J JUNIOR GRANGE

Junior Granger of the Year - Annette Harley, RI Sign-A-Song Best of Show - Kimber Newman, KS Public Speaking Best of Show - Eric Rodriguez, TX

Creative Art Best of Show - Kimber Newman, KS

Age 5-7 1st Paige Darling, NY 2nd Ellen Durand, KS 3rd Addison Conroy, VA

Age 8-10 1st Kimber Newman Kansas

Age 11-14 1st Brianna Gervais, CT 2nd Mackenzie Fens, VA 3rd Rheannon Fens, VA

Seed Art Best of Show - Paige Darling, NY

Age 5-7 1st Paige Darling, NY 2nd Henry Greer, CO 3rd Annabell Maring, NY

Age 8-10 1st Kimber Newman, KS 2nd Jacob Smith, WA 3rd Chance Burtenshaw, WA

Age 11-14 1st Brianna Gervais, CT 2nd Jaelyn Johnson, WA 3rd Abbi Schmoe, WA

Mini Scrapbook Best of Show - Kimber Newman, KS

Age 8-10 1st Kimber Newman, KS Creative Writing Best of Show - Annette Hartley, RI

Age 5-7 1st Addison Conroy, VA

Age 8-10 1st Kimber Newman, KS

Age 11-14 1st Annette Hartley, RI 2nd Brianna Gervais, CT

Photography Best of Show - Ellen Durand, KS

Age 5-7 1st Ellen Durand, KS 2nd Addison Conroy, VA 3rd Savannah Fens, VA

Age 8-10 1st Kimber Newman, KS

Age 11-14 1st Sarah VanHouse, KS 2nd Brianna Gervais, CT 3rd Rheannon Fens, VA

Cape of Honor Award

Gold Annette Hartley, RI (507.5 Hours)

Gold Danni Wilcox, PA (139 Hours)

White Taylor Elliott, OR (28 Hours)

Recognition of Submitted Annual Reports

Oregon State Junior Grange

New York State Junior Grange

Ekonk Community Junior Grange #101, CT

Kirkland Junior Grange, NY

Whitehall Junior Grange #346, NY

BEST IN SHOW Junior imagines being National Grange President for a day

By Annette Hartley

National Junior Granger of the Year

The hour of labor has arrived and the work of another day demands my attention...

If I was National President for the day, where do I even begin?

I should start planning since I really want to be the National Grange President in my future!

It is going to be hard to narrow it down since I would only have one day to be the President, but I think I could do it.

I would definitely need help with the things I want to do, as I know I couldn’t do it by myself, so I would ask for the guidance from national directors and office staff.

One of the first things that I Would do is retake a picture of me sitting in the National President Betsy Huber’s chair, in her office, in Washington, D.C.

One thing that I would really want to do and focus on is membership as I am on the northeast regional membership committee. I would like to get people’s input on why they would and wouldn’t like to join the Grange. I would see if it is something we could fix and work on.

Our Junior Granges in particular are having a hard time with the number of members. When we had our last membership meeting for the northeast membership committee in March, there were 50,479 (fraternal) Grange members in general and only 2% of those are Juniors. That would equal about 1,010 Junior Grangers out of all the States.

As a Junior Grange and current President of my Junior Grange, I would love to see those number get bigger.

I would also like to see so many more Juniors that we would have to organize brand new Granges.

Since I would only have one day, I would make a Zoom meeting to reach out to the State Presidents just to remind them that I would always be there for them if they needed me.

It’s important to have great communication line with all the States in case something is happening in their State Grange, they would like me to step in to help where I can. I think that it could help a lot of the States out, in case they need advice with finances, membership and any other things that they might need assistance with.

I would also make the opportunity to schedule Zoom meetings with Junior and Youth directors from all the States to discuss how we can recruit new members and keep the ones we have.

After that meeting, I would meet with the membership directors from all States to see where we can incorporate ideas from the Juniors and Youth to come up with a plan to build up our membership so our great organization could flourish and continue for generations to come.

With the assistance of the National Legislative Director, I would like to host a luncheon with our legislative contacts from Capitol Hill to discuss the important issues to the Grange and our members nationwide. With open communication and continued discussions, we can keep the Grange’s important matters on their agenda and moving forward to achieve our goals.

After my luncheon, when I get back to my office, I’d like to meet with the building manager to get a full tour of the building and an update as to the needed repairs and priority levels.

On my tour, I would also like to meet the tenants to hear what their thoughts are on the status of the building.

My final meeting of my day would be with the National Executive Committee to discuss my day’s events and to share the concerns voiced throughout my day.

