HHMayJune2020

Welcome to my ‘Lemonade’ issue!

When we were first told to quarantine due to Covid, I had been waiting for the March/April issue of the magazine to arrive. I remember getting a cold sweat thinking- “How am I going to distribute 10,000 magazines with everything closed?!?!” Right when I was worried the most, I have to hand it to three superstars: Moscow Safeway, Pullman Safeway and Pullman Dissmores- who all were happy to allow me temporary rack locations to really get those issues into your hands. God Bless them. They literally saved the day and we ran out of magazines quickly.

But then, things kept getting worse.

Our flower shop closed. I started to think about all of my businesses who advertise, wondering what was going to happen with the May/June issue. You see, the magazine is how Tony and I truly survive. The flower shop is happily growing, but the magazine is our bread and butter. I imagined someone calling the flower shop to advertise, or pay for the May/June issue. We couldn’t even pay our rent! The thought of asking anyone to pay for advertising disgusted me. This is a time to help, I thought! I knew I would have to make a firm decision by April 1- to try to guess the future. It was scary and depressing and I couldn’t picture anything being open come May- or anyone being able to afford advertising, let alone being able to distribute again.

A few days later I was in the middle of rearranging the living room when I got this hair-brained idea. “I’ll make a huge, free, online issue,” I thought. “And I’ll make a free ad for everyone. ANYONE. It has to be full pages so it’s easier to see. Bigger font. Size 14? OMG can I even do this?” I told Tony my idea and he said, Heather you should do it.

So fast-forward a month later and here you have the biggest, most meaningful issue I’ve ever made. I’ve also included a few of my favorite articles from years back to balance out the ads. And speaking of- there are 92 businesses in this issue who can really use your love and support. I’ve pushed myself farther than I thought I could go- the magazine is usually 72 pages, as you know. And if you’ve been a loyal reader for awhile you know that I put my HEART and SOUL into the ads and each page. I truly can’t believe I made so many without running dry, creatively. Although after I upload this you might find me muttering in a closet, eating peanut butter cups and trying to call Mariah Carey on my Roku remote. By the way, there’s a great PB cup recipe in this issue, haha!

But you know, my grandmother once told me, “When the going gets tough- that’s when you find out what you’re made of.”

So here you have it- this huge, 222 page local magazine, free, filled with love. So much love, the writers in it did this for free. Yes- they were not paid. I let them know they could bow out without judgement and not a single one did. In fact several ripped up their paychecks from the Mar/April issue- when I just gave everyone a raise!! That’s how much they care.

I only ask one thing. Please, please give me this kindness. If you happen upon this online, please share it on your social media. There are no print copies of this. This very link is all there is. Please thank a local business you see and support them. Thank you for reading this! I truly have done the best I could do and I know it’s not perfect.

But thank you for loving me anyway.

Health, peace and joy to you all,

Heather Niccoli Editor-In-Chief Home&Harvest Magazine

12 So There Was Southwick 28 Soji + Time 46 Fighting the Wildland 50 Bird Watching for a Couch Potato 68 Curated 82 S-Wheat Farm Life 98 Depression Era Burgers 105 Berry Tart 110 Chocolate Espresso Cake 112 My Mother’s Banana Bread 114 Vegan Oatmeal Cookies 118 Peanut Butter Cups 120 Braided Cheese Loaf 122 Drop Biscuits Shrimp Casserole 124 Vegan Avocado and Peanut Fudge 126 Nothing Bundt 130 Sip of Summer 132 Strawberry Shortcake Popsicles 137 Mastering the Mundane 142 Mother Nature 150 People of the Palouse 174 Joe’s Death Ray 180 Give it a Shot 194 Our English as 2nd Language 210 There is Only Blue

Editor|design|sales heather Niccoli heather@homeandharvestmagazine.com 208.596.5400 | 208.596.4434

Publisher|Design|Sales Tony niccoli tony@homeandharvestmagazine.com 208.596.5424 PO BOX 9931 Moscow, Idaho 83843

Talent Gayle Anderson Keith Crossler Aline Gale Joe Evans Jessica Drago Diane Conroy Emory Ann Kurysh Annie Gebel Temple Kinyon Zachary Wnek David Flaherty Tony Niccoli Heather Niccoli

There

was

Southwick

By Heather Niccoli

A

And the hills rolled on as they do, lulling you into that kind of daydream slumber where everything you see glosses together beautifully so. You drive, not expecting much beyond this knowing, this mindless behavior. And that’s when you find it: Southwick, Idaho. The place that bred the strong-willed women of yesterday, the place where fires burned brightly and the general store was the town’s heartbeat. Southwick: The place where my grandmother Catherine was born and raised, and also the place where her ashes found home again, scattered amongst the greatness and the grain. Let me take you there with the help of a very important man who gives his time to this town, his home: Mark Mustoe.

If you’ve ever been to this area of Idaho before, you might take a look at these photos with shock that so much once stood where plains are now abundant. If you haven’t gone this way, I encourage you to take this copy of Home&Harvest with you, to fully experience all that was and is now the Community Center. If it weren’t for Mark and the wonderful remaining residents of Southwick, the story would surely be lost. That’s why the first thing I asked Mark is why he’s so driven to preserve Southwick.

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“I believe that our history helps make us who we are, and it’s important to remember that… not only just to look back at it, but also to help us look forward in a more well rounded way,” says Mark. “My Grandma and Grandpa Mustoe and my parents told me many stories over the years about Southwick and its people in its heyday, which always interested me. Their home was always a meeting place full of people and stories. My Great-Great Grandfather was Stephen R. Southwick. He and his wife Martha were the first settlers on the upper end of Potlatch ridge in 1882, coming on a wagon train from Kansas. He had the first post office in his home and was Postmaster from 1888 to 1895. In 1896, Lewis Harris became the Postmaster and the post office moved from their Southwick home up the ridge a quarter mile to the small town of “Grafton” that was starting up. The post office name stayed the same and the name Southwick stuck, forever being known as Southwick Idaho.”

Mark was raised on the Mustoe Family farm and ranch at Southwick (still standing), and farmed there for several years. “I have always called it home,” Mark recalls. “I remember King’s Store and the Post Office, our zip code was 83530, which operated in the now Community Center until their closing in 1971/1972. I also went to grade school in Southwick until the school was consolidated to Kendrick in 1965.” I was shocked to learn that Southwick played its own gold rush part as well. “At the turn of the last century Southwick was a bustling town,” Mark tells me.

“It had several stores selling groceries, dry goods, mining supplies and millinery, two hotels, livery stables, barber shop, confectionary, King’s Store, four churches, a newspaper called the Potlatch Star, and I.O.O.F Hall, dance halls, skating rinks, a grade school and high school, a baseball team and many clubs and organizations.

Home&Harvest

Southwick was the jumping off point to the mining camps in Weippe and Pierce and the last stop for miners to get supplies. The place was also a stopping off point for the Nez Perce Indians on the way to the Weippe Prairie to dig for camas in the summer stay, camping below the Mustoe house just west of town.” As Mark tells me this, I try to picture the people and the richness of it all. I am grateful to the old photographs he points to with each sentence, it helps me bring it all together in my mind. I ask him what his favorite tidbit of history regarding Southwick is. “I think maybe the most fascinating story of all is the collective story of all the people who came via wagon train and locomotive to an area where there was nothing, and through a lot of determination and hard work, made lives for themselves and created Southwick,” Mark says. “This is the big part of the early history of Potlatch Ridge and the area,” he adds.

On a side note, you might be wondering what inspired me to write about this place, other than the fact that my grandmother was born and raised here. It just so happens that Tony and I were recently driving to Kendrick to deliver the latest edition of Home&Harvest when we stopped in Simple Joys Antiques to shop a little. I’m deep in the milk glass selection when Tony picks up this HUGE book and calls out to me, “Heather- didn’t you say your grandmother was from Southwick? Check out this book!”

You know I was interested in seeing it because I damn near dropped an awesome piece of milk glass to get over to that book asap. And just who is behind that book?

Mark Mustoe. Mark is not the type to toot his own horn, but I had to stop this story to tell you about his book, because if you like what you’re reading now and you’re into history, you’re going to love the in-depth read he published.

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The publication is through the Kendrick Juliette Heritage Foundation and is titled Southwick and Cedar Ridge. It was put together by Loeda Reil, Sharon Harris and our man Mark. It tells the history of Southwick and Cedar Ridge and has hundreds of family histories, including my grandmother’s family on both sides! I learned our family operated the sawmill and were of course, farmers as well. I highly recommend buying this book, and it’s available at Simple Joys Antiques in Kendrick, the Kendrick Pharmacy, or by contacting southwickcommunitycenter@ gmail.com or www.jkhf.info or through the JKHF facebook page. Many of the stories go back to the 1800’s. I love that the family’s histories are up to the modern date in many cases, and there’s page after page of interesting tidbits. Here is a brief excerpt of one of my favorite pages- the part on Homesteading.

Home&Harvest

Getting to Southwick for many was a long and difficult task. Some came over the Oregon Trail and then north while others made their way on lesser-known paths. Furniture and possessions would be left along the way as well as loved ones buried who either got sick or could not endure the journey. Once in Southwick the real work of creating a life began: building a home, finding and developing a sufficient water source, and getting enough food put away for the coming winter. There were many perils. From the risk of diseases like typhus from the water from hand-dug wells, influenza, or the risks of childbirth. The cemeteries of the area show the huge cost of life associated with homesteading in the 1880’s and 90’s. But with enormous costs also came huge potentials. The idea of homesteading and owning 160 acres of your own, with the ability to make your own decisions, to most, far outweighed the risks and folks just kept coming.

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It could mean personal and financial freedom.

No matter how the journey, getting to Southwick was no easy task. In the 1880’s and 90’s, there were virtually no roads and the folks that had come to homestead and settle found their way by trails and Indian paths. There were no bridges, and rivers and creeks were forded. All via horses, mules, wagons and buggies, they carried everything they had.

Once in Southwick, the work of creating a life began. Even making a decision of where to put down roots was complicated. The draw to Southwick, as opposed to the lower end of the ridge near Leland, was the timber. That meant you had lumber for building, but you also had to make a living so you needed ground suitable to farm. Maybe most important was a source of water. Springs were important sources of fresh, safe drinking water. If you had a spring you could then dig and line a cistern to hold additional water supplies. If there was no spring then you had to hand dig a well in a low area that could retain ground water. While it may provide water, it also provided the opportunity for disease.

Many people, especially children died from toxic well water in the early days. Most folks built small one room homes, sometimes housing up to twelve in the family. With mouths to feed, developing a food source that could last you all year was critical. In Southwick, the growing season…. [was] the source of survival.

Winter squash, carrots and cabbage were either buried in the ground and covered, or buried in the middle of haystacks to keep them from freezing.

Sauerkraut was made in crocks and pork, beef, chickens and other stock were butchered, with the meats being either canned or smoked and stored.

Root cellars were important food storage places.

Icehouses for storage were filled in the winter with slabs of ice from the Clearwater and Potlatch Rivers. Many trips were made in the dead of winter to gather ice. Cows were milked daily… [and] the milk was often processed into butter and cheese.

Home&Harvest

All these processes meant lots of work. It would take the work from the spring, summer and fall to provide enough food for the family through the winter. Bartering and trading with local stores also provided a wider variety of items for a pioneering family that would otherwise be unavailable.

In the very early days there were no doctors in the immediate area so they relied on their own knowledge of medicine to survive. Childbirth was risky business, as complications were not easily solved. As if the elements weren’t enough, there was always the local wildlife and predators. While hunting for game and fowl also helped feed the family, it was always important to keep an eye out for a traveling bear or cougar. Southwick had its share of cougars, thus the mascot for Southwick High School. If you lived near either Bedrock or Cedar creek canyons you also kept your eye out for rattlesnakes as they moved up out of the canyons in the spring and summer. In the very early days, the Nez Perce Indians traveled through the area in route to hunt, fish, and dig camas. Most all the early settlers encountered Indian travels and stopovers. Both knew how harsh the existence could be and that created respect for one another. At whatever cost, the settlers came and they kept coming. They believed there was a better life ahead and hopefully good things were to come. It was that thought, determination and dedication that made a community and Southwick was indeed becoming a community.

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When you spend time reading Mark’s book, you begin to wonder why places like this fall to pieces. “What happened to Southwick over the years is the same story repeated in hundreds of small towns across the country,” Mark tells me.

“In the early years, there were families living and farming on 80 to 160 acres. As farms grew in size there were less people there, thus less commerce. The automobile allowed people to travel farther for necessities. That together with the great depression depleted the population and the town declined. When the school was closed and later in the 70’s the store and post office, Southwick lost its ‘meeting places.’ That’s why all you see Southwick consisting of today is a few homes, a church and the community center building. We are really just getting started in this long-term goal of preservation, and restoration of the building. Myself, Barry James, and my daughters Mollie Mustoe and Marie Linehan and the community members are all helping in this effort. We want to encourage people who are sincerely interested in preserving Southwick for the long haul to join us in volunteer efforts or donations. We are excited to announce that The Southwick Community Center is available to rent for events, including weddings, gatherings, reunions, etc.

There is a kitchen, meeting area, and amazing views. Yes, we do have a restroom and it is a ‘modern’ out house behind the building,” he adds. Thrifty people and junkers take note: “Basically, for the Community Center, I would like in the coming years for it to be a place where people can once again get together, as a place to visit or have events, with a long term plan of a part of it being a museum that displays historical pieces of the past from Southwick. We have already been offered the original Post Office Boxes back and the Craftsman style couch and rocker that King’s used when they owned the store.

We also have plans over time for a Native Plant walk, for people to see the grasses and flowers that were in the area at the time of settlement. I invite people to stop at the Community Center and take a look at our Historical Marker that is a timeline of the area from settlement to now, with pictures and brief histories and imagine a busy main street with a boardwalk the length of town and hotels, business and livery stables.

The Southwick Pine Hill Cemetery is one of the oldest on the ridge dating back to 1890, and the Southwick Bible church building, originally the United Brethren Church dates back to 1915. Certainly not the least, take a look at the scenery, with views into Oregon and of nearby Moscow Mountain, Tamarack and the Camas Prairie,” Mark tells me. “Sometimes we all have a tendency to drive by places that seem insignificant without giving a second thought about what that place might have been like in earlier days. Today, Southwick is easily one of those places,” Mark says. But Southwick doesn’t have to be just a story of survival from yesterday. We all have the ability to keep their story alive. All we have to do is tell it to anyone who will listen, and something tells me the road to Southwick is about to become very traveled again. Happy trails and safe traveling to you, dear friends. Enjoy Southwick for all that is was before and all that it is today.

In Zen Buddhist temples, Soji is a time of mindlessness devoted to work that will never be completed and is done without worry or avoidance. It takes place after the morning meditation and everyone in the community is involved, each with their own assigned task. When you are given a chore it is accepted without expression, comment, or even emotion. Perhaps it is your turn to water every flower and plant in the temple grounds, or sweep every surface, or just scrub pots and pans. Soji is short lived, it only lasts 20 minutes and you will never be able to complete the task. So there is no reason to have joy at being assigned a chore you love, or remorse at having pots and pans duty again. You simply pick up your task when the morning meditation ends, and put it back down when the bell rings. It’s how you approach the task that really matters.

Soji is done with a clear mind and absolute effort. You know you can’t succeed in ever finishing and that the work will always be there tomorrow, but it is in your control to produce the best 20 minutes possible. And most importantly, it is in your power to view the chore for what it is, releasing your mind to focus on the wisdom gained from the mediation that came before it. You aren’t really watering the flowers, your body is completely capable of performing that operation on auto pilot. You are centered in the now, and aware of the voice inside your head, not the tedium of the task. You aren’t watching a clock to know when it ends, you simply know that it will – that it must.

In Japanese schools they teach Soji. A cleaning rag is one of the required supplies for children along with pencils and notebooks. After recess, every child has a task and together they learn personal responsibility, basic life skills, and respect for community space. Again, Soji is short, and can be done without worry or avoidance. This week your assignment might be tiding up the rows of desks and next week could be scrubbing the floor, but either way it ends. Your mind is free to focus while you are performing the task and not worrying about finishing or how much you have to do and how little time you have. Soji will benefit everyone, and before you know it, Soji will end.

I’ve given significant effort in the last year thinking about time itself. I understand less now than when I started. Its easy to define increments of time and watch them pass with turning hands on a clock, or the hanging of a new calendar. You can even imagine where you want to go in life, and create a goal for how to use that time. All without ever understanding what time really means. Is that acceptable to our way of thinking? Can we enjoy every moment without knowing the how or why? Maybe we just need to change the way we view time. Then we can continue to move forward and progress, while being mindful of focusing on what really matters.

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May June 2020

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Think about these two questions. Both created with the same set of 4 words.

1.

What time is it?

2.

Time: what is it?

One is basic and easy to answer. The other should be just as simple but on closer inspection we realize that it’s not.

The way we measure time, both in the minutia of minutes, seconds, or smaller fractions and in the longer scales of weeks, months, and years has changed significantly over the last few thousand years. What hasn’t changed is our inability to come up with a simple definition for time. To physicists it’s just a dimension. Simple theories see it as a fourth dimension that our 3 dimensional world passes through on a liner progression. I think this is the easiest to understand, and was my starting point in reflecting on time.

But Einstein showed us that time was relative to motion through space, creating a possibility that the difference we see between the past and future could only be an illusion. String theory gets even more bizarre with space-time being 10, 11, or even 26 dimensional. None of this changes the underlying problem. We observe time as passing, we remember it as having occurred, and we know that it will continue. But what is time?

Picture the future and the past and imagine yourself currently standing directly between the two and looking forward. Got that image set in your head? Good – now tell me, were you facing the future with the past behind you? That’s the way most of us orient ourselves in this thought experiment. We think of the past as “behind us” and often even use that phrase. The future then is “what lies ahead.” But to many ancient Greek philosophers it was reversed.

They saw themselves as standing in the present, with the lessons of the past spread out in front of them. The future was something unseen that would sneak up from behind and it held great uncertainty.

Home&Harvest

One of the reasons that our modern view of facing the future seems more intuitive is that time is used for the ordering of events. I was born, I am living, and someday I will die. Those events have to happen in that order and it is the concept of time that allows us to define the progression. But it is also the function of time that allows us to measure the gaps between these events. How many years since a child was born; how many months until an anniversary; how many hours until lunch, how many minutes before you can turn of the elliptical and relax.

I’ve always pictured the year as an oval. If it was described like a clock, I would have December at 12 and the time progressing counter clockwise with spring and fall occurring on the elongated arms of the oval and summer and winter on the rounded ends. It doesn’t change time, but it’s just how I’ve always visualized it.

