So...My Wednesday writers have a ritual of bringing in a writing exercise along with their workshop pages, which is great because they are often so unlike anything I would ever come up with and usually much less complicated and a lot of fun. And of course there are always those prompts that you wonder what in the world am I going to do with this? (to which I always respond "you just keep going until you find something, trust the process... something is always there, always below the surface, ESPECIALLY if you think there is nothing to write about!")... Last Wednesday was one of those times for me. The prompt was "DESCRIBE YOUR FANTASY MEAL".
oh.
I've tried, folks, but I'm so not a foodie. I'm just bland bland bland. Fruit, vegies, tofu, done. Sure I appreciate a good meal, I enjoy fine dining once in a while, etc, etc, but I'm more in line with my earth mama friend Deb who recently told me she went to one of those Bistros on 46th one night after drumming and ended up with an appetizer consisting of sprigs and sauce. What am I supposed to do with these? she/I wonder, Am I supposed to be full now?
Of course, the prompt was a blast and I ended up writing about the giant potluck I plan to have at the Beach one of these days. But the real treat was what the others came up with. They made me...well, hungry.
And of course, one's fantasy meal is about so much more than food... it's about what you truly hunger for. What is your fantasy meal? Where? When? With whom?
Speaking of hunger, if you'd like to go deeper into hunger, I've set my next PROJECT 25 RETREAT for April 14-15, 2012. Guess what about? A CALL AND RESPONSE TO HUNGER Sign up soon to reserve your place at the table....
Nice blog....
ReplyDeleteWhy thank you, Dog Walking Frisco... do I know you?
ReplyDeleteThis Is My Father’s Barn
ReplyDelete(as told to me by a 96 year old man)
The barn was there when my parents moved into the house, in Mountville, Minnesota. My father was superintendent of the county schools in the area, so he was not a farmer, per se, but we kept enough animals for our own use. I have illustrated our barn in my watercolor painting, and you can see the hay loft on the right side of my watercolor. The barn structure itself was built of wood, layered with grey clapboard siding, and a shingled roof. Its dimensions were roughly 80 feet by 30 feet, and it stood perhaps 50 feet from our house. In the front part of the barn was a structure we used for our chicken coop, where we kept about 20 chickens, plus one rooster. The rooster would crow in the morning, alerting us to the sunrise. I never noticed any foxes or other creatures bothering our chickens, even though we did not have a dog in those early years. Some years later, my much younger brother Lou went to a neighbor’s house and brought home a puppy we named, “Jimmy”, Lou said the puppy costs, 27 cents, the full extent of his savings at the time. Later we had a dog named “Whoopee,” when we lived in Gaylord. He was a mutt. Father loved that dog, and the dog lived in the house with us.
The barn had a second floor with room for the hay we stored in order to feed the cows in winter. My father would purchase a load of hay from a neighboring farmer in August. I would help the farmer and my father as we heaved the hay up into the hay loft. It was a hot and horrible job, hay stuck to me as I shoveled it above my head into the loft.
We had stalls enough in the barn itself for four full grown horses or cows. But typically we just had one cow, and one heifer that we would raise to maturity. My father had a horse, but that was before I had any consciousness of such an animal. The horse was replaced with father’s Model T Ford, because his job involved traveling around to all of the schools he supervised. Father kept this car in a shed, which became a garage, which I have illustrated as the building on the left hand side of my watercolor. You can see the door to the garage swung to the side on a single hinge. I have illustrated this hinge as well. I was very interested in the car. No one needed to teach me to drive it. I just knew how. I never needed to ask my father for the keys, because to turn the car on, one just turned the magneto switch. My father was very adept at fixing the car. I drove it around the farm yard. And I especially loved it when mother would be invited to pick berries or other produce at a neighbor’s farm, and she would ask me to drive her there, so she could easily bring home big baskets of produce and berries.
I had various jobs on the farm, which I completed before and after school. I had to get up early, perhaps 6 am. One of my jobs was pumping water from a well down by the road, and then bringing buckets of water into the house for my mother to use for breakfast. Then I pumped more water to take to the chickens, and our cow and calf in the barn. I had to pump the water even when it was 30 below zero, because the animals needed the water and so did my family. We had no running water in the house. Nor did we have electricity. When it was cold outside, you didn’t want to spill water on your clothes when you were pumping and carrying it up to the house, nor did you want your skin to freeze to the metal handle of the pump.
