Mistakes

I am by nature an insecure person and that insecurity, coupled with an intensity to rival that of a nuclear blast, did not, shall we say, make it easy for me to laugh at things in my life.  Laughing at things in my life would mean that I was laughing at myself and that would be to admit that I was human and therefore imperfect.  I would have to stop berating myself for my mistakes and start laughing at them.  I was also secretly afraid that if I took things more lightly, then I wouldn't learn everything I needed to learn in order to make fewer mistakes.  My whole goal in life was to Avoid Mistakes.  It was a strategy that wasn't working.  So, I started yearning for a sense of humor and low and behold, laughing at my life began to feel good.  Also, truly comical material increased exponentially in my life.

Sometimes I felt like I was living a comedy routine.  Slapstick.  And I was the straight man.

Garden Helps

I am not a natural vegetable grower.   I grow weeds well.   I grow herbs well.  I grow some flowers well.   Until 2 years ago, I didn't grow vegetables. [My husband did - a few tomatoes....].    Two years ago, we figured out that our property really did have an altitude problem.    We're in a hollow.  The gardens are in the bottom of the hollow an on terraces up the south end.   The house and studio sit above them.    Our little hollow was collecting the cold air and frosting things out in bizarre ways.   Also, we live in the clay and limestone capital of the word [and I am not kidding].   Drainage was a problem, even on the terraces.

After we built the studio, up behind the house, we realized that the area next to it could be drained and then we could build raised beds full of sand and manure and grow veggies there.    It was backbreaking, but it worked.  I'll post pictures when it's not covered with snow.  

Once we had the beds ready, it was time to plant.   I had a lot to learn about vegetables and luckily our local library has a lot of resources.    Here is my favorite book on growing vegetables:  The Kitchen Garden, by Sylvia Thompson.  [Link below]   Just the right balance of chemistry, lore, basic information and hand-holding.    I actually bought it.

My other favorite tool these days is Clyde's Garden Planner, which is a handy-dandy little slide-rule sort of unit that lets you select which garden area you're in according to when your last frost is, and then tells you when to start planting seeds indoors and outdoors for all sorts of veggies.    On the back, you can see when to plant your fall veggies [radishes, greens...] by when your first frost is.    Here's a picture of mine.  It gets just as much use as my gloves.

Sauerkraut

Sauerkraut is one of my favorite winter foods.   It's not rocket science to make, nature does all the work and it is delicious either hot in a reuben or cold with a fork right out of the jar.  Even my kids will eat it in a reuben.  I also like it on salads or as a coleslaw base.   Moosewood has a fabulous recipe for an Apple Sauerkraut Casserole in their Enchanted Broccoli Forest cookbook  (link below).  We like it with crispy polish sausage. [We fry the sausage to get as much fat out of it as possible.  Also, it's just better crispy.]

Sauerkraut happens by way of lactic fermentation. This is not the type of fermentation that makes alcohol.   Here is an interesting site on the benefits of lactic fermentation in food and they have recipes.

To make your own sauerkraut, all you have to do is take your regular every day type cabbage from the grocery store and shred it, salt it, pound it and let it sit for 3-4 weeks.   Easy.

Here is a step by step of how we do it:

1.  Get cabbage.   They say late season cabbage is the best and since I'm too busy doing other foodie things all summer and fall, winter is the first chance I have to think about doing sauerkraut.  I'm figuring that the only cabbage you can get at the grocery store in December is the late season kind.  

2.  Weigh the cabbage so we can figure out how much salt we need to use.    Figure on 1 Tablespoon of salt per pound - or about 2 Tablespoons for a regular head.

3.  Shred.  I do this by hand but you can use a food processor.  You get longer shreds if you do it by hand.  You're supposed to shoot for 1/16th of an inch shreds.  I shoot for 1/8th inch and try not to cut myself.  

4.  Salt.   We put all of the shreds in a nice huge bowl and salt it, then mix it up well.   Things should start to ooze.   Ooze is good.

5.  Pound the living snot out of the cabbage.   Do Not Pound In A Glass Bowl.  [Don't ask me how I know.]  We transfer the salty cabbage to an empty plastic ice cream bucket and use a potato masher to pound.    It is loud.  It takes some time and patience.   I use this opportunity to work out anxiety or perhaps some less than kind feelings about someone in my life.  We pound until the juice covers the cabbage.

