Embracing the Cold

Daylight savings time hits me at a really bad time.  It usually happens a few days before my birthday each year and the sudden change to early darkness combined with the realization that it is, in fact, getting colder and I am getting older sends my mood into a tailspin.

But this year, I decided to adopt my native Minnesotan attitude.

In northern Minnesota there really are only two seasons - summer and winter.  Summer is perfect for canoeing, fishing, hiking, exploring, and swatting mosquitoes but winter....winter is when the fun really happens.  Skiing, snowshoeing, ice fishing, snowmobiling, hockey, ice skating, curling, you name it and they have invented something fun to do in the snow and cold.

Given the recent plunge into this polar weather, my suspicion is that we are in for a long, cold winter and so, with that in mind, rather than dread it, I am embracing it - the cold and all its loveliness, its fun, its challenges, and especially the escape from it into a warm and toasty house with family and friends to cheer the way until Spring.  Each of the following pictures is a reminder of some of the beauty of winter.

Crisp, cold mornings when the smell of wood smoke foretells of a warm house with a cozy fire. 

 Quiet snowfalls when the earth is muffled and the snowflake crystals glimmer in the lights.

Watching in awe as tiny birds fly about in the deepest of snows and frigid temperatures surviving in a way that I cannot begin to fathom. 

The wake of a big snow storm when the digging out brings people and 

neighbors together for help and assistance. 

The thrill of the hill 

with hot chocolate and the recounting of wipeouts that follow.

Hoarfrost mornings

   Animals and their simple

 tolerance for what is

Roadways that are simply made for skiing or snowmobiling, 

but not really driving

The beauty and brutality that is Winter

Magic Beans

It has been a while since I have tackled a keyboard and attempted to jot down much of anything. I could say that I have been busy, or lazy, or apathetic...all would be true and also none of them are true.  Sometimes I just  discontinue projects for a time and then come back when the mood strikes, or winter does....whatever it takes to find myself with a little more time and a few thoughts to ponder.

In this case it is beans.

"Beans, beans, they're good for your heart. 

The more you eat, the more you fart. 

The more you fart, the better you feel. 

We should all eat beans at every meal."

This little rhyme, sadly enough, is what is typically trapped in my head from about June until sometime in September because one of the main focuses of the summer season is.....beans.

I can't say that beans are exactly my favorite crop (that honor goes to garlic), but they certainly are a useful one.

They are good early in the season as green beans  At this stage we pick them and eat them almost as fast as we are able and the ones we don't eat, we freeze for winter's lean months.  But, if you get busy and don't get them picked, they dry well and then you can eat them that way too.
They are a forgiving crop and ridiculously easy to grow, and in my life, that counts for a lot.

Beans come in more varieties than I would ever care to name, but there are somewhere in the neighborhood of 40,000 different varieties of beans.  Of course you wouldn't know that living in Iowa....here there seems to only be one....soybean.

Personally, I grow three different varieties - two of them I plant on purpose (one pole and one bush) and the third one is a freelance pole bean that self seeds and sprouts every year and then I just transplant it to where I want it to grow.  My main producer, however is the bush bean known as Black Valentine.  It is a dual purpose bean that makes nice green beans as well as a wonderful dried black bean.  What is the difference between a bush bean and a pole bean? One grows as a bush and one will trail and spiral its way up a tall pole.  In tight spaces the pole beans are nice, but when you have more space and don't want to have to deal with a pole or trellis, bush beans are optimal.

When asking people today where they get their cooking beans, I am almost universally met with a blank stare followed by some line amounting to, "well, we just use canned beans from the store," and then they look at me as though I am just not quite right in the head, I mean, where else would a person get beans, right?  Once again, people have forgotten how ubiquitous beans used to be.

Beans are one of the crops that have been cultivated the longest.  Native Americans would grow them together with corn and squash in a "three sisters" planting - using each of those three plant's best qualities to help the other two grow well. The colonies, and particularly Boston, perfected the baked bean.  From the colonies they were hauled overland in covered wagons and were a large percentage of the diet of the early pioneers - they were high in protein and fiber, transported well, grew well and could be saved for incredibly long periods of time. No cowboy dinner would be complete without a plate full of beans, and what kind of Mexican restaurant would it be without refried beans on the side?

 But chances are, if I put five beans in the palm of a person's hand today, they wouldn't know where to start with growing or cooking them.

So let's start at the beginning.  Someone gives you five magic beans....what do you do?

These beans - they are a fairly large seed in and of themselves.  Easy for even small children to plant.
1/2 - 1 inch down in the ground and roughly 6 -8 inches apart.

Keep them weeded.  Invite your friends to help.

Pick them green when the pods are long and full, but before the seeds inside start to mature.  They should "snap" easily in half - crisp and tender.  At this stage they can be steamed for 7 - 12 minutes until they are bright green and just slightly tender.  Seasoned with salt and butter, they are likely the first vegetables to be devoured at dinner.

Miss a week or two of picking the green beans, but keep the weeds down and then let the pods start to turn light tan and dry.  If you thought you had a lot of green beans, just wait until the dried beans start to show up.  I usually give myself some sort of limit as to how long I will pick each day.  I typically pick one pillowcase sized sack full any time I have a free hour or so.  This is when that little rhyme sets up shop in my brain and refuses to leave until I find myself simply singing it while kneeling in my bean patch.... this can become a monotonous job, but then again, watching a sun set or watching a summer storm quietly build while picking is more meditative than monotonous. And communing with the bees and the beetles as well as the occasional visit from my ducks waddling through would often make this one of the more contemplative jobs that had to be done.

After each picking, I dump the bag's worth of beans out on my porch to dry. And by dry, I mean the pods have to be so dry that they crack open with relatively little pressure and reveal a dried, black (or brown, or spotted depending on the type) inside. Sometimes this drying takes a day or two and sometimes weeks.  It is also largely dependent on whether or not I have time to deal with them - beans drying in the sun are amazingly patient.

When the time is right, pack them back into the bag you picked them with....I know this sounds redundant, but bear with me.

