January - Baby, It's Cold Outside

Luxury ice fishing hut.  Note the chimney.

    Mid-winter has arrived here in Madison. How do I know? The ice fishermen arrived on the lake earlier this month. They are encamped almost at the mid-point of the lake (they will get there soon), and their ice fishing huts, which look like a cross between a dome tent and a port-a-potty, are beginning to dot the frozen surface all the way to the other shore which must be at least a mile away.

    I have yet to understand this activity, since the products of ice fishing are paltry, indeed. It appears, by all accounts, to be a means by which men sit in a tent on upturned buckets with their lines dropping through a hole they've drilled in the ice and drinking themselves into a such a state that the cold can no longer be felt. There are even radar-like devices which can detect fish swimming toward said hole so that, in their inebriated state, the fishermen will know when it's time to haul up their line and bask in the glory of a six-inch bluegill.

    I watched one episode of this activity on the local Wisconsin PBS channel. Watching paint dry is more exciting - positively riveting - in comparison. The dialog, of which there was little, went something like this:

    "Yep, we got a line down there." (long pause)

    "Yep, you can see those fish comin'." (longer pause)

    "Yep. These detectors are great." (nearly interminable pause) 

    "Yep. I caught a few last week." (camerman sighs audibly)

    This is one part of Wisconsin culture that even Wisconsin wives do not understand. I'm sure there must be a few women who find this "sport" intriguing, but I have yet to meet one. On the other hand, I've met a number of women who think this a grand method for getting some peace and quiet for a few hours.

    The first fisherman to claim his spot on the lake this year (like an old miner, they leave some kind of gear behind to stake their claim) was dressed from head to foot in safety orange. A friend of mine assures me that the reason for this was because he was wearing his hunting clothes from fall rather than buying a new set of coveralls for winter. I think the real reason was because he had encamped on rather thin ice, and if it broke through and he went in, someone would spot him as he went down and fish him out. He has returned to his spot several times now, so it appears that all is well, and as far as I can see, he no longer wears safety orange. I still feel vindicated even if my theory is dead wrong. I do think about what will happen when the thaw comes sometime around mid-March and those huts are just a teensy bit too heavy for the thinning ice. I wonder how many ice fishing huts dot the bottom of the lake. Quite a few, I imagine.

    Meanwhile, back at our house, the chickens continue to endure the cold with as much grace as they can muster. We do have a heater in the coop and in their water bucket, but it's still not anywhere near warm. They are still laying some eggs, bless their fluffy little backsides. Isis and Judy have grown their feathers back after their badly-timed molt and are willing to come out of the coop and into the run.  On the downside, Barbara has decided that it's her turn to drop a pillow full of feathers and turn sulky.  Chickens don't usually molt at nine months old.  I'd never seen this before, and I was rather alarmed, expecting to find her, rigid as a plank, on the floor of the run or keeled over in the coop.  She looks fairly dreadful, but this is apparently not uncommon, and she is otherwise doing well, though her egg laying has stopped.  I give them extra scratch seeds to keep their fat and protein up which helps them deal with the cold, and they get any chicken-friendly leftovers we have such as oatmeal, cheese, and veggie peelings.  It seems to work.

Goldie discovers snow.

      There was a day in mid-January that was warm enough to open the run door and let them outside.  They had never had a chance to stroll around in the snow, and the initial shock took them aback somewhat.  Isis and Judy were having none of it, since they were still in molt, but the "big girls" were willing to wander about for a while, though not too far from the warmth and safety of the coop.  My greatest fear was that a hungry hawk might spot a midwinter snack and decide to launch a full scale attack, so I didn't leave them out for long.  As it was, the neighbor's dog started to wander over which sent the girls scuttling back toward the coop and me barreling out the back door to rescue them if need be.

    Hattie McDaniel, the big, black Australorp, has decided that she is a feathered puppy and will follow me anywhere, even in the snow, demanding to be held and "bwaak-purring" at me if I don't pay her enough attention.  Australorps are known for being gentle, personable birds, but she has become quite attached.  Most nights when I arrive home after work, I trudge out to the chicken coop, flashlight in hand, to give the girls a nightly snack and check to make sure that everyone is accounted for and the heaters are working.  Despite the dark and cold, Hattie will always come to the door of the run to greet me, which means that she will get first crack at whatever I deposit in the big, blue bowl.  Smart bird.

     Some of the local geese seem to be able to handle the cold rather well.  Rather than flying south with their brethren, a sizable number of hardy souls choose to stay put and weather out the winter, and I found out why.  In the early 1900s, non-migratory geese were brought in to populate wildlife refuges, and populate them they have, and then some, as any golfer or park walker will inform you.  They apparently find some kind of adequate shelter and sufficient food, perhaps under trees.  I've seen them poking about in the stubble of corn fields when the snow isn't too deep.  I imagine they huddle together for warmth on the coldest days and draw straws to see who gets to be in the middle and who has to be on the outside of the scrum.  In mid- December, there must be some kind of goose convention on Lake Leota, the small lake in Evansville.  Geese gather there by the hundreds to stroll around on the frozen lake, completely unaware that the person who is photographing them would like nothing better than to get inside by a hot fire and drink cocoa.  They even pose.

