I Joined The Club

For years I have enjoyed reading a magazine called "Mary Jane's Farm", which talks about things like gardening, sewing, camping, outdoor cooking (and bathing, which I would never ever do). Snarky Jamey sometimes refers to it as my 'hippie commie magazine' (I like to remind him that the early Christians also had communist leanings, if you think about it, although their motivation was quite different). One day I was chatting with my neighbor and she mentioned a 'farmgirl sisterhood' she had started, and I recognized the term from Mary Jane's mag and asked her about it. Turns out there are several women who gather at her house every other Monday to do 'farmgirl' stuff (although I think if any actual farmgirls knew about all this, they would just laugh in our faces). They made aprons, created an all-organic lunch of soup, salad and bread that they made mostly from their gardens, started a beehive, and have hiked all over the county to view wildflowers. I, being a farmgirl wannabee, have been to two of these meetings. I helped to weed a neighbor's garden, and, along with about 10 other ladies, I helped to make this beautiful soap. Out of goat's milk and lye. Lye is nasty - it is difficult to find and purchase (you have to convince the pharmacist you are not making meth, apparently), it really stinks, and it burns the skin instantly, so we had to wear goggles and gloves (for more lovely photos and goings-on, you can check out the blog at wildatheartfarmgirls.blogspot.com). I learned that it is MUCH easier to buy soap at the store. I really appreciate soap manufacturers, in fact. Then, I went to the store and bought myself an apron. Our next meeting is on Monday and I'll let you know what we do or don't do next!

Benefits of A Rainy Winter

It was a very rainy winter. One week in February this year, we got almost 12 inches of rain. My favorite running route is still closed off because of standing water. Our old house has leaked in two different places. The floor just inside the back door was constantly muddy. The creek was way up and the dog was bored.

But as you can see from the above photo (from our local NBC website, ksby.com) we are currently enjoying the benefits of all that water. We've never seen such flowers - from the bulbs and blossoms in our own yard to the wildflowers in abundance on the hills. I have at this very moment 22 tulips and 10 irises in various vases around the house. Amazing!!

All of this means: it's gardening season!! Planted so far: onions, artichokes. We will keep you posted.....

The Feast

It started out several years ago, when the first day of the NCAA basketball tourney coincided with Saint Patrick's Day. Since our whole staff team (of 5) was going to be at my house watching the games anyway, I thought I'd just make some corned beef and cabbage for dinner. When else could we eat such a thing? The next year, I added colcannon, a potato dish, and an apple crisp for dessert. Later on, I decided it would also be fun to try to speak in an Irish brogue for the whole day. Which brings us to this year's St Patty's Day feast at our house.....now for a crowd of 24 (our staff, interns, our kids, and 'significant others'). Menu: Brown bread, Irish cheddar, pickles, corned beef and cabbage with mustard-cream sauce, Irish stew, colcannon, and Irish cream cheesecake for dessert. Here's how my Tuesday (the 16th) and Wednesday (17th) went.....

Tuesday, March 16 - 6 a.m.: set out 48-oz brick of cream cheese to soften, dig giant crab-cooking pot and spring-form pan out of cellar.

6:05 - wash dust and cobwebs off of pot and pan

9 a.m. - prepare first two loaves of Irish brown bread for baking

10:30 - prepare next two loaves for baking, consider eating half of a loaf for lunch but resist

noon - boil 25 potatoes, cook chopped kale and onion for colcannon

12:30 - shove baking dish full of colcannon into fridge (rearranging things to find space)

1p.m. - begin making first of two Irish cream cheesecakes, which require the aforementioned brick of cream cheese, the spring-form pan, and three stages (crust, filling, topping) of mixing and baking. Quickly realize why I haven't made this cheesecake in 14 years (Christmas of '96!). Consider putting some Bailey's Irish Cream in my iced coffee, but chicken out, since I have to pick up 5 kids from school in two hours. Also, I don't really drink Bailey's Irish Cream...

10 p.m. - get last cheesecake out of oven, cool, cover, cram into over-crowded fridge

Wednesday, March 17 - 5:30 a.m.: get bag of produce out of cellar where it was being stored since there was no more room in fridge; secretly rejoice that there are no signs of mice getting into it

6 a.m.- chop 3 onions; cook with 3 lb beef for Irish Guiness stew; begin stew in crock pot

9-11 a.m. - clean house, shower, find green T-shirt and earrings, listen to Chieftans station on Pandora

11 a.m. - chop turnips, carrots, parsnips; add to stew

1 p.m. - start simmering 3 corned beef roasts in giant crab pot on stove

4 p.m. - add cabbage to corned beef, put colcannon in oven, get drinks ready in big tub, get dishes and silverware out (including awesome festive napkins I bought last year after St Pat's Day)

5 p.m. - enjoy the party, the music by the Chieftans, watching Kevin and Jenn's red-haired daughter Abby run around my yard chasing chickens, and trying to master an Irish brogue. Give large helpings of cheesecake to the people who drove my kids home from their youth groups so we didn't have to leave the party

9 p.m. - 10:30 - do most of the clean up (Jamey helped. A LOT), take out several bags of garbage, start dishwasher, store leftovers, eat one last piece of cheesecake, consider making cheesecake more often

Thursday at 4 p.m. - put away last of the dishes, clean sink with bleach because Irish food seems greasy, enjoy a delicious piece of cheesecake with kids, collapse on couch to watch some basketball games, start thinking about next year's feast!

