Yahara Winter

"It was just ten years ago that Bob came home to catch the feeling of the Minnesota-Ontario border country in midwinter. He wanted, above all, to sit in a dark house with me again and watch the circling decoy and the scene below the ice." – Sigurd Olson, from the Singing Wilderness








The Lake Monona shoreline has been a veritable kaleidoscope of conditions over the past several weeks. Yesterday the temperatures had plummeted back down into the teens, a very thin snow ha re-covered the surface, and all the little cracks and seams and alleyways that had formed by a recent high thaw had nearly magically recongealed, hardened over the fishing holes, and seemed to be capable of holding the intermittent truck once again.  Living across the lake, its safe to say that the frozen months offer the onlooker an entirely new variety of natural beauty and phenomenon. The mere thought that the white trailer that stands out there in the middle of the lake, maybe a quarter of a ton heavy, is on a layer of ice a mere foot thick, full of suspended bubbles and littered with ogger holes which one might think would generally make the vast shelf of ice vulnerable and might, over time, split or sag or sink – any of the things that common sense projects onto the physics of the laws of weight and gravity. It was only last week that the sun had been out all day long, it was fifty degrees, and I decided that I wanted to check the conditions to see what a day of melting did to a frozen lake. I had never seen in my life such a collection of new phenomenon over a particular space. Only a hike last spring up Booths Falls in Colorado could similarly match the changes brought on in the time of one day.  Back here on Lake Monona, the surface of the lake had become a series of clear water ponds, glimmering and rippling with the direction of the wind. Nearer the shoreline, old ice had been heaved upwards over the rip rap, creating wavelike structures of thin ice, looking as if it was diving up toward the park. Dark holes had formed on the thin layer and you could see down to either open (shallow) water, or another layer of older ice. Where cracks cleared and water rose up to meet the thin layer of now pond-like water, small whirlpools were created. I assumed that these little oddities, which I have never seen before on a frozen lake, were created by the meeting of two varying temperatures of water, water pressure differential, and wind itself, which created a near stream pattern flowing from west to east. My boots were just thick enough at the soles to walk over the depth of the water without the uppers getting wet. Because the snow was melted, the lake, for the first time since its original freeze, was entirely clear, a kind of unusual, solid, water dessert oasis. The sun was hanging over the line of trees in its afternoon slot but left its lurching panels of light heading my way. Out in the middle, only one fisherman was left, tending to his multiple fishing holes. Next to him his quarter ton trailer which seemed to be sitting quite solidly over what was clearly a shimmering surface of likely two inches of blown water. All just water in varying forms.  When olson mentions his friend who wanted to come all the way up to the Quetico to experience again real ice, as I looked out across the vast watery space of Monona, I could understand, for it is a temporary existence this frozen lake, something like the combined efforts of both natural science and a random sort of art. To be able to sit on top of this frozen living room floor that you can actually see through to observe the habits of fish is a true naturalist's catbird seat.

Weeknight Tagine

"This traditional Moorish dish appears in various guises throughout the Arab-influenced world. Poultry cooked with dates and honey is probably one of the most ancient culinary combinations and the finished dish is deliciously succulent." – Ghillie Basan, from easy tagine










Over many years, after cooking your thousandth weeknight meal, it's simply never easy to into the realm of "this is the best ever." There's all kinds of reasons for this, not the least is that your very own self-perceived culinary masterpiece might look (over even taste) the very opposite to the kid-and-spouse combination eaters. In other words, it is time itself that teaches you the most obvious of all points about cooking, but that is sometimes hard to swallow: tastes vary. I recently received a 'best ever' vote from both wife and child and I all it all to the tagine, my new – and very much hope permanent – kitchen sidekick. The tagine I am finding out is a very intuitive and forgiving pot. One-pot meals have always made sense to me for family cooking. Gather your ingredients, add the stuff that makes sense for the overall taste of the majority of your eaters, then toss them them, turn them to a ragout style comfort food, and folks will generally be receptive. Tagine cooking is a little like finally finding a mode of doing this, but with some style, some fun, interest, and with a new flavor profile. With a tagine of chicken leg quarters with dates and honey, I know before I start the process that my main goal is to get those leg quarters tender and suffused with its surrounding stew-like ingredients – butter, ginger, garlic, olive oil, a dash of cinnamon, honey, and pitted dates. So, let's face it, knowing how the tagine works, as a sort of circulation steam system, there's a couple of things I have to do not to screw it up. One, I want my chicken skins to carry an initial flavor that will stick and not just fade in the liquid. So I browned my legs in a pan before I plopped them into the ginger and oil, sprinkling with a rotisserie chicken seasoning holds up its flavor nicely over the stewing process. After placing the tagine hood over, I could very well imagine that fresh combination of ginger and cinnamon and garlic rising up through the chicken at the bottom and then circulating back down and cooking from the top. Once in a while, even thought I am not supposed, I lifted the hood to make sure that I was not low on liquid. I placed a handful of dates along the edges of the legs, stirring in the honey at the same time, adding sweetness and a sort of gelatin texture.  I happened to decide to toss in a few baby carrots and larger cut broccoli florets over the top to steam. On the side I briefly browned a handful of almonds and eventually tossed those over the tops of the legs and dished, making each portion got dates and veggies.  As I sat the chicken legs onto the plates, I was very