     For some time now, I've needed a spinning wheel that is better suited to being carted about when I teach classes.  Much as I adore her, my German wedding wheel, Wilhelmina Murray, is beautiful and lightweight, but she's also rather delicate. (Many spinning wheels are given names.  Wilhelmina has a "WM" picked out in small brass tacks on the top of the table of the wheel, so  I named her after the heroine in Dracula.)  Given that she is well over 100 years old, like many elderly folk, she doesn't do well being transported hither and yon, so I went searching for a wheel that wasn't too large but was sturdy and would fit my budget.  Which is how I found myself driving in pitch darkness and a freezing drizzle to pick up a new spinning wheel in Beaver Dam.  

    When you find a good prospect on a spinning wheel, you don't wait.  You call the owner, and then you  drive.  As far as necessary and as fast as safety will allow.  Speed limits will almost certainly be broken.  It was a miserable late afternoon when I contacted the owners of a little spinning wheel that looked like it would fit the bill.  They asked if I would come by to look at it.  I had planned to make a nice chicken dinner, but all that flew out the window with the prospect of the perfect traveling wheel.  Harvest merely sighed, knowing that there was no stopping me, and waved me out the door with a wan smile.  

    It was full dark by the time I reached Beaver Dam, made all the darker by the looming cloud cover and freezing rain.  I felt like I was inside an 8-ball. From what I was able to determine that night,  Beaver Dam does not believe in street lights.  The directions I received were rather sketchy as well, including a direction to drive around the left side of a theater and up a hill.  That theater, which was actually an old playhouse, might have been visible in daylight, but in the darkness it was just another looming building to navigate around, and there wasn't another car anywhere in sight except mine.  It was downright eerie.

    The owners of this wheel were a lovely elderly couple. The wheel had been built in Denmark in the 1970s and had been purchased from the wheel maker by a friend of theirs while she was in the country.  Some years later, the woman gave the wheel to the couple after her divorce, and it had been sitting unused in their home for several years.  This situation is actually fortunate for a spinning wheel.  Sitting indoors creating country ambience in a living room is far preferable to being stored in a cold, leaky barn.

    I always bring a small basket of basic spinning necessities (a bottle of wheel oil, some twine to make a  new drive band, a pair of scissors, a chunk of beeswax, a crochet hook, and some sample fiber to spin) when I look at a new wheel because many of them haven't been touched in years and need a little help to get them running again.  As I was giving the wheel a little oil to get her ready to spin again after a good 40 years, I nattered on about wheels and their names.

    "Are you going to name this wheel?" asked the wife.

    " I think so," I said.  "What's your name?"

    "Katherine," she replied.

    "Well, Katherine it is, then.  Do you mind if I call her Katie?"  

    There were no objections, and they were delighted to see their wheel in action spinning yarn.  They even took a video so they could show their friends and family.

Katie, my new spinning wheel

   

    I've had new bobbins made for Katie by a friend of mine, and her debut workday will be at the Home and Garden Show in Madison in February where I will be demonstrating spinning with Scott Johnson of the Low Technology Institute.  There are few things more satisfying than seeing a spinning wheel doing what it was built to do: make yarn.  The wheels seem happier, too, after languishing for so long.  Having restored and spun on so many wheels over the years, I've discovered that each one has its own personality.  Perhaps that's why spinners name them.  I hope Katie and I will become good friends and workmates.

    Harvest is well into her garden planning and has already bought two batches of seeds.  She has allowed me one patch on which to grow my "boutique" veggies.  I like to experiment with things.  They don't always do well, but they're interesting nonetheless.   I'm not quite ready to order my own seed  or plan my garden plot yet, though I'm beginning to feel the gardener's itch in my frozen little hands.  Every day that passes brings us closer to warmth and green again, but it still seems a long way off, even if the sun is setting a little later every day.  Truly, the best part of any winter in Wisconsin is the spring.

    

     

Yule Greetings - The Big Freeze Begins

 

A Belsnickle guarding the woodbox

     This December, the serious cold arrived early and stayed there.  Temperatures plummeted to not much above 20 degrees with some days well below zero with wind chills.  This is unusual for this time of year.  We don't usually begin to get this cold until January and although it has been quite cold, we have had very little snow.  I dislike the intense cold, but I dislike slippery, poorly plowed roads much, much more.

    The lakes will freeze over rapidly now, which will delight the ice fishermen.  We, on the other hand are  now on twice daily chicken check to make sure their water is still unfrozen, the heater is still working in the coop, and the birds are all still well.  At least with a twice daily check, none of the precious eggs are exploding due to being frozen.  A chicken's egg production declines significantly as the light wanes and the cold comes in, so we appreciate every egg we get.  The pullets - the ones who were chicks this year - are in fair egg production, however the two "little girls", Isis and Judy, who produce lovely light blue eggs and who were hatched last year, both decided that this was an opportune time to molt and lost enough feathers to stuff a small pillow.  This, of course, meant that they were less resistant to the cold, and they have ventured outside the coop as infrequently as possible.  Isis initially slept in one of the nest boxes until that got too cold.  Each of them have now created warm, snuggly spots in the straw inside the coop leaving the rest of the girls to sleep on the perches.  

     As with Halloween, we have something of a reputation to maintain with our decorations in front of the house.  Harvest put the Santa with his corgi sleigh out as soon as it was within the bounds of propriety to do so.  It's always a delicate balance of timing - too soon is in bad taste, too late means frozen fingers.   I came home one evening to find the extravaganza below waiting for me to admire the following morning.

     Santa and his team of faithful corgis must be staked down well in order to resist the winds that kick up at this time of year.  Santa has been found more than once keeled over, flat on his back in the morning snow like a drunk in a ditch.  He was staked and strapped down this year with mover's belts.  Alas, the sleigh took a tumble on its side, but it was soon righted and strapped firmly to its stake. 

    Given that this is Wisconsin, the ground around those stakes will freeze solid, and they will not be able to be removed until spring.  We usually have to wait for a January thaw to bring Santa and the corgis back into the garage where they will reside until the following December, but Harvest had them rigged this year to be able to put them back in storage without waiting for March to release them from the ice and snow.  Not so for many of our neighbors, whose outdoor ornaments are still in place well into February and beyond.  Their Christmas trees seem to remain indoors as well, fully lit.  One only hopes that they are all artificial trees.  The fire hazard posed by natural trees would make any sensible person shudder.

   We went all out with Yule figurines this year, bringing out every Santa, Belsnickle, and winter goddess we own and decorating in true Victorian fashion.  They covered every possible surface in the three main rooms downstairs, then spilled out into the foyer and the bathroom. I will say that it is somewhat unnerving to have any kind of Yule figurine placed in the bathroom, much less one of the larger ones.  There's nowhere to hide, and to judge by their solemn faces, they seem quite put out to be living there in exile from the rest of their clan.  There are quite a few of these figurines that we have collected over the years.  Here is a sampling:  

This is a papier mâché Belsnickle.  Belsnickle is a sort of "servant" of St. Nicholas who originated in Germany and eventually merged with St. Nicholas himself.  He is a gift bringer, but he also carries birch switches to use on naughty children   Over the decades he's been gentled into a folksy Santa which is how I like him best.

There wasn't much room for teapots on the buffet with these fellows standing around a tiny Yule log.  

     A lot of the Belsnickle figures look like little sea captains holding round life preservers.  When not engaged in his Yuletide duties, St. Nicholas is also the patron of sailors (which makes sense) and prostitutes (which doesn't).  If you look at the one below on the right, he is wearing seaman's boots.  

    

    Two of my absolute favorites among the "menfolk" of Yuletide are Black Peter and the Ghost of Christmas Present from Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol (above).  Black Peter carries a bag of coal and provides Santa with the list of naughty children.  To judge by the size of the book in his hands, that year was quite a list.  Being the practical child in my family, I would have happily accepted the coal and gone off to put it into the fireplace.  I've been tempted to leave him out all year.  The Ghost of Christmas Present delights me with his beneficence and hearkens back to the pre-Christian Holly King who ruled during the winter months.  This figurine shows the two children, Want and Ignorance, beneath his robes.  

     The women of Yule have a special place all to themselves.   Before Santa Claus became the universal symbol of the season, there were other gift bringers; many of them female.  None of them carried switches  or coal.  They either brought gifts or put you on time out in the corner.   

    Clockwise from top left: 

     Frau Perchta or Mother Berchta.  She travels about on the Yule Goat (or Julbock), Master Skeggy. 

     La Befana, the old woman of Italy carrying her bag of treats. She rides on a broomstick and carries a lantern to light her way through the snow.

     Frau Holle  or Holda,  a pre-Christian legendary figure who survived in popular belief well into the 19th century as the goddess of winter and women's crafts, especially spinning.  From Christmas Eve until 12th Night on January 6th, no spinning wheel may turn lest the spinner's work for the next year be poor.  I observe it faithfully, though I have to cover up my wheels to avoid using them, and my hands positively itch to spin long before 12th Night.

     Lucina, the Child of Light, who brings cakes to her parents on Christmas morning (and a pot of coffee, one hopes).

     The Yule Fairy.  There are several stories, most of them written fairly recently, of fairies who celebrate the returning of the sun on the Winter Solstice.  

    At the bottom left are three tiny figures of Frau Holle, Lucina, and La Befana.

    Harvest has also collected quite a number of Mrs. Claus figures, and they have their own table where they sit together like a weekly coffee klatch with their various cakes taking a break from Santa . 

    

   I always like to have themes for each of the swags we put up at the three openings between the parlor, the center room, and the guest room/office.  This year the swag at the center room opening was All Things Shiny and included all of the moon and sun ornaments plus a small truckload of chandelier crystals which make lovely decorations and can be found at fairly reasonable prices at antique stores if you keep your eyes open.  We always leave a corner of one swag for our corgi-themed ornaments, and this swag was the home for them this year. The swag over the office/bedroom door was Friends of the Forest and included pine cones and critters including birds, bees, fireflies, flowers squirrels, foxes, and badgers both English and American.   The swag nearest the parlor was Fruit and Veg and included pickles, bananas, nuts, apples, strawberries, tomatoes, eggplant, and potted flower ornaments, among others.  There is even a savoy cabbage ornament.  No broccoli or cauliflower yet, but I'm keeping my eyes out.  The chandelier was bedecked with oak leaf ornaments this year through which floated the Yule Fairy doll, all dressed in white with her wand and sparkly wings.

     We do have a tree, but it's not what you might think.

     This is a corgi tree.  It's full of corgis getting into all sorts of mischief - tussling over bows, grabbing presents, racing off with ornaments, snatching at stockings, and playing all the tricks corgis like to do.  A Lucina figurine offers cakes to the shocked onlooker while the Queen looks on benevolently.

     Even the foyer is not exempt from decoration.  A huge swag snakes up the stairway, and my walking wheel is bedecked with twinkle lights which makes it impossible to spin and makes Mother Berchta happy.

     On December 21st, Yule, the Winter Solstice arrives.  We gathered with friends as we always do to welcome the return of the sun as people have done down through the ages.  We lit candles in the dark, talked about our hopes for the new year, and sang songs to welcome Lucina, the light bringer.  We enjoyed a wonderful feast including Harvest's fresh baked sun bread.

     On Christmas Eve, we settled down to watch A Christmas Carol.  Listening to or watching a film version of A Christmas Carol has become a household tradition.  Some years ago we attended a play here in Wisconsin where the final act with the Ghost of Christmas Past was performed in a graveyard with the audience huddled around in the snow to watch.  I felt badly for the actor playing Scrooge that night since no amount of underclothing was going to keep him from freezing in that nightshirt.

    Christmas Day is often quiet in our house.  Rather than a frenetic gathering with children racing about everywhere and Jello molds brought by well-meaning relatives, we prefer a quiet day by the fire.  This year two of our best friends spent the afternoon with us, and we drank tea and nibbled on finger foods while teaching them the game of Man Jongg and enjoying each other's company.  As I grow older, I realize that a group of four old ladies gathered around a card table laughing and joking by the fire while listening to the Man Jongg tiles clicking is a gift of the season. 

    

   And with the New Year, we move toward warmer days to come, though the cold still holds sway for now.  May this next year bring us all forward in health and safety, both in body and mind.

 

November - Waiting for Snow

 Downtown Evansville's Old Fashioned Christmas (photo by Brian Carter)

       November is a month in which everything seems to be holding its breath.  Halloween is over, and the green begins to drain out of the plants and grasses as though it is being slowly sucked down into the ground.  Like an old photograph left out in the sun, the color of the landscape slowly fades to sepia and then toward the monochrome of winter when all will turn to black, white, and grey.  The roses are still holding onto a bit of green, as they will do until the last possible moment, but everything else is leaching its color into the soil.  Seed pods appear seemingly out of nowhere looking like some kind of alien life form.  Sometimes it is only by their location that I can identify the plant they once were.  

       There is never enough time to get everything done, and if we got everything we had planned to do finished, we would find yet more to do because that is the nature of the season.  We are nesting, putting by, bedding down.  

     I managed to turn over a section of soil in the front garden to make another attempt at planting European poppies.  I had been given a small packet of seeds last summer by the elderly Amish woman in Cashton from whom we buy perennials, and I scattered them directly onto the lightly worked soil last October.  They failed miserably, and not a single shoot emerged this spring.  It was with some chagrin that I returned this September to ask for more seeds so I could make a second attempt.  If I can establish them, I will be happy to have them pop up wherever they like.  I believe I can harvest the seeds from this variety to use in cooking and baking while still leaving plenty to spread their colorful blooms everywhere.

       All of the brightly colored gourds we grew and displayed as part of our Halloween decorations were scooped up into a wheelbarrow and dumped, somewhat unceremoniously, in a heap near the back corner of the house where we hope they will volunteer in spring and we can avoid mistaking them for edible squash.  Gourds are beautiful things, but they're decidedly unpalatable, though outdoor critters like them.

      The garlic - all 120 cloves - has been planted and is lying quietly under several inches of straw.  Why, you might ask, would someone plant that many cloves of garlic if not to sell them?  Garlic scapes is the answer.  Garlic scapes are the lovely little flower stalks that emerge from the green leaves of the plant in midsummer.  They are a delicacy, and they can be chopped up and frozen for later use.   Because they are not as strong as raw garlic, you can toss them in or on just about anything you like in the same way you would green onions.  By the way, garlic leaves are also a treat when picked young - mild but tasty.

     I have wrapped our young cherry tree with enough chicken wire that it looks like something out of a high security prison yard.  Under the tree are the ashes of our beloved corgi Juju.  The mice and rabbits ate the little tree right down to the ground last winter leaving only two fragile, brown stems less than a foot above ground.  Harvest insisted I leave them alone because, as she says, "The plants always come back for you.  Just wait and see."  So I left the little sticks to themselves.  By some miracle, two tiny shoots emerged at soil level, then three, then four, and the tree leafed out again even bigger than before.  I suppose you can't keep a good dog down.  I've done everything I can to make sure that Juju's tree won't be damaged again this year.  I'll be shoveling a path through the snow so I can check on it every couple of days.

     

     I had plans to thoroughly weed and till both of the gardens before frost, but that got away from me.  There will be need to be some serious weed pulling in spring before I can till the soil, or I'll regret it later.  I'll just have to live with it looking ratty when the snow melts.

     I managed to bribe, cajole, and herd the chickens (not as easy as it sounds) into the garden area so they could scratch about in the late fall sunshine while  I winter-proofed their run and coop.  I wrapped their run in clear, heavy polythene plastic sheeting so they will be out of the wind and the worst of the cold when the winter sets in to stay.  I plugged in the heat lamp in the coop as well.  When the cold really bites in February, the girls will spend almost all their time in there snuggled up and warm.  I submerged the water heater into their water bucket and plugged that in to keep the water from freezing over.  Back in Victorian times, the chickens would have had a warm barn with other animals in it to keep them warm, and they could drink out of the animal troughs, but we have neither barn nor barnyard animals to accommodate them, so we have to resort to electricity to do the job horses would have done for us.  Naturally, the girls were totally oblivious to all this effort as they scratched about. 

(left) Barbara browsing among the broccolini

                                                        (right)  Judy, alert as always

     

     Once they figured out what was on offer, the chickens were only too happy to trundle over and wander in through the garden gate.  I kept a fairly close eye on them while they were out there for fear that a hawk flying casually overhead might spot an unexpected mid-afternoon snack.  I've continued to let them out as often as I can, but as the days grow colder, they don't go far from the comfort of the run and the coop.  Judy and Isis, who are smaller and lighter than the other girls, will venture out for only brief periods before deciding it's too chilly and heading back inside.  

     Rather than raking leaves out of our yard to be picked up at the curb, I raked up wheelbarrow loads of them and tossed them into the chicken run as the base layer for their winter bedding.  The chickens love stomping around in the leaves almost as much as children, and it's a much better, and less wasteful, use for the leaves as well.  I will note here that Scott Johnson of the Low Technology Institute reminded me not to use walnut leaves as they are toxic to other plants and would affect the garden soil if they were tilled into it, so I only gathered up maple leaves, of which there was an abundance.  I was saved from raiding the huge pile of leaves across the street only by the misfortune of the city leaf pick up vehicle arriving and scooping them up before I could get to them.   Leaf envy.  It's a thing.  

     We harvested a good number of squash from the garden, and I rescued two more from the front porch of the former Masonic Lodge where the town's mock graveyard had been set up for our radio play production of Twisted Tales of Poe last month.  We sustained a good deal of mouse damage last year in the basement pantry (they like chocolate chips and candle wax in addition to squash), so my initial thought was to put the squash into mesh slings and hang them from the rafters.  An easier option presented itself in the form of the wire table I use for skirting fleeces, and they are now away from the wall, safe from little teeth, and have plenty of air circulation.  Nevertheless, I have been forced to put out mouse traps again so that our foodstuffs are not contaminated.  Each time I go down into the basement, I announce in a loud voice, "Hear me, all ye mousies!  Stay far away!  To come here is to court disaster!"  So far, no mice.  I sincerely hope they go elsewhere.  It's reality, but it isn't pleasant.

       The weather this November has seesawed back and forth.  One day frost lies crisp and bright on the ground, and the next day it feels like early spring. We've not had a hard frost yet.  Given that in February the temperature will drop to well below zero for days on end, the lakes will be frozen over, and ice fishing huts will dot the frozen surface all the way from one end to the other shore, I welcome every one of these warmer days; each day holding off the cold a little longer and bringing me closer to spring again and a green world.  Even so, we march inexorably toward winter.  The fire in the woodstove burns every day, all day and into the night, and we keep the teapot warm by sitting it on top.  On the weekends, I usually fire up Milly in the back kitchen, and that area of the house gets nice and toasty.  When we had the back kitchen built, I insisted on having a grate put in the kitchen ceiling so that the heat from the woodstove out there could make its way up to the second floor.  It's remarkable how well this combination works.  Our heater doesn't really come on until early morning when the fire has died down.  We figure we break about even using wood instead of gas, but the wood comes from trees which are being cut down anyway because they have fallen over or need to be removed for some other reason, so the wood doesn't go to waste, we get heat, and it keeps our local arborist in business.  

   The weekend before Thanksgiving is Evansville's Old Fashioned Christmas.  The shops on Main Street put on their best finery, and there are horse drawn carriage rides, including Bo, the wonderful, black Percheron who ferried us around for Sweetest Day last year (see "The Surrey With the Fringe on Top" from last November for that story). There were two new additions this year, shown above, and three horse-drawn wagons rolled through town until just before dark on Friday evening as they must have done over 100 years ago.  On Saturday morning, Santa and Mrs. Claus arrived downtown by fire truck as they do every year.  Our Santa has a real beard.  I think children know the difference.  These little ones don't need coaxing to have a chat with Jolly Old Saint Nick.

      

     The following Thursday, Thanksgiving  Day arrived, and as usual, Harvest organizes a complete culinary blowout in grand Victorian style.  This year's menu was as follows:  Roast duck, baked acorn squash with mixed rice stuffing, pumpkin and squash soup, sweet potato casserole (no marshmallows), another stuffing of breadcrumbs, dried fruits and nuts; Harvard beets, carrots, green beans with almonds, mashed potatoes, dinner rolls, pecan pie, vanilla custard cups, and cranberry sauce. There were only three of us at the dinner table, but that mattered not.  I took charge of roasting the duck and preparing the stuffing, carrots, mashed potatoes, and dinner rolls.  Harvest did everything else except baking the pie which was purchased from a local woman who bakes in her home.

The antique roaster is pressed into service to cook the duck.

    The size of each dish was moderate, but even so, we had Milly's oven and the conventional oven going simultaneously and both stovetops as well.  We felt very fortunate to be able to offer so many wonderful dishes to our guest, and not a scrap went to waste.  Even the chickens got the leftover pie.

                                                                         

                    

 Bear waits patiently for his portion of the feast

    

       I must add a side note here to those who avoid duck because of its greasiness.  I read a recipe somewhere years ago that has made all the difference, and I pass it on to you:  Before you roast the duck, prick it all over, just under the skin, and then put it into boiling water for about 5 - 10 minutes.  This accomplishes two things:  a good portion of the excess fat is left behind in the water, and it makes the roasting much faster.  I've done this for years now, and it never fails.

     And as we wait for snow, we have been inspired to try brewing tea in a unique way.  This odd looking bit of kit below is a samovar.  More precisely, a "samovar on wood".  The name will become clear in a moment.  

     Sometime last winter we discovered an amazing vlog on YouTube called "Country Life" (I highly recommend it).  It isn't at all what you might imagine - American farmers driving enormous tractors across vast fields or ranchers driving cattle out on the open range.  It's a vlog produced by a couple and their son  who live in a small village in Azerbaijan near the Caucasus Mountains.  They have a homestead on which they work an organic garden and raise cows, sheep, chickens, ducks, and geese with two pet rabbits and two dogs. We have watched all manner of interesting projects and hand farming, including the building of a new house with only three men to do it.  The wife makes the most incredible dishes over an open fire or in a wood-fired, hand built oven, and she cooks outside all year round, even in the winter with wolves howling in the mountains nearby (I do not jest).   Almost every episode, and there is a new one about every three days, includes the brewing of tea in a much fancier samovar than our low budget version which looks a lot like a leftover prop from Star Wars.  We were so fascinated, we had to try it ourselves.

Our very own samovar on wood

     The idea is simple.  There is a doughnut-shaped reservoir inside the top container into which water is poured.  A fire is built somewhere (ours was in the woodstove), and once burning, hot branches are dropped down the central chimney of the samovar where they continue to burn and heat the water.  When the water is hot, the little spigot is turned and the teapot is filled.  There is a dish built into the top of the samovar on which the teapot can sit and stay hot from the steam of the hot water.  It's amazingly efficient and not at all difficult to clean. It is, however, very smoky, and I found myself having to put the burning brands into a coal scuttle and taking them carefully out to the porch so they could be dropped down the chimney.  As you can see, the contraption was placed on the cement rail of the porch well away from any flammables.  There's a bit of technique as to how large and how long the pieces of wood need to be and how much can be dropped down the chimney without snuffing out the fire, but I think my first try was pretty successful.  It will likely be put to use more often when the weather allows us to build a fire outside (We are not as cold hardy as our friends in Azerbaijian).  For now it has a place of honor next to the woodstove and stands ready for service.  It's ugly, but I love it.

     We certainly enjoyed the tea.  The couple in the vlog make tea from all manner of things including leaves, flowers, roses, and herbs.  A glass teapot allows one to view the tea as the hot water is being added to the pot.  Many are stunningly beautiful and look quite tasty.  We tried our own version with rosehips and black tea.  From what we have observed, in Azerbaijian the tea itself isn't sweetened.  Instead, little dishes of sugar chunks or sweets such as jam are served with tiny spoons.  The tea is drunk with a small mouthful of the sweet.  I will leave those of you who may be in the dental profession to fret about this. 

     

     And so, dear reader, we leave you on the cusp of winter.  May your own holidays be full of light and good friends and family.  May your hearths be warm and your teacups full and hot.  Until next time. 

     

Happy Anniversary - Victorian Technology Institute Turns One

     The VTI this past July

     It seems hard to believe that I started this blog a year ago.  It was just a few days after Halloween, and I was nursing a broken right wrist (see "A Skull, a Spectre, and a Snap" for that story).  I typed the first blog entry using my left hand and right index finger, figuring out how to use Blogger as I went.  It took nine hours.  I've cut that time by half, but it's still a slog, mostly because of how Blogger works (or doesn't work) with images.  But it's been worth it.

     It's been a busy October.   Harvest and I travelled to Kidron, Ohio, to go to Lehman's: a huge store that carries almost everything a low-technology person could want.  I've been making purchases from them for years, first via their paper catalog and now though their online store, but it's worth making the drive and going to the store to shop.  I had been lusting after an Alladin oil lamp for years - it gives much better light than a standard oil lamp - and Lehman's had a large selection of them.  It was high time to get one.

 

     Our trip to Central Ohio took us by some interesting roadside oddities.  Wisconsin may have its giant chainsaw-carved logger statutes and enormous mice with cheese, but Central Ohio's oddities have a regional flavor all their own.

                         If the Trojan horse relocated to Central Ohio, it would look like this.

A team of four "draft" horses made out of straw pulling a vegetable cart.  Their eyes are small squash, and their ears are corn cobs. 

  Rather than staying at one of the tourist hotels in the Amish community area, we opted for a B&B at Buckeye Ridge Farm in Wooster, Ohio, about 20 minutes away. We had a little cottage all to ourselves.  The farm owners, Lynn and Steve, raise Spanish cashmere goats and buckeye chickens which suited me right down to the ground.  We had great walks in the woods with Bear who loved crunching along in the leaves.  The goats were quite personable, and of course, the relative merits of various chicken breeds were discussed.  I helped Lynn evaluate some of her cashmere, which, of course, meant I had to have some of my own, and I came home with a small bag of the precious stuff which will be blended with some super-soft wool to make a luxurious yarn.  

        

This handsome fellow is either Fabio or Antonio Banderas.  He's gorgeous, but since it's breeding season, he smells absolutely dreadful.  

Kidron is smack in the heart of the Ohio Amish community, which is handy for a store  like Lehmans that sells low-technology goods.  The settlement, as it's called by the Amish, spreads over several towns and counties.   The Amish are well-known for their skill in woodworking and furniture, but there are any number of other craftspeople and small specialty shops scattered among or within the farms, their skills or wares only visible through small signs located at the end of long driveways.  Because we enjoy finding beautiful handmade items and keeping away from the crowds, particularly this year, we found ourselves following these little signs up hills and down dales to find the farms in question.  

     GPS will do you no good whatever here:  you need to navigate by knowing where the particular road is that you might have seen yesterday which is by that school near the fence that runs along the side of this barn and up and over the hill on the left.  I'm not joking.  Our Amish area in Cashton is quite navigable, but this area is vast.  Add to that the Amish farm aesthetic:  white house, dark green curtains, white or red barn, and navigation becomes even more interesting.

   In Wisconsin, the Amish specialize in greenhouses full of plants and flowers, wooden items, rugs, and maple syrup in addition to the numerous furniture shops they are famous for.  In Ohio, it's hand-woven baskets.  We managed to find a beautiful dog bed basket made by a young man who, at his father's request, signed the bottom of the basket for us while we chatted with his father.  Bear enjoys it enormously.  

   

   I won't claim to be any kind of expert in Amish life and culture, but I can say that it appears that many of the Amish groups in this area of Ohio are far more "liberal" than here in Wisconsin.  Tractors seem to be allowed if they are pulling something down a road but are not in a field.  Given the hilly nature of the terrain, e-bikes are a real thing here, as it avoids hitching up the buggy to go to town for just a few necessaries.  I'm sure that many people were grateful when it was determined that they were acceptable.  The bikes are usually black, sometimes white, and all have the same dark gray panniers on the back.

The little bike trailers that are made for towing children behind a bike, however, can be any color at all.  They are used for carrying all kinds of things that the rest of us would put in the trunk of our car.  And with all those bright colors, they are highly visible, which makes for safety when cars are whizzing by.  

     Our arrival was at a particularly opportune time, as the Mid-Ohio Draft Horse and Carriage Sale was taking place that week in Mount Hope.  Amish people come from all over to purchase horses, buggies, and tack.  This makes for interesting traffic jams at stop signs where cars, buggies, and tour buses compete to get through an intersection.  The auction itself is spread out over three days:  draft horses on one day, horses and ponies for carriage and buggy driving the next day, and the buggies themselves on the third day.  By chance we happened upon the "used car lot" of the buggies that were going to be up for auction.  There were at least forty of them.

         Knowing that it was likely that would buy almost everything I saw at Lehman's, I had set myself a generous, but not to be exceeded, spending limit.  I'm happy to report that I came in under budget.  Just.  We did come home with that lamp I had been waiting for, a pair of new butter paddles, several other kitchen items including a dough whisk that's become one of Harvest's favorite baking tools, and a wooden food dehydrator that can work in a conventional oven, in the oven of the wood cookstove,  or on top of the soapstone stove in the parlor.  I've been making good use of it drying apples on top of the parlor stove where I can use the gentle radiant heat to good effect.

    Once home, it was time to finish rehearsing "Twisted Tales of Poe," a radio play I was performing with Evansville Community Theater.  A radio play is done as if it was one of the old radio broadcasts from the 1940s and 1950s, with actors moving back and forth from their seats to the microphones to play their characters.  These broadcasts often included a live audience.  Naturally, we had commercials as well, as the old programs would have had, including our very own Ward Hurtley Funeral Home - perfect for Halloween.  I was cast as Montressor from The Cask of Amontillado, and I had a great time portraying that vengeful villain.  Of our three nights of performance, on October 28, 29, and 30, two were sell-outs.  

  

                                           The cast of "Twisted Tales of Poe" in our 1940s costumes.

    

      One of Poe's best known tales, The Cask of Amontillado was published in Godey's Lady's Book in 1846.  This magazine was part Vogue and part Good Housekeeping.  I imagine it caused quite a stir when it was published and read by Victorian ladies.  Amateur theatricals were all the rage in the Victorian era, and there's no reason not to imagine that, at the very least, Poe's tales would be have been read to chilling effect in a darkened room with thunder and rain outside and rapt listeners sitting by a fire inside hanging on every word.  

     In keeping with the Poe theme, I bought two bottles of Merlot and made wine labels for each of them which read:

  E.A. Poe    

Amontillado     

 Montressor Winery, Italy

    1846

 

and gave them to our director.  The labels were so well done that at first, some of the cast members thought I'd actually found a wine called Amontillado! 

         A Victorian etching of The Raven

    Which brings us around again to Halloween 2021.  The painted sugar skull from last year came back out and was placed at the bottom of the stairs and filled with springy frog toys, and the lanterns, with real candles, were lit as always to enhance the ambience.  We have been known as the Witch House for several years now, to the extent that if someone in town asks where our house is, and we tell them, "It's the Witch House," the questioner will often respond, "Oh, yes.  I know exactly where it is."  It doesn't have to be Halloween for the house to be recognized as such.  We are the Witch house in May and June just as much as in October, and we have a reputation to maintain.   Unlike last year, this time we were able to enjoy the arrival of the trick-or-treaters. Though there were certainly not as many as in 2019, we expect it to pick right up to the usual 600 (I do not exaggerate) next year.  Of course, parents dressed up as well, and there were a good number of costumed dogs.  This year, the Cowardly Lion from The Wizard of Oz seemed to be the most popular canine attire.   

     Harvest cackled for two solid hours, amusing adults and older kids while giving the youngest just a moment of pause.  She only does this at Halloween.  One of the directors from the play sat with us on the porch drinking mulled wine and enjoying the show.  This was far preferable to driving to the hospital with a broken wrist.

                                                Harvest waiting on the porch for the first trick-or-treaters

   

     I even got a photo of the Mysterious Lady again this year.  She was the most elegant witch I've ever seen, with full Day of the Dead makeup, a silver wig, a stunning purple velvet hat and a matching cape that went all the way over the horse's rump.  I have no idea where she gets her clothes, but I sure would like to find out.  As usual, she made only two passes down the street, and I had to run to catch up with her on the second pass.  She was kind enough to stop for me to take a photo.  I still have no idea who she is or how she arrives in town.  She simply appears and disappears like the ghost she may be.

     

     And so, the Victorian Technology Institute begins another year with new adventures to be had and new skills to learn and share.  Happy birthday to VTI, and Happy Halloween to all our readers!