Perhaps you have something different in mind as you read this. Either way, you are imagining a time period that we call a year – roughly defined as the time it takes our planet to orbit the sun (plus a little bump every 4 years to keep on track). Ironically, the year was the same length back when people believed that it was the sun orbiting us because it’s the seasonal progression that has always been most important to the calendar, and not the question of who orbits whom. None of this matters to time.

It’s easy to see why we have a year of 365.25 days, but why do we have 12 months and not just 4 months for the seasons, or even 73 months? And why do we reset in January? I looked for answers in history, but knowing why we divide time in our specific patterns doesn’t really help to understand time. The Romans had Janus – a two faced deity that looked both forward to the future and back to the past.

Janus was their god of time, beginnings, and doorways so it makes sense that our year starts with the month that bears his name.

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But why put it in the winter instead of starting our years with the Spring Equinox or some other completely arbitrary date? One explanation is that January falls just after the December Solstice and is normally the coldest month in the Northern Hemisphere. So it is a re-set of sorts, where the days will get longer and the temperatures will rise. It also happen to be the perihelion. That is the point of the earth’s orbit when we are closest to the sun. Is it possible that the early calendar makers actually knew this, or was January a simply a symbolic choice? It’s not a real beginning or a real end, but it feels that way every time we reach another January. Time doesn’t notice, only we do.

January wasn’t a part of the Romans early 10 month calendars, but was actually added to bring their lunar calendar up to 355 days.

The lunar calendar was based on the cycle of the moon – roughly 28 days (the length of our shortest month). Our weeks correspond to the phases in each cycle, with the moon taking about 7 days to pass each major phase and the cycle completes at the end of the fourth week with another new moon.

For all Abrahamic religions there is also a 7 day week built into the creation of the world, with 6 days of toil and a final day to rest or observe. But this understanding doesn’t bring us any closer to meaning of time, or even why we experience it.

The idea of a day is much simpler to understand. It is dark, then light, the sun rises then falls, and finally it is dark again. When the process repeats we count a new day. We could just get up when the sun rises and work until it sets. If we need to have a communal gathering it is easy to time it for mid-day, or twilight, and so in a more simple society there really isn’t a pressing need to know that it’s currently 51 seconds past 1:44 on a Friday.

But if you are an Olympic sprinter, or a high school student stuck in Calculus class it’sHome&Harvest

-absolutely essential that you have an accurate way to know how much time is left.

So we have divisions of the day, and subsequent divisions into smaller parts. The ancient Egyptians gave us the 24 hour division of the day. Using a stick in the ground, and then upgrading to a T-shaped sundial, they could approximate 10 hours of daylight into equal divisions and then they added an hour for twilight at the beginning and end. This has two major draw-backs. First, it’s worthless at night. But that can be solved by using a water clock, or learning to watch groups of stars as they pass. The second problem with the sundial is that it’s not constant. You may have divided the day into 12 equal parts but those intervals change with the seasons. Using this system, one “hour” of work in the winter is worth much less than an “hour” of work in the summer, For the minute and second we have to thank Greek astronomers using a number system created by the Sumerians and Babylonians.

We still see their base 60 system in our 360 degree circles, and units of time that divide so pleasantly into groups of 30, 15, 12, 10, 5, 4, 3, and 2. We can say that it is a quarter till, or half passed the hour without understanding what it is that we have measured. All we know is that we have a shared fascination with keeping those divisions consistent. Your stopwatch needs to run precisely in time with mine or we begin to feel that something is terribly off with the world.

In nicer weather we keep our windows open and I can hear the bell of a local church ringing the hours of the day. I smile whenever I hear it and I reflect on the history of relying on those bells for time. Towns used to revolve around them with a shared understanding of when the work day started and when it was time to go home. The hours from a sundial certainly varied through the seasons but at least everyone knew when it was 12pm in their town.

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And if you moved to a different town and worked there you just used the local time.

It was a perfect system until they invented the train. Suddenly towns needed to have a shared understanding of time that was able to work across longer distances. Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) is a clock based on the annual average time that the sun is at its highest point over the Prime Meridian. Time zones were later established so that local time in all areas would correspond with the position of the sun. And now we measure our seconds with atomic clocks and our seconds are so “correct” that we need to add leap seconds to insure that our time keeping is accurate with the actual positing of the Earth. There were 61 seconds in the final minute of 2016 so don’t panic – everything is as it should be.

Changing “time” to suit our measurements isn’t something new. When countries switched from the Julian calendar to our current Gregorian calendar, several days had to be omitted to keep the seasons occurring on the correct dates. If you were around in 1752, you went to be on Wednesday, September 2nd and woke up on Thursday, September 14th. What happened on September 3rd, 1752? Nothing, because that day never existed! But time didn’t really change, we just crossed a few days off a calendar. Time itself didn’t even notice.

So we clearly know how to accurately measure and work with time. But this really isn’t the same as understanding. I can take some sausages and cut each of them into a set number of pieces that are all exactly the same size.

But just because it is measureable and repeatable doesn’t mean that it is knowledge. What is the sausage really made of? None of the pieces I cut tell me anything about what went into the casing, or the process of creating it.

The value of the sausage is not revealed in the cleverly ordered pieces.

Is time a dimension with its own inherent significance, or just our observation and experience? If it isn’t real do we need to even think about it?

We have a great ability to view the world logarithmically and see the proportions between objects before we take the time to count them individually. For example, it may take you an hour to count a pile of 497 apples, and another pile of 982 apples, but in a quick glance you can tell that one pile is about double the size of the other. Seeing logarithmic scales in our perceptions of the world leads to the old adage that “time goes faster as you age.”

Imagine summer. No, not your summers now which are far too short, and full of to-do lists you won’t be able to complete. Your current summers will be “over before you know it” – I’m talking about imagining summer when you were a child. When summers seemed to last forever. When you had to correct people that you weren’t 4 anymore, you were now 4 and a half.

Now go ahead and imagine a current summer, or how long the years last today. Time hasn’t changed. So that means that you have.

When you are 4, the idea of going an entire year before you have another birthday means that you are waiting 25% of your life. That’s one quarter of every memory and experience you have. At that rate even days seem endless, and as a child I used to measure “get-ups” or how many times I woke up before an important event. But now I have had almost 14,000 get-ups and time seems to pass much faster.

An entire season passing is only 1/152 of my life. Summers are less than 1% of my experienced time and when I allow myself to view them that way they slip away. It takes active effort to remember that time itself has never changed, and never will change. Each day we need to be reminded that we have a full day ahead of us and ample time at our disposal.

Cherishing the act of perfecting every one of those moments is the real key to time.

In the end, time is just time. Even a young child understands the concept of time, though our best scientists still can’t really define it. And besides, sausage is delicious – wait, I mean time is precious. So in everyday life we don’t really need to understand what makes it. Seasons will change, experiences will accrue, loved ones will enlighten our lives and eventually pass, and all while we continue to flip pages on a calendar and plan resolutions for this lap around the sun. But time is fair – the king and the pauper both have but 60 seconds in their minute and 12 months in their year. The only difference you can make is what you choose to do with yours.

My father used to have a stopwatch on his desk and I remember being fascinated with it as child. It sits on my dresser now to remind me every get-up that my day will have 24 hours and the outcome is in my control- even if I feel like I just can’t get it done today. So this year I’m going to start living with Soji.

Each day I’ll pick up rag and clean knowing that I might not ever finish, being mindful of embracing the opportunity and not the task. Tempus Fugit.

Fighting

the Wildland

Keith Crossler

It’s no secret that I have a passion for the Rural District side of the Moscow Volunteer Fire Department. I love the comradery of the Company, the trucks, and the large area that we service. Most of our 129 square miles is timber ground.

Of course there are plenty of houses mixed in with the trees along with farm ground and major highways. We have different trucks for all different types of calls. Brush trucks for the timber or agricultural, pumpers for structure calls or car crashes, and water tenders that pack the much needed water to the call whatever it may be. The district was fortunate to get two new brush trucks added to the fleet just recently and we are itching to get them out of the station now that the weather is starting to turn for that season.

The calls that are particularly challenging are the ones out on the mountain. A report of seeing smoke, but no location other than generic directions. Or, maybe someone saw lightning strike, but can’t really describe where it was other than the south side of the mountain. So it’s a hunt to find it. I remember one spring when we got a call for a 10 by 10 patch burning off one of the bike paths on the mountain that became quite the challenge to find.

When the tones rang out, it was for an outside fire next to the road on Moscow Mountain. Devon and I pulled up at the station about the same time. We chuckled at each other because neither of us had our wildland gear with us. It was early spring and most of us don’t carry our wildland bags with us in the winter. We figured since it was just off the road, it wouldn’t be a big deal and we took off wearing our structure gear. We later found out that was a big mistake. The wildland gear is much lighter and made for the outdoor environment.

Structure gear has multiple layers and is designed for higher heat situations inside burning buildings. It is also much heavier and not designed for hiking.

Not to mention that the boots for the structure gear are just pull on rubber or leather boots. For the wildland gear we wear lace-up Whites. They are much better for hiking around in the trees because of all the extra support they offer.

Both have their purpose and in this case, we had the wrong gear for the job.

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We pulled up to the meeting place based on the description that was given by dispatch. Checking in with our on duty Captain, we all determined that the fire was actually a fair distance off the beaten path.

Or bike path as it turned out. Devon and I geared up with some hand tools, chain saw, and a water can to head up the trail. The bike trail system on the mountain is impressive, but is designed for just that. Bikes. There was no way for getting any kind of truck, ATV, or anything other than us to where the fire was. We hiked for what felt like an eternity.

Wondering if there was really a fire up this path. We both then caught a sniff of smoke and knew we were going the right direction. Now we just needed to find it. Another crew had set off a road above us trying to see if they could come down to the fire. They hadn’t checked in yet on their progress and we knew we would hear from them if they were successful. Of course, now it was starting to get dark. Not only did we need to find this before darkness came, we needed to get it taken care of and then back out of there too.

As we continued up the path, we realized the smell was getting faint and we were feeling that we were getting further away the further we went. We decided to turn back and get back to where the smell was the strongest. Feeling lost and not able to find the fire, we ended up with a little help. A biker was headed down the path and bumped into us. He pointed us in the right direction and we were headed the right way. The fire was directly across from where we were standing.

Only trouble was that it was across a draw and half way back up the other side. That’s ok, we were determined to get to it and contain it before it got out of hand. We were also able to determine that the other crew wasn’t going to be able to get to the fire from where they were at. We hailed them on the radio and let them know to head back and that the only access was going to be up ourbike path. As we walked into the thickening trees, it was getting darker even faster and we realized our next challenge. Our head lamps were also with our wildland gear. So, now as we get to the fire, in the middle of the forest, and at dusk; we also don’t have any lights with us. I know, we are a couple of smart fellas today! bike path. As we walked into the thickening trees, it was getting darker even faster and we realized our next challenge. Our head lamps were also with our wildland gear. So, now as Home&Harvest

we get to the fire, in the bike path. As we walked into the thickening trees, it was getting darker even faster and we realized our next challenge. Our head lamps were also with our wildland gear. So, now as we get to the fire, in the middle of the forest, and at dusk; we also don’t have any lights with us. I know, we are a couple of smart fellas today! Rest assured, others were coming and you can bet that neither of us go that unprepared into the woods no matter what time of day or year it is.

I radioed into Command our location and requested the other equipment we needed. Being so remote, hose lines weren’t an option and it would be up to hand work to get the fire contained where it was at. Devon went to work with the saw. Falling the last bit of tree that was standing. The fire was caused by a lightning strike that blew a tree most off the way apart and was burning the ground around it. I went to work digging a line around the perimeter of the fire. Once Devon was done with the saw work, he helped me re-enforce the line that I had most of the way around it. We used the water can to hit the hot spots to hopefully cool it down enough that it wouldn’t kick up.

Fire and heat from these types of fires can work deep into the ground following the root system of the tree.

Using just water, it could take thousands of gallons to get it completely out. We had just 5 gallons with us.

While we knew that we wouldn’t get it out, we could at least get the major hot spots cooled and let the hand line showing clean dirt contain the rest if it flared up at all.

Happy with our work, we called in to Command that we were coming out.

Just as we got back to the main trail, by light of our cell phones, we were able to meet up with the other guys who walked in to help. Being the gentlemen that they were, they gave us some drinking water and offered to carry some of the gear back out. We figured out later that we ended up walking in about a half a mile from where the trucks were parked. I’m thankful for the bike path we used for the majority of that walk as it gave us a clean path in the dark coming back. It was still rugged terrain and steep in spots, especially when we got off the path to get across the draw to the fire.

Devon and I like to tell this story to the new guys so they don’t make the same mistakes that we did that evening. The right gear is always necessary and a good idea. We’re lucky to have a group of Commissioners that make sure we have the right stuff for these types of calls. We just have to remember to bring it.

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Bird Watching for a

couch potato

By Tony Niccoli If 48 million Americans jumped off a bridge, would you follow?

You know that old saying, about not doing something just because everyone else is. But hear me out –this one time it just might make sense. If that many people are going outside to look at birds, even though it seems like something that you aren’t necessarily into, maybe you should have a second look.

Everyone is birdwatching. Everyone.

That 48 million Americans per year statistic came from the US Fish and Wildlife Service – BEFORE Covid. Before we got stuck at home, before millions of people started looking for more isolated outdoor activities that respected social distancing, and before the birds – noticing the lack of humans – decided to really come out and put on a show. So now everyone has caught on, everyone is birdwatching, and I’m encouraging you to jump off that bridge.

Trust me, the water’s fine.

For Heather and I this has been an activity a long time in the making. We have talked about it for years but never really “found the time” to become fullfledged birders. We’ve always stayed more around the level of “casual birdwatcher.” Basically meaning, if an interesting bird crossed our path we would stop and look. You too? See, everyone is birdwatching.

One of my all-time favorite sightings was a plastic lawn ornament that looked remarkably like a bald eagle. We were on our way out to Helmer, and there, just a few feet in from the side of the road, sitting in front of an old barn and a few disinterested horses, was an absolutely huge bald eagle. We drove by slowly and it didn’t even move as we stared. But it just looked too real to be some imitation, so after a little debate, we turned the truck around and went back.

Second pass, even slower this time and it still didn’t move – or did it? We felt like the eyes had followed us, but the head seemed to be in the same position.

It was getting eerie. We made another u-turn a little ways down the road and started back on our original route. Still debating this eagle’s authenticity. No, we decided it was just too genuine and needed a closer examination so we pulled off the side of the road and got out to walk closer.

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Step by step, we inched our way closer, almost like villains in a cartoon doing an extra sneaky prowl.

Thirty feet out and we could tell it wasn’t wood or plastic – those were real feathers! Some farmer had gone to a lot of trouble to make this bald eagle replica for their yard.

Twenty feet out and we exchanged a questioning glace – I was almost certain I saw the head move a little. But we were way to close, it had to be a fake.

Fifteen feet out and this bald eagle, a little taller than my hip, suddenly jerks its head and stares directly into my soul. At the same moment it spreads colossal wings and with three mighty flaps it was up in the air above our heads faster that I would have ever thought possible. A few more relaxed flaps of those enormous wings, and it began to circle on a little current, looking down on us from about thirty feet in the air.

Turns out this wasn’t some plastic lawn ornament. It was a bald eagle out enjoying an afternoon of people watching. As you can see, Heather and I aren’t exactly expert ornithologists.

In fact, we barely even count as competent bird watchers. So if we can enjoy it, and laugh about eagle sightings years later, you can master the art of having fun looking at birds as well.

There are a few ways you can do this. One, birding, is the active pursuit of as many birds as possible. Birders have the goal of getting as many sightings (or soundings) as possible, and checking names off a list. They will hunt for specific species, and travel near and far to get the most elusive types. If you’ve ever seen the movie “The Big Year” then you know just how crazy this can get. Active birders set yearly goals, and then operate in a single region, state, or nation, trying to score as many different species of birds as possible. I pictured us being a little like this when Heather and I decided to spend more time bird watching. Out in the field somewhere with a set of binoculars and a little note pad to record my finds. A trusty field manual at my side for identification. I even started studying up on basic identification and the major types of birds I could expect to see on the Palouse, and in the Panhandle region.

That impulse first came when we ran into – almost literally – an owl. We were on a hike out in Phillips Farm shortly after my dad had passed away. We were on the heritage trail, at its deepest point in the woods, and just starting up the hill. Heather and I were simply holding hands and slowly strolling, and out of nowhere a huge owl swooped down directly in front of us. A few steps closer and we would have been able to reach out and touch it. The majestic bird followed along the path in front of us for about twenty yards, then crossed to the far side and perched in a tree – watching us as we walked past.

From the large “ears” I was later able to determine that it was a Great Horned Owl, and a very lucky sighting for an afternoon walk. When I read that many cultures associate them with both wisdom and departed souls it really struck a chord with me and I wanted to learn more about them and their behavior. I remembered the basics that everyone learns in childhood, nocturnal behavior, great hunters, able to turn their heads all the way around, a “who” call that echoes through the woods, and a terror to mice everywhere. But learning more about the various species of owls and how to spot them in the field was much more in depth. Along with the classification facts I was taking the time to discover a lot more about their daily behavior, environmental dependence, food sources, and the differences between them.

It got me temporarily hooked – not just on owls, but on learning all the birds. Is that even possible?

With more than 10,000 species known, and more discovered all the time, I’m sure someone could manage it but just knowing them all would be an incredible feat. Let alone learning all about them as individuals and being able to spot them in the wild.

But I quickly tired of this idea. I realized that I didn’t really care about keeping a list – I’ll always remember my favorite sightings. And with a list, a second or third sighting of the same species might just not seem as thrilling. I know I’ve seen tons of hawks and eagles – in fact there are usually several hawks that circle above our yard every day – but if I took the time to record the exact types it might become less meaningful to me when I see them again somewhere else. Instead I decided to focus on the uniqueness of each time I spot a bird, and to really take the time to study their behavior.

So at this point, I can tell a crow from pigeon, I can tell an owl from quail, and I have a 50% chance of telling a fake bald eagle from a real one. I’ve decided that this is enough for now. I’m back in the field with binoculars, enthusiasm, and a renewed sense of wonderment. We just never set out with the expectation of birdwatching. It’s simply a hike, or we are just for a picnic. It really changes the expectation, and that seems to lead to a lot more enjoyment. Sighting some interesting bird – or any wildlife – isn’t a completion of a task, and conversely, getting skunked isn’t a letdown. As long as the hike was good, the time wasn’t wasted. And when you do get treated with something awe inspiring, it’s all that much more exciting and rewarding. My dad, an avid fly fisher, used to say “they call it fishing – not catching.” And now I’m working on applying that outlook. If you set out expecting to land some fish (or a new bird you haven’t seen before) it hurts when you come up empty. But if your goal all along was to enjoy the process – the act of hunting and not the measure of attainment – then you always get rewarded with exactly what you wanted. And, on some special days, you get a lot more than you expected. With that in mind, we have still been birdwatching in a sense, we just wouldn’t really call it that. Walks in the arboretum, hikes at Idler’s Rest, even bike rides, have all become opportunities to accidently run into some captivating avian delights. It’s not the icing on the cake – it’s the second piece of cake instead. These last few weeks, after spending a lot more time at home, I’ve really started to look at the birds in our yard and study them as individuals.

