I'm going to quote an email referencing an article reviewing a book, which is kind of like a repeating decimal, as D. E. Stevenson once said.
This is from a Simple Dollar email from Trent Hamm, and is typical of what you find when you look up "How to escape poverty."
In an article in The Atlantic, Gillian B. White writes about inequality in American society. She reviews a book by Peter Temin called The Vanishing Middle Class: Prejudice and Power in a Dual Economy
Temin argues that, following decades of growing inequality, America is now left with what is more or less a two-class system: One small, predominantly white upper class that wields a disproportionate share of money, power, and political influence and a much larger, minority-heavy (but still mostly white) lower class that is all too frequently subject to the first group’s whims.
Temin identifies two types of workers in what he calls “the dual economy.” The first are skilled, tech-savvy workers and managers with college degrees and high salaries who are concentrated heavily in fields such as finance, technology, and electronics. . .. The other group is the low-skilled workers, which he simply calls the “low-wage sector.”
. . .
[And especially this:]
And how is one to move up from the lower group to the higher one? Education is key, Temin writes, but notes that this means plotting, starting in early childhood, a successful path to, and through, college.
You can find lots of insightful material on overcoming poverty, coming from many angles and proposing many solutions. But they all promote education. Many imply that to really leave poverty behind and get somewhere in the world, you not only have to finish high school but also go to college, and a college degree is a pretty sure ticket out of poverty forever.
Which brings us to my dad and the strange Anabaptist economy.
Most Amish people attend school only through the 8th grade. The same is true for other conservative Anabaptist branches, such as the Fellowship and Holdeman churches.
My dad was, in his day, the only Amishman in history who got a college degree and stayed Amish. It seems he had a bishop who recognized that Dad was unusually gifted academically but didn't have a rebellious bone in his body, so the bishop gave him permission to go to college. He not only got a Bachelor's degree in German at Eastern Mennonite College, but he also studied at the University of Iowa in Iowa City and got a Master's in elementary education.
All the while, he wore his Amish clothes and didn't drive a car.
In Iowa and Ohio and Minnesota, we lived in Amish or Beachy-Amish or Fellowship communities where everyone else had quit school after the 8th grade. In addition, English was their second language, and it was sometimes shocking how poorly they read and spelled and spoke.
With the "worldly" experts' emphasis on education, you'd think Dad would have been powerful in such a community, wealthy and admired, and maybe even ordained minister or bishop.
Instead, we were always among the poorest, struggling and scratching and desperate among efficient carpenters and prosperous farmers.
The Amish economy had no place for someone with his education. Why pay him what he was worth as a teacher if you could just as easily hire an 18-year-old girl putting in a few years before she got married? Either way, your children would learn to read and do basic arithmetic.
The Amish respected physical strength and hard work and a good head for business. Dad was small and in fragile health and not, as they said, a "good manager."
When we lived in rural Minnesota, Dad quit teaching and focused on farming, instead of trying to do both. He was far more educated than our Englisch neighbors and most of our public school teachers, so he could probably have walked into a local high school and gotten a teaching job with a salary that would have seemed astronomical.
But he really wanted to farm. I don't know if he really loved farming that much, or if he wanted to prove that he was a real Amishman, but his farms never thrived like everyone else's.
In the H.G. Wells story, "The Country of the Blind," a mountaineer happens to find an isolated valley where all the residents are blind. From Wikipedia: Upon discovering that everyone is blind, Nuñez begins reciting to himself the refrain, "In the Country of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is King". He realises that he can teach and rule them, but the villagers have no concept of sight, and do not understand his attempts to explain this fifth sense to them. Frustrated, Nuñez becomes angry, but the villagers calm him, and he reluctantly submits to their way of life, because returning to the outside world seems impossible.
Eventually the mountaineer realizes that the blind people in this community have figured out how to fully live life, and he is actually at a disadvantage despite this phenomenal gift of sight that he has and they don't.
I think that's kind of what it was like for Dad. He really wanted to teach and reach his own people with this valuable commodity of education that he brought with him, but they liked their lives just as they were, thank you very much. And who can blame them, when their children had new shoes and a big box of crayons apiece?
Tomorrow: more on the Anabaptist economy.
Tuesday, March 20, 2018
Monday, March 19, 2018
Post 2--Poverty and Wealth--Childhood
I was probably in ninth grade when Mrs. Carlson decided to do a poll to demonstrate some point about economics. She had a list of items that kids our age or our families would probably own--normal American things, she said. We were to raise our hands if we did NOT own this item.
I sat in the front row and thought: Oh. No.
A tv.
I raised my hand, the only one in the room.
A stereo.
I raised my hand.
A radio.
Same.
A musical instrument of any kind.
Me.
A baseball and bat.
Me.
She listed various sports equipment like a football, cleats, running shoes, and a basketball hoop.
Me, me, me, me. This was getting awkward for everyone.
A snowmobile.
Up went my hand.
Fishing gear.
Me.
A tent.
Me.
A 35 mm camera.
Me.
A slide projector.
Me of course.
This torturous exercise went on and on.
Mrs. Carlson marched down through that entire lengthy list, and my conscience wouldn't let me lie, so I kept raising my hand every blessed time. Sometimes a scattering of other people did as well, but often I was the only one. Snickers erupted behind me.
Finally Mrs. Carlson laughed and said to me, "You're probably the most contented of us all."
Not in that moment I wasn't, believe me, which might be why it's branded into my memory.
Granted, a few of these items were forbidden by the Beachy-Amish church we were part of, but mostly we didn't own these things because we were so poor.
Our relationship with money and possessions was characterized by worry, pinching, saving, stretching, economizing, waiting, wanting, needing, longing, wishing, mending, making do, hand-me-downs, and acute shame.
Dad was an impractical, dreamy, scholarly Amish farmer, which is as contradictory as it sounds. Money was a nebulous something that drifted in and out of his life. He could never quite grasp it and make it work for him. He was endlessly burdened by debts, haunted by a looming day of reckoning that made him say No to almost anything we wanted to do or get or see.
So we learned not to ask.
Mom was a miracle worker with her gardening and sewing and about fifty other skills that kept us fed and clothed and clean.
But she worried endlessly and carried heavy burdens. She never said this out loud, but now I realize that she could have handled the finances much better than Dad, being of a practical and enterprising nature. But that would have destroyed Dad's last shreds of dignity.
Mom occasionally conjured a sense of abundance, such as when she hauled us all to the back 40 to pick blackberries or secretly sewed warm, ruffled pink flannel nightgowns for our Christmas gifts.
But most of the time we felt impoverished.
After I went to a public school in the fifth grade, we would get a paper at the beginning of the year with a chart listing family sizes, income levels, and who qualified for free lunches. The amount at which a family of our size would get free lunches was far more than we ever made. But we never utilized this benefit. Handouts from the Government were unthinkable.
We either made things ourselves or bought them secondhand. Mostly, we did without. We didn't buy new clothes or ready-made food. We never went out to eat. A box of 64 crayons was something to envy and long for, knowing we could never afford it. Something as fun and cool as a banana-seat bike, which was the ultimate fun and cool thing in its day, was as out of reach as Mars.
But, for some reason, it was important to Dad that we regularly went to the dentist. So I got a mouthful of fillings, which I have reason to believe I didn't always need, while at the same time we "couldn't afford" adequate gear in Minnesota winters, such as the tiny little lightweight chore gloves I wore to school in subzero temperatures.
My sister Margaret remembers having cold feet all winter because her boots had holes and the snow got in. She never had decent warm socks. It wasn't only because we couldn't afford new ones. It was also because no one noticed or cared, and she knew she shouldn't ask. We were going through a horrifically stressful time as a family, and Mom and Dad were preoccupied with just trying to survive the financial struggles and mental illnesses and chaos and conflict.
