Sunday Wrapup 9/26/2010

It's the end of a lovely day--clear skies after a thunderstorm swept through yesterday, depositing another half inch of rain--after a similar amount a day or so earlier. Tonight the temperature is slated to dip into the upper 40's. I wonder when we last had temps like this.

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Did you know that September is National Chicken Month? (I'm sure you've been on pins and needles wondering about this.) I learned that from the Berridge's (Nickerson grocery store) ad. The other good thing I learned from their ad is that SmartChicken is on sale this week. I love to buy it when the price is right. The birds are antibiotic-free, with no added hormones in the feed. Also, the meat is air-cooled rather than water cooled. This prevents the meat from having in-soaked the multiple chlorine water baths most chicken meat is immersed in to kill harmful bacteria. I've heard nightmarish tales about the thickness of the sludge layers in the bottom of the cooling/disinfecting tanks. Air-cooling is a European tradition that has caught on in a small way here.

Irene told me recently that SmartChicken comes from a Mennonite-owned processing facility in Nebraska. I didn't verify this from other sources, but have no reason to doubt this information. I do know that the brand and the processing method were present in the European market before the same was true here.

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Today I saw in an auction listing that 2 very nice "choral" wing-back chairs will be sold. I saw a picture of them. They were not occupied by members of a choir. They were a salmon-orange color (coral).

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The freshmen at school have announced a "Celebrate the Freshmen" day for Friday of this week. The rest of the school is either muttering about their conceit or admiring their optimism and chutzpah. ("So if you want to give us gifts or anything, that would be fine.") They're very busy planning the activities of this special day during the typing class break times, so I am privy to their plots. I haven't had to head off anything inappropriate so far.

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Kudos to Will who taught this year's freshmen how to write well-organized essays while they were in eighth grade. I started in with my usual introduction before the first written report of the year (current events), when I quickly saw that they already knew what I was going to say. So we had a brief review instead of a teaching session. I was impressed.

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At school our literature selection for the month is The Chosen by Chaim Potok. It's a great story set in the Orthodox Jewish community. One of the fun things about this selection is being able to make lots of comparisons between Hasidic Jewish life and Amish life. I think my college English prof saw this when she recommended the book to me outside of class one day years ago.

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I did some shopping yesterday--a very rare event in my life. I downgraded my cell phone service to a prepaid calling plan. Since I'm next to a phone most of the time at home and at school, I don't feel a need for a cell phone except for emergency use. With 80 minutes a month for $15.00, I think I'm good to go. I had to change my number though, so if you've ever happened upon my number, don't count on it working now. It won't.

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One of the other things I learned while shopping was something I had often suspected. A sales lady told me that all the jackets in the store were on sale. "But we have to watch out because some of these are blouses and not jackets, so we have to be careful." She was saying in effect that jackets and blouses look the same, but I think the jackets are more roomy--to fit over other clothing.

I see a lot of closely fitted tops worn over cape dresses and wonder exactly how what I'm seeing qualifies as a jacket--an outer garment. It's an added layer, but it clearly does not make an outfit more modest. It effectively negates the modesty of the cape underneath. I suspect that what I'm seeing is a blouse--not made to be worn over a dress. The tight fit is my clue.

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The Pilgrim Perspective staff has handed out assignments for the fall issue of the school newspaper. I was informed that they have decided "with much deliberation but no hesitation" that I would be the perfect person to write an ironic essay. Sigh. Irony is hard to do well, and I'm afraid that the things I could write most passionately on would also be the most risky. Lyle (music teacher) also got an assignment. These matters provoked some discussion at the staff lunch table one day last week. It turns out that teachers aren't all that impressed when the "assignment" tables are turned and the teachers end up following the students' instructions. We're not sure we should put up with it. I'm sure the students are enjoying it.

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The oven did not fire up when I turned it on last night. Hiromi thinks he knows what's wrong with it. Tomorrow he plans to call the Maytag dealer cousins in Iowa to check out his diagnosis and get their advice. I had already started a batch of bread in the bread machine, intending to bake it in the oven this morning before church. Judy to the rescue. She happened to stop in last night shortly after I had discovered the problem and I sent the whole machine home with her and she returned two freshly baked loaves this morning, along with the machine.

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We're on a food preservation roll. Yesterday we bought a vacuum sealing machine to help extend the good quality storage possibilities for various kinds of food. We have lots of peppers to harvest right now, and Hiromi got tired of dealing with the ice crystals inside the packages when we use conventional plastic freezer boxes to freeze them. If there has been any melting, or if all the juice accumulated during the preparation process is included, it can turn into a hard block that hinders our typical use of frozen peppers--to add a small amount to scrambled eggs, stir-frys, or various other kinds of foods.