There is a large regular group of what I think are finches that dart about the front yard most mornings looking for breakfast. I’ve gotten to know that there is one really bossy one that likes to suddenly dash from one side of the yard to the other, always flapping frantically on the descent, and coming down in the very center of a gathering of five or six other birds, sending them all skittering away. As soon as they disperse, the foreman returns to his work on the other side of the lawn, poking about for a worm. But when that gaggle has a chance to regroup, and get to chatting more than hunting, he’s on the wing again coming in for a jarring disruption to their conference.

In the space of one cup of coffee I usually get to see this play out at least four or five times.

On the far side of the yard, near the boss-bird, there is a different species making a nest in our pine tree. With a beak full of twigs and bits of dried grass or straw, it hops around the base of the tree, keeping a careful eye on the flock of finches.

Once everything seems to be in order, or perhaps after this bird is sure that it isn’t being followed, it always takes one of three different paths up and into the tree. Hopping then flying from branch to branch in the same patterns, and ducking into the tree at the same spots. Patient as I am, I never get to see it leave – only return – so I imagine it must have a similar process to exit on the opposite side of the tree that faces out to the street. This one has an orange chest and grey feathers and is a little larger than the others. I’m assuming it’s a robin of some type but I can’t be bothered to check. I’ve found more joy in studying its individual personality and having my coffee. A bird book would just unnecessarily complicate our relationship.

In our back yard, it’s not uncommon for a crow to land on high perch and take a little survey of the scene below. As I said before, we have daily hawks that circle above in route to their next meal. We hear an owl on rare nights, and once we saw two bald eagles – one taking laps around our block, and the other perched high in the next-door neighbor’s tree. After about ten minutes, they took off together headed to the southwest, they must have had dinner plans elsewhere. Or maybe they were just looking for a new home.

What I have found most enjoyable isn’t trying to classify everything I see, or reading someone else’s analysis of their expected behavior and habits. I like to just watch them come and go and try to see the patterns for myself. To watch their interactions with other birds. To notice that not one of them is afraid of our cat (admittedly she is always more interested in eating a little grass than paying any attention to the yard full of birds). I like to discover the way they differentiate their own flock members from outsiders of a different species. And I love to watch nests being build, or our two little bird houses being re-occupied.

There is a family of quails – with their whimsical deedily-boopers bobbing on their heads as they skitter about. You see, this is life without the bird book in hand. I’m sure someone else would have a technical analysis of the importance of that head ornamentation, along with a technical name and evolutionary elucidation. But I’m happy enough to just go on calling it a deedily-booper, and assuming that its either so they can tell exactly who’s in the their family and who isn’t, or it’s just like some big sparkly earrings, or a meticulously styled pompadour, and it’s only real function is making sure you get noticed by the quail you noticed yourself.

Last year we were tickled to view little family crossings, with the larger momma quail hoping out from some juniper bushes and giving our road careful inspection, before leading a train of adorable baby birds across the street to visit the neighbor’s fountain. As she gained speed, the line would stretch out behind her, then when she came to an abrupt stop on the other side, they would compact, almost colliding with siblings in their hurry. No one wants to be left behind when a fun outing is planned, especially not a baby quail.

I do still have a bird book, and I will from time to time have a look at a particular species. But now I reserve that for after I feel that I’ve gotten to know them on my own. Just a little filler and background info to go along with all that I’ve discovered in person. And for me that is proving to be the most rewarding path to birdwatching. Again, there are many way to enjoy it, and yours might be a more researched or more active approach, but for me a clear favorite has emerged.

And that brings me to the cheeseburger. No, this isn’t a cross over from my normal Flank to Flame articles about grilling (but that does give me a great idea for this issue). The cheeseburger I’m referring to is a bird that we often hear in the mornings, but still haven’t identified. Maybe you know the one. It has a beautiful three-syllable call that almost sounds like someone shouting “cheeseburger” from a perch somewhere high in a tree behind out house.

It’s often one of the first calls we hear in the morning – some days even serving as an alarm clock.

Home&Harvest

And on occasion we get a few calls later in the day.

But for the most part, Mr. or Mrs. Cheeseburger is a morning crooner. Later being overlapped and the altogether replaced by the cacophony of other calls. “Cheeseburger” it wails, reminding me that every day is a good day for grilling. “Cheeseburger!”

But I haven’t gone scouting for it. At some point, I’m sure I’ll inadvertently catch this little rascal in the act. For now, it gets to maintain its anonymity and mysteriously continue its routine. In writing this article I was tempted to finally look it up – I’m only a quick Google search away, just as you are now as well. But I decided against it, even in the face of being so utterly informed in the middle of an article about birds. Or at least, an article about my interactions and musings about birds.

But one of the things I did learn while looking into the differences in approaches to bird watching was a great anecdote about Henry David Thoreau.

Despite being an amazing naturalist, botanist, and ornithologist, Thoreau had an indefinable caller as well. He referenced it several times in his journals as the “night warbler” but couldn’t put a species to the description. And in a conversation with his friend Ralph Waldo Emerson, Thoreau was convinced to give up the search. Emmerson encouraged him to abandon the quest to identify the species, to enjoy the call, and to allow nature to maintain her mystery.

So this morning, before my coffee, before my front stoop birdwatching, before carrying my lazy cat back inside for her second breakfast and third nap, and before writing an article about birds, I listened to the possibly rare North American winged cheeseburger lover and smiled know that I’ll never chase it for a name. Someday it may choose to land in front of me and put a face to the song, and a name to that face. But until then we will maintain our current relationship and I’ll feel all the more comfortable in enjoying things as they stand.

Please don’t ever tell me – as I’m sure some of you already know. I’m enjoying following the greats and letting nature have her mystery. In the end it seems that I came to fish – and nobody ever called it catching.

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01-11-442

Curated. zachary wnek

Carrasow Book 2 Page 49

As we all work to flatten the curve of COVID-19, many of us have spent more time at home than usual. I want to propose a solution to your boredom. Instead of binge-watching your favorite shows on streaming platforms (again), why don’t you take a few moments to share your life with history?

Well, that doesn’t make any sense curator, what do you mean?

There are numerous ways that we are chronicling our lives today. Some examples include journaling, correspondence (paper and electronic), photographs, social media, memes & more. Every footprint you leave might be part of the historical record. I wanted to take a few moments to talk about what makes an excellent historical record and how you can leave your mark on history (purposefully).

Photographs. If you are anything like me, you shoot a plethora of images using the smart device that you carry in your purse or pocket.

Many times these are backed up in ‘the cloud’ and are easily accessed (by the user - you) so long as you can remember your username & password.

As a record, it is crucial to think about how the photographs originated. These are born-digital records. These records were taken using a digital detector and are digital representations of what you see.

Digital photographs look fantastic on your phone, tablet, or computer. However, it is worth remembering that digital files have a lifespan.

When was the last time you used a 3.5” floppy disk? Have you ever dropped and broken your phone? What happens when there is a power outage?

Home&Harvest

What happens if ‘the cloud’ goes out (or the company running it goes under)? What happens when you pass on?

Keep in mind that I can still see images in the LCHS archives dated before 1900. Will your digital file formats be supported in over 120 years? I’m guessing not.

To combat these issues, I am suggesting the following: select, print, describe, and store. Sort out your essential images from those that are less than stellar. Select the photos that you look at and can’t help but smile. Be selective (your other photographs will understand). Print your photographs. Have them printed professionally using archival inks. Coordinate with your printer to determine the best size for the images to be printed at (if you print a digital image too large, it will appear pixelated).

Once you have the images printed, describe them. I would recommend naming and or numbering the photographs using a small marking on the back. Describe the pictures on a separate sheet of paper and use these reference numbers in your descriptions. Store the descriptions with your photographs for easy access.

Now that you have invested in all of this work store them properly. You can either place them in shoeboxes (not great, but it will do) or invest in archival quality acid-free boxes. Naturally, I recommend the latter. I would also recommend storing the photographs in acid-free photo sleeves so that they do not stick to one another in the box.

Place the box in a cool, dark place. You want to find somewhere that doesn’t get a ton of sunlight and doesn’t have substantial temperature fluctuations.

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01-06-295

Keep in mind that you want it to be somewhere that is out of foreseeable damage.

Therefore in the basement near the water heater probably isn’t great. Alternatively, the attic doesn’t work great either due to the potential of extreme temperatures.

Lastly, if you can avoid it, do not use scrapbooks as your archives. Most scrapbooks and photo albums use some form of glue to keep your images in place. This glue can be nearly impossible to remove without damaging the image and will due damage to the image over time. Scrapbooks and photo albums are fantastic ways to share your photos on a coffee table, but consider creating archival copies for future generations.

Journaling. Sometimes things do not need to be more complicated than they already are.

Find a blank notebook and a pen. Write down your thoughts every day. What happened to you? How did you feel about it? What do you plan to do next? Pick an event, give yourself the who, what, where, when, and why. Start small; make it part of your routine.

If you would prefer to create a digital journal, take the time to print it out periodically.

Just like photographs, file formats change as companies that own the file types get bought, sold, and shuttered. While it is possible to restore degraded file types, it can be difficult.

The main principle still applies: records written on paper (or stone) throughout history are still largely legible. Unless you are nimble with a chisel, I strongly recommend printing your journal so that it can be part of your record for a long time. Just as with photographs, if you would like this to be a long-lasting record, I recommend printing on archival paper with archival-quality inks. Similar to photographs, I recommend storingHome&Harvest

-journals, and all documents, in acid-free folders inside of acid-free archival boxes. To be stored in a cool, dry place away from potential hazards.

Blogging. Do you write a personal weblog or blog? That’s fantastic. However, print your content. Create PDFs of the pages and print them on paper. Printing will preserve the formatting of the website, which gives the historical records the same feel as the original as possible, for best results use archival paper and archival-quality inks.

Social Media. Is your Instagram game on point? Do you maintain an epic Facebook presence? Perhaps you chronicle your experiences on Twitter. Or maybe you use some other platform that I don’t even know about, which is highly likely. Find your content and print it out.

Just like before, archival paper, archival-quality inks.

Once you have done all of this work to preserve your story, let your family members know that you have it preserved and invite them to do the same.

To sum it up, here’s a rule of thumb. Record your story so that your family knows what your life was all about. Print your historical record and describe your prints & information. Store this information in archival quality boxes in a temperature-controlled, dark place. Go through your records occasionally to reflect on your life.

Have a starting point for when your grandchildren ask you about what you did during the Coronavirus / COVID-19 pandemic.

If you would like some recommendations on where to acquire archival supplies, email me, and I would be happy to send along my thoughts. - zwnek@latah.id.us

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Hotel Bovill Register page 7, 1910

The Latah County Historical Society is currently looking for your stories of Coronavirus containment, quarantine, remote work, homeschooling, and more. Please consider sharing your Latah County experience with the Latah County Historical Society. Become part of our Coronavirus collection, which will live in our archives. Submissions can come via post at: Latah County Historical Society 327 E 2nd Street Moscow, Idaho 83843

01-11-442 - Moscow High School graduating class of 1899. - Shown here as an example of photographs from long ago being able to be seen due to printing.

Carrasow Book 2 Page 49 is an example of how scrapbook glue can damage an image over time.

01-06-295 - Miss (Lena) Whitmore’s Second Grade class, Russell School, 1944. - Shown here as a juxtaposition showing that despite four and a half decades between the two photographs they are both available to researchers in 2020 despite the myriad of changes in technology during that time.

Hotel Bovill Register page 7, 1910 - Example of script from over 100 years ago being available to researchers

We also have an online form where you can submit your information digitally here: https://www.latahcountyhistoricalsociety.org/covid-19

When you are a kid, or at least this was how I was, everyday seemed like a Saturday. There was no urgency and days just melded one into another. As I write the May/June edition, everyone is in the middle of the mandatory stay at home order and I have to admit, everyday feels like a Saturday, minus the fact that I am actually working from home.

Maybe it’s the fact that the “commute” is just down one flight of stairs, through the kitchen and into my office. Having never worked from home other than a day here or there, my mind is fooled into thinking this is just a really long week-end. I know I am one of the fortunate ones having a job and I take my time in front of my work laptop seriously. But today, which is on a real Saturday, I let my mind wander as I ponder what life will look like as you are reading this early summer issue online, given the fact that the printer who prints this magazine and almost all the vendors who have magazine racks are closed. So, I imagine you, the reader taking a moment from your day and sitting down to peruse this issue from your favorite spot, and hoping you are sitting at a sidewalk café, sipping something delicious on a warm sunny day. And that life is flowing back into a place where everyone can relish family, friends and connections again.

And what keeps surfacing as I gaze outside this sunny but cold April day, is the moment in my young life that I discovered I possessed optimism. First of all, I was not an extraordinary child by any means, I was scrawny with a mop of naturally curly dark brown hair that seemed to have a life of its own. I was bossy to my younger brothers, but outside the family I was quiet, but fairly social. So to sum it up, I was an ordinary kid and I am still ordinary. Growing up, I was not any kind of genius - that title goes to my youngest brother Barry and that is a whole other story of its own. Anyway, I’ve had a couple of life lessons that registered in my young mind that I recognized and actually felt the “aha moment” that have stuck with me and served me well all through my life so far.

I was in 5th grade when my parents sat us kids down and explained that we would probably be living in separate households.

They were contemplating divorce. Back then I knew only one girl who lived with her mom and she seemed sad all the time. And I was terrified of what life would look like and how my world had changed completely overnight without my consent. My folks told us that they loved us and that it wasn’t our fault, but it was still a gut-wrenching time. And then a few days later, after crying myself to sleep every night, I awoke one morning and thought, this won’t be so bad, we can have regular visits with dad and we will live with mom who always was the one who nurtured us. She was (and still is) the “go to parent” and life will go on. I felt our little world would be okay, actually more than okay, it would be truly good.

And then it hit me, I was aware that this feeling was something important and there was this shift and I recognized what optimism felt like. Even though I was only around 10 or 11, I knew this was powerful and it registered as a life truth in my young mind.

r d

It’s a wonderful ability to realize that you had the power to choose happy and accept that regardless of what was happening - that you had the power to frame the circumstances. I remember telling my brothers, it would be okay and actually feeling like it would be.

Maybe they trusted me, maybe they didn’t and tuned me out since I was the bossy sister, but I like to think they took my words seriously. Anyway, the split never happened, a comprise of my parents ensued and they stayed together until I was twenty. But that life lesson of finding optimism has been a corner stone of getting through many hard and difficult times throughout my life.

I will admit I get more than annoyed with others who only see the half-full glass side of life. I wonder what made them choose to look at life in that way and it makes me feel sad for them. My life is probably a lot like yours, in that we’ve all hit our fair share of speed bumps on the road of life. And the difference is how you view the obstacles that may have temporarily derailed you, what you learned, and what you did to get back on your journey. I know personally when I hit a major speed bump seven years ago, that it forever changed my pathway and in turn took me on a very different road. One that I most likely would not have chosen on my own, but one with all of its twists and turns has shown me so much more than I ever knew existed. I guess I would now call it my version of a happy ending to a long journey. But we before I ended up in my present state, I had to face uncertainty, loneliness, heartache, self-worth and all the other junk that sometimes gets heaped on when a major change happens. But then you have the choice to sink deeper into that hole or stand up and take one step at a time to move forward. Hope and a good dose of optimism are essential items to keep in your back pocket.

Home&Harvest

And I am here to tell you that today I have never been happier and actually thankful for the bumpy road that has taught me so much.

Being in the Ag industry for many years, having optimism is also a corner stone in every single farm family’s lives. Year after year, they have faith and hope every time they put in a crop that they will have a bountiful harvest and that the market is kind to them.

Unknown factors of weather and a picky market play a big factor in the end result of the their efforts that is commonly called a paycheck. If you felt the toilet paper shortage, just imagine for a terrifying moment what a food shortage would be like. But these dedicated full-time farmers & ranchers go out every day and do what they do best, grow our food for our bellies, cotton for the clothes on our backs and give us a safe abundant food source. God bless them.

Now more than ever with the COVID-19 impact on our lives, I have an even greater appreciation to the everyday heroes of the frontline. The obvious ones, such as the medical workforce and the police/fireman/ military have always been important to me, especially since some of my family are or were in those professions. But now I have even a deeper appreciation for them, along with the clerks in the stores, the truck drivers, the warehouse workers who all faced the risk of being infected every shift. I applaud the educators who on a moment’s notice had to change their method of instruction. And the list of those keeping us afloat goes on.

And I pray every day for them. My heart swells with joy when the news stations report on ways Americans are bonding together and sharing the latest of the good deeds and acts that are being shown to one another.

And the take-away as I reflect back to our forced stay home order is that we all have the opportunity to do a “restart” on our lives and redefine what is important in this journey.

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This has been a difficult time, for some more than others, but it has affected all of us. How we rise up and go forward is equally important and I hope that you as well as myself will continue to seek out and nourish that inner optimism and let it help you which in turn helps our community. I know for me personally, as I wait for the “pause button on life” to be lifted, that I will be redefining my new normal and reviewing what is truly important and what can be tossed. The headline of “Let’s be Wonderful Together” from the Ruralite magazine hit the nail on the head. It further quoted my alltime favorite movie from “It’s A Wonderful Life” when Clarence the Angel says to George Bailey, “Strange isn’t it? Each man’s life touches so many other lives. When he isn’t around, he leaves an awful hole, doesn’t he?” The article talked about volunteers and difference-makers who affect the lives of others for the better.

And I do look forward to seeing the explosion of life once again where we can gather together to share a meal and laugh at our stories of our struggles and high fives on our triumphs. I eagerly await the time when we all are celebrating the everyday sweetness of life, love, family and friends in ways that have meaning to each of us. Mr. Right (Rod) commented that we need to do some kind of weekly friend/family dinner parties! (I agree) And in the coming months, I hope I continue seeing people out riding bikes or walking together, and where home cooked meals are still eaten in leisure and savored followed by snuggling in to watch a movie or play a game. Cherished times.

