Always On My Mind

I'm a mom of four and a farm wife. Of all the thoughts that swirl throughout my head each day, one subject always outweighs the others: food.

Not only do I provide it for my family several times a day, but I rather enjoy it myself.

We are in the unique predicament of selling it so that we can afford to buy it.

Our distance from town requires that I constantly make note of what I use so that the list is complete when it is time to replenish the pantry.

Food is always on my mind.

After snacking on some peas in the garden this morning, I returned to the house and did a little reading. Apparently I'm not the only one who is thinking about food these days. The new fad is to create a garden in the backyard and grow produce in urban areas. I'm not one to follow trends, but I am encouraged by this development. I think that the more in touch people are with the production of food, the more positive the public perception of agriculture will be.

However, today's New York Times reported a phenomenon that disturbs me. Wealthy people are paying people to raise and harvest the produce - and in some cases to cook it into meals - so that they can have the benefits of the garden without getting their fingernails dirty.

I have no qualms about these people's rights to produce their own food. However, I see this development as further evidence of the growing rift between economic classes. In fact, I think that food (and access to it) is actually widening that gap.

This trend, just like the trend of eating organic or "all natural" (whatever that means) foods, is only available to those who can afford it. Many people are unable to shop at the farmer's market. We cannot all buy organic foods. We certainly can't all grow produce in our backyards; millions of people don't even have a backyard.

Those people who are economically or geographically excluded from obtaining food from those sources rely on production agriculture to provide the food. But because of movements like the one mentioned in the Times today, public perception is that production agriculture is no longer necessary. People who can afford to pay gardeners and chefs can also afford to support anti-agriculture environmental activists who work every day to shut down ag operations. Shutting down production agriculture in this country will mean further dependence on foreign imports.

Dependence on foreign food is a scary concept.

So, here's my plea. Buy organic. Buy all-natural (whatever that means). Buy locally. Grow your own. Raise a goat. Hire a gardener. But please think twice before supporting causes that aim to destroy production agriculture, even if they have shiny slogans and you want to impress the neighbors by how green you are. Those of us in production agriculture would like you to know that we take care of the land. We depend upon its health. We are proud to feed the nation - or at least those who can't afford their own personal gardener.

Yum

I am of the opinion that if a person is going to the work of making a dessert, it may as well be chocolate.

I am also of the opinion that if a person is going to eat a chocolate dessert, it's pretty pointless to try to make it healthy.

That said, I'm sharing with you my incredibly easy recipe for chocolate brownie trifle. I concocted this recipe after discovering that I have a trifle bowl that has been trifleless for 13 years. I thought I should remedy the situation, so I made a trifle. It was pretty good, but it wasn't quite perfection. I was asked to bring a dessert to a potluck over the weekend, so I decided to tweak the trifle. Since I was satisfying the chocolate cravings of a crowd, I used a large glass bowl this time, so my trifle bowl is still trifleless.

Here's the list of ingredients for the extra-large version.

a double batch of your favorite brownies (my favorite recipe starts with Betty and ends with Crocker)

one package cream cheese

one large tub Cool Whip

one large and one small package of chocolate pudding mix

3 1/4 cups milk

6 tsp. instant coffee dissolved in 4 Tablespoons boiling water

one Hershey's chocolate bar


Bake the brownies according to the package directions recipe. Cool for a few minutes and invert on parchment-lined cooling racks. When completely cool, slide cooling racks out from under parchment and use a pizza cutter to cut brownies into one-inch squares.

While brownies are cooling, mix together softened cream cheese and coffee until well blended. Add pudding mix and gradually beat in milk.


Enlist the subordinates to place a layer of brownies in the bottom of a large bowl.


Monitor carefully to prohibit unauthorized taste testing.

Use about 1/3 of the brownie squares. Please don't count them, though; this shouldn't be that stressful.


Spread 1/3 of the pudding mixture over the brownies. Make sure there is proper supervision.


Crack down on any nibbling.


Spread 1/3 of the Cool Whip over the pudding mixture, and then begin the layers again.


Repeat all layers three times. That last layer may require some real feet hands on treatment.

For the finishing touch (and to disguise the brown Cool Whip that results from overzealous Cool Whip spreading during the final step), top the dessert with some chocolate curls.

