Capturing the scent of Mother Nature

It is impossible to mimic the scent of Mother Nature no matter how many times man tries – he misses the mark.

There’s something about the smell of natural that cannot be manufactured in a laboratory. You know the smell of the earth warming in the spring, the scent of rain coming from a distance; and of course, the smell of sheets dried in the wind and sunshine.

It’s always a magnificent fragrance, but in the wintertime, somehow it is even more amazing.

While most folks would rather use the dryer; which in my mind uses electricity and yucky fabric softener, I hang my wash as often as I can outdoors. When the weather doesn’t cooperate I hang it indoors on a rack. Yes, my clothes are stiff, but body heat softens them when you get dressed. The dryer actually wears the color out of clothes, especially black; one more good reason not to use the dryer.

When the air is cold, the smell from outdoors lingers for days in our bedroom and crawling into bed at night is such a blessing. Well, it's a blessing just to have a bed.

Laundry day was a huge chore in the olden days. In an interview with Theresa (Meier) Eissinger, from Napoleon, she talks about laundry and clothes.

"After the necessities were purchased came the clothes. Many an evening was spent around the kitchen table with the kerosene lamp in the middle, paging though the catalogs. There was Sears and Roebuck, Montgomery Ward and Spiegel to choose from. The size of the order depended on how much money there was left to spend. After much choosing and discarding, and choosing again, the order was placed from the catalog where they got the best deal. 

"We always had two winter “outfits”; two pair of long johns (how I hated them); two pair of long woolen stockings; two flannel shirts, and two pair of bib overalls. We wore one “outfit” one week - all week. 

"Those clothes then went into the laundry and we wore the other “outfit”. And woe unto us if we got our new shirt or overalls so dirty we had to take from the next week’s outfit. That threw everything out of kilter. 

"We usually got new mittens, but the woolen stocking cap lasted forever and fit from the time we were two until we were 20. We wore hand-me-downs whenever possible, but occasionally we would be unlucky enough to need new shoes. I say unlucky because shoes were purchased at least two sizes too big so we could grow into them. So, we slopped around in new shoes and by the time they fit they looked pretty awful."

In our time of throw-away-purchases, laundry day and shopping for clothes takes on a whole new dimension. Now our closets are stuffed with options for costuming our selves daily.  There are many young folks who may never have the privilege of drying sheets outdoors... so if I could only bottle that smell... how wonderful would that be?

Of course, maybe we can't imitate Mother Nature for a reason. Man was not meant to be indoors all the time - so get out and breathe in the fresh air of North Dakota... for those of you who are not here - maybe someday we can bottle that fresh winter feeling and send it to you. 

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Garden gathering

If you know gardeners, you know that there is never enough dirt to plant all the wonderful seeds available. In addition to my home garden, and now my hoop house, I have two community garden plots. As much trouble as I have had with theft the past two years, my spouse is asking me to give those up... and then what? Where will I plant my squash and potatoes and carrots and beets and turnips and cabbage.

And where would we be without cabbage? After losing more than a couple of heads of cabbage to theft one year, I investigated heirloom varieties and found what my sister-in-law fondly refers to as "Dr. Suess" cabbage.

Fildenkraut (from Annie's Heirloom Seeds website at http://www.anniesheirloomseeds.com) is this description: 90 day.  This is a German heirloom developed for sauerkraut.  It has a large pointed head.  This point is coreless, making it very easy to cut fine shreds for sauerkraut.  It is also very sweet, making for one of the best sauerkrauts I've tasted.

One - being German, I had to try it and two no one steals it because it doesn't ever look like it has a head. But being the farthest thing from the truth, Fildenkraut has huge and heavy heads and grows like a cold flame of crispy goodness. Even the tiny plants that I couldn't bear to throw away and planted them between the healthy ones grew up into substantial sized heads of cabbage. perfect for stirfry and perfect for cabbage rolls... and saurkraut.

It's funny how lacto-fermentation has become so popular as of late. In our house we have been fermenting and eating cabbage and pickles forever. It is said that the Germans ate those types of foods in opposition to the smoked meats and white flour dough foods of their food culture.

Making sauerkraut is fairly simple. Cabbage and salt... Ewiger Saatz - Everlasting Yeast has the old food culture recipes from the Germans from Russia... You can find the book on Amazon.com.

In the meantime, admire the Fildenkraut.

PS: if you have never tried homemade sauerkraut before, you don't know what you are missing. Winter is coming on and well... the best meals are roast and sauerkraut with knephla... that recipe is in the book also.

I Believe

No, wait... I don't always believe...