The peppers we have ready for processing are so pretty, it seems a shame to cut them up. Seeing their glossy bright colors is a good reason to garden, and the high price of fresh peppers during the winter is a good reason to preserve what grows during the summer.

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The cooler weather is accompanied by an influx of mice. Fortunately we have some trigger-happy traps, and Hiromi is diligently emptying and re-setting them. Grant is grousing about Shane having killed a bullsnake here last summer, saying he'd rather have bullsnakes outside the house than mice inside. Grant's logic is that the worst that a bullsnake can do is scare you, but mice can destroy property with their gnawing. I hope both of them stay far away from the house. Cats seem far more innocuous than either snakes or mice, but we aren't seeing any cats around recently.

I have been traumatized several times, however, with hearing a trap trip and then hearing way too much squeaking going on far too long. One trap was completely gone this morning, and neither Hiromi nor Grant could see or stir it out from under the stove where we thought the caught mouse may have dragged it. I heard all the accompanying noises from this episode last night after Hiromi had gone to bed and before Grant got home. Ugh. I used to be able to deal with mice without much ado. Not so anymore.

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Earlier I had said on this blog that we would be moving back to our house on Trail West Road later this year. Those plans have changed. We will probably stay here on the farm for the next two years yet.

Shane is in the process of buying about 20 acres of the farm--all of the area around the buildings, plus several small patches and a pasture. He is resurrecting the hog facility Dad built and used as part of a farrow-to-finish operation. The hogs he will raise here will be sold as naturally raised pork--a marketing setup that Caleb Y. has been using and is helping him with. At least at first, he plans to bring in feeder pigs and sell them at market weight.

The plan is for Shane and Dorcas to move here at the end of two years--after the financial picture has improved somewhat, hopefully, and they can put their Abbyville house on the market and expect a fair return on their investment. They want to do fairly extensive remodeling on this house before they move in, and spreading out the costs and work of setting up the hog facility again and the house remodel seem like a good idea, with the first part of the process being a potential money-maker rather than a money-pit.

Our Trail West house will be rented out again for this time, with Shane in charge of managing it. We're doing some remodeling there now too in the kitchen and bathroom, with Shane leading the effort. This will enable our move and remodel to be spread out a bit too, and it gives us a little more time to move into our family's next stage--the empty nest one. We're happy that Grant's being here has saved us from this fate so far.

I'm not positive that we'll like everything about living on a hog farm, but I'm delighted that Shane is seeing an opportunity here that no one has been taking advantage of for some time. With his energy and skills, I think things around here will soon take giant leaps forward in terms of tidiness, efficiency, and productivity. I hope that it will be a home for family members for another 55 years or so. I think my parents moved here about 55 years ago.

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I missed a chance to hear Wendell Berry speak yesterday in Salina at The Land Institute's Prairie Festival. I would have gone the 80 miles in a heartbeat if I had found someone to go along, or someone I could have gone with, but I didn't want to go alone. Berry is probably the most well-known contemporary sustainable agriculture practitioner and writer, and I've read and liked his essays and some of his poetry. I would have liked to hear Kent Whealy (Seed Savers Exchange) and Wes Jackson (The Land Institute) too, but they both had speaking parts today and I would not have gone to hear them instead of going to church.

Berry writes about community building, fine craftsmanship, building social capital, and many other fine concepts for the idealistic or those who are simply thoughtful and discerning. I don't know that I am any of those, but I like Berry's writing on these subjects.

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Hiromi says that Japan and China are engaged in a tiff regarding ownership of a small island. Japan claims it--has done so since some time many decades ago when they announced ownership and China did not contest it. Now it seems that the island may have valuable mineral stores, and ownership is a prize, so China claims it too. Recently a Chinese fishing vessel was found in the waters near the island, and a Japanese coast guard ship tried to chase it off. The fishing vessel ended up ramming the coast guard vessel and the fight was on. The captain of the fishing vessel was taken into Japanese custody and subsequently released, but the Chinese government retaliated by suing for damages. The Japanese refused to respond to the suit, saying that such action is unlawful since the Chinese vessel was an invader in Japanese territory. Furthermore, they sent China a bill for repairs to the Coast Guard ship. Oh my. Trade is being affected, and the newly elected Japanese government is up to its ears in controversy with no time to catch their breath.

I hope things simmer down soon. Things aren't pretty when Japan and China get "into it" with each other.