So we had a poverty of nurturing and attention as well, which fed us those crippling "truths" that we were on our own, no one was going to look out for us, these things could not be said out loud, and the good things in life were for everyone out there, but not for us.
Except, of course, we got our teeth checked twice a year, without fail.
Poverty and wealth are strange things to quantify and evaluate, they go far deeper and wider than mere income levels and family sizes on a mimeographed chart, and they are far more nuanced than the overall patterns of education, jobs, and costs of living. Parents' relationship with finances affects their children's view of the world and themselves in a dozen odd and seemingly unconnected ways.
What's really strange is that by one key metric, we ought to have been better off than anyone else at church and most people in the community.
Come back tomorrow for that.
I sat in the front row and thought: Oh. No.
A tv.
I raised my hand, the only one in the room.
A stereo.
I raised my hand.
A radio.
Same.
A musical instrument of any kind.
Me.
A baseball and bat.
Me.
She listed various sports equipment like a football, cleats, running shoes, and a basketball hoop.
Me, me, me, me. This was getting awkward for everyone.
A snowmobile.
Up went my hand.
Fishing gear.
Me.
A tent.
Me.
A 35 mm camera.
Me.
A slide projector.
Me of course.
This torturous exercise went on and on.
Mrs. Carlson marched down through that entire lengthy list, and my conscience wouldn't let me lie, so I kept raising my hand every blessed time. Sometimes a scattering of other people did as well, but often I was the only one. Snickers erupted behind me.
Finally Mrs. Carlson laughed and said to me, "You're probably the most contented of us all."
Not in that moment I wasn't, believe me, which might be why it's branded into my memory.
Granted, a few of these items were forbidden by the Beachy-Amish church we were part of, but mostly we didn't own these things because we were so poor.
Our relationship with money and possessions was characterized by worry, pinching, saving, stretching, economizing, waiting, wanting, needing, longing, wishing, mending, making do, hand-me-downs, and acute shame.
Dad was an impractical, dreamy, scholarly Amish farmer, which is as contradictory as it sounds. Money was a nebulous something that drifted in and out of his life. He could never quite grasp it and make it work for him. He was endlessly burdened by debts, haunted by a looming day of reckoning that made him say No to almost anything we wanted to do or get or see.
So we learned not to ask.
Mom was a miracle worker with her gardening and sewing and about fifty other skills that kept us fed and clothed and clean.
But she worried endlessly and carried heavy burdens. She never said this out loud, but now I realize that she could have handled the finances much better than Dad, being of a practical and enterprising nature. But that would have destroyed Dad's last shreds of dignity.
Mom occasionally conjured a sense of abundance, such as when she hauled us all to the back 40 to pick blackberries or secretly sewed warm, ruffled pink flannel nightgowns for our Christmas gifts.
But most of the time we felt impoverished.
After I went to a public school in the fifth grade, we would get a paper at the beginning of the year with a chart listing family sizes, income levels, and who qualified for free lunches. The amount at which a family of our size would get free lunches was far more than we ever made. But we never utilized this benefit. Handouts from the Government were unthinkable.
We either made things ourselves or bought them secondhand. Mostly, we did without. We didn't buy new clothes or ready-made food. We never went out to eat. A box of 64 crayons was something to envy and long for, knowing we could never afford it. Something as fun and cool as a banana-seat bike, which was the ultimate fun and cool thing in its day, was as out of reach as Mars.
But, for some reason, it was important to Dad that we regularly went to the dentist. So I got a mouthful of fillings, which I have reason to believe I didn't always need, while at the same time we "couldn't afford" adequate gear in Minnesota winters, such as the tiny little lightweight chore gloves I wore to school in subzero temperatures.
My sister Margaret remembers having cold feet all winter because her boots had holes and the snow got in. She never had decent warm socks. It wasn't only because we couldn't afford new ones. It was also because no one noticed or cared, and she knew she shouldn't ask. We were going through a horrifically stressful time as a family, and Mom and Dad were preoccupied with just trying to survive the financial struggles and mental illnesses and chaos and conflict.
So we had a poverty of nurturing and attention as well, which fed us those crippling "truths" that we were on our own, no one was going to look out for us, these things could not be said out loud, and the good things in life were for everyone out there, but not for us.
Except, of course, we got our teeth checked twice a year, without fail.
Poverty and wealth are strange things to quantify and evaluate, they go far deeper and wider than mere income levels and family sizes on a mimeographed chart, and they are far more nuanced than the overall patterns of education, jobs, and costs of living. Parents' relationship with finances affects their children's view of the world and themselves in a dozen odd and seemingly unconnected ways.
What's really strange is that by one key metric, we ought to have been better off than anyone else at church and most people in the community.
Come back tomorrow for that.
Sunday, March 18, 2018
Thoughts on Poverty and Wealth--Post 1
When I wrote an article last month about canning sausage, I mentioned that Paul and I have had times when our income was very low. For example, right after we got married in 1986, I was going to college and he was making $600 a month as a Christian school teacher. Rent was $250 a month. We tithed $60 a month and saved $60, and what remained after taxes was stretched a long way. When I got pregnant a year into marriage, $60 a month went to the doctor instead of savings, and we were just barely able to pay for the hospital bill and all.
Later, when we were working in Canada, our housing and food were provided, and we got a stipend of $60 a month to cover transportation, clothing, postage, phone calls, gifts, cosmetics, household supplies, and so on.
"Extreme frugality" is an understatement for how we lived.
Eventually, things changed and now we are middle-class by the official government charts but compared to back then, I feel like we are astonishingly wealthy.
Canning that sausage and writing about it made me realize that the government charts tally only one type of wealth, and that is dollars. Actually, there are probably a hundred different factors and resources and types of wealth that make all the difference and can either compensate for a low income or make it all a lot worse.
Such as:
health
literacy
community support
family support
relationships
land
financial sense and skills
DIY skills
distance from work and family
Somehow the charts and the government solutions never seem to take these things into account.
I had lots of notes left over after the article was done so I decided to do a few blog posts on poverty and wealth, not to draw any real conclusions or to tell anyone what they ought to do or to try to "fix" the poor, but just as a platform to observe and cogitate.
Recently one of my daughters said, "I was reading about the teachers' strike in West Virginia, and there was a picture of the governor talking, and there was something different about him. Finally I figured out it was his teeth! You almost never see people at that level of government with bad teeth."
I think that in American society there's nothing like teeth to divide the comfortable from the struggling. I am extra aware of this because of my mom's obsession with teeth ever since she got dentures at age 17, but research backs me up.
This is a fascinating article by Sarah Smarsh about how teeth denote our class in America.
She says,
‘Don’t get fooled by those mangled teeth she sports on camera!’ says the ABC News host introducing the woman who plays Pennsatucky. ‘Taryn Manning is one beautiful and talented actress.’ This suggestion that bad teeth and talent, in particular, are mutually exclusive betrays our broad, unexamined bigotry toward those long known, tellingly, as ‘white trash.’ It’s become less acceptable in recent decades to make racist or sexist statements, but blatant classism generally goes unchecked. See the hugely successful blog People of Walmart that, through submitted photographs, viciously ridicules people who look like contemporary US poverty: the elastic waistbands and jutting stomachs of diabetic obesity, the wheelchairs and oxygen tanks of gout and emphysema.
I still have crowded, crooked, overlapping front teeth, a relic of a childhood of poverty. I sometimes wonder: should I get them straightened because we could afford it now, or should I keep them as a symbol of solidarity with the poor?
