Fall Photos (Book Review and Old World Roots)

Just going through my recent photos, I noticed these beautiful autumn images. It's now December, and the gorgeous autumn leaves have long ago turned into compost, but I wanted to share these pictures nonetheless.

This hasn't been a particularly beautiful Fall. Even when it is a particularly beautiful Fall here, it isn't, compared to Fall in some other parts of the world, like Vermont. We in the Pacific Northwest are accustomed to our soggy, brown, moldy Autumns. If we are lucky, and paying attention, we might see one beautiful weekend. Here is our beautiful weekend 2011.

These photos are already some five weeks in the past. Today was the first sunny day in weeks, and I let the goats out to graze. One sunny day does not make up for weeks of rain; I stepped in the ankle deep mud, freezing and clammy. I have simply had to resign myself to the fact that the reality of life, currently, is cold mud, even when the sky is clear blue and the mercury unseasonably tops forty-five degree.

Today, the first sunny day this Fall warm enough to entice me outside to allow my animals to graze, was really lovely. I brought a book: Miriam's Kitchen, a book about a woman rediscovering her Jewish roots, and read it while I relaxed in a canvass chair with an oak-stick resting gently against my knee. The author tells the story of growing up the child of holocaust survivors, and marrying the son of holocaust survivors. All four of her children's grandparents are immigrants, refugees, and formerly orthodox Jews. One side of the family assimilates, and the other doesn't. The author grows up in a "culturally Jewish" family, a family which observes Hanukkah and Passover but doesn't keep kosher. She marries into a traditional family which does keep kosher and which is observant in ways her family was not. The book is the story of her slowly reconciling the two sides, mostly via the kitchen. I highly recommend it for anyone who is attempting to create or maintain a spiritual tradition for their children.

I am fairly certain I will never decide to do the hard work of rediscovering my own Jewish roots. My mother's family were Ashkenazi Jews who immigrated at the beginning of the twentieth century and who lost their traditions over a couple of generations of living in America. My family has ignored their roots to such a degree that much of my own generation doesn't even realize they have Jewish roots to rediscover. All I have left is a better-than-average Yiddish vocabulary and a wry sense of humor.

My sister has chosen to resurrect (ha!) the family's heritage to the extent with which she feels comfortable. I wouldn't presume to speak for her, but I believe that she has found a rich spiritual vein to mine, one that lives and speaks to her. She has chosen the rituals that she practices because they have something to say to her, something she believes valuable to pass on to her children. I have chosen other rituals from other traditions that I believe pass on similar lessons.

Few Americans of my generation were raised in a faith tradition. There are good things and bad things about that fact, and I'm not going to debate them. Personally, I am happy to have the freedom to develop, organically, my own faith. However, I recognize that that freedom comes at a cost, a cost that I can never even fully understand. Most of us, those of us who have no ingrained faith but who nonetheless long to instill a living spirituality in our children, must search our family backgrounds for traces of a tradition hardy enough to resurrect. Or, if our background yields none, then we must search the general landscape, a landscape which is becoming more and more sterile over the years.

I found Zion Lutheran, a small country church with a century long heritage of ministering to local farming families. The congregation is tiny, and elderly, but the tradition is unbroken. In the pews each sunday sit couples who were married in the same nave a half century ago, and every year there are a few funerals for members who were baptized there a hundred years before. Zion offers a beautiful, traditional liturgical service and close observance of a sacred calendar. I joined in order to worship with my neighbors, but I have also found great joy in seeing my children baptized there. On any given sunday there are few children in attendance, and the baptism of young members is a special occasion. I find a surprising amount of happiness in braiding my family into this small local faith tradition.

This is blasphemy in nearly all traditions, I suppose, but the truth is, I really don't care what particulars a faith teaches. I don't care if my congregation worships Jesus or Allah or

Buddha or freakin' Zoroaster. Every faith I've ever studied espouses more or less the same universal values: kindness, love, reciprocity, forgiveness, and honesty. That is what I want for my chikldren: that they be kind, honest, and loving. It so happens that I believe those values are best transmitted through an intact faith system. Or an intact mythology, if you prefer.

I also believe in the value of prayer. I don't think it matters much who one prays to: I have a household altar and many different deities have made an appearance on it. I don't think God cares about names. I think the impulse toward the sacred is universal, and universally valid. Certain images have resonance for me, and I assume different images have resonance for others. That should threaten me? Why?

Here's my prayer for the day: God reaches out towards all people at all times. May all of us recognize the divine when it stretches into our hearts and lives. May all of us honor it. May all of us feel the blessing and the beauty when we reach back out towards God, however God appears to us.

Annual Duck (Harvesting Breasts)

Our newest Christmas season tradition around here is wild duck for dinner. A very generous duck hunting neighbor of ours (hereinafter Duckman)has taken to stopping by on his way home and dropping off a few ducks for us. I guess he likes hunting duck more than he likes eating it. Also, he heard that my husband really loves duck - which is true. Me, I could take it or leave it, but Homero adores duck. Above is a lovely brace of mallards we were given yesterday.

Duckman showed me, the very first time he gave me some ducks, how to cut out the breast, which is the only part he eats. Last year, when Homero's family was here, Mama and Temy cleaned all five ducks and we roasted them whole, but I am just not up for that. If I could have convinced Homero to get the livers out for me, I would have used them as well, but since I was on my own, I only harvested the breasts.

It sounds wasteful, I know, but seriously, the breast comprises about 60% of the meat on a wild duck, anyway. The liver is another 20%, and the rest of the carcass is pretty much a mass of splintery sharp bones.

The nice thing about plucking duck breasts is how easy it is. No need for hot water, just grab and pull. The feathers come out very easily, and the small fluff left over can be singed off with a wooden kitchen match.

Do watch out for shotgun pellets!

To remove the breast, take a very sharp knife and cut down at an angle as closely to the keel bone as you can. Follow the natural curve of the muscle. It's not difficult at all to get the breast off in more or less one piece, with a nice cap of skin still attached, for roasting up crispy.

These four breasts are now submerged in a mixture of soy sauce, honey, and rice wine vinegar and will be quickly broiled and served over the wild rice and fennel salad leftover from Thanksgiving. Homero usually gets them mostly to himself, which makes him very happy.