Now more than ever, I see that I am beyond blessed with the special people in my life, some related, some not and it’s that personal connection to others that truly is the spice of life. So as you go about your new normal, remember the good and the acts of random kindness that arose from our “pause on life”, remember to not be in such a hurry to get things done and to savor those near and dear to you and keep up the acts of kindness. All my best, Gayle (for more stories: www.swheatfarmlife.net)

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Flank to Flame Cooking Depression-Era Onion Burgers

by Tony Niccoli My Gammy could cook! I don’t just mean gourmet ingredients, and the poshest preparations. Grandma could cook poor-folk food and make it taste as good as anything you’re likely to find being served by a highly awarded chef in a top restaurant today. And growing up, a lot of what she was cooking was coming from what she was canning.

Every year, we would help (or get int the way) as Gammy tended a garden that took up most of her backyard. Tidy rows of every vegetable and herb that you could grow in Ohio were lovingly planted, weeded, and harvested. Fruit trees were cared for and more jars went into the boiler for the overabundance.

Grandma’s house was where you got to eat fresh peaches in the middle of winter, crisp beans long after the season was over, homemade strawberry jelly the year around.

Nothing was ever wasted, and every meal was a feast with main courses and sides that had often spent hours in a pressure cooker, double boiler, or braiser pan. When a condiment or staple ran out, there was always a replacement already waiting on the shelves by the breezeway, neatly organized next to the rows of cans with homemade labels.

Dinners with Gammy are the best I’ve ever eaten.

I learned later that it was the depression that had taught my grandma the values of self-reliance, thriftiness, and preparation. Food was carefully stored because tomorrow the money might run out. Everything was grown when it could be instead of purchased, and nothing with any possible use was discarded. It was a generation that still knew how to darn a sock – still saw value in maintaining what you had.

But it wasn’t a burden or disappointment to share in that way of life. We weren’t eating unappetizing food for the sake of economy. In reality, you could have told me that it all cost a fortune and based on taste I would have believed it.

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As more of us spend this extra time we now face with thoughts of the skills we wish we had paid more heed to when we still had the chance, when we ask neighbors to sew us simple cloth masks because we snickered at the idea of mastering an antiquated practice like operating a sewing machine, when victory gardens pop up in every yard and Instagram abounds with images of people’s tomato starts, when we rush home with takeout hoping to arrive while its still warm because our favorite restaurants have been forced to close their seating, and when we all find ourselves trying to eek out a little more from what we already have, now more than ever, I want to finally try a recipe that has been on my to-do list for years. I’m doing it honor of my grandma – and yours – and all the generations that made do with so much less that what we take for granted.

Today, we are cooking Oklahoma Onion Burgers – Okie Dokies. They are from the depression, and not just the depression, but from the dust bowl no less. Born in the height of the poverty there. But here’s the thing, if I had just written this article a year ago, you’d have no idea. I could pass these off as high-society’s newest delicacy. I could charge $25 a burger at a fancy restaurant for these and then tell you that fries cost extra. And after you tasted one, you wouldn’t even flinch. You might just buy two. These aren’t just poor-folk food, they aren’t just thrifty and a clever way to use less meat. These are real burgers that pack real flavor.

Before we get to the meat preparation, lets get a few onions.

Home&Harvest

You want to use sweet onions, and you want to use a lot. I used about a half of a bulb for each burger and paired that to ¼ pound of ground beef but that can vary based on the size of your onions. The pile of onion should actually be larger than the ball of meat for the burgers. If I just lost you – please – believe me this is worth a try. I have always liked sautéed onions or grilled onions on burgers so for me it was a no-brainer, but Heather, who doesn’t always like hers that way was just as impressed.

So why the mountain of onions? Because they’re cheap! They were then and they are now. And for a Route 66 burger stand in Oklahoma, faced with a rising cost of beef, and a drive to keep burgers at a nickel, there wasn’t much choice except to get creative.

I used a grater, but you could also do it with a mandoline. Try to get the onion strips as thin as possible and then use a towel to squeeze out the excess water. For the burger prep, we are not going to do the normal patty style I recommend for a regular patty – instead make a loosely pressed ball with ¼ pound of ground beef.

You could up this to 1/3 for each burger, just make sure to use more onion to keep the appropriate balance. These burgers are designed to be cooked on a flat-top so you can easily make them in a pan in your kitchen. But that’s just not how I do things.

So at my house, it’s a cast iron pan on the grill outside.

I heated to medium temp, with the pan on the grill so it had a lot of stored heat before the burgers when in. When I was ready to cook, I started with a healthy drizzle of olive oil, tossed in my two burger balls, and immediately smashed them as flat as possible.

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I know – long time readers are cringing – I’ve told you many times not to ever do this on a grill, and I do still hold by that advice. But with the inclusion of the cast iron pan, we have essentially created a cook top. Our fats, and the delicious juice that will give the burger flavor has nowhere to escape, so it won’t just be wasted on your lower grill area creating a massive flair-up and dry burger this time. Go ahead, just this one time, press, press, press away. When you think its flat enough, push just a little more. Once they are flat, hit the top with a heavy dousing of salt and pepper.

Allow them to cook for a few minutes on this side – I did about 2 minutes on myHome&Harvest

-grill but that pan was pretty hot so your time may vary just a little.

When I checked them, I was just starting to see a little bit of a cook to the top side and decided this was the perfect time to add my onion. I built two big mounds on the flat burger patties and then smashed the onion down into the meat. You want to create a single, cohesive, mixed burger patty – not just a burger on bottom with a heap of onions on top. With a good spatula, and a lot of force you should be able to drive them completely into the burger. The seared meat on the bottom surface will still be in direct contact with the pan and getting a great crust, but the rest will become a heavenly mix of shaved onion and

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-ground beef. At this point, I gave them just a little more salt and pepper and closed the lid again to wait.

About two or three minutes later I gave another check and tested one to see if it would easily release. With just a little spatula wiggle I was able to get it to let go of the pan, so I knew it would be ready to flip without leaving my perfect char behind. I turned both patties so that the smashed onion side was down, gave another quick pinch of salt and pepper, and then closed the lid to let them finish the cook. This side got a little over two minutes, and then I opened the lid again and hit them with a slice of cheese.

No, that wasn’t on the original recipe for the standard burger, but I decided to give it a try for my first cook – to be honest I was still a little skeptical and wanted to make sure they were at least enjoyable. I put my buns on the grill for a quick toasting after adding the cheese, and about 1 minute later everything was ready to come off and rest.

For plating I followed the original recipe exactly – a plain hamburger bun, a few thinly sliced pickles, and some yellow mustard. Nothing more. Other than the cheese, I really wanted to get as close to an authentic depression burger as possible.

And let me just say – I was amazed! These might just be my new favorite burger. The onion sweetens the flavor and adds a great depth, the tang from the yellow mustard cuts in effortlessly, and the crunch and acid from the pickle round out a perfect bite. In fact, if you were to serve one of these without telling someone that it was an Oklahoma Onion Burger, they might not even catch it. The deep crust on the first side, and the full cook of the onion side, mixed directly into the beef, creates one seamless and enjoyable burger patty. It’s just a burger – with a kick of extra flavor. Definitely notHome&Harvest

-something less because of its thrift and use

of inexpensive ingredients to stretch it out. . Instead, these are full-on flavor bombs that could stand up against any burger from any chef. In fact, the next two times I cooked them that week, we didn’t even use cheese. That’s right – two more depression burger cookouts quickly followed – we just couldn’t get enough.

I’m not sure what will be going on in our community by the time you get to read this.

Things may be already getting back to normal, or it could be getting harder, with people making more sacrifices and having to tighten their belts a little more. What I do know for certain is that I’ll still be making onion burgers, and I’ll be doing it for the taste. The thrifty part is just a little bonus that reminds me of my grandma. The fact that the onions I’ll be using by the end of summer are now growing in my backyard garden now is something that would make Gammy smile too.

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Berry Tart

Kitchen

Gayle Anderson

Crust: Process: 1 ¼ cup flour ½ cup powdered sugar ¼ teas salt Add & pulse: 1 stick (1/2 cup) cold butter 1 egg yolk Process flour, sugar & salt in a food processor until just combined (about 15 seconds). Add butter and pulse until mixture resembles coarse crumbs, then blend in the egg yolk. The mixture will not hold together and will be crumbly. Preheat oven to 400 degrees. In a 9” tart pan press dough over the bottom and up the sides. Bake 12-15 minutes.

Home&Harvest

Streusel: ½ cup flour ¼ cup coarsely chopped walnuts ¼ cup cold butter 3 Tbs brown sugar In a food processor, pulse all the ingrediants until crumbly In the cooked crust, add fruit, then sprinkle the streusel over the fruit. Bake 400 for about 40-45 minutes or until the streusel is golden brown.

Filling: 5 cups fruit ( anything such as: blackberries, raspberries, cherries, strawberries) 10 Tbl sugar 1 TbL lemon juice 3 Tbl brown sugar In a bowl, add fruit and rest of ingredients to and gently toss to make sure fruit is well coated.

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In a large bowl, combine:

First

¾ cup butter, room temp 2 cups white sugar Mix well, then add: 2 tsp vanilla 4 large eggs, room temp 3 Tbls oil (canola or vegetable) Next add & mix well: 2 Tbls instant espresso granules dissolved in 1 ¼ coffee (or you can use water) Sift in & mix well: 2/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder 2 ¾ cups flour 1 tsp baking powder 1 tsp baking soda ½ tsp salt

Chocolate Espresso Cake Gayle Anderson

Then

COFFEE SYRUP Mix in a small bowl, till sugar & coffee dissolve, set aside 1 Tbl instant Espresso granules ¼ cup sugar ½ cup water CHOCOLATE GLAZE 1 cup powdered sugar 3 Tbl cocoa powder 2 Tbl butter, melted 2 tsp vanilla 1 to 3 Tbl hot water Mix to desired consistency and drizzle over cooled COFFEE GLAZE 2 tsp instant espresso granules 2 Tbls milk 1 ½ cups powdered sugar

Eat!

Mix coffee, milk & powdered sugar in a small bowl – note: you may need to add extra liquid to make the right drizzle consistency. (I will use left over coffee, but water or milk works fine too) Preheat oven to 325 and pour cake into a prepared (greased/floured or baking paste) Bundt or 10” tube pan. Bake for 60 -70 min or until a skewer inserted comes out clean. Let cool in pan 10 min, then poke holes in the cake and pour 3/4 of the coffee syrup over the cake, then let sit in pan for 20 min. Loosen the cake edges with a knife and invert the cake onto a cake plate. Then with a pastry brush, brush remaining coffee syrup over the cake and let it soak in.

Once the cake has cooled, drizzle the chocolate glaze over it, then drizzle the coffee glaze over the chocolate (see picture). See? Not too hard and oh so yummy.

My Mother’s Banana Bread Ingredients: ½ cup butter 1 cup sugar 1 egg 1 cup bananas, overripe & mashed 2 tsp vanilla 2 cups whole wheat flour ½ cup milk, soured 1 tbsp cinnamon 1 tsp baking soda ½ tsp salt 1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips Steps: 1. Preheat oven to 350°F. In a large bowl, cream together the butter and sugar. Next add the egg, bananas, and vanilla. Then combine the remaining ingredients and mix well.

2. Pour into a greased loaf pan. Bake for approximately 1 hour or until toothpick comes out clean.

Kitchen:

Emory Ann Kurysh

Vegan Oatmeal Cookies

Kitchen:

Emory Ann Kurysh Makes 3 dozen (Variations include chocolate chips, raisins, butterscotch chips, and more!)

Ingredients: 1 cup vegan butter, room temperature ¾ granulated sugar ¾ cup brown sugar ¼ cup applesauce 1 tsp vanilla extract 2 ½ cups large flake oats 1 ¼ cup unbleached all-purpose flour 1 ½ tsp baking soda 1 tsp cinnamon 1 tsp salt ½ cup unsweetened coconut 2 cups raisins (or other)

Steps:

Preheat oven to 350°F. In a medium-sized bowl, cream together the butter, sugar, applesauce, and vanilla extract.

In a large bowl, add remaining ingredients. Stir until just combined, and then fold in wet ingredients. Mix well.

Using a tablespoon, roll a ball into the palm of your hand. Gently flatten, then place on nonstick cookie sheet. Bake for 8 minutes. Allow to cool before transferring them!

(Store at room temperature in an airtight container or sealed bag for up to 7 days.)

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4

Ingredient Peanut Butter Cups

by Emory Ann Kurysh

These chocolate peanut butter cups are so easy to whip up in a matter of minutes! They require no baking time, just mix, freeze, and wait. Sure, they may not look store bought, but they are made with care and are healthier. They really are so sweet and decadent, you would never guess that they were vegan. Try them yourself!

Makes 12 Ingredients: 2/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder 2/3 maple syrup 1 cup coconut oil, melted 1/3 cup smooth peanut butter Steps: 1. Put cocoa powder, maple syrup, and coconut oil in a blender. Blend until well combined.

2. Lay out 12 muffin cups in a muffin pan. Evenly spread a teaspoon of blended chocolate on the bottom of each muffin cup. Grab a new teaspoon, and then place a dollop of peanut butter over the chocolate. Top off the peanut butter cup with one final teaspoon of chocolate, spreading evenly on top.

3. Put in the freezer for 30 minutes. Once they have set, you can either remove the paper from the peanut butter cups immediately or leave them until you are ready to eat them. Store in the freezer or fridge in an airtight container. Enjoy!

Braided Cheese Loaf

by Emory Ann Kurysh Ingredients:

2 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for countertop 1/8 cup granulated sugar 1 tsp salt 2 tsp active dry yeast 1/2 cup water 1/8 cup milk 1/4 cup butter, plus more to grease 1 large egg 2 cups (any) cheese, grated 1/4 cup parmesan cheese Steps: 1. Combine the flour, sugar, salt, and active dry yeast in a large bowl. Mix well.

2. In a medium bowl, add the water, milk, and melted butter. Stir. Then pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients. Add the egg. Mix with a spatula until well-combined. A soft dough should be formed. Transfer the dough to a floured surface. Knead for 5 minutes, adding more flour if dough is sticky. Grease a medium bowl and place the dough inside, covering with a towel and letting rest for 20 minutes.

3. Using the same floured surface, remove the dough from the bowl. Flour a rolling pin and roll out the dough to an 11”x17” rectangle. Spread the grated cheese and parmesan evenly onto the dough. Starting at the widest end, roll the dough into a long log. Cut the log in half and pinch one of their ends together. Gently braid a few times. Set inside a greased loaf pan, cover, and let rise for 60 minutes.

4. Preheat the oven to 350°F. Put the cheese loaf inside and bake for 30 minutes or until golden brown. Remove and let cool slightly before taking it out of the pan. Store in an airtight container, bag, or bread box at room temperature

Ingredient s: (FOR THE BISCUITS) 2 cups all-purpose flour 1 tbsp baking powder 2 tbsp sugar ¼ tsp salt ½ cup butter, melted 1 cup milk

This is a rich and savory meal that is packed full of flavor and comfort.

-Emory

(FOR THE SHRIMP CASSEROLE) 300 g peeled shrimp, thawed ½ cup corn, frozen ½ leek, chopped 1 garlic clove, chopped ½ tbsp salt pepper, to taste 3 tbsp butter ¼ cup canola oil

Steps: FOR THE BISCUITS 1. Preheat oven to 450°F. Mix the first four ingredients together in a medium-sized bowl. Then add the final ingredients, stirring until just combined.

2. Place parchment or aluminum foil onto a large cookie sheet. Grease well. Using a tablespoon, drop twelve biscuits onto the sheet.

3. Place in oven, and bake for approximately 12 minutes, or until golden brown. Remove from oven, and let cool.

FOR THE SHRIMP CASSEROLE 1. Preheat oven to 400°F. Place six fresh biscuits in an oblong casserole dish. Then add the shrimp, corn, leek, garlic, salt, and pepper. Drop the butter on top of the casserole mixture.

Drizzle with oil, and place in oven for 30 minutes, stirring halfway through. Serve hot.

Emory

Drop Biscuit s

Shrimp Casserole

Ann Kurysh

Vegan Avocado & Peanut Fudge Emory Ann Kurysh

1 ½ cups vegan chocolate chips 1 cup coconut sugar ¾ cup coconut milk (place in fridge beforehand and use hardened top and bottom layers) ½ cup cocoa powder 1 tsp vanilla 1 tsp sea salt 2 large avocados ½ cup chopped peanuts Steps: 1. In a medium saucepan, combine the first six ingredients. Stir over medium heat until completely melted. Turn the heat off, and set the mixture aside.

2. Remove the skin and pits from the avocados. Place in a food processor or blender and blend until smooth. Then add the chocolate mixture and blend again until well combined.

3. Line a square baking dish with parchment paper. (I tried using tin foil the first time round, and it was a disaster! Use parchment to ensure that the fudge won’t stick to the dish.) Pour the fudge evenly into the dish. Top with peanuts. Place in the freezer for at least 4 hours, and keep the fudge in there until just before serving. The cooler it is, the firmer it is, which makes it easier to cut and to eat! Bon appétit!

Nothing Bundt.. by heather niccoli

I

I have always been fascinated with Bundt cakes. Not only are they a retro staple, they are a true work of art. Since all of you know how I am devoted to living a retro lifestyle, it surprised me that I have never perfected the art of the Bundt cake, or even owned a single pan- and I do a LOT of baking. I was reading about the history of retro foods when I came across an article on the history of Bundt cakes and it inspired me to share it all with you. It’s fairly simple but so cute!

Bundt pans were invented by H. David Dalquist- founder of the Nordic Ware company in 1950, located in Minnesota. He created the pan for the Minneapolis-based Hadassah Society. This group of Jewish women wanted to recreate a traditional cake called the Kugelhopf, which is a dense, ring-shaped cake. Some say that fluted cakes have been in existence since the late 1700s- but they are not to be confused with cake molds. Others say they come from a European brioche-esque cake. The most interesting thing perhaps, is the name. He originally named them “Bund” cakes, and it is still quite a mystery as to why Mr. Dalquist added the ‘t’. Some say it was to trademark the name, others say it was to distance himself and his product from the German-American Bund, a pro-Nazi group.

Since he created such a small batch of these pans in 1950, they didn’t make headlines or become a major staple in households. Nordic Ware considered discontinuing the pan, but thankfully, they didn’t. Sales continued to remain low until a small boost came in 1963, when the New Good Housekeeping Cookbook mentioned it. It wasn’t until 1966, when extraordinary baker Ella Helfrich created a Bundt cake called the “Tunnel of Fudge” and entered it into the annual Pillsbury Bake-off.

She won 2nd place, earning herself $5,000. Roughly adjusting for inflation, that was serious money back then, estimated to be $37,000 today!

