Fleur-de-Soundtrack

This music-as-a-soundtrack-of-our-lives concept fascinates me.

It started at the nursing home concert. The singer asked for requests. To break the silence I suggested “Moon River,” thinking that was a good oldie for the group, and yes, a favorite of mine. I was shocked when the entertainer said “Moon River” came out in 1961. I thought it was ancient, not a song from the Sixties!

So I started drifting back. Back to the BS days. BS, in this case, stands for Before Seatbelts. I sang many a song in the back of the family station wagon with a gaggle of girlfriends on the way to swim meets. My favorite was what we might now call “performance art,” combining words and hand motions, in this instance, on a friend’s back:

“X marks the spot with a dot, dot, dot and a dash, dash, dash and a question mark. Three lines down, once around, the chills go up, the chills go down, the chills go all around. Crack an egg, down it flows, with a breeze and a squeeze.” 

Then there was “John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt” and our school bus ballad, “100 Bottles of Beer on the Wall”.  TV commercials, such as the one for Brylcream, “a little dab’ll do ya,” are imprinted on my brain, and I can’t forget the jingle from a Pittsburgh cousin: “Just plant a watermelon on my grave and let the juice (slurp, slurp) run through.” As the wrinkles wrinkle and the hairs gray I’m seriously considering it as my personal after-life plan.

By college, I was still swimming and my musical memories dredge up songs like “Black Water” and Barbra Streisand’s “The Way We Were.” (We created our own lyrics with “misty water-colored memories” to honor two wonderful coaches.)

Skip a few decades, and we’re driving to State College on Route 322, starting up the Seven Mountains. The kids are fidgeting in their car seats, anxious to get to their grandparents’ house for Thanksgiving dinner. My childhood comes calling and I break into song.

“The bear went over the mountain, the bear went over the mountain, the bear went over the mountain—to see what he could see. He saw another mountain, he saw another mountain, he saw another mountain—and what do you think he did? He climbed another mountain, he climbed another mountain…”

Yes, I’m developing my soundtrack. Now it is your turn. Share your musical memories, and while you’re at it, have a Thanksgiving that is full of thanks. Laurie Lynch

Fleur-de-MomSongs

 Pearls of wisdom show up in unexpected places at unexpected times.

My mother and I went to a local personal care facility to say good-bye to my favorite aunt, Patria, before she moved to Florida.

She wasn’t in her room so we wandered to a community room where we heard a man strumming on a guitar, singing. Around him, on upholstered wing chairs and chintz sofas, was a collection of oldsters, most seated statues with slack jaws and vacant eyes. A few, including Aunt Pat, sat with tapping toes, bouncing shoulders, and lips moving with every word.

The singer, whose name I’ve forgotten, had several notebooks filled with lyrics and the year the songs made the top of the popular music charts. When he launched into, “I found my thrill on blueberry hill…” Aunt Pat turned to me and mouthed the words, “Saylors Lake,” with a sly smile.

My father grew up in Pen Argyl, a small town in Pennsylvania’s slate belt. His mother Nives was Patria’s best friend and Patria married Nives’s brother Raymond. I searched the Internet for details about the “Blueberry Hill” song and read that Fats Domino made it a rock and roll hit in 1956. But that date didn’t make sense with what I knew of Aunt Pat’s and Uncle Ray’s timeline—they were living in State College by then.

Then I found an article about swing music dance halls. On summer nights in the 1940s, it read, up to 3,000 people would jam the pavilion at Saylors Lake to listen to The Glenn Miller Orchestra and other Big Bands. (Quick geography lesson, Saylorsburg and Saylors Lake are just on the other side of Wind Gap, which butts up to, you guessed it, Pen Argyl.) The article confided that those who didn’t have tickets would park their cars nearby and listen to the music, or listen to the music and park, if you get my gist. The GMO’s version of  “Blueberry Hill” was No. 1 in 1940. Now Aunt Pat’s whisper made sense.

Some weeks later, I had lunch with my mother and her college roommate who I’ll refer to as Trig, her college nickname. Trig was reminiscing about meeting my mother in 1947 and told me that my mother was so popular at Penn State that she was in the May Queen court. The conversation drifted to songs of youth. Trig sang a little ditty about farts. My mother answered back with “Around the corner and under a tree, the sergeant major said to me, ‘Who would marry you? I would like to know for every time I look at your face, it makes me want to go’ around the corner…” Trig echoed with a third song and my mom returned the favor with, “Who’s gonna marry Tom Mix?”

We discussed that it was odd they didn’t recognize each other’s songs. Maybe not so odd.  Trig grew up in Roseto (on the other side of Pen Argyl) in the eastern part of the state, while my mother grew up in Braddock, on the outskirts of Pittsburgh, in the western part of the state. The geography of slang and song, like soda and pop.

These two occasions simmered in my subconscious and were joined with a description I read somewhere that “music creates a soundtrack of our lives.”  With that, I’ll leave you with one more mom-song story.

