Solstice journal: La tamalada

On this darkest day of the year, we found light in gathering, working together, and making tamales.

I started preparing weeks ago, making sure we had sufficient hojas (corn husks), that the 10 pound pork roast went from freezer to refrigerator in time to defrost, locating the chile pods my momma sent from New Mexico. Then yesterday morning I put that roast into one of my huge pots with salt, pepper corns, chile flakes, garlic, coriander corns, and oregano. It boiled all day and started to fall off the bone in late afternoon. That’s when I toasted my chile pods in the oven and then steeped them in hot water for 5 minutes. Into the blender with some (a lot?) of the steeping water and more garlic and whirred until smooth. Meat into two fry pans, shredded with forks. Into one: more garlic, more salt, the red chile sauce, and cumin. Maybe more oregano. At this point, it is “to taste.” In the other pan went chopped green chile and MORE GARLIC. Then everything went outside (where it would freeze) overnight.

Today I made the corn gruel (masa) with corn flour (masa harina), yellow corn flour, salt, baking powder, lard, and the boiling pork broth. We smeared the masa on the softened corn husks, added a large dollop of meat, rolled them up and steamed them for about an hour and a half.

Michael made red chile sauce and black beans, I made guacamole, and we have cottage cheese because one of my daughters inherited a Danish palate (where black pepper is spicy). Everyone declared the tamales to be “edible,” which was Aunt Harriette’s word of culinary praise. Or as my Tío John would say: “pasa.”

Being surrounded by these celestial bodies is more than enough to light up our lives. Now it is time to sit down, watch the fire, and resolve to do dishes in the morning.

Toolbox journal: carbon steel knives

We cook almost every day in this household. Hard to justify all the time we spend producing food if we don’t eat it! That, and we cook better food than you can find in most restaurants. This means I get to be very demanding when it comes to food tools.

My newest acquisition is this paring knife. We have purchased and been gifted a number of knives over the years, including Wüsthof stainless steel, which has a great reputation. I have never been thrilled with any of the stainless versions. They do not keep edges well and are difficult to sharpen. Then I watched the movie Julie and Julia, in which Julia Child explained that her friendship with Avis Desoto began with a letter to Avis’ husband regarding an article he wrote about the joys of carbon steel knives. If Julia waxes poetic over knives, a cook needs to pay attention.

The only carbon steel knife we had in our arsenal is this unmarked 14” blade. It could serve as a short sword! But it does keep an edge well and can be honed on a steel quickly. We don’t use it often due to its unwieldy length, but it works beautifully on our huge cabbages and other large garden produce. Sometimes you need a giant knife. A giant sharp knife minimizes injuries.

What convinced me to squander my saved up pennies (dimes, nickles, and large bills) was this birthday gift from Michael. It is a Henkel carbon steel chef’s knife. I use it daily. It remains sharp. When it dulls, I can sharpen it myself on a steel. The handle fills my hand and allows a firm grip. Carbon steel knives require care to prevent rusting and pitting. I wash and dry my carbon steel immediately after every use.

I’m showing the knife with onions as having a clean cut on an onion reduces the amount of irritating chemicals an onion releases when cut or bruised. The thin edge of my new paring knife allows me to skin onions efficiently. I love it! Today we are making venison stew with corn and wild mushrooms, rosemary, wine…and a lot of onions. A good use of our garden produce on a snowy December day.

As Julia would say: Bon Appetit!

Thanksgiving journal: every day is a gift

Michael and I cut our Christmas tree this week. A friend offered us access to her land on which she and her husband planted a wide variety of evergreens. He died a few years ago, but the love they shared for this land remains. I give thanks for good and generous friends.

I welcome the beauty they created into my home and my life. Most of the ornaments on our tree have been given to us, or were made by children. I love taking them out every year, with all the memories they bring.

We did feast on Thanksgiving. The Grand Girl had three helpings of carrots! I made them with butter and fresh thyme this year. Michael added fresh rosemary to the squash. Most of our feast came from our gardens. I give thanks every day for the energy, time and space for creating good food to share.