Thanks to Ella, there were suddenly over 200,000 requests to Pillsbury as to where someone could buy Bundt pans! Soon after, in the 1970’s, Pillsbury licensed the name Bundt from Nordic Ware and sold a-

-variety of Bundt cake mixes and even though discontinued in the 1980’s, people are still gaga over the nostalgia of the Chocolate Macaroon and the Boston Crème. There are tons of copy-cat recipes, but nothing most people say comes close to the original taste. More than 60 million Bundt pans have been sold by Nordic Ware since, and the rest they say- is nothing Bundt history. (I had to make one Bundt pun). As for me, I’m still pining for Ella’s skills. The only-difference is Pillsbury no longer makes the exact fudge frosting that Ella used for her cake- despite public outcry for Pillsbury to bring it back. I would just substitute for regular fudge frosting. I contemplated making it for the magazine, but I’m just not on that level yet.

Believe it or not, the small present-shaped Bundt cake pictured is my first successful attempt at getting the cake out of the mold! My secret? I spray the heck out of the pan with cooking spray, until it matches the level of hairspray I use to get my hair in the typical retro bubble style I have. Meanwhile, I melt Crisco until it’s runny, and then pour it slowly all over the pan. I then wait a few minutes until it mostly dries, to see what spots haven’t gotten enough coverage. Then I flour it really well. For me, that’s the only thing that I’ve done that’s been successful. Well, that, and the fact that timing isn’t always everything they claim it to be in recipes. I just err on the side of caution and continually check my cake.

I know we live in a day when people don’t stop by for a cup of coffee and a piece of cake, but that doesn’t mean we can’t make someone a thoughtful gift, or something retro-unique for a birthday cake like a Bundt cake! It’s truly amazing how many shapes and sizes they come in. I am now the proud owner of 5 Bundt cakes- all Nordic Ware- and I can fondly say a heartfelt thank you to Ella for bringing this simplistic confectionary beauty into my life! *A special thank you to Tony Niccoli for not eating my perfect Bundt cake until I could photograph it.

Vintage Lemon Bundt (My Birthday Cake- Shaped Bundt) 2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour 2 1/4 tsp baking powder 1/2 tsp salt 4 eggs.

2 cups sugar 1 tsp vanilla extract Zest of 2 large lemons (about 2 Tbsp of zest) 1 1/4 cups milk 10 tablespoons unsalted butter, cubed For the glaze 1 1/2 Cups of confectionery sugar 2 to 3 Tbsp of fresh squeezed lemon juice 3 Tbl butter Preheat oven to 350°F and grease your Bundt pan!

Combine flour, baking powder and salt in a small bowl and set aside.

In a large bowl, beat eggs on high speed for 5 minutes or until thickened and lemon-colored. Gradually add sugar, beating until mixture is light and fluffy. Add vanilla and lemon zest and beat in.

Gradually add the dry ingredients and beat at low speed until smooth, scraping bowl as needed.

In a small saucepan, heat milk and butter just until butter is melted (don’t let boil). With mixer running, gradually add milk mixture to batter; beating just until combined and scraping bowl as needed. Pour into prepared baking pan. Bake at 350° for 28 to 35 minutes- until top springs back when pressed and a toothpick inserted near the center comes out clean (or with a few moist crumbs) Remove from oven, place on a wire rack and allow to cool for 5 minutes or until the cake starts to pull away from side of pan. With a knife gently release the cake from the sides of the pan and turn cake out onto cake platter.

For the glaze:Whisk together the confectionery sugar, butter and enough lemon juice to make a drizzling consistency until smooth.

Drizzle, pour, or brush onto cake.

1 pint fresh strawberries 1 teaspoon fresh lemon juice 1/4 cup white sugar 1 package (8 ounces) cream cheese 1 can (14 ounces) sweetened condensed milk 1 teaspoon vanilla extract 1 (8 ounces) container frozen whipped topping 2 tablespoons strawberry jell-o mix dry Freeze Dried Strawberries 1 package of shortbread cookies Chop strawberries into very small pieces, till you get roughly 1 and 1/2 cups. Toss the strawberries with the lemon juice and sugar. Allow to sit while preparing the rest. In a large bowl, beat the cream cheese until smooth, about 3-4 minutes. Slowly add in the sweetened condensed milk while continuing to beat the ingredients together. Beat in the vanilla extract.

Once the mixture is completely smooth and creamy, fold in the whipped topping using a spatula until completely combined.

Remove two cups of the mixture into another bowl. Drain any liquid in the strawberry mixture and gently fold the chopped strawberries and strawberry jell-o mix into the removed two cups. Pour the strawberry mixture and the white mixture into popsicle molds. alternating colors. Allow to freeze overnight or at least 10 hours. When the popsicles are almost done freezing, roll in crumbed shortbread cookies. Top with freeze dried strawberries.

Mastering the Mundane -the subtle key to the life we desire

by Jessica Drago Habits. We all have them. Our days are made up of them whether we are aware of it or not. At the start of the Gregorian calendar year, our society experiences the annual influx of resolutions and promises to get our lives together. Many of us proclaim, “This will be the year!” However, we usually miss one very important factor to get those life changing results. We have to not only do things differently. We have to be different.

“Quality is not an act, it’s a habit.”- Aristotle There comes a time (maybe several) in our life where we know that the trajectory we are currently on isn’t in alignment with our potential. We know that the quality of life we desire isn’t a part of our current reality. For me this happened right after the birth of my son. As a wellness pro and business owner, motherhood came at me like a wrecking ball.

The quality of my mental and physical health tanked under the demands I was putting on myself. It was obvious that my life needed more rhythm and simplicity. I knew what I wanted, but didn’t know how to get the results. What became obvious is that in order for me to experience peace in myself and in my household, I have to organize my life differently based on what I truly valued. From there, I could see that daily habits were either orienting me towards the quality of life I desired or away from it. Let it be known that I have yet to perfect this art. What I do know is that little habits add up to results over time.

“It’s just as easy to do as not to do.” - The Slight Edge by Jeff Olson How do we build the life we desire? I wish I could say that the process is always exciting but it’s not. In fact, it can sometimes appear downright boring. This is why it is so easy to miss. It’s easy to think that these seemingly insignificant habits we hold in our body and our minds don’t have much power. However, the compound effect is real.

Before we know it 1 day has turned into 365, and we are starting our resolution wheel all over again. To avoid the vicious cycle of disappointment, we have to dive deeper than the surface level tasks. While the tasks are a part of it, the belief structures we cling to manafest over time. This means exploring “why” we desire the things we do and explore if these desires are moving us towards the type of person we want to be.

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Mother Nature

by

Annie Gebel

Mother Nature has so much to teach us. She cycles through her year with lesson after lesson, whether or not we’re paying attention. I encourage you to do just that, though. Please take note of how nature is leading by example. Maybe you need more than good manners to truly tune in. So, here are a few reasons for you and the natural world around you to get reacquainted.

First of all, nature is beautiful! Music is written about it. Art is created honoring it. It’s no wonder why, either. It is wonderous!

I’ve had the opportunity to live all over the United States. I’ve lived in the humid heat of Southeast Georgia and the dry heat of New Mexico. I’ve been a short drive from both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. I’ve flown over the quilted mid-states and driven the interstates that part their fields. It’s all awe inspiring in its own way – and that’s not even stepping foot out of our own country.

So, looking around and enjoying the journey, rather than only be concerned about the destination or your phone, will allow you to appreciate the incredible gift that Mother Nature has for us – all that is around us. The more you look at nature, the more you’ll notice about how adaptive, impressive, and simply lovely it is. For example, think about nursery trees. When a tree falls (no, I don’t know if it makes a noise if no one is there to hear it), it becomes part of the rich base layer that everything grows out of. Saplings will sprout on it. Fungus will grow. Animals will call it home. It’s not ignored or forgotten by the rest of its environment – it becomes the environment and nurses the next generation of new growth. I don’t know about you, but I find that to be beautiful, and maybe a little extra credit in respecting our elders and seeking nourishment from them.

If the sights around you aren’t enough to make you a student of nature – the sounds and scents are also quite a joy to take in. Many a person has been calmed by the lull of gentle waves gliding over the sand and taking out to sea all our worries.

And if you’ve ever had the pleasure of watching a storm over the ocean, you know that crashing waves can take on a very different persona, leaving anyone watching breathless. Maybe you can recall the calls of birds, deep croaking of frogs, or rustle of a breeze in the trees. When we take a minute to focus on what we hear, perhaps we’ll hear something deeper in nature’s songs.

Science has told us how scent is incredibly important, and marketing has used this to sell all sorts of things, from deodorant to laundry detergent, but nothing can beat the natural smells all around. Well, maybe not all the smells. Most of us probably can live without skunk smells. But what about that fresh, earthy after-rain scent? Or freshly mowed grass? Or spring blossoms? Or pine boughs or cinnamon? These are exactly the scents manufactured into candles sold from store shelves, but they’re also outside too and can bring up whole ranges of emotions and memories for us.

I propose that anything that can connect with our senses like nature does is worth paying attention to! When we do, we can notice the subtle ways Mother Nature imparts her intelligence to us.

The cycle of the seasons gives us rather obvious clues to a way we can move through life easily too. A rotation of new dreams and beginnings can bring forth an active time to play and do and laugh and work.

Following that we can enjoy the products we create, the abundance that we earn, what grows from our ideas and efforts.

And, at last we can rest a bit, letting the dust settle, giving our brains a rest and chance to grow as well as feeling the stirring of new notions beginning to swirl– bringing us back to the beginning again. This is the way of the seasons – spring, summer, autumn, and winter.

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It can be repeated in our days, our weeks, our years. It’s a perfect and beautiful cycle. And not to be rushed. Each season has its place and purpose, for nature and for us.

Of course, it’s not always that simple is it? In our daily routines we have interruptions like phone calls, fire drills, kids who pester with their constant needs and questions. Even during the best planned weeks, we’re likely working around meetings, appointments, and other people’s schedules. Looking at the whole year, there are birthdays, holidays, funerals, and illnesses. Overshadowing all of this are the really big things that throw us completely off like car accidents, cancer, or self-isolation and quarantine due to a pandemic.

Don’t worry, though, Mother Nature can lead us through these situations, too. She has her own storms to deal with. In fact, her biggest issues tend to overlap with ours – hurricanes, volcanic eruptions, forest fires, to name a few.

After each of these disruptions to her seasonal cycles, we see nature bounce back. New sprouts will form in the spring. Vines and trees will grow around and through debris left uncollected. Animals that scurried away will come back. And we can do this all too.

Like the best of teachers, we can enjoy learning from and through Mother Nature. We can appreciate her offerings, take in all the ways she smiles at us, soak in her wisdom.

And even when we try to prove her wrong or ignore what we’ve learned, she’ll gladly welcome us back and help us to remember the lessons we’ve forgotten. And I think it’s time we accepted her offer to come back. Don’t you? And just so you don’t think I’ve forgotten my manners, I’ll add this - pretty please.

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people OF the palouse photos: aline k photography interview by: heather niccoli

Shawn Sombret HN: Tell us about yourself. would consider myself from the Northwest. Moscow has been my home since 1999 S.S. Iwhen I moved here for a new job. I am lucky to have met the love of my life Nicole Sombret here to keep me grounded in such a beautiful community. I can’t imagine living anywhere else but the Palouse.

H.N. This past year, you went through an incredible life experience. Can you tell us about what happened? in September of 2019. I was at a routine eye exam and failed the peripheral vision test three times S.S. Itinstarted a row. My eye doctor kindly gave me the run down that my peripheral vision might be impaired by a mass

putting pressure on my optic nerve in the brain located at the cross point where the two nerves intersect. The doctor said they are usually benign and recommended I get an MRI to confirm this. I really couldn’t believe the possibility of this happening to me. I was in total disbelief, because for the past decade I have been focused totally on health to prevent such things.Later that night I casually mentioned the doctor’s recommendation to my wife Nicole and I laughed about the absurdity of it. I went on how MRI’s are expensive and we weren’t really going to get me one were we? Nicole didn’t laugh, she was seriously worried and wanted me to get an MRI to be sure. I agreed to get the MRI reluctantly, as I never go to the doctor, for I rarely suffer from any ailments.

This was my first MRI since my childhood when I had a head concussion that almost killed me in fifth grade and was vastly different. It was so loud- they injected a metal called gadolinium into my blood stream to make the brain light up from the magnetic impulses of the MRI. I had quite the headache afterward. I took a four pound magnesium Epsom salt bath and drank lots of water to help with my pain. I wasn’t concerned about the headache though. I was more focused on the results.

The results were to be available the next day; however to my surprise my eye doctor called me within two hours after the scan even though I was not to expect them her call until the next day. The scan revealed a tumor about one inch in diameter surrounding my Pituitary Gland just under the frontal lobe in the forehead region.

She offered a referral to a neurosurgeon she knew well who is a specialist in treating my diagnosis; which was a Pituitary Adenoma Tumor of the brain. A few weeks later when I met with the doctor at Sacred Heart Hospital, he would assure us he does this Pituitary tumor surgery almost seven times a month and should be low risk, but before that time I was in denial and in shock. I refused to accept anything until I saw for myself on the scans.The next day I received the report and scans and went through them. I had studied the brain quite a lot in the past and the pituitary region to me looked like a normal part of the brain. Until I did an internet search on a “normal” MRI scan of a healthy tumor free pituitary and saw how small the region looks compared to mine. My heart sank and the results sank in too.

Of course I did what I shouldn’t do. I promptly got online and looked up side effects and risks of a surgery to remove the tumor; which for most cases is the size of a bean and mine was abnormally large. I was sure to scare myself real good with possible risks such as; damage during surgery of the optic nerve and going blind, damage to the pituitary and needing synthetic hormone therapy for the rest of my life, damage to the blood brain barrier and spinal fluid leaking out into the lymphatic system and into the sinuses causing meningitis; which would require an additional surgery to fix. Worse case was damage to the main arteries on either side of the pituitary gland and death; although the smallest percentage of risk.

The best case scenario was to have a specialist who does this particular surgery a lot: a procedure that is done endoscopically up through the nose, where they temporarily remove the inside part of the septum, dividing the two nasal passageways and move it to the side, so they can enter through the sphenoid sinus cavity and puncture a hole through the skull into the pituitary region to remove the tumor in pieces.

I was in pure denial of my condition’s remedy being only surgery, because a major surgery has been a lifelong fear of mine. One that I had worked very hard over the last ten years to avoid through health and diet changes. As I knew I wasn’t getting any younger and experiencing my Mom die at an early age of 61 of cancer in 2013. I knew it was time to start researching and changing my diet and lifestyle habits for myself and my family. The first two weeks of October 2019 were very disheartening for me.

I couldn’t get away from thinking about possible side effects of surgery and how I might be living with any of them for the rest of my life. And not doing the surgery meant going blind in time no matter what.

I felt though with all my research there had to be a way to naturally heal my condition without surgery. I began searching the causes of pituitary tumors and possible natural ways to reverse the problem. I wasn’t being very successful, but by random chance Nicole had shared a link to an article on Facebook concerning sugar. The article was by a natural health Dr. The article explained that not all sugars are the same. The focus being that fruit sugar doesn’t affect the body the same as processed sugars or processed complex carbohydrates; which need insulin to be transported and utilized by the cells of the body. Fruit sugar uses no insulin and is utilized immediately by the body without the sugar highs from processed sugars or carbohydrates. Essentially-

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-even diabetics could eat fruit sugar in its natural fresh state without consequence. He went on to say the body uses fruit sugar as its natural form of energy. The brain being the largest consumption of fruit sugars. This was interesting to me, because Nicole and I had been on the Code Red Keto diet just recently; which is the opposite of sugars.

The Dr. explained that the key component in our bodies is the lymphatic system; which is seventy five percent of the fluid in the body that removes toxins and waste byproduct from our body during digestion and metabolism. The main byproduct being acids. And animal proteins, processed sugar and processed carbohydrates are among the highest in creating the byproduct acid; which promotes the loss of vitamins and minerals as well as creating mucus in the lymphatic system. When he wrote that Acids and Mucus are the main causes of tumors and they needed to be detoxed and flushed out of the body. I finally realized my errors all these years in health and why I had a tumor in the brain.

I had spent years eating a high animal protein, high processed sugar and high processed carbohydrate diet with little to no fruit or vegetables. And the reason why my tumor was in the Pituitary region was because during metabolic processes, all cells in the body also create the waste byproduct of acids. For my condition, the pituitary gland when you are stressed all the time, creates a lot of hormone production, cortisol and adrenal response; which caused a lot of acid to be created by the pituitary gland. This large production of acid by the pituitary caused a lot of mucus in the pituitary region. This coupled with an acid and mucus forming diet caused my lymphatic system to become stagnant and not able to flow to detox fast enough to remove acids and mucus from the body. This being the main reason why I had a tumor in my pituitary region.

Upon reading his two books and my past years of research finally coming to an understanding of how my body works in dealing with diet, stress and health. I thought for sure if I followed the detox plan described in his book, I would be able to avoid surgery and reverse my condition. Unfortunately, I didn’t have that kind of time. One of his other colleagues mentioned in his book it would take at least six months or more detoxing on an all fruit diet to heal and remove tumors and cancer. I didn’t have that kind of time. My tumor was pushing on my optic nerve and I could go blind any time.

Yet my fear of surgery was fresh on my mind and I saw a way out of surgery. In complete denial I thought, maybe if I went all in for three months I could make a big enough difference to postpone surgery. So when we met with the specialist in October 2019 for setting the surgery date. I kindly asked that we wait until December to give me a chance at holistic healing.

My doctor advised against it and Nicole being my best advocate proceeded to still support me while gathering help, resources and finalizing a surgery date of December 4th just in case my fruit detox did not work. Meanwhile all this change and stress in my life was getting to me. One night I came home from work and just hugged Nicole and sobbed. I cried and told her I didn’t want to have to do surgery and I didn’t want this tumor to happen to me.

The next day, consumed with fear, anxiety and hope, I went from an all animal product diet just a month prior doing Keto with Nicole, to a full embrace of doing an all fruit diet detox; which consisted on a daily diet of a whole large watermelon, ten to fifteen apples, a few oranges, a pound of grapes and an avocado with celery. Now I started off slow with a large salad for lunch and dinner, because this was supposed to slow and stop detox symptoms, but once I got going I wanted to make the most of my-

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-time. So I embraced whatever detox symptoms came and went on the all fruit and avocado diet after the first three weeks.

Empowered by fear and hope I started my day with a whole watermelon throughout the morning, followed by apples and grapes throughout the day with 64 oz. of water to drink and ended the evening with avocado, celery and herbal teas. This brought on an array of detox symptoms as my body began to purge acids and mucus. From headaches, diarrhea, to strong nausea, cold symptoms, muscle cramps, joint pain and a metallic taste in my mouth that wouldn’t go away. I stumbled along through work and home with these symptoms longing for bedtime for about three weeks and finally the symptoms went away except joint pain; which was acids leaving the tissues of my body each day. Not all was negative though, because after the first few weeks of detox I discovered an energy and vitality I had not known since a young child. In addition I could breathe deep again and my sinuses were clear. I felt so alert, awake, energetic and good, I embraced the diet as more than just a detox, but a way to better health. During that time, there was a lot of illness around me and to my surprise I never got sick and my muscles seemed to heal at an accelerated rate. I had suffered from a weak lower back for years and for the first time I was stretching better and when my back got too fatigued it healed in three days instead of a week or more.

