The Neighbor's Woods

Mother’s Day always puts me in mind of Schaub’s woods. The neighboring farm had a block of woods within walking distance of our farm. In the old days, and often now still farmers have a few acres of woods here and there. In days gone by it was used as a good place to make firewood. Often cows were pastured there, finding deep shade and comfort there. I found deep shade and comfort there too. I still do. Mama hikes there still.

The steers with the woods in the
background in the spring.

 I spent a lot of time in those woods as a kid. Mother’s day was was usually the first trek. By then it wasn’t as muddy, and made for good walking. Each year I went on a walk to gather wild flowers for Mama. By mother’s Day the trilliums were growing thick. I remember the first time I picked one for Mama because it was so pretty and Mama told me not to. You see, a trillium is a delicate plant that takes a long time to grow. My little brain couldn’t quite fathom how a flower that grew so thickly in our neighboring woods could be endangered. My little bouquet had all sorts of early spring gems in it; strawberry blossoms, and my personal favorite - violets! I spent the an hour in the outhouse, hiding, so I could assemble the most perfect corsage. 

My daughter on the rock.

The woods was and still is a lovely place on a summers day. It is shady and cool, and if it weren’t for the bugs, it would heaven. In heaven, I imagine there are no skeeters. The canopy didn’t let a lot of light through. It was dim, and I followed the paths left by the deer, avoiding the sharp brambles that grew on the forest floor.  I spent hours there. I built tipis and other lodges along the creek; the same creek that crossed though our own pasture. I watched the birds and the squirrels while sitting in the great oak that had been taken down in a storm. It had all sorts of comfy places to snuggle in with some snacks and a book. There was also a huge rock. The kind with the holes in it like Swiss cheese and was fun to perch on. If nature built a stage it would be that rock. It has a rugged sort of beauty folks now days would call “primitive.”

Come Christmas time, Mama hiked to the woods with her Ash splint, pack basket to gather greenery to decorate the house. The house smelled delicious after those trips. 

In the crisp cold of January, I snowshoed  or cross country skied to the woods. Sometimes I brought friends along, but often I went alone. Myself as a lost trekker in the Alaskan wilderness, that instantly disappeared as soon as my cherry nose smelled fresh ginger cake just out of the cook stove oven, and I was back in my cozy house in Wisconsin. 

In the fall, Pa and I rode our horses to the woods. Pa on one of the many bays and me on good ol’ Sam or eventually my own horse. We galloped up the hill and plodded quietly though the peaceful woods. Peaceful except when Pa left a branch swing back and hit me in the face, giggling as we do when out for a ride. We came out on the back side of the woods, further than I often went on my own, and circled back towards home. When we crested the hill. The horses chomped on their bit begging us to turn them loose for home, but we never did. Any horsemen worth his salt won't give a horse its head returning to the barn. Holding them at a walk, we plodded back into the yard. Just in time for chore time and a cup of tea.

The rainbow ending in the woods as it often did.

I truly hope these treasured little pockets of woods are something that is always there. Schaub’s woods hold a few little plants found very few other places. They are little glimpse of what was. If you look closely and listen hard you can probably still hear the people who once called the land home, or catch a glimpse of the cows that sought its cool shade in summer pasture. Little places where generations of kids got lost until suppertime and I can’t imagine the world without such places. 

The Kitchen Range and Other Warm Things

When my parents bought the palace back in 87,’ there was no central heating system. Life without central heat means a variety of things; keeping cupboard doors open to avoid frozen pipes, frost on the upper level ceilings, but also a nice place to preheat your pants before you put them on in the frosty February mornings. 

I loved reading about Laura and Mary Ingalls being shoveled out of their bed when it snowed in the Little Town on the Prairie book because it was almost the same as waking up with frost on the ceiling like I did. No matter how you stoke a stove, it usually doesn’t throw a lot of heat after not being tended most of the night. I was in about 1st grade when we finally did get central heat. My folks exclusively used that for a few years, basking the the break from chopping an hauling wood. Then one, crisp day a fire in the parlor stove was suggested and now the thermostat is really only there to prevent the pipes from freezing, or for days when there hasn’t been anyone in the house to tend the fire all day. Most cold days the stoves burn and crackle merrily, inviting us to gather round. 