6.  Put into jars, leaving about 1 1/2 inches of headroom.  Juice should cover the top of the kraut.  The headroom is important.   As the fermentation occurs, little bubbles push the contents up a bit and if the jars are packed to the top, things will overflow.   I know this from experience.

Ready to eat now!

7.  Put lids on the jars but don't screw them down tightly.  Air is good. Also, the ability for little bubbles to escape is good.   If they can't escape, the jars might explode.  Seriously.  This is not something we want to experiment with. 

8.  Put jars in a plastic bucket to catch any accidental overflow and then tuck it away in a cupboard where it won't freeze.   We left ours in our jelly cupboard this year and it ripened a week faster [in 3 weeks] than when we put it in our mudroom where the temp is much lower [4 weeks]. 

9.  Notes:  Sauerkraut overflow smells like farts.   We clean it up and the smell goes away.

Guess that bird...

We had one of these sweeties visit our feeder last week.   They pass through in the late fall and winter and then again in late winter.  

Answer below the fold.....

Moving to the Country - more things to think about

 A friend of mine is contemplating a move to the country and asked me about the pros and cons.   So I sat down and made a list – in no particular order.  Forgive me if some of this seems obvious.   In the end, it’s not really about pros and cons, but about how much of country reality can you tolerate.   We and our neighbors tolerate this stuff pretty well – we just wish there were more hours in the day to get everything done.

Seeds -Vegetable

Seed buying is my favorite part of gardening season.  All that anticipation and potential, no failures.  Until the ground thaws, all those seeds have to do to succeed is just stay in that cute little packet.   All I have to do to succeed is let them.    I can do that.

This is my favorite seed company:  Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds.  Their catalogs are full of descriptions that make my mouth water and which make for great reading-aloud while my husband fixes dinner.  They make me want to try new things.  And we have!   Last year we discovered how wonderful Dragon Tongue beans and Purple Okra are. This year, we're going to try growing our own tomatoes and onions from seed. [I'm terrified.]  We're also going to try zucchini rampicante and a couple of new melons.  I spent an obnoxious amount of money on seed this year, but I am confident that I'll more than make up for it in great food.

What are you going to plant this year?

Horehound Candy

Marrubium vulgare: Horehound

I began studying herbs when I was in high school.  While other people were at football games and movies, I was in the library.  My taste in books was varied.  I read lots of murder mysteries and I loved books about plants.  Although I never planted a garden back then, I drew elaborate garden plans on old math papers and eventually all that planning practice paid off when I was a graduate student and found myself living in an apartment in an old house, the back yard of which had been turned over to me to ‘do something with’.   After considerable earth moving and wall building, one shovelful and rock at a time, I was ready to plant.  I planted an eclectic selection of herbs, annuals and perennials and some of those plants are still with me today, three houses later.   For the first time, I could look into all the gardening catalogs I had been acquiring and actually buy some of herbs I had been lusting over. 

That year my love affair with all things herbal began.  I have steadily increased the numbers of herbs in my collection and increased the size of my gardens to compensate.  My herbal experiments have become increasingly daring and my successes and failures have become increasing spectacular.

Take for example the first time I tried making hard candy. 

Inspiration - British Gardens

It's January and I'm sure I'm not alone in needing a bit of garden cheer to get me through the winter.   I have two books to recommend today about gardens.  The first is about one of the most famous gardens in Britain, Sissinghurst.   The second is about a fictitious garden in Cornwall.   They both make me very happy.  Links at the bottom of the page.

Gardening at Sissinghurst, by Tony Lord, is a beautiful description of the garden rooms at Sissinghurst estate, which was owned and landscaped by Vita Sackville-West and her husband, Harold Nicolson.   The photos are wonderful and the descriptions of the estate and her gardening and design methods are very instructive for those of you who love gardening and garden design.   I noticed when I was linking this book that there are several other books out there now about Sissinghurst, so if you fall in love with this garden, there's plenty more to read about it.

