Thanksgiving

It's about family. Friends. Far and near. People: it's about people. Some of you may have many at your Thanksgiving table. At the grocery store, I was waiting to buy one slice of ham. Just one. I thought it could add something to the green bean plate. A woman standing next to me said -- oh, I'm having thirty for dinner! That's probably too many, isn't it? There was a note of both defiance and triumph in her voice. As if more is better.

More is not better. (And thirty is a little over the top, but hey, who am I to judge...) No one is counting. Your Thanksgiving should be as big or little as you want it to be. But no one is counting.

Our farmhouse Thanksgiving day begins with kitchen work. None of it is taxing, none of it is rushed.

I make the cranberry cornmeal muffins that should have been done yesterday and, too, the cranberry dressing. Simple. With orange stuff.






The Madison young family comes in time for a late morning snack. Sort of a second breakfast (somewhere in there, I think there was a first breakfast).






There is the parade to watch. There are books. There's food. Lots of food.











("There's Santa Claus!")





For me, there is the lovely warm hum of kitchen work.

("lunchtime!")





And in the early afternoon, my younger daughter arrives with her family!






Primrose! You're getting to be such a grownup girl!






Back in the kitchen, my daughter lends a hand. As does Sparrow...






(Showing Snowdrop how to grate a nutmeg...)






I'm a little preoccupied with the coordination of the meal. The veggies (brussels sprouts, green beans, corn) have last minute components. The stuffing and potatoes have to bake in the same oven as the turkey. Temperatures have to be adjusted. And so I only give an occasional glance to the activity in the other room...

(the dancing)





Though I do pause to take a picture of the awesome threesome!






Finally. The turkey is ready. The dark meat took significantly longer to reach the desired degree of doneness, but I am able to to stall everything so that it would all come together more or less at the same time.

It's both exhilarating and a relief when the meal is finally placed on the table and everyone sits down.
This is, after all, the whole holiday, right there, at the table, with the people you love so much!






Dessert is easy! Pies. Not baked by me!





And there you have it: the most heartwarming holiday of the year. Everyone is an equal player. Everyone belongs. And I am so very grateful to have all of them there today.

So, maybe you were at a meal with 29 others. Or perhaps your Thanksgiving merely meant that you talked to a bunch of family members on Facetime. It's all good. Indeed, beautiful to the core.

Wednesday of Thanksgiving week

The morning begins with the two of us heading out to the barn together to try to figure out what happened to Peach. The brown chicken. Old, but reliable. She hadn't shown up last night for the ritual of locking up the coop at dusk. Ed and I searched everywhere for her, flashlights spanning the barn walls, favorite bushes, the garage -- nothing.

This morning, we hunt in the barn with the help of daylight. The five remaining cheepers come out, demand their corn and go about their business. What happened to your sister? You guys are so... corn focused!

We think we hear a quiet chirp, but the winds are high, the chickens are squawking their displeasure at the weather and the cats are meowing because we didn't feed them first. We're about to return to the farmhouse when Ed throws one glance behind a bunch of boards. We'd checked there before, but what we had missed was a small platform. Peach was there alright, wedged solid between boards. In other words, stuck. She must have tumbled down and then eventually fallen asleep. She would have surely died there had Ed passed the spot in our final search.

Chickens are really really slow witted about their surroundings.

(Breakfast)






It's my day of cooking, but it starts slowly. Ed and I are feeling chatty about issues big and small. The cooking waits until it can wait no more.

Goal for today? Season and prep turkey. I've had the bird split up this year!






Make gravy. Yes, really. A day ahead. A super duper gravy that has you roasting extra turkey wings with aromatics of mushrooms, ginger and garlic. It is the most complicated gravy I've ever made. It takes up the better part of the afternoon.






The recipe calls for for tossing the extra turkey wings after I'm done milking them for their essential flavor. No way! I mine them for shreds of turkey meat which Ed and I use for a supper of stuffed turkey tortillas. Shhhh! Don't tell anyone we ate turkey the day before Thanksgiving!