pleased that the chicken was clearly tender but not yet to the moment where the meat began to disconnect from the bone – sometimes slow cookers have a tendency to render meat like this and although many might claim that this is an ideal texture, I've alway felt that usually by this time, the meat has post some of its inherent taste and structure and tastes far more like the stew surrounding than meat itself. It took it out right on time. As we began to eat, it was very promising that as an entire dish it is did not overly exotic. Moroccan, stocked full of a wonderful assortment of nuanced ingredients, could look a bit complicated for younger eaters. Here, only dates might have looked out of the ordinary; the almonds there but fine and acceptable.  The tagine had worked its magic and indeed it had become deliciously succulent, just as Basan had mapped out in the recipe description. Some 'best evers' were tossed around. Even though I realized this was one-pot cooking, I became convinced that the tagine likely does have at least two advantages that more delicately handles the cooking process: the hood is higher and makes the heating less intense on the topside than a standard dutch ceramic, and two, there is a considerable call for sweetness in tangines which of course highlights the surrounding North African culture and its abundant ingredient: dates, figs, honeys, cinnamons, even gingers, once broken down, as a sweetness. Maybe it was possible was Moroccan cooking, although from far far away, held the promise of offering a taste profile quite close to the heart of a young dinner eater.

Yahara Winter

"The eye is the first circle; the horizon which it forms is the second; and throughout nature this primary figure is repeated without end." – Emerson, from "Circles"










Now, your days
by winter
will go by
with less truth;
is it I who handles
the steering
wheel that scuttles
across the weary
streets
covered by the lead of ice,
or some other
that I watch,
as if from a far,
a moon
watching the earth
by night?
These are not
questions
for everybody.
Winter can sag low
and uneasy
like poor old cats
abandoned
and slinking in among
the alley eaves.
Who am I by cold?
The silver pictures
of Alaskan
summers behold
the crisp
domes of Denali,
and perhaps
we see
the slurping tongue
of the husky
take hold of her
reins and barge
through a crystal lit snowdrift.
The hours,
here, however, don't hold.
Today
the truth of the sunlight
came out and held.
I walked out
onto the ice
rippled
by the melt,
small holes
uprose like a vent
of whirlpools,
resurrected leaves
circled
and I could see through
three inches
to suspended bubbles.
I could say,
for once this month,
I knew all I needed,
for the water was clear
and bright
and the face
that shone in the water
below
as mirror image
I could see

Yahara in Winter

"Last night
she
came,
livid,
night-blue,
wine-red:
the tempest
with her
hair of water..."  – Neruda, from "Ode to the Storm"




Oh, white glass
I see
across the street,
a tundra
of old trees
that I am used to
but the bark
of the north facing
slivered by snow,
how did you paint that
my friend?
By Wisconsin streets
in winter
we hold captive
by the compulsion
of the sun
as it is our only
diadem,
the glitter of a world
we know
but are not,
like children, allowed
to peruse
such a section of delight.
Neighbors now
scoot by
holding the tethered
handles
of their leashes
as if the spring has sprung,
as if that light
that coats
the river
and sorts out its folds
rendezvoused volume
had been sent
from a world
of solution,
a world that is cinder
and pure
which does not
know restraint.
Up there, a thousand
years away,
long ago beamed,
yellow molten
paint dab sun.
I walk up to the glass
case in my house,
and know not
what I have
done to deserve
the pattern
that reels in protest
against
the monotony
of dull gray winter.