Together we could come up with a plan to boost and retain our membership at all levels of the Grange, hear updates from our State Presidents, review our legislative agenda and to go over the building status and options.

Once the labors of the day are complete, I would end my night with a guided night tour of our nation’s capital and dinner with the entire national office staff.

Submitted Photo

Nettie Hartley, who was named Junior of the Year in 2021, had her photo taken with National President Betsy Huber when visiting the National Headquarters in 2018.

Submitted Photo

Reading ourselves: Rural experiences in Young Adult literature

By Chea Parton

Literacy In Place Founder

I am a farm girl and the legacy of proud working-class people from rural Indiana and East Tennessee.

Growing up, we never had cable TV - only had what we affectionately called the “Farmer Five”. One of those channels was PBS and we existed on a steady diet of Wishbone and Austin City Limits (ACL). Together they fostered in me a deep love and respect for stories of all kinds and country folk intellectuals - which describes pert near all my family. However, in school I came to understand Standard Academic English as the only kind that would allow me to be successful, so I got good at it. Because I believed I needed it to be successful, to go to college, and to get out of that onestoplight town. Because, as far as I knew, that was the only way to be somebody.

So, I did leave. I ended up attending an ag-based institution in Indiana, getting my teacher’s license. Then, I taught high school English in a rural Indiana school, eventually left to earn my master’s degree, and then moved out of state to attend The University of Texas at Visit literacyinplace.com

Austin to pursue my Ph.D.

I chose Austin because of my love for ACL and the singer-songwriters that sang about it and because I thought it would feel like some kind of home. But when I got down here, I discovered that the Austin I knew from their songs didn’t exist anymore and definitely didn’t feel like home.

Feeling completely out of place in my urban-focused Ph.D. program in language and literacy, I was routinely misunderstood because of the ruralconnected cultural practices I used to engage with ideas, colleagues, and faculty members in conversation. And I realized that I was different in a way I hadn’t expected from the other cityfolks in my program.

These experiences formed the basis of my research on how rural identity influences the professional identities and teaching practices of rural outmigrant teachers.

While conducting my study, I realized that in all my time as a rural student and teacher, I never read a book (maybe besides Charlotte’s Web) that made me feel seen as a rural young person and that locating and choosing to include rural young adult literature (YAL) in their instruction was challenging for the teachers I was working with.

The main obstacles were that: 1. Rural YAL is hard to come by. 2. Rural stories are seldom viewed as worthy of study, even by folks with rural backgrounds. 3. The theories of learning and teaching that teachers learn in their teacher preparation programs are metro-centric, focusing on and created out of urban spaces.

Rather than report on this and leave it at that, I set out to create and launch a website that would help rural teachers, teacher educators, and parents locate and learn about texts that present authentic and nuanced depictions of rural living. Thus literacyinplace.com was born.

In this work, I’m essentially combining those two favorite shows from my childhood. Bringing people access to stories that are deeply connected to rural people, places, and cultures.

What’s on the website?

Literacy in Place is founded on three main beliefs: 1. Rural stories are worth reading and worthy of study. 2. Rural stories are worth telling. 3. Rural cultures (imperfect as they may be) are worth sustaining.

The site provides a running list of books featuring rural people, places, and experiences, access to my Reading Rural YAL YouTube channel where I give book talks of rural YAL, access to the Reading Rural Goodreads account where I review books.

For teacher educators, the site provides a suggested reading list of texts to include in teacher preparation programs to invite preservice teachers to think about how place has and will continue to shape who they are becoming as teachers as well as sample activities and lesson ideas.

Chea Parton is a farm girl and former rural student and English teacher. She is currently an assistant professor of instruction at The University of Texas at Austin and founder of literacyinplace.com.

She is passionate about rural stories and helping students and teachers find texts that make them feel seen as rural people. You can follow her @readingrural on Twitter.

Lastly, the (Non)Rural Voices blog seeks to provide a space for students of all levels, teachers, and teacher educators of varying rural and outmigrant identities to write their stories so that we can continue to disrupt and dismantle the dominant deficit understandings of rural people as ignorant, backward, no-count hicks/ hillbillies/rednecks clinging to guns and Bibles.

Overall, I hope that Literacy in Place will support rural students, teachers, parents, and teacher educators from all over in finding books that serve as mirrors for young peoples’ rural experiences and lives.