My sister Lisa took my mother to see the dementia doctor. The appointment went as appointments go, until my mother broke into song.

“I’ll be there to get you in a taxi, honey, better be ready ‘bout half past eight. Now baby, don’t be late, I wanna be there when the band starts playing…”

The doctor joined in. 

Later he admitted to my sister he didn’t know all the words to the “Darktown Strutters’ Ball” the way my mother did. That part of her memory, he said, is just fine. Laurie Lynch

Fleur-de-QuietCreekSC

What a difference a weekend makes:

–Two of Rusty’s inoculated shiitake logs are leaning against the trunk of an old spruce tree near my kitchen garden.

–Claire’s method of making oatmeal coincided with a cold front moving into Centre County, so I’ve been making good use of it.

–Sliced a HUGE head of cabbage to start a new batch of sauerkraut, which is percolating on the kitchen counter and headed for the basement for five more weeks.

–Made a DIY vermicomposter for this winter’s kitchen trimmings to keep in the basement. My mother will be OK with it as long as I don’t say the W word, aka WORM bin.

–Seeds collected from the Callaloo plant and Korna pepper will bring a warm memory of Quiet Creek to next year’s Garden 101.

–Cloves of Quiet Creek German garlic and tubers of a red-skinned Jerusalem artichoke are nestled in the soil at my mother’s place, awaiting a long winter’s nap.

–Baked my first batch of whole-wheat yeast bread…ever! Bread baking was always Paul’s role in our family dynamics. I watched Claire, she shared her recipe, and my fear of yeast breads is conquered!

–Clipped some fresh rosemary and mixed it with a stick of soft butter, a la Claire, to spread on the lovely loaves.

Quiet Creek’s Sprouted Whole Grain Bread*

1 T. baking yeast

3 T. molasses or honey

4 T olive oil

1 tsp. salt

3 cups warm water

Mix above ingredients and allow mixture to sit for 10 minutes.

Add:

5-6 cups whole-wheat flour

5 cups of unbleached white flour

1 T. flax seed

1 cup sunflower seeds (soaked for 12 hours, washed and strained)

1 cup wheat berries (soaked for 12 hours, sprouted for 48 hours, washed, and strained, then ground with flax in ½ cup water)

1 T. nutritional yeast (I skipped this because I forgot to buy it and bread still turned out)

Mix all for 5 minutes. Knead for 5 minutes. Add more water or add more flour, as needed. Allow it to rise until the dough has doubled in size. Divide into four loaves. Let rise 20 minutes. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F and bake for 45 minutes.

*Prepare wheat berries three days before baking and sunflower seeds one day before baking.

As you can see from the photo, sometimes I stray from directions. I wanted to make smaller loaves, because there are only two of us, but instead of six, I ended up with five…never was good at division! Laurie Lynch

Fleur-de-QuietCreekPart3

Quiet Creek classroom/workroom with library in herb drying loft.

It’s been years since Tweet greet me as “The Egg Lady” but his voice echoed through Quiet Creek as I sprinkled feed on the ground for the family’s flock of guinea hens.

Ashton and I climbed to the loft of the shop/teaching barn that houses a library. Our morning task was to sort, sticker and shelve a box of books. He told me about his favorite TV show, Sherlock, and star Benedict Cumberbatch (What planet have I been on? I had never heard of him.) I told Ashton about the book I was reading, The Motorcycle Diaries by Ernesto “Che” Guevara.

Ben and Wyatt, two 20-somethings who volunteer at the farm, stopped by. Rusty put the three of us to work, chopping Nappa cabbage, daikon radishes and carrots Claire and I harvested from the garden just an hour earlier. Then came the onions and Jerusalem artichokes. Rusty manned the Vitamix blender creating the Kim chi paste of hot peppers, powdered brown rice, fish sauce, garlic and ginger, telling stories all the while.

Shiitake log

A couple from Westminster College stopped in to see Quiet Creek’s shiitake grove, so I joined them on a tour.  Rusty probably has a hundred or so four-foot long logs inoculated with shiitake and oyster mushrooms leaning on rails in the shade of his mature pine windbreak. Besides selling fresh and dried mushrooms, they also sell the inoculated logs for people who want to grow their own at home for three or four years.

Another highlight of the weekend was learning about a new vegetable that the Orners discovered on a mission trip to Jamaica. They have spires of it growing in a bed of sweet potatoes – Callaloo. It is in the amaranth family and its leaves are used in soups, stews and even for breakfast in the Caribbean, South America and Africa. We had it on pizza!

Sign at Quiet Creek Herb Farm Shop: “In every peaceful heart flows a quiet creek.”

