Life in the Woods: Everyday Challenges

I always assumed moving home was kind of a cop-out, something you do when you're scared of rush hour and can't wrap your head around the expense of work clothes.

When you return home, you return to a little safety net of familiarity. You'll know the majority of people you bump into while running errands and you'll pick right back up on the small town gossip. Although I live an hour away from my childhood home, I still have the same zip code that I had growing up (it has to be one of the "most area covering" zip codes in the country!) and I shop at the same grocery store as my mother and bank at an institution where my grandmother worked for 39 years. Because I've simply fallen back into "the way things always were," there's not a whole lot of "figuring it out" that has to be done on a daily basis.

Yet despite the familiarity of it all, I find myself doing things every day that I never thought I'd do.

There's the whole "learning to drive a manual transmission" thing that I think I'm finally getting a handle on. Every day, I light a fire in the wood stove, something I never did growing up. Let's not even get started on my everyday fashion. In the end, my daily apparel of wool pants, "moon boots"  and Carhartt vests (Yes, I received not one, but two Carhartt vests for Christmas) isn't really the haute couture I'd imagined for myself.

And if you'd told me that one day I'd be crawling underneath the cabin to swap out propane tanks, I would have laughed in your face.  

But on Saturday afternoon, I went to brown some venison (case in point). But when I turned the knob to light the burner, I was greeted by "tick, tick, tick." As the ticking continued and the burner still refused to ignite, I knew we'd run out of propane. I'd suspected we were near the bottom of the tank, since the stove had smelled slightly gassy the last couple times I'd turned it on, a sure sign that a replacement tank would be in short order.  

Since moving into the cabin, I've always made Andy swap out the tanks because I didn't know how to do it. But the last time we ran out of propane, Andy was at work. So, after some detailed instructions from Andy over the phone, I donned my Carhartt vest, grabbed the crescent wrench and hopped underneath the deck to detach the empty propane cylinder. It took a little doing to get the cylinder detached. Propane tanks are threaded opposite of most things, making "lefty loosey, righty tighty" totally irrelevant and it was harder for me to wrap my brain around that than I would like to admit. Nevertheless, I eventually got it and getting the new cylinder in place was a piece of cake. 

The propane tanks are small, just the standard cylinders that you'd use for your grill. Despite their petite size, the cylinders usually last us close to four months, but as luck would have it, when the tank ran out on Saturday, Andy was again nowhere to be found.

I figured I remembered how to switch out the tanks by myself, so I threw on some shoes and headed to the shed to grab a full propane cylinder. This time of year, the ground beneath the deck is littered with sunflower seed shells and as I knelt beneath the deck I noticed four little squirrel paws pop out on the side of the deck plank right above my head.

"Living the dream," I grumbled as I sent up a silent prayer to whoever was listening that the squirrel would not defecate on my head or make a nest out of my hair while I tried to remember which way to turn the wrench. (Towards the house to loosen and towards yourself to tighten.) 

The gods above must have been listen. The squirrel scampered off, oblivious of my presence and the propane tanks were swapped out in minutes By the time Andy came home, stew burbled away on the stove top.

I will not be defeated by ticking ranges. I am woman: watch me swap out propane tanks.

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Meat. Lots of Meat

Greetings from the Of Woods and Words butcher shop.

Ever since Andy got his buck a week ago Saturday, we've been busy processing venison. I'll spare you the gory details, but there has been much chopping, grinding, freezer wrapping, labeling and dishwashing going on in these parts. The cabin has about 4 square feet of useable counter space, so it's been a juggling act, to say the least. We have some very happy jays and a rather smug looking red fox who are happily gobbling up the scraps we leaves outside.

Thank goodness Andy didn't try to get a second deer with his license this season. While I'd felt we'd gotten a decent amount of meat from last year's doe -- about 20-25 pounds of venison, including sausage-- this buck easily has provided us with twice as much. Between the garden produce we put away in early autumn and the recent venison additions, our chest freezer is nearly brimming at the top and we haven't even finished "SausageFest 2011" yet.  

Speaking of SausageFest 2011, on Saturday evening, Andy and I finished up a batch of Italian sausage. And when I say batch, I mean 21+ pounds of Italian sausage.  Pretty much any bit of useable venison that's not tenderloins, roasts, or round steak, gets ground up for sausage. The ground venison is then mixed 50:50 with ground pork. Because venison is an extremely lean meat, the pork is necessary to "bind" the sausage together. The fact that we ended up with about 20 pounds of ground venison this year means we'll ended up making approximately 40 pounds of sausage. Holy schmoly!

