The Ant and the Grasshopper

Without a ready source of tomatoes for canning this year, I decided I would be like the grasshopper and enjoy the last lingering days of summer and buy canned tomatoes this winter. Around about last week when the weather got chilly and I wanted to make chili, I realized the folly of my ways. To top it off, a friend told me that commercially canned tomatoes -- even the organic ones -- came in cans lined with plastic. Gack! Like some poor sea creature caught in plastic 6-pack rings, I could feel myself choking on the stuff! In unseasonably cold weather -- snow, even -- I took myself down to the farmers' market on a mission to buy tomatoes. Surely someone had stripped their plants the night before in anticipation of the first frost!

Pumpkins galore, potatoes, doughnuts, ostrich meat … Roma tomatoes, $20 for 25 lbs! I paid for a 25 lb. box, finished shopping (buying apples from novelist Jane Hamilton -- one of the perks at the Dane County Farmers' Market) and drove my car around to pick up my tomatoes. Thinking, "Hmmm … are those tomatoes going to be enough to carry me over until next tomato season?" With my car in the middle of the street, emergency flashers going, I quickly made a deal to buy another 25 lbs. of tomatoes.

This is the 3rd year I have canned tomatoes and the first time I did it all by myself. I canned half yesterday and half today, all in all 6 hours of intensive labor -- blanching, peeling and coring the tomatoes, partially cooking them, sterilizing the jars, filling the jars, boiling them in a hot water bath … Rather than trying to multi-task, I broke the process down into discrete steps -- a decision that I think saved time in the end. Hallelujah, all the jars sealed nicely, and lined up on the kitchen counter they look like sparkling jewels.

Bon appetit!

Domestic Scenes 2

I am somewhat obsessed with knitting lace these days. I also love to knit socks because as projects go they are small and easy to carry around, they use small amounts of yarn, and I can always use more socks. I also get a kick out of making things that one normally buys.

So, voila! My newest pair of lace socks, finished last night.
Enlarge the photo to see the creative use I make of dog hair in my knitting -- in fact in all my home decorating schemes!

[For knitting geeks: The lace is an Orkney Island pattern called "Columns and Arches." I adapted the pattern from one in Nancy Bush's book Knitting on the Road. I used KnitPicks' Risatta yarn, a blend of cotton, wool, and elastic.]

Domestic Scenes 1

When life gives you purple cabbages, make cabbage salad! I photographed dinner tonight because the colors were so stunning. The ingredients are purple cabbage, steamed broccoli, chopped onion, raisins, and bacon. The dressing is a mixture of yogurt, mayonnaise, and lemon juice. It's a variation on the "Creamy Broccoli Salad" from Molly Katzen's Enchanted Broccoli Forest. The ingredients are partially locally grown: the onion from my gardening group and the cabbage from a cow-orker's parents' truck farm. I wish there was a way to get local broccoli in the colder months.

Book Review: Sylvia's Farm

I finally finished another book -- Sylvia's Farm: The Journal of an Improbable Shepherd by Sylvia Jorrin. One of my fantasy lives involves living on a farm and owning sheep, so Jorrin's book was right up my alley. Jorrin was in her fifties and the granddaughter of a farmer, but raised in a city and afraid of all animals. When she bought her property in the foothills of the Catskill Mountains in the 1980s she had no intention of having a working farm, but a neighbor talked her into sharing a small flock of sheep, and then he promptly quit the business. Jorrin discovered that she loved animals, and at the time of the book's publication, twenty years later, her farm was home to 120 sheep, 21 goats, 2 Jersey cows, 4 geese, 50 chickens, 4 cats, 1 dog, and a donkey. Every one of her animals has a name (but not "Bob" as in the shish ke-variety, like the sheep belonging to a friend of ours) and a story.

Sylvia's Farm is a collection of columns that she wrote for her local newspaper. It is a chronicle of the ups and downs of those twenty years, the despair of bitter cold winters when the water froze continually, the joy of bottle feeding lambs, the struggle to fit in as a somewhat eccentric stranger in a relatively closed rural community. (This last piece was interesting: Jorrin does not drive, so she is dependent on the kindness of her neighbors for just about everything.)

In some ways, Jorrin reminds me of the children's author/illustrator Tasha Tudor, who has lived her adult life on a Vermont farm, dressing and living in a style from the mid-nineteenth century. Jorrin gets much of her farming wisdom from reprints of books from the early twentieth century. She is, however, conscious of her place in the newest millennium, and even has a chapter that is clearly written after the attacks of 9/11/01.

The language in this book struck my ear as somewhat awkward or old-fashioned, particularly the frequent use of the word "shall" as in, "I shall make a pear tart" or "I shall repair the pasture gate and paint it green." But that was a minor quirk, revealing much about her upbringing. Some of the chapters were very poetic. I was moved by one called This Is A Day that opened with

"This is a day the Lord has made. Those words are usually the first that come to my mind each morning when I get up."