The final day of the fruit detox I was scheduled for an MRI to see if the detox had done what I was hoping. This was a pinnacle day for me. Everything hinged on it. It was a few days before Thanksgiving in November of 2019. I was going to celebrate with turkey and mashed potatoes! Yet to my high hopes, the scan came back showing only a 1mm difference. Negligible to my recovery.

This is when my delusions of grandeur of avoiding the surgery came crashing down. I sat alone at home pondering on what I should do. Obviously surgery was scheduled and that was what everyone was expecting I was going to move towards. But a small part of me, the scared and anxiety filled person wanted to rise up. I wanted to stand up and say, “No this is my life, my body and I am going to continue on with the fruit detox for the full six months if that was necessary”.

Inside this rolled around until a small voice came beside me. The voice of my conscience urged me to not make a decision until I prayed to the Father.

I’m not a religious person, but I am well versed in the Bible and have a close relationship of my own to God that I consider spiritually a personal one. I feel the Father’s presence when I need him and on this particular day he was really close.

To me, the Father speaks through my conscience like a feeling or small voice of what is good and right. When I prayed. I asked the Father, “What is the right thing to do?” “Should I do the surgery?”

The Father responded to me in a kind of knowing of a whole picture. He said, “The decision is not yours alone to make”. The Father pointed my attention to Nicole and showed me that Nicole needs this experience, too. That she needs to have an opportunity to rise up and be strong while I am vulnerable. That everything in life is a challenge to help us overcome ourselves. The Father also brought my attention to everyone at work and in my circle of people. The Father reminded me of all the hopes, prayers, positive thoughts and things put into place to support me; which would not come to be if I didn’t go through with the surgery.

I would be hindering the fulfillment of love and not giving everyone the opportunity to rise up from daily life as well. He showed me how all these experiences shapes the soul and how we are all connected. Finally the Father said to me, “You will be denying yourself the final transformation of your spiritual journey”. To face my greatest fear of major surgery would most likely change me in some way, I just didn’t know how.

I then made my decision to go forward with the surgery. To put Faith in what the Father showed me and all those who are in my life supporting me. I put in my notice of the surgery at work and began coming to terms with a destination of brain surgery in a weeks’ time. People poured in with love, prayers and support on Nicole and I on Facebook. It was all so very reassuring.

I continued on with the fruit diet, as I felt so good on it. I should mention, I lost weight effortlessly eating a fruit diet. I didn’t lose muscle just body fat, but became so lean, I felt like I was in high school again. My body going into surgery was strong, healthy, a stable weight and energetic. A good combination for recovery. I realized later that I was not directed to the fruit cleans to avoid surgery, but to prepare my health for it.

As we were ending the evening and getting ready for bed the feeling of the next day began to really overwhelm me.

My anxiety started to climb and my fear was surrounding me. The business of life was gone and I was left with just a few hours before surgery. I showered to ease the stress and as I finished up getting ready for bed I went inward spiritually to myself to get a hold of my fears. I reasoned with my fears and anxiety trying to get ahold on my feelings. I had so much apprehension of what outcome would come of the surgery. I reminded myself of all the prayers and blessings, hopes and positive energy from everyone. I knew based on my own ideology that if you are surrounded by negativity, that the frequencies of any other possibility would cancel out and not be attainable by my own focus on the negative.

I reasoned then that I was getting in the way of my own best outcome. I visualized to myself it was like I was holding a sling shot. The sling shot being my focus, attention and intention. The target being a certain outcome.

And what was in the sling shot was the positive energy of everyone’s hopes, prayers, positive thoughts and blessings including the Father on my side. My hand gripping the sling shot back was apprehension, fear and anxiety.

I also reasoned with my own ideology, since infinity has all possible outcomes waiting for me depending on the belief and intention positive or negative with which I focus my attention on. That so much positive energy was already there from everyone else, my outcome has already been preordained. All that was left was for me to stop holding back the sling shot with fear, anxiety and apprehension, put faith in that sling shot to hit the target and let go.

So, that’s what I did. I put faith in the positive energy and let go of my life. I got out of the way. I decided by letting go of my life, I would relinquish my experience of life.

My focus and attention on my own personal feelings of everything going on outside of me would not be mine anymore. My intentions would end and it would be as if I was experiencing nothing on the day of surgery. With this reasoning a calming peace washed over me as I looked down. My breathing normalized and I came to bed. Nicole and I wound down with a show of “This is US” hoping to get some sleep for a stressful day.

That morning was a rush getting checked out and to the Hospital. But once we were there, it all became a blur. I had relinquished my experience of life. I sat in the waiting room for surgery check in calm, humble, at peace.

I was glad to see my dad and stepmom arrive from the coast of Washington. Paperwork filled my minutes. And then I was being lead into surgery. It all seems vague and like a dream now. I never really experienced any of it.

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I trusted in faith and everyone else completely. I didn’t try to soak up each situation or room with people and try to create a feeling about anything. It was like staring off into space. Moving like on auto pilot to every request by everyone, responding with love, compassion, trust, humility and inner peace. I just let the whole experience happen like I was watching someone else’s life, but not my own.

Nicole was by my side the whole time. She is so precious to me. They got me all hooked up to tubes after I washed down every inch of the body with alcohol wipes and shortly after taking blood samples, Nicole left and I was lead into the operating room. So white, so much light and computer screens. I laid down, they propped my head with pillows and I was out. They went up through the nose, into the brain region of the forehead beneath the frontal lobe through the sphenoid sinus cavity. The ENT prepared the extraction going up through the nose to enter the brain, using a camera, GPS and my head screwed down to the table. A six person team and my Dr. spent three and a half hours removing the tumor. They took fat from my abdomen to plug the hole in the skull and packed the sphenoid sinus region with self-dissolving packing.

Upon waking, to my surprise I wasn’t in any pain and I could breathe well. I didn’t know that was the steroids and anti-inflammatory IV drugs at work which would be gone soon. The first thing that came to mind was relief.

They came in and let me know things went really well.

They got all the tumor out and no major complications.

The Dr. said he was surprised that the tumor kept falling down as they were removing pieces. Usually it’s stuck up against the wall of the blood brain barrier, but it was just coming down easily. This made it so they didn’t have to go too far near other risky things. I thought to myself, that the fruit detox might have had something to do with hydrating the area to make it easier for surgery. The Dr. said the optic nerve and blood brain barrier just fell back down to normal position as they removed the tumor and my vision should be ok.

I spent a night in ICU while my blood sodium levels normalized. Brain surgeries I guess really mess with sodium levels and need monitoring for at least three days. They did another MRI to see the results. And the next morning the team came in to the recovery wing to show the scans. Everything looked clear and they were really happy with the results. The best possible outcome had come into the present like a gift from God and infinity. All the positive energy had brought me forward and all I had to do was have faith and get out of the way.

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In the recovery room alone, I thought about all the people supporting me and tears wanted to come flooding in. I wasn’t allowed to cough, puke or cry in a way that would create pressure in my sinuses, so I pushed the tears down for later. I was just glad to be on the other side of my fear at the moment and taking in recovery. Pain management and healing was my focus for quite some time.

The ride home from the hospital in Spokane back to Moscow was really rough on me. The loud road noise and wash board highway was shaking my head like a fishbowl. We arrived home with our spare bedroom prepared for my recovery like a hospital room. The bed was at an incline and all my meds were on a shelf for me. Nicole is such a blessing. She took care of everything I would need as well as our kids, so I could rest and recover.

For the next week I was in a lot of pain. My headaches would not go away no matter how much Tylenol I took. I couldn’t eat much with such pain and lost a lot of weight and muscle. My face looked thin. In middle of the night I would wake with the shakes and would eat like seven tangerines to make them go away. I thought it was blood sugar related, but much later we found out it was electrolyte-related to the nervous system. It was near the end of the first week of recovery where I reached a point where nausea had gotten so strong it engulfed me to the point of wanting to vomit, but I knew that would be detrimental to my recovery. And as I came downstairs I told Nicole of my nausea, feeling very concerned. As I was standing in front of her the color washed out of my face and I felt light headed and was going to pass out. I sat down freaking out. My body was emerging into something going wrong and I didn’t understand. I remembered that nausea can be caused from eating a high fruit diet and I reasoned all the meds were more acids in the body than I could handle detoxing right now. I remembered the Dr. saying you can slam a detox into a dead stop with eating meat. So I grabbed a half a chicken breast out of the fridge and ate it. The nausea went away within a couple minutes. But I still didn’t feel right, so I told Nicole I needed to go to the emergency room.

Upon treatment at the ER, they said I had a condition called Hyponatremia; which is low sodium blood levels. This can be life threatening, but they didn’t have the support to treat my condition based on my discharge records. They saw I needed an endocrinologist, because of the team of people that are taking care of my recovery in Spokane based on my surgery. So unfortunately they said, I would have to be transferred to by ambulance. My heart sank when they said I couldn’t wait for Nicole to drive me up tomorrow. It was urgent and they had to Home&Harvest

keep me on a sodium drip all the way up to the Hospital.

It was the first snow storm of the season and a bumpy two hour ride on a stretcher to Spokane in the middle of the night, but the two EMT’s were great at what they do, I felt very safe.

Once they flushed my blood and got the sodium levels up, they monitored my blood levels and released me to go home the next day; which was another ride on bumpy highways. Four days later I had to go to the ER again for severe burning of my feet and hands and cramping of my back and joints. At the ER I was treated this time for Neuropathy of the nervous system with another sodium IV drip even though my sodium blood levels were ok.

Finally after strictly keeping my sodium and electrolytes balanced two weeks in to recovery, I was stable. I kept the salt and electrolyte levels up and went back to a meat diet to keep the nausea away. I was not in a condition to heal from brain surgery and detox at the same time.

After two weeks I was able to start neti pot sodium rinses to flush out the surgery site. This was my main reprieve from pain and pressure. During the month of December I went through sixteen gallons of distilled water flushing my sinuses every two hours. This helped the Dr.’s post-op cleaning and examination of surgery sight.

On my first post op a couple weeks after surgery they gave me the reassurance that everything was healing well and I could do ibuprophen for pain. This was a major relief to me, but I also discovered my headaches were being additionally aggravated by looking down, especially at my phone and talking at full volume from the vibration in my sinuses causing inflammation in the fresh surgery site. I had to keep my head up and talk at a whisper for a while.

Near the end of December, I had made a lot of recovery progress at my third post op. I was finally starting to feel fairly normal and stronger. I celebrated with my brother in-law, Robert. He drove me to Spokane for the post-op and afterward we met my two sisters Chani and Kiirki who I hadn’t seen in 20 years at the downtown mall. The four of us had lunch and reminisced. Then my sisters parted ways and Robert and I headed up to the IMAX to excitedly see the final Star Wars movie, “Rise of Skywalker”. It was a wonderful and memorable way to end a tough road to recovery. I was able to go back to work on light duty a couple weeks later.

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HN: What has changed or not changed about your perspective on life since your tumor?

S.S.

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On the day of my first post op; which was December 13th I had an amazing experience that has altered my life and perspective forever besides the surgery itself. It was as if all of the experience had caught up to me now that I was stable and healing well after two ER visits. I finally was out of so much pain management and recovery mode.

My grandma Joan and I had been talking about faith and life on the way home from Spokane.

All the emotions and tears since I had gotten out of the ICU were fresh on my heart. We pulled up to my house and something strange came over me. I looked out the car window and I didn’t recognize where I was. I asked Joan where we were and she said with a puzzled tone, “We are at your house”. To me it felt like it wasn’t my place. As I began to remember, it felt like a place long in the past. I walked up as if I had been gone for years and stepped up to the door for the first time.

I walked in the door to find Nicole on a step stool putting up Christmas lights and Kaylee, my daughter setting up the Christmas tree. It was so strange, it felt like I was witnessing the past, as if I had died and come back to a moment in time. I pushed that feeling out of my mind and took in the beautiful surprise my family had setup. The lights made the house glow and it was very magical. Joan left shortly after and Nicole started dinner. I was sitting at the kitchen table talking to her, still fresh with the emotions and tears from the car ride talk.

I sat there thinking about the day and how I felt about not recognizing my own house. I began trying to get a perspective on my life. I had been in preservation mode for two weeks and had not even thought about life since before the surgery when I let go of my life and experience of it. I had not experienced “me” since that night in the hotel when I gave up my own personal intentions. I had been recovering since then and with my first good post op and stable path of recovery. I finally could take stock on my life. I sat at the table while Nicole was busy in the kitchen and I tried to think about life and myself to get perspective. And the first place I could find perspective was the night before my surgery.

To my bewilderment, I could not remember “myself ”. What I mean by this, is when you think about yourself. You tend to bring in your own feelings, beliefs, outlook, goals, aspirations, the things that make your persona or character to identify with yourself. The attachments that make my identity inside that defined me as the Shawn I knew which would start my perspective on life as I reflected on my life changing experience was gone. I had all my memories like they were the far distant past, but I couldn’t remember “me” in that moment. It was like I was empty.

Just then a feeling of emotions came over me like a wave. And out of nowhere I began to sob uncontrollably- full body sobbing and crying for like five minutes. Nicole turned around and asked if I was OK concerned. I said, I was fine, I wasn’t upset, it was just happening like a release. And then just as sudden as it came it was gone, but it then brought on a sudden large wave of uncontrollable laughter for what seemed another five minutes until I couldn’t breathe anymore. Once it ended, Nicole and I were amazed and confused at what had happened. I decided to go upstairs to take a shower to get my bearings before dinner. As I was in the shower I thought to myself, I can believe I don’t remember myself. It feels like I am no one, like the Shawn I knew was me in another lifetime.

As I pondered in the shower on this fact that I couldn’t remember myself being who I once was.

That emotional energy came over me again and I began crying so full body that I had to put my hands on the shower wall to stabilize myself. Nicole rushed upstairs and asked if I was ok.

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I said yes I was through my sobbing and crying and that it was another release of emotions. She said she wanted to make sure I had not fallen or something and left me alone since I was ok. As Nicole left, I was still crying but not upset. I couldn’t believe this crying coming out of me. It was as if it wasn’t me. And then something amazing happened. I felt a presence in the shower and I knew it was the Father.

I felt a sort of knowing come over me and the Father said in this knowing, “it is OK to let go”. And then I became one with the crying emotional release and I “was” crying. It felt like I was standing next to my Father in heaven and my life and all my suffering for the last forty three years was being released from me as negative energy coming out of me. Like a child finally home from being lost all this time.

As I was crying this release of energy, the presence of the Father said to me, “I have been holding your burdens for you until you were ready to let them go”.

And in that realization, I knew that all our suffering is only one percent of what we can truly experience. That the spirit of Love protects us from ourselves. As if the Father carries our baggage throughout life until we are ready to set it down and let it go. As this crying release was happening the Father said to me, “I am proud of who you have become”, “You have made an image to be proud of son”, “and It is an image of Love and Truth”, “One that you can live the rest of your life through”.

I knew the Father was speaking of my last ten years of a personal spiritual journey to come to know myself. And with that presence I felt great gratitude and wonder, like a child who has made their parents proud for the first time. The connection with the Father was so strong it was as if we were standing together. And then the presence left me, like its moment was done and fulfilled. I stood in amazement and a feeling of great relief washed over me. Like one who had been lost in the woods for years and finally made it back to civilization, or someone who had been lost at sea for years and finally made it to dry land. And in that feeling of relief another wave of emotion washed over me of absolute pure Joy. I began laughing uncontrollably in the shower and when I found my breath, I got out as if reborn.

I didn’t talk much about it to Nicole, because it was too hard to explain and I barely understood it myself. I still ponder on that experience to this day. Nicole had asked her Aunt Ann who is a nurse about such emotional responses. She said brain surgeries can bring on an array of emotional reactions; especially where hormones are involved, but I know what I felt and what I experienced Home&Harvest

and it was more than emotions. It was beyond this scope of material life and can only be described as a spiritual awakening.

After that day I feel so empty, still in the heart, free and a great peace has washed over me inside. I am not the same person anymore and my concern of remembering who I once was is gone. My emotions are under my complete control. The clarity to which I see life is indescribable. It is like when someone dies and all your hang ups and baggage between you are gone and you see clearly what you miss and wish you could have back. I see life and everyone as if I had gone and died from this life. All the hang ups of life and baggage from the last forty three years that society has placed in my heart and mind throughout my childhood and adult life are gone. Only instead of having to miss everyone and life, I am still here. It is like the surgery created a spiritual death and rebirth.

My heart is full of love and peace. I am so thankful to have made it through all of this. Glad to be able to laugh again, create laughter, love more and appreciate my life and others more. I see everyone not as I used to where usually one would form an image of a person based on the past between each other and what they look like or what they wear to form a perspective of them and their persona in a level of a positive or negative feeling about any one person, but rather in a neutral fashion. I see everyone as if brand new. Where the body is not the focus of value, or the past, but the person inside fresh in the moment. I see people through just pure emotion. I see whether they are happy, sad, mad etc. I feel what people feel. My empathy is wide open, only with the wisdom to be passionate about life, but not consumed by what I feel positive or negative. I am so filled up with love, it is as if I don’t need any from anyone else and the peace I feel I just share. The love is like a self-love. A gratitude for my Being and an appreciation for life. An inner respect for myself and the source of all that is. I feel connected to everything, the whole universe and the spirit.

What has not changed is my priorities to make the most out of loving and supporting my family, friends, work and others in life. But now I have a perspective which allows me to stay grounded inside. I am empty of want and a pursuit of a happiness outside of me.

I am aware of the moment always and I see what is needed in any given situation. With the love and peace I feel inside, I seek to help others, bring order to conflict and to stabilize the chaotic days as life throws us curve balls always, but with a positive attitude.

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HN: What do you think more people should live with on their minds each day to make a difference?

S.S.

I’ve always looked at the world wanting to make a difference. Wishing the world was a better place and sometimes feeling hopeless and negative about it along the way growing up, especially in the last ten years. I have been on a spiritual journey of looking inside myself and seeking to come to know the inner workings of consciousness and awareness. To understand my mind with all its thoughts and emotions which have wreaked havoc on my heart most of my life. In the last ten years I have realized through a lot of soul searching, and seeking Truth within writings such as Jesus’ very words, Buddhism and the Toa Te Ching... that any difference starts within myself and how I act and respond to my everyday interactions with everyone in society.

