This weekend was a birthday weekend.  Last year during  Adam’s birthday, I was in my first trimester of pregnancy.  I slept a minimum of eleven hours a night and subsisted on little more than oranges and toast.  This year, I baked Adam’s cake during naptime and we toted Reed along to brunch with Adam’s parents. Afterward, my husband requested the two of us get a coffee all by ourselves. We did, and it was wonderful.

Twenty-six.  I like the number.  It seems warm and fun and steady.  I expressed this to Adam, and he said that he prefers twenty-five.  Either way, it is fun to watch him turn another year older.  So very very fun.   I love him and like him, and I am glad he is alive and growing older.

Shortly after Reed was born, we filled our freezer with half a hog.  It was a beautiful sight, all the crisp paper parcels stacked in the deep freeze  ready to feed us through the winter.  The shoulder roasts vanished first.  Then, during a split pea soup craze, the hocks.  We made the belly into home cured salt bacon and quickly gorged our way through 2/3 of that.  Even our seemingly endless reserves of pork chops dwindled.

By February, the majority of what was left were “project cuts.”  Pork livers for pate (do I even like pate?).  A giant bag of fat (that’s right, a giant bag of fat) to be rendered into lard.  And the ham.  The 25lb fresh ham ready to be thawed, cured and hung.  But 25 lb hams are kind of intimidating.

This afternoon, Adam and I got that ham (#38) all boxed up in salt and injected with brine.  It was pretty fun, sticking such a boulder of meat with a giant needle.  For the next 40 days, I’ll be tending the ham like a tender little plant.  And then we’ll hang it for months and months and months.  If all goes well, we’ll have a gorgeous ham to hack beautiful slivers from come Christmas.  Ham failure, I hear, smells quite putrid.  Either way, I’ve been having a blast.  The meat is beautiful, and I have really enjoyed working with it.

Working with meat used to intimidate me.  I hated the factory farm meat industry (still do), and didn’t really know how to go about buying it.  So, as a single lady, I probably ate meat once a month.  If that.  After I got married, Adam and I together began to figure out our ways, and I got more comfortable with meat, incorporating it into our dinners once or twice a week.  But I still didn’t know a chuck roast from a flank steak.  Then, last summer, I got this book.  I read it cover to cover and carried it with me for weeks.  I ordered half a hog from a responsible local farmer, butchered, but otherwise untouched.

We’ve been learning as we go.  And not all of our “project cuts” have turned out perfectly.  But it has been incredibly satisfying, and, truly, a good deal easier than I anticipated.

If you live in Wisconsin, you can find sources for local meat here.  Let me know if you have had any interesting experiences with meat or making things you never thought you could make.

It’s now all wrinkled happy from being worn well, but #36 is completed.

It has been busy.  I would write more, but I will take this small sliver of time after the boy is asleep and before I am to work on 2 and 10.

March is one of my most favorite times of year.  Happy spring, friends.

My family and I are just getting back into the swing of things after a big wonderful wedding weekend (such big adventures can be tiring for tiny boys!).  Upon returning home we ate some lazy meals, watched a movie or two, went hunting for our camera (we left it at my parents house), and got the house somewhat in order again.

And now the week begins.  I love Monday mornings.  I love the return to the day-to-day routine, the fresh beginning of a week spread out ahead like newly tilled ground.

I love Monday mornings.  I love my work, and I believe in my work.  Caring for a child.  Buying food from people who care well for the land and its creatures.  Praying.  Praying to learn generosity.  Praying to learn thankfulness.  Practicing the craft of thrift.  Practicing the art of sales resistance.  Making mistakes.  Making yogurt.  Trying to keep the dishes done and the floor clean.  Trying to keep up with correspondences.  Failing often.  Nursing.  Knitting.  Tending my body and this tiny patch of earth I inhabit.  I believe our small, daily acts such as these are the truest form of activism.  I believe they are a vocation.  I believe they are my calling for this time and place.

I am reading Sex, Economy, Freedom & Community by Wendell Berry again, for the fifth(?) time since I bought it just over a year ago. I often think about that passage I quoted in that post about using the health of one’s community to chose.  People are usually surprised that I don’t use a breast pump (which in itself says a lot).  Aware that it is a very personal decision, they usually don’t ask why, and I am grateful for that.  My choice not to pump came after reading this article passed on to me by a coworker (I hadn’t thought much about it before).