Jump up and down on the bag and then dump them into a large bowl or pail. (My littlest kids think this is great fun) Set up a large house fan on high and, while standing in front of the fan, slowly dump the beans from one pail into another with the air blowing away the chaff.  This takes time, but slowly, by crushing the remaining pods and winnowing out the chaff, a hill of beans will emerge.  I can usually spend an evening winnowing beans on my porch and end up with 3 - 5 pounds of relatively clean beans by the time the sun sets.

At this point I usually take the bowl of beans into the house and find a movie that I know by heart and sit down to sort through them by hand to pick out the "bad" ones.  This is a completely mindless task, but one that, for one reason or another, is also very soothing - probably because the "finished" beans are so pretty and fun to sink your hands into.

I know....I know....this is a lot of work for a measly hill of beans, but now...those 5 magic beans have become hundreds (if not thousands) of beautiful, protein rich beans that can be saved and eaten through the winter in soups, stews, or even as a most amazing black bean dip.  On average, for a family of 7 people, we will have several gallon jugs filled as well as a 3-4 quart jars.  These, then, become the staple in chili, ham and bean soup, black bean dip and baked beans.

To cook:  Take 1 cup of dried beans and cover with water - place in the fridge overnight to soften. Then, to cook, put in a pot with water and boil until they are soft being sure not to let the water completely boil off.  Drain the beans (or don't - depending on the recipe) and use in whatever bean recipe strikes your fancy.  This really is ridiculously easy but it does require time and a little planning ahead.

Black Bean Dip

   1 cup black beans boiled and soft 

(reserve some of the fluid they were boiled in)

1 -2 cloves of garlic

fresh cilantro

salt to taste

Mix the cooked black beans and roughly 1/2 cup of the water they were boiled in, the garlic cloves, cilantro and salt into a blender or food processor and mix until smooth (adding more water if necessary to make a bean dip consistency)  Salt to taste and eat with tortilla chips.

I make a batch of this and it is gone before it has time to cool off with hungry kids around.

These beans, these magic beans, are magic in so many ways.  Not only do they provide and incredible food source, but while they are growing, their roots bind nitrogen in the soil and help it to become more fertile.  They are a restorative crop and one that I plant in areas where the soil was plundered by other crops the last year - crops such as corn which are horribly greedy plants that strip the ground of its nutrients to produce a huge plant that supplies only 2 small ears of edible goodness.  Beans, relative to their size produce more edible produce than many of the other plants in the garden.

 Yes, they take time to plant, and cultivate, and harvest and dry and process and cook.  But there is some magic in that time as well  - sunsets watched, rain clouds rejoiced, bees observed, kids laughing and playing rhyming games while weeding, a teenager helping to make bean dip- a connection to the earth, each other, the plants and the food that you grow and harvest with your own hands.  There is a strange sort of connectedness in that process.

Not only do they feed the ground and the body ....they feed the soul.  Magic indeed.

Free Food

Every spring I am rewarded for my laziness. While many gardeners and farmers clean up their gardens before the first frost, I become my usual slothful self and decide that I would rather spend what little energy I have left freezing and canning my garden's bounty and skip clean up all together.

It pays off in the spring.

But you have to be patient and pay attention.

All too often in the early spring, I would be in such a hurry to get the garden clean and tilled and ready to plant that I would miss all the food just waiting for me.  I would plow it under before it even showed itself.

Every fall, that lettuce that you didn't take the time to uproot....it goes to seed.
Those cucumbers that you neglected after you had enough pickles made and stored....they went to seed.
That spinach that bolted and became too bitter to eat....it went to seed
That somewhat rotten onion that you didn't want - it sprouted again and is now beautiful
The garlic that you didn't pull....it's back and bigger than last year.
The parsnip you forgot to dig up - they are sweeter than ever now and ready to eat.
And so is that carrot!

And not only that, but Mother Nature is the best almanac for when to plant things you will ever find.  In general, when seeds are naturally sprouting outside in the cold spring, it means those seeds can handle it, so if you want to start neat and tidy rows of food, you probably can - even though the almanac and the seed packets may say otherwise.

There are all kinds of wives tales about "what is the best time to plant _____?"  For corn it is when oak leaves are the size of a squirrel's ear.  I don't know how many people have actually even seen a squirrel's ear?  I tend to just wait for the random forgotten ear of corn to suddenly sprout into action.  Even after a long, sub-zero winter, it will happen.

This is, of course, provided you use seeds that haven't been genetically modified to only sprout once.  Heirloom quality seeds or organic seeds cost more, but they will more than pay you back in their ability to produce fantastic quality foods with minimal work (or in this case, no work), year after year .







So, while other enterprising gardeners are busy cleaning, tilling and planting, I am busy harvesting the fresh spinach and lettuce from the garden - the first crop of greens so long awaited in the many months of cold.

 What we don't immediately harvest and eat, I transplant into more recognizable and organized rows.  The transplanting slows it down a bit and extends the season for a few more weeks.

So many times while gardening I have marveled at man's belief that we know what we are doing and are "in charge" of growing food.  While it is true that we are the caretakers of the produce, Mother Nature already has the system down and knows the perfect timing and temperature for it all.

Sometimes It's Cold

It's cold.

It's freakishly cold, and what is worse are the people who keep saying "It's cold!" as though this is something that they can't fathom happening in February in Iowa.

"No kidding?" I say as I go out for a run, or clean a barn in the sub zero weather. "Well, we had better get used to it.  And while we are getting used to the cold, we better be good with draughts, tornadoes, floods, earthquakes, and tsunamis as well."

I think my patience for people is running very thin right now.  I have moments when I can see how people completely snap and feel the need to cause a scene, if only to have their message finally get out there.  Individually, most people seem to get it, but collectively we are a bunch of dunces when it comes to figuring out how to make a change.