Michael’s father bought this china when he was stationed in the Philippines right after WWII. He gave it to his mother, and then received it back when she died. Now we have it. We use it! The flatware was a gift from a dear friend in Alabama. We have been showered in generosity.

I am thankful for family! I grew up far from an extended family. Not that we didn’t visit, but it was not on a weekly or monthly basis. Having the ability to watch the Grands grow is a true blessing.

Jackie, a friend who now lives in Illinois, stopped by on her way home from visiting in the Cities. Having time to talk and catch up with long time friends is a blessing.

I have been walking this road for ten years now, and it brings me something new every day. How light hits the seed heads against the darkness of the woods. Finding where deer have bedded overnight. Frost on tall grass. The patterns of wind and sun and clouds. So much to do! So much to see! It’s a wonderful life, lived one day at a time.

Harvest journal: making tallow

Suet is fat taken directly off an animal, and usually refers to the type of fat that is solid at room temperature. Tallow is what you get when you render suet, and also is solid at room temperature.

This is snow, but it reminds me of suet…without the blood. You are welcome, all my friends who really don’t care to see dead animal parts.

Once I have a batch of suet, I put it into one of my big pots and add water until I can see water start to float the fat. I cover the pot and bring it to a simmer. I simmer the fat for a couple of hours, until all that hard suet becomes soft. I then uncover the pot and mash the fat into small pieces with a potato masher.

I boil that fat on a low fire until all the water has boiled away, stirring occasionally so the fat solids don’t stick to the bottom of my pot. This can take a couple of days, if only because I turn off the fire when I’m not around to supervise. A grease fire would be bad. Eventually, the fat gets to be this clear golden color and the solids begin to brown and crisp.

I separate the tallow from the solids by ladling the whole thing into a wire sieve over that big glass mixing bowl. I’ve tried pouring it from the pot into the sieve, but it tends to splash all over. Tallow is like paraffin or wax and sticks to the table and everything else. Before the tallow hardens on my sieve, I sprinkle it with baking soda and then wash in hot sudsy water. The baking soda combines with the fat to release it from everything else.

Once cooled, I cover my bowl and put it into a cold place. I let it cool uncovered to keep water from condensing on the tallow. The picnic table qualifies as a cold place this time of year. Because the fat shrinks at a different rate than the glass, it pulls away from the bowl and slides right out.

Small bits of fat solids sink to the bottom and need to be removed before using the tallow to make soap.

Michael was a potter in a prior life, and would like to be again. This means we still have clay trimming tools, which work perfectly for trimming the solids off the tallow. This process need to be done quickly because those trimmings become sticky as the tallow warms.

The scrapings and fat solids go to the birds. Less fat than in suet blocks sold for winter bird feeders, but the chickens still love it. The ducks, not so much.

So far we have about 8 pounds of tallow, and will probably end up with a total of about 10 pounds.

Michael will turn the tallow into soap. I LOVE deer tallow soap. Michael is not concerned with making uniform bars that are pretty, but the soap treats my delicate skin well. Thank you to these lovely animals that provide us with so much!

Harvest journal: making burger

Today we made hamburger out of the odds and ends left over from the cutlets, stew meat, and roasts already packaged and frozen.

We cut the larger pieces into strips and layer everything between waxed paper before freezing. The fat is almost all gone, but the tendons grind better if frozen first. If left unfrozen, they tend to wind around the grinding barrel, which then requires frequent stops to clear them out. Ask us how we know…

Michael put the strips through the grinder once.

Then once again.

Then I weigh and package. The Foodsaver uses plastic bags. I suppose we could use butcher paper. But having the air vacuumed out of the package means less spoilage from freezer burn. It’s all a balancing act! We recycle as much as we can, but frankly, plastics are amazingly versatile and form a huge part of our surroundings, even on our subsistence farm. If we didn’t use plastic packaging, we would probably smoke more of our meat, which involves nitrates, those notorious carcinogens that keep the meat from spoiling while smoking. By not purchasing a lot of other stuff that keeps our consumer economy going, we minimize our plastics footprint.