Everybody deserves to see themselves represented - in all of their complexity - with dignity in literature. And I hope Literacy In Place will help young people have those opportunities. If you have questions, suggestions for additions to the book list, or ideas for collaboration, please contact me here. You can also follow me @readingrural on Twitter for updates on blog posts, videos, and happenings in rural English Language Arts teaching.

By Chea Parton

Literacy In Place Founder

Rural America is not a monolith.

Some folks – especially those in cities – may find it hard to believe that the depictions they’ve seen of rural people in shows like The Beverly Hillbillies and Duck Dynasty and films like Deliverance aren’t accurate or authentic depictions of rural places and people. This popular dominant narrative of rural folks as backward, ignorant, inbred hillbillies, hicks, and rednecks clinging to guns and Bibles is highly pervasive and leads to further marginalization of rural people and communities.

There are folks out there, however, who are actively working to disrupt and dismantle that narrative through their work, and one of them is Nora Shalaway Carpenter, an award-winning young adult novelist.

As the editor of Rural Voices: 15 Authors Challenge Assumptions of Small Town America - a collection of shortstories, poems, and essay - she and the other authors featured in the anthology diligently work to do exactly what the title says.

As Carpenter outlines in her introductory letter to the reader, this collection is meant to “change the conversation. To offer new narratives and ways of viewing the incredible people who make up rural America, the people who are so often misunderstood, made fun of and maligned, who are overlooked or even outright ignored.

The short stories, poetry, graphic short stories, personal essay, and author anecdotes in these pages dive deep into the complexity and diversity of rural America and the people who call it home” (n.p.). This makes Rural Voices a perfect text for classrooms and book clubs where rural readers can dig deeply into what it means to be rural, how that connects to the way they see the world, and how it shapes the way the world sees them.

In total, there are 16 pieces in the collection: two poems; three graphic short stories; one essay; and ten short stories.

Courtesy of Penguin Random House

Nora Shalaway Carpenter is the editor of Rural Voices: 15 Authors Challenge Asusmptiosn About SmallTown America.

Courtesy of Penguin Random House

The states represented include: South Carolina, New York, Texas, Idaho, West Virginia, Virginia, Utah, Georgia, Michigan, Indiana, Alaska, and New Mexico.

Most of the stories are realistic fiction but there are a few with speculative elements to them. All of them are deeply connected to the authors’ own experiences as rural people and illustrate the complexity of what it means to be rural across different states and geographies.

The pieces gathered here tackle everything from issues of class, ableism/disability, mental health, family, religion, LGBTQIA+ identity building and acceptance, and just being a human being with all the beauty and challenges that come with it.

For example, in Carpenter’s own story in the collection entitled “Close Enough,” we meet Alina (the main character) as she’s chopping wood to put off writing a short story for a writing scholarship. She’s struggling to write her story because she knows winning stories always feature recognizable or “tellable”

narratives of West Virginia - “topics like dried-up coal-mining towns, mountain dulcimer-playing grandparents, or extended families who’d lived on the same land for generations” (p. 85). These are undoubtedly authentic narratives for those writers and are experiences of some folks who live in West Virginia. Just not for Alina.

For her - “trying to find herself in those stories was like seeking her picture in another family’s photo album” (p. 85) because she had only lived in her West Virginian home since she was three, so none of those were her experiences. She tells us she has “no West Virginia relatives or roots of any kind” making her feel “utterly other.”

Alina tells her friend, Mori, “Even though I’ve lived most of my life here, I don’t truly belong. But I don’t belong anywhere else either” (p. 99), realizing that she “may be embarrassed about being too West Virginian and also jealous that [she’s] not West Virginian enough at the same time” (p. 99). And that line right there points to an important and often ignored discussion around identity and what it means to be from some place.

With all the moving around that people can do nowadays - both into and out of rural places - considerations for a much more nuanced understanding of what it means and who gets to identify as rural or from a rural place is much more complicated than it might seem. Rural could but doesn’t necessarily mean that your family has been there for generations or that you’re a farmer or a miner or a bullrider or a hunter or in 4-H or conservative or Christian or white or heteronormative - the list could go on.

Alina and Mori’s experiences living in West Virginia and the way they’re shared through the story forces readers to reckon with what it means to be from somewhere, what it means to belong, and how that connects to the stereotypes typically associated with that place.

Carpenter’s story isn’t the only one that does this work, but it’s an example of one that really tackles it head on.

What it means to be rural differs across places and people and experiences. Definitions of rural also continue to shift across time. Reflecting on our layered rural identities, connecting them to the rural experiences of others, and understanding how the outside world sees and understands rural people are all vital for pruning and preserving rural cultures. Rural Voices offers important opportunities for readers to do just that.

