It is full-fledged canning season at the farm so come on over to my other blog Farmwife at Midlife and visit me in my cottage canning kitchen. There are gently cooling breezes down from the knob and we can enjoy the porch again after a long heat wave and drought-like conditions here in south-central Kentucky.
I promise there will be more regular updates here at In the Pantry with pantry-related posts throughout the autumn and winter months ahead.
In the meantime, I'm filling our pantries and freezers from now until the colder weather. Getting a woodstove installed–oh how I miss a woodstove!–and we will soon be piling up many cords of seasoned wood from our farm on our back porch. Here in the very hot and dry South we will welcome Fall sooner than we did in the Northeast. And Fall rains will be welcome as will the cozier and cooler days ahead. I used to mourn the summer's passing in late August–now I embrace it like an old friend or my favorite shawl.
And oh how I still love to fill a pantry, our many freezers, and a wood box. There is something immensely gratifying about seeing your jars of the summer harvest lined up in rows on the shelf. It is a visual record of a day's work, of self-sustenance and good nourishment, too. The idea of living out of our own food stores, with our own animals and eggs, local produce from farmers we know, and avoiding the store? Priceless.
Perhaps you have often wondered where I've been this year. Well, I have, too. It's been a busy one, full of many continued transitions, adjustments and a few minor blips on the radar. Nothing bad–just disconcerting at times and occasionally transformative. I realize it is the year, of the five of the In the Pantry blog, that I've written the least. It's not that I haven't wanted or intended to blog, it's just that some things–like real life–take precedence at times.
Books and gnomes––two of my favorite things.
We have been busy on the farm and building more needed buildings, while increasing our cattle herd. I tried, for much of the year, to pursue several full-time writing-related jobs off of the farm. Several potentially ideal opportunities were presented to me but none came of anything. What did happen, after six months of pursuit and follow-up, is that I realized, for now, that I'm supposed to stay in my own back yard. And I'm meant to write, right here. I've been publishing, too: several articles this year. It's never all for naught, just remember that!
I've been told these gnomes are really creepy, perhaps even inebriated.
A favorite gnome from a dear friend.
So, 2011 will begin with a new and renewed focus. I'm going to be launching a new blog in the coming weeks, one that better reflects my life as it is now. When I started In the Pantry I was living in an 1803 Federal mansion, filled with family heirlooms and layers of history. We were in the midst of a Currier and Ives New England village setting. I was writing my first book. Our daughter was a teenager and our boys were eight and five! Visions of a farm of our own were dancing in our heads with various scenarios and outcomes. I have often shared those here and will continue to do so in the new format.
Our hen house on Christmas morning––of course we were up before dawn!
Fast forward and here we are, five years later, on a farm on a ridge in Kentucky. Now we have land spreading out so far and wide, we have stuff in storage and we live in a comfortable doublewide. We raise much of our own food or buy it from local farmers. While there is much I often think about or miss in New England, we are blessed!
My husband's birthday "Robert E. Lee" cake.
I promise that my new blog will be integrating the essence of In the Pantry that you enjoy, while also adding other "bits and pieces" of my life [thank you, Katherine Mansfield for forever imbedding that quote in my mind]. I will also still post here on occasion, especially if it is pantry-related, or The Pantry book-related. [And copies of the book are still available from my website at CatherinePond.com]
Our annual pudding of York! [Yes, that's its real color: from our own eggs!]
I am also looking forward to starting my 11-year journal tomorrow! I just ordered a 10+ Journal from Lehman's (on sale!) and it chronicles 11 years (A decade plus) in small format on one page per date (with eleven entries: one for each year's date, in five lines or less). So you can track, in Twitter-like brevity (or let's make that more like haiku-style notation, as I will never be a Twitterer!), the events of your life, day by day: or the weather, or your diet, or highlights in your family. I used to keep many extensive hand-written journals, many years ago, but this will be a short chronicle. I'm looking forward to the exercise and the meditation of it, while the blogs will continue to be my postcards to the world.
I wish you a very happy, healthy and special New Year and thank you for visiting here all of these years! I'm not going anywhere, I'm just shape-shifting a bit. Stay tuned for an announcement of the new blog in the weeks ahead.
