Vernalruminations

Dear Readers, dear Friends,  Until now I have not used my blog for any political statements with the possible exception of my story of our trip to Brownsville to help feed the asylum seekers.  Although the command to clothe the naked and feed the hungry is biblical, not political. But after the two weeks of DNC and then RNC I had to just this once react and share my feelings.  And you can choose to read it or not.  A blog is like the bottle thrown out on the waves for anyone or no one.  But I had to put it down in words.  HUMPTY DUMPTY “ When I use a word ,” said Humpty Dumpty, “ it means just what I choose it to mean.”   Last night I forced myself to watch the whole tawdry parade.   Somewhere early on—I think around Ben Carson—I grabbed this sweet toy that some of you remember Marti sent me when the quarantining started.   I needed something soft to clutch for comfort. Lies and more lies, lies repeated over and over, their insane mantra. And echoed on Fox news and believed in some

  The lake was still and inviting this morning when I took out the Old Town canoe to paddle over to Round Island, site of many memories. I started this blog just a year ago here on Long Lake where I’ve spent part or all of every summer for the past eight decades.   I was indeed “ruminating,” chewing over so many memories from my childhood, memories of my parents—especially my mother who brought us here—my four big sisters who taught me everything about swimming and rowing and diving and fishing, even about cooking, although I just watched and consumed and was for many years kept out of the kitchen. We had electricity and running water and indoor toilets, but only one tub reserved for my mother and me, no shower. My sisters had to bathe and wash their hair in the lake, and did so without complaining because Long Lake, unlike Lake Michigan, was never icy cold once you got past mid-June. In 2020 of course, Lake Michigan is no longer cold. Back then in my childhood we had a canoe, a sn

  NORTHERN HARVEST: TWENTY MICHIGAN WOMEN IN FOOD AND FARMING https://www.wsupress.wayne.edu/books/detail/northern-harvest   ROSE HOLLANDER’S STORY Born in the Bronx of German heritage, Rose was familiar with different aspects of the food business from early childhood.   When her family moved to Woodstock, Rose, at age twelve, helped with making pastries in an Italian restaurant.  Years later, living in Hong Kong with her husband, Rose discovered Asian cuisine and ever since then incorporated this into her own cuisine, whether at home or catering. Returning from Hong Kong, Rose and Stuart spent a few years in California, but when they had children they moved to Suttons Bay where she has lived ever since. After Stuart died , “I decided to look into the idea of going to a culinary school, not with the notion that I would ever run a restaurant, but just that I would learn those skills.” This led to a twelve week program at the Ballymaloe Cooking School in Ireland.   “In my tw

  NORTHERN HARVEST: TWENTY MICHIGAN WOMEN IN FOOD AND FARMING https://www.wsupress.wayne.edu/books/detail/northern-harvest   CHERYL KOBERNIK’S STORY Her German heritage looms large in Cheryl’s tale.   You never give up, go backwards, or go around obstacles, but face them head on until the solution pops up.   A house inhabited by raccoons, black with smoke and the furnace not working?   “Perfect. Exactly what we were looking for.” Cherries grown without chemicals to help them abscise. How then to get them off the trees?   “Step back, think. . . . You don’t pick fruit until it’s ripe. . . We are just going to have to let it get ripe.” Growing up in a suburb of Detroit, Cheryl was lucky in that her parents owned ninety acres of pine woods in Boyne City, northern Michigan, her dad’s “ place of solace, ” where they spent not only summer vacation time but many weekends during the winter months. Planning to be a nurse, she enrolled at Wayne State, switched to counseling, and finishe

  NORTHERN HARVEST: TWENTY MICHIGAN WOMEN IN FOOD AND FARMING https://www.wsupress.wayne.edu/books/detail/northern-harvest   Patty’s Story After describing herself as a “ terrible ” student in high school, and before that a “horrible” student in junior high school, Patty LaNoue Stearns attributed her successful career as a journalist to the teaching of one very charismatic journalism teacher in that high school, and also to the good fortune that her mother was already a journalist and could give Patty, still in her teens, entrée to a local chain of papers in Lincoln Park, as a copy girl/society reporter. Years later that same high school honored her as a distinguished former student in the Allen Park Hall of Fame for her career in journalism. With regard to food, she described her mom as “a stone soup cook who would pull a rabbit out of a hat every night, and we’d eat it.” And this was in the “Wonder Bread, Space-Age kind of eating existence.” But moving on from Wonder brea

  NORTHERN HARVEST: TWENTY MICHIGAN WOMEN IN FOOD AND FARMING http://www.wsupress.wayne.edu/books/detail/northern-harvest   SUSI MCCONNELL’S STORY Growing up in a Lithuanian family and neighborhood in Saginaw, Susi loved baking from early childhood, but also all the plants and flowers and vegetables in her parents’ garden. Influenced by the back-to-nature movement of the 60s she became aware of “organic stuff. . . . I became really aware of food and the health benefits . . . and I was very aware of the mind/body thing.” After working as a pastry chef at Leland Lodge, at SugarLoaf, at Hattie’s, at Thyme Out and at Martha’s, Susi developed celiac and could no longer work with flour. Still very conscious of health as relates to food, she then worked with Angela Macke at Light of Day and got into biodynamic gardening.  "I follow the calendar, and I harvest and plant according to the calendar. . . . When we built our house I planted . . . currant bushes, strawberries, black a

NORTHERN HARVEST: TWENTY MICHIGAN WOMEN IN FOOD AND FARMING https://www.wsupress.wayne.edu/books/detail/northern-harvest   Jenny Tutlis’s story Like Jennifer Blakeslee, Jenny Tutlis grew up in Traverse City, but as a child she did not farm or garden.   It wasn’t until she spent a post-college year volunteering in a community of people with mixed abilities in Virginia, that she discovered   a passion for gardening that led over time to the wonderful CSA in Leelanau County known as Meadowlark. The CSA now feeds almost 600 people through its 180 shareholders. With the advent of hoop houses Jenny and husband Jon are able to garden in all seasons and to sustain their farm without resorting to other jobs, something that was a familiar necessity for many farming families without hoop houses when their produce was strictly seasonal. Jenny told me, “ I feel especially passionate about young women and girls seeing me as a woman farmer. That idea that farmers are all men is still real