To be continued…

Fleur-de-QuietCreekPart2

“I sent in a deposit. No one contacted me. I can’t go back,” I blurted out. “I drove from State College. Is there a Holiday Inn around?”  I then gave him the details of my need for a weekend escape. Rusty said his wife Claire was expected to return soon from a conference in State College (how ironic) and he would talk it over with her. Rusty and his brother-in-law were about to move a piano from the house to the second floor of the barn. He suggested I take a walk on the trail through their woods. Alone.

When I returned, Claire was apologetic for failing to let me know of the course cancelation (too few participants). Then she and Rusty welcomed me to stay for the weekend.

Instead of the yurt, which is massive—30-feet in diameter—I would stay in the straw bale house (the farm interns who normally live there left for Florida) with (oh my gosh!) a king-sized bed to rest my sleeping bag upon. Even my pillowcase of lavender gingham matched their gingham pillow. The adobe walls, deep windowsills, and stone floor reminded me of Provence so my years ago. And, there was a composting toilet, which I knew all about, thanks to my Humanure Handbook reading.

Rusty and Claire Orner bought their 30-acre farm in 1998, just a year after Paul, the kids and I moved to Fleur-de-Lys. Their sons Walker and Ashton have grown up planting potatoes, weeding raised beds, harvesting basil, tomatoes and peppers, as well as other farming chores, and eating the bounty of their family’s hard work.

That evening we ate grilled hamburgers, yellow Korno and red Jimmy Nardello peppers, and shiitake mushrooms, and a marinated heirloom tomato salad. Claire showed me how she mixes ½ cup yogurt and ½ cup water into 4 cups of oats and lets it sit overnight to break down the phytic acid so the following morning the oats are easier to digest and release beneficial nutrients the body can absorb. The science behind it all is in the Sally Fallon’s “Nourishing Traditions” book, which is packed away in one of my moving boxes. I must have skipped that chapter.

Rusty made an applesauce-red raspberry-blueberry mixture earlier in the day. We smeared a film of the blend onto freezer paper-lined cookie sheets, and placed the trays into the farm’s closet-sized dehydrator to make fruit leather for a Sunday treat.

Quiet Creek Fruit Leather

2 cups apple, chopped with skins on

2 cups pear, chopped with skins on

1 cup strawberries

1 cup raspberries

1 cup blueberries

1 cup pumpkin, chopped without skin

2 cups water

½ tsp. dried green stevia

Place all ingredients in a pot, cook on medium until all fruits are soft. Blend smooth and pour on freezer paper. Dehydrate for three days.

Before heading out into the night, Claire handed me a booklet Rusty wrote and illustrated on growing shiitake mushrooms in Western Pennsylvania. Oatmeal and raspberries would be served at 7:30 a.m., and then we’d start the bread and make pizzas for lunch, and….  By the light of the straw bale house I read about cultivating shiitakes but was more taken with the author’s note: “The Orner family strives to Live, Laugh, Love and Learn daily with God, each other, their community and the world. It’s not what we do for a living, it’s what we do for a life.” A family mission statement, what a powerful idea.

To be continued…

Fleur-de-QuietCreek

“Caregivers need to take care of themselves too.” It is a message I’m tired of hearing from friends, on websites, in articles. When I started telling myself I needed a break, I knew things were serious.

Then Spring Creek Homesteading’s electronic email arrived and I saw a notice for an Intensive Fall Harvesting Weekend at Quiet Creek Herb Farm and School of Country Living in Brookville.  I wrote out a check and mailed in my deposit.

More caregiver advice: “When people offer help, tell them what you need.”

I sent an email to my sisters giving them the exact hours and days I needed a replacement to care for our mother. I filled out the application, signed up my co-worker as my “emergency contact” and started plowing through the reading list. Luckily the  “Humanure Handbook” was free and downloadable. I bought a headlamp (could always use it for late-night gardening) but nixed the suggested camping pad.

The course schedule included orientation to sustainability, making fruit leather, sprouted wheat bread and pesto, baking homemade pizza in an earthen oven, cultivating mushrooms, fermenting (Kim chi and sauerkraut), making herbal blends and salsa, some journaling, some stretching, some hiking and biking. A $275 fee included instruction, yurt housing (BYO sleeping bag), and group participation in preparing and eating whole foods meals.

“But Mom, you know how to do all of that stuff,” was Marina’s reaction.

“Not all, and besides, doing things with other people, helps you learn better techniques.” And, I might add, I’m such a Mother Earth nerd that Yurt Camp for Tree Huggers is my kind of vacation.

Yes, to anyone who asked, I just said I was going to Yurt Camp. Then we’d get into a discussion about the origin of yurts (circular tents used by nomads in Mongolia, Siberia and Turkey), thus avoiding a cross-examination of why I would go off for a weekend alone to forage and ferment.

Brookville is about a two-hour drive from State College. I got there a half-hour early. Rusty greeted me, waiting for his sons to come home on the school bus. I introduced myself and said I was there for the fall harvest weekend.

“But that’s been cancelled,” he said.

To be continued…