Or is it simply silly to think of spending thousands on straightening teeth at age 55 just because the society around me says it's important?
As the paragraph by Ms. Smarsh says, it's more than teeth that physically defines poverty.
My three daughters and I took an overnight trip to Seattle a couple of months ago to see a play. It was an adaptation of a middle-grade fiction book that the girls loved, and was held in a small theater at the Seattle Center.
We all like to observe people, and after the play one of the daughters remarked, "I was looking around, and I realized everyone looks exactly the same. I just knew they all had plenty of money, and not just because they could afford to attend a play. They just had that LOOK."
A few weeks previously, when I attended Jenny's choir concert, I had looked at the singers onstage and thought, "They look like they're poor." It wasn't only because they were community college students—they also had a certain Look.
What is it?
Well, their teeth, at least sometimes.
And body weight.
And also hair and makeup, which I don't know that much about, but the Seattle crowd looked more understated.
It was more than all that, though. Some people have always had a clear path before them, an assumption that their needs would be met as they came up, and an expectation of success. Others overcome astonishing obstacles just to attend the local community college this term. And it shows.
I feel more at home among struggling and poor than around educated and successful, but I connect most with people who have had difficult times but found a way to thrive.
So I have crooked teeth as a relic of poverty, but I also have lots of fillings, because of my dad's strange priorities. More on that tomorrow.
Later, when we were working in Canada, our housing and food were provided, and we got a stipend of $60 a month to cover transportation, clothing, postage, phone calls, gifts, cosmetics, household supplies, and so on.
"Extreme frugality" is an understatement for how we lived.
Eventually, things changed and now we are middle-class by the official government charts but compared to back then, I feel like we are astonishingly wealthy.
Canning that sausage and writing about it made me realize that the government charts tally only one type of wealth, and that is dollars. Actually, there are probably a hundred different factors and resources and types of wealth that make all the difference and can either compensate for a low income or make it all a lot worse.
Such as:
health
literacy
community support
family support
relationships
land
financial sense and skills
DIY skills
distance from work and family
Somehow the charts and the government solutions never seem to take these things into account.
I had lots of notes left over after the article was done so I decided to do a few blog posts on poverty and wealth, not to draw any real conclusions or to tell anyone what they ought to do or to try to "fix" the poor, but just as a platform to observe and cogitate.
Recently one of my daughters said, "I was reading about the teachers' strike in West Virginia, and there was a picture of the governor talking, and there was something different about him. Finally I figured out it was his teeth! You almost never see people at that level of government with bad teeth."
I think that in American society there's nothing like teeth to divide the comfortable from the struggling. I am extra aware of this because of my mom's obsession with teeth ever since she got dentures at age 17, but research backs me up.
This is a fascinating article by Sarah Smarsh about how teeth denote our class in America.
She says,
‘Don’t get fooled by those mangled teeth she sports on camera!’ says the ABC News host introducing the woman who plays Pennsatucky. ‘Taryn Manning is one beautiful and talented actress.’ This suggestion that bad teeth and talent, in particular, are mutually exclusive betrays our broad, unexamined bigotry toward those long known, tellingly, as ‘white trash.’ It’s become less acceptable in recent decades to make racist or sexist statements, but blatant classism generally goes unchecked. See the hugely successful blog People of Walmart that, through submitted photographs, viciously ridicules people who look like contemporary US poverty: the elastic waistbands and jutting stomachs of diabetic obesity, the wheelchairs and oxygen tanks of gout and emphysema.
I still have crowded, crooked, overlapping front teeth, a relic of a childhood of poverty. I sometimes wonder: should I get them straightened because we could afford it now, or should I keep them as a symbol of solidarity with the poor?
Or is it simply silly to think of spending thousands on straightening teeth at age 55 just because the society around me says it's important?
As the paragraph by Ms. Smarsh says, it's more than teeth that physically defines poverty.
My three daughters and I took an overnight trip to Seattle a couple of months ago to see a play. It was an adaptation of a middle-grade fiction book that the girls loved, and was held in a small theater at the Seattle Center.
We all like to observe people, and after the play one of the daughters remarked, "I was looking around, and I realized everyone looks exactly the same. I just knew they all had plenty of money, and not just because they could afford to attend a play. They just had that LOOK."
A few weeks previously, when I attended Jenny's choir concert, I had looked at the singers onstage and thought, "They look like they're poor." It wasn't only because they were community college students—they also had a certain Look.
What is it?
Well, their teeth, at least sometimes.
And body weight.
And also hair and makeup, which I don't know that much about, but the Seattle crowd looked more understated.
It was more than all that, though. Some people have always had a clear path before them, an assumption that their needs would be met as they came up, and an expectation of success. Others overcome astonishing obstacles just to attend the local community college this term. And it shows.
I feel more at home among struggling and poor than around educated and successful, but I connect most with people who have had difficult times but found a way to thrive.
So I have crooked teeth as a relic of poverty, but I also have lots of fillings, because of my dad's strange priorities. More on that tomorrow.
Tuesday, March 13, 2018
Review: Fledge: Launching Your Kids Without Losing Your Mind
Here's one thing I got right, as a mom:
One of my daughters says that at the ends of summers, when the other moms in the checkout lines would be sighing that they can't wait for school to start again, I would tell the children that I like having them home, and it makes me sad when school starts.
At our current stage, I know that leaving is good. It's what adults do. They grow up, find their way, and leave home--not necessarily in that order.
Even though the process is right, this also makes me sad.
If you're with me on all these mom FEELINGS, I want you to know that there's someone who Gets us. Brenda Yoder launched a new book today, and I agreed to review it. It's called Fledge--Launching Your Kids Without Losing Your Mind.
The title has two significant meanings. "Fledge" is what young eagles do as they leave the nest. It's also the process of attaching feathers to prepare an arrow for flight.
Appropriate, right?
Arrows are for warriors, she says, and it takes a warrior to equip a child for their God-designed journey.
Also, isn't that the prettiest cover you ever saw?
Brenda and her husband have four children. Some have left the nest and some have not, so she writes from the perspective of still being a hands-on mom at the same time as she has kids leaving for college or mission work.
Brenda's style is detailed and meditative, so it isn't a fast read. There are Scripture verses to study, personal stories, professional perspectives from her work as a counselor--although these are subtle, as she wanted the book to be mom-to-mom--and questions at the end of each chapter, called Building Up and Letting Go, to help you process your own life and stage.
Here's one of my favorite lines:
Yet with all the focus and preparation on the fledgling, no one really checks on Mama Bird and all the changes that happen when your quiver starts emptying—changes for you, your child, and your family.
This is a book that cares for the Mama Bird. It understands the grief she's feeling, the joy, the regrets, the hope, the frustrations, all of it.
One of the author's goals was to be "real" in her writing, and I don't know her personally but I get the sense she succeeded. She is honest about family life, and I won't list all the things that struck me as having happened at our house also, except to say I could relate to what she said about those impossibly busy years and the regrets that lurk after they're over, of short tempers and trying to do way too much, and the lingering effects on relationships with our children. She also writes about all kinds of dilemmas you face, such as when three children have three different events in a single day, and how in the world do you decide who you're going to "be there" for?
Everything is written from the standpoint of God's overarching plan for us and our children. This is not about us floundering helplessly until we manage to shoo them out the door. It's about a divine calling for both us and our kids.
In the chapter on control, she talks about how God wants us to lead and guide our children, neither hovering nor ignoring, but then there's a gentle process of releasing that control.
In the chapter on control, she talks about how God wants us to lead and guide our children, neither hovering nor ignoring, but then there's a gentle process of releasing that control.