I have been asked why I do this? Why don't I make it a potluck? Truly, I have no idea, except that I like doing it once a year (twice....I also do a staff Christmas dinner). If this is still a conundrum for you, read a short story called "Babette's Feast" by Isak Dinesen (it was made into a movie years ago. In Danish. I actually made Jamey watch it once). It's about a French woman who washes up on a Scandinavian shore after a shipwreck and is cared for by the townspeople. Then she wins the lottery and uses the money to make them all a grand French feast in appreciation. All of the money. They, being stoic, strict Puritan-types, don't get it. I don't really, either, except that I really love feeding the people I like a good meal. Once or twice a year. Or four times, if you count the annual Super Bowl Party and Memorial Day Barbecue, too....

Green Eggs....and Chicken

Oh, the dilemma: we were all mentally prepared to place an ad offering "seven retired non-laying hens, free" on Craig's List, since we hadn't seen an egg since about July (I had to start buying them at the grocery store again....unacceptable!). We had toyed with the idea of butchering them ourselves (messy, gross, and I'm not going to pluck the things) but were warned that old chickens are way too tough to cook any other way except 'boiling the dickens out of them', as one of my neighbors suggested. Then, just when we were ready to go online and type up the add, I found the above beautiful greeny-blue egg in the box. I have found several since then. Actually, someone has been laying enough for our family (8 or so per week) so we are granting the girls a temporary stay of execution.

I guess this means I will not yet be getting a miniature cow or donkey that I've had my eye on....

News Briefs From The Homestead

I thought I would take a couple of photos that show what happens when I walk out the back door. The chickens come waddling from all corners of the yard in hopes of some scraps (if I don't bring them anything, they hop up on the picnic table and look for leftover cat food....greedy little things!), the cat comes running to me because he loves me so (okay, maybe it's because he's hoping for some food, too), and Max the dog, well, he is just always looking for a good belly-scratching.

In other news, we gave Jason's room a thorough cleaning this week. We gave clothes and toys to Goodwill, shoes to Haiti, and about a million gum wrappers and a pound of dirt and pretzel crumbs to the garbage can. And if you have ever felt like an inadequate housekeeper, what I am about to tell you will be amazing for your self-esteem. I decided to clean out the top two shelves of Jason's closet, so I could put more stuff up there and get it out from under the bed. Because our house is old and quirky, Jason's closet is narrow and deep, so getting to the shelves involves maneuvering a chair in there, and then holding onto a wooden rod with one hand while using a long yardstick (or broom handle...or arrow) to pull stuff out from the depths. And because I am short, I can't always see what I am bringing out until it falls on my head. First I pulled out some blocks, old matchbox cars, and a bin of dried-up play-doh. But then, I retrieved the object in the very back after much effort. And it was...(this is really embarrassing) a package of pull-ups (yes, the diaper kind). Have I mentioned that Jason is almost THIRTEEN? Wow. Glad those are gone! That could be humiliating if found by someone's junior high buddies.

Last news item - Grace is away this weekend on a mission trip with her youth group. They are in Fresno, and when you are done snickering, let me tell you that Fresno is one tough city. There are some very gnarly parts of town, and that's where the 40-plus kids are. Now I am getting a glimpse of what it's like for the parents of our Cal Poly students when we go off to exotic places like El Salvador and East Asia (and San Diego, and Colorado....). It is a new way of 'trusting God with my kids'. Grace took our camera with her, so some photos are coming shortly, I am sure....

Enjoy the Super Bowl and Valentine's Day and we will be in touch soon with the latest from our little acre!

Christmas Trees and Bonfires....

We got home last weekend from San Diego, where we spent a few great days at Campus Crusade's Winter Conference. It's a whole lot of fun for us all. Lots of students, time with dear staff friends, an adjacent amazing mall (complete with after-Christmas sales! Would you believe there's no mall in the entire county of San Luis Obispo? It's true), a pool and jacuzzi for all of the junior-high-aged boys, warm-water surf - oh, the endless delights!

The down side of going away for a week right after Christmas is losing all of that time to slowly put away the decorations at your leisure. Instead, we arrived home on the evening of January 1st to a crispy tree and some droopy red ribbons on the picket fence (it rained while we were gone). Every year it's the same dilemma - what to do with that tree? In the past, we've taken it in to be made into mulch (have I mentioned that our neighborhood is somewhat insanely environmentally conscious?), and the other option, of which I am a little bit ashamed, but not really: cutting it into bits and shoving it into the green waste garbage can (do NOT tell our neighbors!). This year, however, I discovered a fabulous option number three.