We ended up with 30 lbs of burger, for a total venison harvest of 65 pounds. It has taken about 5 days of hard work to take that 65 pounds from hoof to freezer. I am ever thankful that we are both still strong and well enough to do this work.

Harvest journal: “Shoot deer. Cut them up. Eat them.”

Gun season opened late this year. The rut was done about two weeks ago. No reason for deer to be running around. Even so, you will never see a deer unless you go and sit, quietly, and listen to the sounds of the woods.

The mice had been in my stand, nibbling on hickory nuts.

The trumpeter swans have been out in force.

A few Sandhill Cranes lasted until the second day of the season, when the temperatures dropped and water began to freeze.

I didn’t have many birds at my feeder, and very few squirrels. Another year without a crop in the field has suppressed their local populations.

A pair of pileated woodpeckers eat the dried grapes off our fences. ‘Tis the season for jays and woodpeckers.

I saw a couple of deer moving in the brush. They would move a few steps and I’d see them. They’d stop and disappear. I never had a shot and they wandered off across the neighbor’s field.

To give you an idea how well prey animals can hide, there is a rabbit in the middle of this photo.

Around 1 PM I crawled out of my stand and went inside to warm up. Then back out, but I stayed on the ground. My knees can’t take sitting on the stool in my stand, so I looked for an alternate place on ground level. This is the ladder to my first stand. The basswood blew down several years ago, taking the platform with it.

It’s still a good spot to find signs that deer have passed by. A buck stopped and rubbed the velvet off his antlers at the base of the basswood. I was leaning against my ladder when I heard two shots and knew Michael had seen a deer.

As indeed he had.

Two deer. The first doe he shot through the lungs. She ran off and the second doe stepped out of the woods. He shot that one through the spine and it dropped in its tracks. I stroked this second one, admired its clean smell, and thanked it for its life. I got the Ranger and we brought them home and got them hung to cool.

Felix loved petting the deer. He’s the one who chants, “Shoot deer. Cut them up. Eat them!”

Imogen stayed inside and chased Zeke. She started crawling on Opening Day!

Michael skinned and quartered the deer the next day. We’ve been cutting them up ever since. (We did take time off for Thanksgiving.). I got the last bits of meat and fat separated today.

The fat is rendering. Michael will make soap from the tallow. My skin loves the soap he makes. Tomorrow we will grind burger. We will end up with about 45 pounds of venison in the freezer.

We had venison liver and onions to celebrate. The last of our cabbages stir fried with brown rice balanced the meal. “Shoot deer. Cut them up. Eat them.”

Harvest journal: a warm autumn extended our harvest season

Mid-November and my deck flowers still bloom.

We harvested small cabbages that grew from stumps we left in the ground two days ago and have been using them as fresh greens.

I sliced up the last of the large cabbages on October 30th. They sat on our dining room table for two weeks, and were still good. I brined them and made another batch of sauerkraut. Michael says it’s the best he’s ever had. This will go into the outside refrigerator to keep company with the pickles. Good thing we still have some kielbasa!

Michael gathered all the green beans we neglected and dried on the vine. I’ve been shelling them out in my spare moments in front of the fire. We will save some to plant next year and will boil up the rest for dinner one of these days.

My furboys keep me company.

Michael picked all the apples in October, but the weather was warm enough to press them on November 8th. We got a new press that uses a bottle jack to push a piston down on the ground up apple mash. The apples were very dry this year and gave us very dark cider. I look forward to trying it after it has fermented. We got 5 gallons, which is more than we thought we’d get, given how the early hail harmed the harvest.

I gathered these shaggy manes from a hillside in town. I was driving to the store on a lightening-fast trip for more wallboard mud on Veterans Day and hesitated about a millisecond before pulling over, hiking back, and picking these lovelies. We had them as a base for duck breasts. Whatever else I was supposed to do took a backseat to cleaning and sautéing the shaggies. They tend to turn black and bitter if left too long.

The very next day I found more oysters on the big elm log. We had those with venison medallions.

We had them with the last of our garden tomatoes. We will have tomatoes canned and dried, but will wait for our garden to gift us more before having them fresh again. The long, dry autumn gave us ripe chiles, a singular event. I am drying them for seed.