An example that pops into my head this morning came from a client of mine.  He and his wife run a small business in our local town and are two very wonderful people, kind, and well versed in supporting the community. Myself, being the veterinarian for their pets, gave them a recommendation for a medication that can drastically help their pet and the offer to have that medication filled immediately at my office, they opt instead to go shopping on-line.  Now don't get me wrong, I understand the desire to save a few bucks as much as the next guy, but here's the thing….when faced with small business owners struggling to make ends meet (which, you will remember, these clients are as well) or big box stores that undercut us in costs and monopolize all the product so that we end up having it back ordered for months at a time….which one is likely going to help the local economy more?  Seems pretty simple right? You go with the small business owner.  But time and time again, people know what needs to be done on a larger scale, but when it boils down to the individual they think, 'I'm sure there are others buying locally so if I save a few dollars, it won't be a problem'.

It's a problem.
It's a big problem and it is only getting bigger.

Every dollar spent is a vote for how we want the world to be….every dollar.

The increase in farmer's markets, healthy food, and small cooperative grocery stores has been a bright spot, but the blow back from the large food companies has been huge - the advertising and marketing campaigns alone have been enough to boggle the minds of the average consumer to the point of throwing up their hands and saying, "Oh, what the heck! I don't know what to eat anymore so I will just go get a McRib and a shamrock shake!" …..game, set, and match for big agriculture right there and quietly another organic farmer goes bankrupt.  People vote with their forks three times every day, and every meal counts….every meal.

Is it that people understand it, but just don't think it applies to them?  Or are they so easily confused and mesmerized by fancy advertising? Or maybe they are just too tired from working their three part time jobs to make ends meet that they just don't have the time to do the necessary research to understand the issues.

I spent the evening last night watching Brooklyn Castle with my kids.  A documentary about kids in a 'below the poverty line' school learning chess and winning national championships.  Sounds crazy, but it was impressive and such a fantastic way to keep these kids engaged and learning in all of their subjects.  But like so many schools these days, their funding is being cut. Why? Where does this funding go? ….to pay off wars?, to cover for the many bad decisions of bankers?  Cutting educational funding is the most ridiculous thing a country could possibly do. It is like having the makings of a star athlete and then cutting off his legs.  Children are the investment in all of our futures, and we can't stand idly by with our hands in our pockets and say, "but I don't want to pay taxes anymore! We need a tax break!" What we need is an equitable tax that helps support education to its fullest degree. And please don't hit me up with the "charter and private school" theory or we are right back to the top paragraph with the "big box stores/ controlled by corporations" discussion because eventually, that is where a lot of those schools end up - funding coming from large corporations or sponsors that can foot the bill and control what the kids ultimately end up learning.  Public school - as in sponsored by all of us, for the education of all our children is still the best and most broad base start we can give them.  Every kid will one day have a say in how this country runs…..every kid.

Okay, so my little rant is over, call it cabin fever, call it my pressure valve so I don't go out and completely loose it with the population at large.

When it comes to this weather, we get what we asked for, in my opinion.  I know I can send off any number of letters to Congress and the President, I can shut off any unnecessary lights in my house, I can contact the utility company and opt to pay more for the renewable energy, but until
every single person stands up and says, "No more coal and oil! No more fossil fuels! Renewable energy only!" - until that point, there will be enough muddying of the water by the coal/oil/gas industries to keep people confused and questioning, there will continue to be lobbyist money that gets passed across (or under) the table to our "elected leaders" and there will continue to be environmental changes that we are not equipped to handle.  Who knows, before long maybe Hell really will freeze over.

Until then….bundle up and stop complaining.

Four Dollar Wedding

It was the fall of the year 1932 and group of young people were ambling down a road and spending the evening together talking of local events and people they knew.  One topic of discussion that came up was the elopement of a young girl that had been engaged to another man, and another was one of the ladies bemoaning the fact that her husband had forgotten their wedding anniversary.  Amid this group of young people were two people that would come to have great significance in my life.  One was a young woman of 20 years named Vera, and the other was a young man of 21 years named David.

David overheard Vera talking with one of her friends and, as the topic revolved around marriage and anniversaries, she made the comment that she never wanted to be engaged.  She made the statement that if a reasonable looking fellow showed up with a license and the next day was New Year's day, she might just consider getting married, because then if he forgot the day, at least she would have reason to celebrate anyway.

Being small town, South Dakota in the depression, much of the entertainment for the young crowd included spending time together in the evenings, talking, dancing, and catching a movie when one could afford to.  David and Vera had spent several such evenings together, but no formal discussion of marriage had ever come up.

Vera was working as a teacher's aid in the local school and bringing in $6.25 per week at the worst of the depression. That small salary is what kept her parents, sisters and brother from going hungry.    David worked on the family farm doing what he could to help provide a living for his family, but the times were so bad that typically only one person in a family or couple were allowed to have a job in order to ensure more jobs to go around within the community.

As the fall wore on and slowly turned into winter, David was busy repairing the family car - a Nash coupe and decided to take it for a drive on Saturday, December 31st.What thoughts must have occupied David's mind during that snowy drive on solitary country roads, one can only surmise - 'height of depression, maybe it would be better to wait until times improved, but then again, when you are at rock bottom there isn't anywhere to go but up, I love her but will that be enough to sustain us, or will I even be able to make a living for them?' It was forty miles later, in Faulk county, in the county seat of Faulkton, when he bought a marriage license for $2 and then purchased a ring at the drug store.  Another forty mile drive home again with as many thoughts and fears to occupy his mind, and he tucked the license and ring into a safe hiding place - in the handhold of one of the monocoupe airplanes in the hanger.

Vera and David with their first born son (my uncle)

That evening, he took Vera for a ride and they stopped out at the hanger.  He showed her the license and pointed out that the next day was New Year's Day.  If she was so inclined, he thought they might get married the next afternoon.  Maybe she sensed the proposal was coming, or maybe it was a surprise, but either way what thoughts and fears Vera faced, is hard to imagine - 'key provider for the family, what will they do without me?, Do I really love this man enough? When you are at rock bottom is there anywhere else to go but up?'  Whatever her thoughts and fears were, she must of thought he was a reasonable looking fellow, because she said 'yes'. 