Yahara Winter Journal

"...All the walks here are wide, and the spaces ample and free – now flooded with liquid gold from the last two hours of powerful sunshine. The whole area at 5 o'clock, the days of my observations, must have contain'd from thirty thousand finely-dressed people, all in motion... – Whitman, from Specimen Days







January 24. – it will always start here, near the Rutledge Bridge which leans so firmly over the Yahara as it carries its buses and hundreds of cars, very early, and out the little bedroom window the joggers have already taken hold of still-icy road, adorned their yellow slick suits, glowing in the dark by the shining of car light. That is the fresh and invigorating way to begin the day...but oh how difficult it is! The cold seeps in the front doors, it finds its ways inside the cracks in the floor, frost flies off the eaves at the roofs and whips up in a wintry mix, no sun for days, but here they are, the runners the walkers the bikers to work, thin-wheeled, slow, deliberate over the shoveled sidewalks. Most of us come to live out on the road. Down East Washington toward the Capitol building, that domed white giant teacup up against the luck of the blue threshold that opens for a moment above makes the building a natural gravitational pull. I drive often down these roads and watch the traffic boil and complain at lights. I watch the young men walk out of EVS Coffeeshop, the smokers by lunch standing at the curb lights outside of the Baldwin Grille, no longer cold, already whiskey on their breath. Another man pulled over along the vestibule of the Avenue Bar talked to by cops. Buses whir past, baby strollers, wrapped up in blankets, so not a single breath can reach inside to where the miniature traveler sleeps so snug.  This is the city as it unfolds. Tomorrow the sunshine glaze will be out again and these same very scenes will lose their menace and monotony. Far reaching fields of golden sunshine will wash along the jagged shores of Mendota at James Madison Park. One skater, off in the distance, etching along the crumpled ice, as the last lake eagle soars overhead looking for fresh inlets. And there, from three hundred yards out, the white capitol, stolid, gleaming white, at the center like the very edge of a postcard.

On the Yahara

"Sitting in the Scamper, curling her arms up like a boxer, Keeper flexed her muscles. She certainly was not like the Incredible Hulk, but she was proud of her strong arms." – Appelt, from Keeper










So far Cora and Shaw had only one summer client signed up for what they decided to call The Lost Bee Society.  Mrs. Gavelwood was an ex biology school teacher and knew all about these things. She was almost always out in her frontyard which faced the park and made sure the park department didn't cut down the dogwoods or mow over what she called the spring ephemerals.  Cora and Shaw would walk past Mrs. Gavelwood's house every morning that they remembered and ask what she was doing today? "We want to count all the neighborhood bees," was the first service that The Lost Bee Society would work on.  "Well remember, it matters how much we give them to eat and pollinate. Now if every house planted an apple tree, we'd have something wouldn't we?" Mrs. Gavelwood was pruning the long branches of her own apple tree that particular  morning. "Once those bees sniff out those apple buds, that's all it takes. Come on back here girls, let me show you something." Gavelwood set her loppers down and made a tidy stack of limbs along the tree. The front porch of the house was a lush herb garden planted along the stairs and up onto the porch railings. "When you start your bee counting, no need to come back this way," she said, pointing out the contours of the backyard. It was rolling in small hills. Raised beds were fit like square puzzle pieces. Ms. Gavelwood was the tallest woman that the girls knew and when she pointed to the raised beds, her arms seemed to extend all the way down the ground without bending over. "Do you see that box back there by the garage? Don't tell anybody but those are my Italians. Stay put for now." The side wall seemed to be moving. "Italians?" Shaw asked, wanting so badly to walk over to the mysterious box. "What has a powerful queen, likes apples, and lives on one another in a very small apartment?"

On the Yahara

"'Come on, moon,' she implored. Didn't it know she was in a hurry? As soon as she said the word 'moon,' she chewed on her bottom lip. So much had depended on tonight's moon, a blue moon, second full moon of the month." – Kathi Appelt, from Keeper









