Holiday Traditions

Well, Christmas 2013 has come and gone, and thankfully all the commercials on my TV have subsided for at least the next 6 months.  We had a nice, quiet Christmas Day here on HeartSong Farm with a phone call from my oldest son, Matt, who moved to California this year, brunch at our local IHOP, and a matinee of “The Hobbit” in a neighboring town.  I spent Christmas Eve watching “Dr. Zhivago” on my DVD.  I wanted to see snow and romance and costumes!  Usually I watch “Steel Magnolias” at Christmas time, but this year I wanted something different, and I had picked well.  I bundled up in two fluffy afghans I had gotten as gifts on previous Christmases, with two of my kitty cats and some hot chocolate by the side, and enjoyed seeing the snow, hearing the sleigh bells and beautiful music, and admiring the period costumes and fine acting.

Before going to bed, I ventured out into the cold night for what has become an annual Tradition for me since I moved to this farm.  I took with me a tray full of treats for any wildlife that might pass by, and placed it under a live oak tree near one of the brier patches in my front yard.  I had loaded it down with carrots, raisins, marshmallows, soy nuts, whole grain bread chunks with peanut butter, suet, and hay.  I also added a handful of llama fiber in case a warmer nest was needed for the winter.  The night sky was clear and crisp overhead.  I breathed in the cold air and stood there gazing at the spectacular cosmos above me for a few minutes before heading back into the warmth of my log home and bed.  

2013 Nativity Tray

I began this Christmas Tradition after having read Sarah Ban Breathnach’s wonderful book, Simple Abundance, A Daybook of Comfort and Joy, throughout my first full year back to Texas in 1999.  Newly divorced, I was very much needing to do away with past Traditions and birth some new ones.  This quickly became a favorite with me, as did going to the movies on either Christmas Eve or Christmas Day.  This year, Ben and I decided to add going to IHOP (the only place open in our town) for brunch as part of our holiday celebration.  Letting someone else do the planning, cooking and cleaning up seemed like a wonderful thing to me and part of me wondered why I hadn't thought of this before!  Ben enjoyed biscuits and gravy with pork sausage links and scrambled eggs, while I opted for a loaded fajita omelet and 3 buttermilk pancakes with lots of butter and some warm maple syrup, along with glasses of ice-cold orange juice and delicious strong hot coffee just like I like it.  Needless to say, we will be doing this again from now on!

I no longer put up a tree for the holidays.  That is another of my new Traditions.  Oh, I still have most of the ornaments in boxes in the storage closet, along with beautiful stockings, a manger set, wreaths and bows, but decorating a tree and hanging stockings seemed pointless and a bit sad with just me here at first.  After all, my wedding anniversary was December 23rd and he had moved out the day after Christmas in 1997.  When Ben moved back in with me in 2001, being a fairly typical male of the species, he said it made no difference to him one way or the other.  For sure, there are plenty of decorated trees, houses and offices for us to enjoy around town without all the hassle associated with hauling ours out and then packing it all back up later, especially when those chores would have fallen most certainly to me to accomplish.  I can tell you that there is a certain amount of peace associated with this new Tradition.  So please don’t think me a “bah humbug!”  I am not a Scrooge by any means.  I just really need simplicity in my life along with serenity, joy and creativity.

With fondness I remember the Traditions my family had at Christmas time when I was growing up.  Things were so much simpler back then in the 50's and 60's, and that is certainly not a bad thing!  Some years we traveled 13 hours by car to my mother's parents house in Mississippi, some years we stayed at home.  

If at Mom and Pop's house, there was never a tree in the house until Christmas morning when we would awake to find one complete with decorations and lights and presents in the living room!  Magical!  I learned when I was grown that my grandfather would wait to buy a tree after he closed his downtown drugstore on Christmas Eve. He would pick from the leftover, marked down trees at the tree lot on the highway and prop it up on the far side of the house, unseen, when he got home.  Then once the house was all quiet, he and my grandmother would decorate it, place the gifts underneath, and fill the stockings we children had hung up on the mantle before going to bed.  In our stockings there would always be three of his favorites:  Wrigley's chewing gum, a roll of Lifesavers, and spicy ribbon candy.

