BFFs

My BFF announced herself at a superbowl party, maybe six years ago. We'd spent a fair bit of time together as friends-of-friends, acquaintances grown closer, and at the beginning of what we both hoped was a real friendship. I am ever grateful to her for recognizing it as the friendship it has now become.

We could be really good friends. BFFs. Shouted over shots, beers and Todd-nado, who was yelling GET SOME!!!! in my ear.

My heart lit up. Sometimes you say things over drinks that are exaggerated, overly enthusiastic. This time, we recognized and declared a truth. We could be really good friends. BFFs. 

From that moment in Queens Pub, Erin is family. I've adopted her parents, her childhood dogs, her in-laws, as an extension of my own familial tree. And our friendship has made me a better person, a better friend. I am so lucky to have this amazing woman in my life. She is incredible. Beautiful and loyal and smart. Funny as hell.

Erin drove home to Michigan from Washington, D.C. (three times) to take care of me when I was pregnant and right after I had my baby. She's cleaned the dirtiest rooms in my house. She snuck in and did the dishes and cleaned the stove grates when I was so pregnant I couldn't do dishes for more than a few minutes at time. She called me on hogging my pregnancy and helped me figure out how to confide in her, how to ask for help.

She's teased me out of my most childish moods. She's held my crying daughter. She cleaned up the upstairs bedroom, transforming it from the cat's lair to a nursery.

She's loved me through my most insecure, stubborn and reticent moments, when I am hardest to love.

She has helped me see the friendships all around me. The whole GR crew has become family because Erin has helped me understand all that love. I have new bravery to respond, reciprocate. On my own, I would have told myself that there was nothing special there. Convinced myself that those friendships were acquaintances, people who were being nice to me because they were good people, not because they truly saw something in me. I would have let myself be too busy with work and the insignificant details of life to commit to those friendships. I would have invented obstacles to keep these friends from getting too close, just in case they didn't REALLY like me and they were just being polite.

This would have been a huge loss. And frankly, just plain stupid. Good god, my insecurity must be maddening to the people who love me.

BFF, thank you for recognizing and declaring our friendship. Thank you for sticking with me when I get my priorities messed up. Thank you for loving me and Kevin the way you do. Thank you for taking care of me. Thank you for being you. An incredible and strong woman, a loving mamma and wife, a loyal, honest and true friend. I love you. For realsies. Forever. No matter what.

xo

PS, your sunglasses are on my microwave, and I found a tiara on top of the vitamins.

PPS, the nursery is SPARKLING in the sunlight. Thank you so much for cleaning it up.

Novice cheesemaker

My cheesemaking journey began simply, turning milk from Hilhof Dairy into yogurt and kefir. I knew, even then, that I wanted to wander down the dairying path. Here is my first experiment with something that resembles cheese (read: requires setting a curd, cutting it, and cooking and rinsing).

Cottage cheese
Adapted from/inspired by recipes from Ricki Carroll and Mother Earth News

Equipment

• Stainless steel pot big enough to hold all the ingredients. You want one that has a lid that fits.
• Thermometer. It's awesome if it's the kind that can clip on to your pot. Mine does not, and I survive.
• Glass/pyrex measuring cup
• 10-inch kitchen knife

Make sure everything is clean when you start. I didn't sterilize, but if you have trouble with contamination, that'd be one thing to try.

Ingredients

• 1/2 gallon skim milk (thanks to Hilhof Dairy)
• 1/4 cup cultured buttermilk (the kind you buy in the store)

The milk I buy is pasteurized (but not ultrapasteurized). If you start with raw milk, everybody says it's best to pasteurize it so that you are starting with a bacterial culture that you pick (from the buttermilk). That's between you and your buttermilk. 

Step 1: Setting the curd

• Bring milk to room temperature by heating or just by sitting out in a pan while you get distracted by other chores. You're aiming for about 75 degrees. 
• I let the buttermilk sit out for a bit too, to bring it up to room temperature.
• Stir the buttermilk into the pot of skim milk. Cover, and place in a warm spot (70-75 degrees).
• Let it sit for 16 hours (at least), probably closer to 24. You want it to resemble custard.

Note: For weekday cheesery, I do this at 7 or 8 p.m., so that when I get home from work the next day, I can check it first thing. If it needs a few more hours, I am still ok to finish the cheese before bed. On weekends, or in my daydream farm life, I'd do it at 9 or 10 in the morning.

Tomorrow evening, I'll move on to step 2...