Sunday, January 1st 1933, after lunch, David asked his dad if he had any money he could borrow. His dad gave him two dollars….all that he had with him.  With the little money that David had saved and the $2 from his dad, he picked up

Vera in his 1926 green Chevy coupe and they lit out for Faulkton.  They had to keep the marriage a secret because they knew that if the school district found out that Vera was married, she would loose her job.  They were married by the minister with his two children standing in for witnesses.  David had planned to pay the minister $5, but realized that the amount of money he had was pretty slim.  He paid him $4 instead and then they went for hot beef sandwiches and a movie in Highmore before heading home for the night.  When all was said and done, they had $1 left to start a marriage on.

They kept their marriage a secret until May and on the last day of school, Vera skipped out and left a note saying she would accept the last day of school off as a wedding present.  David and Vera left that night for the Black Hills,  their honeymoon and many happy years of marriage.  Those two young people were my paternal grandparents whose sense of optimism and adventure in the face of a depression have left inspiration in their wake for all of their descendants to come.  They were together for 72 years….that may have been the best $4 investment grandpa ever made.

The Darkest Day

I started a new tradition with my kids a few years ago. In the summer, when the weather is reasonably good, I take the oldest ones up to northern Minnesota for a little camping.  We find the remotest location possible within a State Park and set up housekeeping in a tent for three or four days.  We sleep on the hard ground, we eat food that has been warmed up over a fire and we explore the area in the hopes of seeing large and potentially dangerous animals (at a distance).  I mention this here only as a prelude to my train of thought. This camping, although rustic, is far from primal - we have an easily built fire, we have mostly prepared foods, we have a car in which to drive away if the weather turns foul, but it allows my kids to see how easy life really is for us most of the time.  This last year, I brought along a flint striker and let them set about starting their own fire.  After nearly an hour of attempts there had been only a small fizzle of flame and the need for sustenance outweighed the basic skill set of building a fire without an easy spark, and the matches were brought forth.

Camping in the woods with my kids makes me think about what sort of conditions humans survived for thousands of years. A daily job of finding shelter, food, and warmth….that's it, day after day.  No house to mortgage, clean, and repair.  No cars to buy, fix, and drive.  No jobs to employ, tax, and stress us.  Just life, simple and basic....and extremely difficult.  I like to think that, if push came to shove, I could survive better than most out in the elements.   I think about what I would need first - shelter? food? and what would be the best way of obtaining these things.  I realize that this is likely a silly thought experiment given today's world, but it and the time of year that we are in lead me to the following question:


Who originally figured out the solstice timing?

There are countless festivities around this time every year - almost every culture has some celebration or feast, but who was the first?  Early neolithic cultures in England come to mind with their stone circles that have been assumed to be related to the solstices, but the builders of Stonehenge weren't necessarily first, they just built a great huge rock configuration after they had it worked out.  What fascinates me is wondering who was the first person to take a moment in their daily drudgery and say, "is it me, or are the days getting shorter?"  At what point did homo sapians advance enough to notice that the days quietly got shorter until approximately now and then slowly begin to get longer again?

Every year, as each new season happens, I have to stop and think, "did it happen like this last year?" I marvel anew at the first green sprouts, the warm breeze, the turning of the leaves, the first snow….it is as though I have no memory of the season specifics that I have lived through for the last forty years. And the sudden realization that the nights are getting ever longer catches me completely off guard when I walk outside after work and realize I am standing in twilight.  This realization that the days are getting shorter always fills me with a certain amount of gloominess.  How much more might the first people have felt this gloom slowly engulfing them?  It must have felt like the end of days at times and for many it probably was - starvation was a fairly common form of population control and the cold weather did not make survival any easier.

What I find interesting is that among most of the cultures of the world, this celebration appears to have developed independently of one another.  There was no newspaper, no television broadcast to announce a discovery of the day upon which the earth took off again for another 585 million miles around the sun, no universally agreed upon moment of relief in which the world would heave a collective sign and think, "oh, good! We are on course for another year!"   And so, each region and culture developed their own set of beliefs and story for why things are the way they are - each slightly different, but with a common thread…..light.

Regardless of the origins, the celebrations ring similar in more ways than they are different - The coming of the light, whether it be in the form of a person or the return of the sun's warmth to the earth.  They all celebrate a subtle shifting of the earth and all its inhabitants that promises renewed hope for the future.  So, this year, whether you light a candle on a menorah, decorate a Christmas tree, burn a yule log, celebrate Kwanzaa, or light a candle and say a quiet "thank-you" to the earth and sun, remember we are all in this Earth together for another spectacular 585 million mile ride around a distant sun. The darkest day is here, now let the light come in.

Peace.

Tan Your Hide

Many of us grew up with it, the threat of "I ought to tan your hide" when we did something unspeakable.  I am beginning to think that this threat was never actually uttered by anyone who really had tanned a hide because, frankly, given even the worst infraction by a kid possible, "tanning" is simply a lot of work and likely more of a punishment for the person doing the tanning.

We have established a strange pattern  on our small livestock farm.  When some beloved, fur bearing, food animal either dies unexpectedly or is sent to market, we have taken to tanning their hide.  Now, granted, we are at a sum total of two at the moment, but once bitten by the tanning bug, it becomes something that you consider every time you run your hands over a soft furry, or woolly back.

The first time this thought even crossed our mind was the day that our beloved sheep, Lambie, died suddenly of heart failure.  It is a terrible conundrum, really to happen upon an animal that you loved as both a pet and a potential farm contributor who has quite suddenly died from an apparent heart attack.  What's to be done?  Bury her and loose all the good meat and wool, or butcher this poor hapless family member that also just happens to be a sheep?  While we deliberated this ethical and moral situation, it was deemed best that we at least start the butchering process because there really is only a small window of opportunity for that process to take place.  Grieving would have to take place while wielding the sharp knives and bone saw.  The skin, of course, is one of the first things to be removed and Lambie had such a fine coat of wool that I was sad to see it, too, go to waste.  Around here, one thing leads to another and, thanks to a few quick references, the initial scraping of the hide was underway.

