Tale of the Gingerbread House

One of the joys of getting ready for Christmas is the day to create the beloved Gingerbread House. When our children were at that magical age of wanting to do everything Christmas – popcorn and cranberry garland for the tree, Holiday cookies, print our own wrapping paper with potato stamps, they also begged to make their first gingerbread house.    

Karla, the ten year old baker, meticulously measured out the construction pieces of each “cookie” wall. Guy and Jessie whipped up the cement frosting for the walls and roof.

Once the pieces were baked, cut, and cemented into place, the plain house was ready for the candy decorations. The memory of watching little hands pressing candy chips on the roof and around the frame still sends a thrill through me. They decorated the cardboard platform with cookie bushes and green coconut leaves on cookie pine trees each carefully placed to the rhythmic song of child talk.

Once their very own unique ginger house was completed we gave it a proud place on the dining room table flanked by two candles. In the morning we happily ate our crunchy granola admiring the beauty of the previous day’s creation.

A few days went by when one of the children noticed a hole in the back wall of the gingerbread house along with nibbles out of the bushes and outside the newly created doorway - little black . . . well, mouse turds. It’s a week before Christmas and a mouse has moved into our beautiful gingerbread house!

What a fine mess this is! 

We called a family meeting with children lobbying for the new resident of their creation to happily enjoy the place. We adults explained the whole cleanliness thing to which they countered (while munching on other pretty cookies), that they were not intending to eat the structure anyway. We agreed to move the house off of the table and implement an eviction in the case of excessive mouse partying or if mouse relatives moved in. Recognizing this was a seasonal decoration we also agreed to move the house outside along with the Christmas tree and its edible garland when we entered a new year.

Each morning the children checked on the interesting disintegration of their ginger house. We imagined the mouse ecstatic at his good fortune. We never saw the little creature but only knew him through his leavings. Though there are those who would criticize our parental decision to allow the mouse to live with us in our house, the situation remained benign.

Our gifts from this curious animal visit included humor, imagination, cooperative decision making, and eventually our mouse in the house became part of a delightful repertoire of family stories.

Wishing you all a wonderful holiday season and a healthy new year.

Helene and family

p.s. Happy Birthday Leon, Jim, John and Tyler, fine December men.

Thanksgiving Ghosts

            At this time of year I often think of our first country-grown, free barnyard rambling turkey. Our neighbor, a quarter mile down the road raised a few hundred turkeys for the locals in the Thanksgiving season. He also raised Hereford beef cattle that grazed and lounged on the hill outside our east-facing kitchen window. And milk cows, large Holsteins, housed in the big old Sears designed white barn across the road from our newly built homestead.

            After a grueling year surviving the near-tragedy of moving in too soon to our unfinished house, we were finally living upstairs. Joel built bedrooms for the children in the walkout downstairs while we slept in the upper level.

The story of the turkey as described in the book, A Homestead Decade, How Crunchy Granola Changed My Life goes like this:

One moonless night we woke to strange sounds outside our window – rustling grass and deep animal sounds. Trying hard to draw up some light from the darkness all we could really see right outside our window were free form white shapes moving slowly one way and another. The sounds intensified - deep low grumblings – as if the mass of whatever it was, was growing. The white spots lurked around all the south side windows. Joel grabbed a small child’s baseball bat and lantern flashlight. In a surprise move he flung open the door only to see several large startled Holstein cows staring back at him.

I called our farmer neighbor who seemed grateful to be notified of his naughty girl cows. At two o’clock in the morning we helped round up the giant explorers and escorted them back across the street to their barn.

We talked into the sunrise about how our urban roots had not prepared us with enough data to determine the mystery of floating free-form white blobs attached to heavy animal snorts.

In late November, about a month after our strange encounter with errant Holsteins, we heard a light knock at the door. Our farmer neighbor sent his shy young 15-year-old son to deliver a 22-pound freshly harvested, cleaned, and bagged turkey for us. “Here’s this,” he almost whispered as he plopped the big bird in Joel’s grasp.

We were equally as grateful for this big thank you compared to our small neighborly gesture of rescuing cows. We have yet to find another Thanksgiving turkey to match the incredible taste of that big Tom. In the years following we discovered that all subsequent Thanksgiving meals remain attached in our minds to the confusion of ghostly grumbling forms in the night.  

No matter how you celebrate the launching of this holiday season, we wish you opportunities to enjoy the mysteries around you, and a place of comfort to tell the stories.

If you want to read more about our country life discoveries, you’ll find lots of humor and insights in A Homestead Decade, How Crunchy GranolaChanged My Life: 2.99 Amazon Kindle. We hope you check it out.

Affectionately,

Helene

Garden Tomatoes - MMMMmm

                Harvest season is almost over in these parts of the country. We’ve become so used to green house and transportation technology presenting us with fresh vegetables all year that we tend to forget the foods of the season have a time limit . . . except for garden tomatoes. Yes, we can get tomatoes all year long, beautiful perfectly formed red globes. Still the exclamation from August through September rings loudly as we sink our teeth into sloppy, artistically formed, scarred and deeply colored clowns of the harvest  – “mmm there’s nothing like the taste of tomatoes from the garden” we exclaim.

