Whiteley Creek Homestead

albany farm show corned beef and cabbage soup

September 16, 2013

Fall and farm shows. One is not complete without the other. Dick and I had attended the Rollag (Minnesota) Farm Show near Fargo over Labor Day Weekend. Two weeks later and we were off to Albany (Minnesota) near St. Cloud for one called Albany Pioneer Days that was held September 13, 14 and 15, 2013. In one building on the grounds, there were old-fashioned home crafts being demonstrated. Fabric scrap rug-making, hardanger embroidery, wool dyeing and spinning, hand-stitched quilting… In the far back corner was a farmhouse kitchen.

Lying on the baker's cupboard was a book encased in a brown, tattered cover titled The Home Menu Cook Book published in 1934 by The Goldsmith Publishing Co. in Chicago. It was a book my mother may have referenced as a new wife and mother. I gently turned the pages to reveal menus organized by the seasons. The recipes in each seasonal chapter used garden bounty or, in the
winter and early spring menus, food stocked in the larder (pantry)
or root cellar. Eating foods that are
in season. Not a recent concept at all.

A sampling of fall menus from the cook book… 1)pot roast of beef, browned potatoes, carrots, and onions, cucumber strips, and apple ginger pudding with lemon sauce 2)salmon loaf, scalloped potatoes, baked squash, buttered onions, pickles, fruit sauce, and gingerbread 3)baked fillets of fish, tartar sauce, mashed potatoes, succotash, cabbage salad, and peach pudding.

The Home Menu Cook Book inspired me to make a pot of Corned Beef and Cabbage Soup using cabbage and potatoes from my garden. I purchased the onions from our local CSA farm and the uncured corned beef from the Good Earth Co-op in St. Cloud. I used Black Nile Barley in the recipe which added a sprinkling of attitude.

Corned Beef and Cabbage Soup

2 tbsp butter

1 ½ cups chopped onion

1 cup sliced celery

2 cloves garlic, minced

2 quarts chicken broth

1 ½ cups chopped or julienne-cut carrots (I subbed sweet
potatoes and garden potatoes.)

½ small head cabbage, coarsely chopped, about 4 to 5 cups

¼ cup pearled barley (I used ½ cup Black Nile Barley.)

1 small bay leaf

1 tbsp fresh chopped parsley or 1 tsp dried parsley flakes

½ tsp dried leaf thyme

¼ tsp black pepper

2 to 2 ½ cups diced cooked corned beef, about 10 to 12
ounces (I used half this amount.)

1 can (14.5 ounces) diced tomatoes, undrained

salt, to taste

Heat butter in a soup pot. Sauté onion and celery, stirring
frequently, until tender. Add garlic and continue cooking for 1 minute. Stir in
chicken broth, carrots (or sweet potatoes and garden potatoes), cabbage, and
barley. Add the bay leaf, parsley, thyme, and pepper; bring to a boil. Reduce
heat, cover, and simmer for 45 minutes. Stir in corned beef and tomatoes and
simmer uncovered for 15 minutes.
roosevelt school riverton minnesota

September 8, 2013

A handful of residents inhabit the former mining town of Riverton (Minnesota), which is located between Brainerd and Crosby-Ironton on Highway 210. Although the iron ore mining industry ceased operation years ago, this proud community celebrated their town's centennial milestone on Saturday, September 7 with festivities that rivaled towns much larger than their population of 117 (2010 census). Dick and I ate lunch in the park, listened to live music, enjoyed an old-fashioned ice cream social, and drove a 1934 Chevy Coupe in the parade. (Photo source: Crosby-Ironton Courier Wednesday, Sept. 11, 2013)

Hanging on the wall in Riverton's city hall, was a display of old photos chronicaling the community's history. Among the photos hung images of Riverton's Roosevelt School.

Dick lived in Ironton until his family moved east of Brainerd on the property where our bed and breakfast is located. At the time of his move, he was assigned to Roosevelt School in Riverton where he attended fourth through eighth grade. Dick said the school's first floor had a gymnasium with an adjacent boiler room, a lunchroom, an industrial arts shop, and regular classrooms. A huge auditorium with a stage was on the second floor directly above the gymnasium. The second floor also included a library, the principal/superintendent's office, and more classrooms. All of the hallways had terrazzo floors with hardwood floors in the classrooms. During the timespan that Dick attended the school, new blackboards and cabinets were installed. "If the desks were orange, then the cabinets were orange. If the desks were blue, the cabinets were blue. The school's original windows were replaced with aluminum frame, hinged windows that "opened outward with a screen on the inside. The windows' upper portion was replaced with foggy-looking glass block that had intermittent orange, turquoise, yellow, and green (or blue) glass blocks to accent the classrooms' decor." It has 1960s vibes, don't you think? (I included detailed descriptions in this post because I was having great fun listening to Dick describe the images embedded in his memory. It's amazing what our minds remember so vividly.) New lighting and lowered ceilings completed the remodel.