A locally-made wooden painted turkey kit from nearby Bear Wallow Farm and a lovely pumpkin from Casey County, just a bit nibbled on by our chickens. The kit would be an easy thing to make with your children if you are crafty. (Alas, I am not.)
Here's what I love about Thanksgiving–it just extends into a nice, long weekend of leftovers and doing whatever it is that we want to do. Like hunker in on our ridge: playing games, watching old movies and family programs on television, chopping wood, general puttering around. Thanksgiving remains my favorite holiday, even though this year it was just our immediate family (minus our daughter, for the third year in a row, who works at a ski resort back in Vermont where the holidays are a blur of accommodating skiers and their families). Our boys even had an entire week off from school, which we appreciated, even though we didn't travel anywhere. [And who wants to these days?]
This little fellow has the right idea after a hearty bowl of slop.
Henry chops pumpkins for the pigs.
We were thinking of going to the Liberty Christmas parade last night, and to the Clementsville Variety Show later on today (MCed this year by our friend Joberta Wells: and check out her new blog at The Casey County News where she is a columnist–she is our local "hoot" and deservedly so, as well as having coined the phrase). We were even going to see the new Harry Potter movie (which would be Henry's second time in a week). But we're not.
A late fall bull calf, born just before Thanksgiving on our farm.
Instead, our entertainment over the past few days has consisted of moving some cattle (including some of the neighbor's that had escaped). We watched our great friend, Chuckie Willard, back in New Hampshire, and the coverage of his trebuchet-building for Science Channel's On the Road to Punkin Chunkin[on the link, click on the "Tired Iron" video]. We also watched The Fabulous Beekman Boysfirst-season marathon on Planet Green (what a joy they are, and their animals, friends and Farmer John, who lives on the premises, and we can't wait for their Christmas special on December 8–on so many levels this is a worthwhile new reality series). Oh, yes: my husband's favorite actress of all time, Marjorie Main, had several feature movies on TCM this week, too. And who can not watch the annual reshowing of The Wizard of Oz? I still cry each time that Dorothy goes home again and it is delightful to experience this movie with our own children.
A daily reminder on my mantel.
Our wine glasses!
This year our holiday mantra will continue to be "simplify." Our Thanksgiving set the tone for that: we were all clean and well-scrubbed but changed into our comfortable pajamas after feeding the animals on the farm. Our boys wanted a "Jammy Thanksgiving" and they got it. If you are not entertaining anyone but yourselves, I highly recommend it! I didn't even pull out all of the decorative stops that I usually do. And we used paper towels for napkins! (OK, so I haven't ironed in a while.)
Part of my "Country Fare" in the hutch in NH.
We did pull out our silver and paired it with our Country Fare–my favorite every day pottery, made by Zanesville Pottery from the 1940s-60s (eventually bought out by Louisville Stoneware in Kentucky). Who knew one day that I–an Ohio girl, born and bred, raised in New England–would eventually be living in the state that adopted my favorite Ohio pottery?! Those are our farmer friends Peter Sawyer and Eric Tenney in our kitchen in Hancock in early December 2007, when we had another Thanksgiving dinner all over again, but our last in New Hampshire. [Our dear bull mastiff, Lucy, is curled up for a nap: she passed away here in Kentucky almost two years ago now.]
John, Tom and Patch in January 2009. Today was their second birthday (but Patch disappeared when he was six months). This is my favorite photo of them altogether, on my favorite chair.
Our former Hancock home in a Wallace Nutting print.
Thanksgiving is time to give pause to our many blessings, the love of each other, and memories of holidays past. I'm glad that I am at a point in my life now where I can remember the magical holidays of childhood and beyond without a full immersion of bittersweet sorrow, or even a tinge of it–where I can be in a memory or a feeling or a place in my mind and linger there, a bit, but not dwell too much in what has past. It's not always an easy thing for me. ["Dwell, Stew, Obsess!" in the words of cartoonist Roz Chast.]
Edward Henry Corbould (1869), Cold
I know why the holidays can be the hardest time of year for some people: I have been in that place. I now embrace the winter months like a warm, cozy throw. It is admittedly less wintry here in Kentucky but still just as dark, cold and bleak as any mild winter we have experienced in New Hampshire. Winter is now something I am happy to put on and to wear, like a shroud, as I tuck in for a few months of reflection and repurposing. It's a necessary system reboot for the soul.