                The thing about garden fresh tomatoes is the metaphor for the garden itself: from early summer to the intense heat of late July, early August, tomato plants grow tall and wide singing sweetly, showing their delicate yellow blossoms soon to turn into little green shiny balls.

As the new green fruits grow larger and fatter, we hopeful gardeners begin dreaming in anticipation of all the harvest. Green beans come on quickly and soon scream at us to get out there and harvest! We eat the sweet first fresh strands and store the rest. Beans are gone as swiftly as they come,  while those puffy tomato plants continue to grow bigger with still green globes. Sniffing the air with their pungent fragrance, we linger on anticipations of summer meals decorated with a plate of tasty, very tasty, sliced tomatoes. Not yet. Wait. Wait. We are taunted by their beauty and the memory of that luscious taste.

Then sometime in mid-August the green becomes painted with pink, light orange, soft red, and suddenly, BAM! Tomatoes! Eat eat until you never thought it would happen but you get sick of them. C’mon eat! Soon they will be gone. And so they are.

                Yes, they are canned and frozen and combined with other great flavors into sauces and salsas. Yes, we can buy some pretties at the grocery store all winter long. But too soon, the mouth-watering fruit that tantalizes all our senses even to the kinetic dribbles down our face and arms are done. With much sighing, we rescue a few of the lingering green ones and stretch them out on an available window sill in October for one more chance to absorb that succulent flavor. Ahh. 

Hope you enjoy other garden stories in A Homestead Decade, How Crunchy Granola Changed My Life, Amazon Kindle (also good to read on iPod and computer), cheap - $2.99. 

It's All About BUSINESS

Though Crunchy Granola, the book, reads like a back-to-the land memoir, it is really a book about Business, capital B. What we learned about living with animals, growing our own food, building a house, and raising (or being raised by) delightful children were all just day-to-day do-with-what-is. The bigger story is how we learned the basic principles of Commerce and the tremendous impact on our understanding the world around us.

            The book, A Homestead Decade  - How CrunchyGranola Changed My Life, begins with a gigantic bale of broom straw brought to our snowy homestead by an 18-wheeler and dropped off at the top of the hill presenting us with a serious problem-solving issue: how to get the bale down the hill, then how to store it in our tiny workshop.

            Yes, brooms. We became broom makers out of a dire need to feed and clothe our children and it was the next thing in front of us. With unbridled enthusiasm (ignorance notwithstanding) we threw ourselves into the business opportunity. The principles are simple on paper: production, marketing, and distribution. We didn’t need a textbook or degree to figure out the tremendous list under each of those items.

Production – means design, equipment, raw materials, storage, hands and bodies, and lots of coffee. We learned to produce beautiful fireplace brooms and variations on each. We learned to find and manage the raw materials from the best sources across the Midwest. We learned, sometimes grudgingly, to discipline ourselves to the task.

Marketing – required creative thinking about who the market might be and how to reach the various entities (before computers and the elegant electronic tools available to us today). We learned about seasonal timing. We enjoyed the ego boost of sales from all over the country including our grand sister states Alaska and Hawaii. We also learned that The Market, even our little hand crafted product, can be surprisingly vulnerable to the ebb and flow of consumer trends.

And the real surprise Distribution – how to get the hard earned product to the customer (and collect payment) especially when the nearest UPS distribution station was more than 40 miles away and there’s an OPEC oil embargo interfering with us little tiny business people just trying to survive, and your mother is calling wondering what you are doing playing with goats and brooms and when are you going to get a real job.

            The size of the business really didn’t matter in this grand MBA lesson. Trucks and trains and ocean container freight all have new meaning to us. We discern from “good ads” and crappy advertising unlike ever before. We have come to understand BUSINESS. Bet you never thought Crunchy Granola could do that for you.

As always, thanks for stopping by. If you get an e-copy of the book from AmazonKindle (cheap $2.99) let us know what you think.

Loving the fall colors,

Helene  

Saturday Sale Subject of Documentary - Sale Barn

On a slow summer night for television a few days ago, I just happened on a documentary on WKAR tv called Sale Barn, by Brooke Dagnan and Producer Angel Vasquez. What?! Is that our Saturday Sale? And sure enough a soft little awareness film about a place that gave us so much way back in our homestead history from learning about and acquiring our first goats to picking up Free-Take-One Amos the absolutely best dog that ever lived (I know, that’s a little romantic, but I swear he is becoming legendary in our memories). Sale Barn gives a lightweight visual of the Saturday Sale now known as the KenFrecker Auctioneers Inc , but in our memory the weekly event was far more than a casual auction. From the book, A Homestead Decade, How Crunchy Granola Changed My Life we described the Saturday Sale a little differently:

“The Saturday Sale in this rural area is quite different from another popular Midwest cosmopolitan sale at Shipshewana. Tune up your senses, here we go: Sweaty human body smells through old damp wool. Goats with urine/sperm spray radiating from their coats. Coffee steaming from plastic foam cups. The misty vapor of barn manure, muck, rotted straw and grain drifting from thick rubber boots. And old oil and grease smells intermingling with contrary drifts of excessive after shave colognes.