Mama will tell you that the break up of the American family was not TV or video games or most of these other contraptions, though I am sure they haven’t helped. The real culprit is central heat systems. Teenagers spend much less time alone in their rooms when it is 45 degrees there. Families gather by the fire - where they won't freeze to death. There we sat. Pa in his chair with a book in his lap, maybe he is momentarily napping. Tea cup on the walnut table nearby. Mama in in her chair with her stack to books and a notebook with her cup of tea in one hand while she reads. And there is me, knees up in another chair with a book of my own, or a sewing project on my lap - turning button holes. The parlor stove has a glass window in it. Sometimes I would pretend it was a TV when I was a kid. I had all those videos of the fireplace burning way before it was cool. There is something deeply comforting about it, which is probably why they make it a setting on the TV nowadays.

Lack of central heat also means the existence of the kitchen range. The first kitchen range had belonged to me Great-Grandma on my mother’s mother’s side. Maybe even my Great-Great-Grandma since no one can remember how long it was at their farm. Grandma and her siblings broke the oven door from sitting on it on their frosty mornings in their childhood. A lovely 1930’s Kalamazoo stove that was green - little lime, little pistachio, little key lime all mixed up in the same color, with almond accents on the doors and the backsplash.  It had an oven, cooking range, water reservoir on the right end, and a warming shelf up top. 

Kitchen ranges make it easier to get out of bed for kids in the morning. If you know Mama already has a fire roaring in there you make a mad dash for the cozy kitchen and your oatmeal tastes that much better. I spent my winters before school sprinting down the freezing cold stairs and stuffing my clothes in the warming oven of the kitchen range. There is hardly a better feeling than putting on cozy warm clothes that smell like fresh baked bread, and burn your skin in places.  In the days after central heat was installed, there were days when the stove wasn’t lit yet when I got up and it was the biggest letdown ever. I dash to the kitchen and find it cold - it takes everything a girl has not to dash back to her hopefully still warm bed and try again later. It is warmer in bed - plus there are books!

The Kalamazoo fed my imagination and  childhood obsession with being Laura. Mama could scold me throughly by saying "Laura" in a certain tone that all mothers know and it worked even though my name wasn't Laura. When I was old enough to cook. I dressed in my Civil War reenacting dresses and cooked from the Laura Ingalls cook book on the kitchen range. One recipe I made was ox tail soup. The old Kalamazoo was a comfort in kitchen. My friends and I baked from the American Girl cookbooks in it and fashioned our gingerbread houses next to its warm presence.

As a child Mama and I visited many historical sites and museums over the years. Many guides had much different expectations for a kid my age. “And do you know what this is?” The kind lady asked motioning to the far right end of the old Kalamazoo kitchen range in the museum kitchen. “That’s the water reservoir.” I stated, and the kind, elderly lady was surprised. She looked at my Mama and back at me. “We have one at home,” I said, “it has water in it too.” It is perhaps one of my favorite things about being raised as I was - shocking old people with my rad knowledge of old things they don’t expect to find in a person my age.

That Kalamazoo was a good old stove, but for Mama’s 40th birthday we got a brand new, Waterford Stanley cook stove shipped all the way from Ireland and it is wonderful. While the old Kalamazoo was a good stove, but Stanley is solid cast, heats hotter, and has a real warming oven instead of a shelf. Stanley is forest green with black trim. Perfectly cozy. Mama’s first test was making tea, and if I remember right, she went from building a fire to boiling water in somewheres around 20 minutes. In the colder months, the tea kettle can be found at the back of the range waiting and ready to be pulled to the hot spot for a needed cup of tea. 

Stanley the Stove

Stanley has a cast iron, tight sealing oven. Especially when it was new. This heats far more evenly than the old Kalamazoo and it also heats much hotter. Once when baking with a friend, we left the kitchen before the last tray of cookies were out of the oven and Mama found them later in the week as charred, blobs that resembled a hockey puck more than a cookie. When she went to thrown them into into the fire, they came off as ash. No one ever smelled them though. 

In truth, I don’t know how people survive holiday meal preparations without an old style cooking range. Stanley’s warming oven is packed full while certain dishes wait for others to be ready. Pans are pushed back and forth across the top from the hot side to the cooler side as they cook. Mama has both the electric stove and Stanley blazing with all the good aromas spilling from the kitchen. The activity and stove makes it warmer and cozier than any other place in the house. Every time I walk in I thank the Lord that holidays are in the colder weather so we can all enjoy the convince and comfort of the old kitchen range. The rest of the family gathers around the parlor stove. I can’t imagine what we would do in July. Though, I suppose that is why folks grill out for the 4th of July. 