Last year we made a batch (about 8 pounds each) of Italian and breakfast sausage. The Italian sausage was by far the favorite, which is why Andy decided we need to make so very much of it this year. We don't bother putting the sausage in casings, just freeze it in bulk for use in lasanga, spaghetti, and pizza throughout the winter. But 21 lasangas is an awful lot of lasanga. I have a feeling we'll be giving some the sausage away.

And yet, we still have 10 pounds of ground venison that needs to be converted into sausage. I'm thinking a batch of chorizo, maybe a small batch of breakfast sausage, and some jerky. Also does anyone have a good recipe for wild rice venison sausage. Google has totally failed me in my search for a wild rice sausage recipe, yet I know wild rice venison sausage is a standby in many Minnesota households, so if you have a recipe, please do share!  

All this venison must be seeping into my subconscious. Just last night, I dreamed I saw a ginormous buck, only to realize I needn't bother telling Andy because deer season was already over. (The season ended on Sunday night.) I don't even want to explore the meaning behind this one!

You're welcome to dinner any time. Just be forewarned: chances are, we'll be having lasanga.

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The garden: in review

Sometimes, it's really easy to forget how far you've come. Just a few short months back, I had trays of seedlings in the window. Now looky:

Zinnia

Ripening Thai Peppers

Tomato Escalade

 I mean, remember when it looked like this?

Granted, the above picture of the raised bed isn't really the best portrait of how far the little garden has progressed. For one thing, we've picked all the kohlrabi and all but one of the cabbages. Also, all the onions died. I have no idea why.

But just because the onions decided they didn't like the little patch of earth I'd provided for them, that doesn't mean the other seedlings didn't take a liking to our pots and raised beds. Just take a look at these tomatoes. 

Your loss, onions, your loss.

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My Hot, Steamy Love Affair

Andy looked me in the eyes. He'd cornered me by the pantry.

"Are you having an affair?" he asked.

I gulped. I hadn't thought he'd noticed how distant I'd become or how my evenings have been spent focused on matters other than him.  But I had to tell him the truth. I was having an affair. One that was hot and steamy, with just a tinge of danger.

"Yes," I fessed up. "With my hot water bath canner."

It's true.

What started out as a single batch of jam, quickly turned into an obsession. Things have only escalated since the "putting up" post. The last four weeks have been a frenetic flurry of food preservation. If I wasn't out picking berries, I was buying a lug of peaches. I've spent so much time standing at the kitchen counter, chopping, stirring, scooping that I developed shin splints this week.

Here's the damage:

From left to right:5 pints wild blueberry/raspberry jam
4.5 pints raspberry jam (tame raspberries, from Mom's garden)
7 pints peach salsa
4 quarts blueberry pie filling
3 quarts peach slices
3 quarts sauerkraut
4 pints peach jam
3 pints blueberry jam

Like any affair, I feel a little shame about the whole thing. When did I get so stinkin' domestic and focused on home economics? What 26-year-old in her right mind can't wait to get home so she can stand in front of boiling vat "canning things for winter?" I've been known to cackle in delight when I hear the "click" of the can lids sealing. It's all disconcerting.

But while I might wish from the bottom of my heart that I could quit the whole thing, by this point, things are too complicated for that. Anymore, it's hard to relax if I don't have a spoon or knife in my hands. I feel a little lost if my face isn't flushed from the steam of the burbling canner.

Still, at some point, it has to end. (Doesn't it?) Andy's tired of sharing me. Heck, there are even times when I want the life I had before back. I have to promise Andy (and myself) that it will all end soon  . . . right after I make another batch of salsa . . . and pickle some jalapenos . . . and . . . .

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The Dog Days

I've recently stumbled across a couple quotes about August.

The first one was shared with me by an Of Woods and Words fan: 

"The first week of August hangs at the very top of summer, the top of the live-long year, like the highest seat of a Ferris wheel when it pauses in its turning. The weeks that come before are only a climb from balmy spring, and those that follow a drop to the chill of autumn, but the first week of August is motionless, and hot. It is curiously silent, too, with blank white dawns and glaring noons, and sunsets smeared with too much color." — Natalie Babbitt, Tuck Everlasting 

The second quote I found while leafing through the latest issue of Minnesota Monthly:

"If the calendar were a family, August would be the great, bosomy aunt who turned down her first proposal and never again had the chance to marry. Here she comes, all smothering warmth, smelling of Aqua Net, and accompanied by a slight sense of sadness for opportunities missed." -- Shannon Olson.