“That is just the smells. Sounds from all the activity include a symphony of comments from bleating goats, angry roosters, braying asses, ducks, chickens, geese, horses. Humans are blowing and wiping amid a cacophonic chatter of tones, accents, words working their way through rough graveled throats. And children. Children who are free for a time running, laughing, whispering anticipated mischief to each other. Imagine a long journey through human gatherings – the Saturday Sale is the medieval market live.”

One important item the film, Sale Barn, captured is Martin “Barney” Barnhart, auctioneer. We forgot the gift of Barney’s captivating auction song. There are many effective auction rolls rattling numbers and enticing bidders in a crowd, but we have yet to hear one that quite compares to the cadence of Barney’s call, it is truly a song bringing the notes up then finalizing the punch down – “45 doll-ars, you got it.”

Barney Barnhart auctioneer is well-known in Southern Michigan, in his mid-nineties at this writing. KenFrecker has a nice page on the history of the gentle man with the big voice – an exceptional singing auctioneer. As for the documentary, Sale Barn, thank you for reminding us, you may have captured more than you know.

Thanks always for stopping by. Be sure to go walk among those beautiful wind towers in the previous blog. 

Affectionately,

Helene

WOW - We Own Wind!

           We go through our busy lives paying bills, doing laundry, catching a number of family situations – all generally without notice. Then one day we see something that draws us to take a turn in the road and so experience a very notable moment. So it happened with us a few days ago. Driving north on Michigan’s Highway 127, the one that leads to our historic masterpiece the MackinacBridge, when just an hour out of Lansing we saw tall towering gleaming white Wind Towers. Not just one or two, but many wind towers.  We turned east following the site like curious Don Quixotes, bearing instead our intention to embrace the concept rather than fight it.

            In our Crunchy Granola days experimenting with various non-polluting renewable resources we only dreamed of power significant enough to serve a grand population. Our little abode used passive solar techniques, but mostly we depended on wood from our little forest out back, and coal delivered to our local utility company. We watched more adventurous colleagues actually produce wind/solar power enough to sell energy back to “the grid”.

Over the years we have explored the advancing technology in both wind turbine designs and solar collection. We lamented that we might not live long enough to actually see acceptance of the advancing renewable technology against the resistance of high profit dinosaur bones, that the sucking of oil from sands and the flattening of mountains will use all of our human brain and muscle power until there is nothing left, before we try to catch up to the gifts that shine on us (sometimes blisteringly) every day.

            Here, in the summer of 2012 the giants stood before us – over 130 of them – quietly overseeing lush corn and soybean fields amid pristine farmsteads of Gratiot County, Michigan. They stand over 400 feet capturing gentle winds across this ancient lake bed flatland of mid-Michigan on some 30,000 acres. The wind towers generate enough electricity for more than 50,000 homes in the area.

These lovely machines are providing hundreds of jobs from production (General Electric) to raising at the sites (Livonia-based Aristeo Construction), to maintenance. They provide tens of thousands of dollars, millions of dollars over a few years, to the communities for roads, schools, and all the things that make for great places to live right here in my beautiful Michigan. This is just one of several planned energy farms in the state. Consumers Energy and DTE are swiftly moving toward the establishment of the wind farms in the “thumb” and the Lake Land Wind Farm in Ludington capturing Lake Michigan winds on the high ground.

According to Kevin Parzyck, vice-president of development in the Midwest for  Invenergy which oversees the construction projects, “Once things get rolling, you can put a couple up of (the towers) a day.” [Barrie Barber, The Saginaw News]

            This all came about with more urgency by Michigan’s Clean, Renewable and Efficient Energy Act of 2008 that requires 10% of energy output to be clean renewable by 2015. The projects are embraced by the energy companies for more than meeting that goal, accounting for over a billion dollars invested in the wind/solar projects.            

Standing among the beautiful farmland wind towers listening to the soft cranking of the rotating motors amid crickets and birds, it occurred to me that we are standing in the Future, no plutonium waste, no burning holes in the ozone, no gaseous spills in the water table. A sense of elation came over me – I am so grateful I lived to experience this moment.

By the way, if you research wind energy in Michigan you will also find a good deal of home energy products produced right here. Whew (that’s a little puff of wind celebrating a good world comin’).

Helene author of

A Homestead Decade, How Crunchy Granola Changed My Life, Amazon Kindle Book, a memoir, funny, serious and cheap $2.99.