This photo shows the school's ornate entrance.

Classes were held at the school from 1916 through 1975-76. The school was then abandoned and steadily deteriorated due to neglect and vandals. It was torn down in 2003. That always makes me sad. It brutally finalizes a chapter that is important in the lives of so many… like Dick.
storyhill fest 2013

September 4, 2013

Storyhill Fest. An amazing lineup of folk musicians who came together at Clearwater Forest Camp near Deerwood Minnesota to round out our Labor Day Weekend. It's just twenty miles from Brainerd. Practically in our backyard. Dick and I attended the festival on Sunday, September 1st. Our third year consecutively. The event is organized and hosted by Chris Cunningham and John Hermanson, a folk duo known as Storyhill. (This photo is from our attendance in 2012.)

Avalon is one of their songs. Beautifully touching. "Sister leave me here to breathe my final breath. I leave you facing life in the face of death. There is no deeper truth. There is no truer rest. Avalon. Avalon." It will be played at Dick's and my funerals… a peaceful sendoff. One of my favorite performances this year was Love We Are We Love by the duo "The Sea The Sea." Last year's festival featured Carrie Elkin and Danny Schmidt, who were present at this year's event but didn't perform on the day we attended. Their song, Company of Friends impacted my life… my lifetime. Storyhill Fest. Impactful. Life changing.
rollag farm show

September 3, 2013

Peace. In the autumn. That is what Dick and I find at the farm show held each year over Labor Day Weekend at Rollag, Minnesota twenty miles from Fargo, North Dakota. This is the view from our campsite overlooking the farmstead alongside Gunderson Pond.

I have always been thankful for the farmers that grow the grain which I grind in my grain mill, but the bird's eye view of its harvest at the farm show expanded my appreciation. Although tractors have now replaced horses, the image that the farm show's horse-powered machinery provides is akin to the small scale farm operations scattered about the country today… local production that feeds a farmer's family and others within a limited radius.

This machine cuts the cornstalks and ties them into a bundle. A large spool of twine is stored in the five-gallon bucket attached to the right rear corner of the wooden wagon. The twine unwinds and automatically feeds into the mechanism that binds the stalks.

Using another piece of vintage machinery, a farmer demonstrates how wheat is cut and tied into bundles. Bundles of oats, that have been cut from another field, are mounded high on an old wooden hay wagon.

A team of horses, that are harnessed to an apparatus resembling a large wooden wagon wheel, step in unison to rotate the wheel like a merry-go-round. A long, wide belt is attached to the wheel. The wheel's rotation moves the belt which powers a machine that separates the oats from their supporting stem. (It wasn't operating at the time of my photo shoot, therefore no photo, but I had observed its use the previous day.) The grain makes its way to my kitchen and the dry, brittle stem that is formed into a bale of straw is used in my coop so that Olga, Pearl, Flossie, Opal, Henny Penny, Cora, Phoebe, and Edith may form a nest to lay their eggs. We have become detached from the farm families who toil so that we may enjoy the
harvest. Establish a connection. Know thy local farmers and support their small-scale efforts.
visually impactful veggie garden plants

August 23, 2013

Autumn's harvest. It's gathering in end-of-summer and late-season maturation crops before overnight temperatures produce frost. It's also taking inventory of what produced especially well and added an artistic element to the garden. Some large-leafed plants that I will incorporate again into next year's garden are rutabaga, cabbage, zucchini, and cucumber. Large leaves quickly fill open space with lush green foliage.

We constructed the support for trailing cucumber vines from a section of
concrete reinforcement wire. The wire is sold in a roll, so its
cylindrical shape lends itself perfectly for this application. Pound a
few wooden stakes into the ground to form and secure a length of wire
into a tunnel. It adds height to the garden and keeps the cukes off the
ground to be easily plucked as they hang suspended from the support.
seed viability

July 24, 2013

Have you hesitated to plant expired seed? Don't. Hesitate, that is.

In early spring 2013, my frugal nature couldn't bear to toss out a previously opened package of
zucchini seed packed for 2009. I planted one seed in each of twelve
newspaper pots.
Ten seeds germinated.
The seedlings matured into beautifully lush plants that bore an
abundance of zucchini throughout the growing season. The germination rate may vary with plant
varieties, so recording results in a gardening journal would be helpful
for future reference.
adjusting our sails

June 25, 2013

It all began with conversations recently. Various guests on different days each sharing their insights regarding what is truly important, how to achieve it, and living in the here and now with unbridled joy. We can come up with so many excuses that prevent us from making something happen and allowing joy to fill our life. A Canadian guest's wisdom has been zinging around in my head since his stay last week. "Why not me? Why not now?" After his stay, he emailed me an equally inspirational quote. "We cannot direct the wind, but we can adjust our sails." If there's something we really want, rather than thinking our circumstances prevent us from achieving it, we need to rethink how we can make it a reality. Two women guests, over the past weekend, left this partially enjoyed bottle of wine in their cabin's fridge with a note to me that set the wheels in motion. Stop and just be.