Salting the hide

There is a strange sort of alchemy that happens when butchering an animal.  Chickens can quickly be turned from feathered friends into rubber chicken-like models, and then into an incredible bowl of chicken noodle soup with a mere flick of a knife, and some really hot water.  Sheep convert from a large, belligerent, somewhat spastic animal into a fleece and a significant amount of red meat very quickly.  I am not suggesting that there is not true affection for these animals, or that we are blood thirsty individuals - quite the opposite really.  Killing an animal, for whatever reason, but especially if we are going to be eating them, is a very thought provoking process in which there is a lot of introspection and palpable gratitude expressed to the animal.  The day Lambie died, Keith and I really did not talk much to one another, both lost in our own thoughts, grappling with our emotions surrounding this farm life altering event, but understanding the time sensitive nature of the material required us to put it all on hold for the time being.  In Lambie's case, we were spared the necessity of trying to decide when, or how we would ever send her to market.  She did it for us, bless her little weak heart.  And just to be clear, before I get a lot of worried responses to the effect of "that meat may not be safe to eat!"….yes, yes it was.  Being the vet that I am, I sent off multiple tissues samples to try to determine the cause of the sudden demise of our entire herd of one.  Turns out it was White Snake Root poisoning - a type of plant that was in our hay that we didn't even know about…. but that is another post for a different time, I digress….

 Lambie was a hand off from our neighbor who had a set of triplets.  She was the one triplet that wasn't doing well because she didn't get any milk.  Our neighbor, also being the school bus driver, knew that we had a lot of kids and a mom who was a vet.  It hasn't taken long for the neighbors to realize that we are a good place to drop the rejects - we are like the island of misfit farm animals.  Lambie, when she first came to us, was not even able to suck from a  bottle so had to be tube fed for three weeks until she learned to eat the new spring grass that was finally growing.  Because of the cold weather, she lived in the house with us for that time, often to be found sleeping behind the door of the mudroom curled into a small ball of warm, black wool.

So it was this now white, fleecy pelt that we skinned off, scraped cleaned and then salted.  These unplanned events never happen at an ideal time, but in Lambie's case, she picked a good day.  Cool temperatures and I was home from work.  What a way to have to spend the day off.  We tracked down a few references for what we were doing and set to work.  The basics are the same for any skin or pelt.

1. Scrape clean of any muscle tissue and fascia (and hair or wool if you don't want it)
2. Salt the skin well to help dry and preserve it
3. Pickle it in an acidic salt brine
4. Tan it
5. Oil it 
6. Break down the fibrous connective tissue in the skin as it dries out to provide with a soft, workable leather. 

This all sounds straight forward, but it can be very cumbersome working with a hide.  They are incredibly heavy and unwieldy, not to mention smelly and somewhat gross to begin with.  Lambie's hide went well up until the point of breaking down the connective tissue in the skin while it dries.  We set the hide out thinking that it would take several days to dry, but it dried too quickly and left us with a stiffer leather than we wanted. 

Undaunted by the less than perfect tanning of the Lambie hide, she now covers one of the chairs in our computer room and is fantastically comfortable and warm. And when I threw my back out some time back, she pillowed the hard floor I slept on and made it far more tolerable .  Somehow the hide has still retained the name "Lambie" so, rather than saying, "hey, go grab the sheep skin rug to lay on", it is simply still, "Go get Lambie" as though the soul and spirit of the animal is somehow infused into their skin.  I am not actually sure what to make of this connection and can't decide if this relationship to a formerly living creature is healthy or not.  While I have been pondering this a bit longer, we have started on Harold's hide.

Harold was another castoff creature.  A poor doing calf from the farm down the road.  He was apparently three weeks old at the time we got him but he didn't weigh more than 25 pounds.  Probably premature or lacking in some important genetic component that stunted his development significantly, Harold spent the first three months of his life just learning how to eat.  Bottle feedings were hopeless, he never did figure out a bucket, and it would take him an hour to eat a small amount of grain.  Green grass saved us once again and slowly he figured out his natural food and took to it with relish. That's not to say he ever really grew much.  By five months old, when most of his contemporaries were several hundreds of pounds, he topped out at 124 pounds.  By his first year, when he should have been about the size of our two year old dairy cow, he was half her size.

Cute and fuzzy, but not entirely all there, his small stature would sometimes make him look as though his internal organs were going to pop out of his small skeletal frame.  By eighteen months, when it became apparent that he was no longer growing any bigger, only wider, the decision had to be made.

Pasture is always at a premium around here, as is hay in the winter.  The options were to send him to market before winter hit, or in the spring…..given the hay situation, the answer was made for us.

Market day is always a sad day around here, and this year was no different except it was also my birthday.  We had decided just that morning to go ahead and get the hide back so we could tan it, and it only dawned on me later that this meant I was likely going to spend some part of my birthday scraping muscle and connective tissue off a newly skinned hide from an animal that I had loved and reared. Some people go out to party…..others flesh hides.

Repairing small holes

Acid bath soak

I could describe the entire process, but I would do a poor job of it at best because the actual process is long, involved, and usually split between Keith and I, with Keith doing the lion's share of the heavy work.  There are many good references available and websites from which to get the tanning chemicals needed, such as Van Dykes.  Having re-read these instructions myself just now, I chuckled reading the last section about the breaking stage on cattle and buffalo hides where it says, "Good Luck! This will be a difficult process."….they aren't kidding.

One thing is abundantly clear when working a hide, Native American women were incredibly strong! Much of the scraping, tanning, and breaking of hides was up to them and this is a process that takes days of hard, back breaking labor….and they were working with buffalo hides to boot! As someone who has spent several hours in the last two weeks working a hide in one fashion or another, I will attest that there are muscles in my arms, shoulders and back that I didn't know were even there, and I have blisters in places on my fingers that I didn't even know could blister.

Stretching the hide

However, as taxing as this job can be, it is also very methodical and mesmerizing.  I will be out in the shop listening to the radio while slowly scraping or breaking the hide and the whole circle of Harold's life will play itself out in my head and there is a quiet sort of thankfulness that emerges when I think of how we will have a part of him around to use and enjoy.  It's difficult to put in words really, without coming across as a total freak, but the hide speaks to a person when you take the time to listen, just like the earth does when you are busy growing food, or the trees do when you walk among them.  There is just a simple expression of wonder and infinite mystery that surrounds anything in nature, whether it is animal, vegetable, or mineral and when it is held in respect and deference for its small part of the whole,  it transforms an odious, back breaking task into a transcendent celebration of all of life.

