Saturday in the Cities

Today was a beautiful fall day in Minnesota. I returned home to the Twin Cities for the weekend. I needed a break from the farm and wanted to spend some time with family and friends. After a lazy morning I went to the bank, read about spiritual disciplines in a locally owned coffeeshop and then visited a friend. We drove down to the Mississippi and sat on a ledge that overlooks the river. We chatted and then went back to her house and chatted some more.

After that nice visit I returned home to spend the evening with my parents. My mom and I made a Kohlrabi, Apple, and Turnip coleslaw with vegetables that I brought home with me from the farm and we all ate steak, corn, beans, and coleslaw together.

I retreated to the basement to watch the culturally destructive television and watched a lifetime movie about Georgia O'keeffe. What an incredible woman. I was wonderfully interrupted by a phone call from my dear friend Karen, who I went to Gordon with. It was lovely.

I am excited for tomorrow when I will share the morning with my grandparents by going to church and out to eat afterwards. What great stories I look forward to hearing from them about farming and threshing!

The Adventures of Orrie and Maddie

This weekend my friend and co-worker Orrie and I were the only interns that stayed on the farm. We decided that there were too many fun things going around in the area to actually stay on the farm, so we ended up taking field trips to enjoy some of the local culture. 

On Saturday there was a threshing festival in Dalton. This wasn't merely a threshing, but also a celebration of historic rural life, big machinery, flea markets, food, and fun for the whole family. When we first arrived everybody was sitting around waiting for the tractor parade to start. 

Everybody was there to watch. 

And everybody participated. 

Young, 

old, 

women, 

and men.

We saw all kinds of tractors but the coolest were the steam engine tractors.

Afterwards we walked around the different exhibits

We found a blacksmith in his shop

and a woodworker making a baseball bat, which he kindly gifted to me after he was finished.

There were also some old homes, schoolhouses, and city halls. My favorite homes were the one room log cabins that had lofts in them. 

I think this would be the way to live. 

Then we saw the threshing happening and we didn't want to miss out on that. 

The thresher is connected to a tractor by a belt that spins around a gear. People stand on trailers and throw wheat (and other grains) into the back end and then the seeds get separated from the stalk. The stalks fly out the front and make a big pile while the seeds fall from the side into a trailer. It was the highlight of the day. 

We also watched the tractor pull. This was a hilarious sight to see. People hook their tractors up to "babe the blue ox" that adds weight as the distance increases and the tractor goes until the wheels begin to spin. 

Even the children wanted to drive their own tractors

On Sunday Orrie and I drove south to Sauk Center and participated in the fall festival at Camphill village. The Camphill movement was started by Rudolf Steiner, who also started the Waldorf Schools. Camphill village Minnesota is home to 45 people, half of who have special needs. It seeks to see the person not only as a physical creature but also as a spiritual one and it values the role that community plays in that. It is also a biodynamic farm that grows vegetables and grass fed beef. They also have some animals.

We saw some ducks crossing

And Orrie found a quaint swing

I ran into my friend Sarah who was drinking from a water pump

We wandered into a one room wood heated cabin. It reminded me of the cabin that we saw on Saturday and now I know it's possible to live like that even today. They were even using the same kind of stove!!

We also found the root cellar where they store the root crops for the winter. 

I also was able to talk to Leonard, a man who has been living at the village for 13 years. He told me about his model trains and airplanes that he builds and flies and he introduced me to his fiancé who also lives at the village. I talked to some of the co-workers as well and it sounds like a pretty cool experience. Maybe this adventure could turn into something more...???

Overall it was a good weekend with many new and cool things. 

The Shapes of Creation

I had an interesting revelation on Friday when we were picking melons. Our melons don't fit well into the bins that we use to store them, and my boss said something like "wouldn't it be great if melons were square so we could stack them easier in the bins." We mentioned that the melons should be genetically modified but realized that would be impossible. Do you know why? Because nothing in creation is a straight line. It is not square. I wonder what this has done to our psychology, when the Lord meant for us to live in a world of many shapes but we have created rigidity. I sure like the shapes. 

Trying new things

One fun thing about living on the farm is that I get some time and resources that allow me to make things from scratch and try things in the kitchen that I have never done before.

This week for the first time ever I made dill pickles from our pickling cucumbers. I am still waiting for them to ferment. I tried one on Friday(only 4 days after they were prepared) and they only tasted like salty cucumbers. It will take 1 to 4 weeks for them to be completely fermented. 

The other thing that I made this week was mozarella cheese and then ricotta cheese from the non-pastuerized milk that we get weekly from the neighbor that's a dairy farmer. It was so cool to watch the curds move away from the whey. The next day we put the cheese on our homemade pizza, which was delicious. 

Oh, and I almost forgot that a couple of weeks ago I found popcorn in the garage and I have been making popcorn directly taken from the ear on the stove. I know, it sounds ancient, but it's way better than microwave popcorn!

Crop Walks

Every Thursday morning on the farm we have a "crop walk." During this time we walk around the field and talk about what's been done in the past week and what needs to be done over the next week (which is actually from Thursday until Monday because on Tuesday we start the 2-day harvesting madness again). One fun part of the crop walk is that we get to see the progress of the vegetables. It is so crazy how fast that they grow. We also get to try some of the vegetables. This weeks crop walk I ate:

Brussel Sprouts

Celery

Tomatoes

Cucumber

Cayene Peppers

The best one was the celery because it didn't taste like the water filled celery from the grocery store. It had all of these delicious flavors in it that I never knew existed in celery. Yummmm.