I found the second quote last night when I'd finally put my feet up after an afternoon and evening of what some people might call homesteading and what I prefer to refer to as "fridge damage control."  It all started when I went out to survey the gardens and came back with four more large zucchinis in my hands. Which brought our total of harvested zucchinis and yellow summer squash that had not been transformed into anything edible and delicious up to eight. EIGHT. 

Too much zucchini

"Okay," I said to Andy, holding up the latest zucchini harvest, "who can we plant bomb?" It's that awful time of year when everyone has zucchinis (too many zucchinis) and there's no one out there to accept the (gracious, selfless) gifts of zucchini. And so, instead of setting up a "free zucchini (!!!)" stand on the side of the road, I turned on the oven, and got busy. I cranked out a double batch of both zucchini lemon muffins and chocolate zucchini bread, and chopped up two of the larger zucchini to dehydrate for later use in soups and chilis. Before I dealt with the zucchini, I had to do some reorganizing in the fridge, which resulted in a vat of fruit salad and another cold savory salad. 

"Congratulations," Andy said as I worked to get the water bath canner up to a boil to seal four quarts of blueberry pie filling. "You've successfully made it 20 degrees warmer in the cabin than it is outside."  

At the time, the thermometer in the kitchen said the indoor temp was 87, while the outdoor temp was down to 73. (Thanks for exaggerating, Andy.)

Steamy stuff

I'm not going to lie. When I looked at all those zucchinis piled on my counter, my first thought wasn't a prideful "we totally grew that." Nope, it was a feeling of sheer, body-surging horror: "What the heck am I going to do with all of these." By the time I got around to the blueberry pie filling (which had really been my sole ambition for the day), I stood over the pot, stirring the 25 cups of steaming berries and muttering under my breath "just fucking boil already." I think I lost points off my "happy homemaker ala1950s image" for the profanity. C'est la vie. 

So yes, the first week of August is certainly hanging hot and heavy in these parts. Thank goodness there's a lake 20 paces or so from the sweltering stove to provide instant heat relief.

As for the sense of missed opportunities, already Andy and I are heading out to the gardens to survey both the successes and failures and saying those fateful words: "Next year . . ."

Next year? Already the kohlrabi and broccoli have had their time in the sun. The evenings are becoming noticeably shorter. The first load of winter firewood has been ordered. It won't be long until that autumn crispness starts to sneak into the air.

But for now I'm planning to enjoy this first week of August, with all its warmth, all its sunshine, and all its zucchini.

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The Joy of Putting Up

No, not the joy of putting out. . .That would take us in a completely different direction. A direction I dare say Of Woods and Words has never been before.

Nope, today is much more Laura Ingalls Wilder than it is Carrie Bradshaw. Honestly, I've always been more Laura than Carrie, although I did spend many of my young adult years assuming my future held many a cosmopolitan and several pairs of expensive heels. While not exactly how things ended up, I'm also happy to report that my future (thus far) has not contained a single covered wagon. So that's a relief.

Ever since reading Little House in the Big Woods, I've been fascinated with the idea of self-sufficiency. Through the years, that fascination has taken me down many a twisted path. Thankfully, my long suffering mother patiently let me use up her entire stash of yarn for my knitting attempts, didn't fuss too much when my attempt to dry juneberries in the oven resulted in cookie pans that are still scarred, let me use her canner to make some not so great chokecherry jelly and apple butter. She didn't say a word when I decided to use the garden's red clay to make "bowls."

Now that I'm all grown up, my self-sufficiency attempts are a little less haphazard. And now that I have a garden of my own, my putting up habits have to become a little more focused. Letting any bit of that fresh produce that we've been working to cultivate since late March go to waste would just be a waste. (Yep, pretty swift this morning, eh?) At the very time the blueberries are peaking, I also have zucchinis coming out of my ears and the grocery produce (cherries, stone fruit, etc.) is at its most luscious. I'm trying my best to get it all "put up" for the winter months.

