The Accidental Valentine

Note to Weldon...with my lobster magnet

I wanted to fill a Valentine post with delectable recipes for two and budget-friendly sweetheart celebrations, but the topic that ended up feeling right was how Weldon and I stumbled through last week and found that our love was laced throughout it.

Formulating our plan for Valentine's Day this year was like trying to choose the captain of a basketball team from a group of computer geeks and art students.  Nothing seemed like a good fit for our tight budget and tighter schedule.  Although we don't make a huge deal of the day in a conventional roses/dinner/teddy bear sense, we try to pick a fun way to conscientiously celebrate our love. But an all-star option wasn't showing up for this season!  Because we rarely ever celebrate on the 14th, last Monday hit like a buzzer on the clock.  Time was ticking and the outlook was grim.  In reality, the alarm woke us before daylight and we set into our usual routine -- make breakfast, pack lunches, stoke the fire, and get Weldon on the road by 6:30.  Somewhere in the middle of all that it struck me that it wasn't just any Monday -- it was February 10th! On that day six years prior, Weldon had taken me on our very first date.  As I voiced my happy realization from the kitchen, Weldon appeared holding his blue Irish cable-knit sweater.  He'd chosen to wear it for the first time this season as his weapon of choice against the freezing temperatures.  Coincidentally, he'd also worn it on our date.  (Queue the collective "Awwww" from the audience!) Thus began our Valentine celebrating...a lovely week with a mind all its own.

My Friend

The sun shone and the wind was pleasant for the better part of the day yesterday. I ventured out in the yard to hang my laundry and gather kindling before the forecasted rains.  The striking contrast to our winter weather was so invigorating that my entire being swelled with the tease of spring.  The garden came to mind with my first slow gulp of warm air.  Ordinarily, I'd be leaving a layer of outer wear in the house and rolling up my sleeves to get into the dirt on a day like that.  But I was distracted...troubled even.  As I populated the line with clothespins I thought about people, community, and friendship. Two years ago Weldon introduced me to the mother of two of his high school friends.  She lived alone not far from us on a beautiful secluded farm and kept herself busy with livestock and gardening.  She heard Weldon had taken the plunge into alternative agriculture and looked him up in search of a few resources.  The three of us met at her home for homemade pizza and talked until late in the evening about all things homesteading and farming.  We all could tell there was an enjoyable acquaintanceship brewing.  A few short months later she called and preemptively asked for some assistance in the coming months -- she had just been diagnosed with late stage cancer.  There are many reasons why I've chosen not to clock-in at a conventional career or to structure my life in a "normal" fashion.  I just never realized that something like this would be one of them.

Home Improvement

For the past three years I've been devouring books, magazines, websites, and conversations to aid me in designing my dream home – a cabin-y cottage equipped to be our family’s homestead hub.  Until we’re ready to build, Weldon and I are living in a glorified garage.  It sounds a bit off kilter, but I assure you, our 1,200 square-foot shop building is an absolutely wonderful home…even with plywood walls, a concrete floor, metal ceilings, and a trailer-sized roll-up door.  Recently, it began to dawn on me that I've spent so much effort defining my future ideal that I haven’t given full attention to my current dwelling.  So, having made peace with staying where we are for at least another two years, I set out last week to look at our space with fresh eyes and renewed vigor.  Saturday’s grand finale was a John Deere tractor rolling toward my door with a piano dangling from its pallet forks.  Yes, you read that right.  All I can say is, “It was a good week.” 

Winter Hibernation

When the alarm went off this morning at 5:30 I rebelliously kept my eyes clamped shut and then rolled over in smug satisfaction.  The wake up call wasn't for me...Weldon was heading to work. Today would be the first weekday since summer that I would have the house to myself and nowhere else to be. Weeks ago I knew a day like this would come: the holiday train would come to a slow and screeching halt and the mounting list marked "After the Holidays" would stare me in the face.  Should I wash my refrigerator, schedule my appointments, cull the overflow from the cabinets, organize the spare room, or finalize the 2013 financials first?  D. None of the above. Late last night I decided that the list could (should) wait.  Instead, I defied the morning alarm's call to action and stayed in bed to watch the darkness outside my bedroom curtain become hinted with light and finally awash in a luminous gray.  As I lay there contemplating what the day, the week, the next twelve months might hold, I realized that this was one of the beautiful things that winter is really all about.