The final chapters come back around to taking care of the Mama Bird. Self-care, identity, mid-life stuff, and so on. Giving yourself grace. Accepting. Looking forward.
This book is about launching your children, and if you're a mom at the fledging stage, it will make you feel understood. Even better, it will help you see a thread of God's plan leading all the way through your mothering journey. You will understand more deeply and you will think hard about how you got to this place and where you want to go from here.
Sunday, March 11, 2018
Letter from Hburg--Farewell to an Old Van
Register-Guard
March 11, 2018
They emptied out the van last week, removed the wheels and hoisted it onto a trailer. It looked hollow, tired and a bit lopsided. You couldn’t see the stories it contained, the adventures, the accumulated trips and experiences and conversations stuffed to the ceiling, seeping out the doors and trailing behind as it was hauled away.
It was a big piece of red and white metal that rattled and clanked and devoured too much gas, but it was much more than frame and wheels and seats.
Back in 2000, we needed a big family vehicle because we had five children and, with Paul being both pastor and church school principal, we often wanted to transport lots of children besides ours.
My parents were visiting at the time, and we took them along to Portland to look at this 1992 Ford Club Wagon. Mom, as I recall, mended my sons’ jeans as we drove. Dad was impressed with Paul, who not only knew what questions to ask the dealer but also paid for the van in full that day.
“Are you OK with saying that this is the Lord’s van?” Paul asked me after we brought it home. “We won’t consider it ours, exactly, so we’ll let it be used for all kinds of things — church, school, loaning it out to other people, wherever it’s needed.”
“I’m fine with that,” I said, “except I don’t think the Lord is going to clean out his van. So if everyone is going to use it, let’s rip out the carpet and put in something that’s easier to wash.”
Paul said, “I don’t think you can do that.”
I said, “I am sure you can.”
We located a vinyl mat, shaped to fit, that could be swept and washed. Whenever I swept sand out of the corners after a trip to the coast or wiped up sticky Mountain Dew puddles after a school field trip, I was grateful I had insisted on taking out that impractical carpet.
For years, we took the family to church in the van on Sundays and filled it with school children twice a day during the week.
“It was always quiet in the morning,” our youngest daughter, Jenny, recalls, “but in the afternoon everyone would be talking. That’s one of my favorite memories: all the conversations, coming home from school.”
Even when the roads were icy, I could safely haul the children to and from school. Despite its ungainly size, the van was cooperative and easy to handle, like a gentle Clydesdale. I could tell that it liked me, so I liked it back, and we got along well. I even drove it to Portland, full of sisters-in-law, when we went secondhand shopping on 82nd Avenue, and then back home again, stuffed with Value Village and Deseret Industries bags and also laughter, empathy, and shared stories of life with Smucker men.
When I walked out of WinCo every other week with two heaped and heavy shopping carts, pulling one and pushing the other, the van always was easy to spot in the parking lot, its red top rising head and shoulders above the other vehicles. I could easily fit the groceries inside, but I had to do it strategically or the bags would topple and the soy sauce bottles and cans of pineapple would roll away under the seats.
We loaned it out to Gospel quartets touring churches in the Northwest, to Uncle James and Aunt Orpha when their children came home for visits, and to the church youth group to take on mission trips to Mexico. When Paul’s cousin Caroline and her family flew in from Ohio and borrowed it, they were driving on Interstate 84 near Multnomah Falls when a rear wheel suddenly came off. Somehow they pulled safely to a stop while the wheel and tire plowed through blackberry bushes and vaulted over the railroad tracks, never to be seen again.
It soon was repaired, but the miles accumulated, and the dents and rattles increased.
For almost 20 years, we hooked either a pop-up camper or a trailer of gear to the hitch, loaded the seats with hyper children and patient adults, and left for three days of Bible Memory Camp, our church’s reward to the 9- to 14-year-olds who memorized 50 Bible verses.
 |
| Bible Memory Camp, 2008 |
 |
| 2013 |
 |
| 2016 I think |
Two or three times a year, Paul stuffed the van with students and took them on field trips — to OMSI in Portland, almost every year; to Mount St. Helens to the north and the Wildlife Safari to the south; to the aviation museum in Eugene and the carousel in Salem. Once every winter, I set a bucket of homemade hot chocolate mix and a large insulated tub of boiling water in the back, and Paul drove the school kids to Tombstone Pass to play in the snow.
Soggy mittens and socks lurked under the seats afterwards, and sticky cups and crumpled lunch bags.
We drove on long trips as a family, sometimes with an extra cousin or two. On the way home from a Christmas trip to Minnesota, we inched along an icy Wyoming highway while the teens in the back seat quietly repeated the 23rd Psalm until we finally reached a safe place to spend the night.
Our daughter Amy and her friend Carrie cooked for a harvest crew one summer and used the van to haul groceries from the store and hot food to the field. One evening, our huge old dog, Hansie, disappeared. Overnight and into the next day, we worried and searched. Finally, I felt a strange compulsion to look inside the van. I slid open the door and there he was, having slipped inside and behind the back seat while Amy was unloading groceries.
In an old photo, I see our children climbing into the van, parked under the oak tree on a snowy day, with Hansie looking on.
Acorns dropping on the roof of the van were always the sign of summer’s end. One night, the oak tree quietly fell over, sprawling its gnarly branches over the driveway and yard, engulfing the van in its heavy embrace. Miraculously, when the tree was cut up and hauled away, the van still could be used. We replaced the broken windows and tried to pry out the dents. It served us for another eight years.
Soon after the tree fell, Hansie also collapsed. Friends helped me place him on blankets behind the back seat, and I drove him to the veterinarian to be put down. Then I drove him home to be buried, crying all the way.
One by one, the kids grew up and bought their own cars. We still loaned out the van, but it grew less and less reliable, and when the engine finally gave out, we decided it was too old to repair. A friend bought it and hauled it away to be recycled.
A faithful and reliable means of transportation is no small thing, nor is taking a group of people from here to there and back in warmth and safety. The van was the Lord’s, but the experiences were ours, and the travels and destinations. The stories are ours as well, and all the conversations, and 18 years of memories still trailing on behind.
Tuesday, March 06, 2018
At the Widow's Warehouse: A Story
This story has a few limbs that all must be examined if it is to make any sense. I admit, it's a stretch, even then.
1. I want grandchildren someday. Some obvious miracles need to occur before these gifts can arrive, and I'd like them to happen in the proper order, if possible, so I pray about all this. My faith does better with visual reminders, so I've collected a few little animals, from garage sales and such, as faith seeds. Someday I want to keep them in my purse, as grandmas do, and pull them out at the right times to entertain the little descendants.
2. Meanwhile, I keep these animals on the desk in the little corner where I do my Bible study and prayer every day. With time, they have taken on personalities, and they always seem to be in the middle of a story. When I rearrange them, another story takes place.
3. I have a really terrible time with the discipline of writing, so I set a timer and reward myself with some kind of visual reward every 15 minutes, whether it's coloring in a square on a chart or pinching another clothespin to the top edge of my laptop. Today the only place I could find some peace and quiet to finish my column was in my Bible study corner, so I transferred one little animal from the pasture on the right to the one on my left whenever the timer beeped.
4. So, of course, their story began and progressed at the same pace as my column, in 15 minute intervals, one animal after another, a bit unevenly. Also it was supposed to be a bit of "Amish" fiction (covering strings and the name "Emory") but it was hard with all the trucks and combines that showed up.
5. Just for fun, I decided to share each chapter on social media as it developed. Just to be clear, this was not the same writing I was doing for my column. That was something else entirely.
