Thank you Winnie for your support, it means a lot to me, having you here. And everyone else, Welcome! I would like to have an adventure, lets walk down a trail and see what magic we can find, want to? There may be portals between the hedgerows and the corn fields so keep a good eye open. Whichever path we take let's keep nature close by our side and our hearts tuned to the divine, shall we? I have a feeling it's going to be grand. I'll meet you here by the blue door.
Sunday, September 26, 2004
Bean Supper at ClearCreek
by Trendle Ellwood
We fell together into a rare two hour afternoon nap when Jim and I found ourselves exhausted after Saturdays Market. Then it was like being awoken from a mummied state, when he let me know that it was time to arise and go to the bean super that we had promised to show up at. “Oh! Why did I say we would go? I berated myself, as I struggled to get ready and get myself and two girls out the door, “It would be so good to just stay home and rest.”
I grabbed a jar of my Company’s Coming Bread and Butter Pickles from the cupboard, and Jim retrieved a jar of honey from the truck to take. We went through town and stopped at Kroger to get some chips and pop to contribute, plus a container of macaroni feeling guilty that it wasn’t homemade.
We traveled around the south side of town and into the country towards the hilly and pretty area that Clear Creek runs through. We found the bean dinner on a beautiful piece of land where a regal but comfortable old farmhouse snuggles on the hillside and watches proudly over the vista, a large sweeping vista with a great blue sky above and a great green lawn below. We parked our car with the others in a row on this span of green and then walked out into the midst of it. We were then between the house and the view and we walked towards the horizon where in the foreground of this landscape the people were gathered on the lawn. The lawn sloped on down past the people into pastures below, pastures which joined a stretching stand of corn that stood glowing amber and gold in the autumn light. Beyond all this flowed the creek, spanned by a charming old wooden covered bridge, which posed, picturesque like, in the valley.
This is the home and land, all 100 and some acres of it, of Hazel and Loraine, fellow marketers. “As far that way as your eye can see,” is the way Hazel puts it, as she nods to the south. When we got there Hazel and Loraine were tending to the kettle that was hanging over a fire. A big black kettle that was as big as your arms outstretched into a circle. They stirred the beans in this kettle with a big wooden tool that looked like a paddle. They were good beans, with ham and lots of pepper.
After Hazel and Loraine greeted us I snuck our store bought macaroni onto the table and with a knife popped open the lid on my pickles and put the honey by the cornbread. Our friends from market, Shirley and Ed were there. Ed was coming back to the table for seconds and he made a point of getting another piece of cornbread just because Jim had brought his honey. He squeezed the honey bear over his bread and then he helped himself to some of my pickles, took a bite of them, “Good, like everything you attempt,” he told me.
As we went to join the others Jim and I realized that we were suppose to have brought our own chairs. Last time we went to one of these get-togethers it was the plates and silver that we were to bring for ourselves, this time it was chairs. I guess we need to study some bean dinner/potluck, textbooks. Before I even knew what was happening Ed had given up his seat and had me seated by his lovely wife Shirley, as he took up a conversation with the fellows by the tractor. After eating and needing to stretch, us women folk got up to walk around and after I got myself a cup of coffee I drifted over to where my Husband was in a conversation with the articulate fellow who had complimented my pickles.
He tapped the resin from his pipe then refilled and lit it and the spicy warm aroma of his smoke wafted through the air. Talk was of market, gardening and the weather. Ed had said something about new people setting up at market and how the new was good, even if it gave the old ones more competition. Then Ed flourished his pipe through air with one hand as he told us how he used to read the obituary when he was young and he would see, “So and So had died at the age of 69, or 73 or 80,” and he would think, “ No big deal, they had a nice long life, it is the natural way of things, the old die, the new take over.”
But he went on to tell us, things felt a lot different to him now that he was one of those so-called old fellows, and he was walking a tightrope with life on one side and death on the other. In his seventies Ed has been in a battle with cancer. At one time he chose to have an operation that the doctors tried to discourage him from having, he would have to be tough to go through it they told him and at best it would give him two months. “I choose the two months,” he told us. When you get right up close to leaving this earth two months seems like a precious amount of time to be with your loved ones. Those two months stretched to years. Again and again he has fought the battle and again and again he has won. We were relieved when Ed informed us that the last test that was done showed him to be tumor free.