Thanks for Everything

When I was a kid my mother had a rule that made me nearly explode at the end of every August.  Having worked myself into a frenzy opening a glut of birthday presents, I was required to write thank you notes before I could stash the loot in my room.  It’s not that I wasn't appreciative, but the timing couldn't have been worse!  I dutifully scribbled notes in the neatest penmanship I could muster considering the circumstances.  Then off I’d fly to my room never to be seen or heard from again.  Good news, mom!  I learned the lesson:  I don’t make a habit of taking things or people for granted.  Unfortunately, it still creeps up on me quicker than I’d like to admit.  My excuse is that everything in life seems to happen so fast these days – one week zooms into the next, seasons pass in a blink, my how the year does fly!  It is a great relief to me that Americans have a handy national holiday during which it is “strongly suggested” I STOP and appreciate my blessings.  I still write thank you notes for my birthday gifts, but I've upped the ante for Thanksgiving, the time for reflection and offering of thanks comes regardless of the gluttonous feast.

Hard to Say Goodbye

Goodbyes are tough.  No matter how long I have to prepare, it’s difficult for me to embrace the finality of a particular period or relationship…even when it’s with a cow.  Last week, Weldon and I sold Bambi, our milk cow.  When we purchased her two years ago we were eager to jump into the delicious possibilities that home dairy would offer.  Though our plate was fairly full at the time, we didn't expect that after only one full season of milking, life would require us to take a sabbatical and force us to say goodbye to Bambi so soon.

Making a List, Checking it Twice

I’m a little hesitant to post this.  One of my sisters (whose calming presence and laid-back personality make

her a phenomenal massage therapist and an ideal confidant) unleashes her otherwise non-existent fury when “a certain holiday” unfairly takes the stage before Thanksgiving has been given proper festivity.  She mandates that carols, themed movies, and décor remain under wraps until after the pumpkins and cranberries take their bow in the limelight.  I've chosen to acquiesce to her demands for two reasons: she’s my older sister and I can’t afford to pay for massages.  Truly, I agree with the notion that Thanksgiving is an amiable holiday, full of noble sentiment and historical value. I’m very much looking forward to the entire turkey-topped season.  I also agree that the “other major holiday soon to come” has greedily begun chomping on other calendar pages because of outlandish consumerism, nothing more.  However, as a homemade gift giver and a busy woman, I am required to turn my thoughts to December’s celebratory season long before the temperatures plummet.  So…with a bit of trepidation and a wish and a prayer to remain in my sister’s good graces (and within reach of her stone-melting thumbs), I’m posting about my preparations for "you know what".

News for November

Happy November!   I've finally bested the cold that had me down the past few weeks.  In the interim I’ve continued to craft Digging Deeper Pages.  There are TWO NEW PAGES posted on the blog's homepage for your reading and research enjoyment:  The House – a bit of domestic dissection about the tactile traits and philosophical framework of making a home.  The Livestock – a brief personal history along with the why and generic how-to of our animal husbandry practices.  This should be handy for animal lovers and conscientious consumers alike.    

There are a few more pages soon to come: The Farm, The Garden, and The Finances.  I value your interest, comments, and questions.  I know many of you have applicable personal experience and musings to share!

The Teacher Type

“Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel.”  -- Socrates

If Socrates were alive today I’d give his toga-wearing frame a huge bear hug, look him straight in the eyes, and thank him profusely for acknowledging this truth.  Then I’d ask him how in the world he said so many quote-worthy things that we still reference thousands of years later.

With the exception of one moment of weakness in elementary school when I said the words, “I want to be a teacher,” (out of adoration for Mrs. Most-Awesome-Teacher-Ever) I was otherwise convinced that the field was not for me.  I loved school but there seemed to be a mismatch between me and the profession.  I wasn't a softy-type nurturing personality that could warmly embrace snot-nosed little ones or repeat the basics of multiplication for the eleven-thousandth time.  Likewise, the idea of working with upper level students made me roll my eyes because, as everyone knows, aliens remove teenage brains and don’t return them until much later in life.  When I began setting my sites on viable career paths I objected to the entire field of education under the guise that I didn't have the patience for it.  The only thing I even hesitated to consider was a position on a collegiate level…but I think I was only intrigued by that because Indiana Jones was a college professor by day and an adventuring intellectual by night.  So, pretty much teaching was out. 

Ten years later, look at me…I’m working with middle school students five days a week!

A Birthday to Remember

A friend of ours made this astonishing cake.
Those veggies are FROSTING!

I love birthdays.  Yours, mine, ours, theirs…it doesn't matter; birthdays are one of my favorite things.  I like the idea that for one day in the year an individual can be loved on, feasted with, sung to, and given gifts.  Every one is worth that.  Of course, I realize that for some the loving may come from a pet, the feast may be a candy bar, the song may be on the radio, and the gifts may be green traffic lights and a pretty sunset; but, if that person acknowledges these things on their birthday, it is still a special day.  I think birthdays give each one of us an opportunity for reflection and hope.  Unlike New Year’s Day, when everyone around us is encouraged to acknowledge the annual passage of time, a birthday is personal, private even.  Only you have lived the exact moments of your days past and will experience the fullness of your days to come.  Only you know the wish that you make when the candles are blown out (or your head hits the pillow that night). 