 

AN INDEPENDENCE DAY TO REMEMBER!

Here comes another one, smack in the middle of the week!

We have had some memorable Independence Day celebrations, but only one stands out with fear akin to images of apocalyptic chaos. It was during our “homestead days” when we had moved to the country, lived by our garden and animals, and contemplated a world of peace and love. At that time we had not experienced a rural American Fourth of July.

All chores done, a wonderful summer meal settling in our bellies we decided to take the children – eight year old daughter, six year old son, and the baby in the infant carrier on our backs – to the county fair grounds for some country fun. Remember this is 4^th of July, not the charming harvest days in the fall. This was a completely different crowd.

The temperature soared past 90 degrees. Carney hawkers in smudged shirts with faces glistening from slow moving  streaks of sweat taunted for a piece of the money pie. To pass the time until evening when the fireworks would finish the day folks congregated in the grand stands to take part in bear fights.  Yes, bear fights as in Black Bear.

Men from the audience were chided to come down to the ring, pay a dollar and wrestle the brown bear who had been pacing the edges of the ropes in the ring. Ragged, aging men from a local motorcycle gang challenged each other with shoulder punches and loud laughter to show their toughness against the bear. One burly gang fellow was especially prodded by his colleagues to get in there and take that hairy (bleeper) down. When the human challenger took off his shirt he looked amazingly like his furry opponent.

The bear stood on his hind legs which made him tower over the human and lumbered toward the man. Mr. Motorcycle guy looked visibly afraid, while people in the audience began shouting for blood. The bear hovered above the man. The man began punching the bear. Punch. Punch. Until he managed to slug the bear’s jaw. The angry referee/owner pulled the bear back by his leash and ordered the man out of the ring. The audience went wild. We sensed serious danger and gathered up our children who wisely questioned our lack of wisdom bringing them to this event in the first place. As we left the grand stand, the motorcycle gang was surrounding the wrestling ring demanding their hero’s dollar back. Surprisingly the bear owner refused the refund! We got the heck out of there and decided to linger on the grounds until the fireworks started, which was not such a great idea either.

The crowds outside the arena pushed together tightly to get a close view of the explosions. As the rockets began to fire up to the sky, it became apparent that something was terribly wrong. Rockets were exploding too close to the ground spewing burning cinders on the crowd. We grabbed our children and pushed our way to our old parked pickup truck.  Getting out of the town turned into another event as we turned down one street to find police had blocked the way with flashing lights stirring up the atmosphere. We scooted down another street and finally got onto our country road, which was not idyllic as the song goes, but rather full of raucous alcohol crazies weaving across the lines, screaming and laughing and throwing big green bottles in the ditches.

 At about a half mile from our farm, smoke began floating from under the dash board, then the lights went out. No moon. We have to walk. The sense of danger swooped over us, when our little boy turned to his dad and said, “I brought my flashlight.” I almost cried.

We made it home safely to a joyful Amos who repeated over and over, “where were you guys?!”

There are lots of stories in A Homestead Decade - How Crunchy Granola Changed My Life, Amazon Kindle e-book (works on most digital devices) just $2.99. I hope you enjoy the book and the blog and send a little note about what you think. Enjoy a safe holiday this year. Thanks for stopping by.

Helene

EGGS

“After just a few weeks, the lovely little baby chicks became obnoxious, awkward, half-bony feathered adolescent animals. . . Why did the country life seem so appealing? And how did we get stuck raising 48 unruly chickens? . . .“

In pursuit of eggs (and meat) we impulsively bought an advertised 50# bag of chicken feed from a local feed store and as an incentive we were given a cake box size of 50 day-old baby chicks. The whole terrifying story is described thoroughly in A Homestead Decade – How Crunchy Granola Changed My Life (Amazon e-book, $2.99). As explained, we newbies to the homestead farm did not know how fast chickens grow, which included their rampant developmental stages (libido), and ultimate redistribution from our quiet little chicken yard to various outlets including a community freezer locker.

Four gentle hens remained in our barn happy to be away from raging roosters. Everyday their little nests offered up two or three big brown tasty eggs. Each morning I gave the egg time in admiration of its unique structure, value, and timely presence (24-hour production!). And yes, great appreciation to its original purpose. The hens developed a symbiotic relationship with us as we did with them. It was a calm time after the initial storm of 50 fast growing chickens was over.

Today, no longer on the homestead, I buy eggs in a grocery store. I try to purchase with a humane sense knowing that I have to trust the grower is really a local farmer and his or her chickens are as happy as our remaining hens. I know all the concerns – we as a nation just cannot satisfy the insatiable demand for eggs for our vast population with home grown free chickens. It is just not practical – unless . . . we carefully consider a small collection of backyard hens even in the middle of the city. What was that? Did I hear a groan? A quick calculation of reasons why chickens are just not an urban or even suburban animal? They’re dirty, noisy, they attract vermin. Not like dogs.  Wait ‘til I tell you about backyard goats. Just kidding . . . sort of.