Resources for reading rural gems

Reading Guide Questions for Book Clubs and Classrooms Possible Activities for Classrooms

Because this collection offers such a wide variety of depictions of rurality, it makes a perfect text to help readers tackle important questions about who they are and what it means to be rural. As the class or book club reads the individual pieces in the collection they could ask: • What does it mean to be rural in this piece? How does that connect my own definition of what it means to be rural? • What does rural look like, sound like, taste like, feel like, smell like in this piece? How are those sensory details similar to and different from my own experiences in my rural place? • Once readers have finished each of the pieces, thinking of the collection as a whole they could discuss how does their senses of rurality compare to those featured in the collection - what they recognize and what they can learn from what they don’t? • Readers can also visit the Author Talk with Nora Shalaway Carpenter on the Reading Rural YAL YouTube channel to further consider the importance of reading and writing rural sto-ries for pruning and preserving rural cultures.

There are so many possibilities for connecting stories in Rural Voices to other texts and their own experiences as rural people in their rural communities. Students could: • Find a song that they feel like represents rural people and compare/contrast it with one or more of the stories, poems, or essay in the collection. • Write their own rural stories (either fiction or nonfiction) using one of the stories in the collection as a mentor text. Literacy In Place would be happy to publish those on the web-site. • Interview folks in their rural communities collecting oral histories and stories about them and the town to compile in a Humans of ______ type of collection, comparing the rural ex-periences of folks where they live to those represented in the pieces in Rural Voices.

To learn more, visit literacyinplace.com

The Where is important

By Christopher Dean

Massachusetts Grange Member

I have no particular claim to life in this town by the sea. I’ve never worked the waters here myself, I never wrestled my life from the harbor or the quarries which dot the landscape north of my family home, nor have I any relatives or ancestors who have.

My grandparents settled here after my grandfather retired; they had wanted to live by the ocean, in a town where they’d vacationed.

I didn’t even grow up here, having lived here only until I was eight, before we moved to a suburb of Boston; and I only returned here six-and-a-half years ago, which means that I’ve lived by the sea for only 13 of my 61 years – about one-fifth of my life.

There are people in this town whose families settled here about 400 years ago; that’s maybe 16 generations, depending on how you count them. These are people who have names that match those of street signs or hardware stores.

Still, I like to think that I have some sort of strong personal connection; I spent summers here, and all holidays that required family to be gathered. Most of our Thanksgiving dinners were here, and many of our Easter dinners, and always at least part of Christmas

day. I used to have family in Connecticut, but my time spent there was without any real connection to the place; family is often hard, and the members of that side of the family had their difficulties and complications, many of which I’ve since grown to understand, though not forgive.

For years – most of my adult life actually – I’d thought about moving here, just waited for the time to be “right,” until I had enough money to make a fair down payment on a home.

So, when the time was finally right, Dumpling and I took the plunge, and did it, and we haven’t looked back.

We found our forever home after a search of all of 40 minutes, after which we looked at a few others over the course of the day mostly to be polite to the realtor who had worked out a whole day of visits to properties. We’d even expected that the search would take years. But I knew in my heart that we’d found our forever home when I was walking up the stairs to look at the second floor for the first time and my arm hair bristled, an actual physical reaction to our potential home.

Many things have happened in my life, not as many as I’d hoped when I was young. I’d never moved to Europe, never had an apartment in Paris, or a squat with artists alongside the Berlin wall, never made movies in London, never sailed across the Atlantic on a sailing ship, nor learned to fly a plane, or really any of those things that I read about and yearned to do. This is one the few dreams I had that actually came true, though, and I love that it did.

I did some other things though, like I joined the Grange (we’re members of Beverly Grange not far from here, it’s small but sincere and we’re always looking for new members, hint hint); I’ve done some writing. I’m, essentially, quite content; I’m in a good place in my life right now.

Mostly though, I walk the beach in the mornings, savoring the gray early light, now almost to its darkest point and latest sunrise. I’ve watched that eternal cycle of the seasons, and since I no longer work in the big city, I can experience the change more closely.

Living in a suburb means that you’re not really connected to the seasons: you buy your food in a supermarket and weather is what you experience between the car and the house or what puts off your cookout from Saturday to Sunday.

It’s a little bit different here, not much, but a little.

I can get fish from a guy who sets up shop outside the general store on Friday, at least during the warmer months, and there’s a small Farmer’s Market behind the old bank in town, plus there’s the farm stand just up the street from our house.

