Lost in Translation

"The idea of teaching every girl to thump the piano and every boy to be a bookkeeper will make potatoes worth eight dollars a barrel in twenty years." -Virginia City [Montana] Times I have no idea what that means.

Montana's Loose Definition of 'Moral'

"Judge Clancy yesterday in a naturalization hearing defined a man 'of good moral character' who had never stolen a horse or cut a throat." -The Montana Standard, 19 April 1942, p. 29

No strength like a father's love

A most peculiar accident happened in Baggs Friday morning. While Al Warren was preparing to start to Rawlins, his little six-year-old boy climbed up on the wheel of the wagon, which was loaded with 3300 lbs of oats. The horses started, throwing the young fellow under the wheel. Mr. Warren caught the wheel and lifted in all of his power, which no doubt saved the little fellow's life as the wheel ran across him from above his hip to the knee of the opposite leg. Strange to say, he was not even bruised, while one would naturally suppose his body had been cut in two. -Routt County Courier, October 26, 1905

A Cure for the Wandering Mate

Overheard this valuable lesson at a community museum gathering: Woman #1: "When my mother got married, her mother-in-law had one piece of advice: Never learn to milk a cow." Woman #2: "Too much work!" Woman #1: "Yes, and you guarantee your husband has to be at home twice a day to get it done!"

"You deserve to be somewhere you feel free." -Tom Petty

All paths are open to you.

Conquering a new frontier: Bread Edition

I love to bake. Weekly, I make up cookies, cakes, fruit bread and biscuits for our little family to enjoy. My continuing failure proves to be brownies, which I blame totally on the high elevation we live at. However, I've never given the slightest thought to making homemade bread. My sweetheart is a carb-oholic. While he weighs a relatively minor 150 lbs, he eats carbs like he's been running back-to-back marathons. He mentioned the other day how much he loves homemade bread, and I realized that in my entire life of baking, I had never even attempted it. Flipping through a couple of back issues of Mother Earth News, I found a supposedly "easy" no-knead bread recipe, and gave it a try. It turned out fantastic! It has a heavy, crunchy crust with a soft, dense center. I used cheap flour as I wasn't sure it was going to turn out, but my mouth waters thinking of the results using high-quality Wheat Montana whole wheat flour! I'm starting another loaf tonight! Here's the recipe, and my results: 1/4 tsp active dry yeast 1 1/2 cups warm water 3 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for dusting. You may use white, whole wheat or a combination of the two. 1 1/2 tsp salt Cornmeal or wheat bran for dusting In a large bowl, dissolve yeast in water. Add the flour and salt, stirring until blended. The dough will be shaggy and sticky. Cover bowl with plastic wrap. Let the dough rest at least 8 hours, preferably 12 to 18, at warm room temperature, about 70 degrees. (I popped our dough in one of my heated seed-starting boxes, where it sat overnight.) The dough is ready when its surface is dotted with bubbles. Lightly flour a work surface and place dough on it. Sprinkle it with a little more flour and fold it over on itself once or twice. Cover loosely with plastic wrap and let it rest for about 15 minutes. Using just enough flour to keep the dough from sticking to the work surface or to your fingers, gently shape it into a ball. Generously coat a clean dish towel with flour, wheat bran or cornmeal. Put the seam side of the dough down on the towel and dust with more flour, bran or cornmeal. Cover with another towel and let rise for about 1 to 2 hours. When it’s ready, the dough will have doubled in size and will not readily spring back when poked with a finger. (So I got home late from a meeting on Sunday night, and popped the dough out to rise. It had not yet doubled after two hours, but I was sick of waiting and starving for dinner, so we popped it in the oven anyway. It turned out beautifully! Next time I'll budget a little more time to let it rise.) At least 20 minutes before the dough is ready, heat oven to 475 degrees. Put a 6- to 8-quart heavy covered pot (cast iron, enamel, Pyrex or ceramic) in the oven as it heats. When the dough is ready, carefully remove the pot from the oven and lift off the lid. Slide your hand under the towel and turn the dough over into the pot, seam side up. The dough will lose its shape a bit in the process, but that’s OK. Give the pan a firm shake or two to help distribute the dough evenly, but don’t worry if it’s not perfect; it will straighten out as it bakes. Cover and bake for 30 minutes. Remove the lid and bake another 15 to 20 minutes, until the loaf is beautifully browned. Remove the bread from the Dutch oven and let it cool on a rack for at least 1 hour before slicing. (The first photo is the bread rising in the seed starter box. The second photo is just out of the oven!) Read more: http://www.motherearthnews.com/Real-Food/2007-12-01/Easy-No-Knead-Dutch-Oven-Crusty-Bread.aspx?page=2#ixzz2QXWWTjzy

The red-winged blackbirds and the sandhill cranes call from the fields around the house, and a pair of woodpeckers are building a nest in a hollow tree on the creek. It seems a little early for true spring here in the wild Montana mountains, but we're eager for it none the less. This weekend, we finally had time to start work on the gardens. Since moving here last year, we've discovered the heavy, alkaline, clay soil (along with a 30-100 day growing season) really isn't very good for raising our food. But if our ancestors were able to make it work, surely we will too. The existing garden, although lovely in its planning, was full of totally depleted soil. We built retaining walls last fall, but the snow caught us before we were able to replace the soil. On Friday, I pulled off the leaf mulch and we piled on load after load of well-aged horse manure. The new beds are 10" deep and look fantastic! That garden will hold our important storage crops like onions, parsnips, and potatoes, as well as cucumber, yellow wax beans, and zucchini. In the middle sits a stone bed of herbs, and the east edge is full of raspberries, strawberries, rhubarb, blueberries (struggling in our alkaline soil), gooseberries and currants. The gooseberries and currants didn't produce last year-- I have no familiarity with them, and I read that some varieties take three years to become established before producing. We'll see what happens this year! With some major additions of wood ash and pine needle mulch, I hope to help the blueberries pull through... but everything I read tells me it's unlikely they'll survive. Our house garden consists of a bunch of 35-gallon cattle mineral tubs. Less work than digging a new bed, and hopefully warmer (thanks to the black plastic), they were a cinch to drill full of drainage holes and fill with well-composted manure this weekend. While I muscled those into place, Levi built six beautiful seed-starting boxes of scrap lumber and florescent light fixtures, insulated with foil-backed foam. They are going to be ideal for giving seedlings a strong start, and I'm looking forward to having a dining room full of plants! The vegetable garden preparations went so smoothly I had time to wire up a new compost bin and fill it half full of scraps, leaves, and moldy hay, and lay out my new "sundial" garden at a corner of the courtyard area behind our house. Now instead of seeing a propane tank from our bedroom window, I'll have a lovely flower garden in bloom all summer.