I think having the option to breast pump is a wonderful, wonderful thing.  It gives so much freedom to women who love their work and can take care of their family (and themselves!) best by working away from home and providing good care for their babies during the day.

But what about the women working at Woodman’s who can hardly afford to take their much needed, but still unpaid, maternity leave?  What about women who can afford neither quality day care nor staying home to take care of their infant themselves (Imagine how different this country would be if all women got nine months paid maternity leave like women living in Norway recieve)?  Pumping is not a substitute for paid maternity leave or on-site day-care.  Giving mothers the ability to work is good, but that allowance often turns into requirement.  And those bearing the brunt of that are the low-wage workers.  I wish it weren’t that way.

So I breastfeed.  And on very rare occasions of great importance (for example, standing up in my best friend’s wedding), I use formula.  I know that this decision doesn’t make any difference to policy makers or CEO’s.  But that small act of saying no to something that makes me pay dearly (not just from my wallet) for what I already have (the ability to feed my child), seems very good.

If you have any thoughts about small acts, sales resistance, motherhood, pumping, breastfeeding, comment away.  I hope this fresh week ahead begins very blessed.

-Lindsey

February 19, 2007

Just one dollar (two for both of us) bought an afternoon of summertime, canaries and orange trees.

(thanks for the suggestion, Bri)

Today, Reed took an honest to goodness nap.  A real nap.  A nap longer than half an hour.  A nap at home.  Not in the car.  Not on a walk.  A nap outside of my arms.  Off the rocking chair.  Just him sleeping.  On his own.  Two (two!) hours.

I made a pot of tea and pulled out my journal.  I sat and wrote and then wrote some more and edited my novel.  What a treat it was to sit down and write with the sun on the streets and quiet in the house.  It was like having coffee when you haven’t had it for a while and you really really want coffee.  Coffee tastes so good when you really really want it.  So does writing.

It’s a shame no one will likely ever read this book.  I am growing to like it.

February 12, 2007

It’s official. I am engaged to Adam Lloyd Whitlock: owner of my favourite smile. I am super excited.

A lot of people are a bit confused about why it’s so fast. I don’t have any superb, dynamic reason to give them them, I just know that I’m not confused about it. I feel content. I feel sure. I really like that.

I’m stoked to share life with this guy. He’s wonderful.

Today is snowy.  Not December snowy: the sort of snow that makes you want to strap on a snowsuit and jump and run and roll in it.  It is February snowy: the sort of snow that you want to watch from the warm side of the window with some cinnamon rolls in the oven.  It is a perfect day for books, baking, and baby’s cheeks.  It is a day for afghans, for balls of wool yarn, for poems and journals and making Reed laugh.  I am so grateful for days like today.  This is a good life, and I am thankful to be able to stay home most days and care for my son.  It suits me, the quiet, the simplicity, the walks and pots of simple food.  Money is tight (as usual) but especially on days like today, with plenty of coffee on the stove, a fridge full of nourishing food, a well-rested body, and a happy, healthy baby, I don’t think I could be any richer.

Here’s a bit of a poem I have been enjoying:

…But harmony of earth is Heaven made,
Heaven-making is promise and is prayer,
A little song to keep us unafraid,
an earthy music magnified in air

-from A Timbered Choir: The Sabbath Poems 1979-1997 by Wendell Berry

Tonight I made oeufs en meurette while drinking wine.  Its amazing how delicious eggs on toast can be when you add wine.  The experience reminded me why I put number 63 on the list: wine has a way of bringing out joy in food and friends and life.  And nothing makes me want to drink more joyous wine and eat more joyous food than this book.

Reed doesn’t take to napping easily.  He would rather look around and smile and play until he is severely overtired and grumpy.  Getting him to sleep can be amusing, stressful, funny, frustrating, meditative, sweet, restful, and any combination thereof.

So, I have taken to drinking a calming herbal tea I learned to make from this book while nursing the little one before trying to get him down.  I don’t know if it’s the smell that settles him in, if it effects the milk, or if it just relaxes him through me, but it does seem to have an effect.  Either way, the tea is very pleasant and very nice to take whenever you want to wind things down. Catnip is more known around here for the effects it has on cats, but it has a much longer history of human consumption.   Don’t buy it from your pet store, but look for it where loose herbs and teas are sold (try a local co-op or alternative health store or just grow your own).  In humans, rather than creating a wild euphoria, it is quite sedative.

1 part chamomile
1 part fennel seed
1 part catnip

Steep ten minutes.