My guess is that our cow hide will continue to be known as "Harold" regardless of where he ends up residing in my house…. and I am completely all right with that.

Wabi-sabi

It is the pre-holiday season again.  The first of November is quickly gone, when all the Halloween decorations have been torn down and stashed until next year and all the Christmas decorations have been put up in the department stores with merry Christmas music blaring to help inspire you to do your Christmas shopping a little early this year.  Giving thanks doesn't sell material things, so the retailers just jump right over Thanksgiving and head for what will move inventory before the fourth quarter of the year is up in order to keep the stockholders happy.  What a world, what a world.

This time of year becomes entirely too compressed, too hurried.  There is the seasonal dread of the darker days and the cold temperatures, there is the requisite shopping to be done with equal parts of faked joy and drummed up enthusiasm that will culminate in one or two days of anticipated holiday bliss which never quite lives up to our memories from childhood no matter how hard we try.  Not to mention the stresses of travel, families getting together, and parties to be attended.  I find myself caught up in a whirlwind of holiday craziness that only subsides when I flip the calendar and realize that it is January 2nd which then leads rapidly to a post holiday funk.

I used to hate the coming of winter. The end of the warmth, the darker days and longer nights, but now I have come to enjoy it as a chance to read, to sleep, to watch a movie with one of my kids on a Saturday afternoon.  As to the "pre-holiday race to new year" time….it will require a little wabi-sabi thinking.

Wabi-sabi is a Japanese philosophy that essentially encompasses the idea that nothing is ever permanent, nothing is ever perfect, and nothing is ever complete.  This imperfection, impermanence, and incompleteness are things to be valued and cherished in and of themselves rather than constantly striving for some distant, ideal "finish line".  The idea that "I will be happy when__________" is an all to common phrase, especially in the Western hemisphere, as we strive for complete infinite perfection and are constantly stressed and disappointed when it is never quite achieved.

Nature is perhaps the very best model for this concept.  Nature is perfect in its incompleteness, complete in its imperfection, and the seasons quietly change never to allow permanence. The very leaves falling off the trees outside represent Wabi-sabi in their random, chaotic distribution and eventual rotting demise.  The same will apply to the snow, and the spring mud and melting that is sure to come.

Washing dishes is probably the first place I learned to use this principle. The dishes in my house never stay washed.  I would no more than finish one load of dishes only to have my kids hand me another set from the endless meal and snack cycle that goes on with a growing family. It would make me crazy! So, in an effort to avoid the straight jacket and padded room, I learned to let the frustration go and love the process - the sorting, the mess, the hot water, the soap, the cleaning, rinsing, drying and putting away - knowing all the while that it was all right that in another ten minutes I could do it again if I wanted.   My daughters' attic bedrooms are another place where I have to employ this philosophy as well - they are a mess and even after cleaning completely they never stay clean for more than three hours.  No amount of yelling, cajoling, or applying to their (as yet underdeveloped) sense of personal hygiene is going to keep this area clean, but when I stop and realize that in a few short years, they will be grown and gone to mess up houses and apartments of their own, I have to fight the urge to add a few more random pieces of clothes to the mess for a while longer.

Somewhat related to this whole idea is another theory of, "picture it already broken" because all things - even us - will someday be gone.  My favorite coffee cup is the example I use a lot.  I know that at some point one of my children (or myself) will knock it on the floor and it will shatter. I know that typically this sort of thing would have upset me, but since adopting the "picture it already broken" philosophy, I have found that many things come and go without my typical distraught reaction because I have already dealt with their loss mentally.  I notice them and treasure them a bit more because, in my mind, they are already gone.  A bit fatalistic in some sense, but it is oddly very soothing and when a favorite dish crashes to the floor, or a beloved childhood book is found in tatters,  I now find myself thinking, "yep, that's how I pictured it" and there is now space in my cupboard and bookshelf for a new favorite item to take up residence.  I feel that even treasured items are meant to be used and loved rather than placed on a shelf somewhere safe.  I have my grandmother's china set that my mom gave to her for a present - we routinely pull these out and use them for dinners in which I would actually like the plates to match or when we have more people to dinner than we have mismatched plates.  I know that these too will slowly meet with unfortunate ends, but they will have been lovingly used in the process.

How this all applies to this chaotic pre-holiday season is this:  I stop and notice the day for what it is - windy, rainy, cold, hectic- and then, rather than allowing the typical frustration and depression to take hold, I smile and see if for it's imperfect, impermanent chaotic beauty - the quiet melancholy of the fall season. For the holidays this year, rather than striving for the great traditional celebration in which time stops in a moment of perfect  completeness, I am going to rejoice in the imperfections, the craziness, the chaos of last minute shopping, the lack of funds, the messes, the pine needles on the floor, the dry turkey, the kid that doesn't like their present, and even the turning of the year into the dark days of January because, all too soon, this too will pass and the world will roll around to spring again.

Next Year's Garden

I have received a request to do a blog about garden planning from a friend of mine that recently moved entirely too far away to a farm of their very own.  So, for you new homesteaders in Ohio…this one is all yours.

This time of year is the point at which I finally stand up straight from my permanent "weeding" position and take a deep sign of relief.  It's over! I've survived another growing season and maybe, just maybe, I have put up enough tomato sauce, peaches, pears, potatoes, apple sauce, dried beans, frozen peas, herbs and spices to make it through the winter….maybe.

After that one second of relaxation it dawns on me that I have to start planning for next year's garden.

Unlike a lot of gardeners and farmers, I don't do a lot of clean up before winter rears her cold head.  I like to let the leaves sit where they will, I like to let the dried foliage of crops sit where it landed after I was through rifling through it, and I leave the newspaper compost that was dug up with the potatoes lie where it is all through the winter.  It all helps to insulate the ground a little and continues to break down into compost throughout the winter.  No sense in stripping it off only to expose the bare ground underneath.