If I were concerned with appearances, I would go to the work of making homemade chocolate curls. But I'm more concerned with getting to the eating step, so I take the easy route. If you want the prettier way, go here.


My way involves a Hershey's bar and a vegetable peeler.

Holding the chocolate bar on its side, peel off layers and place them in curly positions on top of the dessert.


It may not be the prettiest dessert you've ever eaten, but it will certainly satisfy your chocolate cravings.

It's not bad for breakfast, either.

The Parts Run

I have been writing a farm life column for a regional agricultural publication for nearly 10 years. In that time, I have received more comments about one column than all of the others combined. I think that the following piece resonates with farm wives because it is the absolute, universal truth. And, to date, it is the only column that has ever elicited a rebuttal column (written by a parts guy).

When a piece of equipment breaks down on a farm or ranch, it always breaks at a critical time. Swathers break during haying. Tractors break during seeding. Combines break during harvest.
When it is ascertained that the breakdown cannot be cured with duct tape or baling twine, the farm wife is contacted.

“I need you to go get parts,” the farmer or rancher will declare urgently.

The first time my dad said that to me, I was somewhat excited. The parts store held a kind of mystique for me because I had never actually entered it.

When I was a small child, I thought the parts store was “town.” My dad would come in the house and tell us we had to go to town, and after the hour-long drive all I remember is sitting in the back seat of our station wagon in front of the parts store.

It seemed like hours that we would wait for my dad to make his purchases. To my mother, it must have seemed like days.

She was forced to listen to three bored and cranky kids taking their frustrations out upon one another.

“Moooooooooom, Jimmy’s hitting me,” my sister or I would holler.

“Knock it off!” responded the fatigued voice from the front seat.

“Moooooooooom, Colleen’s on my side of the car.”

“What did I just tell you?” growled my mother.

As time wore on, the hot vinyl seats would stick to the backs of our bare legs, and we would yearn to run around.

“Sit down and be quiet!” my mom would mutter. “Did your dad get lost in there, or what?”

Finally, he would emerge from the parts store, and we would head home.

Now that I would finally be able to enter the store, I wondered what I would find there that held my father’s attention for such long periods of time.

I pulled the car up to the familiar building and anxiously entered it. Once inside, I couldn’t understand how my dad could spend so long in such a boring place.

After that trip, I realized that the parts store is an entirely different place for women than for men.

For men, it is a sort of Mecca. From farms and ranches everywhere, they make their pilgrimages to the place that houses the answers to their mechanical problems.

For most women, it is a building of doom.

During a woman’s first parts run, she is usually unaware of the mistakes she is about to make. Her spouse has told her exactly what she needs to bring home, and she relays this information to the man behind the counter.

He punches the information into the computer, looks up and asks, “Is that an “A” model or a “B” model?”

She panics. Her husband didn’t tell her there would be any questions. She was supposed to give the information to the parts guy, grab the part, and attempt to break a land speed record on her way home with the merchandise.

The parts guy recognizes the distraught look on the woman’s face and gives his co-worker a knowing smirk.

“Well, is it an ’82 baler or an ’83?” he asks.

“’82?”she guesses.

He disappears down the long aisle of boxes and returns with a small package. She signs the slip and heads home, feeling for the first time the doom that the parts store instills in a woman who has just bought the wrong part.

The parts guy is smiling when she returns with the package two or three hours later.

“It’s an ‘83, huh?” he laughs.

It is not so funny to her, since she’s the one who encountered the wrath of the rancher who is home watching the rain clouds build up over his broken baler.

The next time, she returns to the parts store a much smarter woman. She has written down the necessary information. Feeling more confident than ever, she passes her note to the parts guy.
I am convinced that parts guys go to special training sessions where they learn a secret language to make farm wives feel stupid. Even if the wife has all the significant information written on a carefully organized note, the parts guy will always look up from the computer and ask a question in a language that might as well be Greek.

“Is it the left galutaclophy or the right galutaclophy that is broken?” he asks in his secret code.

“Right,” she replies, smiling. Having witnessed the breakdown, she clearly remembers the side of the tractor from which the cursing was coming.

He throws the necessary part on the counter. She signs for it and dashes back to the field, convinced that she has purchased the correct part.

No such luck. She is beginning to realize that a strange power is working against her. In fact, some would consider it a conspiracy. Whatever the truth may be, the farm wife will rarely, if ever, return home with exactly the right part, and her husband will become exasperated with her.

