May Day

Photo taken in April 2008, our first spring on the farm here in Kentucky–nine years ago now!

May Day by Sara Teasdale

A delicate fabric of bird song 
Floats in the air, 
The smell of wet wild earth 
Is everywhere. 

Red small leaves of the maple 
Are clenched like a hand, 
Like girls at their first communion 
The pear trees stand. 

Oh I must pass nothing by 
Without loving it much, 
The raindrop try with my lips, 
The grass with my touch; 

For how can I be sure 
I shall see again 
The world on the first of May Shining after the rain?

Welcome Easter Tide

Happy Easter from Valley View Farm!

Under the Lilacs

Today I was a wee bit wistful  because already the lilacs are fading, having bloomed early this year after a very warm winter, and a very warm spring. We brought some inside and I made certain to admire and sniff them whenever possible outdoors, too.

Later in the afternoon when the sun has gone behind the shed, some of the cats have been lying like lions in the part of the yard where we planted several lilacs about eight years ago. Slow growers, you know you have a prized specimen when it is large and full and high–likely even 100 years old or more. Our newer bushes have the fullest blooms they've had yet and are now almost as tall as I am (which isn't a huge stretch!). Sadly, an older lilac in front of the house on the bank that goes down to the road has died out completely. Not sure why as you don't really have to do much with lilacs to keep them happy. But I hate to see an old plant fade.

One nostalgic reminder of old cellar holes in New England is that you often come upon vast, towering lilac bushes in the woods near the edge of a field or by an old roadside. We had one such place near our New Hampshire farm. Sherwin Hill had been an old hill farm settlement about a half mile from our farm with several farmsteads that were abandoned at some point in the nineteenth century. The land is protected, the fields are still mowed, and the old road passes by the cellar holes belied by ancient lilacs and patches of day lilies. Behind our nineteenth-century barn at the farm there was a magnificent, huge white lilac (I haven't seen one since) which had been planted there easily a century or more ago (and it's one of those things I wish I had a photograph of–but that was well before digital when I didn't shoot everything I saw!). Here in Kentucky an old house site is often found by the amount of daffodils nearby. [Seems I've waxed on about lilacs before over at my old blog at InthePantry.blogspot.com.]

At the doublewide, which we're selling soon (we have an offer), there is an older bush that was probably put there by the Dicks. They had a dog-trot house on the same site as where the doublewide was placed. I picked some from there, which are more lush, for the last time. There are some peony clumps that I will leave but I do want to dig up some of the applemint around the birdhouse that I brought down from New Hampshire. It is the grandchild of my grandparents' mint patch at Gray Goose Farm–which must have been dug out at some point as I don't remember it. Ann Sawyer, a neighboring farm wife and a great friend of my family, along with her husband Peter, gave me a clump from which my grandfather had originally given to her. Another friend has some Gray Goose Farm rhubarb, which doesn't do so well here, but I think I've found the right spot for it so I may beg for a clump next time I'm back in New England.

Spring has become one of my favorite times of year here–not only with its length (an actual three months) but with all of the wild flowers that emerge in stages. Blood root comes first (around the time that the morel mushrooms poke through the forest floor), then violets by the road side where the grass is shorter, then miniature iris on rocky and sandy banks, and trillium and Jack-in-the-Pulpit, and so many others. By the end of April the pageant of spring wildflowers is fairly much through.

It is Good Friday today. Have a blessed Easter or Passover–or just enjoy your weekend–everyone!


You come back when you're ready!

Catherine

First Day of Spring!

It occurred to me recently, as the sun filtered into our living room about a half hour after rising and where it lingers for a while at window level, that the light here is the same in late March as it is in late September. Only it is a much warmer, more promising light. In the first weeks of fall the sun will also stretch its fingers across the living room and, about twelve hours later, it blinds us in our sitting room on the west side of our small cottage.

My amateur astronomer father would have been slightly distressed to know that it took me 54 years to understand that "Equinox" means "equal night" in Latin. [I even took one year of Latin in college...]. So of course it is!

