A Ploughmans Lunch

My greenhouse did very well this year in spite of the crappy weather and the gloomy cloud cover.  It really was my best cucumber year ever!  I had really great success with pickle cukes and this year for the first time in a long time I got to make the quick pickles that my grandmother used to make.  They are super simple and you can make a little or a lot at a time.

Start with at least 2 or 3 pickle cukes, I slice mine into rounds about 1/8^th inch thick (Ill tell you why in a minute) or you can cut them into spears.  I also slice some carrots into sticks to put in as well.  It adds some fun color and they are tasty as well.

Layer your cukes and carrots into whatever size jar you have chosen to use - place either fresh or dry dill in between the layers of veg – I have used both and it works well with either.   I use a mix of jar sizes since they aren’t going in the pressure cooker and  I like to use wide mouth best as it makes the pickles easier to get out of the jar.  Pack them in pretty good as they loosen up when the brine goes in.

In a saucepan heat 3 C of Vinegar, 2 Tbsp. of coarse sea salt ( I like the pink but any will do), ½ tsp celery seed,  1 tsp. mustard seed, ½ tsp turmeric, ¼ tsp chili flakes or white pepper,  and ¼ to ½ C. sugar (I use less since my people like them more dill and less sweet).

 Heat to just boiling and then pour the brine over the vegetables to completely cover the them.  

Put the lids on them and refrigerate immediately until cool.  The jars will usually seal themselves 

but it is best to leave them in the fridge for storage.

These make a beautiful hostess gift as well.  Such a pretty jar!

I like to make them as a sliced pickle because a favorite snack at our house is sort of a ploughmans lunch -usually cheese, pickle and bread– we make it on a cracker with sharp white cheese (you can use whatever cheese you like though) and then a slice of pickle on top of that.  To make a meal out of it add some apple slices and a little ham.  It’s a great farm lunch and it’ll help to keep you sturdy and regular!

Enjoy!

Houston High and the huge Hose

It has been a strange year in the Valley where Wicked Raven Farm is located.  We have had some of the strangest weather that I ever remember having.  What started out as the coldest spring we have had in five years turned in to the coldest and clammiest summer that I can remember ever.  Even though we didn’t set records for rain it was cloudy and gloomy.  Like I always imagine London might be the way it is described in some of the tv shows.

That being said – we didn’t always have the rain we needed to water things and we still had to haul out the hoses.  And at the Houston High School Garden that means 400 feet of hose!  

Do you know how much 400 feet of hose weighs?  A ton!  We ended up spooling it in to a wheelbarrow and hauling it across the parking lot that way so that we could water and refill the rain barrels at the garden.  We are working with the welding group to see if we can develop a hose reel that will hold the whole shebang.  Its in the works.

Above left is about 3/4 of the distance between the garden and the school.  Above right is the hose in the wheelbarrow ready to spool out to the hose bib - at the school in the background.  Its right in the corner of the school that you can see.

We are also well drillers – yes- that is also one of my jobs.  Drill a well at the garden you say?  Yes!  That would be ideal but NO! says the company who’s gas lines run under the garden, and NO says the school district and NO says the State separation guidelines.  And all with good reason.

First of all, the garden is situated in a gravel corner of the school property, out back that used to be the school snow dump area.  The snow plow guys from the school were kind enough to work with us when we first started the garden to move the snow dump area to another location that works for everyone and our garden area will only be used as a snow dump in extreme snow years – when the other one gets full.  A snow dump is where the snow from plowing the parking lots at the school gets dumped and stays there in mounds sometimes until the middle of summer here – depending on how much there is and how warm the year is.  It can be a long lasting yard full of snow.

The reason it is a gravel area that was an open space in the first place is that it is a Gas line (main line) easement that runs along the inside of the fence here at the school.  We cannot put anything permanent on top of the area where the gas line runs directly, and certainly a well cannot be drilled there.  We have some of our tire tomato planters, our soil mixing station and our storage cabinet against that part of the fence, all of which can be moved fairly easily around the garden if it should need to be.

Secondly, there is a septic station for the school that is only about 100 feet from the garden area, and it’s a big one.  A well could not be drilled that would be outside the gas line easement and also outside the separation distance for the septic station – there is just not room.  And yes, this is the best spot for the garden, where moose can’t get easily to it, and kids still can, and it is within a camera view – for those little vandals when they get fired up – which has happened!

And lastly, we have drilled another well on the school property – for the baseball field sprinkler system.  If you didn’t already know it, Houston High has one of the nicest baseball fields in the State.  Almost all of it was made via donations and in kind work.  The Kramer Family, the Ruta Family, and us – Ace Water Wells – to name a few – and if you get a chance come on out for a game in the spring!

So for now we haul hose in the wheelbarrow, and we plan for the future where we will have a greenhouse and rain catchment system to assist us with our watering and go along with the hoses.  As always - things are a work in progress!  Happy Gardening and Happy Fall!

A whole year.

IT has been one full year since our Rye guy passed away.  We have no more answers now than we did then and we are still struggling to make sense of the universe and why it would choose us and ours.

This grief comes in waves – I had been told that it would – sometimes for no apparent reason at all it washes over you.  Sometimes it is soft and gentle like the surf lapping at your beach chair, but sometimes it just beats you into the surf and tears your swimsuit off leaving you crying and naked and wet with your breath stuck in your chest and the pain in your heart worse than ever. 

