Bloom Where You're Planted

Big Edie Beale in her ruinous home, "Grey Gardens," c. 1975,
in front of her younger portrait.

Something I've accepted at midlife is my complete ability to fall prey to the blues and for no particular reason. Little things (especially with many details) seem more complicated, transitions more weary. There is a constant restive state of not fitting in, not feeling at home (no matter where I seem to be), and yet a kind of disabling inertia. It's like I'm back in that adolescent fugue state of chaotic expectancy, only without the span of decades of unknown future ahead of me. At twenty-five, half my lifetime ago, there was that poignant wonderment of what was to come.

Now I feel like I'm on some kind of teeter-totter, not sure how or where things will land. Whatever it is, it's a bit wobbly and disconcerting. I keep telling myself that my mind and soul are preparing for 50, that seven-year cellular change at 49 (every seven years the body is supposed to slough away itself, as well as the psyche), or maybe even the confusion of early Alzheimer's. (Hey, there are days!)

Our garden gate in Kentucky with "Golden Glow" from our New Hampshire garden and mint from the Gray Goose Farm (via Sawyer Farm) further on. I love to bring plants from former homes along with me. [The garden is in transition and I will use it to free-range some "Cornish Cross" chickens.]

We've been here four years this week (full time, pending the sale of our house in September 2008, back in New Hampshire, which it did, bittersweetly, despite the complete and total economic collapse that ensued that week.) There are days that I feel completely at home here in Kentucky and there are other times when I want to return to the homes that were. I suspect I would feel this way at this point in my life no matter where I was living. It's more a state of mind than a state of place but it is a state of being with which I need to reckon.

"Home should be an oratorio of the memory." 

Henry Ward Beecher

My broody chicken mama and one of her chicks.

Like any woman or person who enjoys nesting, I like to feather my place with mementoes, favorite books, photographs, things that have meant something along the way. Many of these things are still in boxes and my fear is that they might remain there if I don't go through them or if we never build that "dream farmhouse." Borderline hoarder am I but I prefer the title, "curator of collections." After all, I have a museums background in historic preservation and I sought a vocation that came from my collecting avocation. But this "stuff" is also cumbersome.


Here, surrounded by the natural and private world of our farm, I find I feel at home with the little things. Discovering a bird's nest, admiring volunteer morning glories that have emerged along my chicken house from gardeners past, seeing a Mama chicken and her brood enjoying the yard for the first time, the lowing and bellowing of cattle. Farm life is hard and uncertain but nature provides a backdrop of what we can count on each year: the renewal of the world around us. Nature seems to make herself at home wherever she is and there is a constancy to that and a comfort.

The large heart-shaped leaves of the heirloom "Grandpa Ott" morning glory
are as lovely as the purple-magenta blossoms. They "volunteer" themselves
every summer on my hen house fence and I love to see them until frost.

We just moved our twenty-four year old daughter back to Kentucky for a transitional time before her fall job. I was amazed by the amount of stuff she had accumulated in four years but realize that when I was in my 20s, I, too, started on that path towards accumulation.

With each progressive move I have had more, not less. At fifty, it seems that we should start deaccessioning things, stuff, the past, old boxes of useless crap. That is my intention: reorganize, reshuffle, pitch, sort, repeat.

Little Edie Beale, in front of "Grey Gardens," c. 1975, East Hampton, New York. 

Little Edie Beale, who returned to her childhood home in her mid-20s and stayed on there with her aging mother, said it best: "It's very difficult to keep the line between the past and the present. You know what I mean? It's awfully difficult." [As quoted in the Maysles documentary, Grey Gardens, 1975.] My daughter and I watched this documentary the other day for the first time together: it was sad and haunting and we laughed at how things might be if we co-existed together for all of those decades! [I hadn't watched it since with friends back in New Hampshire in 2007: here's a blog post about that viewing.] Unlike Big Edie, I believe in theory that children need to leave the nest and find their own home in the world, too. But as Robert Frost wrote, "Home is the place that when you have to go there, they have to take you in." [From the poem, "Death of a Hired Man"] And we've all had to be taken in from time to time in our lives before going out into the world again.

"But whatever else home is–and however it entered our consciousness–it's a way of organizing space in our minds. 

Home is home, and everything else is not home. 

That's the way the world is constructed." 

Verlyn Klinkenborg, "The Definition of Home," 

Smithsonian, May 2012.