While the daylight, and night time, is not exactly equal at this time of year (for some reason I can't explain here but it's something like 12 minutes off) it is, for all intents and purposes, the same 12 hour stretch for darkness and light–even with Daylight Savings starting in early March. Of course, the Solstices are the opposite: the greatest stretch of light on June 21st and the longest stretch of night on December 21st. These are symbolically special times in our astronomical calendar. A scattering of rock circles throughout Britain, such as Stonehenge and Avebury, were believed to have been constructed around them. [For a beautiful account of Stonehenge and its pagan and mystical associations, read Chapter 28 of Thomas Hardy's 1892 novel, Tess of the d'Urbervilles, here.]

On our farm in Kentucky where spring is truly spring (and not covered by a blanket of snow), the Spring Equinox awakens so much: there are new animals, red buds bursting, bulbs emerging, grass greening, wild flowers starting, and rhubarb and strawberries in May! The fields are usually dry enough to walk around without worrying about tamping down the hay (or ticks and chiggers to bite us).

Our Kentucky spring spans from March-May, for the most part and by Memorial Day, it starts to get hot and humid. It is a wonderful, hopeful time in our year. There are gardens to dream about and to start planting and a few months where we can actually have the heat and the air-conditioning off for much of the time. I wash all of our quilts, and small area rugs, and hang them on the line. Ideally I spring clean in March and early April, generally leading up to Easter, so I'd best hold true to that conviction.

I was so excited about gardening that the other day I stopped at a few trusted garden centers to see if they had any pansies in–the ones I visited were closed or only had flats of annuals starting. In another month, or less, there will be an abundant selection of plants through Mother's Day–and regular produce and flower auctions at Casey County Produce Auction!

What are your favorite spring rituals or things you look forward to?

You come back when you're ready!

Catherine

Strawberry Girl

Did you ever read Strawberry Girl by Lois Lenski? She wrote and illustrated many books of middle grade historical fiction about children and their lives in various parts of the country. This book was about a girl in Florida and her family––"Crackers," a term for early settlers and now more associated with a derogatory name for poor white people––who moved there to farm strawberries. The book won the Newbery Medal in 1946. I loved reading Lenski's many books, and still have them, and delighted in her unsentimental depictions of other lifestyles––her illustrations were always fine and engaging, too. Whenever I read this book, just as when I'd read Robert McCloskey's Blueberries for Sal, I wanted to eat those sweet berries right then. 

May is strawberry season in Kentucky and this year there were some beauties. After a late spring, the first berries were huge and Wilson's Cedar Point Farm on nearby Tick Ridge announced on Facebook that it only took seven minutes to pick a gallon basket full! Despite their size, they were sweet and juicy. Before the weekend we bought ten gallons and put all but one into the freezer (for enjoying fresh). I got 20 quart bags full (and about 2 gallons of hulls: I don't actually hull them, I just carefully remove the tops with my trusty serrated paring knife, as close to the leaves as I can get: usually I give them to my chickens but we are chicken-less right now). And I'd say we easily ate about half a gallon in the car on the way home.

A huge bowl full of fresh local strawberries: note that this bowl is about three feet wide! 

Ready for the freezer with two quarts to slather with whipped cream and Angel food cake.

I love to sit on our porch at the farm cottage and "put up" produce or prepare to can, especially in the cooler weather that we were enjoying before the weekend: just like I remember a New England summer, hot in the sun but not too humid and with a light breeze. I can work there and see what's going on, who is coming and going, and the west porch stays fairly cool until the sun comes around in the afternoon. My husband and I like to joke that in Hancock, NH we also had an east porch and a west porch but on a much grander scale.

At this point we wouldn't trade this farm, and it's more ramshackle porches, for the world. It's a centering feeling to be here and what is remarkable is how well-sited the house was when it was built over one hundred years ago. The breezes come down over the knob and wrap around it, and through the open doors and windows on all sides. It is always much cooler than the doublewide that is in a bowl where no air stirs: instead it goes right over (which is, admittedly, a good thing in tornado weather). [Sometimes we do have to air-condition during the day but usually at night I just throw the windows open and fans on in all but the most humid weather.]

My trusty French serrated paring knife.
OK, so it's also color-coordinated!

I'm currently macerating some berries for jam––a two-day recipe––and I will post on that in the next few days. Son Henry especially enjoys strawberry jam and I like to make enough extra to tuck away for Christmas gifts, too. It is always spring in a jar.