(This is My Father’s Barn, as told by a 96 year old man, continued)
ReplyDeleteAfter I pumped the water in the morning, and gave some to the chickens, I would give some fresh water to the cow and calf, and then I climbed up into the hay loft and shoveled some fresh hay down into the cow and calf’s stall for them to eat. My mother milked the cow until I was old enough to do so. I was about 10 when I took over the job. It took about 12 to 15 minutes for me to complete the milking job. I would bring the milk into the house for the family to use for breakfast, and the other meals of the day. We drank whole milk, complete with all the cream. Occasionally, if we didn’t need all of the milk, I would pour the milk into the cream separator and separate the cream, which my father would take to a collection site across the road from our house. The other farmers brought their cream to the collection site as well, and then it would be taken to a creamery in Gaylord, where we would be paid for the weight of the cream, and then the cream would be turned into cheese and butter. We also had a hand crank ice cream maker at home, and sometimes we would make ice cream out of the cream we separated from the milk.
After I fed and watered the cow and calf, and then milked the cow, I would collect the eggs from our twenty hens. To do this, I would shoo a hen away, and reach into her nest and pick up any eggs that were freshly laid. I took the eggs, which were warm in my hand, and placed them in the wicker basket mother gave me to collect the eggs. Then I would carry the fresh eggs into the house, and mother would cook them for breakfast, or use them in her cooking and baking for the day. Most of the time, we used all of the eggs that were gathered in a day, so we did not typically need to store the eggs. We did have an ice box to store our perishable foods, and once a week we bought a chunk of ice, maybe a foot square, to keep the food cold.
I would muck out the cow stalls, and spread the manure on our dirt yard, which is the area shown in my painting between the garage and the barn. Then after I completed all of my chores I would go back to the house and eat breakfast before school.
I never objected to doing my chores, because every other kid I knew had exactly the same jobs at their houses. We didn’t have the luxury of hating our jobs, we just did them because the work needed to be done.
When I was done with breakfast, if it was during the growing season, I would take the cow to the neighbor’s pasture. This was the farmer that father purchased our cows from. I had a rope, like a dog’s leash, tied to the cow’s neck, and I would use this to lead the cow to the pasture. The cow was amenable to the journey, so it was not a difficult walk. The cow was brown. My daughter-in-law has repeatedly asked me for the names of some of the cows, but I do not recall that the cows ever had names. My daughter-in-law, who I am telling this story to, can’t conceive of such a thing as a family cow, without a name, so we have reached somewhat of an impasse here. I told her that I would provide her with any bovine names as they occur to me. But so far none. Lou, however recalls that one cow was named, “Oxcart,” due to her brown color. It was about a 15 minute walk to the neighbor’s pasture. Then I returned home, and walked across the road to our school house, which consisted of one big room with children of all different ages. We listened to the lesson presented by the teacher. I was a very good student, and I brought home excellent progress reports. My daughter-in-law has repeatedly asked me if I was the smartest kid in the school, and I have not answered her directly, but she suspects that I was the smartest, since I was allowed to go on to prep school in St. Paul, when I was 14. (That is when I left home.)
(This Is My Father's Barn, as told by a 96 year old man, continued)
ReplyDeleteOf course, after school, I would bring the brown cow home. The cow would be standing in the herd of Mr. Goetch’s own cows, grazing in the pasture, but it would not be difficult for me to recognize and call to my unnamed cow, and bring her home with my rope. My daughter-in-law is trying to understand how I called to an unnamed cow. The cow just came, we will leave it at that for right now. Lou has also confirmed that calling a cow was not difficult at all.
In order for us to have a chicken dinner, it meant that my father had to kill the chicken, and mother had to pluck out all the feathers. Once I watched my father cutting the head off the chicken. This upset me greatly. I went into the house and announced to everyone, “I am NOT going to eat chickens anymore!” My mother said, “Where did you think the chicken on your plate was coming from?” Then I responded, “If you want to eat chickens, well that’s your business, but I won’t have any part of it!” Now, of course I do eat chicken.
I should also mention that we had an outhouse on the farm, no indoor toilets.
One summer, father took me and Gene and Naomi fishing on Lake Marianne. He also taught us how to clean fish.
I am almost 97 years old. Now I live in assisted living in a pretty suburb far away from the farm, and far away from the industrial city where I made my living as an adult. Now everyday, I have an aide who comes to my apartment to help me get up in the morning and get dressed. If I forget to go to the dining room to take my meals, I get a telephone call to remind me to come downstairs to eat. Sometimes someone comes to get me. Or they send my meal up to my apartment. I can walk down to the dining room by myself. I use a three wheel walker.
Growing up the way I did, in a rural community, we realized how dependent we were on animals. All around us, there were cows, pigs, hogs, chickens, plus geese, turkeys, and ducks (in general the women cared for the feathered animals). When you grow up on a farm, animals and the produce from your garden, provide for all of the food you ever needed. All of these animals were part of the farm.