Tuesday, January 31, 2012

Letters From The Barn: Homemade Wine

Letters From The Barn: Homemade Wine

For the holidays, I got a lovely gift of some homemade wine. A riesling to be exact. Now, as someone who barely drinks, even knowing the type of wine makes me feel like an expert. I took it with me to one holiday event, but they were all basically tea drinkers like me, so I lugged it home again thirty miles on a snowy, foggy night.

The next time I tried to drink it was a Saturday. I had worked hard all day outside. I'd put new bedding down in the barn and chased a rabbit that had escaped the barn and was hiding out in the snow. He was wise, though. Once the goats and I got out of the way, he made his way back through the fence and hopped back into the barn like he knew just where he belonged.

After that, I knocked ice out of water buckets, tried to fix a broken furnace and worried over my septic tank. By the end of the day, I thought perhaps it was finally a good time to open that bottle of homemade riesling. I got it out of the cabinet. Found a special glass. And brought it to the table to sit and read a book for the rest of the evening.

Only, I had no corkscrew. Apparently, people who actually drink wine know that you need to have these things around the house. And, apparently, it's not included in the book of manners that one must give a corkscrew to your numbskull friends who don't drink and don't realize until the last possible second that they might need one.

So, I made a cup of coffee and put everything back in the cabinet. Then, I put it on my grocery list to buy a corkscrew. Do you think I've bought one yet? Let's just say that I'm planning on bringing it over to my neighbor's house the next time we do something wonderfully boring on a Saturday night like read the paper together or play cards. Do you think she might have a corkscrew? Let's hope she does.
 

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Meriwether O'Connor 

World Book Night Sign Up Extended to February 6th!

 

Monday, January 30, 2012

Wrapped in Love

Wrapped in Love

By Jane-Ann Heitmueller

She rocked gently in the glow of the warm, open fire that frigid winter morning. Harsh winds howled outside, fiercely whipping rough pine boughs against the small wooden cottage. As she softly hummed, the young girl’s nimble fingers moved skillfully over the sturdy, muslin material. She had begun the quilt just weeks ago when the chill of winter had, like a creeping fog, silently eased its way from the mountaintops down into the sheltered valley nestled below.

“Mary,” her mother had always said, “ Idle hands are the devil’s workshop. You must always involve yourself in a worthy, productive project during the cold months when you are unable to work outside.”

She always dreaded the arrival of those bone chilling, dull days spent inside the small log cabin, counting the days until the warmth of spring returned once again to the mountains. Mary yearned to view emerging fragile shoots of green on the now barren limbs. She missed watching fluffy clouds drifting in a sea of blue overhead and the chatter of busy creatures in the nearby woods. How she longed, stitching with daily diligence by the flickering firelight, for the sound of water dripping from the eaves overhead, a sure signal that sunshine was close and warm enough to be a true harbinger of spring. “I feel just like a mama bear,” she frowned and begrudgingly complained, “closed up in my dark cave to hibernate.”

As the days slowly passed Christmas came and went, a new year began its journey and Mary grew another year older, yet the stillness and chill remained. Mary continued to rock and daydream as the quilt on her lap began to resemble a bright flower garden. The same lovely, comforting images that her mind so desired seemed to spring to life before her eyes as the quilt progressed week by week. Would she ever be free to skip amongst the yellow daffodils on the hillside and bend to smell the sweet hyacinth blooms peeking their tiny head out of the warm earth, or surprise her mother with a handful of deep purple Iris that languished with such elegance beside the sparkling mountain stream? She continued to wish and stitch as the days came and went.

A certain uneasiness awakened Mary early that March morning and a sudden need to complete her quilt that day tugged at her heart. While the family remained nestled placidly in their warm loft beds overhead, she slipped down the wooden ladder to tend the embers in the fireplace and resume her sewing. Mary was puzzled by the deep desire she felt inside, yet was determined to follow the intangible, internal directions and settled down to stitch with an eagerness that surprised her.

At the exact moment she completed the last stitch and tied the final knot her concentration was suddenly broken. “Mary,” called her father with a certain urgency to his tone, “come quickly.”

Bolting from the rocker, still grasping the completed quilt, Mary did as her father ordered and scrambled quickly up the ladder into the loft. “Hurry,” he directed, “get something warm and soft to wrap around your new baby brother.”

It was only at that moment Mary noticed the tiny figure cradled in her mother’s arms. No one had told her about the wonderful surprise that was to arrive simultaneously that March morning with the welcomed beauty of spring. Suddenly, as though struck with a bolt from heaven, Mary instantly realized the reason for the unexplained urgency she had felt in the stillness of that early dawn only hours ago.

Smiling broadly, she stretched forth her arms and proudly handed the completed quilt to her father, who tenderly wrapped her new baby brother in the gift Mary had spent the cold winter designing and creating. Her precious quilt of love.

Saturday, January 28, 2012

WASH DAY

Wash Day
By

Bettye H. Galloway

Wash day was always Monday. At least it was always Monday in our little community in North Mississippi in the early forties. These were the days before REA found us and provided electricity, which meant no electricity and no running water.

Dale, with her two smallest girls, would come up our hill at daylight on wash day, and by the time we got up and ate breakfast, she had already started the fire under the black wash pot. By the time we were allowed to go outside, Dale was busy carrying water from the pump to fill the three tubs lined up on the sawhorses behind the house, one for scrubbing, one for rinsing, and one with bluing water for the white clothes. Dale had mastered the art of washday. She sorted the items from our hampers into three piles—whites, coloreds, and work clothes. The whites went into the first tub where they were soaked for a while, gently scrubbed on a rub board, and then carried to the wash pot and boiled while she worked on the colored clothes. The whites were removed very carefully from the boiling water with a broom handle and carried to the second tub on the sawhorses where they were rinsed and transferred to the third tub of bluing water. My sister and I were too busy playing with Dale’s girls to pay much attention to what she was doing, but we were allowed to keep the fire stoked under the wash pot and to hand her the clothes from the piles as she needed them. When the whites had soaked for a while in the bluing water to whiten them, we were allowed to help hang them on the clothesline holding them in place with wooden clothespins and being careful to space them so that there would be room left for the colored clothes.

The colored clothes, meanwhile, had been soaking in the first tub. They were scrubbed on the rub board, boiled in the wash pot, and transferred to the rinse water. We then were allowed to hang them on the clotheslines with the white clothes. The work clothes followed the same pattern with the exception of the trip to the clothesline. Usually the white and coloreds had filled the clothesline, and the work clothes (usually denim and khaki) were hung on the fence surrounding the yard.

After the wash was completed, Dale stripped us all and gave us a good bath in the wash water—her girls in the rinse water and my sister and me in the bluing tub. We were filthy from playing around the ashes at the wash pot and around the tubs all morning. She then carried all the water, bucketful by bucketful, to the garden for irrigation. Water was scarce and nothing was wasted.

Toward noon, we watched Dale and her girls walk down the hill toward their house, and we waited with bated breath for the next washday—a whole week away!

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Born, reared, and educated in Oxford, Lafayette County, Mississippi, Bettye Hudson Galloway is retired from Mississippi state service (primarily from the University of Mississippi) and as the executive vice president of a drug testing laboratory.