By chance we discovered another nursery over in western Casey County the other day: I've been scrounging around for plants since returning from Colorado. If you don't get them before Mother's Day in Kentucky, or even by late April, they can be few and far between (unless you like a lot of wave petunias and marigolds). [Next year I am determined to grow my own favorite heirloom annuals from seed!] Anyway, the Amish-Mennonite family who operate their farm-based nursery will have blueberries in a few weeks––entirely organic––and I ordered about 20 pounds of those (affordable and pre-picked by them). Fortunately, they will be easier to freeze. On the way home I will stop and see my friend Diana at her produce farm (where her specialty is heirloom tomatoes) and perhaps share a nice gin & tonic on her porch.

You come back when you're ready!

Catherine

The Open Road and Home Again

The beautiful prairie of eastern Kansas where the only vertical punctuations
on the horizon of clouds and land are churches, grain silos and windmills.

I was recently in Colorado for a few weeks to see our daughter and then we drove back across the wide prairie so she could spend some time here at the farm between ski and summer seasons (and before starting a great new job). It's been such a good stretch of time together. While Addie ended the season with her job I was productive during the day in her cozy condo: I sent a children's book to a publisher (on spec), got an article assignment for Early Homes (from Active Interest Media which also publishes Old-House Journal and other magazines) and reviewed my manuscript for The 1950s American Kitchen for Shire Books in England which was submitted to my editor in April. [I also have a new book-related blog, The 1950s American Kitchen]

Yet despite my occasional love of the open road, there is something so comforting about being home on the farm with my husband and all three of our children and our many animals and pets. As a mother it is immensely reassuring to have your chicks all safely back in the nest for a bit. I feel centered and as if we are an impermeable unit tucked into the hills and haven of our farm. When the world seems like a challenging place, as it often is, the rhythms of our days here seem to be a small contribution to a larger wholeness or sanity. There are struggles, yes, but I have reached at midlife, at long last, a kind of Zen-like contentment with where we are and in what we are doing.

I'd never spent so much time in the high mountains before: 9,600' altitude took
some adjustment but I was fine after four days. Didn't sleep much, however.
This is the Continental Divide at over 13,000 feet just south of Breckenridge.

It snowed on Mother's Day: over a foot from Zephyr in the Colorado Rockies!
Addie and I made carrot soup and Mexican food and caught up on Bravo television shows.

Silly Mother's Day "selfies."

A view of our farm looking east from the top of the Pennywinkle Field
(named years ago by the former owner for the snail-like shells found in the nearby creek).

Eli getting ready to ted the hay fields. He designed the work shirt that he is wearing.

The Pennywinkle Field with Eli tedding.

Henry finishes the mowing of the first hay on the farm (more down the road to do yet!).

Temple with a new baby lamb and Alice, our rescue deer (she was one of triplet fauns
that her mother abandoned last summer in a hay field after leaving with the other two).
[NOTE: this is before Temple was shorn for the summer!]

"Sheep and lambs may safely graze..." [for now]. Eli bought ten pregnant hair sheep (no wool to shear) and most have had their lambs. Trying not to get too attached as the babies will be in our freezer this winter. [We love lamb meat.]

Henry with the brand-new baler: we decided to do our own baling rather than hire it out.

Edgar surveys his domain (and his new harem of yearling heifers).

My husband Temple and Edgar, our beloved bull, who he found and rescued from the mud on their shared December birthday in 2011. The view is looking southeast towards the farm and above one of our many natural springs.

Loading hay to be wrapped.

Henry counts bales.

The great county wrapper guy cometh! The view of our farm is from part-way up our knob field and looking southeast.

The boys and my husband are done with first haying––and before the next stretch of rain––and that's always a good feeling. I'm catching up on the gardening in this coolish May weather after being away for several weeks during prime garden time (and our very late spring pushed everything back a bit). School has been out for the summer for over a week. Sports are done.