I love stories about less than perfect, less than beautiful people finding themselves in situations where they have the chance to believe and follow a dream.  I also love gardens.  Nancy Atherton is the author of this series of mysteries featuring  the supernatural Aunt Dimity, who continues on after her death to watch over her friends and family.  Aunt Dimity and the Duke is the second of the books published in the series, but the first chronologically in the stories, and it's the only one I really consider a gem.  I smile all the way through this book, every time.  It's about a middle aged gardener starting over, a stained glass window, a magic lantern and the restoration of an old garden inside the marvelous grounds of a Cornish estate.  It is the literary equivalent of a chic flick, but if you need a little dose of optimism and a happy ending, then I highly recommend it.

Project: A boot for a cast

Guaranteed to keep her cast and foot dry

Before

Yep, K1 broke her ankle sledding last weekend.   She's sporting a lovely blue cast.  It being winter and all, and there being the very real necessity of keeping this thing dry and warm, we put our heads to making a removable boot for her cast. That cute little toe sock thing with the elastic around the back came from the doc's office when she got the cast on.  Leave it on when you're making the boot.

Materials:

•  heavy plastic trash bag
• scotch tape
• duct tape (1 roll, 20 yds, was enough)
• sharp scissors (The sharp part matters.)
• velcro with the sticky-tape on the back.
• embellishments

It's about heart - not population

I've been thinking a lot about the differences between how folks out here treat each other and how folks in the city treat each other.   Then, lo and behold, I found a link this morning about this very same subject with a twist.   Greg Sullivan's rural world is more densely populated than mine, but the heart is the same. From Maine Family Robinson: Winter In America

It was the Maine version of a prank. Instead of vandalizing his house when he wasn't home, we shoveled his driveway.

Read the whole thing....

Creativity Exercise: Affirmations

An unfortunate time honored tradition of artists is that mythical belief that in order to be a ‘real’ artist, you have to suffer.    ‘Real’ artists are tortured, miserable, addicted, sad, etc.  Somehow, they periodically emerge from their fog of dysfunctionality to create masterpieces, the genius of which the public attributes to the misery of the artist’s hard living.    This is nonsense. You are much more likely to be creative and inspired when you have a clear head and feel good. 

Affirmations are positive statements about yourself as a person and as an artist that make you feel good.   Julia Cameron, in her book The Artist’s Way, has a whole section on affirmations. [If you don’t already have the book, get it.   It will be one of the best investments in your art that you ever make.]   Most of what I’m saying here, she said first in that book.  Affirmations are the shield you use to protect yourself from others’ artistic or anti-artistic drama.   Affirmations are personalized to protect your specific vulnerabilities.

The first step to creating your affirmations is to identify your vulnerabilities.   Julia Cameron recommends that you have a little chat with your internal Censor by sitting down with paper and pen and writing down all of the awful things that are bouncing around in your head about you and your art.  This might be hard, but it’s worth the time.   Do it.  Right now.  Spend 10 minutes and begin with this:   I     your name here    am a brilliant, prolific artist.  Write that 10 times in a row, then let your Censor loose and see what it says.  Write down all of the nasty stuff that comes out.   All of it.  Do not stop before the 10 minutes is up.

Once you have your list of nasties [Julia calls them ‘blurts’], you know where your vulnerabilities are.   Now it’s time to build shields to protect these parts of you.    Take each nasty and turn it into a positive statement – an affirmation.   ‘You’re a terrible writer’ turns into ‘I’m a great writer’.   ‘You can’t do anything original’ turns into ‘My art is inspired and original’.   ‘You’ll never make any money doing this’ becomes ‘I support myself with my art’.    Do this for every single nasty.  Email me if you’re having trouble with one of these.  I’ll help you turn it into an affirmation. 

The next big objection that frequently comes up at this point is this:  Why should I do these affirmations, when they are clearly not true?  These affirmations are lies.  Every time I say this affirmation out loud, I feel like I’m lying.    

You have a good point; the affirmations aren’t true. Yet.  But remember this:  Your nasties aren’t true, either, and you were willing to believe them.  You have a choice.   You can choose to keep believing the nasties, which aren’t true, and which make you feel bad, thereby decreasing your creativity and productivity.  Or, you can start believing your affirmations, which aren’t true [yet] and which make you feel good, thereby increasing your creativity and productivity [and the likelihood that they will come true.]  Your choice.  You’ve been willing to feel bad before.  Are you willing to feel good now?

