The past few weeks in my tiny town have been a bit of a roller coaster. A young family had to say goodbye to a husband, father and all around great guy after a courageous battle with cancer. As our community came together in this terrible time of loss it has also caused all of us to look at our own families a little closer and hold them a little tighter. We all get so busy doing our day to day and running from here to there we often miss the simple things that happen every day.
One of the perks of being married to a farmer is that there is little travel involved so we are able to have dinner together many nights (except during harvest!). It's a simple thing that I have never thought much of and mostly appreciated because it meant there was another referee at the table with me. Our dinners usually comprise of talking about our day and our plans for the next day. I knew this was a good habit for my kids and hoped it would pay off when they become tweens and teens that don't want to tell their parents anything.
Last week we were skiing and my little guy and I took a break to get a snack. As we sat down at the table in the lodge and I doled out the goldfish he looked up at me and said "so mom, how was your day." He said it with such sincerity and with a genuine interest in my response. It was at that moment I realized how important our family dinner chats are and what they are teaching my children.
Whether it a family dinner, a car ride ritual, or a bedtime routine I think we all need to remember that all those 'little things' we do mean a lot.
There has been a lot of buzz about
the "farmer' super bowl commercial which got me thinking of my own
farmer. I have said before what my husband does is fancy farming but it's
farming none the less. Almost everyday, in every weather is
he outside taking care of his crop. He works very hard, every day
and sometimes I get numb and forget to notice all the weight he carries.
Winters are spent making sure his
team trims almost 250,000 trees (all by hand) before the spring comes.
They do this every day, in every kind of weather, snow, rain, wind and just
plain COLD.
Once they make it through the winter
spring rolls through Central New York. This is one of the most critical
times on an apple farm. This is when the buds begin to grow, flower, get
pollinated and eventually become the beginnings of fruit. Of
course none of this happens magically. You need sun, rain, plenty of bees
and temperatures that above freezing. The month of May is carefree time
for most families, spring is in full swing, summer is on the horizon, people
being mowing the lawn and playing outside. In our house May can be very
stressful. May is beautiful, sunny, sometimes warm during the day and can
be very cold at night. At each stage of bud development they can
only tolerate a certain level of cold before they become damaged (damaged bud
=damaged flower or no flower which affects the apple). This means that
checking the weather is an hourly occurrence along with studying wind maps, jet
stream and a bunch of other charts that I still don't
understand. Usually, the most beautiful clear sky days bring
on the hardest nights.
On a night when there is
going to be frost my farmer spends his day prepping the farm by checking his
wind machines (tall fans that keep air moving so cold can't settle into the
valley) laying out smudge-pots and checking all his thermometers to make sure
they are accurate. The next step is to get to bed. He comes home and
tries to go to bed right after dinner because he know that before long he will
be back up headed to work. He will wake every hour and check the
temp and when it starts to get close to his critical point he calls in in
troops who all probably wake their wives while they try to get out of the house
quietly at midnight. Together this army works through the night trying to
keep cold air out and flowers in tack. Usually after this there is still
a full day of work to put in the next day because you spend all your time the
day before prepping and you need to keep on your normal schedule of spring work
so you don't get behind. It's an exhaustive process that thankfully isn't every
night and is normally only about a month long.
When spring turns to summer concern
of frost is a distant memory and instead water is a concern. Trees that
don't get enough water have small fruit, weak fruit.
Summer becomes fall and full harvest
begins. Apples get picked everyday in every kind of weather.
While harvesting your crop you are also worrying about selling
it. Will it be good enough? Will there be enough? Will
it store well? Will the price hold? The tricky thing about
farming is that you spend all your money (on prep, labor, supplies) before you
sell anything all in hopes that you do everything right, mother nature
cooperates and you have people that want to buy your product. To stay
it's stressful at times is an understatement.
Farming is certainly a labor of
love. It's not a get rich quick scheme but it is providing my children
with experiences and memories they will have forever and that will make them
into better adults. They will know what hard labor is, they will
fear it and respect it and I bet they will love it just as much as their dad.
Yesterday was my husband's birthday so it was very busy around here. We had presents to wrap and cupcakes to make!