6. It is very hard to follow five different posts on Facebook or Instagram, so I'm sharing them here for the people who wanted to see all of them in the right order. I'll try to fill in a plot hole or two while I'm at it, as pointed out by my daughters.
7. If you are thinking I'm actually a small child in a 55-year-old body, you would be correct.
Chapter 1--
Sadie looked on with a mixture of curiosity and concern as Henry, the big and strong (but not handsome, to be honest) new truck driver and warehouse manager showed her son Emory how to clean the pit before the next load came in.
It wasn’t easy for a young widow, raising an adolescent and running her late husband’s business. Emory thought Henry hung the moon, that was for sure, Sadie thought as she tucked her dusty covering strings down the back of her dress and tried not to look like she was listening.
Would Henry’s influence be as good as his gear-shifting on the old Ford, that was the question. Ach vell. There was another load of fescue coming and dinner to put on the table.
Chapter 2--
Slowly, Henry turned and shuffled back to the truck with his dusty jeans sagging. Emory looked around for the broom as Sadie turned to leave.
“Ooooooh, Sadieeee!” It was Mary, John Yoder’s young wife who drove the seed trucks when John was on the combine. She hopped out of the truck, fluttered her hands and giggled. “You won’t believe what I just heard on the field radio! You know I told you how Jacob Miller hired that skinny little girl from Idaho that’s here visiting Sam and Ella for the summer because she teaches in the winter and wanted to work in the harvest this summer and I don’t know what Jacob was THINKING because here she was in that 80-acre field over by Pete and Carol’s and of all things she. . .”
Blessedly, Uncle James showed up beside Sadie just then, clearing his throat. “Uhhh…excuse me…Sadie…” he said in his slow deliberate way, “…but….are you aware…..that the….cleaner….hopper….appears… to….be…..overflowing…..??”
What?!? Sadie shrieked and ran, leaving Mary standing there, mid sentence, still fluttering her restless hands.
“Chapter 3--
"Relax, Sadie, it’s ok, I took care of the cleaner hopper,” said Cousin Randy just as Sadie puffed to a stop by the bagger. “It was my fault. I had asked Jason to bring the forklift over and help me load a truck, and he didn’t realize how full the hopper was. We got it cleaned up. It was only a little bit of seed, really.”
“Thanks!” was all Sadie could manage to say. She liked Randy, who ran the pellet mill next door and was always ready to help but didn’t make her feel stupid. “In…my…day….,” said Uncle James with a chuckle, “my…father…was known…to occasionally…take a nap…and…overflow the…hopper.”
“Ooooooh, Amanda!! Are you ok?? What in the world, sweetheart?!”
Good grief, why was Mary still here? And who had showed up beside her but Amanda herself, Jacob’s skinny little combine driver from Idaho! “What did I HEAR about you almost dumping your combine in Muddy Creek??” Mary exclaimed.
Poor Amanda looked about to cry. “Has everybody in the valley heard about this?!” she said.
Mary just giggled.
“It was that clutch!” Amanda wailed. “I’m serious, there’s that little bit of slope in that field, and all of a sudden I was rolling, and I COULD NOT get it in gear, and I was trying to radio Jacob with my other hand, and …” She was really crying now.
“Dear me,” said Sadie. She walked over, patted Mary on the arm, and said, “Didn’t you get a call from John that the next load is almost ready?”
Then she turned to Amanda.
Chapter 4–
Mary ran for her truck, knowing what John was like when he had a full load on the combine and she wasn’t back yet.
Randy went back to the pellet mill, and Uncle James headed home for dinner.
Henry parked the truck and checked the scales. “We’re losin’ a lot on that ryegrass,” he thought. He was not thinking about Sadie even though you, dear Reader, hoped he was.
“Listen, Amanda,” said Sadie, “we all do dumb stuff our first year on the combine. Mary set her dad’s orchardgrass field on fire when she wanted to make the combine pretty and lit a candle and propped it by the gearshift and it fell out when she turned a corner.”
Amanda smiled shakily. "Oh! I almost forgot!" she said, "I have something in the car for you. Jacob asked me to drop off the tags for his Marshall while they're pulling my combine out."
"Thanks," said Sadie. "I was wondering when they were coming."
“Mom! I’m hungry!” said Emory.
“All right,” said Sadie. “Let’s go eat.”
So they did. But first Emory turned and waved at Henry, who grinned and waved back with a large and hairy arm.
The end.
1. I want grandchildren someday. Some obvious miracles need to occur before these gifts can arrive, and I'd like them to happen in the proper order, if possible, so I pray about all this. My faith does better with visual reminders, so I've collected a few little animals, from garage sales and such, as faith seeds. Someday I want to keep them in my purse, as grandmas do, and pull them out at the right times to entertain the little descendants.
2. Meanwhile, I keep these animals on the desk in the little corner where I do my Bible study and prayer every day. With time, they have taken on personalities, and they always seem to be in the middle of a story. When I rearrange them, another story takes place.
3. I have a really terrible time with the discipline of writing, so I set a timer and reward myself with some kind of visual reward every 15 minutes, whether it's coloring in a square on a chart or pinching another clothespin to the top edge of my laptop. Today the only place I could find some peace and quiet to finish my column was in my Bible study corner, so I transferred one little animal from the pasture on the right to the one on my left whenever the timer beeped.
4. So, of course, their story began and progressed at the same pace as my column, in 15 minute intervals, one animal after another, a bit unevenly. Also it was supposed to be a bit of "Amish" fiction (covering strings and the name "Emory") but it was hard with all the trucks and combines that showed up.
5. Just for fun, I decided to share each chapter on social media as it developed. Just to be clear, this was not the same writing I was doing for my column. That was something else entirely.
6. It is very hard to follow five different posts on Facebook or Instagram, so I'm sharing them here for the people who wanted to see all of them in the right order. I'll try to fill in a plot hole or two while I'm at it, as pointed out by my daughters.
7. If you are thinking I'm actually a small child in a 55-year-old body, you would be correct.
At the Widow's Warehouse
Characters, left to right:
Sadie, the young widow.
Her son Emory.
Uncle James.
Henry the truck driver.
Mary the farmer's fluttery wife.
Cousin Randy from the pellet mill.
Amanda the combine driver.
Chapter 1--
Sadie looked on with a mixture of curiosity and concern as Henry, the big and strong (but not handsome, to be honest) new truck driver and warehouse manager showed her son Emory how to clean the pit before the next load came in.
It wasn’t easy for a young widow, raising an adolescent and running her late husband’s business. Emory thought Henry hung the moon, that was for sure, Sadie thought as she tucked her dusty covering strings down the back of her dress and tried not to look like she was listening.
Would Henry’s influence be as good as his gear-shifting on the old Ford, that was the question. Ach vell. There was another load of fescue coming and dinner to put on the table.
Chapter 2--
Slowly, Henry turned and shuffled back to the truck with his dusty jeans sagging. Emory looked around for the broom as Sadie turned to leave.
“Ooooooh, Sadieeee!” It was Mary, John Yoder’s young wife who drove the seed trucks when John was on the combine. She hopped out of the truck, fluttered her hands and giggled. “You won’t believe what I just heard on the field radio! You know I told you how Jacob Miller hired that skinny little girl from Idaho that’s here visiting Sam and Ella for the summer because she teaches in the winter and wanted to work in the harvest this summer and I don’t know what Jacob was THINKING because here she was in that 80-acre field over by Pete and Carol’s and of all things she. . .”