Storms can rage or equipment can break down, someone you love can be hurt or in need, you might not get a job "off farm," when needed, but always there are things for which to be so grateful. There are the green rolling hills, the proximity of good neighbors and friends (but not too close by: we can't see another house from our farm but we know there are neighbors just over the hill and down the lane), the breezes coming over the knob, the chortle of bird song all day, and the long stretch of summer ahead. It is like heaven on Earth and we are so blessed to be here. No matter what is happening in our lives, I seem to always be a "glass half full" kind of person. There is always another way to look at any circumstance or even sorrow. And while I was in Colorado when I thought of home, I thought of Kentucky. It has taken six years to say that but it is true. Now each day feels like a gift, every moment a song.

We are almost all back in the cottage––with recently repaired plumbing after our January 6th pipe burst (where we fortunately had the doublewide to return for a few months)––and DSL is now fully operational! No longer do I have to trek to the nearest town to blog or email (not that I did a lot of blogging in the past eighteen months but I have missed it). I've learned how to manage without ready access to the Internet here and need to continue to pretend that it isn't here for much of the day when I really should be doing other things around the house and farm. But it is handy for being in quick touch with friends, family, and my editors.

We are home. As I wrote under my blog heading, above, Wendell Berry said it best:

"It may be that when we no longer know which way to go that we have come to our real journey...And we pray, not for new earth or heaven, but to be quiet in heart, and in eye clear. What we need is here."

If you are still out there, dear reader, in blog land, you come back when you're ready!

Catherine

Ode to Dad

My Dad, James H. Seiberling, and me on my
Grandpa Sei's croquet court in Akron, Ohio, c. 1976-78.

My father has been gone eleven years. Yesterday I was listening to some classical music on NPR that I know he would have enjoyed. For a long time I couldn't listen to any classical or nineteenth century music, or anything on the organ, without weeping. For my father, music was his lifeblood, his passion, his heartbeat. I am fortunate that he passed that along to me in a diffused but enthusiastic measure.

As I was listening to some child prodigies playing Brahms and other works while at the table in our quiet kitchen on a Sunday evening I was also rummaging through some old recipe clippings. I found them in the shed in one of many unopened, and as yet unplaced, boxes that have formed the detritus––and delights––of my middle-aged life. There, from Dad's college typewriter (he never did try to use a computer), was a recipe he had brought to us in an early autumn of our marriage, on one of many visits he made to New Hampshire to see us each year. I thought of Dad, of course, while reading it, and smiled at a frugal notation he made (see below) and thought, given the season, that I should make it again. Then I realized that October 27, Sunday, was the actual anniversary (and same day of the week) of his passing eleven years ago. This is usually a date that I would have anticipated weeks ago but I suppose it is a sign that the immediacy of grief has slowly left me, replaced only by the presence of my father in my soul and memory as I navigate through the rest of my time here.

Dad died just two days before my 40th birthday and at the very minute, at 2am, that the clocks turned back in the hospital for Daylight Savings time. My two brothers and I were with him for his last days which was a blessing and a comfort and we had all been in and out in the few months prior. Dad's doctor said at the time, "I called and you all came. Not everyone does that, you know." There were many profound and unexplainable things that happened during his last day, and at his memorial service a week later, and I've written about them privately. I always found the Daylight Savings timing to be a strange kismet as he welcomed the darker days of winter when he could be indoors and hibernate as he was want to do with his music and his television. It's not that he was antisocial––being out and about was just always on his terms, like so many things.

As well as music and playing the organ, Dad loved all things autumnal, like I do. He liked Halloween and unpasteurized apple cider (from an old mill in Loyal Oaks near Norton), pumpkin pie and apple crisp and he especially liked homemade apple butter stirred into large-curd cottage cheese. He sometimes joined us for Thanksgiving and appreciated my stuffing (there were several dishes that he liked me to make when he visited but he always preferred his friend Alice's potato salad to mine!). He liked the cooler days and the thrill of the baseball playoffs and World Series, no matter who was playing. Of course, he was a born and bred Cleveland Indians fan and even though I could care less for the sport, I enjoyed going to home games and feeling the breeze from Lake Erie and being a part of the roar of the crowd and sharing this great American tradition with my father and brothers and cousins. [We would also meet my cousins each summer in Boston at Fenway Park––usually for an Indians-Red Sox game.]