Orange and yellow jelly mushrooms. Not edible, but fascinating.

The field mostly grew weeds this year. We need to find a new renter. Even so, I would look up as I cleared out the tomato cages and rolled up fencing and marveled at how the sun makes those weeds shine like gold.

Imogen steals the show again and again. Either that, or she’s easier to photograph than those grands who have learned to run and make good use of that knowledge.

It storms outside as I write this. The sunrise comes late enough to enjoy while drinking coffee. Michael puts the birds to bed at 4 pm, shortly before sunset. We sleep more during this season. Good night.

Celebration journal: Days of the Dead and of the Living

The Days of the Dead come on November 1 (All Saints Day) and 2 (All Souls Day), although most people only recognize All Hallow’s Eve (Halloween), on October 31. In Mexico, people gather in Hallowed Ground (Campo Santo) or cemeteries to commune with the ancestors. It is much colder here in the North, but we try to maintain the intent of spending time with our Dearly Departed, maintaining their memories and their love in our children and their children.

Clyde and Irene took up residence in the Veterans Memorial Cemetery near Spooner, Wisconsin. Other people came to visit their loved ones while we were there. I think they appreciated our idea of picnicking with our vets. The 3 year olds had a great time throwing snowballs at each other. Irene got to meet Imogen for the first time. She really wanted a sister for Felix.

Our Grantsburg stop didn’t have snow. The Grands had a great time running around and eating cheese curds. Auntie Harriette was notorious for stealing other people’s cheese curds. Uncle Klink loved to drink wine, even though he would never be seen buying any. Drinking was something one did not do as a pillar of the community. We spent many Thanksgivings and Christmases with them. It is only right to spend All Souls Day with them now.

Our last stop was in Cushing, where many of Michael’s family reside. When our time comes to return to dust, we will mingle with our ancestors here. We will be in good company.

It is also Felix’s birthday: we celebrate both the Dead and the Living on November 2nd.

I made Felix’s cake on Halloween. It snowed all day, after raining an inch and a half. Talk about a trick and a treat! I remember taking our girls out begging door to door during various snow storms. Luckily, the weather cleared for our outing today. Here’s to many more years celebrating, come rain or come shine!

Foraging Journal: October oysters

The end of gardening season allows me extra time to walk with Zeke. This past week, I made it down to the river after a couple of weeks (months?!?) of not having the luxury of long walks.

Early morning light now comes at mid-morning!

Lichen clothes boulders in lacy finery.

After a very wet summer, drought now looms and the river runs low.

A stump where I found oyster mushrooms last year had them again, but they looked old.

I went traipsing through the underbrush just to check, and found my reward!

Oysters have a floral smell that reminds me of lavender.

Wild mushroom omelette! It fueled our fishing trip.

Celestial journal: light shows

Once Irene passed, we shut off the yard light. We have stars again! And on October 20th, a beautiful view of the aurora borealis.

On October 18th we had a super moon.

I couldn’t capture the shooting stars on the 22nd. The most amazing thing has been being able to stand on the deck in my nightgown, without shivering! The prediction is for a cold winter, but fall has been long and warm.

The sun rises and sets on this little one! Can you see the double moons of her new teeth?

Season journal: first frost

Frost visited this morning in a serious way. Cold mornings had burned the squash vines back, but it wasn’t enough to hurt the tomatoes and peppers. This morning’s frost burnt everything! And that is a shelled-out baked pumpkin in the lower right. Michael is making pie and the ducks love the leftovers.

Which led us to trim the deck plants and bring them in for winter.

I hunted down the last tomatoes, feeding the injured ones to the chickens.

I gathered 4 pounds of tomatoes. Tossed with olive oil and salt, garlic and onions, they roasted nicely in half an hour. I put them through a blender and into the freezer. They will brighten some dinner in the middle of winter. That is a 16 pound cabbage sitting next to those tomatoes.

I shredded four pounds, layered it with salt (2 teaspoons per pound), and stuffed it into a crock.