What Sting said so poetically about the winter season of darkness in his notes for his beautiful album, If On a Winter's Night, captures what I feel about winter now:
Peter Ilsted (1861-1933), Woman Reading by Candlelight
Walking amid the snows of Winter, or sitting entranced in a darkened room gazing at the firelight, usually evokes in me a mood of reflection, a mood that can be at times philosophical, at others wildly irrational; I find myself haunted by memories. For Winter is the season of ghosts; and ghosts, if they can be said to reside anywhere, reside here in this season of frosts and in these long hours of darkness. We must treat with them calmly and civilly, before the snows melt, and the cycle of the seasons begins once more.
A Footnote:
Seeing the credits roll past at the end of On the Road to Punkin Chunkin, we realized it was Chucky's tractor trailer driving out of town, east on Main Street in Hancock where we used to live in New Hampshire. But seeing it, in such a blur, we were able to stop the frames with the slow motion feature of TeVo, and there was our old house, in the top photo (at left, with the brick end). A strange encounter, indeed. The whirring of the sped up film also reminded me of how I process memory: that it flies through me in a blur and then it is gone again, like the wind. But where does it go?
Sometimes I land upright and realize, yes, that's it, it's been this way all along. Perhaps it was there all the time but I wasn't seeing and I wasn't listening. Rather than have that "ruthlessness to rest," as my great-grandmother used to write to her children (here "rest" as in "pause"), I have had a wanderlust for many months.
The Shaker hymn "Simple Gifts" speaks to this necessity to pause right where we are: "Till by turning, turning we come round right." That's exactly what I've done these past few months: whirling and twirling and now fortunate to have landed on my feet again, but glad for having had the journey.
'Tis the gift to be simple, 'tis the gift to be free,
'Tis the gift to come down where we ought to be,
And when we find ourselves in the place just right,
'Twill be in the valley of love and delight.
When true simplicity is gain'd,
To bow and to bend we shan't be asham'd,
To turn, turn will be our delight,
Till by turning, turning we come round right.
In the past six months I have been presented with several job opportunities, all from my own searching but each one, in its own way, something I feel I have been qualified to do and to do well. Problem is, I sense, with an especially tough job market now, that options are limited for writers or historians and certainly more competitive. I made the deliberate choice when my last job was downsized in 1997–– from site manager of an historic museum house to a part-time docent: I chose "I don't think so"––that it was time to have more children. We had been married not even a year and I was thirty-three, my husband forty-one. Our two boys were born within two-and-a-half years. ["The heir and the spare," as it is often referred to in jolly old primogenitured England.] I had our daughter in my mid-20s but that's another long and wonderful story.
My point is that well-educated little old me, who had worked hard at developing her career in historic preservation, public relations and freelance writing, felt it was important to be at home with her children. I had been reared in the "you can have everything you want" school: career, husband, children. But I knew better and I knew myself better than that: I have believed, for some time, that you can have everything you want, within reason, but certainly not all at the same time. If someone tells you otherwise, they are fooling themselves: their house-of-cards has to give somewhere (or they have a lot of hired help).
So I was able to be a stay-at-home mother and I hope it has served my children well (although perfectly organized, crafty and polished mother, I am not). Then we moved here several years ago, over the span of a year, and life has been busy and hectic and still not quite settled. We still have things in boxes and our real estate situation has more settling out to do yet. As my husband stretches out into the farm that we are creating, I'm often running around like some of my hens, cackling and scratching and generally in a twirl. He is project-based and linear where I am circular: he moves from A. to B. with great finesse, while I am dabbling in G., thinking about finishing A. and pondering X., Y. and Z. Occasionally I screech or peck at those around me, but I've been able to keep that to a dull roar. And, I've kept writing in some form, still selling the occasional magazine or newspaper article or copy of The Pantry from my home coffers(thank you all, for that!).