Getting Ready to Go (Travel Expenses)

We try to make it to Mexico to see Homero's family every other year. We used to try to go every year, but travel has simply become too expensive. Ticket prices have more than doubled in the last several years, and we now have to buy FIVE tickets. In years past, we could put a child or two on our laps and save money. This years trip is costing us more than twenty-five hundred dollars in tickets ALONE.

It doesn't help that Homero's family lives in Oaxaca, a relatively inaccessible city. We never fly all the way to Oaxaca - it would double the ticket prices. We fly to Mexico city and take a seven hour bus ride. That adds a day's travel on either side of our flight date, unless we want to bite the bullet and do the whole shebang in one stretch - leave home five hours before flight from Seattle, take two flights, land in Oaxaca, take a cab across the western hemisphere's biggest city to the bus station, wait for a bus, and then ride seven hours to Oaxaca. A further half hour to Mom's house, where we cannot fall into bed, but must first endure the celebration dinner she has prepared for us (it doesn't matter if we arrive at 3 am) and exchange gifts with all twenty-six relatives who are there to greet us. In recent years, I've decided that there will be a night in a hotel somewhere along the way. I'm getting too old for that non-stop shit.

There are more costs than just tickets, of course. We always have to go for a minimum of three weeks, and that is rather a lot of lost income from Homero's time off work. Then we have to make sure the barn is stocked with feed and the propane tank is full and the bills are all paid up so we won't come home to a cold, dark house and a bunch of starving animals. Here, from a past vacation, is a non-comprehensive list of the things I did to prepare for a previous vacation:

Our annual vacation to Mexico to visit family (postponed lo these last three years due to straitened circumstances) are fast upon us. We leave in something like three weeks. I have managed, thank the Lord, to hire a seemingly competent babysitter for the farm (Farmsitters (Just Whose Expectations Are Too High Here?)). Other farmwives will understand when I say there is no level of certainty that will allow me to relax and enjoy the vacation as I should: specters of mastitis, wormy anemia, and footrot will haunt me no matter how far I may wander.

That being the case, all I can do is my best to prepare for the worst. Here is my list of "things that must be done" divided into two categories: House and Farm:

House:

1) pay bills. We don't want the electricity shut off (or the water, or the phone) while our house-sitter is here.

2) Clean the shit out of everything. If I were housesitting for someone, I wouldn't want to discover a moldy refrigerator drawer or a smelly secondary toilet. I would want plenty of clean towels and sheets.

3) Make a set of keys. Currently, I don't even own a set of keys for my own house. 'Nough said.

4) write instructions for everything - how to use the washer and the dryer, the TV remote, et cetera. Plus such things as how much to feed the dogs and where to put the food for the elusive cat.

5) work up a set of emergency numbers - which means contacting a bunch of shirttail relatives and begging them to be available in case of emergency. If they were readily willing to be available, I wouldn't be hiring a stranger, now would I?

Farm:

1) stock up on animal food: full 50 pounds of goat food and chicken food, three or four bales hay, ditto straw for bedding.

2) make stop-gap repairs on barn floor: the floor is totally rotted out but a permanent fix is beyond our means at the moment, so a temporary fix would be something along the lines of:

a) break up and remove rotted plywood flooring

b) scrape and clean out subfloor as much as possible

c) lay cheap-ass treated particle board over studs

d) lay in a supply of straw for bedding

3) set up an account with both the veterinarian and the farm-store, so that any emergencies can be addressed by the farm sitter without a personal outlay.

4) Fix the lawnmower (again - don't ask) and do a final mow of both the lawn and the evil weeds. More to say about the weeds - next post.

5) Trim goat hooves. A long overdue task that haunts me in my dreams.

6) Write a detailed instruction booklet for milking and feeding. I know it sounds easy - "squeeze tits until milk stops flowing" but actually there's just a bit more to it than that. Things like "Goats will most likely jump up on the milking stand alone, but to get them off you must sling your arm around their neck and use the crook of your elbow to haul them down and guide them out the door..." as a matter of fact, I'm pretty sure instructions like the preceding are better demonstrated than explained via the written word, so I should

7) schedule a practice run for the farmsitter (compensated, of course) .

That's about all I have time to think about right now. No doubt there's a great deal more, which I will most likely heartily regret failing to address when I am on the beach in Huatulco and my farmsitter is sending me messages marked "urgent."

And finally, we have to pay the farm sitter. At least this year we don't have to find one: Rowan has finally reached the age whereat she is responsible enough to be left alone for weeks to take care of the farm. I am eighty percent certain she won't 1) burn anything down; 2) move in a bunch of loser friends; or 3) let any animals actually starve. Luckily, my sister and her family are in the area, so they will be an emergency backup.

Vacations are supposed to be relaxing, aren't they? Oh my God, I can't think of anything more stressful than preparing for vacations. But I usually do enjoy them once I get there. For your perusal, here are a few vacation-related posts from the past:

New To Farm Life: To My Farmsitter

Vacation Expenses

Vacation Anxiety

Pig Farming is Not Sexy

I'm sorry to disappoint those of you who were dreaming of a glamorous existence raising a few hogs in your perfectly manicured back yard, but I have got a news flash for you. Pig farming is not sexy. Not remotely. There are no paparazzi, there is no jewelry or red carpets, and there is no fanfare or glory.

There are only pigs, and mud.

this is reality.

Pig farming is not romantic. Piglets are cute, I'll grant you that, for about six weeks. Then they turn into pigs, which are not cute. They are not adorable; they do not make friends with other animals like Wilbur from Charlotte's web; and they are not clean and pink.

this is a fantasy. this is not reality.

Pigs are large, aggressive, pushy animals with teeth. They WILL knock you over, and you WILL land on your ass in a pile of pig shit. Pig shit, by the way, is one of the more offensive types of shit. Like that of other omnivores, pig shit is stinky. By comparison, horse shit smells of newly mown grass. Goat shit is practically invisible, and smells like nothing at all. Pig shit smells like an open sewer on a hot August day. And pigs shit every two minutes, on average.

