A family member recently asked me if I should consider simplifying my life. Rather than spit out my tea, I spent a minute trying to imagine what that could mean. Last I checked, a simple life was defined by smaller houses, fewer commitments, fewer and smaller purchases, growing your own food, enjoying home-cooked meals instead of restaurant fare, making crafts and clothes instead of buying them, owning fewer and/or cheaper vehicles and so on. Going simple means giving up extravagant clothes, outings, events, vacations, trading all things status for all things green and earthy.
In the last few years I have left my job in the city, given up a commute, traded in new vehicles for old, assigned myself as the handywoman in charge of renovating our home, become a full time farmer, a stay-at-home mother, learned to raise all manner of meat, milk a cow, process most of my own food and committed to buy or borrow almost everything in my life second-hand. Am I not the flipping POSTER CHILD for the Simple Life?
Ah, look again.
On the flip side here’s how I would define a complicated life. Taking on too much. Forgetting to prioritize the things you think are most important in life. Spending time and money on things that serve frivolous means, not heartfelt ones. Forgetting to listen to your heart. Setting your family aside for the purpose of making money. Triple booking your schedule. Overspending on your bank account. Telling lies to yourself or others and having to cover your tracks.
In the past few years my life has included all of the above, except maybe the last thing. Although it is possible that I have been telling myself that I have been living the simple life. It turns out this would have been a lie.
What I have learned is that even in a field of green, one can have a temper tantrum. Even without the sounds of traffic and the scent of pollution, one can run circles around themselves and be held hostage by their own agendas and pressures. You can take the girl out the city but you can’t, apparently, take the city out of the girl.
Polite folks often comment on the lifestyle we have. They say things about peace and meaning and importance and all of that. I appreciate what they are saying. It is all true. However, what is missing from this description is how much the experience depends on the person experiencing it.
Oh, I’m an earthy girl. I am actually out of place in any city. I like what a city offers, but my bare feet feel far more at home on softer ground. I need the quiet. I need the living things, the green, the fresh air and wide-open sky. I prefer real food, straight from the soil and prepared the way it has been enjoyed for hundreds if not thousands of years. I like a banjo more than the electric guitar.
I prefer to take time to be quiet. To stay close to those I love. To be present. To breath often. To smells roses, if you will. But preference does not always make it so.
This girl left the city decades ago. But the person who strives to make her life better every second of every day has not gone away. The environment I live in affords me a certain peace and quiet. My personality does not. I can’t stop looking for a better way. I can’t put down the hammer, the whip, the map, the striving.
So it is for this reason that I will give full credit to the person who observed that perhaps my life could use some simplifying.
Every moment we are given a gift. The opportunity to observe what is going on right in front of us. No pressure, no expectation – just the way it is. So much beauty. So much laughter. Right at our fingertips. Softer ground.
Recently I have been caught up in the day-to-day chores. I exist as a robot meeting all of my obligations, forgetting what I am doing it all for. Pushing aside my children to make sure nothing is forgotten. All tasks are complete, nothing is wasted, potential profits are maximized. There have been so few moments that I have been present for.
Now I realize, none of it has to be that complicated. It doesn’t matter where you are. Simplicity is only ever one step away. Towards softer ground.
Friday, August 26, 2011
Tuesday, August 23, 2011
Granny Pickle Recipe
I was very pleased with how my pickles turned out. I used the recipe below. It seems complicated but there is very little to do each day. They are a sweet pickle and can be cut into any shape or size.
Good Luck!
Ingredients
8 – 5” cucumbers
Salt Brine
I Cup coarse (pickling) salt
First Solution:
2 Cups vinegar
4 Cups water
2 Tsp alum
Second Solution:
2 Cups White vinegar
2 Tsp pickling spice (example: dash of cumin, mustard powder, bay leaves, dried ginger, mustard seeds, celery seeds)
Method:
1. Wash cucumbers then cover in salt brine and let stand covered for 3 days
2. Drain then cover with cold water for 3 days (draining and covering with cold water each day)
3. Drain then cut into ½” chunks. Combine first solution and heat to boiling then pour over chunks and let stand 2 days.
4. Drain. Combine second solution and heat to boiling then pour over pickles and let stand 1 day.
5. Pour off liquid and reheat and pour over pickles again and let stand 1 day.
6. On third day pour off liquid and heat to boiling again. While liquid is heating pack pickles into sterilized jars then pour boiling syrup over them 1” shy of the top. Seal.
