The Fields of Home - Book 37

Again, this cover just doesn't fit.  Who is that man?  He's too young to be grandfather and too old to be Ralphie!

The next installment in the Little Britches series, The Fields of Home, recounts Ralph's time working on his grandfather's farm in Maine.  Ralph's family had to move back to Massachusetts from Colorado.  The previous book, Mary Emma & Company, recounts their first year trying to adjust to city life.  Ralph works hard to help support his family.  But he keeps getting into trouble.  Life in Medford, MA has a lot more rules to follow than Littleton, CO.  So to keep himself out of trouble, Ralph is sent to live with his grandfather.

Only grandfather is not easy to live with!  He is a cantankerous old man, who yells and criticizes before he thinks.  He's got a huge chip on his shoulder and he tends to drive everyone he loves away from him.  Ralph can't do anything right in his grandfather's eyes and he chaffs under his authority.  One good thing that has happened to grandfather is that he has finally gotten a good housekeeper to help him, Millie, who is as prickly and grumpy as grandfather, but a hard worker and a good cook.

The farm was inherited by grandfather from his father, who established it before even the founding of the U.S.  Ralph's great grandfather didn't even beget grandfather until he was 72.  Grandfather has lived his whole life under the shadow of his own father's legendary toughness.  Even now in old age, he wants nothing but to please his father by leaving the farm in good shape.  But grandfather has suffered from malaria since he fought in the Civil War (he was at Gettysburg).  His children have up and moved away, his wife has passed, he can't get along with his brother Uncle Levi and his barn has burned down.  Nature is busy reclaiming fields his father once cleared.  He's desperately unhappy and he spreads that unhappiness to those around him.

Things reach a real nadir when both Millie and Ralph leave him (he basically kicks them off the farm in a fit of rage).  But Ralph comes back due to Uncle Levi's urging.  Together they try to understand grandfather and figure out how they can help him, for the truth is, they do love him and they do want the family farm to succeed again.

I found this book so interesting because it mentioned so many little things that I am just learning about and to me are all new.  I've been watching these homesteading videos and learned about this new 'trendy' thing called switchel, except it isn't new at all.   In our newly planted permaculture garden we have chokeberries, something that is also now trendy, except they knew about them back in 1912.   Uncle Levi comes to visit one time and brings lots of fruits from Boston including red bananas and blood oranges.  The only place I've ever seen red bananas is in Whole Foods and I had never heard of blood oranges until my oldest daughter went to Italy and then suddenly they became this new trendy flavor over here.  Except in 1912 farmers in Maine were eating them as treats from the city!  There were so many little incidents like this throughout the book. 

This book contains a wealth of information on farming and how they used to build equipment like forklifters (to clear about stones in the fields) manure spreaders, how to gather hay and stack it for winter, how to chop down trees and raise a barn.  It was like reading one of those Eric Sloane books about early American farm craft. 

While I really don't like the bleak covers on these Bison published editions, the inside black and white illustrations, which look original to the 1953 publication, are charming. 

I am really enjoying moving through this series.  People were such tough, resilient, hard workers back in the day!

For more book reviews go to Read 52 Books in 52 Weeks. 

Mary Emma & Company - Book 36

This cover has absolutely not a thing to do with this book.  C'mon Bison Books, you can at least read the book before selecting the cover!

Mary Emma & Company by Ralph Moody is the next installment in the Little Britches series.  The Moody family has been forced to flee Colorado because Mrs. Moody (whose name is Mary Emma, though her husband had always called her Mame) does not want to have to testify against a former neighbor.  They arrive in Medford, MA to stay with her brother, his wife and children.  Medford is just outside Boston.  Ralph, on the train trip there has been calculating how he can still work with horses in his life.   He figures stores must need a delivery boy and since this is 1912, people are still using horses.  However, in the city no one is going to let a boy drive horses.  He does however land a job right away working for a local grocer.  He delivers groceries either by foot or on bicycle, something his Uncle Frank teaches him to ride. 

The main plot of the story is how the Moody family gets established there in Medford.  They are extremely poor and Mother has to figure out how to keep a roof over their heads.  She and Grace, the oldest daughter, struggle to set up a laundry business.  They also manage to move into an old house (that has a furnace that eats coal, it is so inefficient.)  It is telling that as in most childhood recollections, school plays a very minor part.  Most of the adventures going on are about his job, helping his family set up their household, problem solving all the way, and adventures such as sledding in an old clay pit or trying to get all the neighborhood boys to salvage old railroads for cheap firewood.

School is actually rather miserable.  The principal is convinced that Ralph with his Colorado ways is a delinquent.  Massachusetts ways of doing things are a lot more regulated than Colorado ways of doing things. 

I enjoyed this peep into how people did homey things in 1912 MA.  How laundry was done, how furnaces worked, how people coped with winter.  Children were far more capable and had far more freedom than now. 

Two thumbs up.  I'm moving on to the next book in the series.  For more book reviews go to Read 52 Books in 52 Weeks.  

The Nonesuch - Book 35

The Nonesuch by Georgette Heyer is a novel that shows her at the height of her power.  It is very much in the Jane Austen mode.  It's a portrayal of manners in a country neighborhood and how everyone is affected when Sir Waldo Eckridge, known as the Nonesuch, moves in to the area for a few months.  A nonesuch is a colloquial term for someone who excels in social graces.  He is wealthy, handsome, a great whip (meaning he can control his horses when driving), an athlete.  And because he has so much position in society, he is assumed to be someone caught up in the vanities of celebrityhood 18th century style.

