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.

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

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.

Number 23

I’ve always loved seed catalogues.  When they arrived to my parents’ house in the wintertime, and I was a little girl, I would sit with them day after day, circling and starring and initialing the roses I thought we should plant (I always circled one called “Peace”) and the novel fruits and hollyhocks.  And now I got the first seed catalogue at my first house.  And my mind is swirling with tomatos and cucumbers and carrots and terraces and trellises and sketched and resketched garden plans.  And I love seed catalogues more than ever.

I love my days home with Reed, full of smiling at each other, learning things, doing my small things around the house- practicing thrift and home economics (in the true sense of the word) in little ways that I find so immensely satisfying.

Today, I listened to this talk by Wendell Berry for the 10th time (#6 “Our Land, Our Food, Our Responsibility”).  It always helps me to remember.

I like what he says, here, in one of his poems:

“Hope to become kinder than power instructs you to be
and hope to become poorer than wealth invites you to be”

Enjoy your Friday, everyone.

“Better than any argument is to rise at dawn and pick dew-wet red berries in a cup.” -Wendell Berry

Silence has been on my mind again lately.  The cultivation of quiet.  I am remembering that silence can be prayer, that soundlessness can be service.  Perhaps it is a part of winter.  When I think of last February, I think of silently sweeping the floors in a sunny room.

Silently sweeping the floors in a sunny room.

The morning light coming through our bedroom window while Adam sat bent over the cradle holding Reed’s hand.  And Reed cooed and squeaked away talkatively while he looked at his dad and his dad looked back and replied.

The afternoon light warming the living room while I napped with a baby on my chest, which is like napping with a cat only about 100 times sweeter.

Before the rain began, I went out with a shovel in mismatched clothes, Adam’s scarf, and untied boots (a look Adam affectionately calls “frumperilla”).

First off, let me just say that my due date is officially one month away.