My children are 3 and almost 5 so wrapping presents isn't normally a group activity. Actually, it's a " late at night with some wine" kind of activity but yesterday was the exception. We gathered all our supplies and started cutting. No one could seem to get the tape on straight or do it without using 2 ft at a time and the corners were less than square but my children were so proud and happy of all their work. They then moved on to cutting up an ENTIRE catalog to glue to his card. Throughout both of these crafts I was trying so hard not to correct them or fix it and kept reminding myself it didn't matter.
(what didn't make the card ended up in a million pieces on the floor)
Once our wrapping work was done it was time to move onto decorating the cupcakes. I have always been good about letting my kids choose their own clothes (as long as they are weather appropriate)
and actually find it really important. I think it encourages them to
believe they can make good choices and that as long as they think they
look so why did I have such a hard time with a simple batch of cupcakes?!
In the era of Pintrest perfection a good old box cake and tub of frosting seems to be getting lost but my family has vowed to keep them going! I had purchased a cute decorating set with the fancy tips for the frosting and thought this would be a great chance to try them out. My helpers had other ideas......... After the first two cupcakes I tried to edit their design and was met with much resistance. I suddenly realized it really didn't matter. They were happy, they thought it looked awesome and they were doing it all by themselves! It didn't matter how it looked, it matter how much fun my kids were having and what they thought of the progress.
The funny thing is, in the end the cupcakes looked GREAT!
So, whether it's the pretty presents under the tree or simple birthday cupcakes if our kids are helping and feel like they are contributing isn't that more important that the 'look'? Aren't we supposed to be teaching them to help out, do things for themselves, be independent? I need to work a lot more on 'letting it go' in favor of their help and in spite of my design aesthetic.
(one very happy guy eating all the sprinkles that didn't make it onto the cupcakes!!)
Like everyone else Thanksgiving break was a busy one at our house. Family dinners, friends, turkey trotting and then Christmas prep.
When I first moved here almost 10 years ago my husband and I set out on a romantic adventure to cut our own Christmas tree at his family orchard. He assured me on the ride over that there would be TONS to choose from. He was very confident about this and proudly pulled the truck to a remote section of orchard that backed up to a large wooded area. After trudging through the snow for bit I finally said " I don't see any trees, maybe you planted them somewhere else." We drove to a second spot where he paused, looked out the window and said "yeah, they must have died or something, I know there are trees here." At our third location he was looking desperate and kept looking up at these enormous evergreens that had to be at least 80 ft tall and said "maybe we can figure out how to cut the top off one of these, I just don't understand what happen to all those trees I planted as a kid." AH HA! I tried to be as sweet as can be and said " how old were you when you planted those trees?" to which he replied " maybe 12-14". About 20 years, that's what happen to all the trees he planted long ago. In his mind we were on a hunt for a tree of his childhood just slightly taller. We go back in the car and drove to a lovely little tree farm up the road.
This past weekend between family time and tree trimming we had a date night. After dinner we headed out to a local pub where it was a homecoming of sorts for everyone that was in town for Thanksgiving break. It was a lot of fun seeing some friends that have moved out of town as well as our usual gang but with their younger and olde siblings in tow. Then there was the moment of truth. Across the bar, drinking a beer was a 'girl' that I used to babysit when I first moved to town. She was in high school at the time and I would stay with her and her sisters when her parents went on vacation and do things like take them to lacrosse practice and prevent them from going to parties. There she was, living it up and totally allowed (and legal) to do so. Don't get me wrong it was great seeing her and she is lovely and sweet but, she is also older now, which means so am I!
I guess my holiday homecoming run-in came at a good time. The trees of my husband's childhood and my old friend have all grown up and before I know it so will my own children. With Christmas craziness starting up and 2 young kids that aren't always the angels sitting by the tree it's helpful, but sometimes hard to remember they will grow up someday soon. The won't want to spend hours having an ornament parade or talking to their animals about Santa's upcoming visit. Eventually everything and everyone grows up.
Small town USA is full of haves and have nots and I am not referring to people of different economic classes. Sometimes you need to remember what you have (and don't) to remind yourself why it's so great.....