Cora hadn't figured out yet how to stand upright on the stand up paddleboard. "You are supposed to stand up" Shaw said, who herself, of course, was paddling from shore to shore in a zig zag over the perfectly lit green water. "You can see right down to the bottom," she said, and sure enough, right at this twelve noon sunshine beaming straight down before the Rutledge bridge, she could see rocks on the bottom and a few slippery fish dart to the tangled banks. "Don't fall in" said Cora, who herself was sturdily on her knees. There was no way that she was going to go into that water. It was green for a reason. She wondered if it might take her skin off. It had been only a month ago after the big rain in spring when the little white fish floated down over a green haze. That very day that she saw that parade float from under the bridge and out into Lake Monona, there were a group of boys at the next bridge up toward Willy street who were jumping off the bridge a good fifteen feet into the water. She wondered what their feet felt. She hoped they hadn't accidentally drank any of that 'green tea' as her dad had called it. "Catfish!" she yelled out loud at Shaw. "Catfish two o'clock." She had never ever seen a real catfish along the Yahara here, but they were very scary dudes, big as the paddle board itself, and this river had once been called 'catfish alley,' as dad had said. Oh, this didn't bother Shaw in the least, not a single eyota. For Shaw was a true naturalist, had been from the get go. Dad said some are born Huck Finn's, others have to grow into the role." Cora was a grower into. She was going to save the neighborhood bees, that was a given. But it was Shaw that she let lead the way and do all the work, of course. "Catfish are like pets anyway," Shaw said, paddling now with greater ease and grace. When she swiped off the left the board went right and circled back to Cora now. "The reason I wanted to come out here is because now we can see the house from the proper distance. The first thing we do if we are going to do do Luscious Landscaping is see what our trees are like." Luscious landscaping was the title from a book that had become the families farm bible for the last few months. There was usually a new book and plan at least every week. Dad would try anything. The house on the corner was to become a nature center, and if it was going to be a nature center, we had learn how plant permaculture, he had been saying. Shaw understood intuitively. She knew for certain they would have to draw a map, first. "Remember there will chickens," she said back then, and now there were seven chickens in the back courtyard dropping their stinky pellets all over the place, clucking, pecking. Cora thought they were a funny group of birds, not particularly bright. The plan, however, was in action. "First we have to get you up on your board otherwise you can't see a thing." Nothing had said anything about getting up on a board first to create luscious landscaping. Cora was leery.

Yahara Winter

"The moon, though slight, was moon enough to show
On every tree a bucket with a lid,
And on black ground a bear-skin rug of snow."
– Frost, "Evening in a Sugar Orchard"









It's easier to tell the stories of what you miss.
As the nights draw down to degrees below zero
you then wake, look out the frosted window
and although the sunrise shines you resist

the same plans of the soft yellow summer,
of taking your daily walk along the Yahara,
the hike up over the pine limestone cliffs
or follow butterflies along the prairie at Curtis.

The winter months turn the mind's eye within.
A soft music there we hope tells us what we love.
We are not so much but half ourselves.
The other, warm earth, long gone, again.

Yahara Winter

"It lifts existence on a plane of snow
One level higher than the earth below,
One level nearer heaven overhead,
And last year's berries shining scarlet red."
– Frost, "A Winter Eden"









For generations I imagine
the first heavy snow meant a long shovel,
from sidewalk side to side or driveway,
country or town, a night's work anyway.

Here tonight the traffic has slowed,
snow mounds curl each curb as if bowed
and lends a certain perfect fortress
around the block a quiet friendly fence.

As I make my own shovel marks across
the walk I find the house prosperous,
the little lights along the courtyard stoop
shining a white world in the dark anew.

The serviceberry bushes I see up close,
as they stand stark and thin and cold,
one last reddish berry hanging crinkled
by the fiber of a twig as if a star onto itself.

Across the street the Yahara River
flows past in waves of silver medallions,
light sprayed down by old street lamps
as they have for a hundred years past.

Fatigue settles down into the lower back,
my hat wet, ears raw, knuckles cracked;
I stop and stand for a moment  and wonder
if inside those old-time passing trolleys
the stories they told themselves they believed.

Yahara Winter

"There's a patch of old snow in a corner
That I should have guessed
Was a blow-away paper the rain
Had brought to rest..."

– Frost, "A Patch of Old Snow








Where two days ago the dead leaves
served us with nothing more than questions,
the clouds have now rushed in and spread
their fine white blankets of glitter instead.
How inside the eye changes its suggestions,
and as I walk along the smooth printed
sidewalk footsteps are in jest of someone else,
the crow is like a raucous piece of coal
in contrast to the gleaming whiteout
and no longer do I much care for doubt.
A new painting holds its hope for days,
as you stand it in the corner of the house,
there it sits a new found portal to a world,
strokes and washes teaches the painter
of things you did not fully realize at creation.
And so the arctic mists that sizzle up
from windburned snowbanks seem to soothe
to a blue innocence the mind a day or two.