Here are the fruits of my labors so far: a batch blueberry jam, a batch of blueberry raspberry jam, a batch of blueberry vinegar, and a jar of cherry bounce. I also dried a quart of blueberries last night to be used in granola throughout the year.

Last weekend, I finally developed a salsa recipe that's to both of our liking and I'll put that recipe to good use if I can save our tomatoes from the blasted bottom blossom rot. Don't rot on me now little tomatoes!

There are also currently four massive zucchini/summer squash in the fridge that must be dealt with. I think I'll trying dehydrating a couple and will probably make a double batch of zucchini muffins for the freezer.

It all seems very old fashioned, but there's a joy in taking what you gathered and grew and transforming it into something that will feed you for months to come. I love seeing the jars lining up on the shelf, the bags stuffed with frozen blueberries and other foods stacking up in the chest freezer. It makes the sunburned neck and scrapped up shins well worth it.

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Call Me Audrey

I have a hard time thinking of vegetables as scary or intimidating. I grew up with a huge vegetable garden in the backyard and tend to view vegetable plants as pretty innocuous and even, kind of friendly. So I was surprised last month when the neighbors expressed fear that our tomato and broccoli plants might "eat them."

But as time goes by, I have to admit, the tomato and squash plants are looking rather bad-ass. I've taken to calling them "Audrey", ala Little Shop of Horrors.

I oblige their cries of "Feed me" with plenty of water and a little plant food every couple weeks. But not too much plant food. Andy devoted a portion of yesterday to tying back the rambunctious tomato plants so we can actually pass them on the deck walkway and get in and out of our cabin. We still have to kind of angle ourselves sideways to get around them.

Meanwhile, over in the new raised bed, things are progressing at a similarly "wild" pace. We've been harvesting broccoli and kohlrabi for the last week and a half now. I'm letting the cabbage get huge though. Just because I can. 

Visions of sauerkraut danced through their heads

The zucchini, yellow squash, and pumpkin plants are taking over one half of the raised bed and exceeding expectations. I had little hopes when I planted the pumpkins. I picked the package of seeds up on a whim when the Gold Nugget winter squash seed I'd ordered didn't arrive due to crop failure last year. Now the pumpkin is climbing the fence, sending tendrils willy-nilly, and bearing teeny-tiny pumpkins. Exciting!

Granted, it's only fair if I share our gardening failures too. The onions have once again committed massive hari-kari. I spent last night pulling out all of the spinach and arugula which immediately went to seed after sprouting. We're still figuring out what will and won't grow in our shady terrace gardens. In our extreme heat, one Thai basil plant kicked it when I wasn't looking (or was too hot and miserable to care).

As Andy said yesterday, "Now I know how people have massive, productive gardens."

To which I said, "And why all the people with productive gardens are like 57."

This gardening stuff is most definitely a work in progress. You learn what to do and perhaps more importantly, what not to do, every day.

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In Which Ada Catches A Fish

The first few weeks of July, before berry season is in full swing, seems to be the time of year when the call of the lake and the boat are most answered. For the last week or so, we've been heading down the lake nearly every night to spend an hour or so at sunset dropping ciscos on weighted lines into the lake's depths and drifting across a reef, waiting for the big one to bite.

Although there are also walleye and bass (et al) in the lake, I've always gone lake trout fishing with Andy. Every time we're out, we get plenty of nibbles, even a fair amount of "robbed" hooks, but during the summer months, I've never seen a fish at the end of my line. (During the winter, I've caught a couple "waterbottle" sized baby lake trout that have gotten thrown back.)

Honestly, I'd started to wonder if this fishing stuff was some really long-winded practical joke Andy was pulling on me. "We never catch any fish," I grumbled to a neighbor who asked after our fishing success on Saturday morning.

But on Saturday evening as we bobbed about, I felt three sharp tugs on my line. I opened my bail, let the fish run with the bait, then yanked up to set the hook and started reeling. When Andy glanced over, his eyes grew wide. "You've got a big fish on there." I'd never landed a fish before and had no idea that when the line makes a terrible cranking noise you should stop reeling and let the fish do its own thing for a bit before reeling some more. With some instruction from Andy, I got the fish to the surface. Andy netted the 4-6 lb beauty and brought it in the boat to inspect. 

"Can we keep it?" I asked.

We did.

I had no idea there was so much meat on a fish. We grilled it up on Sunday evening and I made a simple rice pilaf out of the leftovers yesterday that we'll be eating on for a good long time. I'd always thought trout tasted too "fishy", but this particular "landlocked salmon" was pretty darn tasty.