Life provides that constant tussle between feeling at home where we are and longing for what has been. But as I approach fifty, I realize, too, that home can just be in the presence, or mere thought, of a dear friend or family member. A friend back in New England still visits the former homesite of her ancestors: the old house where she spent many summers is long gone but the site is still there, on the shoulder of a mountain, and family members still gather among the ruinous columns and gardens that long ago naturalized into the hillside. While visiting a few weeks ago, she treated a friend and I to a picnic there. In that very special spot it was a tonic to the soul to be able to breathe in the mountain again, the surrounding landscape, the distant hills to the west, and the company of friends on a glorious summer afternoon. For that brief time, all seemed right with the world as we connected with the place and each other.

My children and I outside of Stan Hywet Hall
in Akron, Ohio (built in 1915 by my
great-grandparents, F.A. & Gertrude Seiberling).
Now they love to come here as much as I do.

In Ohio, I return each year to visit the museum home of my great-grandparents and to pass by the home, and other houses, of my childhood. There, in this perfectly preserved museum home, among the photos and the memorabilia, I feel a strange connection with my family and a past that even I did not know. Here in Kentucky the "homeplace" is a revered spot of hallowed ground where a family member once lived. Even if the house is no longer occupied or falling into ruin, it is kept as is, in a kind of stasis, while the fields are mowed or cultivated around it.

Home is as much a place in the mind as anything else and as much comfort as we might have in the world. We can visit former homes in our dreams, as I often do, or in our daytime wanderings or make a home wherever we are. We can be lonely in our homes, surrounded by loved ones, just as we can be homesick for the idea of home.

I suppose it doesn't have to be so complicated and yet, it is.

You come back when you're ready!

Catherine

The Perfect Day: Take It Slow

It's so very hard to slow down in our world, even though we live here in south-central Kentucky, a place decidedly more rural, and more laid-back, than any place we have lived before. There is definitely a Southern work ethic, a more relaxed way of living, even when there is work to be done. People don't freak out or fret as much. You don't see a lot of road rage. There is a basic sense of respect and the pace is unhurried. We've also enjoyed more porch-sitting and random visiting.

We have taken the past few days after two busy haying times, tending to many baby cows and their mothers––and a voracious bout of needed house cleaning––to host and visit with two of our dear friends, Chris and Jo, from England. They visited us here four years ago when we had just moved and each time we see them, we just pick up all over again. Even though it seems that they haven't aged at all, or that no time has passed, you realize it has when you start talking about children (they left their teens at home for the first time), life events, and the odd insight. Chris and Temple worked on the same dairy farm in New Hampshire many years ago and we have visited back and forth ever since.

“Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.” 

~ from Ferris Bueller's Day Off

Our friends Melvin and Anna, asked us all over for a buggy ride on their spring wagon. We've hardly seen them in recent months because they have been traveling all over the country for weddings, funerals and ordinations (the Old Order Mennonites and Amish know how to turn it out for any thing and for their families, no matter how far the distance: it's amazing, really, considering that few orders allow car ownership and definitely not plane travel). So it's been great to reconnect with them, too, and, after four years of friendship, I'd never had a buggy ride with them, either.

The day was perfect: a huge high pressure system from the north brought in pleasant summer temperatures, intense blue skies, and cooling breezes, just for the day. It was a real fall-like treat before the hot blast that is supposed to hit us this weekend (104!). The best part was driving along at a much slower pace than a car, in the open air, talking along the way and where we could really watch the landscape. Everything just slowed right down. One of the books I've often revisited in recent years is In Praise of Slowness by Carl Honoré. This book encourages the same thing (and yes, I read it slowly and savor each word).

Slow read. Slow food. Slow pace. Slow lane. You have to slow it down once in a while. Otherwise, life just passes us by and we get swept up by too much detail and minutiae. So try to take it slow: just for one day, one hour, one moment.

We returned from our ride at the end of the afternoon and spent time talking in Anna's kitchen and under the trees. The only noises were the breeze and the birds and the murmur of voices. No video games, no television, no telephones, no computers. When we returned home again we had a lovely impromptu Mexican meal on the patio, active boys, quiet porch sitting, more laughter.

As my great-grandmother often advised her nine children, "Take the ruthlessness to rest!" Stay put, be serene, try to be content in the moment and with the task. It's really the best cure for what ails.

You come back when you're ready!

Catherine

“There's absolutely no reason for being rushed along with the crowd. Everybody should be free to go very slow...what you want, what you're hanging around in the world for, is for something to occur to you.” 