I happened to be standing looking out onto the street when I saw my neighbor's son drive past with a pickup truck full of old Christmas trees, which he took into his yard. Later that day (I'm not exaggerating here - it was the same day) I was driving past the back of their property, and saw the trunks and a few spindly branches left of those same trees. "Wow, that's fantastic!" I thought, and wondered what had stripped those trees so quickly? Turns out it was 6 goats having themselves a delicious post-holiday treat. So immediately we volunteered our tree to be goat chow, which made everyone happy.

Another neighbor of mine disposed of his tree in more dramatic fashion: with a burn pile to beat all burn piles. I'm not kidding when I say that many people around here look forward to burn days with a glee that makes me a little bit uncomfortable. Country boys like to play with fire, I suppose. It gets very dry here in the summer and fall, you see, so we must await the winter rains and the all-clear from the sheriff before we can light up those piles of trimmings, leaves and brush. Anyway, the smoke from this fire could be seen and smelled for miles (all the way up at the junior high downtown). On our way down the road, coming home from school, I wondered whose barn was on fire. But no worries - as we passed by (trying not to let the 20-foot flames blind me or melt the paint on the side of my truck) we could see a happy young boy standing beside his proud papa (complete with beer can in hand) watching the bonfire. This was right before I drove into the giant cloud of smoke. It was impressive - in fact (I'm not making this up), the pile was still smoldering and spewing out smoke at least 24 hours later. Now THAT'S a fire. We ourselves are a little more demure with our fires - we only have a burn barrel (yes, that's correct. In addition to a chicken coop, a trailer, and an old station wagon, there's also a barrel in my yard. Stop humming that Hank Williams Jr song). We only use it occasionally for excess cardboard, last year's schoolwork, and our Christmas wrapping paper (it's quite a show - foil wrap makes awesome colors). And possibly a very small amount of styrofoam and/or plastic packaging may or may not have been thrown in just to see what would happen....do NOT tell our neighbors!

Thoughts While Making Dumplings

I recently made 27 apple dumplings. And soon I'll be making about a dozen more. It was my opportunity to put on some Christmas music (thank you Pandora.com) and do some good menial tasks in silence. Delightful! Almost as good as the morning I drove from our house down to Cambria along my very favorite country road (Santa Rosa Creek Rd) to get some chocolate sauce and other gift items to send back east. The dumplings remind me of my grandma and great-grandma, and maybe that's why I love making them. Also, they cannot be rushed. It is slow work making the dumplings - peeling, coring, filling, then wrapping and baking. It makes me slow down and gives me time to think. And did I mention the quiet? Except for the music, of course - side note: when you choose "Chieftans Holiday" music as your Pandora.com station, you get some great Celtic-style Christmas songs and, occasionally, a hilarious holiday Irish drinking song thrown in (there's one that tells the story of an Irish man who couldn't make it the whole way home on Christmas Eve and had to sleep in a church and woke up during midnight mass, for example). My other favorite thing about making dumplings is that there's not really a recipe. When I asked my grandma for one, she didn't know it, and just started making them, saying, "Well, you just do this, and then add some of this, and then do this, and then sprinkle on some of this...." so I gathered the info on my own, frantically writing down what I saw her doing. And they turn out all right! Just like having your own personal apple pie, and even better with ice cream. The taste of Christmas, to me.

In the slowed-down-ness of Christmas vacation, we are also finding time to play games and watch some of our favorite holiday classics ("Home Alone", "A Christmas Story"), and to enjoy some things that only happen around Christmas, like the Garden Farms Holiday Parade (truly a sight to behold!). Last year, Jamey got to dress up like Santa and lead the way. This year we got to dress up Sandy the '62 Rambler and drive her in the parade. I have to admit, the car was pretty cute with all of the decorations that Grace and her friend Shelly put on. There was also an assortment of old trucks, tractors, wagons, a wheelbarrow or two, a couple of horses, and a Porsche that I didn't even know my neighbor owned (what a show-off!). The parade started at one end of Walnut Avenue and proceeded all the way through the neighborhood to our neighbors' garage (which looks like an actual garage from the outside, but has couches, a wood stove, and a beer tap - probably for home brew - on the inside) for grilled sausage and tri-tip, because in Garden Farms, we're always on the lookout for a reason to enjoy some barbecued tri-tip!

Later that evening Jason and I went down to SLO for the annual Christmas carol sing-along at our church, which I love. If you are not yet in the Christmas spirit, try reading the verses of O Holy Night (2 is my favorite) or What Child Is This? I secretly sing these two songs to myself when impatient or greedy people in cars or stores make me forget momentarily what Christmas is really about.

In the words of Tiny Tim (the Dickens character - not the odd 60's singer), "God bless us, everyone!"

Hope you all have a wonderful, meaningful, peaceful Christmas!