Notes of a Wannabe Farmer

"Back in his other life, back when he was urban or suburban, it may have been sports cars that caught the newcomer's eye. Or maybe a showroom full of compacts, fresh and glittering from the factory. Now he finds himself eyeing some neighbor's sturdy green pickup with a big load of brush in the back and wondering how much one like it would cost. Welcome to the club." – Noel Perrin, from First Person Rural








There are as many bright images associated with backyard homesteading as there are likely bright images for the real farmer, out there in the real countryside, of living in the city someday. For that real farmer, let us guess that by fifty years of age, after so many thousands of hours of real work, including pre-dusk cow herding or post-dinner milking, there might not be anything more pleasant than to own a little apartment somewhere in the center of the city where a mere short stroll outside of the front doors would lead to places where other people are cooking the food, doing the dishes, staying up until one in the morning before they shut off the lights. For the urban dweller, all this is reversed, of course, because we know that the grass can only greener when finally embedded on the other side. We might not quite be capable of imaging a pig navigating a forty by forty space tied to a leash that would not allow it quite to mingle with the dogs walking along the sidewalks, but what about planting chestnuts or hackberry's where the three rose bushes used to stem? Is it possible that three stalks of true corn might be able to plant inside the widest possible pot? Wheat germ? My own hops? Seven chickens so as not to cross the municipal ordinance? One can only imagine the result of playing through each of these images like such a greedy urban farmer wannabe, and many times, as we see around town in Madison, it does.  I feel I need to cultivate my year old herb garden which was placed last year up along a planting bed stationed at the top of our courtyard fence. There, my cilantro, thyme, sage, rosemary, lavender and basil did quite well and indeed, as the good write-ups suggest, yielded a variety of product months. For my second year, however, I would like to up the ante. I feel well prepared to clip and preserve like I am supposed to. Although there will no doubt come the day when I am able to tie the stalks of my thyme and let them dry from a rack upside down, there are other things that I would like to dabble in. I want to create my tincture, made of Echinacea and ever clear alcohol if that is an option. I want to freeze my basil pesto in ice cube trays then store in freezer bags at the ready to melt and use.  Near the end of the ware season here, I would like to gather my healthiest sets of herbs and transplant to a pot and bring it on inside near a sunny window so that I can continue to snip into the fall and winter months. My own set of images have something more to do with simplifying – perhaps the warm clear glass of chamomile tea at 7 o'clock as the hundredth neighbor walks past the front of the house past Yahara Place Park looking across the street no doubt to see the progress of the farm.

Yahara Winter

"To think to know the country and now know
The hillside on the day the sun lets go
Ten million silver lizards out of snow!"

     – Frost, from "A Hillside Thaw"







The melting days of mid January
has left old piles of golden leaves bare,
alone, unable to fly or sink down
for cover in the frozen solid soil.

These in-between seasons carry
neither sun or snow-white invitations.
Wishes of the mind leap backwards
as if to the first words of a sentence.

The clearer there I see the bright
symphony of purple spiderwort
blooming behind the spiral blazing star,
the sunflowers a sweet ochre yellow.

If I were to reconstruct the words
today the flakes would tumble down wide
and wandering like white envelopes
holding wild white letters of hope.

Yahara in Winter

"But what about the brook
That held the house as in an elbow-crook?"
   – Robert Frost, from "A Brook in the City"









When the days go by in mid January
at the Rutledge bridge the rainy streets
shine at night by streaks a zig zag
pattern of orange lamplight flame.

It's awash over the dull black asphalt
where the buses lurch to stop sign
squeeze their brakes and the dog walkers
pull their slack leashes at the corner.

Underneath again the water flows,
the surface melted, no longer ice.
I wonder what the warm world thinks.
Do the wintering ducks flap their wings

in a sort of once-in-a-lifetime ecstasy?
The fishermen still hold their oggers
hunched over their thinning holes
then quietly slide hooks to blind fish.

Notes of a Wannabe Farmer

"Most country dwellers in New England sooner or later think about doing a little maple sugaring. About nine-tenths of them never actually get around to it." – Noel Perrin, from First Person Rural