I chopped another 4 pounds, along with onions and carrots, and made a sauce with grated garlic, ginger, fish sauce, sugar, red chile, and glutinous rice paste. (Doesn’t everyone keep glutinous rice in their pantry?). Both the kimchi and sauerkraut should be done in a couple of days. They make my house smell good!

I weighted both down with plastic bags filled with salt water. The bags seal the cabbage and keeps it under the water generated by the fermentation process, and so far has kept any unwanted mold from growing in my brews. I didn’t have Korean chile powder, so I used New Mexico red. The rest of that cabbage went to my daughter, who has her own plans for making beautiful food for her family. Braised? Grilled? All good!

We gathered squash and pumpkins in from their garden spots. I found several by pulling vines out of the weeds, reeling in squash like bass out of lily pads.

We decided to leave the really big pumpkins in place. Our children will have to come and claim them.

While Michael was hiking squash down to their basement home, I was clearing out the pepper and eggplant gardens.

I ended up with about 20 cups of chopped green chile and 12 cups of eggplant pulp.

Michael dipped the rutabagas in paraffin and they should last until December.

Before we left for the wedding, we chopped one rutabaga, potatoes, onions, mixed the veg with ground venison and made 32 pasties.

Michael got the apples off the trees. So many were bad due to an early hail storm. We have the ones that look good enough to save in bins in the garage. We are still trying to decide if it’s worth making cider. Now that the tomatoes are done, I will start eating apples and yogurt for breakfast.

A couple of days before our trip to Massachusetts, we found a sulphur shelf and a hen of the woods. They are safely stashed in jars and the freezer. The hen of the woods is particularly good rehydrated by adding it to brown rice.

The rice was great with our final meal of green beans. I’m still trying to figure out what to do with the cabbages I still have on my table. If the kimchi works out, I’ll see if I can can it and maybe I’ll make more. We only eat so much sauerkraut.

This beautiful, crazy, time of year brings the frenzy of racing against the hard deadline of this first real frost. And then the day comes when the growing season is done. We still have food to process and save, but this is the end. I’m looking forward to sitting before the fire and knitting.

Celebration journal: expanding families

October brings challenges and joys, as do other months. But this October’s blessings have been particularly abundant.

On October 6th, a Sunday, Michael officiated at the wedding of a dear friend from our days in Maine. Hannah calls Michael “dad” and their connection fits that title. She has blossomed since they met in nursing school more than ten years ago. Neither ended up being nurses, but the fact that they maintain close contact, despite distance and language barriers, testifies to the honesty of the name she has given him. We love having extra daughters in our lives! I will need to begin knitting a baby blanket.

We stayed at an AirBnB in Malden, a suburb of Boston. I enjoyed the stained glass, especially since learning about cabochon stained glass techniques from my dear friend Katherine, who is a docent at Trinity Church in Boston.

We lured her into picking us up at the airport and then whisking us off to the North End for lunch at the Daily Catch. We try to eat there if ever in the neighborhood, as they make food better than we do. That is high praise!

In exchange, she showed us the amazing library in Malden. Worth the walk! And this is from a person who is bone-on-bone in both knees. [The confusion of travel might explain how I missed getting photos of Katherine!] We slept well Saturday night. Getting up at 2 AM Saturday morning may have helped.

The bakery across from the metro station had jelly donuts filled with red mung beans! There is a large Vietnamese-American population in Malden. The French colonized Vietnam, which means stunning bakeries. The Communist regime wreaked untold agony on the Vietnamese and others. If there is no ill that does not also bring good, perhaps the bakeries and amazing people we inherited is that shining light in what was a very dark period.

I coaxed Michael into taking the train into Boston on Sunday as a dry run for our return trip Monday morning. Good thing too, as we were pretty clueless at buying tickets. We met so many kind people who helped us navigate streets and ticket machines.

We stopped at the Sea Dog across from Faneuil Hall for some calamari.

Then back to Malden and a Thai restaurant, where we hoped to (and did!) find some vegetables. The dip was lump crab in coconut curry. Yum. And yes, I gained about 4 pounds on this trip, despite all the walking.