The year he brought me this recipe, for Jacobs Field Apple Crisp (once served at the home of the Cleveland Indians and now called Progressive Stadium), he also sat in our darkened kitchen and played spooky music on our daughter Addie's electric organ while trick-or-treaters came to our porch. Hancock was the perfect small village for door-to-door goblins and we must have had several hundred children each year from the village and surrounding towns. Dad delighted in seeing the costumes and our decorations and enjoyed many meals around the same table that now graces our small Kentucky kitchen. There he was comfortable telling us stories of his childhood and so many memories that he'd never shared with me before. Perhaps it is something about a kitchen table and a good meal that evokes such spirited remembrance.

So yesterday I was able to listen to beautifully played music, all of which my father would have known by composer, title, and movement. I savored a favorite recipe in his typewritten hand and I was grateful. I know he is still with me, every day, and I know we will be together again. And I know that he is in the great celestial realm, somewhere, playing the organ and singing in a choir. When I hear music that he once shared with me, it is a kind of connection to the divine. And that is why I have always sung, too. After all, singing is like praying twice.

Of course, I plan on making this recipe again very soon. Here it is written exactly as he typed it (if I had my scanner set up I would just scan it!):

Jacobs Field Apple Crisp

Filling:

• 15 apples (4.5 pounds) such as Macs or Golden Delicious
• 1 cup brown sugar packed down
• 1.5 tsps ground cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
• 1/4 tsp ground cloves
• 1/4 tsp ground allspice
• 1/2 cup cider or apple juice
• 1 Tbsp. cornstarch dissolved in 2 Tbsp. water

NOTE: Allspice and cloves may be omitted if not already in your spice rack as they are quite expensive today! [Dad was a bank branch manager and always frugal and I appreciated his concern about my spice cupboard and finances.]

Crumble Topping:

• 1 cup flour
• 1 cup brown sugar packed down
• 4 cups granola cereal [CSP note: I've also used plain rolled oats.]
• 2 tsp. cinnamon
• 1/8 tsp. nutmeg
• 1/8 tsp. allspice
• 1/8 tsp. cloves
• 3 sticks butter, melted

For the filling: Peel, core and slice apples. Combine apples, sugar, spices and cider in large pan or wide kettle. Simmer uncovered over medium heat until apples are tender, about 15 to 20 minutes. Be careful not to burn. Stir in cornstarch mixture. Simmer several minutes, stirring occasionally until thickened. Remove from heat.

For the topping: Combine flour, sugar, granola and spices in a bowl. Add melted butter and stir until dry ingredients are thoroughly coated. 

Place filling in a baking dish and heap the crumble topping over the filling. Bake at 325 degrees for 15 minutes or until golden and bubbly. [CSP note: I've not made this in a while so baking time might be longer.] Let cool and serve with ice cream or whipped cream.

Recipe can be halved for smaller amount.

He added: "This is awesomely delicious. I know you'll enjoy!"

Happy Halloween to you all ~

You come back when you're ready!

Catherine

Country Auctions & Other Musings

My son Eli at the Highway 127 Yard Sale in 2009. We love to "troll" together.

Today I went to a country auction in King's Mountain, Kentucky and didn't spend a dime. But it was worth going just to see everything, to observe the (rather small) crowd, and to head off ridge by myself to do errands, have lunch and borrow some free WiFi. The highlight for me was hearing our Old Order Mennonite friend Paul doing the auction and holding up a pseudo-bronze wall plaque. "It's of some people having supper!" There were a few chuckles from the crowd as it was a bad copy of Leonardo DaVinci's "Last Supper"––you have to really appreciate the lack of worldliness in their culture, especially in the crazy, instant world we live in today. It made me smile.

There were other things, too, but nothing I absolutely needed. One intriguing lot was a grouping of old photographs of people in the mid-late 19th century. I asked the former owner's daughter if she knew who they were. "No, they were relatives of my step-grandmother." The photos were marked with a Louisville, Kentucky studio and the groupings were typical of the period. It always makes me sad when I see old photographs of people in antique shops or at auction. They are the last vestiges of a life and when someone casts them away it usually means they are no longer remembered or known by any living person.

