Chewing the Cud

  • A Kitchen of Culture, Life, And Conversation

    May 10, 2015 The kitchen is a favorite room of mine. Hard to imagine it isn’t everyone’s. Good food, good company, and good talk roll over the counter top and fill the house. Not a big room, but open with movement between kitchen and dining is hardly noticeable. Our home is a back door home.…

  • A Landscape of Dented Buckets and Grain Sacks

    May 03, 2015 We were driving through the Nova Scotia countryside in November taking in farms and farming practices. The practices and work we saw was much like the work of small farmers back home. Most farms were multi-crop in addition to dairy, beef, goats, or sheep. The workers of the land told a story…

  • Meating Reverence At the Intersection of Life and Death

    April 26, 2015 Most calves arrive on the farm arrive in the fall. Many of our neighbor’s spring calves sell at that time, so fall is a good time to buy. Fall, a year later, is butchering time. During the year I walk the pastures and slowly develop a relationship with the steers. Each walk…

  • Mystery In the Nooks and Crannies Of Garages and the Everyday

    April 19, 2015 There was always a bit of mystery in Daddy’s garage. Having free range, we kids were in it most every day for one thing or another. It was a normal place with a bit of an edge. Daddy fought in WWII as a young man. For him, as a parent, that meant…

  • Kneading—A Contemplative Practice—Bread

    April 12, 2015 The other day I read an article talking about 10 foods everyone should make at home. Bread was one of the ten. I gotta say I like it when someone says, “everyone should be doing this…” and I am doing it. Growing up, mother made bread. It was the sixties and early…