overwhelming and wrong in the world and suddenly my mind starts to focus on nothing at all - no worries, no plans, no things to be done, no problems, only the slow, methodical, careful weeding from between the tiny seedlings.  I start to see my life in relation to this weedy patch of ground and realize that it takes slow, methodical, careful work to eventually come to a place in one's life that is free of weeds and open to the air and sunshine.  It can't happen in a day.   And then slowly it refocuses in on the other things that I actually can do that need doing and, eventually, I pull myself up off my knees and, feeling better, meander to the next garden area most in need of attention. 

Pulled from my despondency by a tiny plant that will evolve into a beautiful flower. My bare, weed patch of a life takes on a little of the energy of these hardy little plants that survive the brutal winter, take root amidst a washout of sand and dry dirt and challenge the weeds around them to gain light and air enough to grow, but it never happens all in one day and the enlightenment that they provide doesn't last indefinitely....it all takes time, and year after year it is the same.  A quiet circle of growing, weeding, flowering, seeding out, dying off, surviving the winter, and growing again....and I am part of that circle for these little seeds, and they are part of mine.  Would I survive without them? Yes.  Would they survive without me? Yes.  But together we are better - I pull up the weeds that surround them and they pull me up when my darkest thoughts surround me - and together we grow.

Dandilion Diversity

I am convinced that if you were actually trying  to grow dandelions, they would be the hardest flowers to grow.  Right now, they are everywhere, and what is worse - the seeds are everywhere.  I just spent part of the morning pulling dandelions with my favorite of all garden tools (my wicked dandelion puller) while simultaneously being horrified at the literal carpet of dandelion seeds that are spread on the ground like a shag rug.  Clearly, it is never ending.  It is probably a good thing that I don't live in town or my neighbors would hate me.  I refuse to use chemical spray on my lawn or garden regardless of how many dandelions emerge.  As much as I dislike them, I highly prefer them to the chemicals that we tend to haphazardly spray around. When comparing dandelion to weed killer my list goes something like this:

Dandelion pros -

• green,
• pretty yellow flowers,
• white puffs of seeds that kids like to make wishes on,
• good to eat,
• can make into wine. 

Weed killer pros -

• fewer weeds, 
•  able to keep up with the Jones. 

Dandelion cons -

• dandelions growing everywhere you don't want them, namely the gardens. 

Weed killer cons -

• chemicals in the environment,
• monoculture lawns that provide no beneficial value to pollinators,
• chemicals in the kids and pets that play on the lawn,
• Chemicals in the worms that live in the lawn...and then in the birds that eat the worms...and then the cats that eat the birds that ate the worm that absorbed the chemical that lives in the house that Jack built....

Looking at that list, it makes the decision not to spray a simple one for me.  Are they unsightly? Depends upon how you look at it.  Watching my seven-year-old run laughing and kicking all the dandelion seed heads into the air until she is surrounded by a veritable mist of floating seeds...I don't think they are unsightly at all.  The dandelions also provide my children a much needed way of earning allowance or time on the computer - 30 seconds computer time or 1 cent for every dandelion pulled out of my gardens and it only counts if the entire root is there.  This has been known to keep several kids busy for quite some time and it cleans up the garden nicely. 

It fascinates me to see the amount of money and time that people spend on having the perfect carpet of lawn.  Seriously? This is what we focus on?  Waste of time, energy and water in my opinion.  I love the current move to change over lawns into vegetable gardens - more interesting to look at and clearly better for the environment and our health.  We need to get over our obsession with having a perfect golf course lawn surrounding our houses. 

I am reminded of an anecdote that I read sometime last fall:

"Imagine the conversation The Creator might have had with St. Francis on the subject of lawns:

God: Hey St. Francis, you know all about gardens and nature. What in the world is going on down there in the Midwest? What happened to the dandelions, violets, thistle and stuff I started eons ago? I had a perfect "no maintenance" garden plan. Those plants grow in any type of soil, withstand drought and multiply with abandon. The nectar from the long lasting blossoms attracts butterflies, honey bees and flocks of songbirds. I expected to see a vast garden of colors by now. But all I see are these green rectangles.

St. Francis: It's the tribes that settled there, Lord. The Suburbanites. They started calling your flowers "weeds" and went to great lengths to kill them and replace them with grass.