I’ve learned that the greatest Truth I ever felt made the biggest difference in myself and my own life, was “unconditional” Love. To simply be mindful of all my actions and to be more conscious of the opportunity to give love no matter what, aside from being taking advantage of or used. More specifically to have more patience, to forgive more, to not take life too seriously and to be happy, grateful and content regardless of want or lack thereof.

I realized ultimately that I am responsible for my own happiness regardless of how others treat me or respond to me. It is my choice with my power of Will to decide how I feel and live day to day and ultimately that is how I affect the world and contribute to the difference I might make.

Along the way I reasoned to myself with my own ideology that everything has its own frequency in existence and with all the negative frequencies in the world. My positive outlook could be like a butterfly’s wings creating a ripple effect in the world; which also comes back to help me.

I often think about Love and what it really means. I reasoned to myself that Love is the expression of “Relation” and the act of relation is “awareness” or consciousness. A force beyond the human mind which is interconnected and is rooted in the heart, the essence of the Self inside us, or the I AM. I think to love and respect ourselves more makes the most difference.

To forgive ourselves more, to have patience within ourselves more, to appreciate the life we have daily, because it wasn’t until I let go of the negativity and self-hate that I began to heal and really made a difference in both my own life and those I affect around me.

HN: What inspires you?

S.S.

As I slowly climbed my spiritual journey out of my turmoil and pain, the greater peace I found. It is this peace inside that inspires me in all that I do from the moment I wake. It is like a pearl to me with many layers of experience and wisdom, the foundation of which is Love. I realized a long time ago that to give peace is to love and to love is to maintain peace inside. What is good for me, is good and right for others, you know that golden rule. The most influential and inspiring individuals in my life started with my Mom, she had always been a light in my life that kept me afloat in my darkness growing up. My wife Nicole taking the reins from there. Nicole showed me how love could go beyond boundaries and inner walls and that there was more good than I realized. My mentor and friend I met along my spiritual journey William Hodgetts has written a few books that helped me along the way, he has a website www.lovethemeaningoflife.com. And last but not least, Jesus has been by my side the whole time along with our Father in Heaven. Their words of Truth and Love have guided me along my path to inner peace, freedom and a renewed heart.

HN: If someone was interested in living with philosophies more like yours, what are things they can do?

Eating/meditation? What do you recommend?

With all I have learned with diet and how good I feel, I can’t say enough about a vegan diet centered on fruit being the most complete source of all we need with an addition of avocado, nuts, seeds, leafy greens and herbs. My health, healing and vitality just seems to be greater than it has in my whole life with this way of eating. A recent book I read with a study on a fruit centered diet, called “I live on Fruit” by Dr. T.C. Fry and Essie Honeball available on kindle, has many studies on the subject and testimonials of people living on a fruit centered diet for more than 30 years.

My most helpful meditation for me has always been the walking meditation of self-contemplation. To step out of all that is going on and be the observer of my actions, thoughts, feelings and emotions as I go about life. I realized a few years ago that the more attention and focus I put on the going on’s of life, the more I sacrificed my emotional stability.

With my own ideology I reasoned, that for every single thing we focus our attention on to experience positive or avoid negative requires a level of conscious energy that gives us that feeling of satisfaction in life. And all focus also requires a degree of awareness to focus our attention on what we desire to experience; which these degrees of awareness are connected to that feeling of contentment.

Because the more things accumulatively that we focus our attention on in want, avoidance or fear, the more we deplete our levels of conscious energy and degrees of awareness. To deplete these two forces in our life is to compromise a level of feeling of satisfaction, and a degree of contentment inside. The more things we focus on the more we lose degrees of awareness, which cause a domino effect in the loss of the feeling of contentment.

The more we lose degrees of contentment, the more inner peace is lost. The more we lose peace, the more we lose clarity, the more we lose clarity the more we lose emotional stability. The less emotional stability, the less ability to reason, understand and respond to life with wisdom and the less we handle stress and increase anxiety and affect our emotional well being.

When we lose too much of the levels of conscious energy the less satisfied we feel.

The more degrees of awareness we lose. The more of that feeling of contentment is lost. And as our emotional wellbeing degrades. We start feeling lost, out of control and searching for a way to be grounded, centered and happy. With my observation of these feelings inside for the last ten years, I began pulling my focus and attention away from unnecessary things and became the observer of my thoughts, actions and feelings, so I could regain these levels of conscious energy and degrees of awareness to rebuild my inner peace, contentment, emotional health, understanding and feeling of satisfaction in life.

S.S.

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The easiest unnecessary things I found I could pull my focus and attention away from to gain a lot of clarity from, was personal judgments on my environment. To let go of looking at everyone and everything and labeling things with feelings of positive or negative. To just make everything around me a feeling of neutral. It is like walking into a room and not creating opinions and feelings about everything from the carpet, colors, wall coverings, furniture, music, people, food likes and dislikes.

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Rather, I enter a room, let go of my focus and attention on all of it to the point where I couldn’t tell you what color the couch was or anything else when I left.

To be unobservant and non-opinionated and focus on interaction with people; while making no agenda for validating my own beliefs or opinions and became a listener and a helper. I discovered the more I let go of unnecessary desires for emotional stimulation and distraction the greater emotional health I had.

As I let go of this unconscious habit of forming opinions and unnecessary focus and attention on things, my consciousness and awareness expanded. I began to see life much clearer. I felt more satisfied, content and still inside. Anxiety started to fade and love began to kindle like a flame in my heart and I felt happy inside.

It then became my mission to practice self-sacrifice, let go of my control of unnecessary things and become as selfless as possible. To simplify my life as much as possible, because the more conscious energy and degrees of awareness I regained, the most amazing thing happened. I became invincible to criticism, fearless of the effects of my environment and my willpower was growing. The less I focused on and attached to, the more everything felt neutral. I was becoming unaffected by life and I saw life in a whole new light. My understanding grew into wisdom in my daily self-contemplation of my feelings and actions. Life felt less burdening regardless of any troubles that arose.

HN: Anything else that would inspire S.S. or help others?

I have seen with my own eyes and experienced my life change as I observed all my actions. That to always remain positive, to always forgive, to have unending patience and to live in the moment, always reminding myself that this life is temporary and to make the most out of every second to fulfill Love. To laugh as much as I can and to make others laugh, has enriched my life and turned it into something I could have never imagined. It took complete faith in love. To make Love unconditional no matter how much I suffered for it, but with the wisdom to protect myself from being abused and used. To have the courage to say no when it was necessary but in kindness, respect and calmness.

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I could have never seen how my life would change by only living through Love and its Truth. It took the wisdom of Jesus and God to inspire me to see beyond human reasoning and a leap of faith in the concept of a perfect Love- they offered me to live by in their words of wisdom and walking that love path. Sometimes I felt like a slave to love while everyone else was getting everything they wanted, but I kept my faith in love. I took each attribute of love and practiced them daily until I understood through interaction with life each feeling and essence of the attributes of love, starting with humility. I pretended to love perfect until I ran out of understanding of Love with my limited experience.

I then prayed to the spirit of Love deep within my conscience. I humbly plead to the spirit of love that I have reached a point I don’t know how to love any more in my limited heart. I asked the spirit of Love to guide me. I vowed to my conscience that I would not make an action without waiting for my conscience to guide me in what was good and right. I told the spirit I placed my ego aside and humbly I will listen to my heart above all else until I knew how to love unconditionally.

Every step brought me more inner peace and personal power of Will, Faith, Understanding and Wisdom.

Unconditional Love brought me side by side with the Father and changed my life in ways I could never imagine. The trick was understanding, it started with loving myself unconditionally first. Building my own emotional strength and control by fasting from my own personal desires and emotional distractions.

Realizing an emotionally broken person suffering in life needs to heal emotionally by taking a big time out from my personal agenda in life; while still living consistently responsible for daily obligations so I could focus on myself inside, but not neglect those around me.

This was a difficult balance, but it has been worth every day of self-sacrifice. Thank you everyone who has interacted with me for giving me the chance to try and love unconditionally while still making a lot of mistakes along the way. To me, Sentient Beings are the most precious resource in the Universe. Sentient being “living, conscious and aware”. This includes all animate life, for within every living, conscious and aware being is a heart connected to the divine force of Love.

That force of relation that binds and connects everything in a harmonious balance of vibrational energy and light.

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by Joe Evans

JOE’S death RAY

Home&Harvest

The following is a true hunting story that took place several years ago. The circumstances surrounding the harvest of a nice whitetail doe are extremely unusual to say the least. In reading many published hunting stories and talking to a lot of hunters I have never heard of anything like what I witnessed happen to anyone before, although somewhere along the line something similar has probably happened to someone else. I can’t be the only guy this has ever happened to! I believe that there is a very important lesson to be garnered from this experience and that lesson is: each and every time you discharge a weapon at a game animal, do a complete and thorough search, just to be sure. A complete and thorough search led me to recover a very nice whitetail that furnished many nice meals prepared by my wife. Let’s go back in time. A number of years ago I was doing contract work for the Idaho Department of Lands which involved noxious weed control on old logging roads. To make a long story short, I found this to be a very rewarding job preserving our environment by making targeted applications of selective herbicides to invasive noxious weeds such as knapweed, thistle, hawkweed, hounds-tongue and a whole raft of other noxious weeds on the Idaho hit list. Well, my working compadre and I were on a rather small section of land that had an “L” shaped old logging road on it. We started our herbicide application at the gate and proceeded toward the turn of the “L”. As we slowly moved on, I became impressed with the deer hunting possibilities on the magnificent piece of property.

My, we all should be very happy with the land management performed by the Idaho Department of Lands! I’m not just talking deer hunting management, but land management in all aspects. Okay, we now reach the right angle turn in the “L” and proceed onward. The fellow with me is a licensed application as I am and he continues to be engrossed in the job. I am driving the truck and am able to make the abovementioned observations, look for noxious weeds, and hopefully keep the truck on the road. I glance to my left and find myself looking at the foliage of the tops of tall trees just a few feet away from my window. Hmmm. I lower my eye level and do not see any ground. I now lean out the window and finally see the ground by looking virtually straight down.

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Kinda steep here, don’t go over the edge! That comes under the category of being an important safety tip! According to the map, this precipice is the top edge of the Potlatch canyon Well, I thought, if I come back to hunt on this land later, do not shoot at anything likely to go over the edge. Recovery of an animal could be difficult.

Another important tip!

I believe that most of us hunters have made similar observations. Let’s fast-forward ahead to the hunting season a couple of years later. Time to play hooky from work and take the wife out for an afternoon late deer season hunt! This piece of land seemed ideal so off we go. We started our still hunt at the gate and proceeded onward, following the abandoned logging road. It was a truly magnificent afternoon and the type of fall day to make you feel glad to be alive! We proceeded down that old road bed without seeing game until we reached the “L” in the road.

It was starting to get late in the afternoon and I figured we might be able to go another quarter mile or so before darkness would set in and we would have to mini-mag our way back to the truck. We were at that section of the road with the death-defying precipice to our left, so I tried to keep my eyes focused to the right, surveying more level ground.

About two hundred yards later the juicy doe appeared about a hundred yards ahead and was facing the precipice. My mind worked quickly.

It was late in the season, hunting opportunities were limited and there was no meat in the freezer. My better judgment lost out. I proceeded to make an off-hand shot with my rifle, a Weatherby Vanguard in 257 Weatherby. The load I was using was a hand load consisting of a 100 grain Nosler Ballistic tip bullet ahead of enough 7828 to chrono at over 3600 fps out of my 24-inch barrel. In short, this load had enough snooze to satisfy the hardcore hot-rodder in my soul. Well, the Vanguard in those days had one of the worst triggers ever installed on a rifle, mine honing about a four stage pull.

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I did the best I could but the shot went low and to the left. Deer jumped and over the cliff it went. Bummer!

We went to where the deer was standing and my wife quickly found a patch of white hair, no blood. Okay, I probably just grazed the deer and gave it a good education. However, my better judgment finally took over and over the cliff my wife and I went. Don’t ask your wife to do this sort of thing! We circled around and found many deer tracks but no deer and no blood.

Probably just grazed the beast, I made one last circle and there lay the deer about as dead as dead can get. I tagged the deer, rolled it over and started to dress it out. What’s this? The only mark on the deer is a graze mark- not even a wound on the underbelly! I did not perform a good examination of the deer to see what really happened due to it getting late so I can only speculate. The bullet did not enter the body cavity but I suspect it hit with just enough force on the brisket to send a piece of bone through the heart, or more likely the aorta, causing very rapid loss of blood pressure. Considerable amounts of blood were found in the body cavity and the deer probably didn’t go over fifty yards. Well, fifty yards over the cliff is more like five miles on flat ground, so back to the truck I trotted to get my ATV with a winch.

I’ll spare you the details about getting the deer back up the rocky ledge but will say that was about the most redneck operation I’ve ever been guilty of. To finish, I stress that it is extremely important to look some more, each and every time you fire your weapon at game. My doing so filled my freezer. By the way, the original trigger on that 257 has been replaced by a Timney set at 2.5 pounds and is a delight. It is also my understanding that Weatherby is now installing excellent triggers on the Vanguard. Happy Hunting!

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Give It A Shot

By Temple Kinyon

The first few days this past March, my parents, Joe and Pam, were in New Orleans for a confer-ence. My mom is on the Clearwater Power Board of Directors, and this conference revolved around those duties. After they returned home, Dad then traveled to Boise for a meeting. Yes, they were “out there” during the rising panic about COVID-19. I was extremely worried. They were not.

I’m the youngest of their three kids, and even though I’m 50-years-old, for me to scold my parents is still not something I typically do. However, their travels warranted a stern phone call at the very least.

“Aren’t you worried you’ll be exposed and catch it?” I asked Dad on the phone. It was mid-March by this time.

“No,” Dad laughed, “I’m from the generation that got through the polio epidemic. I tend to take these things in stride.”

His comment sat on my mind for a few days. I’d also chatted with Mom, and she was aware of the growing concerns across the country and world, but also felt like she could weather the brewing storm. They weren’t careless; they were concerned and took the suggested precautions. But I never sensed any type of panic or that they would drastically change their lives due to COVID-19.

They farm in Potlatch, and farming never stops.

After speaking with my in-laws, Roger and Diane, I realized that they, too, were aware of the situation and taking care, but not making drastic changes to their daily activities.

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Meanwhile, back in my world, The Fabulous Las Vegas Strip, along with all gambling in Neva-da, was shut down March 17th, along with every business not deemed essential.

These measures were unprecedented. I felt panic begin to bubble. So what was it about my parents and in-laws that made them mindful of COVID-19’s serious nature, but not to the point of being alarmed? Dad’s comment about poliovirus started me thinking.

What other viruses or contagions did their generation face? How were those national and interna-tional health issues handled back when they were kids and young adults?

I always knew their generation was robust because their parents were—they lived through the depression and WWII. True grit was expected. My curiosity and penchant for writing nostalgia sent me down the rabbit hole. With a little old-fashioned research and interviews with them—Mom, Dad, Roger, and Diane, as well as my sister, Tracy—I took a step back in time to understand their current mindsets.

My parents and in-laws were born in the early 1940s and raised within Latah County.

Way before they landed on earth, ravaging illnesses like smallpox, yellow fever, cholera, scarlet fever, typhoid fever, diphtheria, and the big whopper, Spanish Flu, spread through the US, leaving its devastation through death and economic disruption. Since Dad specifically mentioned polio, I started my research there. Polio appeared in the US first in 1916 but continued its havoc until 1955 when a vaccine was developed. According to the CDC, by that time, 3,145 people died in the US, with a total of 57,682 cases.

“As kids, we knew about polio because of our parents’ concerns,” Mom said. “My familyHome&Harvest

-didn’t know anyone who had it, but my par-

ents put the fear in us. Polio could affect your breathing and eventually lead to paralysis or death.”

“My parents were afraid—really afraid—of polio,” Dad remarked. “Swimming at the lake was ok, but pools were suspect. But there were no businesses shut down, and people weren’t quarantined at home. President Franklin D. Roosevelt had polio and was in a wheelchair sometimes. As kids, we collected dimes and donated them to Roosevelt’s National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis.

That’s how the March of Dimes came about.”

And why FDR’s image is on the dime.

“Polio was a big fear growing up,” Diane said.

“People were crippled and twisted up, landed in an iron lung, or died. We had a cousin who was disabled for life. There was a boy in Genesee we knew who had it, too. I saw what it did to people, and if they lived, there was usually always everlasting effects. It scared me.”

Roger, however, didn’t remember polio as a looming fear when he was a kid. His terror was the measles. “I remember being completely afraid of the German Measles,” he remarked. “But I think that fear revolved around getting a shot more than getting the actual disease. Back in those days, the doctor came to our house, and it seemed like I always got a shot. I swear he used the dullest needle he could find. It always took several tries to stick me. It felt like a tenpenny nail going into my butt cheek. I screamed just at the sight of a needle.”

When the polio vaccine became available in 1955, it was such a big deal, both Mom and Dad belted out at the same time without hesitation, “Jonas Salk.”

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Indeed, Salk, the developer of the vaccine, rose to hero status. Luckily for Roger, the polio vaccine consisted of eating sugar cubes dosed with drops of vaccine, rather than a shot.

A variety of serious illnesses swirled around the country between 1950-1970. “Mumps, measles, chickenpox, all the kids had them,” Mom shared. “You expected to get those things as a kid.”

“Everyone eventually caught everything,” Roger laughed. “The first kid to get whatever illness was run around to all the other kids, so everyone who hadn’t had it to that point caught it.”

“I think it may have been easier on the parents if all their kids were sick at the same time,” Diane remarked. “Back then, parents just handled it and got through it. It was rare for a kid to go to a doctor or hospital unless it was serious.”

And just like catching some of those illnesses was expected, so was immunization. Pam remembers, “We lined up at school to get our polio sugar cubes. The smallpox vaccine was a scratch on your skin that welled up into a scab.

I never had one take; I must’ve been born immune to it.”

Diane and Roger both received their vaccination shots by going to the doctor’s office in Genesee.

“It was never a question to get vaccinated,” Dad observed. “Everyone got their vaccinations.

And when Pam and I became parents, we never questioned whether we would get our kids vaccinated. The disease was worse than the shot.”

“Plus, the kids had to be up-to-date on immunizations to be able to go to school,” Pam added.

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“There was never a question of whether Roger and I would vaccinate our kids, either,” Diane shared. “The shot protected the kids and everyone around them.”

Even when my sister, Tracy, became a mom for the first time in 1989, vaccinating children was the norm. “My husband, Cary, and I figured the alternative was worse. Why would we make our kids possibly go through those awful illnesses?

Both my kids got the chickenpox—there was no vaccine for it then. They stayed home for a few days, and we got through it.”