I don't know that I could live the life that Jorrin has chosen to live. The drama, the stress at times all felt overwhelming just to read, to say nothing of experience on a daily basis! On the other hand, I could certainly see myself living in that kind of a rhythm.

I shall say that I enjoyed this book.

Holy Guacamole, Look At All Those Grapes!

Have I lost my mind? That's the bottom of my kitchen sink, filled with Concord grapes. My friend Frances stood up in Meeting 2 weeks ago and asked if anyone wanted to harvest grapes from her yard. I finally made it over there today. It was an impressive abundance of grapes! I could have taken 3X as many, and still there would be grapes left. Right now those grapes are stewing on the stove, releasing their lovely juice, so that I can make grape jelly in the next day or so. PB&J, anyone? (Too bad I don't know anyone growing peanuts in their backyard!)

Baaa!

Today we enjoyed a nearly perfect September day at the Wisconsin Sheep and Wool Festival in Jefferson, Wisconsin. It was Mr. Ether and me accompanied by my lovely sister (and soon to be first-time grandma) Lisa, as well as the always-delightful Sparkly Seacow and her friend Violet. While Mr. Ether went to watch the sheep dog demonstrations, and Sparkly and Violet did whatever it is that they do (it usually involves a lot of wrestling like puppies), Lisa and I shopped in the 2 barns-full of vendors.

I am usually very frugal at these events. I tell myself I have enough yarn and take vendors' business cards instead. I don't know what got into me today! I bought a pattern for a sweater and a pattern for a shawl, plus angora yarn to make the shawl. I bought some beautiful variegated merino and cashmere yarn to make socks. ($28.00 socks!) I really debated on the sock yarn. I must have gone by the booth 4 times. When I finally went back to buy it, the vendor said, "Oh, I wrote up your receipt half an hour ago. I knew you'd be back." I also bought not one, but two handwoven rag rugs.

Hey, Sen. Gramm is right: our economic woes are all in our heads! We just have to quit whining, get out there and stimulate the economy! (Incidentally, my sister shared the shocking news that her husband was recently "let go" from the tax accounting firm where he has worked for more than two decades. So that's my cabinet-maker husband, my brother with a Master's degree in urban planning, my auto mechanic nephew, and my CPA brother-in-law who have all lost their jobs in the last year. But we're a nation of whiners.)

But I digress into the sordid world of politics. Back to sheep and wool. I love these sheep and wool festivals. A number of years ago I talked a new friend into going with me to the Michigan Wool Festival (before we had our own here.) It was around Kalamazoo when she turned to me and said, "You mean you're really serious about going to this thing?" She thought I was just looking for an excuse to get away from my family for the weekend. Ha! (I think that was the first time I left Sparkly Seacow. Wool is very compelling.) I think I might even go back tomorrow!

Blogger Meet-Up

Oh, yeah ... and tomatoes.
Yesterday the illustrious blogger PoodleDoc and I met, in my kitchen of all places, to can tomatoes.
It was one of the hottest days we've had all summer. Just perfect for boiling gallons of water on your stove ...
Mr. Ether wanted to help. Ed -- Put. down. the. drill. and. step. away. from. the. tomatoes ...
I caught one! I caught one!
Some of the finished product. Aren't they pretty?

Next on the docket: freezing sweet corn.

Pickles!

This Pickles?
No, silly ...
These pickles!
This is the first time I've made pickles. For some reason the jars are not sealing so they'll have to be refrigerator pickles. Should be good though: dill, onions, lots of garlic. Mmmmm. You can never have too much garlic.

The recipe comes from the Mennonite cookbook Eating More With Less, via my friend and fellow gardener Donna. (I met a woman last year who referred to herself as a "cookbook Mennonite." When I asked for clarification, she explained that there are people whose first experience with Mennonites -- one of the historic peace churches -- comes from the Eating More With Less cookbook. If you haven't seen it, I recommend it. I also recommend the companion book Living More With Less.)

I belatedly bought a share in a communal garden when two of the gardeners had to leave town suddenly. Unlike a CSA, where you buy a share and get produce delivered each week, the shareholders in this garden do all the work. I'm coming in at the tail end, for the harvest. Lucky me!

The farm where the garden is located belongs to my friends John, Robin, and Susan. It is exceedingly lovely. I'll try to get some pictures in the coming weeks.

So far we have partaken in potatoes, tomatoes, sweet onions, sweet red peppers, corn, tomatoes, cucumbers, tomatoes ... Later come the melons, squash, storage onions, garlic, basil, carrots, green beans, and did I mention tomatoes? I have a date with Poodle Doc to can the first bunch of tomatoes tomorrow. Last year's tomatoes sustained us until mid-March.