God: Grass? But it's so boring. It's not colorful. It doesn't attract butterflies, birds and bees, only grubs and sod worms. It's temperamental with temperatures. Do these Suburbanites really want all that grass growing there?

St. Francis: Apparently so, Lord. They go to great pains to grow it and keep it green. The begin each spring by fertilizing grass and poisoning any other plant that crops up in the lawn.

God: The spring rains and warm weather probably make grass grow really fast. That must make the Suburbanites happy.

St. Francis: Apparently not, Lord. As soon as it grows a little, they cut it... sometimes twice a week.

God: They cut it? Do they then bail it like hay?

St. Francis: Not exactly, Lord. Most of them rake it up and put it in bags.

God: They bag it? Why? Is it a cash crop? Do they sell it?

St. Francis: No Sir. Just the opposite. They pay to throw it away.

God: Now let me get this straight. They fertilize grass so when it does grow, they cut it off and pay to throw it away?

St. Francis: Yes, Sir.
 
God: These Suburbanites must be relieved in the summer when we cut back on the rain and turn up the heat. That surely slows the growth and saves them a lot of work.

St. Francis: You are not going to believe this Lord. When the grass stops growing so fast, they drag out hoses and pay more money to water it so they can continue to mow it and pay to get rid of it.

God: What nonsense. At least they kept some of the trees. That was a sheer stroke of genius, if I do say so myself. The trees grow leaves in the spring to provide beauty and shade in the summer. In the autumn they fall to the ground and form a natural blanket to keep moisture in the soil and protect the trees and bushes. Plus, as they rot, the leaves form compost to enhance the soil. It's a natural circle of life.

St. Francis: You better sit down, Lord. The Suburbanites have drawn a new circle. As soon as the leaves fall, they rake them into great piles and pay to have them hauled away.

God: No. What do they do to protect the shrub and tree roots in the winter and to keep the soil moist and loose?

St. Francis: After throwing away the leaves, they go out and buy something which they call mulch. The haul it home and spread it around in place of the leaves.

God: And where do they get this mulch?

St. Francis: They cut down trees and grind them up to make the mulch.
 
God: Enough. I don't want to think about this anymore. Sister Catherine, you're in charge of the arts. What movie have you scheduled for us tonight?

Sister Catherine: "Dumb and Dumber", Lord. It's a real stupid movie about.....

God: Never mind, I think I just heard the whole story from St. Francis."

I think of this a lot when I go into garden centers and DIY stores and smell the chemicals that line the aisles and see the bags of mulch.  What a screwed up world we live in these days when maintaining our perfectly green lawns is more important than the millions of people worldwide could use that $38.95 we just spent on weed killer to actually grow a useful crop that could feed them and their whole family. Where are the priorities?  I try my best to find a silver lining in some things, but when it comes to this....it is simply depressing.

I think I will make a few wishes that humanity will someday actually pay attention to this world and what we do to it, and go blow some dandelion seeds around.

The Broody Hen

Every once in a while, for reasons that are not entirely clear to anyone save maybe the chicken herself, one of the hens decides to become broody.  What this generally means is that, what was yesterday a normal strolling, pecking, scratching, egg laying chicken now becomes the equivalent of a chicken zombie.  They pull out the feathers on their belly to provide warmth to eggs (whether there are any or not) and then they sit.  You can attempt to pick them up and shoo them out the door and sometimes they will seem to snap out of it for a few minutes and act like a normal chicken again, but the minute you look away....they are back on the nest and sitting with that glassy-eyed stare of internal concentration.

Some pure bred chickens have had the "broodiness" bred out of them - programed only to lay eggs and then walk away from them without a second thought.  Essentially, genetically programed infanticide.  But there are other breeds, and often mixed breed chickens, that revert back to the "wild type" and will sit on a clutch of eggs. Some even have enough wits about them to actually hatch them out.  I can  honestly say that chickens are not always the brightest of animals.  The current broody hen that I have been monitoring will get off the nest typically once or twice a day and then seems to forget which nest is hers despite the fact that her nest is the only one with eggs in it.  The state of broodiness seems to be contagious as well.  When one chicken starts it, others are likely sure to follow, which is the case at the moment.  Good thing too, because as one crazy zombie bird gets off her nest the other one will often be at the point of trying to remember where her nest is and will trade nests....again, not the brightest light bulbs in the room, but they (eventually) get the job done.