Mom, Dad, Roger, Diane, and Tracy all agreed they’d never seen quarantines for any illness.

“If you had a fever, you stayed home a few days, but other than that, you went to school or work,” Mom pointed out. “I never remember school activities being canceled, or school for that matter, at least in Potlatch.”

“Unless there was blood or a fever, you had to go to school,” Joe laughed. “And farming never stopped for illness unless you couldn’t move.”

Vaccination shots included DTP (diphtheria, tetanus, and peruses), developed in the 1950s, and MMR (measles, mumps, and rubella), developed in the 1960s. I vaguely remember getting some of my shots, and I wear the scar on my shoulder from the fear-inducing, pain-inflicting jet injector with pride. I survived the chickenpox and mumps (so did my siblings).

The biggest fear of getting chickenpox was itching to the point of causing a scar. Mumps just hurt my neck and throat. I never feared death.

Mom, Dad, Roger, and Diane all agreed that as young parents during the ‘60s, ‘70s, and ‘80s, they never really worried much about any of the illnesses, even epidemics or pandemics. They all expressed it was a different time back then.

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“The world was a smaller place,” Joe pointed out. “We lived in a rural area, so a lot of the illnesses never hit, or if they did, it wasn’t widespread.”

-and felt a little ominous. Robert was fearful

“We were tougher back then,” Roger claimed.

“Not to criticize the generations now, but back then, if penicillin didn’t cure it, you were screwed. If you got sick you still worked. That’s just the way it was.”

because of some life choices he’d made over the years. I couldn’t relate to his fears; I knew I was in a low-risk category. When our tests came back negative, he took me out for a beer out of sheer relief. I then realized how close it could’ve come to me and how vital a cure or vaccine would be. Now HIV/AIDS is controlled through proper medical care and medicines. To be honest, there was a time I wondered if anything would ever stop that horrendous virus.

Now people live fulfilling lives with it. There’s no cure, but education and precaution allow for it to exist, but not destroy.

However, when HIV/AIDS arrived in the early 1980s, it hit Roger and Diane close to home.

“We had a friend who had kids that went on a trip. Their boys came home with the disease and eventually died from it.”

Right now, our world faces yet another deadly virus. When I asked my “experts” about COVID-19, they all had about the same response and understood the serious nature of the illness.

“It was scary because at first people didn’t know how it spread,” Diane shared. “But once we knew, we didn’t worry much, although we felt for the folks who suffered and died.”

“At first, I thought it was a lot of to-do,” admitted Dad. “I thought it wouldn’t hit our area too hard, and that it would be like a lot of other illnesses. I took precautions, but given the time of year, farmers still have to work. I don’t see much of a difference in how I live. The 6-foot social distancing rule isn’t anything new; anyone I work around usually stays that far apart anyway. With county and state offices closed for the most part, it’s making signing up for the 2021 Farm Program interesting. As a nation, the US is mobile and enjoys its freedoms, so it doesn’t surprise me that we have a high occurrence of cases and deaths.”

“Our generation never had to face the same things the younger generations do now,” Diane con-tended. “There were fewer people.”

“Of course, we didn’t like to see people die from AIDS,” Joe shared. “But it was never a concern for me to catch it, even when I traveled.”

Tracy was in high school at the time of the outbreak. “HIV/AIDS wasn’t really an issue for me,” she explained. “Kids in school made fun of it; it was distant and not in our area, so it was easy to joke about it. It was on the news, so I was concerned, but I wasn’t scared to catch it.”

I personally wasn’t concerned, either. However, when I took my Human Sexuality psychology class at the University of Idaho, we were encouraged to get tested for HIV. My friend, Robert and I marched up to Student Health and went through the process. It was anonymousHome&Harvest

“I’ve had my Clearwater Power Board meetings scheduled at home until further notice,” Mom said. “And I take care when we have to go get groceries. But our country won’t be going back to the way it was before, no matter what.”

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“I don’t think America realizes yet how big of an effect it’ll have on us,” Diane speculated. “Social gatherings will be different; we’ll change how we live until we get a vaccine.”

“Shaking hands may never happen again,” Roger said. “The things we’ve always done socially and taken for granted may never come back.”

“I’m more afraid of getting diagnosed with cancer than I am getting diagnosed with COVID-19,” Tracy shared. “But for now, we limit access to people, and it’s been a struggle not seeing my kids and grandkids. But if we exposed any of them it would be devastating so we stay apart. I would-n’t say I’m fearful, but I’ll wear a mask to the grocery store. Everyone is being cautious.”

They all expressed positive comments about how their city, county, and state officials handled the situation, and seem optimistic as long as people continue practicing social distancing.

“COVID-19 is the disease that took away so much from so many,” Diane said. “No matter what avenue of thought you take, it has or will hit everyone in some way.”

As I read about previous epidemics and pandemics, I unearthed a few interesting tidbits that seemed to stand consistent through the ages and relevant to share: Sometimes, the tables were turned on what the experts projected to happen vs. what was actually happening.

Age, speed of spread, and gender/race affliction didn’t necessarily match up with predictions.

There was always a portion of the population where people with no symptoms tested positive—asymptomatic carriers.

The response time of worldwide leaders always differed.

There were always two camps of thought, no matter the illness: one said it wasn’t a huge concern, and the other said it was.

What lessons will COVID-19 teach us? Will our lives be changed long-term? Will the “Corona Generation” resemble past generations because they, too, share this unparalleled worldwide experience? Will spending more time at home unwittingly create a “back to basics” culture, where families and friends revive things like Sunday dinners, game nights, baking bread from scratch, gardening, and canning? Will there be more flexibility regarding working at home or less hours per week? Will anyone ever take toilet paper for granted again?

When this issue of “Home & Harvest Magazine” is available, a few weeks will have passed since I wrote these words. I wonder what questions will have answers, and what others will arise?

Author’s note: First, and most importantly, thank you, Heather and Tony, for this wonderful publication. Second, no one mentioned in my article judges how anyone, past or present, handles illness or immunization. The purpose of this article was not political or to stir controversy; it was purely selfish. I wanted to talk to my family and tie current events to the past. I tend to look back to look forward. - Temple

LET’S WORK

TOGETHER 1) If you are spending more time at home, you may be using more energy than usual. Monitor your daily electric usage with your electric provider’s web site or app. Heating your home, water heating, cooking and laundry are usually your biggest costs.

2) For those who have been financially impacted by this pandemic, contact your electric provider to learn about payment assistance, temporary payment deferral and debt arrangement plans.

3) Support local businesses wherever and whenever you can.

4) If you are in a position to help, remember our non-profit assistance agencies. They are facing their greatest challenge! Energy assistance, food banks, blood banks, senior care and temporary shelters are needed now more than ever.

5) Our actions during this time will define our generation.

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Our English as 2nd Language Pioneers

by Diane Conroy If you walked down main street in 1886, or rode in your wagon, you would hear many different languages. Some voices would be Norwegian, others Swedish, some German or Nimiipuu. A community was developing here on the Palouse without people sharing the same language.

John and Mary Lorang were in their new 1884 Genesee homestead with two very young boys and everyone at home spoke German. We know from the early journals he kept that John continued to travel to the Moscow mountains to support his young family by making wooden rails for the railroad. Mary Lorang would stay home and was quite frightened at first to be alone, with the small children. She wouldn’t even leave them to milk the cow and that caused a few arguments for the newlyweds. Later the cows would walk up to the home and bump against the house. Little Peter would wonder what this was, saying “Vas dat?” in German.

My grandfather, Bernard (Barney) Lorang was the other little boy at this time, born at home in 1886. He told us that he spoke only German up until the time he went to school, Ebel Country school just N.W. of White Spring Ranch. When arriving at school for the very first day, he said he was very nervous. He didn’t know any English and was afraid that would matter in the new school. He told us many years later that he still remembered the joy of being greeted by the school teacher in German.

The next little boy, Henry, was born at home in 1888 and also learned German as his first language. This served Henry very well in his later years when he was serving in WWI and got a chance to talk to German prisoners on Armistice Day. Again later, in 1960, Henry traveled to Europe and was able to talk to the German relatives who had barely survived WWII. Albert Lorang was the fourth child, born at home in 1889. This young family lived with four boys and two parents in a very tiny homestead. There was an upstairs to the home, but the stairway to the small 2nd floor had been built outside, which would be very cold for much of the year. In the pretty bay window downstairs, Mary Lorang set up her sewing machine and sewed and cared for the four boys.

John tried to set up farming with barley and wheat. He was also planting trees and the orchard began to grow. John became interested in grafting trees and tried to develop new kinds of apples and peaches, which the boys helped harvest and store.

John and Mary continued to speak German with the family until 1902. John eventually learned English from Mary, who had learned some phrases in her Wisconsin school while growing up. John did his best with English but spelled phonetically for the rest of his life. In his extensive 1910 journals, John and Mary were in Egypt with a church group on tour. Here he found an obelisk, “an oblisk of one salad peas”.

Home&Harvest

John would sometimes experiment with words if he wasn’t sure. One phonetically spelled word was as good as another. The next entry says “sollet cranad ruch”. I’ll let you guess what he meant.

The journals and letters found on site tell us all of the stories from 1877 to 1968 and beyond.

And John’s very artistic photograph collection grew along with the family. They also decided to save all their receipts and books.

John and Mary Lorang and their first four boys, grew up together in their tiny homestead as John began to photograph, adding to the family stories in this way. He loved photography and found Mary Lorang learning to ride a bicycle with children, Peter and Barney in 1898. John handed Mary the camera once in a while and she photographed them all, Peter, Barney, Henry and Albert, standing next to John while he inspected his new peaches, also in 1898. The boys don’t look too happy in this one, probably because early photographs took so long. It was easy to lose a smile while standing and waiting.

Tucked away in this tiny homestead were many items John and Mary had especially saved that belonged to their parents and reminded them of home. Mary had her mother’s flax spinning wheel and some early German religious shadow boxes. More recently, we found a visitor to the Ranch, tearing up over these shadow boxes.

She told us that her grandmother had those in their home in Germany when they had to leave during WWII. It was a precious moment, helping us remember why we are here at the Ranch preserving artifacts. John saved his father’s hand forged carpentry drill, his parent’s photographs and their notebooks. Mary also save her parents photos in an 1863 daguerreotype, glass photo with a small frame.

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She had protected this fragile photograph during their long trip on the train, steamboat and wagon all the way from their German community in Wisconsin. Both John and Mary showed these photos to their children and told stories of the early days. How Mary’s mother was only 16 years old when traveling on a ship to America with all her family. How John’s father was a seminary student born in France, who one day ran away to Germany to grow up and have his own family. How Mary’s grandfather was a tailor in Germany and very talented at it, but he decided to give this up and bring his family to America when he was 42. There were a lot of stories and the appreciation for history was passed down to another generation. On the shelves of special mementos, John and Mary put the small boxes containing all of their courting letters; from 1880-1884. These letters had also been carried by emigrant train, steamboat and wagon to be preserved on this homestead shelf. And John kept writing. His letters are earlier but his journaling began in 1897.

This family began and grew on the Palouse in Genesee, Idaho, preserving items from the past along with the stories to go with them and writing for the future, to preserve their own memories. They were serious historians and pretty good at it. Every single day in the last 140 years could be looked up and experienced as if we all were truly there, just as they had intended.

White Spring Ranch Museum is closed now for the duration, but will be open as Idaho is opened again. Our Facebook page holds many, many stories and photographs to help illustrate this tale. It is designed to entertain visitors for hours just by clicking on “photos”.

Give it a try if you are looking for something to do. See you “at another time” they used to say during the War. Take care and stay well.

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Safari Pearl Comics • Games • Costumes

Safari Pearl is your locally owned source for comics, analog games, and costumes We are adapting to serve you with several new services: • Curbside pick up and local delivery available • New comics will be on sale again starting May 20 • Board game rentals will be available starting June 1 • Jigsaw puzzle exchange beginning on June 15

Let us help you find the perfect game to create a great memory with your loved ones while you are living in exile for the good of our kingdom Thank you for your patronage and support during these difficult times. Your generous donations of food and masks have reminded us why we love living on the Palouse. Here’s to another 31 years of fun!

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a father’s thoughts on teaching his daughter how to fly

by David Flaherty

S

Someone in the small group says something… but I am listening to the distant engine. A few moments ago, the sound rose to a dull roar, hesitated, rose again, only to fall away to a dull ticking. I know she is watching the white needles rise and fall, looking for any change in their usual responses. Beside her, on that scuffed seat, the sectionals are neatly stacked. On the clipboard is her detailed flight plan – distances, VOC frequencies, compass headings. The sky is a deep, beautiful blue this Washington State summer morning. The weather is reported to be clear all the way to her destination. It should be an excellent flight. Yet… About five minutes ago, we exchanged “thumbs-up” as she added power to the Lycoming and taxied away to the end of the runway. Earlier I watched her perform her usual meticulous preflight of the 1968 Cessna 172. The aircraft has carried us faithfully for years throughout most of the West, with an occasional foray into the Midwest and East. There are 1200 hours on the new factory engine that was installed several years ago. The recent annual uncovered nothing unusual. But… Now we can hear the Lycoming begin its modest snarl and see the white wings begin moving toward us, down the black asphalt. In just a few ticks of a watch, air can be seen beneath the Cessna’s wheels. There is a full load of fuel in the tanks, but she is the only one in the four-place aircraft. She is flying light. My daughter is alone… solo!

Almost three hours are scheduled to pass before she will again touch the wheels to the earth, if all goes as planned.

Ahead of her are rolling wheatlands, then forested ridges split by huge canyons, followed by sharp peaks interspersed with high mountain meadows. Her route is to take her across the canyons of the Snake and the Salmon -- the rugged country of Hells Canyon and the River of No Return. Is this any place for a student pilot?

She has already completed her student cross-country flights, but is having difficulty getting enough time in to sharpen her overall skills for taking the checkride. The FBO’s plane she is using, a Piper Archer, is frequently out on charter when she is scheduled for a lesson. I agreed to part with 86 Lima for a couple of weeks so she could take the 172 to where she is working for the summer and taking flight instruction.

The Cessna is almost even with us now, climbing steadily and surely above the runway. The sound of the engine rises to a crescendo as the 172 passes. I can detect no faltering in its steady beat. She dips the wing in a graceful mimic of our earthbound farewell waves from the parking apron of the Pullman-Moscow airport, in southeastern Washington. I say to myself, Have a good one, daughter- and a very safe one. This trip will be a major milestone on her road to obtaining her private pilot’s license, a goal both of us have desired for a long time.

But, unbidden, the worried thoughts come pressing in. I have been flying long enough to know the hazards in venturing aloft are real.

Engines do fail. Mid-airs do happen. What right have I to encourage my daughter to fly? Is her learning just an ego trip for me? The white stripes on the Cessna’s blue fuselage are barely visible now. She is about over the departure end of the runway. I scuff the pavement with my shoe, continue to watch. Time and thoughts to myself are rushing by…

You were such a delight as a child. Never walking when you could run, always sitting on the edge of your seat in the car or plane, saying little, but absorbing the world passing by. We share many memories, you and I- the white flash below of antelope tails on the red desert of Wyoming, the long slogs through the heat and turbulence of the Boise Valley on summer afternoons, the fleeting glimpse of glacial lakes nestled high in cirques of the Cascades, the sudden flash of lightning on the course ahead. But should I have exposed you to the risks of learning to fly? Should I have encouraged you?

She will be turning out to the left soon, to leave the Pullman-Moscow airport pattern, to take up the initial heading that will lead her eventually to the Wood River valley of southern Idaho.

Perhaps today she will see the elk herd of the Seven Devils mountain range, browsing on a green ridgetop. Not too many people are favored

to see that sight, or on occasions to be wingtip to wingtip with golden eagles and red hawks.

But then, my thoughts: Is that enough reason to have nurtured your interest in flying? No, probably not, but there are other reasons. I know them by heart for I have stated them to myself many times.

There is your lack of self-confidence, for one thing. You always were shy. Why, I don’t know.

Your older sister, in contrast, seemed to do many things well with a minimum of effort. You need a success of your own. Your pilot’s license would be good for you. Many aspire to learn to fly, but few translate that dream into reality. You would be joining that select sorority of women who can successfully nurse a plane from the earth and navigate it across a road sign-less land. No interstate markers up there, telling you that a McDonalds is available at the next exit! Obtaining your license would mean that you had mastered the delicate art of fine-tuning throttle, rudder, ailerons, and elevator so to bring an aircraft in graceful three-dimensional arcs from downwind to base to final and to earth- as well as other skills of a high order. A pilot’s license also would seem to be a good asset for a geologist, which is your career goal.

But wait… She should have turned out to the left by now, toward the south. Hailey, and Wood River Valley, where she is working for the summer, lie that way.

Why are you still headed west? Are you mixed up already, baby? No, it’s O.K. Your plan was to climb high so as to receive a strong signal from the Lewiston, Idaho VOR, hidden down in the canyon where the Clearwater and Snake rivers join. Plenty of altitude is your game plan today, all along your route. There are valleys along that route and meadows that you might glide to and land if the 172 develops engine trouble. This is, if you don’t blow your cool. Your instructor has drilled you on emergency landing.

But I know the panic which rises when the engine sputters and your comfortable world aloft grows hostile. Would you react calmly enough? Actual landing strips are few and far between…

I’m jarred back to the present moment. Now the sun glints off the slanted wing as she turns. It is getting hard to see her now. The Cessna must be over three miles away. I slip back into my thoughts again and again.

I wish I could be with you, looking ahead for the first checkpoint, twisting the VOR needle, tuning in Fight Watch. But you must handle this by yourself.

I had to let go of your bicycle handlebar, then the car’s steering wheel. Now I must let go of the control wheel.

You wobbled a lot, on the bike. And the car driving had its moments, too. But you mastered them.

Now you must master this aloneness in the sky.

It comforts me to know that there are other pilots here and there in the airspace with you. You will hear their voices on Flight Watch, on the Center frequencies.

I doubt that you will pick up the mike to talk to them, but their voices should comfort you on the seemingly empty skies. I know that if you should call for help, their response would be immediate. There is a philosophy that if is better to have lived for a short while as a lion that forever as a lamb, that the taking of risks makes life worth living. But is that kind of thinking relevant when it comes to your own flesh and blood? Do other pilot fathers and mothers feel this way?

The tiny speck is gone! There is only blue! She’s gone!

I love you, Laurie. Go, baby, go!

As a postscript, yes, Laurie safely completed the long cross-country. And a few days later, she proudly flew away from her checkride with her license. And yes, her confidence is greatly improved. She has been working on a soaring ticket and does some acrobatics when she has the funds to rent a local Aerobat. She is well embarked on her college studies. She is on her way!

***

photos courtesy of David Flaherty

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