The sun slipped beyond the hill behind the house and the air grew cool. We gathered around the fire where the children roasted marshmallows. As we stood in the shadow of the hill, the sun which had been behind a mist for most of the day peeked out and cast a red glow on the forest of trees beyond the creek. As dusk fell we said our goodbyes and found our way to our cars over the now wet with dew grass. A mockingbird that had gathered his songs of imitation began to practice them to the moon, filling the now dark air with his trilling tunes, I listened to him from the car window as long as I could hear him as we drove off into the black night, on our way back home.
Copyright © 2004, by Trendle Ellwood. All Rights Reserved.
(0) comments
We fell together into a rare two hour afternoon nap when Jim and I found ourselves exhausted after Saturdays Market. Then it was like being awoken from a mummied state, when he let me know that it was time to arise and go to the bean super that we had promised to show up at. “Oh! Why did I say we would go? I berated myself, as I struggled to get ready and get myself and two girls out the door, “It would be so good to just stay home and rest.”
I grabbed a jar of my Company’s Coming Bread and Butter Pickles from the cupboard, and Jim retrieved a jar of honey from the truck to take. We went through town and stopped at Kroger to get some chips and pop to contribute, plus a container of macaroni feeling guilty that it wasn’t homemade.
We traveled around the south side of town and into the country towards the hilly and pretty area that Clear Creek runs through. We found the bean dinner on a beautiful piece of land where a regal but comfortable old farmhouse snuggles on the hillside and watches proudly over the vista, a large sweeping vista with a great blue sky above and a great green lawn below. We parked our car with the others in a row on this span of green and then walked out into the midst of it. We were then between the house and the view and we walked towards the horizon where in the foreground of this landscape the people were gathered on the lawn. The lawn sloped on down past the people into pastures below, pastures which joined a stretching stand of corn that stood glowing amber and gold in the autumn light. Beyond all this flowed the creek, spanned by a charming old wooden covered bridge, which posed, picturesque like, in the valley.
This is the home and land, all 100 and some acres of it, of Hazel and Loraine, fellow marketers. “As far that way as your eye can see,” is the way Hazel puts it, as she nods to the south. When we got there Hazel and Loraine were tending to the kettle that was hanging over a fire. A big black kettle that was as big as your arms outstretched into a circle. They stirred the beans in this kettle with a big wooden tool that looked like a paddle. They were good beans, with ham and lots of pepper.
After Hazel and Loraine greeted us I snuck our store bought macaroni onto the table and with a knife popped open the lid on my pickles and put the honey by the cornbread. Our friends from market, Shirley and Ed were there. Ed was coming back to the table for seconds and he made a point of getting another piece of cornbread just because Jim had brought his honey. He squeezed the honey bear over his bread and then he helped himself to some of my pickles, took a bite of them, “Good, like everything you attempt,” he told me.
As we went to join the others Jim and I realized that we were suppose to have brought our own chairs. Last time we went to one of these get-togethers it was the plates and silver that we were to bring for ourselves, this time it was chairs. I guess we need to study some bean dinner/potluck, textbooks. Before I even knew what was happening Ed had given up his seat and had me seated by his lovely wife Shirley, as he took up a conversation with the fellows by the tractor. After eating and needing to stretch, us women folk got up to walk around and after I got myself a cup of coffee I drifted over to where my Husband was in a conversation with the articulate fellow who had complimented my pickles.
He tapped the resin from his pipe then refilled and lit it and the spicy warm aroma of his smoke wafted through the air. Talk was of market, gardening and the weather. Ed had said something about new people setting up at market and how the new was good, even if it gave the old ones more competition. Then Ed flourished his pipe through air with one hand as he told us how he used to read the obituary when he was young and he would see, “So and So had died at the age of 69, or 73 or 80,” and he would think, “ No big deal, they had a nice long life, it is the natural way of things, the old die, the new take over.”
But he went on to tell us, things felt a lot different to him now that he was one of those so-called old fellows, and he was walking a tightrope with life on one side and death on the other. In his seventies Ed has been in a battle with cancer. At one time he chose to have an operation that the doctors tried to discourage him from having, he would have to be tough to go through it they told him and at best it would give him two months. “I choose the two months,” he told us. When you get right up close to leaving this earth two months seems like a precious amount of time to be with your loved ones. Those two months stretched to years. Again and again he has fought the battle and again and again he has won. We were relieved when Ed informed us that the last test that was done showed him to be tumor free.