When the eggs do hatch however, there is an amazing transformation that takes place in a hen. They go from being an easily frightened, squawking, fleeing chicken into a bold, ruthless, and intimidating mother hen.  I have seen hens stand up to (and make cower) pigs, cats, dogs, and even my children. They puff out every feather until they are twice their usual size and will tackle whatever evil obstacle threatens their young.   I credit the last mother hen with teaching our current pig to have a little respect for the lowly chickens in the barn - while watching the hen and chicks one day strolling around the pig pen, I was convinced that they were all about to be snacks for the pigs- pigs being the indescriminate eaters they are, but mama hen took after the pigs with feet, beak and feathers flying and sent all three pigs racing away from her small flock of babies. I have not seen them bothered since and our pig will happily allow the chickens to eat out of her bowl with her. 

This transformation in motherhood is really not all that unusual - most mother animals would likely walk through fire and fend off whatever evil beast is threatening their young...I know I would.  But what amazes me is a chicken who, the week before, couldn't remember which nest was hers, suddenly has it together enough to defend and protect these small balls of fluff that are all running in different directions.  She keeps track of them, teaches them the best scratching areas and techniques, calls them away from danger, and keeps a wary eye out for any possible marauders.  If the weather turns cold, or at night when it is time to roost, she takes them under her wing to keep them safe and warm.  I have seen human children with mothers that are nowhere near this attentive and a human's instinctual ability for child rearing has been severely diluted over the centuries as compared to that of a chicken.  I am not sure if that is a insult to humans or a compliment to chickens, but needless to say, I keep a wary eye out for the mother hens.

Weathering the Weather

It seems to me that the climate truly is changing. There is a distinct difference to be made between the weather and the climate.  Weather will change day to day - one day unseasonably hot, another day 40 inches of snow may fall, but climate is the overall averages that change slowly over time in different areas of the country and world....maybe overall it is hotter one place and colder somewhere else.  Personally, I am starting to feel like the Midwest is where the toilet bowl vortex meets the drain.

Maybe this change is some fictitious thing that my mind has dreamt up, but it seems to me that the wind used to blow more from the west, storms blew in from the west.  Now, the wind can often be found blowing from the south and sometimes the east as well.  The other day, I went out for a run around the block and was met with a northeasterly wind that threw me all off pace. The radar has as most storms swirling around from the southeast like a giant whirlpool just waiting to haul us under.   The spring used to be a time of "April showers bringing May flowers" but now it seems more like "April tornadoes bring May FEMA and Red Cross trucks".  I, like Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel, gather all the news I need on the weather report....and that news isn't looking so good.

I catch myself sometimes being so angry about our complete apathy of the environment and what we are doing to it, and then at other times I find myself almost hysterically laughing because we are so far past the tipping point already that it really doesn't matter what we do ....we are screwed.  I am often reminded of Ruby in the movie Cold Mountain when she explains the current events, "They call this [weather] a cloud over the land. But they made the weather and then they stand in the rain and say 'Shit, it's raining!'"  We are all aghast that the massive destruction with the tornadoes that takes place and then placidly climb back into SUVs and fill up with gas.  The disconnect in people's mind is completely staggering.

This last weekend has been an especially wild one with regards to the weather.  I didn't sleep much last night because the radio was left on in the hopes that maybe I would hear the Severe Weather Alerts that come up just before a tornado blows you off the face of the earth.  This, of course, only works as long as there is electricity and, given that the electricity went out three times last night before the storm even hit, I also left my window open by my bed so that I might then hear when debris started flying around or the rain would splash in and wake me up.  Night time storms have really started freaking me out.

Personally, I rely most on my dog barometer.  Gina is a very good predictor of what is coming.  I know that when I let her out at night to roam the farm and check for vermin, that if she makes a bee-line for the porch and crawls under it to hide in her ever deepening den, that I had better get inside and pay attention to what is on the horizon because it isn't likely to be anything good.  But, if she strolls off into the pasture and checks out the perimeter of the farm, then the weather will likely be fine for that night.  Now... if I could just teach her to be a barometer for human intelligence with respect to the environment and climate...that might be useful.  My guess, however, would be that she would simply crawl under the porch and dig her hole even deeper.