Pigs are not easy to move around. It is a struggle to get pigs to go where you want them to go (this is also true of goats, but a little less so). Like goats, pigs are escape artists, and like goats, they will ruin your fences. Goats ruin fences by mashing them down from the top; pigs ruin fences by crumpling them up from underneath.

A pig's nose is like a mini-bulldozer. By the time a pig weighs fifty pounds, it is stronger than you are. I don't care if you are Arnold Schwarzenegger on his best day: a fifty pound pig can lift you right off the ground with it's nose. They are fast as deer, too: older folks might remember that county fairs used to have greased-piglet-catching contests. Whoever took that ribbon home earned the hell out of it, I'm here to tell you.

oh, you aren't scared of pigs? really?

Pigs are destructive to pasture and -God forbid - gardens. Ten minutes in your vegetable patch and you can kiss your harvest goodbye. Wherever pigs are, mud is not far behind. Put a few pigs on a major league baseball diamond and in a week flat there will be nothing but brown soup.

There is only one thing that justifies keeping pigs, and you already know what it is. It is their unearthly deliciousness. If a more delicious animal than a homestead-raised pig roams this earth, it hasn't been discovered yet. I pity the person who has only tasted supermarket pork. Pastured pork may be hard on the pasture, but is is heaven on the plate. Pork is one of those few products, like sweet corn or tomatoes, that when raised at home is simply in a whole different league than the commercial product.

In the past, we always raised one pig at a time. Then somebody told me that the pig must be terribly lonely, that more than other animals pigs need the company of their own kind. Also this person said that many of the obnoxious behaviors I complained of, such as screaming and biting, were probably related to loneliness and that two pigs would actually be easier than one.

twice as much bacon; twice as much hassle

This made some kind of sense to me, as I have myself noted that two children are usually easier than one. However, I am sorry to say, this fellow was just flat out wrong in our case. Two pigs are twice as noisy, twice as hard to manage, and twice as scary as one pig.

Here's hoping they will also be twice as yummy. :)

Cheap, Homely, and Comfortable (Winter Food... OK, and Me, Too)

"Cheap, homely, and comforting..." yes, those adjectives could be used to describe me just as easily as they could be used to describe the food coming out of my kitchen in these dark winter months. It's true, and I can't deny it.

The average man might be happier to describe his dinner this way than he would his wife. The adjectives "cheap, homely, and comforting" just sound better when applied to a bowl of cock-a-leekie soup than they do when applied to a forty year old woman. On the other hand, the adjectives "Thin, hardbodied, and high-maintenance" don't really sound enticing applied to dinner.

While we are on the subject, there's a small, slightly amusing anecdote I'd like to relate. Before Homero and I were married, but far enough into our relationship that I was shopping and cooking for him regularly, I found myself complaining to my girlfriend about my future husband's atrocious taste in bread. I was - and am - a fan of whole wheat artisan bread, but Homero was - and is - a devotee of Wonderbread.

"He just loves squishy white bread," I told my girlfriend. "All he wants to eat is squishy white bread." She looked me right in the eye and said "lucky for you, sister."

I love you, Char.

Potatoes. Potatoes are the very cheapest and most comforting of winter foods. We still have half of a five gallon bucket full of our own home grown spuds, but those will soon be gone and we will be relying on grocery store potatoes, like everyone else. I don't know about you, but here, at this time of year, we can get a twenty pound sack of Russets for six bucks. Put those out in your cold storage shed and you are good for a month.

Tonight we ate roasted potatoes - our homegrowns are Rose Finns and Russian Bananas - both dense, nutty fingerlings. They are best simply scrubbed, sliced in half in large, and doused with olive oil and a little salt and roasted at 375 for an hour. Ten minutes before they are done, open the oven and add the juice of a big fat lemon, some minced parsley, and fresh ground pepper. It's pretty much a meal in itself, though a wedge of cheese and a glass of beer doesn't hurt.

Apples are wonderful. Apples are nearly free for the taking in a good year - there are so many old, abandoned trees about on the roadsides, you can pick at will. Even if you haven't got the guts for that, there are you-pick farms and roadside stands where you can get as many apples as you like for about $0.25 the pound. A few days ago I picked a laundry hamper full (as much as I could carry) for $15. Twenty minutes work on my part keeps us in eating apples and pie for a month. Once again - a cardboard box in the shed where they will be protected from freezing, and they will keep through January, at least.

Simple Pie:

Buy some crust. I know - it's sacrilege, but if it's the difference between apple pie for breakfast and no apple pie for breakfast, I guarantee everyone will come down on the side of the sacrilege. Slice up five decent sized apples in a bowl and toss with 1/4 cup sugar, a full teaspoon cinnamon, juice of a small lemon, and a full teaspoon corn starch. Roll out the crust into a greased pie plate and heap up apples. Add second crust on top and cut a few vents. Bake at 375 until crust is deep golden brown and apples are bubbling out of vents, about 45 minutes. Serve with hot coffee and clotted cream.

Cabbage is the cheapest green vegetable available throughout the year, but it is actually at it's best in early winter. If you haven't got your own, you can get a nice big firm head at any market for about $2.00. That's enough cabbage to feed the whole family for a week. If you do have your own, store it - you guessed it - out in the cold storage shed. Other members of the cabbage family that are their best this time year include kale, collards, and brussels sprouts.

Real beef is a seasonal product. We recently bought a side of beef from our neighbor, who raises 100% grass fed cattle on his forty-acres. You might not be lucky enough to have beef for sale that you can see grazing out your front window, but nonetheless, almost everybody has access to grass fed beef in bulk these days, through the magic of the internet. A side of beef is a huge amount - we will be passing a great deal on to friends and family. In general, I'd say a quarter of beef will feed a family of four for seven or eight months - as long as it lasts in the freezer.

Grass fed beef is seasonal because here in the northern hemisphere, grass dies in the fall. After the first frost, grass' nutritional content is pretty much kaput. Any cattle that you want to keep alive through the winter must be fed on hay - either purchased or produced on your own land, which, of course, reduces the grass available for grazing during the summer months. That's why slaughter time is October around here, and that's why our freezer is full to bursting.

Carrots and onions, along with beets, parsnips, celery root, turnips, rutabagas, and other humble roots make up the rest of the cheap, homely, comfortable larder of winter. Even if you don't grow any of these yourself, they are among the cheapest foods available in the grocery store between september and march. And the most versatile.