The sun slipped beyond the hill behind the house and the air grew cool. We gathered around the fire where the children roasted marshmallows. As we stood in the shadow of the hill, the sun which had been behind a mist for most of the day peeked out and cast a red glow on the forest of trees beyond the creek. As dusk fell we said our goodbyes and found our way to our cars over the now wet with dew grass. A mockingbird that had gathered his songs of imitation began to practice them to the moon, filling the now dark air with his trilling tunes, I listened to him from the car window as long as I could hear him as we drove off into the black night, on our way back home.
Copyright © 2004, by Trendle Ellwood. All Rights Reserved.
Sunday, September 19, 2004
September is so Beautiful
by Trendle Ellwood
Hurricane Ivan mellowed as he came north towards us. He lumbered through the Appalachians and then turned into an autumn Ohio storm, swelling the water ways and washing us clean with rain. Then from the north swished a cool breeze that pushed the rain east, and left us with crystal blue skies.
September charms us with yellow rays of goldenrod filling up forgotten fields, turning what once was green into seas of yellow.
Dancing in these yellow seas sways the temptress, aster. Together they weave a spell of gold and lavender, goldenrod and wild purple aster waltzing.
Sumac stands red and proud against the clear blue sky. Every little hedgerow and by-way is a-glow in the late summer sun. Red, gold, yellow, brown and green reign, as the leaves of every little vine and twig turn splendid.
Jim took our last harvest of honey off the hives yesterday and was up late into the night extracting it from the combs. This whole place smells like honey right now. The sweet aroma wafts around the house from the honey hole, (place of honey extracting). The bees are filling up the hives out back with the fall nectar, which gives off a very strong robust essence. This is the goldenrod honey, rich and dark, which they prepare to sustain them through the winter.
I have been harvesting the bittersweet; the berries on our vines are tight and peach colored and the leaves have not yet turned yellow. I gather them and take them inside to hang, where overnight the berries pop open and greet us the next morning with fire and orange. I tie these in bunches and take them to market. I enjoy working with these radiant berries and passing them on, they are something that is missed. People stop by our stand and ask the name of them, or drop off reminisces of their grandmothers picking it, or lament the demise of it in the wild.
It is a good selling plant and worth the effort as a market plant. I cannot make enough apple pie jam to take to market either. They try it, they buy it, has become our motto. There are still berries and apples to pick and squash to put in the meals with tomatoes. But we know it won’t be long, the season is signing now that it is time to make up our apple and tomato sauce’s for winter and collect the wood close to the hearth. One day soon there will be a full moon coming up on the horizon of a clear cloudless night with a chance of frost in air. We will be out grabbing the last green tomatoes to save for ripening in the house.
But oh how beautiful is every moment of this season now.
I just want to stop and stare while summer says her long goodbye with autumn kissing on her face. It wont be long before the sassafras glows red and gold and like a watercolor paints the sky with flurries of yellow swirls as she throws them all away one windy day.
Copyright © 2004, by Trendle Ellwood. All Rights Reserved.
(0) comments
Hurricane Ivan mellowed as he came north towards us. He lumbered through the Appalachians and then turned into an autumn Ohio storm, swelling the water ways and washing us clean with rain. Then from the north swished a cool breeze that pushed the rain east, and left us with crystal blue skies.
September charms us with yellow rays of goldenrod filling up forgotten fields, turning what once was green into seas of yellow.
Dancing in these yellow seas sways the temptress, aster. Together they weave a spell of gold and lavender, goldenrod and wild purple aster waltzing.
Sumac stands red and proud against the clear blue sky. Every little hedgerow and by-way is a-glow in the late summer sun. Red, gold, yellow, brown and green reign, as the leaves of every little vine and twig turn splendid.
Jim took our last harvest of honey off the hives yesterday and was up late into the night extracting it from the combs. This whole place smells like honey right now. The sweet aroma wafts around the house from the honey hole, (place of honey extracting). The bees are filling up the hives out back with the fall nectar, which gives off a very strong robust essence. This is the goldenrod honey, rich and dark, which they prepare to sustain them through the winter.
I have been harvesting the bittersweet; the berries on our vines are tight and peach colored and the leaves have not yet turned yellow. I gather them and take them inside to hang, where overnight the berries pop open and greet us the next morning with fire and orange. I tie these in bunches and take them to market. I enjoy working with these radiant berries and passing them on, they are something that is missed. People stop by our stand and ask the name of them, or drop off reminisces of their grandmothers picking it, or lament the demise of it in the wild.