So, I did just that. I called my longtime friend, Deb, and suggested that we each pack a picnic lunch. Mine included the bottle of wine… to share. We met at a shaded picnic table in a local park. We took time to just be… to experience joy in an ordinary day. What a sweet time we spent together! Because we have adjusted what we consider important, we made time for each other. I will continue to make adjustments to include other friends and family members and you shall hear of it… to inspire you to walk alongside. We shall start a movement to stop and just be.

This evening, Dick and I paused where roses grow wild along the paths that meander throughout our property.

We breathed in the perfume of our first peony bloom that had burst forth just today. Their season is ever so fleeting.

I shall continue to stop and just be. "Why not me (you)? Why not now?"
baker creek seed company festival

May 12, 2013

When my eyes fell upon the old hands planting a seedling. I knew.

When the paved road suddenly turned into a winding dirt road. I just knew. And then I saw the grey weathered barns. Could my smushed nose press any harder against our truck's window?

I saw the main street of a pioneer town. The mercantile and flour mill. And across the street the Baker Creek Seed Company's retail store. Bin after bin filled with heirloom seed packets. Just a few miles from Mansfield Missouri… halfway across the country from our central Minnesota home.

There was music, vendors, speakers, food… all of the components that make a festival festive plus plants and heirloom seeds in abundance. If you've read the book, Animal Vegetable Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver (if you haven't, you need to), you'll remember a Canadian farmer named Percy Schmeiser who takes on Monsanto. He was one of the festival's speakers. It was so interesting to meet the brave man that I had read about in the book. As I sat upon a straw bale, another speaker that I listened to was Hank Will, the editor-in-chief of Grit Magazine, who shared how he farms his acreage with hand tools and farm animals in lieu of mechanized equipment. I replaced my garden roto tiller with a spade years ago to avoid the major disturbance of natural soil layers, so I was intriqued by his comittment to living in a manner closely resembling that of our ancestors. Yes, it's more work. However, it eliminates the need for a gym membership, a noisy engine doesn't compete with birds' melodies, and it's a gentle way to be a steward of our earth. I loved this little girl's attire, so I snapped a photo of her as she played upon newly constructed concrete garden bed enclosures. And then my stride quickened to keep pace with hers, as there was so much more to see and do. (Heirloom seeds are those that are passed down from generation to generation, are open-pollinated, and aren't patented or genetically modified.) Post note: The Wall Street Journal, in its Thursday, May 23, 2013 edition, featured the Baker Creek Seed Company. The article explains the company's birth and phenomenal growth. Your jaw will drop when you learn the ages of the company's founder and owners, Jeremiah and Emilee Gettle.
multigrain flour mix

April 30, 2013

When Kim Boyce's book, Good to the Grain Baking with Whole-Grain Flours debuted in 2010, it found a special place in my recipe book collection. I have made her Beet and Quinoa Pancakes countless times and the Figgy Buckwheat Scones are a major reason I buy dried figs in bulk. The book is divided into sections by types of flours including whole wheat, amaranth, barley, buckwheat, corn, kamut, mulitgrain, oat, quinoa, rye, spelt, and teff with a bonus chapter on jams and compotes. Even if you don't make every recipe in the book, it inspires you to think beyond whole wheat flour. And the photography is lovely. Some time back, my oldest daughter, Heather, told me that she adds barley flour and oat flour to her whole wheat pastry flour to sweeten her muffins, cakes, and cookies. Ever since, I have been doing the same. Last night, as I was reading Good to the Grain before falling asleep, there on p. 109, it reaffirmed what I already knew. I have a very smart daughter. Kim Boyce states that often she likes to use a combination of flours in a recipe, so she mixes up a large batch and keeps a jar on her counter. In her "Multigrain Flour Mix," she combines 1 cup whole-wheat flour, 1 cup oat flour, 1 cup barley flour, 1/2 cup millet flour, and 1/2 cup rye flour.

My grain mill quickly transformed five whole grains into a Multigrain Flour Mix that I used to make peach cranberry scones. Will I limit myself to these five flours? No. As a go-to all-purpose mix, most definitely.
the little ragamuffin, fancyflours, high mowing seeds

April 20, 2013

Each year, April 17th is National Blah, Blah, Blah Day. Did you know that? I first learned of it as I listened to NPR while on my walk three mornings ago. The intent of this wacky holiday is actually to do the things everyone's been nagging you about (e.g., quitting a habit, completing home projects). I took the opposite approach. I set my day's tasks aside and sat at my computer to order some little, joyful things. All three orders arrived in today's mail.