If we were to spend Christmas at home in Houston, Daddy and I would visit the tree lot outside the A & P and pick out a tiny tree that would fit on top of the lamp table in the living room.  I remember that one year our tree cost a whole 75 cents!  Once home it would be decorated with a string of lights that was almost too heavy for it, cranberry and popcorn garlands, mostly homemade ornaments, and aluminum icicles that tended to end up in clumps if my little brother got hold of them before I did!  On Christmas morning we always had to wait until Daddy had gotten the furnace turned on and the house declared "warm enough", the coffee made, and my mother ensconced on the sofa wrapped in a blanket. Then the rush was on.....always to the stockings first, where we would find an orange, some nuts, some candy, and some times a small toy or book.  One year, I found a can of cat food in my stocking and was truly baffled until a tiny black kitten peaked out from under the quilt on my oldest brother's bed on the other side of the living room.  One of the best Christmases ever!!!

For some reason, one of my fondest memories of Christmas Traditions past was ironing the used wrapping paper to save for the next year.  I absolutely loved doing this, and each year it was just as much fun for me to open the box of those old wrapping papers and bows and try to remember what gift had previously been wrapped in which. When I had a family of my own, though, it was hard to keep up this treasured Tradition as my two little boys seemed to delight in ripping and tearing the paper off their gifts and tossing the bows on those Christmas mornings! Well, after all, it had been a simpler time in my childhood. 

Traditions are a wonderful thing, if you ask me.  Don't you agree?

So what are your favorite Holiday Traditions?

Transitions

It has been rather blustery here on HeartSong Farm lately.  The transition between summer and autumn, and then autumn to winter has been unusual everywhere in the United States, and East Texas has been no different.  The dry hot summer lasted a bit longer than what the calendar told us was fall, and then winter got here sooner than December 21.  We had our first hard frost on November 13th preceded by some really good hard rains.  This combination of events seems to have blessed this area with an unusually colorful fall landscape.  Along the highways, byways, and streets of my town there were significantly more reds, oranges and yellows mixed in with the more prevalent evergreens of the Piney Woods area of Texas.

East TX fall foliage

The cold snaps have come one right after another until I have lost count.  Most of those came with rain, lots of it, causing all of us around here to remark, "Oh, why couldn't we have had some of this rain during the summer when we really needed it?!"  I have had to scramble to construct portable greenhouses for my winter vegetable garden, buy winter hay for the llamas, and keep the bird feeders full....all before I was prepared to do so.  This transition was a bit too abrupt for me.  It seems my favorite time of year had been squeezed tightly between summer and winter, wham! bam!, with little time to adjust between hot and cold.  This is not easy on my aging bones and joints!

Oak leaves beginning to turn

Even so, I enjoy watching the transitions from one season into another...just one of the many circles of life and the cosmos.  When it is cold and frosty, I look out the back porch windows to see steam rising from the backs of the llamas as the sun rises.  Their escaping breath, warm and moist, makes me think of dragons breathing smoke.  The flurry of activity at the bird feeders on cold days is nonstop.  There are cardinals, juncos, wrens, goldfinches, purple finches, chickadees, titmice, chipping sparrows, cardinals and pine siskin, all puffed up,coming and going on the feeders and suet basket. Watching the antics outside my dining room window, it occurs to me how similar to humans these feathered creatures can sometimes be:  some play nice, some don't. On the ground below all the commotion are a dozen tiny Inca doves, the kind my Daddy called "chi-chis," politely and methodically pecking at the seeds that have fallen from the feeders.

Bayley staying warm in the sun

Bayley, my very old Pembroke corgi (he is 13 years plus), is spending most of his days and nights curled up in his warm comfy house by the back door, coming out only when the sun is high and the concrete of the back porch has gotten warm. Inside, my three cats (Jessie, Axl, and Godfrey) take turns sitting in or near the dining room windows to observe the busy puffed up birds at the feeders, or else curled up in a favorite spot, most likely dreaming of catching those same birds.  I suspect this because I see them licking their lips and twitching their whiskers in their sleep!