The one thing I do pull out are weeds.  I especially like to pull out the creeping malva plants that grow rapidly in cooler temperatures.  They have a wicked tap root that goes down sometimes several feet and they seed out merrily in almost every season.  Not only that, but our pigs absolutely love them.  Did a little research on this nasty little weed and, come to find out, it is entirely edible and good for you.  The leaves and seeds have a nutty flavor, but tend to have an unusual texture to them.  The roots were used medicinally by Native Americans and can still be found in some places as 'marshmallow root'.  So, in other words, sometimes even the weeds are a good thing.


But aside from pulling a few weeds periodically and making my pigs happy, there is not a lot of garden work that needs to be done….except next year's planning.

In terms of planning, the basic idea is to make a crude drawing of your garden spaces, mark what you planted where this last year and then change it all around so that the same crop is not grown in the same place two years in a room.  This gets slightly more difficult when you try to avoid putting crops of the same family in an area two years in a row….which is how I ended up with three more garden plots to work into my rotation schedule.  It is important to keep these maps somewhere safe for future reference because after a few years of planting, the crops all start to run together in your head.

Garlic is always the first thing that needs to be planted.  If you are reading this now, at the beginning of November, you have about two weeks to get this into the ground before it freezes too much to plant any this year.  Garlic is, by far, my favorite crop.  Planted in the fall, mulched heavily and then you don't have to do a thing to it until the end of June or the beginning of July. Not to mention that it flavors almost every meal we eat around here.

There are many years where I don't get too serious about planning out the garden until the deep, dark, depressing days of winter when I have seed catalogs and garden maps to keep me from dying of cabin fever, but I do have to at least consider where the Garlic is going to go.  Garlic is a simple crop - it is a bulb so technically it doesn't need a lot of fertilizer, but it does like good organic mater in the soil.  It shouldn't be anywhere too wet or the bulbs will start to rot before they get pulled out of the ground next summer.  It needs a lot of mulching with straw (4-6 inches of it) after being planted 2 inches deep, but that essentially is all there is to garlic.  I like to plant it in an area where there was a high intensity crop the year before - beans, corn, etc just because it requires so little soil manipulation, it gives the ground a chance to rest for a year.

Peas, collards, lettuce, spinach, onions, and leeks - those are the next crops to consider because they will need to go in early.  Generally, the peas in my garden get moved around from one fence to another on alternating years.  That way I don't have to put up a trellis and their season is typically finished about the time some of the other crops are taking off.  You can grow and amazing amount of lettuce and leafy greens in a very small space, but the trick is to leave enough space (and to remember) to do sequential plantings.  You won't be able to eat or save 30 heads of lettuce in one week, so you plant 5 and then the following week plant another 5, and so on until the summer heats up.  Most of the time, but the end of June it is tough to get a leafy green to germinate and grow well unless you have a shaded spot with ample watering.

Water is another thing to consider.  My main garden sits at the bottom of a hill so it receives a lot of the rain run off to keep it moist.  I tend to be one of those gardeners that doesn't water unless absolutely necessary.  There have been times these last two summers when I was convinced that my crops were likely going to curl up and blow away, but what I have been doing is slowly selecting for the crops that best handle the drought-like environment that Iowa seems to be experiencing lately.  I have a feeling that this is only likely to get worse.  So, yes, I neglect my crops on purpose when it comes to water, but I do try to put those crops that need more moisture in a location (such as at the bottom of the hill) where they at least stand a chance.   The seeds from those that do well in these dry, climate crises situations will likely continue to do well in the years ahead.

The only crops that I don't move around much is my herb garden because many of those are perennials or self seeding annuals.  I just have to make their environment habitable and provide a little good compost once in a while so they can grow most effectively without depleting the soil too much….although a lot of perennials are very hardy and actually like to be neglected.  The one that I have found to like a change of scenery is Dill.  It seems to grow better if it gets a new plot of ground, and will often venture off on its own to find one if necessary.  I have found dill growing all over my farm and, unless it is truly in the way, I tend to leave it where it is happiest and just try to remember where that is when it comes time to make pickles.  Not to mention the fact that Tiger swallow tail caterpillars love dill, so I leave it for them to enjoy as well.

Strawberries are a crop that also likes to migrate, believe it or not.  When we first bought the farm ten years ago, I found four strawberry plants under the rhubarb bushes and transplanted them to the corner of the garden where I thought they would be happy.  The keep wandering off.  Strawberries don't like weeds and they don't like compressed soil so they keep marching their little runners into the areas of my garden that are tilled up periodically and more free of weeds.  I really can't blame them.  So, I have started tilling up part of my strawberry patch yearly.  I move some of the bigger plants out of the way, till up a section and then replant the plants.  This seems to be keeping them a little happier.  I have, however noted that a few strawberry plants have showed up in completely different garden plots - one of which was my flower garden where it produced the largest and tastiest strawberries yet.  I call this my rouge plot and didn't tell my kids about it for two years because I would snack on the strawberries while working in the flower gardens.

When a perennial plant, herb, or flower takes up residence somewhere other than where I put it, I try not to take offense and instead I leave them there and watch what happens.  Some plants just prefer different light or soil and I figure they probably know best what works for them.

As to the main crops - corn, beans, tomatoes, potatoes, peppers, squash, onions - the thing to remember with these guys is to avoid planting families of crops in the same area.  This means not planting potatoes where tomatoes were the year before if possible.  Beans are great almost anywhere because they help to fix nitrogen in the soil.  Tomatoes and peppers need lots of heat, so don't plant them where the shade produced by tall growing corn stalks to going to limit their sunlight at all.  Onions like it cooler, so they are a good one to plant in the shade of another plant that will eventually cool them off in the hot afternoons.  I used to own an organic gardening book that had the best list of what crop should follow another in one location, or what crop to plant next to another crop for the best results, but unfortunately my sister's dog ate the book, and I found I didn't refer to it as much as I probably should have anyway because most of my garden planning and crop rotation comes from experience that I have picked up in the last ten years of working this soil.  I know just how knobby my potatoes will be if I plant them in one location and then we get a little too much rain….I know just how much my corn is likely to get blown over if I plant it in the more exposed area of wind….I know where to plant lettuce so that when it seeds out it will start growing in a plot that I want it next year.