FIRST, I opened my parcel from The Little Ragamuffin. Etsy shop owner, Jenny, packages her hand-harvested heirloom seeds with her special touch that makes unwrapping a delight despite already knowing what's inside. Look and see…

She created handmade seed packets from a map… one contains Hutterite Soup Bean Seeds and the other Plains Coreopsis Seeds. If that wasn't sufficient, folded around the packets and tied with a ribbon was a page torn from The Lunch Box Cookbook Copyright 1955, 1954. I know because I have the cookbook… for the drawings. Can Jenny possibly have known how much I love that little cookbook? And look. A recipe for "Lunch Box Chicken" and on the flipside drawings of a barnyard and chickens. How would she know I love chickens? I will display the page in my new walk-in pantry.

Now here's where life's twists and turns eventually begin to make sense… and then life becomes just plain fun. It began in 2011 with a seed order I placed through The Little Ragamuffin Etsy Shop. Fast forward two years almost to the day when I received an email from my daughter, Heather. In one hour's time, three seemingly unconnected people… connected.

Tue, Apr 16, 2013 11:55 am Heather: "Have you purchased seeds from her or something before? https://www.etsy.com/shop/TheLittleRagamuffin I just linked to her in a post and now I feel like I recognize the shop name from a post you did once. Wouldn't that be something. I found her by searching for natural soap or something on Etsy. So, it would be a big coincidence if we both separately posted about her. Let me know. I am so curious."

Tue, Apr 16, 2013 12:32 pm Me: "Yes, I did write two posts about her Etsy shop. Isn't that funny that you ended up on her site, too, and posted about her soap?!! I had first discovered her shop when I planted a page from my seed embedded calendar into my garden and one of the wildflowers that grew was plains coreopsis. I wanted to grow more plains coreopsis the following year and ended up on her Etsy shop to buy the seeds. Here's where it gets really fun. She said she had ended up on my blog when she had done a search for "plains coreopsis" prior to my placing my initial order with her in 2011. (I have a photo on my home page of plains coreopsis lining my garden path at the bed and breakfast.) Now, here's where the story goes on even more. Just yesterday, I ordered another packet of plains coreopsis seeds from her… before you told me that you had posted about her soap. She (Jen) packages the seeds so artfully… with such care. It's such a fun parcel to open and I like that they are hand-harvested by her. It makes them that much more special when I take the little seeds and place them in my soil half way across the country. (She lives in NY.) I also ordered some heirloom Hutterite Soup Beans from her to plant in this spring's garden."

Tue, Apr 16, 2013 12:49 pm Heather: "Oh, such a small small world with weird wonderful things that sometimes happen.
What I just e-mailed to her (Jenny,The Little Ragamuffin Etsy Shop):
"Whoah!!!!!! I just e-mailed my mother (who also has a blog) to ask if she had ever bought anything from you. I just started feeling like I recognized your shop name maybe through her. Now I want you to realize that I was not looking at shop names when I was searching for items for the treasury. I had not noticed your shop name at all until you had commented on my blog post. What a small, small world full of quirky coincidences."

Tue, Apr 16, 2013 1:00 pm Jenny, owner of The Little Ragamuffin Etsy Shop: "Heather!
I am absolutely floored! This is just incredible…I am speechless, and while reading your message couldn't stop speaking outloud in disbelief and awe! In the midst of receiving your message, traveling to your blog, and writing messages back and forth to you, I was simultaneously making seed packets and filling your Mom's order. This is really amazing. Smiling ear to ear at life's little gifts. Jenny

And now… my two other parcels that arrived today. I was flipping through some pages torn from magazines. A page from Country Home April 2006 inspired my second purchase… an oversized cookie cutter. The little bird beside the cookie cutter is a photo from the magazine depicting how the sugar cookie can be iced. So pretty. I love the design of the label securing the invoice's fold. Cookie and icing recipes tucked inside the shipping box were a nice touch, too.

And the THIRD parcel… more seeds.

I first grew Organic Sweetie Cherry Tomatoes indoors from seed in 2009 then transplanted them into my garden. Each year since then, they have been a mainstay in my garden. Look how the cherry tomatoes hang so neatly on the vine as they ripen in my garden. They live up to their name… so very sweet. From High Mowing Seeds, I also ordered crunchy, lime green Pirat Butterhead Lettuce with edges tinged in purple, Ruby Rhubarb Red Chard Microgreens, broccoli seed for sprouting in a jar, Beta Salad Mix of beet and chard baby leaves, and bok choy. Note: Shortly after ordering broccoli seed from High Mowing Seeds (1/4 lb $10.00), I discovered that Azure Standard stocks it and for way less $ (1 lb $11.05). I regularly purchase products from this company through our local group buying club. Products can be shipped to individuals via UPS, too.

about