This week my winter garden greens were ready to begin harvesting and enjoying with roasted sweet potatoes and acorn squash from the produce stand.  I have never had a winter garden before, and so there was a transition in my raised beds from summer veggies to those of winter.

End of the summer garden

Mustard, beets, and turnips in my first winter garden

Not only did this promise to supply me with some delicious fresh produce during the colder months, it also gave me a chance to try my hand at building some small, portable hoop houses out of PVC pipes and 6 mil plastic sheeting before diving into the construction of a walk-in sized greenhouse next spring.  I am gradually practicing and preparing, you see, for my retirement in 2016 (31 more months!) when I will be able, at last, to begin living my lifelong dream of being as self sufficient and self reliant as possible within my physical boundaries.  Baby steps, baby steps.....

About a week before that first cold snap in early November, I spent a week in an unusual fog of sorts. I felt very quiet inside and out, slightly sad, and I seemed to be moving and thinking in slow motion in my workplace and at home on the farm. At first I thought it was the impending holiday season since I have a history of being depressed during that time in varying degrees, but I was actually quite calm and rather peaceful.  By Wednesday, I realized that what I felt was akin to being in a walking meditation.  I could think of no better way to describe this strangeness that had come over me.

I had also been sleeping better than I had in recent months, and when I woke up Saturday morning on the sixth day of this phenomenon, the odd feelings were gone, and I "knew" what had taken place.  My gut was telling me that I had gone through some form of Transition, and although I was not sure exactly how, my life had changed and, now 64 years old and heading into my "crone years," everything was going to be alright for me.  I felt comforted and joyful even with the cold and drizzling rain outside my windows, and with this realization the fog was lifted.

Life is good on HeartSong Farm!

I love dirt!

I am a farmer at heart. I know this. I have known this for many, many years…as a child even, before I knew what I was feeling.  An attachment to the land and its elements….its beauty, sounds, fragrances and textures. As a four year old, I enjoyed digging in the dirt in my Daddy’s vegetable garden, letting it sift through my tiny
fingers, enjoying the smell and feel, and marveling at how you could drop a tiny seed into a hole made with your finger, add a bit of water and in a matter of days there would be something green sticking its head up through the brown earth, seeking the warmth of the sun. My Daddy told me it was all part of the Magic of the Universe, part of God’s Plan. That he and I were witness to it together made it all the more magical to me.

I remember beans, peas, asparagus, squash, eggplants, cucumbers and tomatoes growing in those garden plots, and the summer supper table being set with the wonderful fresh bounty. There is nothing like a sandwich made with a freshly sliced homegrown tomato!

We also had a few chickens scratching around, providing us with eggs and sometimes meat. I didn’t care much for the smell of wet, burnt chicken feathers or the plucking, but the resulting crispy fried chicken pieces cooked to a perfect reddish-brown from the Crisco and cast iron skillet on the Sunday dinner table was certainly worth the price of the unsavory preparation. Chickens from the grocery stores these days do not taste like those free rangers did, and it is not just nostalgia telling me this.

And so, throughout the decades from then until now, I have longed to be settled on a farm and have a vegetable garden that would ultimately provide me with what I needed to live a healthy life. I moved around quite a bit during those years, but here and there I was able to work a garden of some sort into my life as well as chickens, guineas, ducks and geese. Those experiences served to reinforce my connection to the land and my desire for rural life and self-reliance grew to where it was becoming hard to contain it.

In 1998, I moved to my present home here in East Texas due to circumstances in my life that I had little control over, and I knew when the choice was made to move, it had to be to a spot where I could fulfill that desire that I had nourished all those years. I would put down roots at last and so I did, but still a full time job to pay the bills and taking care of my elderly parents, as well building a barn and fences and hand shearing upwards of 25 llamas some years, got in the way of any serious gardening until a few years ago when my son
and I built two 4’ x 16’ raised beds and tried out square foot gardening.

That was a great learning experience, but once again circumstances necessitated that I concentrate on other aspects of my life and it was not until this past spring (2013) that I was able to return to those two raised beds, pull a magnitude of weeds, turn over the soil with some llama “beans”, and plant a vegetable crop.