I do have a fascinating egg story. In checking on the history, value, and cultural attachment to eggs in Wikipedia (www.wikipedia.org ) I saw that eggs were also used along with vegetables as a form of vandalism that insults with little damage. The story goes that when Candidate Harry S. Truman made a train stop through town, the local newspaper stated that he was pelted with rotten eggs.  River Grandma (also in the Crunchy Granola book) who  had a strong partisan political view, scoffed at the news story muttering loud enough for family nearby to hear, “the eggs were not rotten.”

Here’s to a pan of boiled eggs in the refrigerator for a quick protein boost.

Enjoy!

Affectionately,

Helene author of A Homestead Decade - How Crunchy Granola Changed My Life (Amazon Kindle book, $2.99)

A Tribute to Pets in Our Lives

A few days ago my dear brother, Leon, took his beloved golden retriever, Bridger, to the veterinarian to be released from a debilitating terminal cancer.

I am sure Leon will share many stories about Bridger in the next decade or so. Amos, who is described in his own chapter in the Crunchy Granola Book, is still the star of so many of our homestead decade episodes. That’s how it goes when a loved one dies. Those of us who have loved another animal in our household know very well the intense feeling of affection for them as well our human loved ones.

Here’s one for you Leon about Bridger in your family:

At one of those events at your house that involved lots of family and friends on a brilliant summer day, your nine-year old daughter played joyfully with the household pets including three dogs and a cat. Because Bridger was the oldest and most obedient at the time she decided to teach him “tricks” – jumping through hula hoops, racing through a child-designed obstacle course, and with full exuberance accepting the “reward” of barking-screaming laughter and big furry hugs. The young one did this training with so much enthusiasm that her 14-year-old sister, who had been trying to be sophisticated among the ‘tweens, wrestled with boring teendom or the pure joy of her baby sister and beloved dog. We watched the moment of submission when the 14-year-old decided that she deserved one more childhood fling and to Bridger’s happy surprise the two girls unabashedly played, ran the course, jumped the hoops and rolled the earth with their big furry buddy. It was a sight I will never forget.

It hurts so to let them go. Amos taught me so much about living on beyond dying. I am so grateful to have had him in our lives as you are with your Bridger.

 So this little blog today is a tribute to all who love and all who have loved a cherished pet friend. May your memories be superb.

If you like funny stories and a couple of sad stories I hope you take a look at the book A Homestead Decade -How Crunchy Granola Changed My Life (Amazon Kindle, $2.99, for all types of reading devices). Thanks for stopping by.

Helene   

Three Children, 13 Years, No Television

“No television?!”  a parent at one of the school functions exclaimed loudly to me during our homestead days. I was surprised at her reaction as if our choice of not having television was a crime against our children. I tried to explain, but as we humans often do when we have a strong opinion about a social topic, she looked at me pretending to listen, but I could almost hear her brain calculating a dozen loud reasons why we have to have television. And there it was. Before finishing the last word of my explanation she was on me with a barrage of considerations why I must bring the box back into our lives.

GROWING UP WITHOUT TELEVISION

“What do you do at night?” another parent interested in the almost conversation asked. We talk, we make cookies, we read. I read the entire series of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House on the Prairie. The children went to bed comfortably sharing their thoughts about each chapter. Years later my daughter listened to her college dorm mates discuss Little House on the Prairie with events she never heard of until she realized they were talking about the television series of their own childhoods.

Our children became voracious readers each checking out seven to ten books at a time from the library. One day they practically demanded that I read C.S. Lewis’ The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe so we could talk about it. As I read this famous “children’s” book, I was horrified by so much of the violence and prejudicial innuendos. I had to write out my thoughts so we could discuss the piece calmly. That was the essence of our life without television – we had conversations.

For 13 years the pop culture world influenced by television went on without us. Think about your experiences a decade ago – life changes subtly but surely so that at the reflection moments of ten or more years we are shocked at what was and how our personal world had changed. Thirteen years in a child’s life is a very long time.

AND THE RESULTS ARE . . .

If this were an experiment on the effects of this dominant connection to the world I can tell you the response from these children and their use of television today is bonded with the changes in the medium itself. Television is now cable, but even more it has taken a broad and narrow path in communication all at the same time. Each of my adult children pays at least $200 a month for the broadest reach of their TV, particularly sports and movies. They are frustrated if the service is interrupted, partly because the television is also “bundled” with numerous other communication “devices” in their homes including The Computer. This is our brave new world. The effects of thirteen years without television? Nothing. They never missed a beat. They moved smoothly onto the super cyber highway.

As for Joel and I, we too have joined the world with computers and smarter than us cell phones. As for television itself, hmm . . . we still abhor the endless repeated commercials that treat us as if we had only one cell functioning in our brains. We watch a few commercial television shows and resent that we are paying for those commercials. We are fortunate to get the Canadian station CBC for a wider perspective of The News. Then there is PBS – Public Broadcasting System.  