Good Luck!
Ingredients
8 – 5” cucumbers
Salt Brine
I Cup coarse (pickling) salt
First Solution:
2 Cups vinegar
4 Cups water
2 Tsp alum
Second Solution:
2 Cups White vinegar
2 Tsp pickling spice (example: dash of cumin, mustard powder, bay leaves, dried ginger, mustard seeds, celery seeds)
Method:
1. Wash cucumbers then cover in salt brine and let stand covered for 3 days
2. Drain then cover with cold water for 3 days (draining and covering with cold water each day)
3. Drain then cut into ½” chunks. Combine first solution and heat to boiling then pour over chunks and let stand 2 days.
4. Drain. Combine second solution and heat to boiling then pour over pickles and let stand 1 day.
5. Pour off liquid and reheat and pour over pickles again and let stand 1 day.
6. On third day pour off liquid and heat to boiling again. While liquid is heating pack pickles into sterilized jars then pour boiling syrup over them 1” shy of the top. Seal.
Sunday, August 21, 2011
We Belong to the World
Often before posting a revealing blog piece, I will run it by my husband to see if I’m saying too much. I do not seem to hold the concerns that others have about sharing too much information about myself.
On first glance, it would seem I am far too willing to tell my deepest, darkest secrets and fears to anyone who will listen. Does this make me self-absorbed, egotistical, navel-gazing? When a recent draft was quietly ‘rejected’ by my editor-in-chief (the guy I married), my defenses showed me something I hadn’t seen before.
I don’t think my experiences belong entirely to me. I feel responsibility for them. I think I have power over which way they go and how I react to them. But my life does not belong to me alone. I live on a planet with billions of other living things of all shapes and sizes be they human or bug and we interact daily whether I like it or not. Forces that nobody has any idea how to name, let alone control, are constantly at work. Even inside the universe we call the human body, chemicals are firing at rates that would astonish and overwhelm us if we were conscious of their doing.
As such, I don’t think my emotions belong entirely to me. I am a product of my environment. I am the summary of all these chemicals firing under my own skin and in my interactions with other beings. I conduct this orchestra with the small bit of brain I use but I don’t control all of the inputs and outputs.
If you believe in the theory that we are all One, as I do. That God is a thread that holds us all together, it is impossible to believe that everything you do belongs to you alone. That your ideas, feelings and thoughts are unique. It seems egotistical to me to assume others haven’t experienced the same.
I truly believe it is selfish NOT to share our perceptions with each other. One of the largest concerns of mothers that I know today is that they feel alone – they aren’t doing as good of a job as other mothers. One of the worst things I can do as a farmer is compare myself to another farmer. Every woman I know wishes she had another woman’s body, brain or life. Every living space (be it a family, a body or a piece of land) is so different that to assume one could expect or force the same results into all systems is ludicrous!
Yet in tiny ways, every day, similarities show their little heads. The basic truth of who we are and how the world works reveals itself and sets us free. I think this is what we call ‘seeing God’. Suddenly the world makes sense. Suddenly the notes we play on our instruments are crystal clear. Suddenly we are finding just the right thing to say. Suddenly the tomato plant is 6 feet tall. Suddenly a child is laughing so loud you swear you can hear angels singing or fairy wings flapping. For a tiny moment.
That’s all we get to keep are the small moments. A friend recently shared her husband’s excellent view of happiness. How we find it only in small windows, glimpses that make the whole picture more beautiful. Our lives are not meant to be the stuff of wedding days. Even your French fries can get cold at Disney World where our troubles are meant to disappear. We must steal these important moments and hold them as our own.
On the other side, we must also own the scary moments. And be willing to open them up to the world, I believe. Let some light in on them. Not flippantly. Not dangerously. Share them carefully in the right places at the right times so that others may know the most important thing we are meant to know in this world. We are not alone.