I myself am a big fan of stews. There are many delicious, traditional soups and stews developed ages ago to nourish the family through the long, dark, European winter. Pair a hearty borscht or beef stroganoff with a loaf of home baked sourdough rye and you will feel ready to go into hibernation well-fed. My husband, coming as he does from the sun drenched equatorial lands, has no inbred dread of long winters and therefore no congenital appreciation for the kind of serious food necessary to bear one through the long, depressing months of darkness. He has been known to complain when I serve soup and bread three days running. Silly man. Where do you think you are, Mexico?

Here is one of my favorite compromises: a hearty root vegetable stew that hails from a hot sunny clime and uses plenty of wake-you-spices. I am happy because I have used only seasonal veggies and pantry staples, and Homero is happy that he gets to eat a fiery delight.

Aimee's Peanut Stew, Winter Style:

1 yellow onion, chopped

3 cloves garlic, smashed

1 inch ginger root, minced

6-8 carrots, depending on size, chopped

1 Tbsp oil

1 tsp hot red pepper flakes

1 chicken bouillon cube

1/2 cup peanut butter

1 can diced tomatoes

1 qt water

cilantro

lime wedges

salt and pepper

sour cream

In a large soup pot, heat oil and sauté chopped vegetables and spices. Crumble bouillon cube and add to pot, stirring with a wooden spoon. Add peanut butter and stir vigorously until fairly smooth. Then add tomatoes and continue stirring. Add water and bring to a fast simmer. Cook until carrots are quite soft, about twenty minutes. Use an immersion blender to blend until smooth, or use a slotted spoon to transfer veggies to a blender and blend until smooth. Return to pot.

Let simmer gently to meld flavors. Serve in bowls, passing cilantro, lime wedges, and sour cream to garnish.

Small Jobs Add Up (Laziness)

I've been lazy lately. That's not unusual - actually I am congenitally lazy. I come from a long line of lazy people (not every last one, of course! Relax, industrious relatives. I didn't mean you.). When given the choice between, say, cleaning out the rabbit hutch and watching the newest episode of Breaking Bad, well - let's just say that's not a tough choice for me.

I am so lazy, I have even figured out many ways to work and be lazy at the same time. Most of us, I am sure, have a hierarchy of hatred when it comes to housework. You might not mind laundry so much, but flinch at the thought of cleaning the bathroom. Or maybe dishes are your bugaboo, but you kind of like yardwork. Perhaps you enjoy the satisfaction of really clean windows, but just can't stand vacuuming day after ever-loving day.

I hate almost all of it. God I hate housework. Here is a comprehensive list of the jobs I don't mind doing so much:

Grocery shopping

Cooking (including Preserving)

Goatherding and Milking

Gardening

My "wifely duty" (yes that counts)

That leaves this much larger list of things I loathe:

Dishes

sweeping and vacuuming

scrubbing of any kind

Laundry

balancing the checkbook

paying bills

recycling

mending clothes

PTA meetings

mowing the lawn

All yardwork really

digging

yelling at the kids (yes that counts)

So here's the (transparent) strategy I've worked out... I've elaborated those tasks I actually enjoy into complex undertakings and creative expressions that take utter precedence over everything else. I like to cook: I've become a gourmet home-chef who bakes our own bread (never will storebought bread pass my children's lips), makes our own cheese (don't call it a hobby), and grows many of our own vegetables.

Under the guise of providing for our food security and reducing our carbon footprint, I spend hours in the garden and at local farmer's markets, procuring enough vegetable bounty to spend many more hours preserving food for the winter, like some kind of hyperactive squirrel. Oh yeah, forgot to mention, I am also saving us boatloads of cash, because we will be giving our friends and relatives pickled asparagus for christmas. Or maybe beets, if we don't like you much.

As you can imagine, all this industriousness on my part leaves me little time for - say - trimming the goat's hooves, or going to the dump. Cleaning out the refrigerator. Pulling weeds. Setting mousetraps (yes, we have a problem). Sorting through the kid's clothes to make sure they don't go to school looking like extras from the set of Little Orphan Annie.

This strategy works surprisingly well, most of the time. It is only about twice a year that the backup of work that legitimately belongs to me gets so large that I can no longer ignore it. Oh, I try to fight it. Before I will recognize that I need to spend a couple of days catching up, I will try mightily to convince my husband that HE needs to go to the dump... rake the leaves.... turn the compost pile... take the kids to the dentist....

But eventually, I have to give in and recognize that my husband is too busy fixing cars to make us money so I can go to the farmer's market to do all the mundane daily tasks that I am supposed to be doing. Then I have to have a day like today.

Things I did today:

-Sorted a pile of laundry the size of Mt. Kulshan. Threw out a pile the size of Mt. Shuksan.

-Trimmed four goat hooves - long overdue and totally disgusting. Did it without, however, cutting myself, so that's a plus.

- cleaned out the rabbit hutch. LONG overdue and totally disgusting. I had to use the hoe. 'Nough said. Will make nice compost, however.

Doesn't sound like much, maybe, but for a lady as lazy as I am, it's a lot.

Things I Have Seen Lately

A chantrelle mushroom as big as my hand. I thought I mad missed chantrelle season, but was lucky enough to catch a guy selling the last of the season's chantrelles fro $6/lb. I bought three pounds and ate myself sick.
My daughter Hope washing her face in a bowl of pumpkin guts. She goes crazy every year for pumpkin guts. That child is weird. Next year we are going to empty all the pumpkins into a kiddie pool and have her put on her bathing suit and swim in it.

Lots of fall harvest decorations. This handsome storefront (I'm showing only a small part of a large, gorgeous display) is that of a bakery in Lynden.

Gigantic pumpkins. These were in front of the bank in Lynden and their weights were labelled. Can't remember, unfortunately, but it was in the eight or nine hundred pound range. We tried to grow giant pumpkins this year but they all rotted on the vine before they even hit fifty pounds. Don't know why.

An amazing sunset. We are blessed with great sunsets fairly often, but this one was pull-over-the-car-and-stand-staring beautiful.