What else? Make stuffing.


 


Pick up pies. That's right  -- pick up. Not bake. Pick up.

There are other things on my list. Muffins. Cranberries. Prep this, prep that. But I don't get there. I end with the gravy and the stuffing.

I mean, there's always tomorrow, no?

Happy, happy Thanksgiving Eve!

Tuesday of Thanksgiving week

There's no room for foolery now. I get down to business.

The calm moment is still there during the morning walk to the sheep shed...





... and at breakfast...




... But immediately after, I make inroads on my grocery shopping. For the meals of Thanksgiving day. For the weekend eating too. People coming and going, Here for one meal, gone the next. You have to keep that calendar of events straight!

Check off that list:

Sage, who doesn't need sage for this day! rosemary. -- no, I grow that. Thyme.
Eggs. Cheepers aren't laying, so eggs.
Yukon gold potatoes. Hmmm... Are they the same as plain old "gold potatoes?" They better be!
Black peppercorns. Pink, too, if I find them. Nah... That's just too fussy. Unnecessarily jacking up the price of things.
Green stuff: brussels sprouts, green beans, celery, parsley.
Ginger. Ginger?? Ginger.
Mushrooms and onions and garlic -- a holiday trilogy.
Extra turkey wings! (For the gravy. Ed will snack on the remains.)
Dairy: milk, buttermilk, butter, cream. And I'm not even baking! Much.
Good white bread. I like that directive! Better be "good!" I ask at the bakery -- is this good? She glares at me. Happy holidays to you too!
And then there are the other meals. Oatmeal, granola, wheat bread, cheese. More eggs. Spaghetti. Chips, nuts, cookies. Oranges.

Turkey!!! Cut up into five pieces this year, because Bon Appetit insists it's the only way to get it right!

The list is long.

I wanted to start in on the cooking today as well, but, the shopping took forever and in the afternoon, I had these two little peanuts to mind.






Sweet moods, both of them.











Can you cook a full Thanksgiving meal in less than two days? We shall see!

Monday of Thanksgiving week

The important thing to note is that this is the last of the warm-ish dry days. The last chance for us to work outside. Sow the meadow wildflowers? It's now or wait until spring.

Thanksgiving preparations will have to wait.

Before I can plant, Ed has to mow down the maple leaves out front. And so we set to work.






The cats watch. (Can you tell these triplets apart? We cannot!)






The cheepers come out.






(Breakfast break)






I have buckets of seeds and, too, I have a whole pail of pods from our own gardens.





All this has to be dispersed. It doesn't take long. Millions of seeds: an hour later, I'm done.

I'm not sure any of this will lead to any abundance of meadow flowers. We don't prep the soil nearly enough. That job would overwhelm us. Still, there is a spark of hope that some flowers will make an appearance next spring or summer. Sowing is an act of hope.


In the afternoon, of course, I play with Sparrow and Snowdrop.

(Doesn't he look like a guy coming home from work?)






We go to pick up Snowdrop. In her class, he is at once shy and insecure and daring and bold.






At the farmette, we cycle through the usual. A few secs of outdoor play...






Many, many minutes of reading (with a corn on the cob snack)...





And then whatever else strikes their fancy.


By evening, I realize I haven't done a blessed thing today to prepare for Thanksgiving. You better wish me demonic speed for the days ahead!

Sunday

Driving to the Brooklyn Wildlife Area, we listen to an NPR program where various people -- writers, ordinary folk, young, old -- share their favorite Thanksgiving memory. In case you're a little panicked about the meal you'll be cooking this Thursday, take some comfort in the fact that flops, fiascos, testy conversations -- this is the stuff that makes us laugh out loud years later.

On the radio, one person notes that on Thanksgiving, you invite the people you have to invite, whereas on the day after, with plenty of leftovers, you invite the people with whom you really want to share a meal. That surely isn't the case for me. Is it for you?