Ah, PBS beauty and thought-provoking, uplifting and challenging, and the distinct absence of commercials every 7 minutes. America Revealed, hosted by Yul Kwon, has had a big influence on my reflective thinking about our homestead/business experiment days. We have all changed terrifically. We are facing an exciting new world in food production, renewable energy applications, global sharing. Wait a minute, maybe it isn’t so new, but rather founded and expanded on things learned in previous days. Just what did we learn then? I’ll let you know what comes out of those considerations in another blog.

Your feedback is greatly appreciated. I hope you get a chance to read A Homestead Decade: How Crunchy Granola Changed My Life (Amazon – Kindle good on any e-reading device – there’s that word again). C’mon back soon.

Helene 

What's for Dinner?

Every day my mother asks me, “What are you going to make for dinner?” At 90, Mom is still cooking fantastic meals even for one, though she does buy more convenience foods than ever before. She taught me without recipes, “Think in threes,” she used to say, “Three items on the plate – a salad or vegetable (vitamins), meat (protein), and starch (carbohydrate).” This guideline has basically served me and my family well over the years. Both of my daughters are very good cooks, so the simple message in balance has been passed on.

Maybe not so simple. In the years between Mom teaching me and me teaching my children the world has spun around several times. Food designs are a dominant issue with Americans and maybe all cultures. It is more than sustenance or even hunger, it is art and recreation, it is a measure of economic status, it is cultural identity. When we say, you are what you eat, we are not just referring to fat levels and vitamins. We really mean you and I are what we eat.

Before the crunchy granola era of my life, I relied more on crutches within my balanced “threes” – a quick premixed basic for such things as biscuits and quick bread, ground meats and bacon, and greens poured out of cans to be heated on the stove. It was a matter of confidence or lack thereof. Fear of failure drove our meals to the aisle of mediocrity.

Then came the first wave of “whole foods” for whole bodies all linked to the awareness of corporate food dominance over our meager meal dollars. Since then we have been in a vigorous race between mass production and personal charge of food gathering. On one side is production for masses (and the masses’ money) that includes an array of development issues – packaging, uniformity, transportation, distribution, volume both of product and of sales, often with an equal array of deep issues including animal care and overdose chemistry.

On the other side are such things as beautiful photography of food, a dozen or more television how-to cooking shows presenting not only fresh foods but glorious combinations of world cultures with unique crops tantalizing our very dreams.

When crunchy granola came along we did not have access to the television or the fresh food stores, we had to bravely learn the specifics of making our own bread and cereal and grow/preserve our own vegetables and fruits. And for protein, we city kids had to face the deepest of all issues:  taking the very life of the animals we raised to put true and good protein on our table.

It has been an interesting ride. These days in our family, we continue to seek out the least modified food because we now have greater access and cook up a grand feast of every variety to nurture our souls using color, texture, herbs and spices. We still throw a few apples in a pan with unbleached sugar and cinnamon and a sprinkle of nutmeg – cook it for a few minutes, mashing it with a fork for sweet hot applesauce. We still can our own minimally salted tomatoes in pints, hot water bath for a musical ping. We still make breads – flat breads, fruit breads, and fine breakfast cinnamon rolls. We have container gardens and fresh herbs during the season. All easy stuff.

All of this growth, it should be noted is without hostile judgment. We are very aware of population issues and the planet – land and water. And we do still love our Little Debbies (sorry if we offend the purists). We also know it isn’t over, this great big awareness and choice of how we will eat in the future. We know energy sources are changing, capturing water, growing vertically, eating locally grown products, finding protein in more efficient resources where the production costs are far less than the anticipated outcome. We personally began with crunchy granola as a life change, but honestly, in the big picture, we humans are on the verge of wonderful new ways to feed ourselves and our neighbors, we just have to work together, diligently, to make it happen.

Wishing you good food every day,

Helene

To Journal or Not to Journal

“Keep track of every day the date emblazoned on yr morning.”  - Jack Kerouac

Ninety years ago Jack Kerouac was born and I’m sure soon after began leaving an interesting legacy to all of us about loving life and keeping it close to our memory. Kerouac may have lived his vision much differently than most of us could, but his words to be vigilant are greatfully received.

I apply Kerouac’s advice to keeping a journal. Yeah, yeah, I know – eighth grade English class or that little locked diary your brother managed to find. No this is a journal, a record of life’s little joys and sorrows and maybe the weather.

My first real journal began as a garden record of that big garden described in the Crunchy Granola book. Somewhere along the entries of how the peas were growing a note slipped in on how the children were growing as well. Soon the children were far more interesting than the stoic vegetables. Once the journal was in gear, there was no stopping the dates emblazoning our mornings and nights deep into the decades of our collective life.