That some people are still enjoying grapes. This was actually a couple of weeks ago. I took a long walk through a bunch of alleys in a cute neighborhood in Bellingham, just to check out people's garden. I am a garden voyeur. I was surprised by all the things that were still out - kale and hardy greens, of course, but also tomatoes, grapes, winter squash.

It's still a season of pretty sights. There's still light out until nearly six o'clock. I'm counting my blessings.

Protest as a Way of Life

I admire the folks who are out in the public squares protesting the ever greater inequality of wealth in this country; the ever greater power of the corporation in writing laws to enrich themselves; the ever lesser power of the people over the political process and over the means of production. I am following the Occupy movement closely and I hold out hope that this will transform over time into a lasting political movement.

However, I am too old and have too many place-based responsibilities to be out there myself. If I were bedding my old bones down on the concrete in Westlake center (ha!), who would be feeding the pigs, milking goats, preserving the harvest? Who would be controlling the means of production at MY house?

In other words, people, there is more than one way to protest. Civil disobedience is awesome and irreplaceable as a means of focusing attention. But the quiet protest of refusing to give your dollars to Monsanto, Cargill, Bayer, Halliburton, GE, and Texaco (among many others) by instead growing your own food, saving your own seed, producing your own electricity, brewing your own biodiesel, and sewing your own clothes is perhaps even more effective.

I'm not trying to say we do all of those things - far from it. But we do many of them. And I am learning how to do more of them. Even if we never reach the point of producing all our own energy, or growing all our own food, having the knowledge base in the community, keeping the traditional wisdom alive is so important. I am quantifiably less dependent on those corporations because I can meet a healthy percentage of my own needs. I have given them a heck of lot less of my money than most Americans (and spent less overall), because I have developed some skills to replace their services.

I may not be out there, visible, but I am a protester nonetheless. And I am as subversive as hell.

Aimee's recommended ways to be subversive in modern America:

1) Maximize your food independence. For some of us, that means growing a lot of food or raising animals. For others, it means learning how to cook from scratch. If you are buying raw materials from your local farmers at the farmer's market, you maximize support of your individual neighbors and minimize your support of the giant agribusiness companies. You also save money and eat better.

2) Buy secondhand. Everything you possibly can. In this way you avoid encouraging the extraction of raw materials and extend the useful life of products. The embedded energy cost in, say, a new car or a new set of dining room furniture - even a new winter coat! - can be stretched over a greater time period and made to serve a greater number of people. For me, buying secondhand clothing is an ethical decision to avoid supporting the sweatshop industry. A subclause to this recommendation is: repair things that can be repaired. Get your fridge fixed a few times before you get a new one. Learn to mend clothes. When was the last time you saw a kid wearing jeans with knee-patches on them, unless they were sold that way to begin with? Take good care of your car. Do all the scheduled maintenance. Learn to do it yourself! Or ask your neighbor.

3) Maximize your energy independence. There are so many ways to do this - we brew biodiesel for our cars. But you might do it with solar panels or windmills, depending on where you live. Or do it by not owning a car and biking instead. Or by living in a smaller house and super-insulating. The sky's the limit.

4) Know your neighbors. Make friends. Develop mutually beneficial networks. Support each other. Lend your tools. Pool your resources. Why should every small-farming family along the same stretch of road own its own haying equipment, for example? That's absurd. Or its own tractor, even? Why shouldn't three or four families get together to buy one tractor instead of four? Does every household really need a chainsaw? No, not if you are on good terms with Bob down the way. And not if you are willing to lend his wife your sewing machine.

5) Most important of all: take charge of your education! Be informed! Get your information from diverse sources. Use your brain. Teach your kids. Go to museums and libraries while they still exist! Buy books (secondhand, of course!). Do not default on your obligation to educate your children, or yourself. It's too important. You can't leave it to the public school system alone. Talk about important issues with your spouse, your neighbor, your kids, your in-laws, your city councilman, your state senator!

6) For the love of God, VOTE!

Milkweed Diaries: Occupy the Pantry. . .

The Food Movement: Its Power and Possibilities

Occupy Your Kitchen

Revolution Begins In Your Kitchen: Occupy Wall Street from Your Kitchen

The King Must Die (Goat Breeding and Divine Kingship)

I used to have my own buck. Storm Cloud, son of Flopsy, was (and presumably still is) an extremely handsome, healthy and virile tri-color purebred Nubian buck. He is black and white with brown points, tall, big-boned, from excellent milking lines, and also good natured, with healthy hooves, and never had a problem with parasites. Pretty much the ideal buck, in other words.

But even the ideal buck - even the divine Pan, were he to descend to Earth in the form of a buck - is only good for three years, maximum. After that, every doe on the place is either his sister, mother, or daughter. After three years, all bucks must be replaced. Now that I think about it, I am sure that is where the ancient tradition of the Summer King comes from.

For those of you who don't know, in ancient days, in Pre-Christian Europe, pretty much across the continent from Ireland to Asia Minor, there existed a tradition of divine kingship. The details varied from place to place, but basically, a king won his throne by supplanting the previous king, who was put to death.

Usually the reign was set for a specific period of time - a year, three years, seven years - after which there would be a solemn ceremony to replace the old king with a new, younger, stronger king. Sometimes the kings would fight to the death - a battle which was weighted against the old king - and sometimes the king submitted, after his appointed term had ended, to a ritual death of one kind or another.

The best documented of these rituals, perhaps, is that of the high festival of Dionysius, in certain parts of ancient Greece. On the appointed night, there would be an orgy, a great feast and dance, and the king would be celebrated, bedded by all the women he wanted, and gotten totally drunk. Then the Queen and her women - in a divine, drunken frenzy -would take on the personae of Maenads and literally tear him to pieces. His body would be plowed into the fields.

After that, the Queen would accept the new king into her bed and the country would be ritually fertilized for another year - or three, or five, or seven years. The Queen herself would only be replaced when she ceased to bear children.

However barbaric we might think such customs were, it seems to me they were expressing an inescapable biological reality. That is - you can't let one buck rule forever. That way lies genetic degeneration, illness, loss of hardiness, and general weakness in the herd. Inbreeding is bad.

