a man and his hoe

every day is a good day

Category: Reflections

Give Us This Day

Every day I appreciate how generous nature is. You don’t have to give nature much of a garden to supply you with more food than you can ever eat. After eating more radishes than you can stomach, you get to play around and see what happens when you don’t pick a radish when it’s ready. Here’s a radish past its prime, and yet it’s more beautiful than ever.

Nature’s generosity reminds me of the part of the Lord’s Prayer which says, “Give us this day our daily bread.” I smiled when I thought about that phrasing: give us. It’s not, give us our daily bread in exchange for eight hours of hard labor, or give us our daily bread if we agree to take a drug test, or promise not to misbehave. It’s just: give us, the way nature works: give, give, give.

November 12, 2015
It Only Happens Once a Year

It only happens once a year, that magical first day of frost. A clear cold night and this morning the grass, fallen leaves, toadstools, and vegetables were fringed with frost. First frost happens only once a year, which means it should be a holiday, right? Reason to close the schools, shutter the businesses, shut down the freeways, and give everyone the day off to live?

Everyone is working too hard these days. There really are no days off left anymore. Even on Thanksgiving the stores are open and the serfs are forced to toil past midnight to appease the 0.001%. How does that make anyone happy? How did we end up in this feudal system again, the masses working for a handful of lords and ladies? Wasn’t the French Revolution supposed to free the masses? No one is allowed to live anymore, which is why we need a system of spontaneous holidays. First frost could be one of them. No one would know when they are coming. There would be a special Department of Firsts in every county. On momentous occasions like First Frost, First Snow, First Cherry Blossom, and so on, the Department of Firsts would declare a Momentous Holiday. All stores, banks, businesses would be shut, schools let out, and to make sure people took the holiday and lived instead of working, the freeways and airports would all be closed. At least a few days a year, the freeways need to be off limits. No one should be allowed to drive. Everyone should be perfectly still and spend at least ten minutes, five at least, and enjoy an earth with no sound except that of the first frost growing on the fallen leaves.

November 10, 2015
If You Can Wipe a Baby’s Butt

If you can wipe a baby’s butt, you can make sausage from scratch. This summer we purchased half of a pig from Akyla Farms. They raised ten pigs on pasture on the banks of the Skagit River in Birdsview. They slaughtered the pigs on October 30. After slaughtering, the carcasses were going into town to be cut and wrapped, but I had to go out to the pasture where they were slaughtering the pigs, to pick up the small intestines. I’d requested them as I wanted to try making sausages.

I brought the small intestines home, hooked one end to a hose in the yard and cleaned them out for an initial cleansing. Then I took them inside to thoroughly clean them by hooking one end to the faucet and running water through them until the water ran clear. You know, if you’ve wiped a baby’s butt, you can do this. There is food matter being digested inside the small intestines, but it isn’t until this matter enters the large intestine that the liquids are absorbed and feces formed. What is in the small intestines is more like green baby spit. Ever have a baby throw up on your shoulder? If that didn’t kill you, this won’t either.

Running water through the small intestines made me realize how amazing they are. The membrane is so thin and yet strong. Pigs and humans have very similar internal organs, and looking at and feeling the small intestines made me realize how dependent we are on these living translucent tubes. All our food goes through them and we get many of our nutrients through these tubes of paper thin membranes. A human’s small intestines are about seven meters long, or around twenty three feet. Think of a garden hose that long and how flexible it would need to be to fit inside your belly. One little puncture wound and it is all over. I’ll never look at knitting needles again. They are sharp and long enough to cause a lot of damage. Maybe knitters should wear puncture proof vests just in case they fall over on their knitting needles. If you are around knitters, maybe you need to be extra cautious.

We picked up our cut and wrapped half a pig on Saturday, and yesterday, we mixed ground pork, ground pork belly, cooked brown rice, a bowl of crushed garlic, a handful of dill weed, allspice, cumin, coriander, pepper, and salt in a big bowl, and then stuffed the mixture into the clean small intestines. We made about ten feet of sausage. Some we formed into rings. Some we formed into links. We had no idea what it would taste like. We were not prepared. My expectations were somewhat along the lines of the sausage from the store. The flavor of these homemade sausages blew our minds away. We kept saying, “Wow!” over and over again. We had no idea sausage could taste this good.

Making our own sausage from scratch was one of those life changing moments, like the first time I pulled a carrot out of the ground and ate it, the first time I plucked an apple off the tree, or the first time I butchered a chicken and discovered that it was nothing like what is sold in the supermarkets. I’ve cleaned baby bottoms that were a lot worse than the small intestines of that pig. So if you find the idea of making sausages from scratch daunting, remember, if you can wipe a baby’s butt, you can do it.

November 9, 2015
Swans-here, Swans-there

Today was an auspicious day. The start of Swans-here. Hearing their distinct honking, we looked up into today’s blue sky and were dazzled by a flock of swans flying in off the bay. There are really only two seasons in the Skagit Valley, the time when the swans are here, known as Swans-here, and the time when the swans are away, called Swans-there. Where? Out there, where you can’t see them. All the other seasons are subsets of these two distinct times.

Around when November begins, the swans start flying in from their summer homes in the far north. If you see them for the first time on November 1, it’s particularly auspicious. They leave in early April and once they are gone, we are in Swans-there. During Swans-there, the whole activity of the valley revolves around preparing for Swans-here, making sure that plenty of crops are grown and harvested so that when the swans arrive, there are acres of good stubble and potato buds for them to savor through the rainy winter. The belief is that if the swans leave satisfied, that year’s crops will be exceptional. If the swans leave discontented, it means we have to try harder. The world would come to an end if they decided not to come back. Then we’d be stuck in Swans-there forever.

November 2, 2015
Flinstonian

I describe this salad fork and spoon set as Flinstonian. The woodcarver who made these, Allen Berry, sells his creations at Bow Little Market and the Mt. Vernon’s Farmer Market. He creates an assortment of boxes, spatulas, stirring spoons, salad forks and spoons, knitting needles, spindles, and other wood wonders. If you don’t live in the area, there must be an Allen Berry in your neighborhood who whittles wood into salad forks and spoons you can use.

November begins with rain, rain, rain, like it always does in this neck of the woods. Every thing is wet and lush. The rain intensifies the fall colors. They pop out when you walk through the woods.

November 1, 2015