In the words of Ani Difranco in her song ‘Joyful Girl’: “The world owes me nothing. We owe each other the world.” Not to treat the world as a dumping ground for our negativity. But to belong to the world in the state that you are in – good or bad. And let the world hold you in it – as you are.
So, I do not believe in keeping things to myself quite like others do. I do not believe that the things that make me human are ‘private’ and best kept to myself. It isn’t because I lost a filter along the way. With as much heart as possible, I have the intention of holding up this one window to the world and maybe just maybe it will act as a mirror for someone else. This is the same kind of mirror that others have so generously held up for me – directing light on the dark places - for most of the years of my life.
Thank you to all of those who offered tiny glimpses of their lives in writing, in song, in their artistic creations. I see you. And you have made me feel more human.
And far less alone.
On first glance, it would seem I am far too willing to tell my deepest, darkest secrets and fears to anyone who will listen. Does this make me self-absorbed, egotistical, navel-gazing? When a recent draft was quietly ‘rejected’ by my editor-in-chief (the guy I married), my defenses showed me something I hadn’t seen before.
I don’t think my experiences belong entirely to me. I feel responsibility for them. I think I have power over which way they go and how I react to them. But my life does not belong to me alone. I live on a planet with billions of other living things of all shapes and sizes be they human or bug and we interact daily whether I like it or not. Forces that nobody has any idea how to name, let alone control, are constantly at work. Even inside the universe we call the human body, chemicals are firing at rates that would astonish and overwhelm us if we were conscious of their doing.
As such, I don’t think my emotions belong entirely to me. I am a product of my environment. I am the summary of all these chemicals firing under my own skin and in my interactions with other beings. I conduct this orchestra with the small bit of brain I use but I don’t control all of the inputs and outputs.
If you believe in the theory that we are all One, as I do. That God is a thread that holds us all together, it is impossible to believe that everything you do belongs to you alone. That your ideas, feelings and thoughts are unique. It seems egotistical to me to assume others haven’t experienced the same.
I truly believe it is selfish NOT to share our perceptions with each other. One of the largest concerns of mothers that I know today is that they feel alone – they aren’t doing as good of a job as other mothers. One of the worst things I can do as a farmer is compare myself to another farmer. Every woman I know wishes she had another woman’s body, brain or life. Every living space (be it a family, a body or a piece of land) is so different that to assume one could expect or force the same results into all systems is ludicrous!
Yet in tiny ways, every day, similarities show their little heads. The basic truth of who we are and how the world works reveals itself and sets us free. I think this is what we call ‘seeing God’. Suddenly the world makes sense. Suddenly the notes we play on our instruments are crystal clear. Suddenly we are finding just the right thing to say. Suddenly the tomato plant is 6 feet tall. Suddenly a child is laughing so loud you swear you can hear angels singing or fairy wings flapping. For a tiny moment.
That’s all we get to keep are the small moments. A friend recently shared her husband’s excellent view of happiness. How we find it only in small windows, glimpses that make the whole picture more beautiful. Our lives are not meant to be the stuff of wedding days. Even your French fries can get cold at Disney World where our troubles are meant to disappear. We must steal these important moments and hold them as our own.
On the other side, we must also own the scary moments. And be willing to open them up to the world, I believe. Let some light in on them. Not flippantly. Not dangerously. Share them carefully in the right places at the right times so that others may know the most important thing we are meant to know in this world. We are not alone.
In the words of Ani Difranco in her song ‘Joyful Girl’: “The world owes me nothing. We owe each other the world.” Not to treat the world as a dumping ground for our negativity. But to belong to the world in the state that you are in – good or bad. And let the world hold you in it – as you are.
So, I do not believe in keeping things to myself quite like others do. I do not believe that the things that make me human are ‘private’ and best kept to myself. It isn’t because I lost a filter along the way. With as much heart as possible, I have the intention of holding up this one window to the world and maybe just maybe it will act as a mirror for someone else. This is the same kind of mirror that others have so generously held up for me – directing light on the dark places - for most of the years of my life.
Thank you to all of those who offered tiny glimpses of their lives in writing, in song, in their artistic creations. I see you. And you have made me feel more human.
And far less alone.
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