More amazing food at the wedding! Just as well that the bakery was closed Monday morning. Back home. We love being home.

Especially since we got to celebrate Petra’s birthday. Hearing her sing “Happy Birthday to Me” while she danced on the tall chairs was a delight. Imogen was a drool monster. Cutting teeth will do that to a girl. We all wanted to hold her even so. She’s our last baby! Good thing we recruit more daughters into our lives. Love you Hannah and Quy!

Season journal: harvest in the post autumnal equinox

We were crazy busy on the equinox. Still are, but without the frantic edge that came with juggling my moonlighting gig with harvest with church lady duties.

The popcorn is in and drying.

On the equinox we had spectacular weather. It’s been dry and warm, highs in the mid-80s, since.

The storm led us to harvest the corn.

The late rain brought moisture at an inconvenient time, promoting aphids, grasshoppers (they chew through the husks to eat the kernels), and ear worms. (Yes, they really are a thing.)

We have a good crop even so.

I neglected the green beans for a couple of weeks. Big and getting tough, but still tasty if sliced thin. Wonderful stir fried with garlic and sweet chili sauce. Those are some of our last tomatoes.

I dug up the last of the potatoes yesterday. About another 30 pounds. Planting in straw does make them easy to find.

Marigolds in the long low light of autumn simply glow.

Pumpkins and squash have wandered everywhere. Still too green to cut and gather. That’s a lilac bush supporting this fellow. The lilacs have been blooming again after losing all their leaves in the wet of early August. They did this last year too. Irene loved lilacs.

We spent this past week preparing for my church’s fall rummage sale. It was yesterday. We may have made enough to put new linoleum in the kitchen AND support our local Christmas toy giveaway. Today we got to see the Grands. Since the last time we saw Moogie, she learned to sit on her own. She’s a big, strong child. At 6 months she wears 12 month clothes. She’ll sprout teeth any day now! And Felix is learning his colors in Spanish!

All the woolly caterpillars are out, telling us winter is coming.

Our land grows languid, shutting down with the waning light. Fall may be frantic, but in strangely mellow tones. I do love it so.

Foraging journal: indigo milky caps

Zeke took me for a walk a couple of days ago, when I spied mushrooms growing in the neighbor’s yard.

Always curious, I wandered that way and plucked one. Running my nail across the gills was diagnostic. A lactarius, or milky cap! Not just any, but an indigo! Woot! These are more common in warmer climes, such as Mexico and Central America. I think my climate may be changing….

My research told me they are edible and hard to confuse with any other fungus.

The blue dye was pretty amazing.

I sautéed them with red onion, garlic, oregano (I didn’t have epazote) and olive oil. Salt and pepper, of course.

They made a nice filling for omelettes. They tasted like mushrooms, but a bit meatier than your normal agaricus (the type commonly sold in supermarkets). And they didn’t kill us! That’s always nice.

Foraging journal: mushrooms but no filberts

We marked our calendar last year when we found filberts, also known as hazelnuts. That date popped up on our calendar, so out we went to the sand barrens/wildlife reserve, where we find wild hazelnut bushes.

We found this fine fellow, but no nuts. Our black walnut trees have taken the year off as well, so the lack of a mast did not surprise us.

On our way to look for filberts, I yelled “mushroom!” Michael hit the brakes and backed up. It was a perfect age for harvesting. Because it was doubtful that anyone else would eat it (except the beetles), Michael cut it off the stump and into one of our paper bags it went. It is good to put mushrooms in paper or an open wicker basket. We have found that wild mushrooms don’t like plastic!

Having found a mushroom but no filberts, we decided to hike the “mushroom woods.” This is a state trail that follows the top of a limestone bluff above the St. Croix River. We have hiked this trail for about 30 years. Not many people use this lovely resource. We know because 1) we rarely encounter anyone while we are there and 2) there’s usually no trash to be found on the trail. Even when we do not find edible mushrooms, the hike itself is a worthy way to spend a Sunday afternoon.