What's striking, of course, is that despite the somewhat fictionalized story behind this holiday, many elements are very real. The theme is so genuine and we embrace it, loving this day of secular traditions that all of us, no matter what our background and religion, can share. [One person on the radio told of staying with the turkey, but stuffing it with a Palestinian themed stuffing. Adam Gopnik, the writer, recalled sharing "the day after" every year with fellow writer Philip Roth, who loved to tell somewhat racy old Jewish jokes that shocked the kids and made the grownups laugh.] And we do all this over a turkey, of all things!

There was a time when I would pack up pots and pans and travel to wherever grownup daughters were on Thanksgiving: one year it was D.C., another -- Chicago. These days, I cook the big meal at home. In the years that they are away, visiting other family members, Ed and I eat sushi. It's not a sad day. But it's absolutely the case that to me, Thanksgiving only makes sense when at least a part of the younger brood is here.

This year, the stars are aligned my way and both young families will be in Madison on Thursday. And so the preparations must begin. Now, right?!

Not so fast. We are still putting things in order here, at the farmette, following Ed's three and a half week absence.

In the morning, he is once again working on my car. Walmart saves him by supplying the needed part. By late morning he is done. (In the mean time, I do animal care and fix us our same old breakfast.)






The day is lovely for November. Not exactly warm, but not cold either.





Ed asks -- do you want to go out for a hike to Brooklyn?

This seems to be a splendid idea until we pull up to the little parking area and notice the presence of a handful of hunters. We have our blaze orange stuff: a cap for Ed, a vest for me. Still, all those hunters (it is the beginning of the official deer hunting week in Wisconsin)... I ask one: you think it's safe for us to take a short hike, keeping to the trail?
He retorts (with some bravado, possibly for the benefit of his younger son) -- I wouldn't! It's a public hunting ground. I sure wouldn't!

Ed and I talk this over. I mean, isn't he going out into the forest himself? With his kid? Why are we different? Because we can't shoot back? Aren't you supposed to shoot at deer rather than people? Do you just fire away at anything that moves?

We have been hiking this trail for years. Dozens of times. We have never seen a deer here. Without question, there are perhaps twenty times as many hunters in the forest as there are deer and even that may be a low estimate.

We set out. Cautiously, I admit.






And we talk loudly (possibly to the irritation of all the men in orange with rifles at the ready).  It's not a long forest walk and soon we reach our destination: the bench with the view we love so much.






It's worth it. For many, many reasons. Perhaps for this selfie alone...





(Later in the day, we read that in fact, three people have been shot by deerhunters so far in Wisconsin this weekend, though I suppose two of them don't count: they accidentally shot themselves. The third was mildly injured.)

In the evening, the young family is here for supper.






Rituals, traditions, family habits and routines. They're so important!





So very important!

Saturday

A day of looking ahead. To Thanksgiving, for example. I know people are in marathon mode. You hear it everywhere. Yesterday, when I sat down for a Friday glass of wine at a neighborhood wine shop with my daughter, it was the predictable back and forth at the table next to ours: "I'm baking two pies." "Should I bring the rolls? I'll bring the rolls." "Not too many! Nobody ever eat the rolls!" "Who is doing the potatoes?" And so on.

At the grocery store on Thursday, I had asked the clerk if they were ready for the Thanksgiving craziness next week.
Oh sure. We have to be. But you know, at Thanksgiving, people are so much more calm and happy here than they are at Christmas time. All hell breaks loose here on the days before Christmas. It's a real different kettle of fish.

So, Thanksgiving calm, eh?

I'm not baking pies. I'm buying them from a bakery. I'm not making rolls (though a "yes" to corn muffins). But there are a lot of dishes on our family menu and with the young parents having to mind little tykes, I see myself as the kitchen staff for the big turkey day. And so on this rather pretty Saturday, after feeding the cats...

("why are you so late this morning??")





... and after breakfast, no longer solo...






... I begin to make lists and write out a schedule of cooking events.


