Winter Sustenance on Hawk's Hill

The snow sifts down from the leaden sky.  Again.  The land feels locked in ice and a thick swaddling of snow.  Frozen hard are the first drips in the maple sap jug so hopefully hung from the granddaddy Sugar Maple in last week's thaw.  The overnight low temperature bottomed out around 9 degrees F early this morning.  Buff Orpington chickens closed into the barn with two heat lamps cozied up to one another and sailed right through the February night, while we tucked in under heavy blankets and a couple of cats.  

Hard as it is to imagine, though, we will be eating off of the land tonight.  A frittata with homegrown potatoes, onions, eggs and side dishes of fresh carrots and frozen broccoli are on the menu, and perhaps a jar of canned beets.  The only store bought ingredient in tonight's dinner is the olive oil I'll use to grease the pan.  And salt and pepper.  I still shop at the grocery store for much of our food, but meals like tonight's tickle my fancy and remind me of the dream I've long held to live off the land.

As a 7th grader at Linkhorne Middle School, I bought a Scholastic paperback copy of Jean Craighead George's My Side of the Mountain  with my own 95 cents and fell into the world of Sam Gribley.  The boy who ran away from the big city to live off the land in the Catskill Mountains enthralled me.  I lived in that story as I read it, savoring every scene, imagining feeding myself off the land like Sam as I tramped through the woods around my childhood home gathering acorns for acorn bread.  I read and re-read that book.  Even as an adult, I returned to its charmed pages from time to time, and later read it aloud to my girls.  

Whenever I dig a basket of carrots from the garden in a January thaw, the thrill of self-sufficiency tickles me.  When I swing a basket around Hawk's Hill Farm in the autumn, plucking the last of the blueberry and raspberry leaves, the last sprigs of mint and Lemon Balm, the late Red Clover blossoms to dry for tea, or when I fill a teapot with water and homegrown herbs as Helen Nearing did every day, the old delight glows within my heart.  Stocking the pantry with mason jars and bushel boxes of homegrown produce, stuffing the deep freeze with peas and broccoli, creating Mrs. Mouse's Store House as our Sarah is fond of calling it, a body gets the reassuring sense that no matter what the weather brings, dinner is in the house.  The thrill sinks deeper into the soul, settling, affirming that the good earth has provided.

Today when she came home from school, Kate asked me "Do you ever feel connected, really in touch with, the earth?"  Did the fresh flakes of snow charm her or was it the little glimpses of sunshine that peered through the cloud deck and spread golden light like melted butter on the ocean of snow crust undulating over the hills to the horizon?  Was it the solitary song sparrow puffed up and faithfully scratching for seeds on the pathway David cleared with his tractor blade?  Was it the warmth of Soulstice, the native stone hearth around the wood stove, the quiet of a winter afternoon with nothing on the schedule?  

The wood stove in Soulstice blazes brightly.

I can only offer gratitude that the next generation has the connection with the earth that I received, passed down from those before me, from my mother who taught me how to make and can real applesauce, and who passed on her love of the song of the House Wren.  From my father who taught me it was okay to walk slowly on the Appalachian Trail on Saturday afternoons matching the wildflowers at our feet with the Peterson Guide, and who faithfully started broccoli in the south window the depth of winter.  May the love of being close to the earth, being grounded continue to pass from generation to generation .  Hail to the ancient joy of gathering our sustenance -- in calories and beauty -- from the landscape!

Peace, health and warmth to you all,
Betsy