Bucks must be replaced, alas. One might fairly ask, why bucks and not does? Well, think about it for a second: does provide kids and milk, year after year. One doe can feed a family of five with her offspring and her milk, each and every year for some ten years. A buck produces nothing but sperm, and his own meat. And each year, his sperm is less and less valuable. As is his meat, actually - meat from a mature, un-castrated billy goat is not, shall we say, a gourmet item.

Luckily, in a modern age, we can choose to trade bucks and shuttle them around rather than kill them when their local utility declines. I sold Storm Cloud to a lady in Portland, Oregon.

He went on to a delightful life servicing other does, and presumable, when he outlives his usefulness there, she will sell him on. Meanwhile - I need a new buck.

I have had a difficult time finding a buck this year. In my next post, I will detail my struggle - but for I will just say I think it is over. I think I have finally found a decent Nubian buck, albeit at a rather exorbitant price, and that I expect all my does to be pregnant within a month. It is late this year - I'd rather they were impregnated last month, but so be it.

Anyone looking for a great read - a truly wonderful novel, on my all-time top-ten list - which treats the subject of divine kingship in depth would be well-advised to read Mary Renault's The King Must Die. It is both a fabulous adventure story and a history lesson. Enjoy!

Brewing Up a Storm (Drinking and Driving)

My first batch of hard cider came out great! I can't take all the credit - or even most of it - or, in fact, hardly any of it at all. I pressed the apples, but J. (my homebrewing friend who moved away and gave me all his equipment - see Cider, Revisited) found the recipe and walked me through the beginning of the process with little baby steps.

After pasteurizing the fresh juice, cooling to room temperature, and tranferring into a sterilized carboy, J. "pitched the yeast" which basically means, pour your yeast into the carboy, and added the airlock. A week later, after it stopped bubbling, we transferred the cider - now somewhat alcoholic - into a second clean carboy, leaving the dregs behind. This second carboy bubbles away with an airlock for another week or so, and then it's time to bottle.

Since I was trying to make carbonated cider, I had to add some more sugar to the cider before bottling it. The idea is that the sugar will fuel a second fermentation in the bottle, creating carbon dioxide which provides the fizz. Just like champagne. I managed the final bottling on my own.

Then I was suppoosed to let it mature for several weeks before imbibing, but I was impatient. Of course I had tasted the cider as I was bottling it, and it tasted pretty good. Not knowing how long it might take to develop some fizz, I waited about four or five days before opening up a couple bottles. There was some slight fizziness, but nowhere near as much as in a bottle of commercial brew. The taste, however, was very good - off dry and apple-y. I drank a bottle as though it were beer, and felt quite tipsy. Clearly, stronger than beer, though not as strong as wine. I'm guessing somewhere around 8%.

Over the next two weeks, all twelve bottles disappeared. I think I gave away six, and Homero and I shared the other six. So, no idea how it might have tasted after the recommended six weeks in the bottle. Better luck this batch - it's a five gallon batch instead of a two gallon batch, so there will be many more bottles. I hope it turns out as tasty this time. The fresh cider was not quite as good - nor as sweet - as the last batch of fresh cider. I'll just have to hope for the best.

Homero has been brewing, too. He's had virtually no work these last few weeks, and so has been turning his attention to those projects that tend to languish when he is busy. One of these is biodiesel. It had been a fair while since the last batch, but over these last two weeks he's made several batches, using up our stored oil and our chemicals. All three vehicles have full tanks, and there is still some thirty gallons leftover to refill them again. I think he made seventy-five gallons in all.

The oil is free to us - he has arrangements with a few local restaurants to pick up their used oil with his oil-sucker. The oil sucker is a very cool device he made. Basically it is a fifty-five gallon drum fitted with hoses and valves. He sticks it in the bed of the pickup and goes to one of his restaurants that has a full oil-dumpster. Then he can use the compression of the engine of his truck to create a vacuum inside the drum and suck up oil. I was very impressed. The oil is free, but the chemicals are expensive. Homero did the math a while ago and at that time, biodiesel costs us about $1.40 a gallon, when you figure in electricity. So, filling the three gas tanks cost somewhere in the vicinity of sixty dollars, or about one-third the cost of regular diesel.

Of course, it takes time, too. Homero hasn't quite got the fiddly precise process down, and so he spends many hours on each batch, and it can be quite frustrating. But even so, it's a highly worthwhile endeavor, economically speaking. Much more so, truth be told, than my cheesemaking or cider-brewing. But I get a lot of satisfaction out of my fiddly processes, too.

I am so proud of him. Of us, really. We are just a couple of homebrewers, each in our own specialty. Driving homebrew on his end, drinking homebrew on mine. Don't worry - we won't mix the two. Never the twain shall meet.

The Great Hen Giveaway (It's Not His Fault)

It's not hard to tell roosters from hens, not when they are full grown. Here; I'll show you.

This is a hen. Hens are female. They lay eggs.

This, on the other hand, is a rooster. The rooster is easily recognized by his many colors, his long feathers and his large red crest.

We had too many roosters - eight, which is six more than we needed. I advertised six free roosters on Craigslist. A man called, and I told him to come pick them up after dark, when they would be easy to catch. As it turned out, I was at the grocery store when he showed up, so my husband caught the roosters and gave them to the man.

Can you guess where this is going?

This morning, I counted the roosters we had left. Four. That means that my husband gave away three roosters and three hens. We still have too many roosters, and now we have three fewer healthy young hens.

True - it was dark. That's true. I'm just going to keep repeating that to myself. And ask the next Craigslist guy to call me personally before he shows up.

Filling Up the Freezer (Great Grapes!)

It was an insanely beautiful day today - much nicer than late October has any right to be. The sun was out in full glory, and I could feel the heat on my shoulders all day long as I completed various fall chores. This has not been a good year for leaves, and so even though the sky was a bright, washed blue, I did miss the sharp contrast of the yellow, gold, and red leaves against it.

That's an awfully petty complaint, though, isn't it?