Gardening is 20% knowledge, 30% trial and error, and 50% just dumb luck.  You can have the nicest looking field of corn only to have the whole thing blow over in a high wind situation.  You can have the most heavily producing tomato plants get decimated by tomato horn worms almost overnight.  You can have great potatoes that seemingly disappear underground because of blight.  Farming and gardening can be the most exhilarating or the most demoralizing thing in the world.

Which is why, at this time of year, I heave a big sigh, I think about the crops that went well, I lay some basic plans for the future, and then I cook up some of the best sweet potato fries and make some black bean dip, find a good book, and wait for the snow to fly.

Gardening In The Rain

It has been a while since I have felt like writing.  This happens.  I wouldn't call it writer's block per se,  rather just a lack of interesting thoughts or farm updates to impart.

This spring has been a crazy one already.  School trips and extracurriculars kept us all on the go, and then there was the Boston Marathon....

Boston is a whole post traumatic blog of its own, so we will just leave it at that.  Time moves forward and the scary stuff slowly fades... a little.

But now we have run into a patch of rather rainy weather which is a nice change from the drought of last year.  Everything is extremely green and lush.  So lush that I have been out in the rain pulling weeds in a futile attempt at keeping ahead of the mid summer jungle.  Now it is bordering on so wet that I may have to move my potted plants in out of the rain to prevent them from drowning and the flood reports are sounding the alarm for people in low lying areas.

It's a messed up weather pattern.

Which is probably why I haven't written in a while.  I recently had someone tell me that, as much as they like what I write, it depresses them....

What do you say in response to that? "I'm sorry." "Then don't read it." "The truth is depressing"  But they are right.  What I write about does have a depressing aspect to it. There hasn't been a lot of good news on the farming/environmental front recently.

Imagine what it is like to live inside my head all the time.

 It is only my feisty, "anxious to take on the world", children that keep me sane most of the time. I was enthralled the other day while listening to my son enthusiastically recount is discussion with classmates about politics and how he is trying to decide how best to get people to use electric cars that use only clean energy and whether or not he wants to run for Congress someday.  I have GOT to see how this turns out!

But, while awaiting for my progeny to inherit this country and planet, I have been haunted by a single number.

350 ppm.

 That is the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere at which the systems on the planet can be sustained.

What worries me more is the current number.

>400 ppm ....and climbing.

The last time the world had this much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, we weren't here....as in, we didn't exist.

That's not to say that an equilibrium can't or won't be found, but the $64,000 question is, "At what expense?"

This is what I ponder while I walk around pulling weeds, transplanting tomatoes, mulching potatoes, cultivating corn, picking lettuce.  This is what I think about as I check the blossoms on the apple trees and realize that there are approximately 1/4 the number of bees there than there had been previously.  This is what paralyzes my mind as I watch a large chemical sprayer enter the field next to me and start spraying away with the petroleum based herbicides that will allow my farming neighbor to raise subsidized crops on hundreds of acres of land. This is what crosses my mind as I see news reports of an F5 tornado that completely devastates a town and kills dozens of people. 400 ppm.

What does a person do with this sort of crippling information?  We do what we can locally to minimize our carbon footprint, but against the corporate giants that just don't care, it is hard to know where to start.  So I write and look for a way to express my concerns in a way that might bring it home to people who otherwise just didn't get the message that we are in trouble here - you, me, our kids, our grandkids. And this isn't really something that we can just put on the back burner and not think of for a while in the hope that it will go away.

And then I look for news articles that point out the positive changes that are ever so slowly starting to take hold.  I write a Congressman (or two,... or twenty), sign a few petitions, send some money if I have any, and then I go outside....

and garden in the rain.

I Resolve....

It's February and finally I think I am ready to start thinking about the new year.  The holidays are always too busy and stressful and then, to top it off, we are supposed to come up with a list of "Resolutions" that we plan to tackle at the time of the new year.  A few years ago I finally gave myself some breathing space and stopped thinking about this until later in the year.  Resolutions made as one sits holding a piece of holiday fudge and a martini are generally hard to stick to as the year rolls on.

The Chinese New Year seems to fit my time frame better when it comes to making resolutions.  By this time, hopefully, I have the holiday decorations down and all the fudge has since been consumed.  This year is the year of the Snake on the Chinese calendar and, according to their astrology, this is to be a year of unexpected transformation.  Sounds good to me, we are due for some unexpected transformation.

"Resolutions" always sounds so final, like if you mess up there will be some dire consequences for not completing the task of  improving yourself over the course of one year. It feels as if a person doesn't change based on this one "cold turkey" try, it wasn't meant to be.   In my own experiences, I have found that most resolutions that are made are things that I slowly work up to changing with many failings along the way....two steps forward, one step back, so to speak....until one day, it finally dawns on me that I actually have made the change I had been seeking - stopped drinking pop, ran a marathon, grew my own popcorn, etc.   More of a transformation than a resolution. Maybe the Chinese are on to something here.

At any rate, my so-called resolutions are much more consistent with a slow metamorphosis, small alterations,  accommodations, and adaptations that all work to achieve some far distant future transformation. And so, to that end.....

I resolve:

• to be more present in the moment 
• to listen with both my ears and then take a minute before making a reply
• to have patience with the extremist viewpoints that come up 
• to run more
• to grow more food and flowers
• to meditate whenever I can
• to write more
• to be brave when I otherwise just want to curl up in a ball and hide
• to let go of the things I "hate" or "want" because both are truly not necessary
• to put less sugar in my coffee
• to drink more tea
• to ride my bike to work

Am I likely to fail at most of these....probably, but this is my working list that I have been carrying around in my head for the last several weeks and I have been coming back to it periodically as I make conscious decisions, like whether to have either tea or coffee, or whether to run or sit on my butt.  I am hoping that by putting these resolutions out there, it will make me more accountable.  Slow steps make for slow progress, but better than the progress of those who never start.  Bring it on year of the snake....I could use a few unexpected transformations.