walking beans

I'm currently knee-deep in Ben Sasse's book The Vanishing American Adult: Our Coming-of-Age Crisis, which I'd highly recommend by the way, and just read his observation that asking an adult about his first job usually kickstarts a fascinating conversation. 

That's providing, of course, that he's not a 20-year-old who's in college and hasn't yet worked a day in his life. 

Gah. 

My first job -- as a ten-year-old -- was very glamorous. Are you ready?

I walked beans for my uncle in the midst of the Iowa summer heat. 

For non-farmers, walking beans meant spreading out over a bean field to seek and destroy any weeds that would have otherwise been combined during harvest. 

Plus it made for an immaculate looking bean field. 

My mom and sister and a couple of her friends and I would meet at a certain field early in the morning before the sun got too hot. We'd drag along our hoes and water and lots of bug spray,  take 6-8 rows per person, and set out across the field to cut down any weeds that had cropped up. 

It was often wet work; the dew from the early morning made the leaves damp so before you were 50 feet into the field, you were soggy from the waist down. 

And it wasn't uncommon to step on a snake. Or a frog. We'd jump so high we'd land a row over while screaming like, well, girls. 

I walked beans every morning for several weeks. I was covered in mosquito bites. I had a solid sunburn. My shoes were soggy, and my jeans were muddy.

And I made $80.00 when it was all over. It was enough to open my first checking account. At the time, it could have been a million dollars as far as ten-year-old me was concerned. 

Most people don't walk beans anymore. I don't know if that's because of superior bean quality, better spray, or if kids are just lazy.  Maybe walking beans was never really necessary to begin with, and it was simply a good way to keep middle schoolers and teenagers busy in the summer. Hmm.

But I do know that walking over all those acres, cutting down all those weeds, stepping on all those snakes and collapsing into bed from being hot and tired earned me 80 glorious dollars and the reward of sweaty work well done. 

And I can't wait to see my children do the same. It may be working with cows or weeding in the garden or building fence. But I do want them to know what it's like to be sweaty and sunburned and bug-bitten. 

It was good for me. It will be good for them too. And you can take that to the bank. 

All $80.00 worth. 

What was your first job? 

thanksgiving 2016

I'll never forget the Thanksgiving that I woke up and realized my left eye was swollen to the size of a ping pong ball and people from church were coming over for the meal. 

Ahh. 

Memories. 

     

 This year, my farmer and I hosted Thanksgiving for the first time. We felt like grown-ups.

And none of our eyeballs were swollen.

I'd consider that a success.

As a child, I spent a fair amount of Thanksgivings watching my mom whip up delicious meals in her red kitchen or staying out of my grandma's way while she made dish after dish after dish. It was like the food never stopped coming when it came to either one of them. 

One of my grandma's staples, and a favorite of mine because we never had it at home, was creamed corn. I was convinced no one could make it like my grandma could. 

Until one Thanksgiving I saw her pouring creamed corn out of a can. 

OUT OF A CAN. My world was upended.

I had no idea such deliciousness could just be gotten at the grocery store. It changed everything. 

So what we've learned thus far is this . . . normal-sized eyes and creamed corn: It doesn't take much to keep me happy. 

Beforehand we had wine and a charcuterie board with salami and Vermont cheddar and olives and goat cheese.  

We also nibbled on a new tradition: the Thanksgiving pumpkin cheeseball.

And by "tradition," I mean this is the second year I've made it. Does that make it an annual cheeseball now?

And really, isn't the goal of any appetizer just to hold your guests over long enough so that you can finish the rest of the meal? 

Or try to salvage the turkey if you wrecked it?

Both maybe?

    

Thankfully, these appetizers were just for fun. Once we prayed, we started passing the good stuff.

We started with a spinach and pear and pomegranate salad, mashed potatoes and gravy, and creamed corn.

Not the can kind.

The kind that involved three sticks of butter and two cream cheeses.

Sorry, arteries.

My farmer did a bang-up job of cooking an Alton Brown-approved turkey, and our dogs though the neck and the carcass were the best Thanksgiving feast they'd ever had.

So everyone came away a winner on that front.

We also had butternut squash and cranberries with honey and cinnamon and feta . . . and some sweet potatoes from our garden thrown in for good measure. 

It was like farm to table . . . except we were still on the farm so . . . farm to farm?

Did I mention the turkey was super moist? Alton Brown's theory is to go high heat--as in, 500--for a short time to basically sear the skin and hold all the juice in. And it worked. 

We had a cranberry-walnut-apple salad, green beans wrapped in bacon, stuffing, rolls and pumpkin cornbread, deviled eggs, a heart attack. 

Whoops. How'd that last one sneak in there? 

And maybe don't ask me if I got juice from the cranberries and apples all over the front of my cupboards--the night before Thanksgiving--while I was grinding the two in my KitchenAid.

Because I totally didn't. Not at all. 

I didn't even contemplate sitting down on the floor and crying. Not even for a second. 

I'm also a really bad liar.  

We moved past the cranberry and apple juice incident by eating delicious desserts, because when you've eaten your allowable caloric intake by the time you get through the mashed potatoes and pumpkin cornbread, why not go for the gold?

We had a hot cocoa bar, even though we were basically all so stuffed at that point that the thought of more decadent calories made us want to . . . well . . . let's just say we were full. 

    

We also gorged ourselves on slices of pecan and pumpkin pie, chewy brownies with hunks of dark chocolate, and a salted caramel pumpkin cheesecake, which the recipe swore wouldn't develop a crack if I left the oven door closed for an hour and a half after baking. 

It promised. 

IT LIES. 

But better than all of that, we gave thanks for one another, learned more about our family traditions, and even managed to talk theology and the election . . . and no one slung mashed potatoes or flipped the table or tossed a glass of wine . . . or went home with a bugged out eyeball. 

Sometimes, even on Thanksgiving, it's the little things.

chicken and veggies and more chicken

It could be that I have chicken on the brain. 

Or that the garden is finally producing some fresh veggies. 

Or that we eat a lot of beef as dairy people and mixing it up never hurts. 

Or that I just want a reason to sit out on the patio and look out over the fields and eat and eat and eat. 

Because I like chicken . . . and eating. 

starting spring planting inside

Earlier this week, it was 70 degrees here in Missouri. 

SEVENTY DEGREES. 

This is a big deal when you're a Northern girl who lived through Iowa and Wisconsin winters that had a tendency to still be going strong in May.