I had a productive day. This morning, I went and cut a whole lot of grapes. A neighbor woman was advertising on Craigslist that she had a nearly unlimited amount of concorde grapes, and would sell them for $5 the five gallon bucket. That was the first thing I did this morning - cut grapes. It's a fine task - searching through the thick leaves, just beginning to wither and yellow, for the dark blue bunches. Her elderly pit-bull bitch followed me around the vineyard, occasionally pushing her wet nose into the back on my knee. It took me some twenty minutes to fill the bucket.

When I got home, I washed and sorted the grapes. I soon learned that only the very ripest and blackest of the grapes were sweet enough to eat out of hand. The majority of the grapes were dark red, but still sour. Not knowing quite what to do with them.I decided to juice them and boil down the juice (with added sugar) into a concentrated syrup that I could can and use throughout the winter to make grape juice. I saved out the sweetest for table grapes, and spent the next couple of hours juicing grapes and boiling down the resulting juice. I have to say, I'm not very happy with it. It isn't clear and claret-colored like store grape juice - it's kind of thick and brownish, and not very good looking. It tastes delicious, but I doubt it will make an attractive table beverage. Oh well.

Other freezer-related developments: we butchered the last two baby goats, and I put one of them into the freezer in the form of small, carefully wrapped packages of raw meat. The other was, as usual, steamed for several hours and consumed in the form of tacos. My family, my sister's family, and our friend C. the butcher's family all ate heartily, and there was enough leftover to send C. home with several pounds of shredded, cooked meat; to send my my brother-in-law home with a couple of pounds, and to put a couple of pounds in the freezer as well. According to my calculations, one medium-small seven month old goat can feed twelve adults and eight children, three times over. Or, I guess, thirty-six adults and twenty-four children. That is, of course, with side dishes, tortillas, beans, etc.

Lastly, we bought a side of beef. In years past, we have always bought a side of beef jointly with my sister's family - a quarter for each of us. That has always been plenty of beef. In fact, I think I just cooked the very last roast from last year's quarter last week. We didn't choose to get a whole beef because we wanted more meat. We did it because the farmer (a neighbor) couldn't find anyone to buy the other half of this small steer. Rather than lose the beef, I said we would take the whole thing. My sister's family is splitting their half with various relatives, but we haven't made any plans here. I seriously doubt we can use an entire half, so I'm going to have to look for somebody to share our half with.

Hey - if you live nearby - this is excellent beef, 100% grass raised and grass finished. We've bought from the same folks for four years running and I have never tasted such good beef in my life. I can see the cows out my front window and can personally vouch for the fact that they live happy, natural lives and that the land is beautifully cared for. You can get in touch with me through the blog if you are interested. I figure I have about a 100 pounds of beef to sell, in the form of hamburger, roasts, steaks, and ribs.

The Yucky Season Arrives (October Images)

Not everything about October is yucky. Apples, for instance. I love apples. I love apple season. I love the smell of the kitchen when an apple pie is in the oven, or the dehydrator is full of apple slices, or I am canning applesauce. I love pressing apple cider, even though it makes my back and hamstrings hurt for days. I love biting into a crisp green apple, juicy and tart, and following it up with a bite of sharp, homemade cheese. I love the amazing abundance of apples - so many forgotten trees, with so much surplus fruit that it falls all over the yard and the roadsides, free for the taking. I like giving windfall apples to my animals - every species loves apples. The horses, of course, but also the goats, the pigs, the chickens, and even the rabbits. Everybody loves apples. Even the apple-mast left over from pressing is useful; it makes wonderful compost. I love the look of apple trees in November, after most of the leaves have fallen but the apples are still clinging to the bare branches, bright red against a frosty blue afternoon sky.

I also like pumpkins. I like carving jack o' lanterns with my kids, and I like roasting the seeds and putting them in the kids' lunches for weeks after Halloween. I like eating pumpkins, too - in almost any form: simply roasted with butter and salt and pepper, as pie of course, and in soup. Oh I love delicious pumpkin-cheese soup with roasted poblano peppers. I like the empty fields, dark brown, bare and bedraggled looking, dotted with bright orange orbs. I love going outside on Halloween eve and looking at the glowing jack o' lanterns lined up on the porch. It makes me feel cozy and safe, remembering that their original function was to serve as guardian spirits, protecting the house and inhabitants from evil forces abroad in the nighttime as the year tips into darkness and death.

I like el Dia de los Muertos, the Mexican Day of the Dead. We celebrate it here in the old fashioned way, by dressing the household altar with an ofrenda, or offering. We drape the altar with a bright colored cloth and lay it with fruits and flowers. We set up the photos of our dead ancestors, or if we don't have photos, then we write their names on slips of paper. We light candles and drink hot cocoa and (for the adults) mezcal. The children and I bake sweet egg-bread in fanciful shapes and eat it dipped in the hot cocoa. We talk, tell stories about our dead loved ones, and honor their memories. Always on the altar is a memento mori in the form of a beautiful little Caterina statue (Lady Death). In this way, we teach our children - and remind ourselves - that the end of all life is death, but that spirits live on as the beloved, beautiful memories that we leave behind. This simple ceremony provides surprisingly strong comfort.

So, with all of the things I love about October, why did I name this post "The Yucky Season?" What is it that I dislike so much? Well, there's the darkness, the gloom and the incessant rain; the damp chill that cannot be banished from the house even by blasting the propane furnace; the smell of wet dogs and wet towels and wet shoes. There's the omnipresent rot - rotting vegetation, rotting leaves, rotting carpets in the mudroom. There's the utter lack of light and warmth. But most of all... most of all...

There's mud. God, how I hate mud. Chilly, slippery, stinky, horrible mud. I wake up at seven thirty and by eight fifteen I am liberally spotted with grotesque ordure. All winter long I will smell like.. well, not mud exactly, but mud that is one third mixed-species animal by-product. You know what I mean. There's no way to avoid it - farmers smell like farms, and never more than in the Yucky season.

Oh well. I'll just try to keep a pot of spiced apple cider simmering on the stove all the time, that ought to help.

Selfish Neighborliness (More Milk!)

At the Second Annual September Swap Meet and Cider Press last week, I met a really cool neighbor lady named M. She brought apples to press, and we made a trade of a bag of (my) raw alpaca fiber for a bunch of (her) canning jars. She also has goats and we talked about that. She also moved here from a city and we talked about that. All in all we spent about 45 minutes chatting and exchanged phone numbers at the end of our conversation, saying we would get together and make cheese sometime.