With each potential job opportunity there has been this expectation: what would the job bring in terms of challenges and income and benefits? How would it change our lives? But each job, as great it has been on paper, and as polished as I've been on paper, has not even led to an interview. This has been a bit discouraging, and also quite humbling. It has also been illuminating because I realize, finally, that I am meant to remain at home for the foreseeable future, perhaps consulting or working away from the ridge when the right opportunity may present itself, but not now. A few weeks ago when I realized this, I received a hearty check for a forthcoming article and some press-related queries on The Pantry. Around the same time I found some amazing writings from my grandmother, in an old college trunk of mine, some of which seemed to speak right to me [she was also a farm wife and a published magazine writer––and we share a focus issue, too]. The Universe was speaking to me and with a big, LOUD BANG!
So what am I going to do with all of this newly allowed "free" time, you may be asking? Well, I've given myself permission to write the stuff I want to write, to try to sell more articles and books. To blog more. To can food for winter and organize our house while we transition some more on the ridge. To be a more organized wife and mother. To start tackling a family archives project at last: for myself, for my extended family, for posterity. To walk again now that the hot summer is behind us and glorious warm fall days are here. To be more present with my family and have no regrets about what I'm not doing in the world, but to better focus on what I am doing. To be right where I am, "where I ought to be."
I've felt a bit like Dorothy in the past few months: looking for a different scenario than the one in my own back yard. Not only did I try so hard to get the right job that sometimes things backfired on me, despite my own efforts: like the time I was a "strong contender" last spring for a publications manager position, but they never received several key emails from me that would have weaned out the group to be interviewed. [I found this out two months after I first applied, when I had the guts to inquire as to what was going on: I have never had "dropped" emails before in my life, at least for something so significant!] There are other stories, some humorous, some pathetic: like when I virtually begged a headhunter (excuse me, a "Culture Catalyst"–don't ask) to convince the ad agency to let me write them some sample copy. I think that guy went running, and fast, leaving me a mere quip: "The agency is no longer in a particular urgency to hire at this time."
Finally, my own personal catalyst for this recent epiphany was this email response, when I inquired as to my status, after spending eight hours about a month ago crafting the pitch-perfect college development letter as another test of my writing abilities: "Thank you for your inquiry. We are in the interviewing stage for the position now but will bring in additional candidates as necessary. We hope to have some resolution to this search soon and will be informing all candidates of our decision."Perhaps I am reading too much into this but my gut says that, in other words: "You are way overqualified for this position (you nitwit), you will probably want a lot of money, and, most of all, you are old. And remember, don't call us, we'll call you for an interview, but only if our other younger, less qualified candidates don't pan out. As a lovely parting gift, you will eventually receive our generic 'We've filled this position but thank you and we wish you the very best in your job search' email. Now, thank you and go away."
"Ladies and Gentlemen, my name is Sally O'Malley. I'm proud to say I'm fifty years old and I like to kick, stretch, and KICK! I'm FIFTY! Fifty years old..."
I've been out of the workforce for some time. I'm graying naturally and I kind of like that. I'm definitely middle-aged but my eyes can still laugh and twinkle or be tinged with melancholy. In my heart and my head I am still that idealistic, passionate twenty-five year old young woman. So, that woman is going to be my driving force now to accomplish the things at home and with my family, and in the world via my writing, that I want to do. Let's face it: writing is an ageless profession. Many women novelists, especially those who raised a family, got their start later in life. One of my favorite books on farm life, Little Heathens, was written and published by a woman in her 80s!
Now that this midlife crisis is effectively over (unless it is just beginning), I'm going to finish my canning this weekend: salsa today, peach jam and bread & butter pickles tomorrow. Then I'm going to tackle projects: both writing and otherwise. Little bites, one life at a time. Most of all, I'm going to "write and KICK!" as my now twenty-two year old daughter has so wisely advised. Because I'm (almost) fifty: fifty years old! And time waits for no one.
One of our two new Hereford bulls in with the ladies (and some of their new calves).
I don't know what it is about Sundays lately, but I do seem a bit obsessed with them. Yesterday it was hot and humid, probably the muggiest day of the summer so far. We spent much of the day in the air-conditioned house, the boys and my husband exhausted from wrangling calves on Saturday morning to tag and give shots. [One lesson learned: wait until it's cooler to do so as the calves get even more stressed in the heat.]
A palisade on a back road in Pulaski County.