Waves of tourists come and go with the seasons, like the birds and the whales, though the animals come by some unknowable ancient drive that’s mysterious as it is powerful; humans just like a change of scenery every now and then and a drive up the coast will cure that.

We’ve lately been making a concerted effort to get out and see local historic towns of eastern New England, since we can’t get out of the country so easily due to COVID.

We’ve been to many lovely towns – towns we’d only heard of and towns we’d been to before but figured it would be worth seeing again. We walked around, bought stuff, had lunch, looked at more things, and looked at vistas and suchlike; sometimes we’d go to a museum, sometimes we buy art.

We always go on nice days, everyone’s in a nice mood, things are clear and sunny.

New England has a lot of nice towns with walkable centers where we can park the car somewhere and then go see everything on foot, no cars, no stretches of six-lane roads, no chain restaurants, just cozy and tidy little downtowns filled with ancient homes and huge old trees.

And we always come home to our little town, with its tiny houses lining the streets and roads, little yards, and huge old trees. My love for this town and, actually, the walkable parts of downtown Boston are all part of the same thing: I like looking at buildings and people, and being part of a crowd, seeing and being seen. We’re people and that’s how people are meant to live.

I’m also very glad that the landscape around here is imprinted on me: the Great Salt Marsh that stretches all along the coast of eastern Massachusetts; the dunes on the beaches; the great granite ledges, created under unimaginable stress over the course of hundreds of millions of years, of landscape tipping upwards as earthquakes and colliding continents made real the rocks that I climb on every weekend.

That’s a new little pastime of mine: going for a walk along the edge of the Atlantic.

I have a walk, I see things and other people also taking walks, we chat, we marvel at the eternal sea and the rocks being slowly whittled down by the relentless pounding of the waves.

We can stand on the edge of time, taste the salt in the air, feel the wind and sort of touch the infinite that’s all out there, waiting to be experienced.

A life lived without nature, without being in nature at least for a little while each day, is a life that is sadly missing out, I’m afraid.

In fact, I’m going out for a walk along the shore as soon as I’ve finished proofreading this.

The humble potato is the hero

By Ann Olson Bercher

Lecturer, National Grange Certified Culinary Specialist

There’s just something wonderful about potatoes.

They are so versatile! They can be prepared in so many ways.

I grew up eating mashed potatoes and gravy at every dinner.

I love mashed potatoes and gravy. There’s the roast beef gravy, and the chicken gravy, and the turkey gravy, and the venison gravy and the onion gravy. Yes, mashed potatoes are the perfect vehicle for directing more gravy to the mouth.

I also enjoy baked potatoes, which also allow for adding buttery, sour creamy toppings to enjoy.

Then there are fried potatoes: French fried, Southern Fried, crispy fried and hash browned. Additions to those range from simple catsup to hot sauces.

What at first blush appears to be a lowly root vegetable, the potato has a very noble history.

According to John Reader from his book, “Potato: A History of the Propitious Esculent,” “In the regions of Peru and Bolivia that border Lake Titicaca… people began to manipulate the wild potato… The motivation is a complete mystery. The tubers of wild potatoes are generally small, bitter to the taste and contain potentially poisonous levels of glycoalkoids. Why would people have bothered? But bother they did, and human ingenuity working with the plant’s adaptability eventually produced not one but seven cultivated species of potato.”

The potato provided essential nutrition in the high regions of the Andes.

When the Spanish introduced potatoes to Europe in the 1500s, the tuber met some resistance where it was thought to cause leprosy.

A Frenchman, Antoine-Augustin Parmentier, had been captured by Prussian soldiers and was forced to eat potatoes while imprisoned. He did not get leprosy, and in fact discovered that potatoes were quite delicious and began experimenting with different ways to cook and prepare them.

It turns out they were quite nutritious as well.

According to Reader, a single acre of potatoes and milk from one cow could keep a family in good health for a year. This was the case in Ireland during the 1700s.

Potatoes became an essential food in Ireland and provided 80 percent of the population’s caloric intake.

The Great Famine of 1845-49 was caused by a blight that destroyed the potato crops. With only a handful of potato varieties being grown where none of the varieties had any resistance to the blight, over a million lives were lost, a million people emigrated to the United States and two million more to other countries.

Today there are more than 2,000 varieties of potatoes, many bred to resist diseases, drought and low temperatures and are being grown in over 160 countries.

The nutritional benefits of potatoes continue to be remarkable including fiber, carbohydrates, protein, potassium, vitamin C, vitamin B6 and manganese. Here in the United States, we eat more potatoes than any other vegetable.