This is probably the only trout we'll keep all year. They're such slow growing, long-lived beasts that it seems only fair that the vast majority of them spend their days down in the dark, cool lake water. 

Moral of the story? Don't stop complaining.You never know how a well-timed grumble might be answered.

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Knock Yourself Out Mark Zuckerberg

We watched The Social Network the other night and it got me thinking about a lot of things; namely, Mark Zuckerberg. Before watching the movie, I'd heard a statement that Zuckerberg's goal for the year is to eat only things he kills with his own hands. Huh?

Now we all know by now that I'm a little idealistic when it comes to trying to live locally and sustainably. I love the idea of cracking open a can of my own locally grown canned goods or pulling some local cut of meat out of the freezer. I feel that if we all ate a little closer to home, the world just might be a slightly better place.

But I also live in northern Minnesota, where eating locally means some wild rice, a lot of blueberries, and a bit of meat when you can get it. And there's just only so much venison with blueberry sauce that a 21st century palate can take. While we eat a fair amount of meat which Andy has shot, the majority of the meat we consume at the cabin isn't even organic.

Why? Well, it takes a lot of food to feed two people for an entire year.

The venison Andy got last Novemeber was all gone by April and we only used about a pound of the meat a week. During grouse season, Andy and I went out hunting nearly every night and while we managed to get enough poultry to provide one or two weekly dinners, we never even stockpiled enough grouse to have any in the freezer for "later." Believe it or not, all that's left of last year's blueberries is less than a cup of berries, rattling around in a gallon bag in the back of the freezer. Even what, at the time, can appear to be massive amounts of food can disappear quickly.

Then there's the price issue. In a world where time is money, we can't afford to spend every waking moment scrounging for food. And much as I'd like to eat only organic, that ideology is a little rough on my pocketbook.


Just yesterday I came back from the grocery store with a nominal amount of food in my (reusable) bags and one honking total on my receipt. "That's it," I declared. "No more fresh produce for us." Forget the yummy red strawberries at $3.65 a pound; next week I'm just going to pick up some cans of Flavorite fruit cocktail in lieu of all the (expensive) fresh fruit salad ingredients I picked up yesterday.

Now, I'm not sure what Zuckerberg means when he says he's only eating food he shot with his own hands. Is he counting produce too? Because let me tell you, as Andy and I ran around last night covering up the gardens to protect them from the latest frost advisory, I realized even a little garden can demand more of you than you ever expected.

With his unlimited funds, maybe Zuckerberg is in a better position to succeed at this "with your own hands" eating game. But while I may consistently cry "busy", I have a feeling Zuckerberg has a couple more obligations and commitments than I do.

Mark, if you figure out how to do this: 1) You're a better man than me and 2) Let me know how you did it.  

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It's A Blizzard (well, sort of) . . .

The snow started last night and blessed us with another inch or two of fluffy sparkles and this morning I just launched a snazzy new writer's website. What better time than the present to (re-)introduce myself as part of the Blizzard Bloghop?!

If you're new around these parts, I'm Ada, a twenty-something freelance writer, tucked away in northern Minnesota woods. I live the life many writers dream of. I spend my days sitting at a desk watching the sun rise and set over a scenic wilderness lake while writing articles and commentaries, working on creative prose of all sorts of lengths, blogging, and working as a small museum manager. Of course being 55 miles away from a grocery store or washing machine makes living the dream a little more complicated. The conundrum of  making a life out of woods and words is where the blog comes in . . .

I live with Andy and we spend a lot of our free time taking in the natural beauty that surrounds us. I love to travel and have lived in England and Ireland. I'm always up for a good road trip, or any trip for that matter. 

Around the cabin, we try to live as self-sufficiently as possible. If you've been around since this past summer, you already know all about my obsession with picking blueberries. We also garden and hunt and try to keep the freezers and shelves stocked with homemade food.

During the quiet winter evenings, I love to knit and read, as well as snuggle up with the Netflix du jour. I try to approach the world in an informed manner with a sense of humor. To me, life is about noticing and enjoying the little things: the colorful flock of birds at the feeder, a blueberry pie, or a sentence edited to death until it reads just right.

Now it's your turn. Leave me a comment, introduce yourself, and please, do come again!