                     

Socially Acceptable

On my way to deciding to move to the country, I slowly began to do 'country' things at my city home.  I use the word city here only as a comparison to the rural home I live in now.   Our nearest city is a university town, which ensures a lively mixture of people from diverse backgrounds and with diverse expectations and assumptions of what life is all about.   These expectations and assumptions lent great interest to our gradual transition to the country. 

Our first house in the city was on the not-very-fashionable, really-run-down-falling-apart west side.  You know, the area of the city where people pause and say, "Oh, Walker St.  Now where IS that?  Oh, yes, the WEST side."  Like we speak another language on the west side.  Our neighborhood was old and many of the people there grew up in the same area and remember when our house was built, in the 1920s during the depression.  While remodeling and ripping out wall plaster, we found that they had used what looked like horse hair in the plaster to help it go farther.  The insulation in the oldest parts of the house was either wool or cotton; it was black with years of dust and the mice had loved whatever it was.  The house had no foundation, but was built up on old limestone piers and blocks.  My husband said some of them had been carved on and looked like old used tombstones.  Since the crawlspace was about eighteen inches high, I took his word for it.  Our closest neighbor had lived right down the street when she was a child and remembered when our house had been one large square with four rooms, one room to a corner, each with a connecting door to the adjacent rooms.  She had come to play with the children living in our house and they used to run circles in the house from one room to the next, around and around until they were banished outdoors. 

Natural Dyeing

Brazilwood and goldenrod samples

Over the past couple of years some good friends and I have been meeting and experimenting with natural dyes.   It's been amazing.  I can't say enough good things about study groups.  We wanted to do it right and keep good records, so we spent a lot of time planning and prepping so we could do ten different fibers in ten different natural dyes, with various combinations of  pre- and postmordants and an ammonia dip.   And we wanted to put everything on sample cards.  Each sample card shows 24 combinations of mordants and dips for one fiber in one dye.  So far we've done eight different dyes:  logwood, goldenrod, brazilwood, comfrey, walnuts, madder, cochineal and osage orange.   When we are done, we will all have large notebooks bursting with samples.

Some day we'll finish the cards!

We have learned all kinds of things about fibers, natural dyes, mordants and organizing large projects.   It did take us months to get everything ready to dye but once we got going, we got efficient very quickly.  Then we learned that it was way more fun to do the dyeing than it was to put the samples on the cards.   We're a little behind.

Dye days go like this:  We meet in the morning and get things set up and in the pots dyeing - outside over a fire if possible.   We try to do two dyes at a time.  While the fibers dye, we have a pot luck lunch [the food is fabulous!] and catch up on the latest news, projects, patterns, books and plans that we are working on.   We always have show and tell and let me tell you, these women are master spinners and weavers and fiber artists.  Their projects are amazing.  As we talk, we put sample cards together or prep for the next dye day.   We play until people drag themselves home again at the end of the day.

We're in the planning stages for indigo, but there are many ways to do an indigo vat and we're not sure which we want to try.  We'll likely try a thiox vat and we've found recipes for a yeast vat and a urine vat.    No one is really excited about the urine vat, though I confess that many years ago when we had sheep, I did manage a weak indigo vat with urine by using the skirtings off our fleeces.  It worked and the colors were very fast. It also smelled to high heaven.   Definitely an outside project.

After indigo, we've got two more dyes to do and then we've been tossing around the idea of doing an overdye day where we can play with dyeing things in one color in the morning, and then overdyeing them in another dye in the afternoon.    We'll keep you posted.

Winter Project: Swirl Hat

Fall and winter are good times for me to experiment.  This is the first time I tried knitting in a pattern that seems to curve back and forth like that.   I took a neckwarmer pattern and expanded it up to make the hat.  I used one skein of my own hand-dyed Kona Bulky, which is a superwash merino yarn.   Here are a few of the other colors that I dyed up this fall. 

UPDATE 2013:  Pattern available in my Etsy shop.