Step 2: Cutting the curd

Step 3: Cooking/heating to separate

Step 4: Draining and washing

Unexpected

I wrote this in August, three days before my sister and brother-in-law had their son Levi. In my first visit with them after Levi's birth, my head whirled through a thousand thoughts as I held the newborn. I marveled at his perfection, and all nine pounds of it. It's the first time a newborn didn't look all that tiny.

I found out two days ago that I am pregnant. I figured out yesterday that I am about 8 weeks pregnant. The baby-to-be already has some nervous system, some circulatory system, and is starting to develop a face. 

What? I think I just fainted a little bit.

On Monday, it started to move, which is (maybe?) what caused me to feel nauseous, and finally go do a pregnancy test. Let me say that again. It started to move. 

Fainting again.

By the time I publish this, I'll be at the end of the first trimester, sharing this unexpected news with the world.

We didn't intend to become parents. In fact, we were well on our way to having decided to forego that whole realm. 

This is all very unlikely. 

I never had a strong desire to be a parent. I never even felt a twinge of biological clock. And now that this is happening, I have an unperturbed sense of peace. We will live out this adventure, with as much love and learning as any other.

I thought it would be more complicated. 

I am not afraid. I am not torn with a desire to know what might have been. I believe that so much of what I have planned for my life will still come to be--just with an unpredicted twist.

It couldn't really be any other way.

To have made a decision to have a child, this would have been so much planning and pressure, we would have struggled to define our own experience. Having already set our course, this becomes simply a part of the journey.

It happens really fast.

I finally called my doctor, and went in for an official test. Yup, still pregnant. Prenatal appointments and a baby-industrial-complex span out in front of me. I find myself browsing sites about home birth, the things I should and shouldn't eat, and the week-by-week development of a pregnancy.

I smile a lot, especially at Kevin. It's a strange little secret we have between us.

I am waiting. My little sister goes before me in this, ready to deliver her baby at any moment. I will hold my news until I know we're past the largest risks, and until after she has had some time in the light.

It's all so unexpected. 

***
Announcements have been made, and the news has begun to sink in for all. My own reaction is still defined by peace and trust. Fourteen weeks have passed by, and the baby growing inside me is getting bigger and stronger every day. I am still amazed, grateful, hopeful. By now, I'm getting over the surprise. 

Worms and other weird things

First off, let's get the context.

I am a writer and project manager/consultant-type for a communications firm. I serve clients. I plan and develop communications strategies, write/edit/architect websites, analyze website usage data, write and advise on Facebook posts, and everything in between. I dress up for work, and I work in a beautiful downtown office. With other people who are consultant-types and creative-types, who also dress up every day and do a lot of brain work.

I'm also a hippie. I believe (fervently!) in living a life connected to the natural world--from food to weather to seasons, to human duty to act responsibly with our resources. It is this philosophy that underlies all my value decisions. I live in a small house, I camp out most weekends in Northport, dreaming (and occasionally making progress) about reclaiming an old farmstead.

And that differential—between business-day Amelia and farmer Amy—is what this post is about. For my friend and colleague Will, whose sharp mind, curiosity, humor and enthusiasm are eternally valuable, here is a catalog of things I do, that you will think are endlessly weird.

1 - Worms

I think this is what started the whole conversation. Worms, that eat your organic garbage, turn it into compost, and live happily in your house with you. They're efficient little fellas, and they live in a condo like this one. You fill each tray with moistened bedding made out of cardboard or newspaper, sawdust, chopped leaves, or other biodegradable goodness. You put in lots of worms in the bottom tray, and as you generate biodegradable waste aka kitchen scraps, you bury it in the bedding in the upper trays. The worms migrate up toward their food, and leave behind their castings, which are awesome for your garden.

You use red wigglers, and lots of them. I looked it up, it's more than 10. More than 50. Probably more than 1,000. It depends on how much compost you have to process. You buy them from a worm farm, by the pound.

Since I know you are DYING to know more, here's a better explanation: http://cityfarmer.org/wormcomp61.html#wormcompost

2 - Homemade dairy products

Yup, this one too. I make yogurt from organic milk (raw if I can find it) and a starter yogurt culture. It involves heating the milk, cooling it a bit, adding starter, and letting it sit at warm temperatures overnight. I eat it plain, straight out of a mason jar.

If you want Greek yogurt, you do just drain off the extra liquid from regular yogurt. Cheesecloth and a colander over a bowl in your fridge for a few hours does the trick.