While we think of potatoes as root vegetables, they are actually the tip of an underground stem, called a tuber. They swell with stored starch and water and produce primordial buds, the “eyes”.

From the “eyes” the stem grows and rises above ground, and the roots also grow from the “eyes” remaining below ground. Potatoes can taste a little sweet, sometimes a little bitter, sometimes a little earthy, depending on the variety and where they are grown.

New potatoes are immature tubers that are harvested in the late spring and through the summer when the plants above ground are still green. They are relatively low in starch and are highly perishable. Mature potatoes are harvested in the fall after the plants have dried and the skins have toughened. Potatoes should be stored in a cool, dry, dark place.

There are generally two cooking categories of potatoes that basically describe their textures when cooked: “waxy” and “mealy.”

“Waxy” types in the U.S. include true new potatoes, red and white skinned varieties and contain less starch and more moisture than “mealy.” When cooked, they have a solid, dense, moist texture and are perfect for roasting, making gratins, potato cakes and potato salad.

“Mealy” types such as russets, blue and purple varieties contain a lot of starch tend to swell when cooked and produce a fine, fluffy, dry texture that works well for fried, baked and mashed potato dishes.

Then there is a final category: all-purpose.

These potatoes have characteristics that fall between waxy and mealy. Yukon Gold and Marcy potatoes hold their shape, have a fluffy texture when cooked and are good to use in most recipes. Yukon Gold tends to have yellow flesh. Try different types of potatoes and find out which ones are your favorites. Now, back to those mashed potatoes…

President’s Recipe

A favorite recipe shared by President Betsy E. Huber

Supper in a Dish

1 pound hamburger or sausage, browned and drained Sliced raw potatoes Sliced carrots Peas Chopped onion Chopped celery Chopped green pepper Salt and pepper to taste

Layer above ingredients in a 9x13 inch greased casserole dish.

Mix one 10 oz can of cream of chicken soup and ¼ cup milk; pour over top of dish.

Bake at 350 degrees for 1 ¼ hours. Sprinkle 2/3 cup grated cheese on top. Return to oven until melted. May cook in slow cooker on high for 4 hours.

Best The Mashed Potatoes

4 pounds potatoes (russet or Yukon Gold) 1/3 c butter, at room temperature 1 c milk or cream Salt and pepper to taste

1. Peel and quarter potatoes, placing in a pot of cold, salted water, making sure potatoes are completely covered. 2. Bring to a boil and cook uncovered 15 minutes or until fork tender. Drain well. (Let drained potatoes remain in the warm pan until all water has evaporated.) 3. Heat milk until warm. (This is part of the secret to creamy potatoes.) 4. Add the butter to the potatoes and begin mashing using a potato masher. (Using a potato masher also helps to result in creamy potatoes without them getting gummy.) 5. Pour in the heated milk a little at a time and continue mashing until desired consistency is reached. (If you prefer texture to your mashed potatoes, use Yukon Gold potatoes, and leave the peels on some of the potatoes.)

Best The Baked Potatoes

Russet Potatoes (1 per person) Extra virgin olive oil Kosher salt

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees 2. Scrub potatoes with a brush, then dry them off. 3. Prick each potato in the center with a fork on each side 4. Microwave the potatoes on high for 5 – 6 minutes for up to two potatoes, 10 – 12 minutes for four potatoes. For more than four potatoes, microwave them in batches. 5. Transfer microwaved potatoes to a sheet pan. 6. Drizzle with olive oil and rotate potatoes until evenly coated. 7. Sprinkle generously with salt and toss gently to evenly coat. 8. Place potatoes directly on the middle oven rack. (You may wish to place a baking sheet beneath the rack to catch any drips) 9. Bake for 30 minutes or until the skins are crispy and a fork easily penetrates the potato. 10. Remove potatoes from oven, split them open and serve with favorite toppings.

2 1/2 lbs. red potatoes (5 large), cut cubes just over 1/2-inch 1/3 c olive oil 1 tsp salt and pepper, then more to taste 3/4 tsp garlic powder and 3/4 tsp paprika 1/2 tsp onion powder

1. Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Spray a rimmed 18 by 13-inch baking sheet with non-stick cooking spray. 2. Place potatoes in a mound in center of baking sheet. Drizzle with olive oil. 3. Sprinkle potatoes with salt, pepper, garlic powder, paprika and onion powder. Toss well to evenly coat. 4. Spread potatoes even into a single layer. 5. Bake in center of preheated oven 15 minutes. 6. Remove from oven, toss and continue to bake until just tender, about 15 minutes longer. 7. Move oven rack about 5-inches from broiler. Broil potatoes about 2 – 3 minutes until slightly browned. 8. Remove and toss, continue to broil until golden brown and crisp on opposite side a minute or two longer. Serve warm.