All morning long Ed heroically continues to shovel the mud out of the driveway. Later, he will set himself to fixing the broken valve on the tire of my car. Me, I clean the greased-up oven glass with a very green but basically worthless combination of baking soda and water. As he runs necessary errands (new valve, bigger broom for the messes in the sheep shed), I step in to do the second round of cat care, which then triggers a typical array of mini-dramas: one cat locks himself in on the porch, another drags a dead animal into the sheep shed. These things drove me nuts when Ed was away. Now I just shake my head at the cat nuisances and look forward to relaying them to Ed when he returns from his shopping trip.

In the afternoon, he and I take a break from chores to go out and play disc golf. It's cold and a bit windy, but the sun continues to sparkle and shine down on this increasingly wintry brown landscape and the sandhills (can you see them?) are crooning away their love song for these northern lands they'll soon leave behind.





Such a pretty day. Pretty and calm. And that's a good thing.

Friday

Just a few weeks ago, I panicked: Thanksgiving is on November 21st and I haven't even thought about how to prepare a turkey this year! (Splice, brine, slow roast, what???)

Of course, I was wrong. The American Thanksgiving falls not on the last weekend of November but, since 1941, always, always on the fourth Thursday of the month.

How can you live for so many decades in this country and not know that? Am I a sheep that follows blindly what is thrust upon her, without thought and contemplation? Maybe, but more likely, the calculation of the date of this holidays fell into one of millions of blind spots I have, that we all have about how we view the world. Some of them we correct and fill in as new evidence presents itself. Oh! Google tells me it's actually on the 28th! But others -- we either never find out about them, or we stubbornly refuse to yield.

*   *   *

It is truly a beautiful day here, in south-central Wisconsin. Crisp, but sunny. You can't ask for more in late fall.








I'm "cooking" breakfast for two again.






And after, Ed and I talk. There is a lot to review, after all. I have questions. The obvious ones: were there storms? What did you do out there on that small boat when you weren't "on watch?" And the less obvious ones: was anyone seasick? (The answer to that is yes, all but one out of the five sailors. I'll leave you to guess who was the one person with a stomach of steel.)

*   *   *

It's a day for outdoor work. Lately, I haven't been motivated to finish up with the fall clean up, but today Ed took out the shovel and wheelbarrow (to fix the driveway) and I took out the rake and clippers and there we were, workings as we have always worked, to improve the farmette lands.

As I clip, snip and shape the front bed, our neighbor from across the road waves a hand and comes down.
I want to thank you for those cats, he tells me. It's remarkable! Almost no mice in the house this fall!

Oh those darn darn cats! Ed tells me -- they're fat! How much have you been feeding them??
Not fat! Just winter plump!

Dance watches us work outside, coming up to me occasionally for a rub, eyeing Ed with suspicious recognition: is he the same old same old?
I smile at her tentativeness. What do you think, Dance?You know, sailing can be transformative....

*   *   *

In the afternoon, I am with Snowdrop. She is at once excited and shy to see Ed again.






But once inside the farmhouse, after many chapters of books and a solid snack...





... she bursts forth with questions for him about sailing.

You bathed in the ocean? But how did you get the salt off?

Three cups of water, Snowdrop: one to lather, two to rinse.

cleaning

Last night I did something that I rarely do: I reread a whole chapter of my blog, one day after the next. True, it was a short chapter (from October 30 until November 20), but I wanted to see if I could make sense of this period where Ed sailed and I faced farmette life on my own. I learned a lot in these days -- about the benefits and shortcomings of living here, about the story I need to frame about farmette life in order to make it a sustainable, indeed lovable existence. So I wanted to review it.

I was reminded of how, at the beginning of the chapter, I wanted to purge stuff within the farmhouse. That seems like ancient news, no? Clean up, throw out, wash away. It didn't happen.

In truth, the farmhouse stayed very clean inside. (I'm a neat person. So are my daughters. We cant stand messes.) But the outside -- the farmette landscape -- proved to bring the greatest surprises and challenges. I learned that the animals here have trapped me. Chickens, cats, especially in the coldest days, required me to be here, or at least they made me feel that I could not just walk away (should, for example, the farmette management prove to be too much).