Blessedly, Uncle James showed up beside Sadie just then, clearing his throat. “Uhhh…excuse me…Sadie…” he said in his slow deliberate way, “…but….are you aware…..that the….cleaner….hopper….appears… to….be…..overflowing…..??”
What?!? Sadie shrieked and ran, leaving Mary standing there, mid sentence, still fluttering her restless hands.
“Chapter 3--
"Relax, Sadie, it’s ok, I took care of the cleaner hopper,” said Cousin Randy just as Sadie puffed to a stop by the bagger. “It was my fault. I had asked Jason to bring the forklift over and help me load a truck, and he didn’t realize how full the hopper was. We got it cleaned up. It was only a little bit of seed, really.”
“Thanks!” was all Sadie could manage to say. She liked Randy, who ran the pellet mill next door and was always ready to help but didn’t make her feel stupid. “In…my…day….,” said Uncle James with a chuckle, “my…father…was known…to occasionally…take a nap…and…overflow the…hopper.”
“Ooooooh, Amanda!! Are you ok?? What in the world, sweetheart?!”
Good grief, why was Mary still here? And who had showed up beside her but Amanda herself, Jacob’s skinny little combine driver from Idaho! “What did I HEAR about you almost dumping your combine in Muddy Creek??” Mary exclaimed.
Poor Amanda looked about to cry. “Has everybody in the valley heard about this?!” she said.
Mary just giggled.
“It was that clutch!” Amanda wailed. “I’m serious, there’s that little bit of slope in that field, and all of a sudden I was rolling, and I COULD NOT get it in gear, and I was trying to radio Jacob with my other hand, and …” She was really crying now.
“Dear me,” said Sadie. She walked over, patted Mary on the arm, and said, “Didn’t you get a call from John that the next load is almost ready?”
Then she turned to Amanda.
Chapter 4–
Mary ran for her truck, knowing what John was like when he had a full load on the combine and she wasn’t back yet.
Randy went back to the pellet mill, and Uncle James headed home for dinner.
Henry parked the truck and checked the scales. “We’re losin’ a lot on that ryegrass,” he thought. He was not thinking about Sadie even though you, dear Reader, hoped he was.
“Listen, Amanda,” said Sadie, “we all do dumb stuff our first year on the combine. Mary set her dad’s orchardgrass field on fire when she wanted to make the combine pretty and lit a candle and propped it by the gearshift and it fell out when she turned a corner.”
Amanda smiled shakily. "Oh! I almost forgot!" she said, "I have something in the car for you. Jacob asked me to drop off the tags for his Marshall while they're pulling my combine out."
"Thanks," said Sadie. "I was wondering when they were coming."
“Mom! I’m hungry!” said Emory.
“All right,” said Sadie. “Let’s go eat.”
So they did. But first Emory turned and waved at Henry, who grinned and waved back with a large and hairy arm.
The end.
Sunday, February 18, 2018
The Happy Pursuit of Staying At Home
I wonder how long I could stay at home without going a little dotty.
The first year I was in Oregon, teaching at Lake Creek School at the tender age of 19, I had something going on every single evening of the month of December. Programs and practices and youth activities and out to dinner with my cool friends and family gatherings with my landlord's family and church and many other wild and happy activities!
I was out of Minnesota and off the farm, and I had a life!! At last!!
Some years later, we have the last few weeks of January, 2018, in which Paul and I drove an hour and a half one Sunday morning to go to Dema Chupp's funeral, then that afternoon we went to a fancy AirBnB house for a retreat with the church ministry team for a couple of days.
We had exactly one day at home before we flew to Pennsylvania for a school administrators' conference. The following weekend I was gone again, to the church ladies' retreat at the coast.
"Do you like doing this sort of thing, or would you rather stay home?" Emily asked me before we went to Pennsylvania.
I said, "To be honest, I'm already thinking, 'Only one more week and I'll be home again, making tea in my own kitchen!'"
Paul said, to Emily, "I think she goes away just for the thrill of looking forward to coming home."
Since the ladies' retreat, I have stayed home a lot. I make tea in my kitchen, with the best water in the world in my own sturdy kettle. Every time a planned activity gets canceled, I do a happy little Mennonite-lady dance.
Every day when there's nothing scheduled away from home, I feel blessed and grateful.
One day I gathered every smidgen of tea from two pantries, one cupboard, the gift drawer, and the countertop, and I sorted and evaluated it all. Then only one of each type went into the kitchen cupboard, and the rest went into the pantry, sorted by type.
I've found that you can read all about downsizing and efficiency, but the key ingredient that is often missing for me is staying at home to do it. When you're gone a lot, you lose track of where you put the box of mint tea, and you're all rushed, so you buy more. Also, the white jasmine tea that no one likes migrates to the back of the top shelf, where no one sees it, and sits there taking up space for years.
So while it was alarming to see how much tea I actually own, it was utterly satisfying to get it all in proper order, and to get rid of what no one uses.
 |
| "Don't judge," as worldly people like to say when they know they are being ridiculous. |
So the patterns are to get categorized this week, after I get the box of mid-size children's patterns down from the attic, and I hope to send half of my collection to the MCC Relief Sale.
[Which still leaves plenty for me, trust me.]
Along with sorting and organizing, I've been sewing. I finished an apron I started long ago, altered two blouses to make them fit, made a skirt from start to finish, and also made a little girl's dress just because I was in the mood to make a little dress.
No wonder my mom always looked so blissful and content, staying home and sewing while the snow fell.
But was I going just a little crazy? I watched for signs. Was I living vicariously through my daughters' adventures out in the big world? Well, I always do that, so that doesn't count. Was I arguing with people in my head? Not excessively.
I kept sewing and organizing and also staying caught up with our laundry, which is a wonderful thing. I made tea several times a day and read two books. I canned sausage like I was preparing for a siege.
One day I took offense at something Paul said, and over-reacted just a teeny bit. But we talked about it almost right away, and I didn't spend a week arguing with him in my head before I brought it up, so that was all ok in the end and not too alarming.
Then on Saturday I thought, "Hey! Tomorrow I can go to church and talk with people! That will be fun!"*
That was when I knew that staying home this much was good for me, and healing and healthy and life-giving. Because when things are far too busy and we are running, traveling, going, meeting, driving, flying, and just zipping hither and thither, then church becomes a heavy obligation, another thing on my endless list, and a duty to be dutifully performed.
I'm always glad I went, but getting out the door on Sunday mornings--that's the hard part.
*Yes, I also go to church to worship God, in case you're worried. But I was also happy about talking to his people.
We don't have much on the calendar for this coming week, either. I am starting to ask God who I'm supposed to call, write to, invite over, or meet for coffee. Certain people are coming to mind, women who aren't visibly needy, but they show up in my thoughts with a quiet nudge. Yes, her. She needs someone to talk to.
Because that is also a benefit of staying home: you feel like you have something to give to others, room in your soul for another, space in your mind for listening--instead of cringing when the phone rings or feeling overwhelmed at another email to answer.
There's a bestselling book called The Lifechanging Magic of Tidying Up. If I wrote my own version, I would call it The Lifechanging Magic of Staying Home.
But first I'll go have some more tea.
Quote of the Day, from Christmas vacation:
Jenny: Dad should learn to play the didgeridoo. It helps with snoring.
Matt: Jenny, be VERY. CAREFUL. what you wish for.
Wednesday, February 14, 2018
A Review of Good's Online Store (and a coupon)
Some time ago I was asked to give a talk to a local business
group about how they can meet the needs of the Mennonite community.