-I have a mail lady that PUTS A STAMP ON MY LETTERS if I forget and then just leaves me a note asking for the $.44! At one point a few years ago I was sick for a while and she knew it (because she saw an out of town car here for a long time) so she started bringing my mail to my door so I wouldn't have to go to my mailbox
-We don't have any fast food restuarants in town. NONE. We have plenty of locally owned places to get breakfast, lunch or dinner but no McDonalds! (which is great)
-My young children have the opporunity to to know almost everyone is their class (there are approx 85 kids per grade)
-We don't have much crime to speak of
-We have a Labor Day parade that our local nursery school children march in and everyone from town lines the streets to watch - even though it's the same fire trucks year after year.
-We don't have a Target or Marshalls but we do have some really great local shops that sell the ski socks we like to wear and the carharts that my farmer husband likes.
-We are a fabulous summer vacation destination with great shops, dining and boutique lodging www.skaneateles.com
-We don't have much sun in the winter months and lots of lake effect snow ...
.......but our great summer spot makes up for it!
-I don't have trash pick up(and have to go to the dump) nor town water & sewer
-I
do have a pump that get my water straight out of one of the cleanest
lakes ever. A quick pass through a filter and it's coming out in my
kitchen, and it tastes great.
-We don't have an extremely large
population but we do have very generous members of our community who are
always willing to help out when someone is in need.
-I don't have my family close by but I do have some very, very dear friends that are just as good. :)
So we may not always have we what we want (like a Target right in town when you realize you are out of Tide and your daughter has no socks or underwear that fit) but when you really think about it you probably have all that you really need.
Growing up in suburbia a deer siting was few and far between. Sometimes you'd see them near the highway or if you went leaf peeping but other than that never. When I was in 6th grade I went to my aunt's (pronounced AUNT, not ANT) camp in rural PA for summer vacation and it was there I learned I how to go 'deer spotting'. We loaded in the car at dusk with some big flashlights and went down some wilderness roads looking for deer. It was an exciting adventure.
Fast forward to my new life in central New York surrounded by farms, open space and lots of undeveloped land. There are TONS of deer, everywhere, all the time. There is never just one either, usually at least 4. A few years ago my husband and I were driving back from dinner along Rt 20, a main road where people travel approx 60 mph. The road is up and down hills the whole ride and this particular night it was my turn to drive home. It was also the night we had dinner a few town away so it was a thirty minute ride of my husband coaching (yelling) at me about my driving and needing to pay more attention to deer. Of course there wasn't a deer in sight that night...until we were about 1 mile from home. All of a sudden hubs says 'don't you see that deer, are you going to speed up" Not knowing any better I thought he said that with a question mark...in his mind he said it questioning my rationale. So, in the split second this happen I did what I thought he meant and floored it hoping to out pace the deer and speed past him before Bambi got to the middle of the road.
Apparently that is not what he meant. I did not hit the deer but did get an extra arm across the steering wheel swerving us out of the way. That was when he asked what the heck I was doing (not as nice though) and when I responded "speeding up like you told me to do" he could do nothing but shake his head in disbelief. It was a good reminder he did not marry a country girl by any stretch because a country girl would have known to slow down and let the deer cross instead of trying to speed past it and end up playing chicken with it. Oops.
For the record I have lived here for 9 years and have yet to meet a deer with my bumper but now I always slow down when I see them.
The small town we live in has a farmers market weekly that we infrequently shop at. Not because I don't love the idea of a farmers market but more so because 2 things usually happen when we go, 1) my kids tend to help themselves to things (for example standing at the table with the blueberries and eating them out of pints as if we were at home and/or like we had paid for them) 2)I end up buying a pie or other baked item (that I REALLY don't need vs buying more veggies). Although both of those reasons are part of why I don't go it's also because I have a good size garden at my house that we get lots of our veggies from.
Since the season is winding down and I am totally sick of my own garden I decided to take my 2 kids yesterday. When I told my 4 1/2 yr old daughter we were going to go the farmers market she said "oh good, I like going to the town grocery store". I have no idea where she got this from but I loved the concept because that's what it is and should be. I am no earth mother by far but there is something really nice about going to the farmers market, seeing friends, chatting with people from town and watching your kids make friends with local growers. This week I even managed to skip the pies and buy some parsnips from the lovely Rose Ryan from http://harvesthomeorganics.blogspot.com/ that I lied and told my kids were white carrots.
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