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