On Labor Day we were invited to a picnic on the ridge—a time of year that people often have family reunions down here. There is a saying in the South that I have found quite true: "God, Guns & Ground." To that I would add "Clan" as family is as important as church here and usually families stay together or at least nearby in Kentucky (and it's a given that almost everyone is related to someone in a small region or on a ridge so you always have to be mindful of that!). Two daughters and their families, and their younger brother—just married—and his new wife, all live on adjacent parcels of the original “homeplace” where their parents still farm. So there they are, altogether: family and neighbors through thick and thin, and they even garden together. It made me sad because that is what we always wanted for our (former) family farm in New England. It was great to be included in their gathering but there was this persistent longing for what will never be in my own family of origin—two (nuclear) parents and their children, and spouses and grandchildren, all gathered around. I hope, at least, to create that kind of matriarchy for my own family while honoring my ancestors with them. It is the least I can do—but also the most I can do—for my own clan. I never want to preside over a fractured matriarchy and neither will I ever allow my children to be separate from each other: I will get them home to sort things out if there is any discord between them. Period. And if I should ever be widowed, there is no way in hell that I will ever let another man come between me and my time with my children and grandchildren. PERIOD!

I do miss blogging but it is so difficult and slow on my ancient (c. 2004-imagine!) MacPowerBook G4. DSL still eludes us on the ridge and the boxes, installed in October 2012, are covered in weeds. I'm ready to get a "HotBox" through Verizon or some such and looking into options. I haven't had my trusty camera with me for some time as I have a bad lens that needs repair or replacement (and I've also enjoyed taking a break from taking photographs of everything of interest). In the meantime I'm hashing out a contract with a publisher for another book deal. I'll keep you posted and it relates, in some way, to pantries and kitchens and all things retro.

Fall is coming. I love the change of light, the cooler nights and mornings, the beautiful pageant of yellow, purple and mauve along the roadside––and here in rural Kentucky the smell of leaves burning around the ridge! After April and May, I do believe that September and October are my favorite months on the farm. The boys and my husband are gathering in the large round bales from our third cutting of hay as I write this.

I'm also canning up a storm (Stanley plums a few weeks ago, Kentucky white peaches for the freezer, and beets for the freezer are up next) and hoping to get in my fall garden––broccoli and Brussels sprout starts, and beet/lettuce seeds––over the weekend (but it's been so hot during the day that I fear bolting).

I hope to be doing a bit of off-ridge traveling in the next few months before the winter ahead. The almanac is talking about a colder winter for Kentucky. I wouldn't mind: nice, cozy, good for writing and reading, and full freezers and pantries to raid.

You come back when you're ready!

Catherine

Ordinary Time

Anna's laundry takes her the better part of the day to do: meanwhile she is doing other things,
none of them electronic or wired in to the larger communications matrix.

A month ago, to the day, we had a small, rogue thunderstorm travel across our ridge. It happened as we were getting ready to leave for a funeral in Tennessee and just as quickly as it started, it was over. In the meantime, the rain was ferocious and lashing and the lightning and thunder clapped on top of our ridge farm. Before we ran to the car in the pouring rain, a terrific bolt of lightning hit just behind our house and there was a snap, crackle and pop. It took out our phone for several days, our solar light on the driveway, and, alas, my (very expensive) satellite internet system.

After a few mini-fits I realized a blessing had occurred. Make that a small miracle. First of all, this has been The Summer of Visitors: 25 days of June-August were spent entertaining friends and family alike here on our Kentucky farm (and this doesn't include the days spent back in New England on a wonderful visit with my eldest son, our daughter, my mother and various friends). Our daughter also returned in July for a few months before moving on to other things.

So this self-admitted recluse-with-occasional-social-inclinations has had plenty of "face time" (vs. Facebook) and real-time connections to sustain her through a quieter fall and winter. Each visit has been special and unique and now part of our arsenal of cherished memory. These visits, and more to come when I return to New England for a stretch in October, have been the greatest gift of my 50th year.

I've learned a lot in this month without Internet at the ready, just off my bedroom. Some of my reasons for not having a new satellite internet dish installed after the repairman said I had outdated equipment have to do with this article in The Atlantic ["Is Facebook Making Us Lonely?"] as much as it has to do with the expense and frustration of it––not to mention that DSL is supposedly coming to our ridge this fall, although I now have to question whether I will even bother.