It may seem like a simple thing to have confidence - but things change. As I grow older, I am struggling struggling struggling with confidence. Some of my relationships are not very confident building and so daily I struggle through getting up and going to my job and finding time to be everything to everybody. I admire all the young women around me who have so much opportunity and I think to myself, "my time has passed, you had your chance, and you didn't always do the right thing." I feel like growing old has become a confidence-sapping experience.

Some days it works. Some days I can claim God's promise to me and I tell myself, "You are okay. You have talents and you have faults. You have done good things and you have done bad things, but you can be forgiven."

God forgives as far as the east is from the west and when I hold on to that thought and start fresh every day I can claim the confidence of being God's child.

Sometimes that confidence lasts all days and then there are the other days. Days when I need to reach out and find something to hold onto. You know it never fails. If I open my Bible (which today is on my Kindle) I can find something wonderful to apply to my own life.

My friend, Lola, told me once (of course I asked her why I have my ups and downs) that one of the reasons we need to go to the well is to fill up daily (sometimes hourly) because we leak.

So here's to being a leaky human vessel desiring God's promise through Jesus Christ. Fill me up Lord.

Newbie

No, I'm not new to Bible studies. I remember my first Bible study at a church in Fargo, ND. I must have been the youngest person there at that time. Over the years I have moved in and out of participating in my church where I have been a member for more than 25 years. I now work two jobs and have a few other commitments that really eat up my time each week. I signed up for a Bible study on heaven and then decided I couldn't make the 30-minute drive to and from the church to participate, but I feel the need, an enormous desire to find out what God has planned for me at this time in my life.

I took a new job recently... a big job and it frightens me. I feel like failure would be disastrous and yet there are folks out there that have complete faith in my abilities. Why don't I? Perhaps spending more time in God's word and with other Christan women will lead me to the answers I seek. You know fill that God-shaped hole in my heart.

So, I am going to try this online Bible study, I put all my other devotionals away and will concentrate only on this ... I am an early riser and find that the time spent in morning devotions sets my whole day on a proper path. So here I go... it's time for my CONFIDENT journey to begin. 

September’s harvest moon had the boldness to creep into our bedroom in the early morning hours, dodging soon-to-be-bare branches of cottonwood trees lining the yard. Beaming across the hand-stitched quilt at 4 a.m. through the large patio door that faces nearly west, the cool blue light summons me from sleep to wakefulness.  It was that bright. We were mere days from the autumnal equinox; the only time of the year when the moon and large door leading to our small deck align like the stars in Orion’s belt.

This beautiful Harvest Moon was the fourth full moon of the summer season reaching its peak just three days before the autumnal equinox that occurred on September 22. The moon rises just a wee bit earlier every September evening providing additional light for harvest – an antiquated idea in light of the modern harvesting equipment moving in calculated alignment through expansive plantings of small grains, corn and soybeans blanketing nearly all of the state. Cabs, GPS, computers and remote controls make the Harvest Moon insignificant except for its incredible beauty.

Northern Plain’s farmers were perhaps fortunate in homesteading days that the Harvest Moon effect amplifies the further north you farm. Shorted on nice weather, there are things about North Dakota that make up for wild winters, like a wonderful lifestyle. We are fortunate for many reasons. And we will always exist this far north.

It’s not uncommon during harvest to pass a tractor, spray coupe, horse trailer, cattle truck or a swaggering load of bales on the Interstate that cuts a fairly straight path across the middle of the state. It connects North Dakota’s major cities lined up like obelisks exactly 100 miles apart. The Interstate has remained the same; the tractors, however, have grown larger and much reduced in numbers, over the past 30 years.

Harvest arrives at the end of an annual cycle. The end of a season means the beginning of a new one, completing a circle of life that, in my experience, rural families understand better than most folks. Perhaps it is because they pay attention to life cycles as critical components of their jobs. Or maybe it’s simply farmers have the opportunity to spend more time outdoors observing the moon wax and wane; as well as witnessing crops along side roads and highways go from seed to food annually. Generations of families, like crops, too replace generations as people move from birth to winter years of life. The cycle continues unending and as unfailing as our own eminent end.

I think often of my grandparents and how hard they had to work at feeding their families and making a living in this far-north land. I respect them, for without them - I would not be here today enjoying the sunrise.

New Blog

I was trying to migrate this blog to a word press site when I discovered my name has been taken and registered... that's too bad, so I'm going to leave it here and hope you will all return to my kitchen for some fun. How about making some vegetable soup?
Here's a link to my YouTube video: Making Vegetable Soup with Sue.
It's soup weather today as we wait for our first storm... hope its a worthwhile one.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas