Feet Up!

68 this morning, cooler and cloudy all morning with a light shower. Then sunny and more humid. Rain expected this evening. 

So this is not my usual position at 5pm! But here I am, feet up, tea tray beside me, and a Lord Peter Wimsey episode on the DVD player. But I think I have earned the break. I've packed eBay, snapped a pan of beans, made granola, cut up a big watermelon, made the Italian herb mix with the herbs I dried yesterday, put away the dried onions, made chicken salad to take to work at the antique mall tomorrow, and filled the dehydrator with tomato slices to dry. Now I need to rest, as tomorrow will be a full day at the mall, filling in for the owner who has a family emergency. 

I realized the other day how much of my days are spent processing food at this time of year. I am not complaining,  mind, but goodness it is time-consuming.  It makes me appreciate the women of older times even more. Imagine doing this work without the modern conveniences, no electricity, air conditioning,  hauling water, etc. And all that on top of the usual necessary housework! 

Friends ask me why I do this, when there is so much food, already prepared and available,  in the stores. Today I had a flashback to my younger self, and to the time I first became fascinated with self-sufficiency. 

It started when my first husband and I bought our little house outside of Manassas, Virginia. The house started outvas a log cabin, built in the 1940s by a man who had been in the CCC. The house was on a hill above the Occoquan River, and had an acre of land. It was a cute place, fairly secluded in an area that was rapidly developing.

One spring day in 1970--I was just 19 then--I was browsing through a cookbook that had been given to me as a wedding present. I had been given a bag of dry white beans by my mother-in-law and had no idea what to do with them, but the book had a recipe for making bean soup. I made the soup and some corn muffins with a Jiffy mix and was so very pleased with myself! I sat in my little kitchen, looking out at the budding trees and the plum tree blooming in my back yard, the clean laundry blowing in the soft breeze, and felt completely content. This, to me, was perfect happiness. 

That little cooking adventure lead me to trying other recipes. I had an d cookbook called Meta Givens Encyclopedia of Cooking, I think, and from it I learned to make bread, pancakes, jams, and many of the basics of cooking. Then a friend to us about a farm down the road that sold fresh milk and eggs. I bought a churn to make butter from the cream and learned to use buttermilk. We planted our first little garden, just tomatoes and cucumbers, down in a hidden corner of the back yard because my husband's mother always said vegetable gardens were u slightly. I started a subscription to Organic Gardening to learn how to garden because even though I had grown up with gardens it was a different thing to have my own. 

That first little garden did so well that the next year we plowed up practically the whole back yard. That garden was terrible because we were so clueless, especially about how to take care of it. But I was hooked. We found a pick your own farm and I learned how to can vegetables. Any of you who put up food know the pleasure and satisfaction of seeing those jars lined up neatly on a shelf. 

Organic Gardening also had a classified section where land was listed for sale, and I began reading them and dreaming of buying a farm. We subscribed to Mother Earth News, too, where property was also listed for sale, and soon we were actively planning our move to the country.

Well, that turned into quite a long story! But isn't it funny how a small thing like a cookbook can have such an impact on a life?

Copyright Susanna Holstein. All rights reserved. No Republication or Redistribution Allowed without attribution to Susanna Holstein.