Day before yesterday, she called me up and said there had been a death in the family and she needed to travel out of state for the funeral. She was sorry to intrude on so new a friendship, but she didn't know anyone else who could milk her goats while she was gone. Having been in a similar situation - not a death in the family, but needing a goat-sitter who can milk - I know how tough it is to find someone you can trust to milk your goats right. Poor or incomplete milking can lead to mastitis, which can kill a goat or ruin her udder right quick.

Of course I said I would be happy to board her goats while she is gone. She has two goats, but only one in milk, a Saanen who is giving about a half-gallon a day. Those of you who raise goats know that this was a fairly big leap of faith, on both our parts. I don't know that her goats are healthy, and she doesn't know that mine are. She has never seen my place, and knows nothing about the state of my fencing or the quality of my feed. I don't know if her goats are jumpers who might destroy my fences and run out on the road and get killed. Without the goodwill and trust that comes with a long friendship, we are both taking a chance that something awful might happen - a sick or a dead goat - and that there would be bad feelings on both sides.

I know that many people would simply say "sorry, but no." While I understand the reasons that would lead them to refuse, I cannot agree with them. My feeling is that human relationships are ultimately more important than animals. It's true that I basically don't know this woman from Eve, and that we may never have a serious friendship, so what do I owe her, you might fairly ask? The answer is, I owe her nothing. Not a damn thing. She didn't offer to pay me, either, and in fact the idea never crossed my mind until just this second.

I'm doing this because it's plain and simple the right thing to do. Yeah, I will get the half-gallon of milk a day that her goat gives, and I'm thrilled about that, since my goats are close to to dry. That milk will most likely translate into three or four pounds of cheese. And I assume that I will get an "I.O.U." to squirrel away in case I ever need a goat-related favor. I also get to feel like a nice person. Don't worry, I'm not going to sprain my arm patting myself on the back for altruism. I'm getting my fair share here.

But I would do it anyway- if neither of the goats were in milk. It's just what neighbors do. I have moved from a place -Seattle- where I lived for fifteen years in the same house without knowing the names of more than a couple of my nearest neighbors to a place where I know everyone. I know their history, I know what grades their kids are in, I know if someone is ill or if someone is widowed. I know my neighbors because they sit in the pew in front of me at church, or check my groceries at the store, or teach my children in the second grade. If, back in Seattle, I had needed to fly off to a family member's funeral at a moment's notice, I wouldn't know who to ask to pick up my mail and feed my cat. Here, I have my choice of a half a dozen people.

The price of that luxury is BEING one of those people for my neighbors, too. You need someone to milk your goat? HELL yes. Want me to pick up your groceries while you are laid up with a broken arm? Yup. Visit your sick mother-in-law? Need some frozen casseroles while you are at home with your new baby? Help with your leaky roof? Yes, yes, and yes.

The truth is, for me at least, that doing these things isn't just a quid-pro-quo; it's a pleasure in and of itself. I adore being part of a community that depends on each other. It makes me very happy to be known as someone who can be counted on to provide a decent lunch, or a ride at a moment's notice, or a shoulder to cry on. I am damn proud of my dependability. And I feel extremely blessed to be part of a web of similar people.

Cider, Revisited

As I wrote in my last post, our neighbors J. and L., our pastors and friends, are leaving town. In exchange for Homero fixing up their car, they are giving us all of J.'s homebrewing equipment - and a couple of lessons. On saturday, I went over to their house with a few gallons of freshly pressed apple cider to get my first lesson.

Wow, J. has a lot of stuff! He's a fairly serious homebrewer - meaning, I guess, that he brews several times a year and consistently turns out a yummy product. The pile of equipment he is giving us was enough to almost cover their kitchen floor. Three carboys of varying sizes; yards and yards of various types of tubing; airlocks, small buckets, mesh bags, filters and funnels of all descriptions. Large stainless steel kettles. A stainless steel chiller - which is a really cool item that enables to cool down five gallons of boiling mash to room temperature in short order. A stand-up bottlecapper. Bags of bottlecaps. And several boxes of bottles.

the bottle-capper

the chiller

When I arrived, J. had a batch of dandelion wine in the smallest carboy that was ready to bottle. So we did that first, and I learned how to sterilize bottles and tubes, siphon the liquid off the top of the carboy into the bottles and how to use the bottlecapper. We sampled the wine, of course, and it gave the rest of the proceedings a certain golden, summery glow - which I believe is the whole point of dandelion wine.

Some of the equipment...

J. has not actually tried making cider before, probably because he doesn't have a cider press. Believe me, when you have ten or fifteen gallons of fresh cider on hand, turning it into a storable product - a storable alcoholic product - floats to the top of one's mind. Winemaking, let us not forget, is one of the preservation arts, no less than smoking or drying. Originally, in fact, winemaking was most likely a semi-accidental by-product of preserving fruit. The pleasant effects of alcohol were probably a felicitous side-effect, one that was only afterwards studied, harnessed, and turned into an art in its own right.

God bless the internet - in under five minutes, we had located a simple recipe for hard apple cider. We added two cups of sugar per gallon of fresh cider and brought it to a temperature just short of boiling. Then we let it cool to blood temperature, more or less (we didn't use the chiller, because it needs to be well-washed and sterilized), and poured it into the carboy. At this point, before you add the yeast, you want to aerate the product, so we shook it up real good.

Then J. put in the yeast - a champagne yeast which I bought at the Four Corners brewing supply in bellingham, and capped the carboy with an airlock. Today, not quite 48 hours later, he called me to let me know that the cider is bubbling away. In a week or so, we will decant it into another carboy for the secondary fermentation, and a week after that I will bottle it. Probably by myself, since I think J. and L. will be gone by then.

I hope this batch comes out better than my single past batch, which was wholly undrinkable. I'm very much looking forward to adding brewing to my small but growing repertoire of traditional skills. I can think of no other ability that has the ability to add so much cheer to a long dark winter.

I read in the paper today that there is a new La Nina system forming in the pacific, meaning another wetter and colder than usual winter around here. Here's hoping that we will have plenty of hard cider to keep our spirits up!