One of the biggest differences between a wannabe farmer and the true backyard homesteader is, well, the farming part of it. When the magic landscaping wand comes along that within three weeks turns my tiny city corner plot into the magnificent spread of the ideal homesteader plot, all quartered and halved and fenced and elevated and chickened and permacultured, I for one would be the first to purchase it from Amazon. Furthermore, how, in modern times, do we get to such an evolved plot starting from scratch? One of my favorite books in the world is A Year in Provence by Peter Mayle, the very book that sort of catapulted what had been (before Europe turned more sour on Americans) a new expat culture, in this case into the south of France. Mayle and his wife decide its time to escape the glum gray skies of London and head to wine country, buy an old country house in the Luberon, and, without necessarily initially seeking them out, meet the neighbors, sometimes head on. The book is all charm. Mayle and his wife play the English speaking stooges to some degree and take French rural advice whether they want it or not. The point of these wonderful little narratives that Mayle creates is that, in the end, they learn to farm, cultivate, drink wine, play boules, and otherwise just live like Frenchmen and Frenchwomen by modeling....they had some step by step assistance, albeit sometimes unwilling. The modern it seems, on the other hand, has books and classes.  We've slowly but surely severed our connection with the rural and now spend our time trying to recreate it from the ashes of something that is lurking in us but its hard to get our hands on. And so we have these wonderful new folk schools that teach beads and metalworking; we have permaculture guild that shows us how to commonsensical contour our property for water flow and edibility; we have kits coming out of our ears for preserving, canning, beering and wining. Quite odd to consider all of the stuff we want to learn that might have been taken for granted two hundred years ago – in an age when we want to think we are all forward thinkers, what is closer to the truth is that we are constantly sending our lines backward, maybe not to the mindsets but certainly to the skillsets and certainly to how we used to experience time.  And so I look at the process of making wine. Only two pages in the homesteader book, so must not be too overwhelming. Until the instructions begin to talk about sanitation, bleaches, tablets, wine casks, tubes, bottles, corks, cracked bottles, cracked corks and then six months of waiting for the maybe, all the while the other wine cellar stocked with the guaranteed good stuff. I suspect the backyard homesteader has to put him or herself on a strict sort of assignment basis with self. How's about this for creating necessity in following through with Perrin's sugaring, or the making of wine: 'you will not have another sip of wine or beer until you make your own!' I can just see now how the eyes might scan the instructions a touch more closely, as if your life depended on it.

Notes of a Wannabe Farmer

"In the early 1980's, my lived in a small gray house on what I now realize was a half-acre backyard homestead situated on a quiet, tree-lined street in Nampa, Idaho. I was just a small child then, but I still remember the vegetable garden my parents planted each year, tucked away in the far corner of our backyard." – Carleen Madigan, from The Backyard Homestead







There must be something very visceral about childhood memories that include the dark spaces and dank smells of grandparents' home. Up until the suburban housing revolution, it seems fairly safe to say that most of us probably have something like them anyway, maybe it was an attic, often times a porch, or some portion of an old garage where the smells of oil and dust commingled and turned to everlasting images. I remember well the farmhouse basement of my grandparents, with the creeky see though stairs, the chipped concrete of the foundation, a surprisingly unusual stand-up shower in the corner with nothing more than a circular curtain, and then, the masterpiece of all memory, the canning cellar. This one was quite small, full of cobwebs in every corner, and to the child's eye something that did not in any way seem like it would useable. It looked more like something that had been passed on from the previous generation; the pickles in their brine and tomatoes floating like suspended red orbs did not look like anything gotten at a grocery store. Yet there the pickles would appear come the magic dinner hour served alongside the soft farm bread and butter, the pot roast and potatoes, and had a kind of singular taste that tasted like the farm itself. These were the very same memories and images that combined with the hay loft up above the barn; the cow stalls, filled or not, the granary and the dairy production in its own building along the side. Canning equipment on its way via Amazon delivery, I feel its time to take an urban stab at canning and see if I can create my own dank cellar full of wispy cobwebs and anticipate the smells that rise at the first crack of the jar lid.

Notes of a Wannabe Farmer

"Up until two years ago, when Ammemarie started her home dairy, I had a completely nineteenth-century image of the process. In my mind's eye I saw a grandmotherly-looking woman seated at a kitchen table, turning a large wooden churn. And turning it, and turning it, and turning it. My mind even supplied two for three strips of flypaper hanging down over the table." – Neil Perrin, from First Person Rural, Essays of a Sometime Farmer