~ Robert Frost

Gooseberry Jam

I've always wanted to make gooseberry jam because I love fresh gooseberries––especially lightly sugared, and folded, in fool-fashion, with homemade vanilla custard sauce and a bit of whipped cream. The pie isn't bad, either. Maybe I'm just losing my sweet tooth, but I have to say that while the results were as promised, the flavor of the jam is more like cranberry sauce (which isn't a bad thing, either, as I'm already imagining slathering the jam on pork or turkey this fall and winter). However, it's quite different than the flavor of a fresh gooseberry which is more a combination of rhubarb and a blueberry. I also used a combination of red (more ripened) and green berries and perhaps next time I shall try to use all green.

This year I bought several quarts of gooseberries from one of our local Casey County farmers. Bobbett Jascor is a garlic farmer and also raises many other unusual fruits that aren't easily found in the markets: gooseberries, currants and even a grape-sized kiwi. Having made the jam, I can understand why Bobbett just makes jelly (which she compared to cranberry sauce, too). [I should also add here that the reason I did not pick gooseberries from our own bush––for more on this wonderful fruit see "Gooseberries!" from my In the Pantry archives––is that my chickens beat me to it! Yes, they have quite a reach from the ground! And, yes, they knew when they were just perfect for eating. Glad they enjoyed them.]

These little buggers (the berries, not the hens, although there are moments) come complete with stems and tiny little hairy beards, both of which have to be removed before using (unlike blueberries where you just have to remove the invariable stems and leaves that get in the mix). Gooseberries are also a thorny (as in long and thorny) berry so I was more than happy to pay $2 a pint to have them picked for me, even if I had to do the cleaning.

Pie is good, too! This is also how I make
our rhubarb pies, more or less.
From RecipeCurio.com

So there I was last week, two days before leaving for a conference, sitting on the porch picking the beards and stems off of about 8 quarts of gooseberries! Needless to say, it was more labor intensive than I'd planned. Bobbett just makes jelly and throws everything in: I could do the same with my steam juicer next year (as I plan to do with elderberry heads in a few more weeks). But I've always been more of a jam kind of gal: I like the thickness, the flavor, the way it glops on a crumpet or slice of bread.

After that preamble, would I make this again? Probably, but not any time soon. After all, next year is another year and, as we dig into the freezer or open a jar, I will have long forgotten the time spent plucking each little stubborn stem and pinching off each little beard. And for a jam that is more like cranberry sauce, which takes about 1/10th the time from cleaning the berries to jamming them, well, I might think twice.

This is a recipe from my old standby, The Joy of Cooking, and is fairly standard for jam: 1 cup fruit to 1 cup sugar.

Gooseberry Jam

• 4 cups gooseberries (de-bearded and stemmed, lightly rinsed)
• 4 cups sugar
• 1 packet pectin (or 2 apples finely diced)

1. Mix berries and sugar (and pectin or apples).
2. Stir well on low heat until bubbly.
3. Follow directions on pectin package OR, if using apples, cook until jam "sets" on a plate.
4. Put into cleaned, sterilized glass jars and can.

NOTE: I doubled the recipe, almost, with 7 cups of berries, a scant 7 cups of sugar, 1 package of pectin, and 2 diced green apples. I ended up cooking it until set. It made 7 half-pints.

You can also freeze gooseberries as you might any other berry. Lightly wash and drain (unless you know they aren't sprayed), put onto clean, dry cookie sheets (with sides) and freeze flat. Then, when solid, you can put them right into a freezer bag or other container as the fruit has frozen individually.

You come back when you're ready!

Catherine

Down on the Creek

It's not every day that a child will say, "Let's go down on the creek today." And so, after a bit of puttering about and some errands and making sure my article got to my editor after two days of no satellite internet (ergh), that's exactly what we did. Just Eli and me. 

Our youngest child has an affinity for rocks (and coins and, well, many things). His laser vision pinpoints the smallest of rocks or just for what he is looking––for a while it was geodes and now he's moved on to others. He can spend hours sorting a collection, organizing a shelf, washing and categorizing his Legos. Truly a young man after my own heart! As a younger boy he enjoyed organizing cupboards or arranging things at the holidays. He is very tactile and an inventory specialist. It will be fun to see what he will do when he grows up: Architect? Geologist? U.S. Mint? A poet-farmer like Wendell Berry? We know he will be Eli and for now he doesn't have to worry about anything else. He is still all boy.