I also make creme fraiche, by mixing buttermilk and heavy cream, and letting it stand on the counter overnight. My least-weird dairy recipe is ice cream.

I want to learn to make cheese. Real cheese of the smelly variety. Like the kind that ages in caves. I also want to have a miscellaneous assortment of milk-producing pasture pals, someday. A cow, a couple goats, a few sheep.

3 - Homemade beer

We brew our own. We drink primarily Michigan beer when we're out, but at home, we pretty much keep ourselves in our own beer, cider and mead.

We spend a few days a year, steeping grain in hot water to convert the starches, boiling the wort, adding hops, adding yeast, and waiting while it ferments away in a corner in the kitchen, five gallons at a time. In a bucket or a giant glass bottle.

I do still buy wine, but only because I haven't had time to figure out winemaking yet. Oh, and it comes in boxes now, which are quite tasty, and better for my recycling bin.

4 - Preserves

I put up vegetables every year, either from the market or from our own garden. This you will not find gross, but perhaps just a little strange. Pickled asparagus, cucumbers, beans, beets and garlic tops. The occasional pickled garlic and pickled eggs (ok, maybe you think that is gross. but it's really delicious). Roasted peppers and roasted tomatoes get popped in the freezer. Frozen beans, peas and fruit. We're nearly out of everything from last year--spring and early summer, before the first harvests, are known as the "hunger gap."

Someday, one summer soon, I want to try to grow all our vegetables. I realize I don't actually have time to be a farmer, so I'll have to keep buying meat and eggs from friends and the market. But, one day, we'll see if I can't more or less feed us out of our garden plot. Between that and a fishing license.... who knows?

5 - Diesel and grease

I drive a diesel Volkswagen Golf with almost 200,000 miles on it. My truck (an early 90s F-250 with about 150K on it) is also a diesel, and is parked behind the grape vines out back right now, because I'm trying to figure out how much to spend fixing it, and when. I fully intend to convert both vehicles to run on grease.

I am sure there are other, and perhaps stranger, things that I do, or want to learn to do. I may not even know they are strange. I like being quirky, dreaming up new ways or reclaiming old ways. I know its nonsensical, when you juxtapose back-to-the-earth-Amy with head-down-working Amy. I might be better off if I were in better balance.

And that, my friend, is the thing that has me scratching my head. How do we create an economy that has room for knowledge work and manual labors of love like growing and cooking food? How do we create space for people to be connected on the internet, and connected to their food source? What does a truly integrated life look like?

I'll be working on that daydream, from my desk, and from my garden.

One more cup of coffee

It's a rare Saturday morning that I wake up at home in Spring Lake, and I'm reveling in the quiet time. Listening to my dog snore softly, and watching the resident wild turkeys wander through the yard, and across the road. Fanning their tails, they're such beautiful and clumsy birds. I can't help but love them, and laugh at the bravado.

Spring has flown by, split between mundane and significance.

We watched our last sunset in Stevensville, and moved all of Grandma's furniture into the garage at home. I've watched my sister become more and more pregnant, expecting the first baby on our side of the family. I labored over TEDxGrandRapids, and waved goodbye to my team mates as I move on to other causes. We plowed in two enormous gardens in Spring Lake, and planted apples and asparagus in Northport. I learned to drive a tractor, and to love riding with Kevin on the Trail 90. Our second truck in six months purportedly needs brakes and a new engine. The 8N needs a new carburetor before we can sell it, and the garden tractor is up on blocks in the driveway. (Our neighbors LOVE us.) I spent last weekend catching up with my bff, and a slough of other old friends, moms and dads now, or like us, keeping parenthood a mystery. I already miss them.

Missing a sense of place

We joke about living on raw land in Northport, working in Grand Rapids and keeping our stuff in Spring Lake. It's a little bit true... This is the first time I've been home on a weekend in what must be months. I haven't kept track. I love my spread-out life, the peace of early mornings in our field when it rains, late evenings under the stars around the fire. I love the simplicity of home, the promise of the gardens. And yet, I yearn for the day when the two come together, and my homebody routine can reclaim me. I have so many projects I want to undertake, and so little time to devote, it's a constant compromise.

Two grandmothers

In our barn/garage and in our home, we're living amidst the physical memories of my two grandmothers. Furniture, keepsakes, pots and pans, small appliances, art, dishes. The things I cherish for the connection to their memories. Grandma Schaus, with her platinum hair, blue eye shadow, and brilliant smile managing circles around her world. I've claimed that heritage, the fierce independence, self-determination, tenacity, and stubborn stoicism. Bockie, with her soft wrinkles, set curls, and tiny feet. Her worries and fears, at one time balanced with fiery warmth and quick laughter. I miss that Bockie, before the darkening of her memory. I'm claiming the laughter, cultivating the warmth. And, for my own sanity, I need to figure out what to do with all the stuff I'm hanging on to...