You can get this yarn in many colors at Yarns Unlimited in Bloomington, Indiana and at River Wools in Terre Haute, Indiana. from me directly.  Email me for colors:  robin at morenna dot com.

For descriptions of all of my yarn click here:

The Cold Frame

Where did those gorgeous radishes come from?  Why, I grew them myself - in our cold frame, which we built this year in one of our garden beds.  We surrounded it with straw bales, which began to compost as soon as they got wet.  Composting makes heat.  Heat keeps my greens warm all winter.  We covered it with an old glass panel from our screen door - the big kind, around 6ft tall - which lets in plenty of light.  I tucked some plastic around the edges to seal up holes.  Next year I'll use black landscaping fabric - the black will hold heat even better.  I'd have done it this year, but I lost it in the studio.  I just found it again yesterday.

This winter we grew spinach, radishes, lettuce, arugula and a big parsley that I transplanted into it at the end of the season.  A couple of things to remember:  You have to take the cover off and water things once in a while - a couple of gallons of lukewarm water is all I need every few weeks.  Also, if you get a lot of snow, you have to scrape it off every few days to let the light in.

This is a photo of the cold frame on December 7th.  It had survived several days of around 0 weather.   Things aren't looking so lush today - it is January after all, but I still have plenty of greens.  

More photos later when we get Adobe back up and running and a new battery for the camera.  Sigh.

Role Models

Why did I really really want to move to the country?  It was time for a change.

The idea to choose the kind of life that would allow me to avoid the pretentious rat race that exists in most cities is not a new one.  Everyone who has ever packed their bags and headed for parts less populated has more or less had the same idea.  I first started thinking about this type of life choice for myself when I picked up a copy of Cross Creek, by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings. [Links at the bottom of the page]  She wrote about her decision to buy, sight unseen, an orange grove in central Florida during the late 1920s.  The book is a long description of the changes that occur in her philosophy of life as a result of her decision to trade her upper-class New York lifestyle for the rigors of tending an orange grove scraping out a living in the wilds of Florida to give herself a chance to become the writer she has always wanted to be.  It is clear throughout the book that her new life is very difficult and that her troubles didn't magically go away just because she moved to the country.  However, it is also clear throughout the book that the experience allowed her to identify and develop untapped abilities and grow in unexpected ways, mostly as a result of having to depend on herself and her own judgment to survive.  I admired that.

I love books about the rural south and find myself rereading them often.  I have worn out a couple of copies of Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, which is also about people who, due in part to the Great Depression and in part to personal philosophy and a regard for the hardships of others, have chosen a less pretentious, simpler way of life.  A Place Called Sweet Apple was written by a woman (Celestine Sibley) who also chose to escape the rat race and find a few quiet acres on which to plant a garden and listen to and nurture her inner self. 

Carrots - Sunshine in a stick

Robin's Carrot Puff

Confession:  Cooking is not generally my idea of a good time unless we're all in the kitchen together cooking a bunch of different stuff at the same time.    Last night was one of those nights.   While the builder, who is a divine cook and baker, was making a green bean, bacon, onion and feta skillet casserole, the kids and I made carrot muffins and carrot puff.

The muffins are carrot cake with a lot of whole wheat flour and a lot less sugar.   If you want them sweet, add up to 3/4 C more sugar.     The puff is sort of a carrot/onion souffle.  Don't worry about the 'puff' part.  It's fabulous served at room temp the same day.   Bake it and set it aside while you worry about the other stuff on the menu.  Refrigerate overnight.  I like it best the next day.

Robin's Carrot Muffins
www.rurification.com

3/4 C sugar
3/4 C veg oil
3 eggs
1 cup white flour
1 cup whole wheat flour [the real stuff]
1 1/2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp nutmeg
3 C shredded carrots
1 C nuts
1 C yogurt [especially the thin whey-y stuff that floats around the top]

Bake at 350 degrees until they're done.  Done will depend on the size of your muffins and the type of pan you're baking them in.   