Still, a kitchen with a good, wood fired, kitchen range is homey to me. The whole kitchen seems to glow with its warm readiness. Nowadays, I always feel like something is missing in the modern kitchen. There are tasks I do where I wish I had one. Days where my modern stove stays on all day to simmer a sauce or cook down the last bit of maple syrup. Days where I wish I could just push those kettles to the back of the range and leave them there. The original “set it and forget it” cooker. I miss the beauty of sliding a pan across the stove top to find just the right spot. When the weather turns cold perhaps most of all, I miss wearing warm clothes just out of the warming oven while I drink my morning tea.

Minimalism is Lame and No One Should Do It

It has been a crazy past few weeks here, our family just having lost great friend and mentor Neil Ostberg. It causes a body to look down the road to perhaps one’s own demise and what will happen to a life’s work. 

There are plenty of things in these modern times telling us to be minimalists. It’s the “in” thing. How to downsize your closet. Never have more than thirty books. If you haven’t used it in a year - get rid of it. All of this while simultaneously selling mass consumerism - get every gadget you probably don’t need super fast by telling Alexa you need it so it appears on your doorstep the next day. 

Neil's Diagram of the Button Lathe
 that is now mine.

Neil(some of his work can be found here, Dude and Rusty and Pa make an appearance too), passed on like we all will someday. How we first met Neil is too early for my memory to know, but I do know it had something to do with Pa building his Kentucky long rifle. I can also remember snippets of conversations over various things Pa built over the years. "You should paint the Windsor chair black and then strip it." because that is the best finish for a Windsor chair apparently. "and why not cast a thousand brass tacks for this project?" I don’t really think the "how we met" is the important part of the story here. The important part is that Neil, like those in my family, was not a minimalist. Defiantly not. Upon his death, his widow and her children were left with masses of stuff to sort through and find new homes for his lifetime of collecting. A first look at the situation left me feeling sad and depressed. Staring at the tables filled with things that he had collected over the years, the stories they held, and the bizarre gadgets and tools few people would even be able to identify let alone what to do with. Old junk some might say. The second look at the situation brought opportunity. I realized how much Neil passed to Pa. The same sorts of tools, and a very similar style of building things. Two things, which I think I have always known, became glaringly obvious. One, minimalism is lame and no one should do it, and two, bizarre old junk is and will always be the foundation for creation, creativity, preservation, and most importantly, handwork.  

Here are my notes on the subject - 

Where a minimalist probably would have had a heart attack, there was a gathering of people and their minds to pour over Neil’s collection. Even in death this gathering of thoughts continued. What if the point is not the mountain of stuff he accumulated during his life, but the mountain on knowledge he accumulated? What if the point is not the buildings packed with tools, artifacts, and broken things, but instead things to be fixed and skills learned. More importantly, the people who learned so much from him over the years. What if it is the same is for you? Not the things in the back of your closet or the junk in your craft room, but the skills and knowledge you accumulate in your mind and hands- and, most importantly, can you have one without the other? I don’t think so.

We are all taught in some way or form to work. How to keep a tidy space, how get our school work done, how to apply ourselves to an extra curricular activity - but at the same time, few are taught what they are capable. How to make and create with our hands the way our foremothers and fathers did. Laura Ingalls Wilder committed her whole girlhood to stacks of legal pads with a pen, by hand, and I am reminded of my shortcomings as I type the story of mine on my MacBook. While I think we can take this all too far, I mean, Laura didn’t make her ink and use a homemade quill. Perhaps it is a bigger accomplishment, or even a bigger self satisfaction results in staring at a stack of legals pads filled with ones own story verses my product which is a one inch icon on the upper left corner of my home screen.  No matter what way the writing is done, there are still tools and a finished product in evidence. Is it really clutter?

Somewhere is the mess of consumerism and minimalism, we are loosing skills. Mama never learned to spin by throwing her spinning wheel onto the burn pile. Pa never learned anything because he owned less than 30 books. Even though progress demands that more skills be honed, it also demands that some be lost - unless we hide them away in out closets, craft rooms and workshops. Important to save because newer is not always better, and because there is always more than one way to do something and some things are just plain enjoyable. Too enjoyable to throw away. 