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The Home Place

For whatever reason, when we’re driving home after some evening event, Andy and I frequently have this conversation:

Ada: I always thought I’d end up in a big city, like Chicago, New York, or London.

Andy: Ick! Not me!

In the British Isles, they have a concept called “the home place.” The concept is a central component of modern day Irish dramatist Brian Friel’s play entitled, well, The Home Place, but I’ve also run across the concept in other pieces of literature set in Ireland. The most recent reference of the home place I ran into was in Minnesota author Erin Hart’s mystery Haunted Ground. The “home place” is a reference to a member of the English Ascendancy’s old family home in England. It’s a place often shrouded with mythical symbolism that is only magnified by the person’s geographical distance from the location. It’s something used to define a person, even if it’s been generations since any direct relative lived on the land.

In the States, our sense of home isn’t tied as tightly with tradition as it is overseas, but our sense of home is just as complicated. We are raised on the American dream and a sense that home is something that travels with us, that with the unpacking of a suitcase we can simply will a new place to be our home. But it’s not quite that easy.

While plenty of Americans head overseas to find their roots, few find more than just a pleasant experience and, if they’re lucky, a deeper understanding of who they are. They usually don’t find a newly realized home. And maybe that’s because there seems to be an infantile understanding of home that haunts us well into adulthood.

I have put in time in the big city. I have proven that I am perfectly capable of living in dorms, in cities, in suburbs. But in all those experiences there was a strain of inexplicable homesickness that tinges such experiences. A sense that after all the newness is discovered, that this really isn’t the place I want to spend all my time.

Is northern Minnesota really my home place? It certainly seems to be Andy’s.

In the movie Orange County the main character, Shaun, finally runs into his writer idol who is also a professor at Stanford. After talking for a while, the writer/professor tells Shaun: “You’re a writer. Every good writer has a conflicted relationship with their home.”

We may not know where our home place lies exactly. But we certainly know when we’re not home and from that, through deductive reasoning, we should be able to determine our home place. When feelings of anxiousness or smothered longing are absent, we may find that we’re already home.

Where’s your home place?

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Ms. Frizzle

Remember Ms. Frizzle of Magic School Bus fame? Known for her crazy school field trips and her trippy, subject appropriate dresses, Ms. Frizzle notoriously sported a frizzy mane, regardless of if she and her class were cruising through outer space or the human immune system. She was a kooky, self-assured character: someone you’d love as a teacher when you were 9 years old and someone who’d garner your fear and mistrust when you were 19 years old.Who really wants to be like that crazy, fashion-unconscious elementary school teacher?

It’s been years since I’ve read a Magic School Bus book, but every once in a while I think of Ms. Frizzle. Usually she comes to mind when the humidity outside is about 90% and my hair is getting bigger and bigger and bigger.

Since my teenage years, I’ve been fighting an often losing battle with my frizzy hair. Over time I’ve assembled quite the arsenal of hair products. On any given morning I shampoo my hair, smear it with conditioner, spray it with some sort of leave-in conditioner, and give it a final layer of hair spray. When I find a hair product that seems to tame the underlying frizz while allowing my hair to keep its natural wave, I’m tempted to head straight back to the store and buy the whole shelf.

Keep in mind that I'm the girl who has to be dragged to the store to buy new socks. I will literally scrunch up a holey sock in my toes and slip on my shoes to minimize the amount of bare skin inside my shoe. While my closet remains in a perpetually stunted and tattered state, I have no problem shelling out money for hair products. At some point in time, a subconscious decision was made that hair trumps style.

But if we’re to consciously think about the products we’re buying with a critical environmental and economic eye, well, then the oodles of plastic and metal spray bottles under the bathroom sink really should go. It’s great if I find a shampoo/body soap bar to use in lieu of bottled shampoo, but it’s pretty much just a drop in the ocean if I won't get rid of any of my other hair products. While I know there are plenty of natural conditioners out there, I just think mayonnaise belongs on sandwiches, not my head, and after an awful food poisoning incident in Paris involving mayonnaise on a baguette, I’m not too keen on mayonnaise on sandwiches either. Hair products are one thing that I really can’t find a great, local alternative to the corporately produced products I currently use.

And my conditioner? You’re going to have pry it out of my dead fingers. Still don’t want to be Ms. Frizzle.

Let the local living hypocrisy begin.

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What to do about coffee?