My veggies included crookneck squash, okra, cucumbers, Ichiban eggplant, bell peppers (red, green, purple and chocolate), Cherokee Purple slicing tomatoes, Roma tomatoes, and a several types of cherry tomatoes. I planted two basil plants, a little rosemary “bush”, and some oregano.   And I planted white, green, and two shades of brown cotton. Yes!  I might have been a bit more excited about my cotton plants, to tell the truth, but I can tell you that I ate a lot of fresh, grilled, roasted and sautéed produce over the summer months and into early fall!

Cotton plant seedlings in front, okra in rear

So why plant cotton? Well, I am a spinner and this year at our annual Wildflower Fiber Retreat we learned about growing and spinning cotton and were given seeds for white cotton and Sea Island Brown cotton to plant if we wanted to try our hand at growing our own spinning fiber. Many of those that attend the Retreat each year raise fiber animals like angora goats and rabbits, llamas, alpacas, and various breeds of sheep, but less than a handful had ever planted a cotton seed to harvest. And so, for me, the year of learning to spin cotton began in March, 2013, and included planting cotton along with my vegetables. If I was going to do it “right”, I wanted green cotton, too, and online I found Earline’s Green Cotton, and also some Nankeen Brown seeds to order, which I did without hesitation.

I planted about 5 or 6 white, 15 green, 10 Sea Island Brown, and 12 Nankeen. The latter did not do as well as the others because I planted them too late, I think, in a new bed quite a way from the others. Still I got a nice bag of lint from those 12 seeds. With the others, however, I got a bumper crop and I will never have to purchase cotton seeds again! I discovered that each individual boll produced about 20 seeds and each plant produced at least 12 bolls (all from 1 seed!). If you would like some, contact me and I will share!

Early bloom

Old bloom

Bees love the blooms

The plants and blooms are lovely. Cotton is related to okra, hibiscus and marsh mallow plants. The blooms start off white and end up pink, yellow or red before dropping. The bees love them, and the natural colors of the cotton lint are gorgeous! Cotton plants are frequently grown in pots as ornamentals and in the far, far South can even be perennials, but mine were victims of the first serious frost in early November this year.

Cotton boll forming

Cotton lint

Harvested bolls

Currently, I am spending the majority of my evenings during the week hand-ginning my cotton bolls and looking forward to spinning the lint...maybe even dying some of the white.  Next year I plan to expand my cotton planting to several new beds in various places around the farm. I need more practice with spinning cotton!

Giving Thanks

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday.  It makes me think of a warm kitchen full of wonderful fragrances wafting from the stove top and oven, and family and friends gathering around with smiles and hugs, sharing memories, making new ones.

Christmas is just too hectic for me and it tends to cause me to hyperventilate and have panic attacks just thinking about the possibility of going to a mall where everyone seems to be in a hurry, pulling out cash and credit cards,with many spending more than they can truly afford, and businesses flashing ads in front of us at every possible angle (beginning before Halloween nowadays!).  It seems more about materialism and competition, and less of joy and good cheer.  Stress is evident in so many faces and depression rears its ugly head.  In general, the Christmas Season seems to have lost a lot of its original meaning and therefore its appeal for me.

Thanksgiving, on the other hand, is about sharing and giving thanks for the many blessings in our lives.  We share this holiday with those who are special to us while eating too much, and, for many of us, traveling to visit with family members or friends we have not seen in awhile.  And for some, there is a wonderful tradition of helping bring food and fellowship to those less fortunate in our communities.

I must inject here that I subscribe to the spirit of the holiday as portrayed in the First Thanksgiving, with the welcoming Native Americans generously bringing food to share with the starving Pilgrims, but not at all to the pain the Native Americans ultimately suffered at the hands of the White Man.

Tradition for the Thanksgiving meal is part universal and part individual.  To most the turkey is the centerpiece, but there is controversy on whether or not to stuff the bird with "stuffing" or have it as "dressing,"  to serve canned cranberry sauce or make it from fresh berries, to put marshmallows on the sweet potato casserole or to have baked potatoes instead.  The green bean casserole....well, some like it, some won't touch it.  And let's not forget the jello salad!  Growing up, in my family there was dressing, fresh cranberries, baked sweet potatoes, fruit salad,and cold canned asparagus....and two kinds of pie:  pecan and sweet potato.