The city-dweller will also have to face the stark truth that as he or she would like nothing more than to look out their backyard porch at a well-conceived and self-sustaining homestead, including raised beds of veggies and herbs, a chicken coop out there in the deepest corner, some grains off to the side, and boxes of honey bees behaving themselves cornered up against the garage which is shared with the neighbor, there will be some issues of practicality and imagination that will have to be adjusted. One of the great motions of mind in modern times is the migration into the urban centers where the schools, the restaurants, the jobs are close by – biking becomes a valid option when compared to considering riding from the rural house fifteen miles in along a highway road shared with crop-cutters. Now once we establish ourselves in our tidy corner house on the cramped block – bless it, for it is beautiful and cozy – we now conceive of the backyard homestead, of course. 'If only,' becomes the key phrase inside the mind of the newly motivated urban farmer. 'If only we could have a few chickens in back,' or 'we need to compost everything for our...crops.' 'If only we had raised beds on the boulevards, corn and potatoes, that would be nice.'  In other words, the urban backyard homesteader is a good and proper dreamer. Landed with 40 acres to plant for real, this same dreamer might wonder what in the world to do with all this land, especially if we are merely feeding ourselves! Should we turn this rural plot into a going concern? Now, reduced to a backyard courtyard made of concrete tile, some planting beds about five by one feet extending at the top of the courtyard walls, and a patch of yard about two by twenty feet, we have to think in its opposite, as micro farmers, if you will. Usually at this point the good and proper urban micro farmer just wishes himself back about a hundred years ago when all these choices weren't around for him to pick from. My own father grew up on a family dairy, three other brothers, and the work was haying, cowing, fencing, manuring, or whatever new real crises arose. There wasn't a lot of thinking about microfilming in those moments. Much of the thinking, if I have gathered all of the information accurately, was something more like, 'let's get off this farm as quick as possible and into the cities and our desk jobs! for goodness sakes. Now we've had our generation or two of rest and its time to get our hands dirty again and we all know it. Notes of a wannabe farmer is a little tongue and cheek, yes, but it's also plenty accurate. The urban wannabe farmer is what it is: a looker back, a looker forward, and a looker of his plot as it is, and realizing that there are some small tasks that have to be planned and executed to make this little city block corner house a 'homestead,' and along the way it might be kind of fun...unlike real farming, which is, as I understand it, like, real, work.

Prairie Views

january 5

Four in the afternoon. 10 degrees near sunset.

Where we park at Governor Nelson
only day old tire tracks circle
the thin stiff snow around the parking lot
but no other cars.
We open the doors and they crack
like old bones, stiff and heavy,
and complain at having to get out
in this cold snap one more time for God's sake.
The prairie across the road
for the moment still tall and golden under the last
long canvas of sunshine retreating
behind the flat cornfields fading west.
Big bluestem seems to lean our way in resignation.
Night has come again for its gold blades,
collars and sheaths like a thief
invited in by the gnarled black oaks.

Tagine of yam, shallots,
carrots and prunes

"The great secret of an authentic tagine is to simmer the ingredients over a low heat, so that everything remains deliciously moist and tender." – Ghillie Basan, from easy tagine












A stew worthy of poetry, as Ghillie Basan writes in her introduction to easy tagine, seems right on the mark for this new venture into cooking vegetable as tangines. I mentioned this in my first post for the Moroccan cooking method, that there's no reason to tuck away the slow cooker for good, or to shelve the new one-pot, but when these two appliances are considered up against the beauty, efficiency and flavor of the tagine, there is no real comparison. The tagine is an old and beautiful approach because it allows for, first of all, a surface hot enough to sautée your initial ingredients. In the yam, shallot and carrots recipe, the first ingredient down is diced ginger, which becomes quickly wonderfully aromatic, then cinnamon, which naturally enhances and sweetens this initial aroma. Whole shallots (I happen to cut mine into quarters) comes next until they are colored. This is the base of the stew as poetry. Because it is in tagine, it is very visible and accessible, just like cooking in a shallow dutch

style ceramic. No doubt it could continue to cook topless if chosen, especially to reduce. Add bite size jams, chopped (or whole) prunes, and strong drizzle of honey and then 1 1/4 cups of broth, season and stir, and this is, as you look at it, already a wonderful looking concoction. Yet it is the covering that makes all the difference. Unlike the one-pot, there is no sealing a cover; unlike the slow cooker, there is no anticipation for either a 5 or 8 hour wait; instead, this cover draws and recirculates the moisture of the broth and oils up an down the contours of the cover, and quickly. We imagine that this is the best method we might come up with for jams and carrots, both of which need not only the patience of a proper steaming method to soften. It just happens that the Moroccan tradition allows this to happen in a kind of syrupy and eventually caramelized liquid. With a few minutes left in the cooking time, lift the cover and set aside, allowing for whatever remaining liquid to thicken. Toss a pinch of shredded mint and cilantro over the top here, within the 25 minutes, is a kind of uniquely presentable vegetable stew that really can't fully be duplicated in pan or insta-pot. As the recipe suggests, serve with plain and buttery couscous and the meal is complete.