To share the value of recording in a journal with you I started looking back – waay back – and found some funny little pieces, like cherished photographs.  Amid the tremendous task of building a house, birthing a baby, and learning to make cheese, there are the little quips and moments of enlightenment. Here are a couple:

A three and a half year old, feeling secure in her family, watches her father leave the room for a moment. “You’re such a handsome king,” she tells him. Then she looks sweetly at me and says, “You knew that.” Or when she flops over her brother and turns to us, “look, Dad, I caught a turkey.”

Nine year old son was asked one day if he knew what body language is – “Yeah,” he answered, “that’s when your stomach growls at you.”

A magazine article suggesting children write to the President to receive an autographed picture sent our son into a long stare into space when he got the idea – “where are my school pictures?” He was going to trade with the President of the United States. His sister, two years older, exclaimed “Exchange pictures!? With the President?” and burst into a long stream of laughter that followed her through the house.

I found journal entries where the wisdom of the eleven year old first born caused me pause – the baby sister cried wildly when her father cut her toast. Big sister explained calmly to the parents that the baby wanted to eat a hole in the center of the toast first.

It wasn’t always children. Sometimes the journal included worldly issues of the times. I love this one:  In July 1975 the Russians and Americans are performing a milestone in space with the dual experiments of the Soviet  Soyuz and U.S. Apollo space maneuvers.  Meanwhile we are all wrapped up with our own exhausting house building project. Amid these two huge constructions, Joel wakes up one morning to tell me in his half sleep, “There are two great campers up there in the sky, checking out each other’s toilets.”

I had completely forgotten most of these incidents and now these many years later with adult children cuddling their own babies, I embrace the vision of them giggling in front of me. I cherish recorded mile markers in time, “14 years married next week”, “its been 28 years with my good friend, my partner, my love”. It has been many more years since then. These scratchings on paper remind me of the treasure in keeping a journal.

Warning: in this search I also discovered the down side of recording passionate thoughts in the journal – words of wisdom (or so I thought at the time) that are meaningless and boring.  Or worse, opinions about people and life that my ego wanted to share, opinions flopping around in the muddle of youth, my youth that show an immaturity that surprises me.  

Keeping a journal is definitely a personal preference, but overall, if anyone reads these when I have “passed”, I hope they enjoy the jokes and bypass the rest. Thanks, Jack, for the advice.

Please check out the e-book, A Homestead Decade How Crunchy Granola Changed My Life,(Amazon Kindle Book) to help understand the basis of this blog. It was great fun to write. The journals are the backbone to the memory.

Talk with you again soon.

Helene

WILD LIFE ADVENTURES IN THE HOMESTEAD

Yes, we had sheep, chickens, a horse, and of course goats – funny goats, but we don’t often hear about the wild animal surprises that graced our country life. Here are a few that linger lovingly and humorously in my memory.

One morning after the children left for school I heard an exceptionally loud buzzing and slapping against the enclosed porch windows. On checking I found what I thought was a large bee slamming the solar windows to get out. A closer look revealed a terrified emerald-throated hummingbird. For a few minutes the bird eluded my grasp. I grabbed a straw hat and carefully laid the head space of the hat over his resting exhausted body and tried to consider my next move. Soon the tiny bird was in my cupped hands. The truth of this situation ran goose-bumpy through me – a hummingbird, I was holding a hummingbird in my hands. His heart raced and yes we did make a moment of breathless eye contact. Hoping he was not injured, I carefully took him outside and thrust him into the air, to freedom. He flew to a tree and quickly began to clean the human off of his beautiful feathers. In another minute he was gone.

On that same porch, before it was completed, I sat on the steps in a moment of quiet meditation when I saw the slow creep of a long thin gardener snake moving along the cool cement. As I watched he slowed his pace and then stopped. He lifted two inches of his back end straight up. What the heck, I thought. Then I saw a small wet dribble rolling away from his body on the floor. After urinating he dropped his “tail” and continued his journey to the edge of the unfinished wall and out into the ground around the porch construction.  We receive many surprise gifts in our lives, but, honestly, how many times do you get to see a snake pee?

Then there was the great brown and black wild turkey who spotted a smaller lighter brown female foraging around the yard. This magnificent creature became immediately excited at the presence of the beautiful girl turkey -his withers turned bright red and the nodules on his head turned a brilliant blue. He dropped his large wings to show the full color spectrum. His white-tipped tail fanned out and he began a kind of Flamenco dance around the lady. She, of course, ignored him, moving slowly toward the woods. Without losing a step he danced across the stage of our yard following her. I watched them disappear into the woods - him dancing, her ignoring.

One night after a school concert we pulled into our driveway catching Vivian our cat in the headlights as she casually sauntered to greet us. We were not the only ones watching her. Just as we walked toward our little white and gray short haired friend, a great owl swooped out of the tree toward her. He was so intent on his prey he had not noticed our approach. Startled, he shot over our heads so close we could feel the rush of wind from his broad wings.