ChowderPotato & Corn

2 c peeled and diced potatoes ½ c diced carrots ½ c diced celery ¼ c chopped onion 1 tsp kosher salt ¼ c butter 2 c milk ¼ c flour 2 15-ounce cans whole kernel corn, drained 2 ½ c cheddar cheese

1. In a large saucepan, combine potatoes, carrots, celery, onion and salt, covered with water. 2. Bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer for 20 minutes. 3. In a small saucepan, combine butter, milk and flour and heat over medium -low heat. Stir constantly until thick and smooth. 4. Pour milk mixture into cooked vegetables. Stir in corn and cheese until cheese is melted. Serve.

1 Tbsp butter at room temperature 3 oz. sharp white cheddar, grated 3 oz. gruyere cheese, grated 3 pounds russet potatoes (about 6 medium) ½ large yellow onion 1 ¾ tsp kosher salt ½ tsp cayenne pepper Freshly ground black pepper 1 ¼ c heavy cream

1. Butter one side of a 12” X 12” square of foil. Line a rimmed baking sheet with another sheet of foil. Preheat oven to 400 degrees with oven rack in upper third of oven. 2. Toss together white cheddar and Gruyere chesses in a medium bowl. 3. Scrub and peel potatoes. Slice into ¼ inch thick rounds. 4. Very thinly slice the half onion crosswise into half-moons, toss with the potato slices. 5. Add salt, cayenne pepper and black pepper to the potato/onion mixture and toss to combine. 6. In a pie dish, lay a row of potato slices across the bottom of the dish, overlapping them about 2/3. 7. Repeat another row beneath the first one, overlapping the second row on top of the first row about halfway. 8. Push the two rows toward the top edge of the dish until the slices slide up the sides toward the rim. 9. Continue to shingle more potatoes into the dish in rows, overlapping as before, pushing the potatoes together snugly, until the dish is filled. 10. Place pie dish onto the prepared baking sheet. 11. Gradually pour the heavy cream over the potatoes. Top with half of the cheese mixture. Cover with the prepared foil, butter side down, crimping tightly to seal. 12. Bake gratin 60 – 75 minutes or until potatoes can be pierced easily with a knife or skewer. 13. Remove gratin from oven and heat broiler. 14. Carefully remove foil. Top gratin with remaining cheese. 15. Broil until cheese is melted and bubbly, about 4 minutes. Let stand 10 minutes before serving.

Store in a cool, wellventilated place Keep out of the light Temperatures lower than 50 degrees cause a potato’s starch to convert to sugar, resulting in a sweet taste and discoloration when cooked. Avoid areas that reach high temperatures or receive too much sunlight Perforated plastic bags and paper bags offer the best environment for extending shelf-life. Don’t wash before storing. Dampness promotes early spoilage.

SamosasBaked Vegetable

¼ cup olive oil 2 onions, minced 3 Tablespoons ground coriander 1 Tablespoon curry powder 1 inch piece of fresh ginger, grated 1 teaspoon kosher salt 1 teaspoon turmeric ½ teaspoon allspice ½ teaspoon cayenne pepper 1/8 teaspoon cinnamon ½ pound red or white skinned potatoes, peeled and cubed into ½ inch cubes ½ cup frozen peas, thawed and drained 2 Roma tomatoes, finely chopped and drained 9 sheets phyllo pastry sheets

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees 2. Heat oil in large skillet over medium heat. Sauté onions until soft. 3. Add coriander, curry powder, ginger, salt, turmeric. Cumin, allspice, cayenne pepper and cinnamon and cook for another minute. 4. Remove from heat, add potatoes, peas and tomatoes stirring to mix well. 5. Stack 3 – 4 sheets of phyllo dough together Cut into 4 even rectangles with a kitchen shears. Continue with remaining sheets, then cover with plastic wrap. 6. Place 2 – 3 Tablespoons of vegetable mixture in the corner of the dough. Roll the corner toward the center. Fold in the right and left corners and continue to roll up.

7. Repeat until all phyllo is used. 8. Place each samosa on an oiled baking sheet. Lightly brush the tops with olive oil. 9. Bake for 20 minutes or until lightly golden brown.