Chicken k'dra with turnips
and chickpeas

"It is Berbers we have to thank for tangines and couscous. A tagine is a glorified stew worthy of poetry – aromatic and syrupy, zesty and spicy, or sweet and fragrant are just some of the words that come to mind." – Ghillie Basan, from Easy Tagine












The slow cooker has always had its place in the kitchen. The insta-pot, a fairly new popular phenomenon, turns out a nice meal in a relative flash. But what happens if we take away the technology and get similar results from a ceramic that has a thousand year tradition behind it? The tagine concept has been interesting to me for a long time. 'One-pots,' as the cooking language goes, have really come to exemplify for me the best of weeknight family cooking because it solves so many of the problems of the six o'clock rush – you get proteins, you get vegetables, you get it tender and it you get it as comfort food, usually fairly quickly, even if done in nothing more than a cast-iron either stop top or in-oven.  The wonderful cookbook Olives, Lemons and Za'tar, by Rawia Bashara inspired me to re-think the process of the one-pot by celebrating her own version of the chicken tagine, which I tried as a pan one-pot.  Although wonderful, there was something still quite tantalizing about the clay pot with domed hood and cylindrical handle that may or may not have a hole cut into it for steam release. I could imagine days at the desert bizarre accumulating turmeric, turnips and smen (a made butter that cookbooks say takes some getting used to), tossing them into the bottom of this authentically decorated pot and letting it steam its way to magic. Because of that circulation (similar, let's be honest, to the insta-pot), the tagine approach forces us to simplify once its on the stove. No need to stir and fuss, just let the lower seep to the upper and back down again, carrying along its way that bed of spices and vegetable aromatics along with it.

So I bought my near 3 qt. tagine and tried a chicken k'dra with turnips and chickpeas, a dish that is traditionally cooked in a large copper pot and packed with plenty of vegetables.  The recipe covered all the essentials, of chicken, onion, turnips, and chickpeas, seasoned by turmeric, garlic, coriander, and finally topped by parsley. Even though this was my first true tagine experience, I decided anyway to make a couple of additions that I thought might round out the texture and the salt – I added some pitted greek olives, both green and purple, and also added cubed eggplant over the top, where I new the soft texture could both hold its shape but also absorb the recirculating flavors.  Our gas fired stove top is potent and it took no more than 35 minutes for the k'dra to finish. As I lifted the hood a steam cloud rose up. Underneath was, to my excitement, a near replica of the picture of the same dish shown by Ghillie Basan in her easy tagine cookbook.  Take the tagine over to the counter, set the hood at an angle over the bottom bowl, and not only do you have a non-sticking one-pot, but one that is visually enticing. Spoon the thighs and essential stew over or near couscous and this might very well be as close to Moroccan one-pot cooking as the home cook can get. It got me to thinking that it would be very easy to consider using the tagine for virtually any meat, veggie and bean combination that suits your taste. A favorite beef stew set into the tagine comes to mind; meatballs; two large turkey legs and new potatoes? Insta-pots are fast, but I'm not sure they are as easy or interesting as the tagine.

Songs for Cold Mountain

"...crowded ridges breath in snow
sunless forests breath out mist..."  – Han Shan, 6











Cold snap has hardened Lake Monona
to nothing but a sky's mirror
under the Yahara bridges
the ducks waddle over cracked ice
where the water opens they leap in
and tip their tails to the distant sun
then plunge like hot arrows
to the bottom with eyes
like moons at midnight

Songs for Cold Mountain

"Towering cliffs were the home I chose
bird trails beyond human tracks
what does my yard contain
white clouds clinging to dark rocks
every year I've lived here
I've seen the seasons change
all you owners of tripods and bells
what good are empty names." – Han Shan, 1






Punta Cana

1

Back home the world is below zero
the sky is likely clear but untouchable
here on the white sands of Punta Cana
we are winter flowers our feet are seeds
it does not take that much to bloom
behind the long leaf of the palm tree
above our small hut the sun is close
enough to seek us for rescue

2

The cobblestone our walkways
here the Dominican workers move
back and forth from tricycles with baskets
filled with small shovels and hard rakes
to manicure the encroaching jungle
small kittens dart under the mangroves
the mice and small creatures hide
in wet tunnels under the teak bridge

3

Mind must be something like weather
morning it rains and droplets cover the windows
clouds linger and brief hope is dashed
blue is the color of new dreams
yellow above is mother spoiling us
when dawn strikes we walk the beach
and lights from the resorts skim the tips
of waves like lightening strikes