There are so many wild life stories, we’ll have to get together another time to share some of these. Thanks for stopping by. I hope you get a chance to read the memoir, A Homestead Decade How Crunchy Granola Changed My Life, for a healthy dose of country living experiences, Amazon Kindle e-book $2.99.  

Helene

ELDERBERRIES AND UNICORNS

Country living is bountiful in surprises, like elderberries. I only knew about elderberries because 

of our loved Les (now 98), who was always willingly to share his wonderful elderberry jam with all of the family. I did not know what he went through to get this interesting wild fruit until we added the Elderberry Jam project to our self-learning list.

The first step is to gather the berries along roadsides, creeks, and my favorite, an abundant growth along a railroad bed near us. Elderberries come to bloom in mid-July through August, but picking early is better because the competition for the fruit is intense. A multitude of birds, insects, little amphibians including shiny little snakes weaving among the bush branches also gather as soon as the hard red berry turns a soft deep purple.

On our first excursion in elderberry gathering we loaded the car with 5-gallon plastic buckets, heavy duty scissors, boots and rubber gloves, and a thermos of coffee. The blue-red blossom heads, each supporting dozens of berries are cut from the branches and dropped into the buckets to separate later at the convenience of home.

With rubber gloves on (avoiding determined elderberry stain on our hands) we rolled the berries off of the blossom heads into a large bowl to be crushed in another phase for the treasured jam. Joel and I worked together on this messy part of the task discussing the pleasing artistic form of the elderberry stems after the berries were removed and dreaming of the eventual sweet outcome of this fussing.

Deep into the process, elderberries sneaking past the rubber gloves staining our arms and clothes, porch and shoes, another life surprise cut through our concentrated senses. Jessie, who was just four at the time, was in the house with her sister and brother when she had an epiphany that demanded an answer. She swung the porch door open and forcefully called to Joel, “Dad! Where did all the unicorns go?”  blink      blink

Some questions just have no answers . . . yet.

Thank you for checking on this blog, the continuation of stories left out of A Homestead Decade How Crunchy Granola Changed My Life, Amazon Kindle, $2.99.  We hope you keep checking back because there is a lot more to come.

Helene

After the Book

My 94 year old Aunt Genevieve used to ask me about raising goats and chickens. She would laugh at the stories, commanding me even to the last week of her life, to write the stories down and share that intriguing part of our life.  That was the get-serious motivation to write, A Homestead Decade – How Crunchy Granola Changed My Life. I say get-serious because it was always one of those someday things we carry around in our to-do lists.

I was also motivated by the new world of the e-book and the ease of facilitating an outlet for such a book. Crunchy Granola, our shortcut to talk about the memoir, is now available on Amazon Kindle Books for a meager $2.99. We are grateful for the wonderful comments received about the book, yet we are also haunted by so much that was left out in our excited haste to get the thing done.

Therefore, in this new fantastic world of e! , we can continue the story and comments about “back-to-the-land” movements, then and now, through a web log. Join us as we see just where the blog takes us. It should be another intriguing journey of its own.

One such story is associated with getting water in and out of the house. I don’t find this topic discussed very often except in trade journals for plumbers and backhoe services. Not that these trade journals are easily accessible to me.

While we were building our homestead house, we planned for a 4” well to obtain water. Only one well-driller in the county had the equipment for such a wide pipe. We were told he was also a dowser, he could find water anywhere using the ancient dowser trick of grasping the forked ends of a branch in his hands and “feeling” the vibration of water from the point of the branch as the point dipped downward pointing to the source of water. Uh-huh. 

So we hired Mr. B to come find a good water source and drill a fine well for us. Well, Mr. B came on a Sunday evening after dinner dressed in his Sunday duds, a woman sat in the truck waiting for him. He sliced a forked branch of a young wild cherry grumbling a bit to himself about no willows on the property. Dowsing rod in position he began walking slowly over the land surrounding the house. We followed trying to see the point of the stick around his large body. In a moment of anticipating some country magic we heard a grand almost musical fart burst through Mr. B’s aura. Joel glanced at me wide eyed before he began to laugh out loud. Mr. B was not fazed. He continued walking over the building site up the western slope through briars and mud at the edge of the trees finally declaring “There it is.”

What? No shimmy on the stick, not even a downward point? And look at the spot, Joel protested, the unprepared west side of the house, up a hill, in the woods! There was no way we could get a big well drilling rig up there. By some dowsing mystery, Mr. B rather quickly “found” water on the flatter south side of the property, where he eventually dug our well 80’down. Now that was a powerful dowsing rod.

 
So goes the stories of our country living. I am hoping to have some fun with this blog sharing stories and recipes and comments on the desire to live in the country. If you would like to take a look at the book, A Homestead Decade – How Crunchy Granola Changed My Life, you can read a sample chapter free on www.Amazon.com Kindle Books. Or better yet, just order a copy for your Kindle or PC or smartphone. Cheap. And it’s a fast and funny read. Let me know what you think.

Helene