In my journey through the world of historical things, I settled into sewing and dressmaking as a comfortable spot. Through the years I have made many beautiful dresses and tailored items for menfolk. But! In 2019 I made my first gown entirely by hand sewing. An adventure into eighteenth century impressions, left me with the need and want to make a gown with the appropriate techniques. I began the intimidating project by investing in quality fabrics and turned out a nice gown I am rather proud of. So far- out of everything I have made, my eighteenth century clothing is that which I am most proud of because I made it with my hands. My many times great grandmothers sewed with the same techniques and stitches I hadn’t heard of because Singer made it easier, but not necessarily better. So, I relearned the stitches, and the gown is better for it. 

The recaned chair

We live in a consumer culture. You know why Facebook is filled with notes on purging our houses and becoming minimalist? Because there is no pride of ownership, or investment of self in plastic things from China and ikea furniture. Nothing is learned. The cure for a consumer culture isn’t minimalism, it is handwork and skill. Handwork is an investment in ourselves that cannot be undone. It helps us grow in ways that a big box store can’t. It gives us skills and teaches us life lessons along the way. The new dress or book shelf is really a bonus. And when I die, and my body is committed to the ground, and my stuff divided up, it is my hope that the skills are divided up too. Neil’s things are all scattered to the four winds now, but his knowledge and the things he taught everyone who crossed his path are all still here too. In some ways the non tangible things are attached to the tangible. I took an old chair, spinning wheel, and button lathe from the sale. I have re-caned the seat of the chair, oiled up the spinning wheel, and am still tackling the button lathe… learning lives in it still, even after all these years. If I hadn’t picked these things up from Neil I likely never would have tried any of these things, and I am sure I am not alone in this. 

My Son and the new/old
spinning wheel 

Given my experience and that of my family, I invite everyone - no - I challenge you all create with your hands. Make great-grandma’s pie recipe from scratch and bake it in her old pan - no premade crust, no instant pudding. Build that book shelf you always wanted, and don’t be afraid to carve those joints out by hand - our forefathers had spectacular tools for this that can still be found if you are willing to look. Sew the dress with just your needle, thread, and thimble. Will it be hard? Yup. Will you get super frustrated at some point? Also yes. Will you learn something? Absolutely. And will it become one of your most treasured things because of all of the challenges? Defiantly! 

When someone close to you passes on, take one of their torches and keep it lit. Light someone else’s torch with yours, and pass it on. Lest we forget what out hands and minds can do.  

Cabin Fever

Jack Frost paints pictures on the window panes at night until I can’t see out of them anymore. The ornate ice crystal pictures that creep up the windows are one of the things I miss now that I live in a house with new fangled, double pane windows. Pa tried to sell the old wooden windows to a window salesman on the phone once. 
“ You got any of those old time, drafty, wooden windows? No? Hmmm. I tell ya what.” I am sure the telemarketer never had a conversation like that before and probably won’t again.  

To scratch a place to look out window with my fingernail is to ruin Jack’s masterpiece, but sometimes I can’t resist holding my face close to the chilly glass and letting my breath melt away a peep hole. If I do I can see out how the drifts wash across the fields like white waves and I am imagining I am lost at sea. The wind picks ups ice crystals of snow and slows them in billowing clouds of ocean spay across the open space.  Perhaps an arctic explorer. I wouldn’t be surprised if a polar bear went strolling by. It is quite the contrast to the warm golden sea it will be in just seven short months, a lifetime away when I am looking out the window on a January morning. 

Snow gathers in drifts across the driveway at the end of the shed and the space between the house and the old wood shop.  Pa pushes it up onto piles where I pretend I am an ice queen in her castle, long before Frozen in the a glimmer in Disney’s eye. 

Winter activities include our usual barn chores. The horses come in every night, so the stalls need to be cleaned on a weekly basis. Formerly done on Saturday mornings, this task is now done as needed. 
Firewood is hauled to the house daily. And some years we spend some of the winter in the woods making firewood. Chain saws echo in the empty woods with no leaves to soften the sound. Mama and I haul wood to the truck or wagon and stack it neatly, making every trip count. 