She can try insisting that her husband call ahead and tell the parts guy what he needs. It’s a nice tactic, but like all other methods, it has flaws. When she arrives at the store, she may find that they are sold out of the necessary part. They may have it in two different types, or it might come with or without an attachment.

The parts guy does not possess the same sense of urgency as the farm wife, either. He ambles back among the rows of parts, stopping along the way to joke with another parts guy or to answer the phone. Meanwhile, the farm wife is looking at her watch, letting the baby on her hip teeth on the car keys and thinking about how she is going to get the kids fed and run the part to the field at the same time.

Even if she obtains the right part in a timely manner, that strange power that hovers over the farm wife will probably interfere at some point. For example, on her hasty drive home, she may encounter a highway patrol officer who thinks that a broken auger is no excuse to abandon reason and prudence on the road.

It’s a wise woman who takes her sense of humor into the season of breakdowns. In fact, it may be the only thing that preserves her sanity when, in his hurry to put the part back on the grain truck, her husband breaks something else, sending the farm wife back to town.

Imagine

Imagine that this is your driveway.


This is your view.


This is your neighborhood.


This is your landscaping.






This was once reality for someone.

I find that difficult to comprehend. I think you would have to be pretty good friends with yourself to live like that. Makes me feel like we're not quite so isolated after all.

Zucchini

Several years ago, I decided to try my luck with gardening once again after a three-year hiatus. I can’t say for sure why I quit the practice of gardening, but it was likely linked to two more children, astonishingly hot temperatures, lack of rain, and the memory of digging a freshly-shelled pea out of the nose of my three-year-old son.

But one year, I had no more excuses to neglect the task, so I yielded to the pleas of my children and set out one spring day to plant the seeds. Thanks to a screaming baby and a bit too much help from his siblings, that planting session lasted exactly 9 minutes. I completed the planting by the glow of the yard light after the helpers were all tucked in bed.

My husband, the farmer, set out in a friendly competition to grow a bigger, better garden than what I could produce. Throughout the summer, he thieved my seeds, my hose, my sprinkler, and my fertilizer in an attempt to demonstrate his superior gardening skills. I was undaunted by his challenge, but I was horrified when he told me that he had taken the zucchini seeds and had planted them.

All of them.

I warned him that a single plant could produce an annoying amount of squash, but he did not seem alarmed. I had frightening visions of myself becoming a zucchini pusher on the streets of our small town, forcing squash upon my unsuspecting neighbors and lurking in the church parking lot where no one locks their car doors.

Whenever he wasn’t looking, I snuck down to his garden plot, searching the ground for signs of emerging plants. I quietly breathed a sigh of relief when his plot failed him; only a few zucchini plants emerged in the row he was hoping to fill.

Meanwhile, I enjoyed tending my own garden. I relished the quiet peace I found while weeding between the rows in the evening. I enjoyed teaching the kids about plants, weeds, and nurturing new life. I especially took pleasure in serving fresh vegetables to my family at dinner.

Only when we returned home from a short vacation did I remember the real reason that I had ceased to garden: you reap what you sow.

Keeping up with the produce from my tiny garden plot became quite a challenge, and it turned out that my husband’s ploy to turn me into a zucchini pusher became a reality. With eight to 10 of the squash on my counter at all times, I was reduced to begging my family and friends to take them off my hands.

I bought a food processor so I could grind the stuff up small enough to hide it in casseroles, brownies, cookies, and cakes. I scoured the Internet for recipes and stuffed zucchini bread down my children for three meals a day. I fried it in so much oil that all the nutritional value was sucked out and replaced by cholesterol. One would think that I would have just given up and thrown it out, but I have enough of my parents’ thriftiness instilled in me that I could not bear to do it. I stopped short, however, of making the recipe I discovered for zucchini gravy.

Last year, a hailstorm eradicated most of my garden, and this year a cold spring caused spotty seed emergence. The zucchini just didn’t germinate, and I find myself missing it.

I guess I’ll just have to make sure the car doors are unlocked the next time I go to church.

A Simple Math Lesson

$4.99

+

= 3 hours of (relative) peace for Mom.

