Woodstove Soup

After spending much of the day cutting wood, I decided to enjoy the fruit of my labors by cooking vegetable beef soup on our woodstove. Seemed like no better way to beat the system than to heat the house and cook supper at the same time. I'm certain there are far better ways to beat the system, but I'm satisfied with this approach for today.

I had never messed with soup bones in the past, but ended up with around twenty pounds of the things when we had one of our steers butchered last fall. A few weeks ago I roasted two pounds worth with chopped onions, celery and carrots for a couple of hours. Then I simmered the concoction for six hours. Next I strained the stock through a colander. After refrigerating overnight and skimming the fat off the top the next day, I poured my homemade stock into containers and froze them.

After letting one of the containers thaw yesterday, I added a little water, seasonings, salt, pepper, barley, carrots, celery, onions and diced tomatoes in an old crock-pot. After some searching I found a lid that kind of fit, and set it on the woodstove.

I'd love to say that everything in the soup, with the exception of some of the seasonings, were raised on the farm. But alas, only the beef and the stock came from here. My previous post may give insight as to why this is so.

Even if my soup adventure does not turn out, seeing that crock-pot on the woodstove and smelling thyme, beef and onion in the air gives me the warm fuzzies. A food review will follow tonight's meal.

The Annual Pursuit of Gardening Greatness

Few people, including those who live with me, know that I am actually a master gardener. Granted, it is only for about three months of each year. But during those months I am nothing short of spectacular.

In December I begin thinking about seed purchases and ponder possible improvements over the previous season’s gardens. January finds me in the throws of meticulous planning. I consider rotations, plant placement within rotational beds, locations of new gardens, made-from-scratch drip irrigation systems, compost piles to be built, and take inventory of material needed to build a couple of late winter cold frames.

February preparations increase dramatically. Seeds on hand are inventoried and a shopping list created. I pull out seed trays and prepare them for March’s plantings. The seed catalogs that have finally arrived are studied and price comparisons computed. Job lists are made according to priority and placed in chronological order. Materials for new trellises are found and positioned for use.

Every year I plan to have my seed trays completed by the third week of March. They are to be placed in our home on shelves sitting in front of southern facing windows. Yet every year, usually by the second week of March, I am frustrated and disappointed. It is seemingly inevitable that each year’s Ides of March are destined to bring my delusions of grandeur down into the pit of reality.

Why can I never rise above life’s obstacles and stay on the garden track? Be it a bathroom drain that suddenly needs replacing or heater in the milkhouse that needs repair, life’s unexpected curve balls have derailed my well-intentioned plans every single year.

The remainder of my garden year also plays out the same as previous years. My seed trays won’t be touched until early April. Some years I surrender completely and just sow directly into the ground. In April I will begin clearing the garden of last year’s weeds, plantings, discarded tools, and trellises. Each of these tasks should have been completed in March.

Early crops (Broccoli and Greens families) should have been planted in April but won’t make it into the ground until after May Day. The second week of May should find me transplanting tomato and other late spring seedlings. They won’t find their way home until the end of the month.

The seemingly endless disappointments continue throughout the growing season. I forget to water. I avoid weeding. Weeds overtake what had been neat, well-tended rows. Some crops (potatoes and onions last year) disappear all together. The failures culminate in November when once again I fail to get garlic in the ground for the following year’s growing season.

Early on, usually some time in April, I begin conversing and reasoning with myself. “I really was set on putting in about ten rows of corn this year. Guess I’ll settle for two. Those rows of new veggies will have to wait until next year. Wonder if I can return the seeds? Potato beds? Forget it. Besides, spuds are really cheap at the grocery store. But they’re not organic. So what? One more year of non-organic russets won’t make that big of a deal.”

Soon I find myself arguing with, err, myself. “You really suck as a gardener. No I don’t. I am just overloaded with responsibilities. That’s a crock. Master gardener? You’re just a master procrastinator. That’s not true. I’d like to see other people try to handle all the stuff I have to handle. You are constantly writing checks that your body can’t cash. Oh yeah? Well you couldn’t find the positive side of a free lunch. Really? I think you’re just a self-absorbed whiner who never intends to get anything of value done and then points the finger of blame at everything but yourself. You bastard! Who are you to judge me? If I listened to you I’d never accomplish anything because you write failure on it before the first step is taken. Well that’s only because every step you take is destined to land in one big heaping, steaming pile of fetid failure.”

Then it gets really ugly and I refuse to speak to myself for a week or two.

Over the last few years my wife, Lisa, has taken pity on me. Either that or she has become so frustrated with my garden that isn’t that she takes it upon herself to put in her own garden. I’m not sure which motivation moves her to action, but in the end she somehow ends up with something that actually produces vegetables.

Lisa does gardening all wrong. I can’t point that out of course, but deep down we both know it. She sometimes plants seeds and genuinely doesn’t care if they come up or not. If they do, she rejoices. If not, c'est la vie. This attitude completely befuddles me, though I must grudgingly admit that I frequently admire her for it.

She never has a “big picture” plan for crop rotation. Wide beds are never considered. Seeds are scattered haphazardly on the ground. Some make it in, some don’t. She even uses our children to assist in planting (I have to find other things to do on the far side of the farm when this happens). But the truth remains that the beautiful, bountiful gardens of my mind remain securely locked in there somewhere. Lisa’s gardens somehow produce despite their obvious flaws and awkward management. How this can be I do not know nor understand. But they do and come harvest time I will be quite grateful for it.

I planned to have most of my seed trays done this week. They remain vacant in the garage as they do each year at this time. Lisa? She has little onion stems just beginning to sprout from the seeds she planted last week. This fall I will enjoy their sweet flavor on a hamburger made from beef that was raised on our own little farm. At that time I will be grateful, pleased and satisfied. Right now they are bitter reminders of my failures in agronomy and bring home the painful realization that my annual stint as a master gardener is over for another nine months.

February

February is a weird month in Wisconsin. It is confused, double-minded. It’s never quite certain which season to align with: winter or spring. It can warm the hills and valleys with temperatures in the fifties as it did two weeks ago. Yet overnight it can plummet to near zero with Alberta clippers bringing fresh snow and ice as it did here last week.

Those of us who live here view February as bittersweet. It is brutal and beautiful, depressing and inspiring. February is filled with hope and despair.

A couple of weeks ago I was up in Dodgeville and stopped in at the local Kwik Trip to gas up the truck and pick up some staples (milk, wine, butter, bananas and bread). The sun was shining. The temperature was just a fraction shy of fifty degrees. The snow banks were shriveling mercifully like the wicked witch in the Wizard of Oz. Melted snow flowed furiously to form streams and lakes in the streets.

Everyone was smiling. Everyone was patient. There was no jockeying for the prime parking spaces nearest the store door, for no one minded walking a little farther on this day. In fact, we preferred it. It gave us more opportunities to say, “Hello. What a day, huh?” to fellow marrow-eaters of life. The glory of the day brought out the best in each of us. We were decent and good. And we were decent and good to each other.

Then the weather turned. So did we.

I was back at that same Kwik Trip the next week. The temperature was in the twenties, the sky overcast. A steady breeze from the north made it feel much colder than it actually was. After gassing up I walked into the store. Faces, both shoppers and employees, were long. They looked neither angry nor sad but just let down, ripped off. They carried the grimace of Charlie Brown who foolishly believed once again that Lucy might hold that football long enough to kick it. But instead they were lying flat on their backs again, feeling stupid for believing that winter was over.

I paid for my gas and walked out of the store, pulling my hood up over my head as an arctic wind blew against the back of my neck. As I pulled the truck away from the pump I was nearly hit by a speeding car. Without so much as an, “I’m sorry, I goofed,” wave, the inconsiderate slob pulled into the parking space nearest the door.  I resisted giving a one fingered salute with great difficulty, settling for a few choice words released in my passenger-less truck.

We in Wisconsin become February. We can’t decide if we are gentle or aggressive. We are both patient yet petty, warm yet frigid, gracious yet demanding. We are conflicted in our emotions and attitudes not because of who we are, but because of the environment in which we live. It brings out both the best and the worst in us.

On the upside, this all makes for a good excuse when needed. Who can't use a little extra guilt deflection? "That wasn't me kicking the cat tonight. I didn't drink the last beer. Well of course I wouldn't leave hair in the sink. I'd never leave the toilet seat up. It was February."

No Way. Has it Really Been Two Years?

I feel so bad. I knew that it had been some time, but how quickly days, weeks, months add up.

I was caught in a trap. Not the animal-catching type that produces swift, immediate and decisive action from P.E.T.A. folk, but the mental type that is sometimes painful and always paralyzing. I kept thinking that I needed to take the time to write one of those "catch up" posts. One of those common things other blog writers use when they disappear for a season. The trap is that the longer you wait, the longer the unwritten post becomes.

Large writing projects without enforceable deadlines should not be in my life. They lead to instant procrastination. And eventual guilt. Guilt leads to denial ("Yeah, I'll get to it as soon as things slow down"). Denial is only a temporary sedative and its decreasing potency reveals greater guilt that is well on its way to outright shame.

Oh, what a wretch I am.

Yet time can be a wonderful thing and a gentle healer. So much time has passed that it is completely unrealistic to consider (on my end) or expect (from your end) a two-year catch-up post is in order for this blog. Therefor I believe that I have arrived upon a seemingly reasonable and far less painful solution: I will just begin writing and when it seems appropriate, I will try to inject some things that have taken place over the last two years into those posts.

That said, err, written, I would be remiss not to express my sincere apologies to those of you who check in every now and then just to see if I'm still ticking. I am, and I will try to do a better job of proving that from here on out.

More to come... very soon. Seriously. I mean I really mean it. I honestly do.

The Changing New Year

New Year's day on the farm has changed. It use to be about getting the chores done quickly in the morning, then catching the Tournament of Roses Parade on TV. While that was happening, Mom would be busy in the kitchen creating a variety of foods that would last into the evening. We could hear the pots and pans banging from time to time. The sound was soothing on a cold winter's day. We knew that someone was working hard to make our lives just a little bit better.

It was a day of laughter and lounging and foraging in the kitchen. We would munch, snack, devour throughout the afternoon with no set "sit down and eat" time. All the while college Bowl games could be heard throughout the lower level of the house. We would huddle around the tube placing silly non-redeemable bets on the outcome of the Rose Bowl. We would cheer when our team scored, and quickly switch to another network during commercials to see what was happening in the Cotton Bowl. Then it was back to the Roses.

Sometime later the "Chores before sundown" would be taken care of and we'd be back for more football in the cozy confines of a well-worn arm chair with a plate full of snacks. At the end of the day I would be stuffed and satisfied. It was perhaps the only day of the year in which I could honestly say that I didn't want to watch any more football and I didn't want to eat another piece of cheese.

We don't have cable or satellite TV on Hillsong Farm. Today we didn't have a lot of football playing on our television. It leaves me wondering how we could have allowed ESPN and the NCAA to wreck such a wonderful tradition?