Later in the day we thought it would be fun to take a little Sunday drive. This is something we've always enjoyed, usually with a destination, but this was on some back roads we wanted to explore to the south of us, down near Lake Cumberland. Here where you reside is defined by what ridge you live on or underneath: the geography defines your community. Our farm is on the southern edge of south-central Kentucky's knob region. What this affords is a rolling, hilly landscape with deeply etched hollers carved by creeks, and higher ridges or plateaus where most people prefer to build upon. It is not as jagged as parts of eastern Kentucky, more plateau-like with finger like-ridges, bumpy hills and secret valleys. Either ridge or holler have large pastures for hay or cattle, dotted by copses of trees or wooded hillsides. It is beautiful countryside and, while it can be rough and tumble on occasion, it has a particular kind of untamed, almost untapped, wildness that we appreciate.
On our little journey, we came upon this old country store, now closed. Of course I had to jump out and take a photograph but I did spare my husband my best Eva Gabor-as-Lisa Douglas imitation. And where is Sam Drucker when you need him, any way? We would have liked a cold drink, at least.
Our boys preferred to stay home and watch a movie and, with cell phone in hand, we set off solo. It is always a chance for us to talk, one on one, and we really hadn't had this opportunity for a while without some kind of interruption (it's summer vacation, after all!). Our favorite way to "off road" is to not take a map (OK, well on longer trips we do bring a Kentucky Gazetteer for backup). As I have a built-in understanding of maps and direction sense, and only usually need to look at a map once or twice to absorb its spatial relationships (yes, this is an idiot savant skill I seem to have been born with), my husband has learned to trust this about me. Doing this kind of "off-roading" (or off-mapping?) is not being afraid of making the wrong turn or the thrill of the wonderment of where we might come out. I rather live my life this way, too: taking many roads and exploring new ones around the constant fixture and presence of home and family. And, as long as I can catch a glimpse of our little "monadnock" here, Green River Knob, I always know where we are.
Green River Knob rises to the west of our own knob pasture on our ridge. It is not only the highest knob in the region but the highest point in Kentucky west of its eastern mountains. The Kentucky knobs, I've realized, are very much the last western gasp of the Appalachian mountain range that forms a long spine up to the northeast.
This same phenomena occurred when we lived back in the Monadnock region of New Hampshire, too, as wherever you go, or soon nearby, you can see the great mass of Mount Monadnock as both a presence and beacon. These geographical fixtures define our places and provide an odd kind of security, too. When we are on top of our knob looking out and I see Green River Knob watching over us to the west, I always find it rather comforting. There is wisdom, truth and solace in the hills around us.
At dusk there was an odd, brilliant light from the east that cast itself on the lawn in an eerie glow. We soon realized this was created by the reflection of the setting sun on the edge of a large thunderstorm system which went around us to the south. A perfect night for a "Thunder Moon."
The chicken house at dusk, just after they'd gone into roost.
So we drove along seeing old homeplaces, new roads and different pastures and felt refreshed by the drive, the company and the air-conditioned car. To take a drive like this, whether for an hour or for the day, is always like a mini-vacation not too far from your own backyard. We came home to a build-up of thunderheads that didn't rain on us, unfortunately (it was the full "Thunder Moon" last night) and shucked some fresh corn a neighbor had given us. That, with some grilled chicken breast, was supper. Ah, a summer Sunday, to paraphrase Henry James, two of the most lovely words in the English language.
Patch was named for my husband's New Hampshire farmer friend, Norris Patch.
Momma Fox, I presumed.
A year ago today, Patch, the original alpha male of the Pond puppy trio, went off into the woods or the sunset and never returned. The worst thing is not knowing what happened. We suspect he got in a tussle with a fox that was sited lurking around on the property a few days before he left us, or maybe even a raccoon or a poisonous snake. Of the three puppies, Patch was the most aggressive in terms of hunting: off they'd go at all hours, running into the woods after something or other: rabbits, squirrels, anything that moved. No hole was too scary for Patch and it's likely he encountered one mad mother, like this worried-looking fox.
As for the chickens, we'll just say that Patch's attentiveness (and John's) when I was feeding the young chicks was not meant to be helpful: they were just eying potential future chicken dinners. As for the ducklings in the pond who lasted about four days, I'll spare you the details. Only a mother can forgive her dogs of being true to their nature and these were the first mutts we'd ever had. It has been a lesson in mixed breed traits, triumphs and tribulations. You get what you get and you love them all the same.