Pea Salad

About thirteen years ago I added a new dish to     my Thanksgiving table....pea salad.  This cold         crunchy, cheesy vegetable dish is a delicious           alternative to that green bean casserole! (When I figure out how to do it, I will put the recipe on the Recipe tab.)  It contrasts nicely with all the hot dishes.  Yummm!



This year I am especially thankful for a number of things in my life.

In January, my little red truck with 165,000 miles on it "died" and needed too much work on it for me to keep it going. With the help of my boss, my financial advisor, my girlfriend, and one of the managers of my local Expert Tire, I was able to find a new home for that faithful vehicle and to wrangle an affordable deal for the Kia Soul I had been wanting for 3 years!  I am so thankful! I named her Steel Magnolia (Maggie for short) and still cannot believe she is mine!!!

Maggie barely escaped damage....Whew!

During a powerful September thunderstorm Maggie barely missed being harmed by a falling maple tree at the corner of the house near where she was parked.  I am very thankful that she suffered nary a scratch although several branches came within an inch of her driver's side exterior.




In May my oldest son, Matt, graduated from Arizona State University with honors, and I traveled by Amtrak to be there.  It was a wonderfully  relaxing trip and I am thankful that I was able to make it!  It took 36 hours by train each way and I reserved a spot in the sleeping car for privacy and comfort.  That way all my meals were included in the price of my ticket, and on the way back I had all my meals served in my roomette.  It was like eating in bed and watching the world go by outside the big window to my left.  I really enjoyed it!

My Amtrak train  2013

I highly recommend taking an Amtrak trip with a roomette if you ever get a chance.  You do not have to deal with the crowds of people and security and waiting that comes with airplane travel, although it does take longer to get where you are going.  It is also not necessarily cheaper, but I wanted to relax and enjoy my trip, and to try something new.  It certainly filled that bill, and I am thankful that I was able to do it that way.

Matt on Graduation Day

I am thankful that Matt graduated after all the hard work and dedication it took him to complete his course of study (Accountancy).  He stuck with it and made excellent grades all the while working as a waiter/supervisor at an Applebee's in the Phoenix area to support himself.  Within two weeks of graduation, he was hired by the State of California as an auditor and he and his girlfriend, Melissa, made the big move to Sacramento.  They seem happy and I am so happy for them!

Matt & Melissa in Olde Town Scottsdale, AZ

Mine are the blue ones!

I am thankful that I got to spend more time getting to

know Melissa (or Miss M, as I call her!).  The two of them have been a pair now for four years. Matt brought her to Texas about 2 years ago for our first meeting and this graduation trip was only the second time we had really had a chance to visit.  Since I never had sisters or daughters, I really wanted to do something "girlie" with her....and so we had mani-pedis!  It was my very first pedicure and it was such fun and I am very happy that it was with Miss M!

Benjamin, my youngest son, is still employed part time for almost a year and a half now, and for anyone who knows me, this is something to be very thankful for, indeed!  He likes the people and the work, and we only hope and pray that soon he will be able to get full-time hours once he gets his health insurance through the Affordable Care Act.  He will have to get more hours in order to pay for it, but that will also mean he has more funds for other necessities, too.

Ben and Pilgrim in the front pasture

I am very thankful that Ben lives here on the farm with me.

There have been many times when he has been a huge help with the fences, the barn, and the llamas.  He is also good company and a pretty good cook.  One day I will try to get his secret recipe for Awesome Spaghetti to put on my recipe page (when I get it figured out how to add that page to the blog!)

I am thankful that I was, once again, able to attend the Wildflower Fiber Retreat this past March and Knit Camp in August.  Being part of a community of fiber sisters and fellow knitters twice a year has become a must for helping to keep my sanity in a world dominated by electronics and mass manufacturing.

I am especially thankful for my job and for all my friends here and across the country.  I couldn't survive right now without the job, and my friends would be impossible to live without at any time.  I am thankful that my home and farm will soon be paid in full (31 more months!).  I am truly thankful for all I have and have experienced.