Over the years Pa has pulled a few vehicles around in the snow. Before the days of tractors and newfangled equipment on the farm. Pa plowed snow Dude and Rusty. If it snowed while he was away at work, he pulled the two wheel drive truck into the driveway as far as he could and then walked the rest of the way to the house. After supper, he hitched the team and pulled the truck to its usual parking spot with the team and then plowed out the driveway with and old road grater. 

Winter driving in Wisconsin becomes a survival skill. In the rural country side this sometimes means knowing the roads well enough to estimate where the road is supposed to be. Pa’s parting line is “Keep it between the fenceposts” and this phrase calls to mind wind blown snowy fields that blend into the road.  If you are lucky enough to have fence posts, your chances of staying on the road and between them(Of course this phrase can also be applied to trips home from the typical Wisconsin small town on a Saturday night - and I’ll give you a clue its isn’t from the church, it’s from the only other establishment in town.). You can only keep it between the fence posts if there are fenceposts though. 

One of the best and most memorable times of putting a car in the ditch is the time Mama and I were headed to school in a near blizzard when I was in grade school. There is/was an intersection just down the road where there is nothing but fields and no road signs. Mama says to me “I think it should be about here.” Referring to the road that was neatly blended into the ocean of drifted snow across the fields. “Wrong!” She declared when our car fell through the drifts and landed in the neighbor’s hay field. “And this is why you never leave home without hats and mittens.” She reminded me. We walked home, up the hill and into the wind. School ended up being canceled early that day. It didn’t matter to me, I was snug by the fire in my little frosted, window house. Later that day Pa came home wondering why the car was sitting in an open field. Turns out over the course of the day the snow drifted away from the car and a good share of it was deposited under the hood. Pa’s plan to start it up and drive it home was foiled. Since our truck was only 2 wheel drive at the time, Pa hitched up Dude and Rusty, ground drove them down the road dragging the evener along. He and the neighbor pulled the car home with the team. The heaved over the plowed embankment with the neighbor in the car and Pa driving. Pa slipped and fell and the neighbor had a mild panic attack at the thought of being in a vehicle without steering, breaks, and limited visibility since no one really bothered to clear the windshield of more than a two inch hole, but Pa popped up again and all was well.  I couldn’t see it from my cozy spot peeping though the hole in the frosty glass at home, but I imaged Pa riding on the hood of the car like king. It probably didn’t really happen like that, but that’s how it lives in my mind. 

In my free time, which I had a lot of between school and the few chores I managed to dodge, I enjoyed snowshoeing and cross country skiing to the neighbor’s woods and back. I shared this favorite past time with a few friends. Anneke was and still is a dear friend who enjoyed a good bit of dress up and a trip down the trail. At her house we packed a neat little lunch of cheese, wholesome bread, a bit of fruit and stroopwaffels. Stroopwaffels before they were cool and found in every trendy grocery store - because she is half dutch and stroopwaffels are as loved as tulips I like to think. We would disappear for the afternoon or at least until our toes went numb. Snow blind and chilled we then baked sweet treats and brewed cocoa or tea, sang rounds at the piano, and played games. 

Indoors, tea cups warm our hands and hearts as we go through our days. In The Morning It’s Tea You Want, is the name of a fiddle tune Pa plays, but we still have it with lunch and supper too. Also for second breakfast and another means in between. Pa starts talking about lumberjacks access. The very coldest days with blowing snow that cause most folks to barricade themselves indoors, he meets with gusto because - Lumberjacks. Lumberjack weather requires vast amounts of tea and doughnuts, though the later is a treat for us. Pa comes in from the barn with his beard covered in ice and snow and cold radiates from him like a freezer. Icicles dangling from his mustache and beard. Its nothing that a cup of tea and the parlor stove can’t fix up right quick. The winter solstice activities become a nightly ritual but without the Christmas tree.

Mama and Pa always read the “Old Oak” from the Sand County Almanac on New Year’s. A careful study of the advancing of the years though the life of an old oak tree. Each ring tells a story, just like us, but perhaps keeping a better chronology of the passage of time that our jumble of memories, where no two accounts of the same event seem to be a like. The coldest days of winter seem to advance the year at a snails pace, by fall it is flying by at break neck speeds. A bit like the beginning of a snowball - it is small at first and grows quickly as it advances. The activities of the farm gather momentum as we hurtle awards spring. Seeds are ordered, Pa begins to think of planing time, and what adventures the new summer will bring. Threshing time is indeed always just around the corner no matter how blustery it is out the frozen windows.