One of the disadvantages of living in the country (and 50 miles from a town with a stoplight) is that the kids don't have friends down the street or a library around the corner. We have plenty of chores to keep us busy, but sometimes we have to stretch our imaginations to come up with new recreation ideas. Chasing the chickens only lasts so long, and unlike our neighbor's five-year-old, my kids aren't thrilled with the idea of roping goats and dogs for fun.

Sometimes I like to surprise them with a special treat like a new game or outdoor toy. This week, we went to town for 4-H interviews (and parts and groceries - we must multi-task on our trips to town), so I browsed the clearance aisle of summer toys. I'm wary of the Slip-n-Slide. I already have one child in a cast, and I don't care to gamble.

This little fishy looked like a safer alternative. I should have known better. They soon had the slide and swings rigged up so they could splash into the water from greater hights. Luckily, no bones were broken, and the $4.99 was paid off - and then some - by the smiles I captured this afternoon.

Who knew that two inches of water could be so much fun?

Summertime, and the Livin's Easy

for those who don't have to apply the sunscreen on four squirmy bodies every day.

Really, though, I am happy that we have access to swimming lessons only 7 miles away. When I was a kid, the nearest pool was 20 miles south, and we just didn't make it to lessons very often.


Watching the kids learn to love the water is gratifying.


Watching them learn to relax in the water is a relief.


And best of all, they have all graduated to the level of swimming in which I do not have to don a swimsuit and join them in the pool.

(By the way, thanks to those who suggested a sleeve for Riley's cast. I ordered one, and he was able to shower tonight. Up next: the pool!)

Fleeting

I can already see the end of summer, and I'm not happy about that.

We have one more week of swimming lessons. Then it's the county fair. Then we'll be harvesting, and before we know it the kids will be back in school.

I selfishly want to keep the kids home. I'm not ready to let them go again, especially since I'll be sending off three of them and keeping only one at home with me.

I'm also mourning the loss of June with its rain showers and abundance of green.


I know that all too soon, frost will coat these wires and snow will settle on these leaves. I know that there is a purpose for every season, but I'd like to hold onto this one just a little longer.

The Woman of Shunem

Awhile back, a sweet Australian mum of six "tagged" me for a "meme."

If you don't know what that means, you're not alone. I'm relatively new to this world of blogging, and I am not quite adept at playing tag. Furthermore, I didn't know the definition of "meme." Or how to pronounce it.

So I did what any self-respecting new blogger would do. I looked it up on Wikipedia.

Apparently it is a unit of cultural information that is transmitted verbally or by repeated action from one mind to another.

There you have it.

So I guess this is where I explain the rules of this particular meme:

1. Choose a person in the Bible who most represents who you are.

2. Post it on your blog and include a visual illustration, scripture or bible story if you like

3. Link to the person that tagged you in your post and to this original post if possible so we can track it as it travels across the blogosphere.

4 .Tag five more blogs with links.

5. And don’t forget to leave a comment on the tagged blogs with an invitation to play!

I can do that.



I'm choosing the Woman of Shunem found in 2 Kings.

I can relate to her on many levels. She is hospitable to Elisha. She does not hesitate to make him welcome in her home. She provides meals for him and asks nothing in return. She is self-sufficient and does not ask for help from others.

In today's world, she would probably have a Blackberry and a power suit. She would think that she has everything under control. And she would not ask for help, even from God, until something earth shattering happens.

That's exactly what happens to the Woman of Shunem. She doubts her ability to produce a child, and she does not turn to God or trust Him until the child dies and she has nowhere else to turn.

This woman's faith is restored after Elisha restores the life of her son. She realizes that there are times when we all need others.

This is an area in which I have struggled. I don't like to need people. I like to be self-sufficient and have everything under control. Marriage, four kids, and farm life have done much to mend that attitude, but re-reading the story of the Woman of Shunem reminds me that my journey is not yet complete.

And now for the business of tagging people: If you're reading this, you're tagged.


That wasn't even painful. Maybe I can survive this blogging thing.

The Other Side of the Sunset

I love the peace of the last few moments of daylight. Usually I point my camera toward the setting sun and take in the vibrant colors.


Sometimes the colors to the east are just as beautiful, especially in July when the landscape is changing every moment.


It's hard to believe that someday this will be beer.


The stillness of the fields is a stark contrast to the flurry of activity they have hosted in the past week. The swathing, raking, and baling are all nearly complete. The wheat has begun its transformation from green to golden, and we prepare for harvest. But tonight, there is peace and quiet.