Some days I get through the day one minute at a time.  Sometimes it is one hour at a time.  Sometimes I don’t make it through the day and I sit on the couch or on the bed and I stare at the door or the ceiling or the television that I am not actually watching.  Sometimes I watch too much television.

It helps to stay busy, and I do that well, but sometimes I just run out of energy and it is all I can do to get up and go to the bathroom without melting into a heap on the floor.

My “good thing” at a work meeting the other day was that I got out of bed and came to work.  I would have worn my pajama pants except that they didn’t have pockets and I have to have pockets during the day.  It’s a personal rule.  Im sure my co-workers were glad that I have that rule!

Life goes on and so do we, my family and all the people in it are changed now though.  Every two steps forward and then it seems something will happen and we go back to square one.  Sometimes it is only a step back, but sometimes it feels like starting over.  The death of another person whether we know them or not sparks all sorts of panic and setbacks.  News that another mother met the child that got her childs heart, or eyes, or lungs begins the pain anew.  She gets to hear her childs heart beat again, to look into his eyes or to hear him breathe.  I am happy for her and terribly jealous and sad at the same time.

My hope and my heart keep thinking that once we get through this horrible first year, that everything will start to feel better or at least not hurt so much, so often.  My head knows that it won’t help to just get through this year, the next year will just begin.

There is also the ongoing issue of “Does what I do matter?”  Every day when we get up we have to find a reason to get out of bed, and then we have to convince ourselves that what we do matters, and that if we keep going we will keep finding reasons to go on.  Some days we cannot find that reason to get out of bed or if we do we cant focus on anything enough to actually get anything done.  Some days we cannot find anything that matters enough to focus on.  It just doesn’t matter.

Then there is the insomnia.  A desperate need and desire to sleep but a complete inability to do so, we have tried everything, melatonin, Simply Sleep, working until we can’t move anymore, to no avail.   Alcohol does not help.  Nothing helps – so I get up and get some things done – or I try to get some things done.  Between the grief fog, lack of sleep and the thoughts of my son it all gets jumbled into a tattered mess that cannot be sorted out and does not allow me to focus for more than 10 minutes at a time.

Some have asked me to help them understand what it is that I go through each day since my son passed but I cannot and I will not, for to make them understand I will have to make them endure death by 1000 cuts, only you don’t die you wake each day and start again fresh and raw and with that piece of your soul missing.  You cannot explain how it feels.  It feels like you are digging a ditch on a beach with your forehead through sand that the waves fill in as soon as you pass through it.  You feel like you should be able to lift your head and see all the beauty around you on that beach which would be so lovely.  But all you can do is push sand with your forehead.  Foggy and hurting and unwilling to have anyone else feel that way.

I do not want to be touched or hugged even though I know you need to do that – I feel fragile and breakable and I don’t like that feeling – the more you hug me the worse it gets as though I am made of glass.

Some days even talking out loud hurts.  Of course, those are milestone days when 18,000 people want to check on us – and we do appreciate that and we know that you love us and that feels good to have that support and feel that love.  We just don’t want to or can’t talk that day or that moment.

Loud noises are not ok and neither are crowds of people pressing and asking and wondering with all the questions in their eyes.  Even though at one time I was the loud one!  They wonder if we are ok and we have to say yes – no matter what we are feeling because to not say we are would be to hurt the person asking and then they try to “fix” something that cannot be fixed.

I once told a friend that in order to fix what was broken we would have to have our son back.  She said “well then it would be the Zombie Apocolypse – and who wants that for their kid!”  I had not thought of Zombie Ill be honest – just raise up him the way that other guys son got raised and he was fine for years after that – you know who Im talking about. 

I looked  into the mirror yesterday (something I rarely do), the one year anniversary of his memorial and realized that he had my exact eyes.  When I look in the mirror I see my sons eyes staring me  back.

Apparently all loss mothers feel this way – at least all of the ones I have talked to do.  They say it never goes away.  17 years, 22 years, there will always be some part of you pushing sand.

We will survive – the same way that other families have survived this, from day to day and year to year.  Yoga and meditation will help and maybe some therapy too.  We will find joy again in some of the things that we did before and find ways to find it in new things that we do.  We will love and smother our other child until he wants to scream at us to stop treating him like a baby – “I’m gwown”!  We will laugh when he acts just like his big brother did and we will not let him get away with some of the things that his brother did!  We will travel places and say “Rye would have loved this” and eventually we will go back to the Highland Games and to the Fair again and it will be fun for us – not something we are getting over with so that we can get that first time out of the way on our own terms.

We should get to do just “whatever the F*&K we want to do” – I was told that at the beginning of this journey, but life doesn’t work that way.  When one of us is doing good it seems the other is not doing so good.  All of us doing good on the same day is a very rare occurrence and it seems that we never get to be together on those days for long – running in different directions taking care of the things that need taken care of while we are up to it!

So if you should see us and ask how we are doing – let “fine” or “ok” be the answer.  That is the best we can do without letting some of our hurt come out like the vicious demon that it is and get all over you and yours.  Let it be.  Blessed Be as we start on the second year of the journey.