But we did find mushrooms! These are lobster mushrooms (hypomyces lactiflorum), which is a type of fungus that infects russula and lactarius mushrooms, turning them from their usual white to this stunning red color. They are edible, but we rarely catch them before they are too old to eat. We gather them anyway because they also make a lovely red dye for my hand spun yarn. (A post for another day.)

We also found some aborted entalomas. There is some evidence that this is another type of fungus that infects a mushroom species and changes it. Which fungus infects which mushroom may not have been settled, but we love these for winter stews. They add a deep umami flavor and are a bit chewy.

Finally, we found this hen of the woods, another favorite to dry and use in winter stews. Unfortunately, it was too old to harvest, so we let it be.

More loveliness on our way home.

I cleaned and sliced mushrooms for the dehydrator while Michael put the birds to bed.

They were all nicely dried by this afternoon. Into tightly sealed glass jars for later use.

We have not been out fishing or foraging as often this year for a number of reasons. We willingly cede other activities to have time watching the Grands grow and to hold onto small bodies while we may. The Grands were not impressed by the borscht I made, but they came back for seconds of the pear-pecan upside down cake. I confess, I ate the last piece after they left!

Visitor journal: the love of family and friends!

A dear friend from college stopped by in early September on her way back from one of her adventures in Alaska. I do not get out much, so I live vicariously through the travels of others. She is also an amazing gardener, so we put her to work.

With her help, the garlic got planted early this year!

We subjected her to the chaos of having small children in the house. We advised that she might find odds and ends of bread rolls in her room, as indeed she did. Felix slept over her first night here. She says she still cherishes the memory of awakening in the morning and hearing a tiny voice chanting “abracadabra” in the next room.

I grilled eggplant (they are beginning to be plentiful) and made a big batch of baba ganoush. Turns out it is one of her favorites!

We went to a neighbor’s house and picked fresh corn. Thanks Mike!

She experienced our motto: the pay is bad but the food is good!

She stirred the pear butter (we took turns) until it “traced”. Now that is friendship!

She made fast friends with Zeke, and then went back to her own fantastic life in Massachusetts.

A few days later I went back to the neighbor’s and brought him seed garlic and one of our huge cabbages. Not only did I score more corn, but I also found some huitlacoche, or what is known around here as “corn smut”. He willingly let me have all I could find.

I sorted through and removed the corn silk and older mushrooms that were turning black. The next day I sautéed it with some onions, garlic, jalapeños, herbs, salt and pepper and then served it as tacos to my sister and her husband, who were passing through from Washington state to Vermont.

She still loves me! But seriously, she and her hubby knew what huitlacoche is, and were happy to finally try some. No photos, as they arrived late and we were all hungry. And more corn! Yum.

Michael had just moved the ducks from their summer pasture to winter residence, which meant we got to enjoy their cheerfulness with Mariluz and Tomás. And now we are back to the craziness of harvest time and preparing the gardens for winter.

(We still have some friends around…)

Up-cycling journal: used tires

The Grand Girl always likes to have a project going. Since she would be visiting, I decided that it was time to act on my vision for the four used tires someone deposited in our ditch last year.

It turned out that her little hands were not strong enough to work the spray paint cans, but she was a trooper and kept me company.

Her job was to draw me designs to put on the tires, from which I made stencils. She chose the sun and moon on her own. I drew the apple.

She pretended to be a flower so I would know how pretty these would be. Then it was time for her to go home.

I cut the stencils out of contact paper. I have to admit, this was the boring part. Then I spray painted over the stencils. The tires are stacked because it kept raining and you can’t paint a wet tire. The stacking kept the top tires dry.

My admiration for graffiti artists grew by doing this project. “Golden apples of the Sun; Silver apples of the moon.” William Butler Yeats is probably turning in his grave.

Clyde loved flowers. If ever told of my scheme for used tires, he would have shaken his head and said, “That girl is crazy!” But he would have devised a means of keeping the flowers watered. Irene always wanted something decorative for the entrance to the driveway. She also liked the color turquoise. Anything bright and cheerful. So here’s to you Summa and Bucka! [No Used Tire planters allowed at the cemetery, so these will have to do.] And no, I don’t want any more tires left in my ditch.