Land, Ho!

This month will go down in my history as a major "FIRST".  I bought land!  I married into 40 acres that Weldon already owned; but these 30 acres we eyeballed, calculated, negotiated, and signed on the dotted line for together. This post is about land ownership -- an integral part of our homestead -- but it is just as much about a more subliminal subject: money.  In a day and age when this topic is politically hot and socially taboo, our culture is motivated by excess and plagued by financial illiteracy.  I'm no financial expert, but in the last five years I've taken my education into my own hands in a desperate search for balance, simplicity, and security.  So far, I'm living on the smallest paycheck yet, but with a greater sense of abundance and the most financial freedom I've ever had.  Had we not had enough of our greenbacks in a row, we never would have been able to scribble our signatures on a deed when the right moment fell in our lap.

Breaking Bread...and Beans

This past Thursday marked the 237th anniversary of our nation's founding. Americans from coast to coast celebrated with thunderous fireworks, patriotic melodies, and gluttonous cookouts.  Many inches of rain falling on south central Kentucky added a particularly sloshy feel to our week's activities. Our grills may have been dampened, but our spirits were not. Both sides of our family still gathered for belt-loosening cook-ins complete with mountains of potato salad and rivers of sweet tea.  There was much story-telling, many good laughs, and lots of family catch-up...a perfect holiday if you ask me.  Surprisingly, of all the meals, traditions, and visiting this week, it was another communal activity -- one significantly less detrimental to the waist-line -- that lingered in my mind as I sat to write this week's post.  It was the ritual of breaking green beans.

Love & Marriage

Weldon and I celebrated our third wedding anniversary last week!  I know I’m deviating a bit from my usual

kitchen, homestead, and farm topics, but as I see it, all things in this life are interconnected.  Weldon and I are the core of this homestead and as such our marriage plays a vital role in how our homestead, kitchen, and farm exist.  Some readers may think this topic too personal or maybe a bit presumptuous for such a newly-married person.  I have no disclaimer there, but perhaps you’ll get a good chuckle from this week’s story and can appreciate a dose of young love. 

A Gardener's Dream

On Monday I was in my garden. Finally. Spring (or perhaps winter, depending on your perspective) has been a bit reluctant this year.  It wasn't until late last week that the tide seemed to turn and spring established itself. The past few days the temperatures have climbed into the balmy seventies. The fire in our wood stove was abandoned over the weekend. The windows have flung open their eyelids to take in the world and the warmth. Naturally, the plants are responding with countless buds and blooms. These were all the signs I needed -- on Monday I was in my garden.

Spring Break

Our county schools are closed this week and I find myself experiencing "Spring Break" in a whole new light. Though it's been nearly a decade since I was matriculating anywhere, I've recently gone back to school -- as a teacher (of sorts). For the first time in my life I have a "9-to-5" job from which to have such a "Break", call it spring or otherwise. My new state of employment came with no lack of soul-searching. Am I breaking the Homesteaders' Creed by taking a full-time job away from home?

Roots and Panini

Bologna: Yup, That's the Italian Dictionary

I’m Italian. By most standards I’m actually a mutt – a quarter Italian, a quarter Russian, and a half mixture of German, Dutch, English, and a bit of hazy after that.  But of all the wonderful cultures that grafted themselves together to yield my family tree, I'm convinced that my Italian roots have a direct sap-line to my heart. Growing up my sisters often remarked about my olive insta-tan skin and my inclination to communicate through food. In college I enrolled in Italian 101 and studied in Bologna for a five-week language intensive program. Five years later, my mother (who is half Italian), took our family on a two-week trip to Tuscany in a splurge of generous exuberance. I soaked up every ounce of it like a dry sponge thrown into the ocean. Even now, seven years since, I catch myself deciphering how to say something in Italian. It doesn't sound as pretty from my lips as it once did…but I want to make sure it can still be done. The older I am, the stronger the kinship I feel to the homeland of my great-grandparents. But it’s more than the country itself that enraptures me. It’s the mindset, the values, the nuances of BE-ing Italian. In many ways, my homestead way of life echoes and encourages similar points of view. And, of course, there’s the food...which is much more a way of life than merely a source of nourishment. To which I say, “Exactly!”