When It Points To The East......

http://cs.astronomy.com/asycs/media/p/449739.aspx

"The night walked down the sky with the moon in her hand"

~Frederic Lawrence Knowles

I never paid much attention to the moon.  All the while I grew up, I would play outside at night and stargaze late into the night, but the moon never entered into my sphere of awareness other than as a way to light my way on dark nights or as an obstruction to my sight of the Milky Way with its quiet ethereal glow.  And then, when I moved into town for college and work, it all but disappeared from my life entirely. 

You hear, now an again, about odd moon moments, the "blue moons" that happen every so often when there are more than one full moon in a month, a lunar eclipse, and periodically an exceptionally large full moon will slowly rise on the horizon with an orange glow that takes the breath away, but the day to day moon changes are completely missing from most people's awareness.

 The moon has always been used to track time.  The Native Americans have a name for every month's full moon to keep track of the time of year and signal when to harvest, when to hunt, when to fish.  We have just passed the Full Pink Moon - which is in reference to all the pink blossoms that fill the fruit trees this time of year. The almanac has all but made a science of using the moon to predict when to plant seeds to obtain the best harvest. The "moon" dates that are best to plant crops for root production or fruit production, the best time to breed animals and set eggs based on the stage of the moon.  Does it work?  I can't say that I know for sure, but I know now of the moon's pull in my own life.

Since moving to this farm, the moon as been an ever present time piece.  She moves about the sky with such precision that I have fallen under her spell.  I have come to find that I can relate better to the moon's constant change- sometimes bright and illuminating, sometimes dark and brooding - than I can to the sun's constant effervescent illumination.  Her moods wax and wane much like my own.  Every twenty-eighth day I know that I will spend the night in a state of wakefulness because of the brightness of the full moon, and in the winter when the snow is on the fields, I know that I will be able to look out and track the deer and coyote that move about under her gaze.  I have come to expect the moonrise just as some anticipate the sunrise.  I know enough now to take a small break after the sun sets during the days surrounding a full moon because, after the moon rises in the east, it will be possible to go back to work in the garden for a while under the pale glow of her illumination.  I have come to realize that it is possible to start the days very early under a waning and waxing moon because the glow from the moon augments the early light of the sunrise.  And if it is the stars that you seek, it is best to wait for the new moon to examine star charts and tell the stories of the constellations. 

For many, the moon is merely something to be studied in science and astronomy classes.  The satellite to our humble planet, a remnant from the formation of the earth, the ugly step-sister to our beautiful blue orb.  However, in true sibling nature, she keeps track of us, she marks our days and months and years.  In quiet counter point to the brash sun that religiously keeps track of the days, she marks the nights.  Even under a thick blanket of clouds, I can often tell just where the moon should be and at what stage.  Like the ocean, I feel the ebb and flow of the tides within my own blood.

This is the question that I ask my children, "Is it getting larger or smaller?"  "Closer to full or closer to dark?"  If your head can spin in astronomical circles fast enough, you can likely figure it out, but my dad taught me a saying that has never steered me wrong, although it took a little practice to figure out.  "When it points to the east - may your light increase.  When it points to the west - wane be at rest."  The "points" being the points of the  crescent moon - if they point to the east, it is getting larger (hence, increasing light) and if the points of the crescent are to the west, then it is waning.  I can tell you, without even looking at it tonight, that it is waning and will be a new moon in the next ten days or so and then we will be slowly waxing toward May's full flower moon.

"Every one is a moon, and has a dark side

which he never shows to anybody."

 ~ Mark Twain

Come Walk With Me.....I Would Love My Flowers To Meet You.

After a long and crazy day of work - either as a veterinarian, or a mother/wife/farmer - there is one time of day that I look forward to - the evening constitutional, my stroll through the gardens,... my walkabout. There are many evenings when I get home and drop all my stuff on the steps to the porch and quietly stroll around the flowers for five or ten minutes. It lets me forget the day's disappointments and frustrations and brings me back to earth....literally. I have built my flower gardens all the way around my house to allow for a leisurely walk before I enter the house and am greeted by my mob. I could spend hours trying to describe the loveliness, peace and tranquility, but my words would fail miserably. Better simply to allow the pictures to speak their thousands of words for me.