I said that Mennonites generally value
self-sufficiency and thrift. So any business that will help us do things for
ourselves, for a reasonable price, will be our friend. For instance, Detering
Orchards or Horse Creek Farms and their you-pick fruits, or Territorial Seed
and its amazing garden seeds, or Hurds Hardware and its custom metal
fabricating that will build exactly the attachment for the forklift that Paul
needs to do his job at the warehouse more efficiently.
Almost every Mennonite or Amish community of any size has a
little store that sells bulk foods, fabric, cookbooks, and canning supplies. Almost
always, they are carefully chosen items, of good quality, for a reasonable
price.
Self-sufficiency and thrift, you know.
I love to shop at such places because you don’t have to dig
through aisles of nonsensical throwaway gimmicky stuff to find what you really
need, nor do you have to worry that this can opener will break after a week.
These places distill their inventory down to the basics, but
they also have half an aisle of pretty candles and teapots that you can give
your sister-in-law for her birthday.
You would like to shop at such a store, I'm sure. If you live in or have visited Pennsylvania,
you probably know all about Goods, which is a large version of the little Amish and Mennonite stores found further west.
If you don’t or haven’t, you can now shop at Goods online. Right here.
I was given a voucher in exchange for an honest review. So
here’s my assessment of their website and its offerings:
1. The site is pretty without being cheesy. I appreciate that they don’t co-opt the Amish name in order to sell products, although you'll find a Pennsylvania Dutch cultural flavor throughout, such as the brass quoits set from Fisher's Harness Shop.
2. I liked the subdivisions of merchandise on the
main page. Lawn&Garden, Health&Beauty, etc. And my favorite: Fabric&Sewing.
3. My one complaint about the website was at this
point. You can find subdivisions by brand name, such as Dritz, Moda, or Schmetz;
but you can’t click on product categories like fabric, thread, and
scissors. So your options are to do a
search at the top of the page or to click through all the products and hope you eventually get past the
fabric swatches and on to sewing supplies.
4.
Clicking through the fabric products is a treat
because they have many colors and prints and solids, especially the Tropical Breeze brand. I don't know how the price compares to other sources, but they also carry Moda quilting fabrics
which are about 30% cheaper than at Oregon’s Fabric Depot. I managed to click my
way through this section without buying anything which took great resolve.
5.
Some other things that caught my eye on the
website were the outdoor thermometers, pretty journals, canningsupplies, and women’s clothing. They even carry Carhartt jackets for women! At
most retailers, women’s clothing is far less durable than men’s. Carhartt is a
happy exception. But I didn’t buy the jacket because I bought a Carhartt hooded
sweatshirt a couple of years ago, and it’s still my go-to cool-and-windy-day
jacket.
I decided to use my voucher to pay for part
of a new Victorio strainer. Mine has turned out many a quart of applesauce and
tomato juice and is nearly worn out. I expect the new one to be of high enough
quality to hand down to my daughters when I’m no longer canning.
If you use the following link, you can get a 10% discount off regular prices. This offer is good until March 17.
Or you can use the coupon code DORCASBLOG when you check out.
Enjoy!
Quote of the Day:
"She also liked small, local shops, places where you were able to buy pins and candles and tins of syrup--the sort of real things that you needed, rather than the insubstantial clothes and flashy electrical goods that newer, louder shops sold."
--Alexander McCall Smith, describing Precious Ramotswe, in The Minor Adjustment Beauty Salon, number 15 in the #1 Ladies Detective Agency series.
Quote of the Day:
"She also liked small, local shops, places where you were able to buy pins and candles and tins of syrup--the sort of real things that you needed, rather than the insubstantial clothes and flashy electrical goods that newer, louder shops sold."
--Alexander McCall Smith, describing Precious Ramotswe, in The Minor Adjustment Beauty Salon, number 15 in the #1 Ladies Detective Agency series.
Monday, February 12, 2018
LFH--Thoughts While Canning Sausage
LETTER FROM HARRISBURG
Traditions of thrift and sharing build wealth of a community
By Dorcas Smucker
For The Register-Guard
FEB. 11, 2018
The pig was 12 cents a pound, live weight.
My delight with this bargain was tempered by a pang of sympathy for the hog farmer, whoever he or she might be. You think of such things when you once drove a load of pigs to the sale barn at age 16 in an old pickup truck that liked to stall at intersections. Our family finances, sketchy at the best of times, descended deeper into debt and despair when the price of hogs dropped.
I’ve learned since then that poverty is far more complicated than dollars and wages and prices. It also encompasses invisible and immeasurable metrics of support and skills, opportunity and relationships, and values and traditions.
My husband’s sister Lois and her husband, Ken, are remarkably self-sufficient, even for Mennonites, in every domestic art from gardening to rug-making to keeping livestock to home repairs. Ken reminded us that he could help us butcher a pig if we needed pork, and when he found a 600-pound hog for that impossibly low price of 12 cents a pound, we agreed it was time.
My husband, Paul, and Ken worked together in Ken and Lois’ cold utility room on our half of the pig, slicing the meat into strips and feeding it into the grinder. Then they mixed up the sausage, following Paul’s Grandma Lena’s famous recipe, here in its entirety:
90 lb. ground pork
5 T. pepper
5 T. ginger
2 c. salt
Optional: 2 T. sage
The hardest part of the process, says Paul, was cranking the old sausage stuffer that used to belong to Grandpa Orval. Paul turned the handle and Ken carefully controlled the casings so they were full but not bursting. After that, Ken smoked the meat for three hours in his brother David's smoker.
Meanwhile, I dug in the pantry for all my empty quart canning jars, Kerrs and Balls and Masons, many of them older than I am. I also pulled my pressure canner off the shelf and borrowed another canner from Lois and two more from Simone, the cousin’s wife just down the road. Paul stomped heavily into the kitchen and placed an enormous blue plastic tote of sausage on the table, then a red one a few minutes later — 150 pounds of meat in all.
The long cold sausages looked and acted alarmingly like large snakes, coiling heavily in the totes and then flopping in muscular curves and curls when I lifted them out, one by one.
In the Smucker family tradition, there is one and only one way to can sausage. You cut it into 2½-inch pieces. Then you put seven of these, upright, into the bottom of the jar, like stout spools of thread standing side by side. Seven more stand upright on top of these, and two more lie down on the very top.
That is how it’s done.
There must be a faster way. I picked up a long rope and carefully threaded it head first into a jar, then coiled it around and around and snipped it off when it reached the top. I shoved another piece down the empty space in the center and snipped that off as well, and the jar was full.
“No one can fill a jar like Lois,” Ken had told Paul. “She can get two pounds of meat in a quart jar.”
I weighed my jars. Two pounds of meat in each. Yes! Quickly, I filled one jar after another, coiling and pushing. They looked just as horrifyingly snake-like inside the jars as out, but I wanted the job done fast.
Paul, who seldom has opinions about food preparation, happened to come inside as I was working. “I’ve never seen anyone put sausage in a jar that way. Are you sure it’s OK?”
“I don’t see why not.”
He actually called Lois, just to make sure.
She laughed. “I don’t think it ever crossed any of our minds to do it that way, but I don’t see why you couldn’t. All of us — Grandma Lena and Mom and Aunt Susie and Aunt JoAn and I — we always did it exactly the same — cut it in chunks and put seven in one layer, seven in the next and two on top.”
I felt like those spunky and courageous girls in “Amish” novels, breaking family tradition like this.
After they’re filled, the jars must be pressure-canned at 10 pounds of pressure for an hour and a half. Every good farm wife has an extra stove just for canning, especially if the kitchen stove has a flat surface. My canning stove came from my friend Gina years ago, for $20.
It’s stained and old, but it works perfectly.