So here's what I've learned about myself and the way I have been spending my time:

• The Internet is a luxury item and an exorbitant waste of time (most of the time);
• I do not need to be checking Facebook several times a day or for great lengths of time (I've probably been on it an hour total in the past four weeks);
• I do not need to be reading everything on the Internet (including stupid blogs and websites);
• I do not need to "Google It" because, chances are, I really don't need to know it after all;
• Real-time conversations trump virtual ones any day, even if they take more effort (eg. going off-ridge or having people stay with us or visit);
• The phone is still a work in progress for me but I'm relearning the art of a quick note or letter (besides, I really don't want the US Post Office to become obsolete);
• Emails can be short, sweet, or just deleted if they don't require a (short, sweet) personal response;
• The Somerset Public Library completely rocks: both in its architecture and in its comfy chairs, expansive library tables, and free wifi;
• My dusty Mac PowerBook G4, while slow and outdated, is a wonderful thing: it travels well, I can write on it, and my ear buds provide blissful musical interludes when the library (or other places) are too noisy;
• Portable Internet devices are also wonderful things for photos and documents and things that need to be emailed to editors; and, finally (huge light bulb moment),
• My domestic time is better spent without the distraction of the Internet.

My friend Anna can multi-task like no one's business: here she is canning peaches
with a grandchild on her left hip (not shown) and laundry on the line outside.
Our Old Order Mennonite friends don't use the Internet, something which seems
to tap my own focus and less intrinsic domestic abilities at times.

This is what I've done to offset the reality that I do not have the Internet at my finger tips:

• I don't feel inclined to check Facebook now, and do so briefly when I log in off-farm;
• "Google It" is no longer in my vernacular;
• My house and guest-writing cottage is more organized than ever before;
• We tend to eat more meals together, at the table;
• I've gone walking a few times (more to come when it's not so hot);
• My head space is clearer and less ADD-addled;
• I've read more books and magazines, cover-to-cover, in the past month than I have in six;
• I've been visiting more off-ridge;
• I've been eating less;
• I've been watching much less television, too (that might be the next thing to depart the house); and, finally (drum roll, please),
• I've been writing more for publication (and upcoming writing workshops).

Obviously I've been blogging less in general and even gave up a blog, more or less, [GROW Casey County] when I realized, with our boys in school in another county and various other things, including time, that it was just too much. I need to focus on paid writing assignments and personal projects––and our own farm––more these days. Our boys are in a new school with increased homework demands, also, so there is that. It's all good. 

I try to recall the days when a big deal was clearing off my answering machine after a day at work or time out with friends: who called? Do people like me? It's really all about validation, or not feeling the need to be validated or connected. I still don't have a cell phone, either. And I guarantee, if you write me, I'll probably write back. And I always love lunch out with friends, too. So call me. Maybe?

The last of the summer hay––being pulled into the farm by our son Henry.

You come back when you're ready!

Catherine

What We Did On Our Summer Vacation

We watched a lot of sunsets.

My mother––Bamma––came to visit us!

We watched as a broody hen raised her seven assorted chicks. 

We broke bread with visiting friends and family.

We tended cows and calves.

We visited our cows on the knob.

We visited dear friends back in New Hampshire.

We visited Bamma (and Lewis)

in New Hampshire.

We posed for lots of photographs (and yours truly took them).

We saw our favorite mountain––Henry and I visited New Hampshire
on our first solo trip together and his first time there in four years.

We went swimming in a clear New Hampshire lake.

We drove by our old New Hampshire house and were a wee bit sad.

We played in the creek with our visiting cousins.

We had homemade lobster rolls
with dear friends...
and pie. For breakfast, too.

We stayed in the best guest room on the planet.

We went to a great restaurant with The Bills.

We road horses with our cousins.

We moved our daughter to Kentucky for a bit.

We sat on our porches and sipped sangria.

We visited "secret" gardens [English Garden at Stan Hywet Hall & Gardens]

We ate at Swenson's in Akron, Ohio.

We always come home again.

You come back when you're ready!

Catherine