The outdoor lands seemed ominous and threatening under extreme weather conditions. Left to manage the tasks of tending to them in the way that I tend to outdoor stuff in late fall, I felt myself to be overwhelmed.

All this reinforced the belief that the reason I had grown to love this place is that it was part of a story in my mind (and certainly in the blog), where Ed and I expressed our affection for each other through work on the farmette. In other words Ed, and my love for him, is a prerequisite to life here.

 *   *   *

The rain at night washed the landscape, cleaning it of the residue of a tough late Fall.






It's a rushed morning. Schools are closed today (parent teacher conferences) and so the kids are coming here early. I quickly feed the cats, keep the cheepers locked up and hurry to Finca Cafe. This is where I have arranged to pick up Sparrow and Snowdrop.






Both kids are seasoned eat-outers and yet, due to birth order and seasonal imperatives, it struck me that I have rarely (never?) taken Sparrow to a coffee shop. Snowdrop and I would routinely walk the neighborhood of her school and wind up at the cafe by the lesser lake. Sam and I have not had the same adventuring escapades.

Both kids are delightful of course and a good bit of time passes with us just hanging here.






At home again, there are the routines: she imagines, he dances....











And then they both eat lunch...






And he naps and she has a wonderful hour of magna-tile play.





*   *   *

Late in the day, I grocery shop. Ed will be returning late tonight and I just don't know how tomorrow morning will work. And so I want to leave it open.

At home,  I cook up chicken soup. Because, if anyone is hungry today, tomorrow, or the next day, there will be home-made chicken soup.

*   *   *

When I am driving from Finca with the kids this morning, Snowdrop pipes up from the back seat.
Gaga, do you have happiness?
I am not surprised. The little girl often probes these topics, especially during our car rides.
Of course, I answer. I'm so happy to be driving home with my wonderful Snowdrop and Sparrow.
She thinks for a while, then continues -- there's lots of happiness in your life, if you find it. Then she repeats it, as if for emphasis.


 

foggy Wednesday

I wake up to thick mists swirling up the path, around trees, structures, cats, thoughts...






The snow is gone. It's as if the weather horror, yes horror had never happened. Deep freeze? Frozen pipes? Dead cats?  Fever, chills, such lethargy, such deep deep lethargy -- no, not here, right? Not at the beautiful November farmette. Not at this place of wet dirt, squishy fallen leaves, grass, still green -- I made it all up, right?






No, I did not. But honestly, in waking to this typical November day -- slightly wet, slightly dark (but the weather gods promised sunshine for Friday, at the latest!), it seems like I am in a different world.

Breakfast, photographed lovingly because always, always, in this meal there is color. And warmth. And hope for a good day ahead.






The good days becomes even better when the kids make their way here after school.






(Sparrow, on his own, finds the music box, gets it playing and dances...






It's sort of astonishing: this little boy who, a month ago, could not really take solo steps, loves to dance!






You go, little guy!






There was this silly rhyme that we used to write in our friends' autograph books (remember those?) when we were kids -- "good, better, best, never let it rest, until your good is better, and your better best."

We coach our little ones to always do better, do better, do better. Do we coach ourselves too? Or is it that at some point we conclude that we've done our work and this is as good as it gets?

I want to be honest here: I fall into this trap too. I may demand a lot of myself -- to care for the people I love -- but do I really ask myself to change? Improve? Or isn't it true that we all, say after age 59, sit back and say -- hey, I'm doing pretty well! I am older, wiser, I have myself and the world figured out?

There's a danger in growing older: you stagnate in your perceptions of others and of yourself, too. You don't look to improve anymore. "I am who I am!" You think you've learned all major life's lessons.  I said this in my post when I spoke of sailing out to sea: can it transform an older person, or are we pretty much formed by now?

The fog lifts, the last leaves tremble and fall. November, in her old age, shows us that she can still throw us a few surprises.