Watching two or three pressure canners at once takes even more courage
than breaking a family tradition. I flitted nervously back and forth,
monitoring gauges and timers and burners, knowing that if one of the
canners exploded, it would take half the house and me with it. And what
would Grandma Lena say if I showed up in heaven as a result of canning
sausages a new and very wrong way?
When I had used up all the non-mayonnaise jars in the pantry, I poked around in the east half of the chicken shed for the box of jars I inherited from my mom’s stash. In typical ingenuity, she had zig-zagged a long strap of old fabric and duct-taped it cleverly under and around the heavy box to form two handles.
My daughter Amy washed out the spiderwebs and dust and sanitized the jars in the dishwasher. Emily filled them with the last of the sausage. Seven quarts per canner, 90 minutes each, batch after batch. Rows of sealed jars, plump and proud on the counter. Another generation learning by doing. This is also how it’s done.
I have been reading about poverty — from news articles on fees and fines that impede progress for low-income people, to Barbara Ehrenreich’s condescending but informative book “Nickel and Dimed.” I’m learning about the descending spiral of poverty and the difficulty of climbing up and out.
When we had four small children, I stayed at home and Paul worked a barely minimum wage job. We slowly worked our way out of that frustrating lifestyle to a pleasant place where we can now buy new shoes if we want to, and a car breakdown doesn’t derail us financially.
This transition was possible because we always have had access to that mysterious source of wealth that is never tallied on government reports or factored in economic projections — the resources of a caring family and community, skills and equipment and thrift passed from one generation to another, and a willingness to help others for no compensation besides eventually being helped in return.
The price of commodities is out of my control, and there is little I can do about vast inequities and financial policies. We donate money to charities that offer help to the poor, and I loan my pressure canner to others who need it. But maybe my husband and I need to find new ways to draw people into our circle of family and community, trading their skills with ours, sharing what we have, teaching what we’ve learned, and learning from them.
True, we put hours of hard work into this project, but it was mostly because of a generous circle of people who offered, taught, loaned and helped that we were able to gather 65 quarts of the best sausage in the world for less than $50. We are abundantly blessed and breathtakingly wealthy.
Traditions of thrift and sharing build wealth of a community
By Dorcas Smucker
For The Register-Guard
FEB. 11, 2018
The pig was 12 cents a pound, live weight.
My delight with this bargain was tempered by a pang of sympathy for the hog farmer, whoever he or she might be. You think of such things when you once drove a load of pigs to the sale barn at age 16 in an old pickup truck that liked to stall at intersections. Our family finances, sketchy at the best of times, descended deeper into debt and despair when the price of hogs dropped.
I’ve learned since then that poverty is far more complicated than dollars and wages and prices. It also encompasses invisible and immeasurable metrics of support and skills, opportunity and relationships, and values and traditions.
My husband’s sister Lois and her husband, Ken, are remarkably self-sufficient, even for Mennonites, in every domestic art from gardening to rug-making to keeping livestock to home repairs. Ken reminded us that he could help us butcher a pig if we needed pork, and when he found a 600-pound hog for that impossibly low price of 12 cents a pound, we agreed it was time.
My husband, Paul, and Ken worked together in Ken and Lois’ cold utility room on our half of the pig, slicing the meat into strips and feeding it into the grinder. Then they mixed up the sausage, following Paul’s Grandma Lena’s famous recipe, here in its entirety:
90 lb. ground pork
5 T. pepper
5 T. ginger
2 c. salt
Optional: 2 T. sage
The hardest part of the process, says Paul, was cranking the old sausage stuffer that used to belong to Grandpa Orval. Paul turned the handle and Ken carefully controlled the casings so they were full but not bursting. After that, Ken smoked the meat for three hours in his brother David's smoker.
Meanwhile, I dug in the pantry for all my empty quart canning jars, Kerrs and Balls and Masons, many of them older than I am. I also pulled my pressure canner off the shelf and borrowed another canner from Lois and two more from Simone, the cousin’s wife just down the road. Paul stomped heavily into the kitchen and placed an enormous blue plastic tote of sausage on the table, then a red one a few minutes later — 150 pounds of meat in all.
The long cold sausages looked and acted alarmingly like large snakes, coiling heavily in the totes and then flopping in muscular curves and curls when I lifted them out, one by one.
In the Smucker family tradition, there is one and only one way to can sausage. You cut it into 2½-inch pieces. Then you put seven of these, upright, into the bottom of the jar, like stout spools of thread standing side by side. Seven more stand upright on top of these, and two more lie down on the very top.
That is how it’s done.
There must be a faster way. I picked up a long rope and carefully threaded it head first into a jar, then coiled it around and around and snipped it off when it reached the top. I shoved another piece down the empty space in the center and snipped that off as well, and the jar was full.
“No one can fill a jar like Lois,” Ken had told Paul. “She can get two pounds of meat in a quart jar.”
I weighed my jars. Two pounds of meat in each. Yes! Quickly, I filled one jar after another, coiling and pushing. They looked just as horrifyingly snake-like inside the jars as out, but I wanted the job done fast.
Paul, who seldom has opinions about food preparation, happened to come inside as I was working. “I’ve never seen anyone put sausage in a jar that way. Are you sure it’s OK?”
“I don’t see why not.”
He actually called Lois, just to make sure.
She laughed. “I don’t think it ever crossed any of our minds to do it that way, but I don’t see why you couldn’t. All of us — Grandma Lena and Mom and Aunt Susie and Aunt JoAn and I — we always did it exactly the same — cut it in chunks and put seven in one layer, seven in the next and two on top.”
I felt like those spunky and courageous girls in “Amish” novels, breaking family tradition like this.
After they’re filled, the jars must be pressure-canned at 10 pounds of pressure for an hour and a half. Every good farm wife has an extra stove just for canning, especially if the kitchen stove has a flat surface. My canning stove came from my friend Gina years ago, for $20.
It’s stained and old, but it works perfectly.
When I had used up all the non-mayonnaise jars in the pantry, I poked around in the east half of the chicken shed for the box of jars I inherited from my mom’s stash. In typical ingenuity, she had zig-zagged a long strap of old fabric and duct-taped it cleverly under and around the heavy box to form two handles.
My daughter Amy washed out the spiderwebs and dust and sanitized the jars in the dishwasher. Emily filled them with the last of the sausage. Seven quarts per canner, 90 minutes each, batch after batch. Rows of sealed jars, plump and proud on the counter. Another generation learning by doing. This is also how it’s done.
I have been reading about poverty — from news articles on fees and fines that impede progress for low-income people, to Barbara Ehrenreich’s condescending but informative book “Nickel and Dimed.” I’m learning about the descending spiral of poverty and the difficulty of climbing up and out.
When we had four small children, I stayed at home and Paul worked a barely minimum wage job. We slowly worked our way out of that frustrating lifestyle to a pleasant place where we can now buy new shoes if we want to, and a car breakdown doesn’t derail us financially.
This transition was possible because we always have had access to that mysterious source of wealth that is never tallied on government reports or factored in economic projections — the resources of a caring family and community, skills and equipment and thrift passed from one generation to another, and a willingness to help others for no compensation besides eventually being helped in return.
The price of commodities is out of my control, and there is little I can do about vast inequities and financial policies. We donate money to charities that offer help to the poor, and I loan my pressure canner to others who need it. But maybe my husband and I need to find new ways to draw people into our circle of family and community, trading their skills with ours, sharing what we have, teaching what we’ve learned, and learning from them.
True, we put hours of hard work into this project, but it was mostly because of a generous circle of people who offered, taught, loaned and helped that we were able to gather 65 quarts of the best sausage in the world for less than $50. We are abundantly blessed and breathtakingly wealthy.
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