It is a good selling plant and worth the effort as a market plant. I cannot make enough apple pie jam to take to market either. They try it, they buy it, has become our motto. There are still berries and apples to pick and squash to put in the meals with tomatoes. But we know it won’t be long, the season is signing now that it is time to make up our apple and tomato sauce’s for winter and collect the wood close to the hearth. One day soon there will be a full moon coming up on the horizon of a clear cloudless night with a chance of frost in air. We will be out grabbing the last green tomatoes to save for ripening in the house.
But oh how beautiful is every moment of this season now.
I just want to stop and stare while summer says her long goodbye with autumn kissing on her face. It wont be long before the sassafras glows red and gold and like a watercolor paints the sky with flurries of yellow swirls as she throws them all away one windy day.
Copyright © 2004, by Trendle Ellwood. All Rights Reserved.
Writer On Foot Getting Bread
A publication of the writings of White Feather
A publication of the writings of White Feather
Sunday, September 12, 2004
As the Storm Rides
by Trendle Ellwood
Watching the storm sweep through the sky,
Is where we stand, you and I.
You and I know that right on the other side
Of the dark cloud, comes the bright day.
Copyright © 2004, by Trendle Ellwood. All Rights Reserved.
(0) comments
Watching the storm sweep through the sky,
Is where we stand, you and I.
You and I know that right on the other side
Of the dark cloud, comes the bright day.
Copyright © 2004, by Trendle Ellwood. All Rights Reserved.
Wednesday, September 08, 2004
Door to My Lemuria
(0) comments
Sunday, September 05, 2004
Those Who Make You Wonder
by Trendle Ellwood
Of all of the people that we have had the privilege to get to know this summer at the farm market, Amish Man Dan and his family are the ones who intrigue me the most. Their whole way of living from the land, staying out of the system and adhering to an old, forgotten by the rest of us, way of life makes me long to learn more about them. I have never seen children who love to work like their children do.
To the Amish children work is play. We have seen them compete with each other and scramble to get a job done. They show much delight in doing the best job that they can do. Little John is only two and one day I watched as he piled the muskmelons that his father had put to his care into a display for the market crowd. Every once in a while his chubby little fingers would lose grasp of one and it would roll away and with all his might he would wobble out to retrieve it and then he grasped the round melon with both arms and with all seriousness and firm determination he would get it back to the top of the pile. Later I glanced back and was blessed by the look of pride on Little John’s face when his father came by and smiled at the muskmelons piled high.
We took our wagon to unload at their home after market Saturday and six children came out to greet us. They immediately saw what needed to be done and the little ones climbed into the wagon and started handing produce to the larger ones and us, which we all then placed on the table in the shade. An older Amish girl had gone into the house to fetch a broom and just as the produce was clear from the wagon, she jumped in and swept out the left over scraps. We were there unloaded and gone in less then five minutes time.
Emma the mother of the nine is such a cheerful soul, she says that her time to rest will be here in the winter, when she is sitting by the fire, quilting and watching the birds that she delights in feeding through her window. She put up 92 quarts of tomato juice Tuesday she told me, the day that she cut open a watermelon at market and shared it with us. Still she had the tomato sauce and whole tomatoes for soup to do. One time as we were unloading she was standing there thinking and writing something down on a scrap piece of paper,
“Are you making a list,” I asked her? She handed it to me and it was a recipe for the watermelon pickles that I had shown an interest in when Dan had told me how she makes them. Muskmelon with vanilla, it sounds so good.
We have been around Dan more than any of the Amish, as he is the only one who always comes to market. I have enjoyed his lively sense of humor and quick smiles throughout these three seasons. We got to talking about growing vegetables without pesticides one day. If a vegetable is not sprayed it will be a little bug eaten at times and how people don’t like to see holes in their food even if it is chemical free.
Then he told me about this one fellow who in the spring kept coming to his stand and asking for sweet corn because he had some of Dan’s sweet corn the year before and he had decided that it was the best. So he was watching and waiting for Dan’s corn to come and every market day he would be asking about it. Well finally some corn was ready and this fellow was the first to buy some. Then this fellow came back the next week and he said that there were a few corn worms on the tip of the corn that he had bought from Dan. Amish Man Dan covered his mouth as he told me, “ Maybe I should not have said this to him, but I couldn’t resist, I told him, Well, I guess it is true that the early bird gets the worm!”