Delicious!

I'm not like some of my blogging friends -- Dr. Monkey and Sacred Suzie, for example -- who can cook fabulous meals and document the process in lovely photographs. I am usually running around the kitchen like a chicken with my head cut off because I started preparing dinner later than I wanted to and everyone is hungry. Still, I'm a pretty good cook, I almost always cook from scratch, and this time of year I love the availability of wonderful, locally grown produce. Yum.

A few days ago I bought a nice baguette intending to make garlic bread, but I forgot that I had it and by yesterday it was as hard as a baseball bat. What to do? I know -- make Tuscan bread salad!

I used this recipe adding steamed string beans (yellow and green), red and yellow carrots, tomato, LOTS of garlic, plus diced cheese and salami. It was kind of like a sandwich all chopped up in a bowl, now that I think about it. Colorful, tasty, and I believe that everything was locally grown/made.

Organic Valley is a good source for recipes and their UHT milk in single servings is a godsend on camping trips. However, I was very disappointed with the revelation last month that they were purchasing a portion of their milk from a corporate "organic" "farm" in Texas. The CEO of OV was largely unapologetic. It reminded me a little bit of how the CEO of Urban Outfitters went from being a counter-culture "hippie" type to one of Rick Santorum's biggest supporters. Hope that's not what's in store for Organic Valley, which has been a boon to the little town of LaFarge, Wisconsin.

Knitting. It's so ... relaxing.

Not! I have spent hours trying to knit a sweet little camisole. I have ripped it out and started over 4 or 5 times. I count my stitches oh so carefully, I mark the pattern repeats, and still the ¢¶•∞*˙ƒ∂ß≥ç∑@#!!! stitch count does not come out right. I have come to the conclusion that there must be an error in the pattern. It happens. Often times patterns even come with a disclaimer. (Like ... I'm going to sue them because my sweater isn't coming out right?) But this pattern is from a pricey eye candy knitting book, so you'd think there had been an editor involved with the project, and maybe some test-knitters too. I surrender to the whims of the Goddess Annoya (patron saint of things that get stuck in kitchen drawers -- according to author Terry Pratchett, and I've just decided, frustrating knitting projects.) I'll knit something else.

book review: Wisconsin My Home

Wisconsin My Home, the Story of Thurine Olesen as told to her daughter Erna Oleson Xan is an imprint of the University of Wisconsin Press. It was originally published in 1950. I am not sure, but it reads as if the narrative was originally collected as an oral history, and then transcribed and roughly polished up for publication. It may even have been self-published at first.

Thurine Oleson was the daughter of Norwegian immigrants, the first child of their family born in America. Unlike many other immigrants, Oleson's family did not leave Norway to better their lives. They were, in fact, well-to-do farmers in Norway who emigrated because everyone was doing it. They settled in central Wisconsin just after the Civil War in a community with many other Norwegian immigrants, a large number of them friends and relatives from back home. Their life in Wisconsin started out being much harder than their previous life had ever been, and it sounds as if Olesen's mother never stopped regretting the move.

The narrative progresses in essentially chronological order, while each chapter is organized around general themes, for example Norway, America, Cooking, Church, Childhood, Neighbors, Courtship, Kinfolk, Children and a couple of chapters that are even more specific to Oleson's life. Because the stories were collected over time (or so I believe) there is some repetition in different chapters. Reading it was a little like listening to your grandmother talk: "And then there were the Jones girls, Gladys and Dolores. You remember them, don't you? Oh, they were wild ones."

I lived in Norway for a year, and hung out for a while with a guy who traveled around Wisconsin collecting oral histories of Norwegian-American fiddlers, so I found the book to be interesting with its descriptions of Norwegian customs and a smattering of Norwegian words that I could understand. I especially liked Oleson's talk about dance parties. They were her favorite form of entertainment, but her husband, who was 5 years older than her, had made a vow to his pious mother that he would give up dancing (which was considered by the Lutheran elders to be sinful.) Oleson had some spirit though; while her husband was away logging in the north woods every summer, she would kick up her heels and go dancing. And she continued to show that spirit all through 55 years of marriage -- yay!

I also liked that Oleson was neither overly sentimental nor overly critical. It really was a chronicle of her life, good times and bad. There were friendships, enduring marriages, and joyful times. There were also abusive marriages, illness, and death. They were all part of a life.

This is definitely a niche book, not for everyone. If you are interested in the Midwest immigrant experience written in a more literary style, I suggest two excellent books by Carrie Young: The Wedding Dress (a book of short stories) and Nothing To Do But Stay (written about her own mother's experience as a farm wife in the Dakota Territory.) There is also the classic Giants in the Earth, although it is rather grim as I recall.