At the cabin, there are a few things that cause us to drop everything and make the 60 mile trip into town, regardless of convenience. Number one is running out of gas. Number two is running out of toothpaste. And number three? Running out of coffee.

Every morning I wake up to the sound of Andy grinding coffee beans. Although our intake of coffee declines slightly in the warm summer months, it’s still part of the everyday routine. And that’s where the conundrum comes in.

If we’re to focus on living locally and feeding our bodies with foods naturally grown in our home range, turning a blind eye to our favorite breakfast beverage is a huge oversight. Feel good statements on the coffee bags like “organic” or “fair trade” don’t erase the fact that every ground coffee bean that ends up in our filters has traveled thousands of miles before reaching our breakfast table. Sure Kona coffee from Hawaii is “U.S. grown coffee” but Hawaii isn’t exactly in my northern Minnesota backyard, now is it?

Since our town is teeny, we’ve been spared the arrival of commercialized coffee. The coffeehouse in town is no Starbucks or Caribou Coffee, it’s a locally owned and operated business which hires local high school kids during summer months and supports a local family. When we grab a latte in town, we’re not supporting “the man,” we’re supporting neighbors.

Even I, who am more of a coffee sipper rather than a coffee drinker, foresee problems in swearing off coffee for good. Caffeine is such integral part of 21st century life that to do away with coffee would probably just mean the emergence of another environmentally and nutritionally worse alternative. If we do some research about where we invest our coffee dollar, we can insure that we support worthy coffee plantations and small business.

Is that good enough? How effective can local living be if we start down the slippery slope of making caveats?

It probably behooves us to remember that when coffee, tea, and spices emerged into Western society, they were considered luxuries. We often forget that stocking up on coffee wasn’t always as easy as hopping in an automobile, turning the key in the ignition and driving 60 miles. It used to be journey that used to involve gangplanks and white handkerchiefs being fluttered in farewell as a three-masted tea clipper pulled out of the harbor on the start of a multi-month trip. If we can remember that every time the coffee grinder roars we are beginning our mornings with the epitome of a “treat” we can succeed not in living locally, but living life a little more mindfully. Everything in moderation, right?

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Why We Garden

I started dreaming of a garden when I lived in a 12 by 20 shack. Outside snow covered the ground. When I hunched over my desk, burrowing into my layers of wool and down, I sometimes wondered if the spot beneath the bird feeder might be a little too shady a spot for a garden when the snow all melted. At night under the sloping ceiling of our loft bedroom, I sketched diagrams of imagined gardens. I checked out gardening books from the library. 

To be truthful, I really wanted flowers. While the Christmas cactus sat stagnantly on a bathroom shelf, the vine-y houseplant beside the cactus faithfully produced new leaves with a methodical rhythm. The house plants stood as a reminder of green growth, but in a snow white world, I dreamed of cascading, colorful blossoms or pretty nosegay for the kitchen table.

Meanwhile, Andy dreamed of garden vegetables. It's easy to grow tired of baby carrots in the dead of winter, when almost all the other produce on the grocery shelves appear to have barely survived some sort of vegetable warfare. 

Of course in northern Minnesota, gardening can only be viewed as an act of optimism. Even after we moved out of the Shack for the summer, the new gardens we had an opportunity to plant were shady and plagued with somewhat questionable soil. Weather always poses a problem: too hot, too cold, too dry, too windy, too wet. But we were curious to see what we could coax into growing. While the zucchini have had an abysmal go of it (who has trouble growing zucchini?!), we’ve managed to get some beautiful tomatoes and peppers from the pots on the deck. Will wonders never cease?

In this day and age of big corporation, when every documentary on big business tells you to vote with your wallet when it comes to shaping your life and country, it seems silly not to attempt to put a very small portion of food on your own table. Our gardens might not be the most fruitful and certainly they could benefit from us spending just a lot more time on them, but even gathering a small amount of green beans from the garden every other morning or so can make dinner a lot more exciting. What comes from the garden is so much better than what we can get in the store, especially when you live in a rural place and “fresh” food has spent quite a long time being “fresh” before it ever gets to the store shelf, let alone your refrigerator. Not only is gardening pretty good for the planet, it also makes our stomachs and hearts extremely happy.

So we garden for color, for hope, for food. Throwing fresh arugula into a salad, tossing fresh basil with pasta and grilled garden veggies, eating that first steamed green bean of the season, it seemed worth the bother.

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