An old kerosene lamp passed through my life this week. I held it
for just a while as it journeyed to a new home. A yellow patina
of age and oil covered decoupage red roses. If roses could tell
a story it would include strong women and a tough farming
family.
What if the lights went out tonight? I don’t have a kerosene
lamp, just candles and flashlights. How prepared I would be with
a little forethought, a lamp, some kerosene and matches. The
olden days were not necessarily simpler but more sustainable as
times included hard physical work with long hours to accomplish
tasks of living.
My love of heritage skills springs to life as we begin planning
for a “summer” kitchen. We will enjoy the cook stove fire in
winter and wonder at our senses as we sweat over homemade bread
in the summer. There was a time in my life when I spent a year
cooking over outdoor fires and a small cast iron cook stove with
an oven. To return to those skills will ground me, to share this
kitchen with home school groups and other farm visitors will
bring full circle that year of my life.
Our kitchen will be filled with shelves of food we have canned,
enamel ware, cast iron cook pots, clothes drying racks, bread
pans with rising bowls, a red legged white enamel top table,
cast iron apron hooks, jelly strainers and good stories.
With wonderful earth nourishing rains upon our fields, comes
lightning, trees collapsing under the weight of old soaked bark
and power outages.
I sincerely hope that with the close of our Farm To Fare season
you will prioritize, throughout the summer, and make a weekly
journey to Crones’ Cradle to connect with the growing soils,
check the progress of our kitchen and tell me stories of a food
you are growing.
I wish you light (including a kerosene lamp), summer showers,
yard flowers, containers filled with peppers, tomatoes, bunching
onions and herbs; mostly I wish you continued earth connections
which enrich and sustain your days.
Growing for the future.
Lee Solomon, Chief Gardener