Field Trip for a Grown-Up

There's nothing like a good field trip! I've been a sucker for them as long as I can remember. I have vivid memories of my elementary classes in Connecticut going to The Nature Center, The Norwalk Aquarium, the local planetarium, the living history museum at colonial Sturbridge Village, the Peabody Museum of natural science, and the cloisters near New York City. One particular fourth grade field trip to the P.T. Barnum Museum commemorated the life and showmanship of this original circus-master from my home state. Who doesn't want to see a mummy, the clothes of a dwarf and his dwarf wife, photos of Siamese twins, and a room-sized model train village all under one roof!?! It was such an awe-inspiring outing for me that I insisted my family return to the museum where I proceeded to recount the entire tour (probably verbatim). Even in college I relished the opportunity to go out into the world and experience what the lectures and notebooks had been brimming with. I made it to the Cumberland County Jail (that was a fun one to call home and report about), a water treatment plant, a landfill, and the incredulously creepy village of Centralia, Pennsylvania where an unquenchable fire has burned for decades in the coal seams under the town. I realize that us grown-ups have to focus on work and the everyday busyness of life, but I'm a firm believer that we all need field trips, even if we sometimes call them vacations.

Prime Time Gardening

There are cutesy sayings out there stating that everything we need to know in life we learned in kindergarten. I often read those and roll my eyes...but I sure hope I can summon my "Works well independently" ways alongside my "Works well with others" skills because I've just signed up to grow a massive garden with my husband's family.  I'm about to embark on a substantially coordinated, many-month endeavor with none other than...my in-laws.

The Scene: Garden Plot 2013

To Everything A Season

Ah, January -- the annual restart button.  This month is one of the slowest and quietest for me. The New Year has been ushered in and with it the urges to re-assess, start afresh, and give it another go. Though it's an informal ritual in the first weeks after the new year, I enjoy the mental exploration of the twelve months to come -- the seasons, the garden, the family occasions, the trips to be dreamed-up, skills to be acquired, information to be gathered, and experience to be gained.  And yet a small part of me senses that before I know it a new calendar will grace my kitchen wall a fleeting twelve months from now and I will start all over again. The day and age we live in is a lightning-paced one.  It's a reality I don't particularly care for but would rather face than ignore. While I won't argue that time flies when you're having fun, I think there are more options to that ending...Time Flies when you don't want it to. Time Flies when you're busy. Time flies when you're not paying attention. Or how about just plain 'ol Time Flies! I've chosen a simple lifestyle with connotations of "slowness" and I still ask myself, "Where does the time go!?!" more frequently than I'd like to admit. So what can I do about it?

Merry, Bright, Silent, and Holy

You and I both know that the Christmas season can be crazy. It's really easy to have a calendar page full of cheer-filled lunches, brunches, dinners, parties, gatherings, and outings.  I enjoy this aspect of the season and gear up for the exhausting coordination that goes hand-in-hand with it.  I bake the coffee cake on Tuesday for Thursday, make the pizza dough on Saturday for Wednesday, freeze the sausage balls this weekend for next, meet the farmer for fresh greens Friday for Christmas Eve's salad...and the to-do list goes on and the parties keep coming. Thankfully, I get along well with my immediate and extended families, so the occasions are a joy, albeit a bit numerous.  Truly, I couldn't ask for better holidays.

Lately I've been grasping for the silent and holy aspects of the season. I realize that it's not politically correct but I'm not ashamed to put in print that I'm a Christian.  Christmas may be a season of giving, a time of childlike awe and wonder, an occasion for charity and selflessness, but as far as I'm concerned it's not because Santa deems it so.  Christmas is the celebration of Jesus' birth -- the greatest gift to mankind.  It was commemorated by the luxurious offerings of the Magi and the breathless anticipation and rapturous jubilee of angels, shepherds, and all creation. It was a foreshadowing of the fulfillment of true love, ultimate sacrifice, and redemption made available for all.

THIS is Christmas.  A reason to be both speechless and to exuberantly rejoice, to be silent and to reverence the reality of this momentous event.  As difficult as it may be to wrap my mind around and as tear-filled as my eyes become, I intentionally contemplate the stillness of that divine night, the hushed expectancy of heaven and nature, and the bursting wonderment of all who witnessed that miracle.  And a miracle it was. Not only the immaculate conception or the paternal dreams, the humble birth in a stable, the angels' celestial song, or the guiding light of a new star, but first and foremost because Emmanuel had come -- God was now with us in human form.  The Creator had provided a way, the Way, for men to be called, drawn, and saved into relationship with Him as He intended.  This night was the moment that the Living Promise finally come to earth.  Joy to the World.

Modern Christmas is holly jolly and I'm okay with that to a degree, but the true reason for this season need not be displaced nor diminished under the jingle of sleighbells and Frosty's button nose.  In the coming weeks before beckoning in the New Year, I wish that your days be Merry and Bright, and that your Christmas be overshadowed by the splendor of that Silent and Holy Night. 

See you in 2013!