This is my favorite picture of John, Tom and Patch, taken when they were c. four months old in spring 2009. Who could refuse this barnyard trio?
Patch had my heart at hello. After only six weeks after losing Lucy in early December 2008, we got three farmyard specials, brothers from the same mother (but we question if they share the same father), at a Mennonite farm. The females of the litter had already been euthanized and we couldn't stand to know that two of the remaining three would suffer the same fate if not found a home (yes, birth control is not practiced much here as few owners get their pets spade or neutered and then think nothing of tossing them out or doing them in if no one wants them). So, we took home all three. Not my initial idea but when I met them, I soon agreed with my husband and boys. Besides, I'm a sucker for cute puppies living in a hay mow.
Patch tackles Tom in a typical puppy moment. I nicknamed him "Patchy Feets" because he, like the other two, always liked to jump up and gently press his feet on my torso for a friendly chat. Tom and John still do.
But Patchy had that distinct puppy personality: all presence, a bit of an observer, and cute as all get-out. His quiet demeanor belied a true alpha male, however. He was the one who led the trio over hill and dale on our farm: John would scream a high-pitched yapping bark of excitement, following close behind Patch, also barking. Ambling along at the rear was Type-B Tom, who really wouldn't hurt a flea but didn't hesitate to haul out dead carrion when he ran with the boys. Patch and John, especially, had the Jack Russell traits in them but it was Patch who also had, what I can only term, an Irish street scrapper persona. He wasn't fierce or scary but he'd get right in the thick of things and then back off, on his terms. When I first saw him I sensed an old dog soul, someone who had been here and back before, perhaps, a quiet observer of things but not afraid to speak his mind when necessary.
Patch had the most lovely blue-green eyes and red coloring. He had a lot of Irish in him, I'm certain, mixed in there with the Jack Russell-ish traits he seemed to exhibit.
We often speak of Patch and imagine him emerging from the woods one day, in full Rambo gear, his floppy red ears framed by a bright red bandanna and brandishing weapons and knives like some kind of pumped up dude in survivor mode. You could also imagine him in a little tweed vest and pants, tucking in by the fire with a glass of bourbon and a good pipe. I think, in the end, Patch's enthusiasm for everything that moved was his downfall. I hope he died on a happy mission. We still miss him.
John and Patch on my favorite old-style chair.
See what I mean?
The last two photos I took of Patch: late June 2009, age 7 months.
John and Tom, late June 2010: remarkably, Tom's coloring has gotten more blonde and his fur more shaggy.
"The puppies," as I will forever call them, follow us all over the farm and wouldn't miss a thing.
John is one lucky fellow, having been given a lifetime stay of execution for numerous poultry offenses. Like everyone else, he just wants to be loved and accepted for who he is and his positive traits outweigh his fierce need to kill small things.
Fresh local strawberries! Our season here in Kentucky lasts about three weeks in May.
I do know what you're probably thinking: didn't this woman just say she wasn't blogging for a while? Perhaps it is just crazy Summer Solstice energy fueling my peripatetic moods but, you see, I'm always open to suggestions, great ideas, and new ways of seeing the world. One of our readers here (Destiny, thank you!) has suggested that I just post a photo from time to time and not worry so much about writing. Brilliant! [Of course, I've probably already babbled on too much.]
So here's my plan: throughout the summer I'll post photos with captions, at the very least, and if I am able to write more, I'll do that, too. It works for me. [I have to say that I am so very pleased with Blogger's recent tweaks to ways of blogging, especially in the new ease of uploading, posting and editing photographs. They have come so far in the past five years in terms of self-design options.]
Organic black raspberries from the local Casey County Produce Auction have been frozen for muffins and for homemade black raspberry ice cream that I'm planning for a Father's Day cookout on Sunday.
My first attempts, ever, at making ice cream, and using our local strawberry finds! Last month I purchased a Sunbeam® ice cream maker for under $30 at Target in Lexington [now it is on sale for even less than I paid. It is electric and makes a gallon in about one hour. Loads of fun (but I didn't realize it would require loads of heavy cream to make it: yikes!)