Robin's Carrot Puff
www.rurification.com


2-3 C shredded carrots
2 C shredded or chopped  onions
2 cloves garlic, chopped or pressed.
3T butter [yes, the real stuff]

Cook that stuff in a pot until the onions are transparent.  It caramelizes everything and makes it sweeter.  Then add:

1/2 C oatmeal
1 tsp salt
pepper
a shake or two of nutmeg
1 1/2 C yogurt
1 C or more grated cheese
4 eggs, beaten

Put it all in a casserole dish and bake at 325 degrees for 50 minutes.   I always bake mine in a blue dish because the orange and the blue look so pretty together.   Also, it tastes better in the blue dish.

Creative Exercise: Play

I am a worker bee.  I work.  It’s what I do.  One of my big challenges over the last few years has been to learn to have fun.  I have never been a good at having fun.   I’m rather earnest by nature and I take everything Very Seriously.   This means that I’m extremely conscientious and more than a little intense -- which is all well and good when I’m being responsible [which is pretty much all the time], but not so good when I need to stop working and relax or get some new ideas.    

Fun is not someone that I know well.   I’ve heard that she hangs around Inspiration and Relax a lot and I’ve been advised by more than one person that if I’d invite Fun over more often, then Inspiration and Relax would show up, too.    I tried it a few times – and they were right.  It’s just that I keep losing Fun’s number, or perhaps I’m just afraid that Responsibility will get mad if I hang out with Fun too much.  Clearly I need to work on that.  

Wait a minute…. I think I just found a way to Work at Fun.      (Banging head on desk…)

The trick to getting Fun to show up is to let yourself get to know Play.    Play shows up when you stop doing whatever-it-is-that-you’re-doing so seriously.  The relationship between Doing Things Not Seriously and Play is a lot like the Clark Kent/Superman thing. Try it. It really doesn’t matter what you do as long you do it Not Seriously.    Walk from the bathroom to your bedroom, not seriously.   See how not seriously you can go get the mail.   Try turning off the lights, not seriously.   Walk the dog, not seriously.   Clear the table, not seriously.  Every time you do something Not Seriously, it’s Play in disguise.   No kidding.   Keep practicing.  Soon you’ll find a way to turn a lot of your Work into Play.  Wherever you find Play, you’ll soon find Fun.  Fun likes Play and if you can just get Fun to show up, then Inspiration and Relax will show up, too.    

This week’s challenge is about learning how to play again at your art.  Choose a task that you want to do (or are desperate to be done with already) but you’re not that into right now:  New Year’s Resolutions; finishing Chapter 4; writing the orchestration for that sound track; fixing that scene in Act 2; cleaning up your space so you can get to your paint and canvas….you get the idea.  Now start that task – but start it Not Seriously. Not Seriously will turn into Play, who will invite Fun and pretty soon, you’ve got a party.  I wouldn’t be surprised if they bring Silly along.  She may be blonde, but she’s not as dumb as you think.  

Fun and Play may not be looking for commitment. Sometimes they prefer a one night stand.  It’s fine if they show up just long enough to get your creative party started.   And don’t worry that the party will spoil your masterpiece.  This is an easy party to clean up after.   And while you’re straightening things up afterward, you just may stumble on some hidden treasure. 

P.S.  I’d love to know what hidden treasures you found after Fun showed up.  Let me know how you are doing with your creative challenges.  Leave a comment.

Welcome

Towels on the loom.

We moved from town to the country in 1994.  I called our transition from a tiny town lot to 40 acres of aggressive wilderness 'rurification'.  We got to know the land, the birds, the trees [and the local health department really well since we had to put in a hugely expanded septic system right away.]  We raised sheep for a while.  We started our businesses.  We had two children.  I became a dyer and weaver.  In 1996, I started writing stories about our adventures and they've been saved on various generations of floppy discs and hard drives ever since, waiting to be read.   It's time to share them.  This blog is my adventure in sharing what goes on in my tiny corner of the rural south central highlands of Indiana.   Note: 'highlands' is a subjective term.  We Hoosiers take what little altitude we can find [800 ft above sea level max] and celebrate it by giving it lofty names.

My days are spent gardening, homeschooling, running a business, making fiber art of all kinds, and teaching.  I teach many things, at fiber festivals, the LYS, at my studio:  dyeing, weaving, spinning, crochet, color theory, and creativity    I write about everything. 

Make yourself at home, and feel free to comment and ask questions.