Ah yes Dan he is always so funny. One day he stopped by our house to let us know that he would need the wagon, I was setting off towards the berry brambles up alongside the cow pasture and I mentioned my concerns about the bulls. I told him that when I am out there with the cows I always kept my mind on the location of the nearest good climbing tree in case I ever had to dash up it.
Dan then showed me what to do if a bull ever charged at me. He said what you do is you take off your hat and you roar like a mad man, and he preceded to demonstrate this scare tactic to me as he pulled his Amish straw hat from his head and waved it frantically in the air, his grey black beard swaying to and fro and him roaring like a lion. I couldn’t be scared of the bulls as I picked berries that day for the remembrance of Dan roaring at them like lion kept me smiling. But I did keep my eyes on the nearest tree just in case.
Copyright © 2004, by Trendle Ellwood. All Rights Reserved.
(0) comments
Of all of the people that we have had the privilege to get to know this summer at the farm market, Amish Man Dan and his family are the ones who intrigue me the most. Their whole way of living from the land, staying out of the system and adhering to an old, forgotten by the rest of us, way of life makes me long to learn more about them. I have never seen children who love to work like their children do.
To the Amish children work is play. We have seen them compete with each other and scramble to get a job done. They show much delight in doing the best job that they can do. Little John is only two and one day I watched as he piled the muskmelons that his father had put to his care into a display for the market crowd. Every once in a while his chubby little fingers would lose grasp of one and it would roll away and with all his might he would wobble out to retrieve it and then he grasped the round melon with both arms and with all seriousness and firm determination he would get it back to the top of the pile. Later I glanced back and was blessed by the look of pride on Little John’s face when his father came by and smiled at the muskmelons piled high.
We took our wagon to unload at their home after market Saturday and six children came out to greet us. They immediately saw what needed to be done and the little ones climbed into the wagon and started handing produce to the larger ones and us, which we all then placed on the table in the shade. An older Amish girl had gone into the house to fetch a broom and just as the produce was clear from the wagon, she jumped in and swept out the left over scraps. We were there unloaded and gone in less then five minutes time.
Emma the mother of the nine is such a cheerful soul, she says that her time to rest will be here in the winter, when she is sitting by the fire, quilting and watching the birds that she delights in feeding through her window. She put up 92 quarts of tomato juice Tuesday she told me, the day that she cut open a watermelon at market and shared it with us. Still she had the tomato sauce and whole tomatoes for soup to do. One time as we were unloading she was standing there thinking and writing something down on a scrap piece of paper,
“Are you making a list,” I asked her? She handed it to me and it was a recipe for the watermelon pickles that I had shown an interest in when Dan had told me how she makes them. Muskmelon with vanilla, it sounds so good.
We have been around Dan more than any of the Amish, as he is the only one who always comes to market. I have enjoyed his lively sense of humor and quick smiles throughout these three seasons. We got to talking about growing vegetables without pesticides one day. If a vegetable is not sprayed it will be a little bug eaten at times and how people don’t like to see holes in their food even if it is chemical free.
Then he told me about this one fellow who in the spring kept coming to his stand and asking for sweet corn because he had some of Dan’s sweet corn the year before and he had decided that it was the best. So he was watching and waiting for Dan’s corn to come and every market day he would be asking about it. Well finally some corn was ready and this fellow was the first to buy some. Then this fellow came back the next week and he said that there were a few corn worms on the tip of the corn that he had bought from Dan. Amish Man Dan covered his mouth as he told me, “ Maybe I should not have said this to him, but I couldn’t resist, I told him, Well, I guess it is true that the early bird gets the worm!”
Ah yes Dan he is always so funny. One day he stopped by our house to let us know that he would need the wagon, I was setting off towards the berry brambles up alongside the cow pasture and I mentioned my concerns about the bulls. I told him that when I am out there with the cows I always kept my mind on the location of the nearest good climbing tree in case I ever had to dash up it.
Dan then showed me what to do if a bull ever charged at me. He said what you do is you take off your hat and you roar like a mad man, and he preceded to demonstrate this scare tactic to me as he pulled his Amish straw hat from his head and waved it frantically in the air, his grey black beard swaying to and fro and him roaring like a lion. I couldn’t be scared of the bulls as I picked berries that day for the remembrance of Dan roaring at them like lion kept me smiling. But I did keep my eyes on the nearest tree just in case.
Copyright © 2004, by Trendle Ellwood. All Rights Reserved.