(Cross-posted at the Spring Reading Challenge)

Creativity, pt. 1

I've been thinking about creativity a lot lately. Writing this blog is a creative act for me. In addition to writing, I love to knit, sew, felt, cook, bake, and decorate Ukrainian Easter eggs. Simply making things gives me so much pleasure. I don't feel as adept with drawing or painting, although in high school I was enamored of the work of Arthur Rackham and Beatrix Potter, and wanted nothing more than to illustrate children's books. But ... life took me on different pathways, as life so often does, and I ended up as an elementary school teacher who does all these other things on the side.

A few years ago I had an existential crisis that centered on my creativity. At the time I had young children, and was in a particularly stressful teaching situation. It felt to me as if I was being sucked dry: my well was dry and I had nothing left. I could barely get myself through a working day, then I would come home and sit in the dark with my fingers in my ears to block out ALL stimulation. It was a terrible feeling! (And hard on my family.) I did a lot of beating on myself -- "Why did I become a teacher? I should have become an artist!" -- pretty relentlessly.

I began working through Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way, and it was a great help to me. Doing the practices she suggested got me more focused on what I wanted my life to look like. I joined a couple of different groups of mostly women, who were also looking to make changes in their lives. And the funny thing was, I kind of did a full circle and ended up right back where I had been all along (kind of like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz. No ruby slippers though.) With one difference: I was very clear that I wanted all the parts of my life to intertwine seamlessly with one another as much as possible.

Now about 8 years have gone by, and I'm in a very good place. I LOVE my job. I LOVE my community. I'm making music, which was a part of myself I had buried really deep for a long time. But I'm beginning to feel these stirrings in my soul that tell me I want something more, specifically I want to create more. So I turned once again to the myriad books that are available about awakening/reclaiming your creativity ... and they're just not doing it for me this time. In fact, for the most part they annoy me!

And I think it's because I know exactly what I need to do: If I want to create something, I need to just do it. I have all the materials at hand.

I also find that so much in the books is about the individual -- how to reclaim your creativity -- and so much of what moves me these days is community. The community of my classroom, my school, my Quaker meeting, my neighborhood ...

I want to write specifically about 2 books that I've recently gotten from the library, but I think I'll save them for a separate post.

Everyday Radical

I'm a novice bloggerina, and I've been following links from blogs I visit regularly to other blogs down in Blogville. I've been thinking a lot about this weird and wonderful world of blogging, and yes, I've been suffering some blogger's angst.

From whence does my angst stem?

Well, it's like this. I'm half Martha Stewart and half Rosa Parks (actually if I was ever a fraction of the person Rosa was, I'd be happy) and I wonder what I want my blog to be. Some days I visit a great many blogs of a great many creative women who post their creative endeavors, and I feel moved to post about my creative endeavors. But the other part of me is passionate (obsessed, my family would say) about social justice, especially as it pertains to children and education, peace, nonviolence. So my blog is inspired by other current event-related blogs, really my cyber-soapbox where I expound and pontificate about things very close to my heart.

I've been ruminating on this for a few days, really looking for the place that these two parts of who I am intersect -- and I think I have a glimpse of clarity about it. It came to me in the phrase "everyday radical."

I believe that every time I (or anyone) creates something, it is a radical act. Every time that I am a creator, rather than a consumer -- every time I sing in the car instead of turning on the radio, bake bread instead of buying it, pick up my guitar and play it, knit socks, write something, make dinner for my family -- all of those things are everyday radical. They are a statement of hope, of faith, of a vision of what I'd like the world to be.

So I'll just continue as I have been, but I might post a photo of a perfect loaf of French bread or Poodle Doc's mittens, or the little mousie slippers that are drying on the kitchen counter ... just every now and again. 'Cause I'm not really Martha Stewart (praise Annoya, the goddess of things that get stuck in kitchen drawers!)

Just know, when I'm in the middle of a rant, that I can also knit a mean pair of socks -- turn the heel and everything. I can even knit shoelaces, and come the Revolution, everyone's going to need to know how to knit shoelaces.

Bread, Not Bombs

What possessed me, that I thought it was a good idea to start baking bread at 8:00 this evening? I'm not talking wussie bread machine bread here; this is the genuine article, made from scratch. I just had a hankering for that yeastie taste all day today. (Should have just had a beer.) But now it's 11:42, there's still another 90 minutes to go, and I have to get up and go to work in the morning. Damn you, Martha Stewart, damn you!

I could sweet talk Ed into taking over ... but then I won't get that first slice, hot from the oven. with butter melting into it. Mmmmmm.

It's a die-lemma. What's a Norwegian housewife wannabe to do?