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.
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.
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