This summer we are trying to be more in the moment when we are not busy doing farm chores. We are embracing spontaneity. Like today when I was hungry at 2:30pm and discovered that no one else had grabbed a sandwich, and suggested we all pile in the car and go get lunch in Nancy at our favorite Mom&Pop place. So we did. [I should note here that I often joke with my husband, "I married you for life, but not for lunch." It's really true: except when either of us takes the other out for lunch. Or when I feel like making it. Don't worry: no one is deprived in our house.]

After our late lunch we took a detour home to see where some new friends live (and who just had a baby) and that led to driving down roads we've never been on and then past some friends who happened to be outside and so we stopped by and had a delightful visit. Three hours after we left we were home. And I remembered Eli's plaintive request: "Let's go down on the creek today."

And so we did.

Just Eli and me. 

It was magical, quiet, and time sort of stood still for forty minutes. I realized that I need to take more one-on-one time with everyone in my family––each of my children and with my husband, too. Even myself. In a few weeks Henry and I will be heading to New England to pick up our daughter who is returning to be with us in Kentucky for a time. He and I will spend some time in New Hampshire together while Addie packs and says her goodbyes in Vermont where she has worked for the past four years. I've never taken a road trip with one of the boys before and look forward to our adventures––and then to having all of the kids home together again. It just feels right.

I like this shape of rock and seek them out.

NOTE: The spider has been enlarged from how he appeared on the rock, but I would say that paw print is about life-sized. I'm thinking a raccoon but not certain.

Thanks to a reader, I've discovered this is a Belted Kingfisher.
Here is more information about them in Kentucky. And I need a better zoom lens!

You come back when you're ready! 

Catherine

Remember that it's not the destination, but the journey.

The Perfect Peach: a Cautionary Tale

There once was a beautiful, plump and perfect peach with just the right amount of blush and not too hard and not too soft. Its skin had an unmatched smoothness and it was the only peach I could reach on our only tree that has bore fruit for the past several years since we've lived here, but never this early in the season (late May: unheard of for Kentucky peaches). Last year we picked too late and two limbs broke from the weight of them. Another year our neighbor was able to pick them while we spent our last summer in New Hampshire: he canned them and said they were picked at just the right time. Every year, I thank Miss Lillian for planting the tree so many years ago.

As I admired the fruit my brief thought was "Oh, the worms haven't found them yet!" I held the large peach and admired it before taking my first bite, savoring it as slowly as I could while the nectar ran down my chin and onto my hands. Never was anything more delicious or infused with everything natural: the warmth of an early Kentucky spring and summer, the country air, the good earth––and no pesticides! There were so many more peaches hanging above me but I needed my children, and a good step-ladder, to get to them. And so, the day after I plucked that first fruit from the tree, we picked all that we could reach: about a bushel.

The next day, as my intention was to turn them all into jam and cobbler and whatever we could muster before they spoiled, they all appeared with odd and different-sized bruises on them. I thought my sons had been too rough with the peaches while picking and so I blamed them, at first. But I soon realized as I cut into each peach that most had small worms in their pits. These tiny, damaging devils must have gotten in at another point in the peach's life cycle, burrowing and waiting for the right, ripe moment to attack from within. They, too, knew when the peaches were at their best expression of perfection as those nasty worms were eating the tree-ripened peaches from the inside out! Parts of the peaches remained acceptable to eat, in small chunks and sides, so I carefully cut those out and used them in a delicious batch of sangria.

But I was truly crest-fallen. How could this be? We're not orchardists by any stretch and yes, I appreciate organic produce. However, I can assure you, I will find any means possible to have a worm-free peach crop next year, even if it means being non-organic in the process. We have no idea what we ingest from the produce at the grocery store so better to have some understanding and control of what I put on my own garden, when necessary. I am hoping that there will be a semi-organic, not too chemical-driven solution––like the diatomaceous earth I just sprinkled on my broccoli and cabbage plants to rid them of the little green and damaging cabbage worms that can plague the brassicas.



It would seem that there is a parasite or foe for every living thing and worms are especially insidious to a species. It would also seem that rot seeks perfection. But the lesson here is that nothing is ever perfect and trying to attain it or even flirt with it––or even to deny it––gives perfection power. "When we make plans, God laughs." Isn't that how the expression goes?

Yet the memory of that one truly perfect and luscious peach, picked by my own hand and selfishly savored on one hot day in May will stay with me forever.

While I will patiently wait for the "Baby Gold" peaches to arrive later in August from Pennsylvania for our canning fest, I will eat and cook or bake with the larger and earlier southern varieties––including the ones ready now at nearby Haney's Appledale Farm. They might not be from our tree, or even organic, but they will do.

You come back when you're ready!

Catherine