Quote of the Day: Kristin Kimball
You don’t measure things with words like success or failure, he said. Satisfaction comes from trying hard things and then going on to the next hard thing, regardless of the outcome. What mattered was whether or not you were moving in a direction that you thought was right.
Kristin Kimball from The Dirty Life: A Memoir of Farming, Food, and Love
This morning I have the privilege of cheering on a friend who’s running her first half marathon (I had to be up at 3:30 am to get to the starting line). She’s running in honor of her daughter Brooklyn who has Rett Syndrome – a debilitating neuralogical disorder. Little Miss Brooklyn can’t walk, so her mom laced up her running shoes and trained to run in her honor.
Kelly said she’s not going to come in first, her goal is just to finish the race. For her satisfaction comes by running, not winning.
Have you been working on any difficult things lately?
If you’d like to read more about Rett Syndrome visit Girl Power 2 Cure, the charity that Kelly works for.
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Quote of the Day: Joe Eck & Wayne Winterrowd
Part of the satisfaction of sugaring is of course the flavor of the maple syrup, which has no substitute and which cannot be convincingly reproduced synthetically (“imitation maple syrup” is an oxymoron). But another part is its connection to the past, it forms a continuous link back to the first settlers, and to the Native Americans before them from whom they learned the art.
Joe Eck & Wayne Winterrowd in Living Seasonally: The Kitchen Garden and the Table at North Hill
It’s been a busy week of sugaring. In fact, after spending the last 2 days gathering sap, straining it and boiling it down I was ready to settle in with a cup of tea and good book to relax until I realized I hadn’t written this blog post. Luckily, Friday night I spent some time outside documenting why we love sugaring so much. There’s definitely a calendar image in the lot for next year!
Sugaring really is about so much more than making your own syrup. When you buy a bottle of syrup at the store you miss out the entire process, the hope you feel when you tap the trees, the joy of the first drip of sap, the healthy movement from collecting gallons and gallons of sap and walking many miles, the relaxation provided by tending the fire, and the wonder that comes when you taste your first sweet reward.
One of the things we love most about sugaring is that it gets us out of the house during that time of year when we might not otherwise. It’s wonderful to bundle up and be outside during that magic hour when the sun sets. Sugaring is probably one of my favorite activities of the entire year, each year I eagerly anticipate it’s arrival and am very sad when it’s gone. Perhaps it comes at just the right time.
What activities are you especially appreciative of at this time?
If you want to read up on maple sugaring I’d highly recommend these books:
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A Tomato in February
Eating a tomato in February would be like opening your Christmas presents on Thanksgiving. It would spoil the fun and kill the anticipation.
Jessica Prentice – Full Moon Feast: Food and the Hunger for Connection
I harvested this tomato from my garden a few years ago and though it would be the perfect Valentine.
Even though I won’t be eating any fresh tomatoes this February, I can dream of the tomatoes I’ll be eating five months from now!
Do you remember when you had your last fresh tomato of the season?
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Quote of the Day: Robin Mather
Having done all the needful things to ready the house for the coming winter, I had time to relax, to reach for my knitting needles or spinning wheel or that book I’d been meaning to dive into. No longer busy with the work of putting food by, I could settle in and enjoy the leisure I earned in those long summer days of hissing kettles and canning jars. By recalibrating my life to a more natural rhythm, I found an instinctive understanding of the old agrarian ways, when winters were slower and more peaceful. Winter was the season of reflection, I had come to see.
Robin Mather (The Feast Nearby)
At the moment, I’m certainly enjoying the fruits of my labor for the time I spent over a hot canning kettle this summer canning up jars of tomato soup. Somehow I haven’t yet found that down time that I find most winters. I do suppose that the sun setting earlier in the evening makes me slow down a bit. At least the tasks I do in the winter are less strenuous than the ones I do all summer long, so my body does get a bit of a break.
Canning isn’t something I spend much time doing in the summer, preferring to focus on vegetables that store without processing, but tomato soup will always be on my list. There really is nothing better than sitting down to a bowl of steamy tomato soup on a cold winter evening, add a grilled cheese sandwich on the side and you’ve got yourself a perfect meal!
What’s your favorite kind of soup to enjoy on a cold day?
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Seeds are Thrilling
The idea of any seed is thrilling, a potent, compact repository of dormant life waiting for the gardener’s whim and the forces of nature to spring into existence, wax large, and reproduce.
Joe Eck & Wayne Winterrowd in Living Seasonally: The Kitchen Garden and the Table at North Hill
Sometimes when I look at a tiny seed I’m amazed by what it will turn into. When you open up that seed packet and take out the tomato seed in February you can see your harvest basket brimming with ripe tomatoes in August. This tiny seed will grow up and produce food for your table and nourishment for your soul.
Those onions seeds I planted earlier this week started popping up on Friday, not bad since they were seeded on Tuesday. I’ll give all the credit to my seedling heating mat, worth it’s weight in gold in my cold house!
Which vegetable are you most surprised by it’s bounty from seed?