THE LAST Word

By Christine E. “Chris” Hamp

National Grange Vice President

Going into the 155th Annual National Grange convention, I was in a groove. I was comfortable. After five years as National Lecturer, I had a routine and programs I enjoyed immensely. Even though I had not before been a Lecturer, I loved it – loved the details, loved the planning and loved interacting with our members and yet-to-be members who entered the contests and participated in the programs.

I was preparing to unveil new programs for 2022 and beyond, and then it happened.

Thursday, November 11, the delegates elected me Vice President – an unexpected honor and a challenge I look forward to meeting with every tool in my toolbox.

A quick moment or two of introspection, and perhaps a tug on my big girl panties, galvanized my desire and commitment to fully embrace the new challenges as Vice President – to look forward to my new view and to keep learning and growing.

The concept of learning and growing can be a difficult one to discuss with other adults – it’s as if most feel that they have moved beyond that stage of their life. Indeed, many seem to have no interest in putting themselves in positions where they are challenged to learn new things. This “know it all” belief is not only limiting to the individual, but hinders the organization’s ability to continue to advance.

Why is the social norm to not expect continued learning and growth? Why are we as adults not expected to have continued goals and dreams? Consider the amazing change in our playing field if everyone strove to continually set new goals, expressed their dreams, learned new things and generally made themselves incrementally better every day. And not only did everyone do these things, but they held themselves and each other accountable for such!

At all levels of the Grange, as in every other organization regardless of age, type or size, it is important and imperative that everyone involved not only embraces transition and change, but comes to expect such. Elections occur. Organizations change. Members come, members go. Transitions and by their nature, pending changes, are healthy and allow organizations and their members to advance and to grow. The importance of embracing these transitions cannot be overstated.

On the next page, I offer a playbook on how to encourage change and how to embrace it. And I’d love to hear from you – how did you encourage the growth of others so they could fill shoes you once did, and how did you embrace the new that came with the change?

The ability to see the big picture, to maintain a 30,000-foot view of where the organization needs to go and how it will get there is critically important for leaders at every level, everywhere. It is easy and comfortable to fall into the day-to-day minutia with our heads down and our eyes focused on ourselves and/or the moment at hand, but then all we see is our current position and situation. As long as our view remains the same, so do our actions and expectations, our growth and our betterment. If each of us can challenge ourselves, collectively, to keep the big picture in mind, then we focus on more than just today, we focus on tomorrow! Tomorrow brings change, tomorrow brings hope and tomorrow brings to fruition our dreams and our labors.

I am committed and ready to grow and to learn. How about you?

A playbook for successful transitions

Preparing for change

Preparing for change can be hard, for some people it can be really hard. This is where it is incumbent upon each of us to embrace change with the understanding in mind that the success of the team/organization (mission and goals) is what is truly important – of ensuring that our organization remains strong and active and vibrant; as well as necessary and critical to the continued development of our members and of the communities where they live. What would we have for an organization today if our Founders had not been willing to hand off the baton?

1. Involve Others in Decisions, Planning and Action • A game plan for success includes building capacity – empowering and allowing others to be able to take the baton when/if necessary. o Create a formal or informal Advisory Board with which to bounce ideas. o Develop a village of stakeholders (both generalists and specialists) to assist as needed. • The game plan should also put the organization as a whole in a position to win. • Experiences can provide valuable confidence and develop initiative. 2. Demonstrate Pride in All You Do • Share results with both members and the community. • Be positive and inclusive in all written and oral communication – say thank you, give credit where credit is due. • Ensure civility. • Continuously look for opportunities to do better, to be better – Raise the Bar! 3. Continually Look to Collaborate • Invite other groups to participate, to share the work load and to share the benefits. • By its very nature, collaboration adds strength and resiliency. 4. Constantly Assess Results and Welcome Comments and

Feedback • Always be willing to learn. • Change direction as necessary. • Ensure you are better tomorrow than yesterday. When change comes

When change comes give yourself some credit for a job done well. Confidence in your performance and pride in the job you have done will allow you to easily and comfortably transition with your successor without fearing that they will surpass your achievements. Remember, the success of others doesn’t in any way diminish your own.

1. Consider Your Elected Office or Appointment a Leg in a Relay and not an Individual Race • The handoff is really important. o Relay runners carry a baton – be prepared to pass it! • Keep complete records and share them with your successor. 2. Communicate Effectively and Thoroughly • Be available and willing to provide information, insight and guidance as requested. o Do as you would appreciate if the roles were reversed. 3. Provide Support • The importance of a mentor, a supporter or of that person who always provides a kind word, a smile or a pat on the back cannot be overstated, nor can you ever have too many. • Be able to read the tea leaves – know when to be there and know when to back off.