A good at-home weekend

By the end of these two days, still stretched out in front of me, we should have a working garden tractor and a mowed field. Two gardens fully planted (vegetable rows in one, and three sisters in the other). A clean house--really, truly clean, not just tidied. I'm even going to dust. A refrigerator full of healthy food to get us through the week. Baby shower invitations out for my sister. A tidier garage. Hopefully a dinner with farming friends we can dream with.

For now, I'm off to the farmer's market, tractor repair shop, and on to the chores of the day.

A new menu

I have been a little behind on sharing menus. (Sorry Jenny... :)). It's getting to the tough part of the year to be inspired about eating. The first harvests are not all that far away, but we're still in the dregs of what's in the cellars—or forced to eat produce from the other side of the continent and beyond. It's also the time of year when the lull of January and February, when we stay home for a few weekends, has subsided. Schedules pick up, and every extra moment that isn't stolen by my paying job should be devoted to catching up on my garden chores. As always, I'm so far behind, I'll never catch up. Sigh.

On the menu

On the bright side, here's next week's menu, and it mostly means we don't need to stop at the grocery store this week.

• Sat: Chick pea salad with feta, parsley and lemony dressing
• Sun: Chicken stew
• (Meatless) Mon: Lentil soup and a big salad with bleu cheese dressing
• Tues: leftovers
• Wed: Roasted cauliflower with parsley pesto, roasted peppers and black beans
• Thurs: Garlic shrimp over wilted spinach
• Fri: headed up to Northport... veggies and black bean puree in the truck
• Saturday: something grilled in NP

Lunches: leftover soup and stew

Breakfast: yogurt, fresh juice, smoothies

Testing a juicer: Jack LaLanne's

Speaking of breakfast, we just got a juicer. They were on sale at Costco, and since I've been contemplating it for 15 years, I decided to just get one and try it. So far I have found:

• It takes a lot of carrots to make 2 glasses of juice
• It's probably great for my compost, but eventually I'll feel wasteful tossing all that pulp
• Garlic in the morning is not so much the ticket
• Carrots, spinach, lemons and celery taste a lot like V8 without the tomatoes and make a bracing but energizing breakfast

Speaking of breakfast... yogurt experiments

I have been in the last 3 months pretty much making all of our yogurt at home. I read something about a favorite milk producer giving in to Monsanto feed, and said EFF IT, I'm going to figure out how to make my own yogurt and cheese so I can buy milk from a neighbor I can trust.

So, for the moment, I'm getting all my milk from Hilhof Farms (via the health food store in town) until I can find a good dairy share where I can get cow's milk and goat's milk. And, here's what I'm learning:

• The first few times went great. Heat up the milk to about 140, cool to about 100, mix in jars with live yogurt culture, and let sit in the oven with the pilot on overnight. 
• The second few times..... not sure what happened. Flavor is great, but texture is too liquid. Either I'm not heating it enough, or the culture is weakened. We'll experiment with adding an actual bacterial culture to see what happens.

Credits

We'll use basic Cook's Illustrated recipes to make the lentil soup. I think I learned the Chick Pea Salad recipe from a Bon Appetit about a year ago. As always, props to Hilhof and Creswick Farms for our dairy and meat, and to the regular old grocery industry for the rest. I can't wait until we're more self-sufficient. I'm anxious to be in charge of my own food.

Now I better get to starting seeds, for real.

Spring is springing

Sarah and Bellamy, putting out the open sign for Tandem

Ten days ago, in Northport we enjoyed what might be the last big snow with friends. The adventure of lots of snow and no power, a great breakfast at Sarah and Steve's cabin, and one of the best days of the year so far, spent with the whole crew at Tandem Ciders, playing music, singing, and catching up.

Today is lovely and sunny, and the daffodils and crocuses are up and beginning to swell with buds. A bluebird is hanging out on top of the bird feeder post, just staring at me. It rained the first sweet-smelling rain of spring yesterday, and after the storms passed, the sunset brought fog and then clear stars. In the dark, I could hear the peeper frogs begin their first songs of the season. We are way ahead of ourselves... and it might very well snow again, but it is good to see the clear sun and feel its warmth.