The story's underlying theme though is about how to handle wealth.  We have two spoiled characters in the novel, Tiffany Wield, a beautiful 17 year old heiress, selfish and childish, and Laurence, the Nonesuch's relation who is also a petulant self absorbed young man.  Both these characters have been corrupted by being indulged in their youth.  Sir Waldo himself says that he inherited his father's wealth at too early an age and didn't handle it well.  It gave rise to his reputation and he also feels guilty in that he spoiled Laurence and ruined his character as a result.  Laurence thinks he has a right to be taken care of by Waldo. Sir Waldo has done better supporting (but not spoiling) his young cousin Julian.  He knows there is a difference.  A lot of what is so great about Sir Waldo is that he does have the intelligence to navigate pretty well in terms of balancing wealth and all the vices it brings and shortcomings it highlights with developing a noble and humane, non-self-absorbed way of living.  Sir Waldo does this by providing homes for poor orphans.

It's fun that I just chanced to pick up this book at the library.  I hadn't read it in a long time.  I also happened to recently watch part of a video on how they treated the poor in the 18th century.  And it turns out that before the so called Enlightenment, caring for the poor was part of a Christian's duty.  But once the idea of free trade and industrialization came into play more and more, and the sort of Puritan idea that whether or not you were saved was reflected in how much God seemed to favor you with material success,  the poor began to be looked down upon.  They needed to pull themselves up.  Their misery was their own fault in some way.  Many people objected to this view (think Johnathan Swift or Dickens for instance) but it was a popular way to view the poor.   Sir Waldo's family like to heap scorn on his head for having his pet project of providing shelter, food and education to poor street urchins, but it is part of the reason they like and admire him.  Rumor and society gossip have read him all wrong and to a certain extent, since his wealth and position have placed him in a certain level, he goes along, but he is detached from it too.

He enjoys his sport, managing his money and helping poor children, and he had managed to remain single til the age of 35.  For no woman has really interested him.  They all seem to set their caps at him for his money and prestige and he really isn't into that.  Then he meets Ancilla Trent, the governess to the spoiled Tiffany.  Ancilla has natural dignity but no put on airs.  She's fallen in social standing.  Her uncle is a well admired general but circumstances forced her to work for a living.  She takes it all in stride.  She's figured she's missed the marriage market.  But she's an attractive, principled, intelligent woman with a great sense of humor.  Yet from afar she's absorbed all the scuttlebutt about the Nonesuch so she's got a lot of prejudice to get over, in spite of the fact that there is almost an instance rapport between Sir Waldo and herself.  She won't let herself see it and when she does see it, she is busy cautioning herself against inevitably disappointment.  He can not be as good as he seems. He's a Corinthian!  He can't really be serious about her.  So she tells herself.

The relationship is set in a country neighborhood in Yorkshire between Harrogate and Leeds.  Nothing much happens there but Sir Waldo and his cousin Julian actually like the country life.  Julian hates the social bustle of London and vastly prefers riding and fishing to having to make small talk amongst the ton.  Sir Waldo is busy trying to get his new property set up to be an orphanage and feeling out the neighbors to see how they'll accept this change.  But the neighbors are excited the famous nonesuch has come into their area and are busy inviting him to various social activities.  He is polite about it but soon his attraction to Ancilla becomes a major draw.  Meanwhile Julian has a crush on the ravishingly beautiful Tiffany.

A lot of people seem down on this novel because they don't buy the idea that an intelligent woman like Ancilla can really believe the Nonesuch is planning to harbor his illegitimate children at Broom Hall.  But I think Heyer does a good job setting up Ancilla's thinking and her emotions.  She has very proper sensibilities, she's a woman on her own trying to make a living.  Her reputation is everything, so she doesn't want to be seen as setting her cap at Waldo.  At the same time she's insecure.  She knows she's naive.  She can't quite let herself believe that someone like Sir Waldo would prefer her to anyone else he could get.  She's already been passed over in the marriage market.  And then in the middle of this muddle of questioning, doubting but falling in love herself, she hears about Sir Waldo's 'brats.'    So I don't think it is such a stretch to allow that Ancilla's insecurities, emotional defenses against probable heartache, and her prejudices could make her jump to conclusions.

It's a great story with lots of wonderful side characters, funny and lively conversations, and lots of subtle interplay between the characters as the plot unfolds.  What I liked was just how low key the romance really is.  Sir Waldo likes Ancilla immediately.  Ancilla slowly begins to respond to his banter.  They have an obvious rapport.  They are on the same wavelength and Sir Waldo loves to make proper Miss Trent laugh.

I thoroughly enjoyed this novel  For more book reviews go to Read 52 Books in 52 Weeks.

Garden Update - 8/10/19

I haven't been blogging much.  Just thought I'd jot down some notes on our garden.

• While we enjoyed a small but surprising amount of cherries, blueberries and strawberries in the early part of the summer, the birds soon discovered them and we haven't had any in more than a month now.  However, our aronia berry bushes are fruiting.  I don't quite know what to do with aronia berries.  No one will really eat them.  We've been trying to do more smoothies but haven't been too successful in that.  I have included them in those.  Mostly I have been eating them on my oatmeal with a little maple syrup.  They are super, super healthy so I've got to learn to incorporate them into my diet more effectively.
• We did have a surprising little peach harvest on one of our new trees.  The two nectarine trees aren't productive yet, but we had a little boon of peaches.  So I harvested them, blanched, peeled, sliced and froze them.  I hope to make a gluten free paleo peach crisp soon.  Maybe tomorrow for Granddad's birthday.
• Our vegetable garden is not that productive.  I'm disappointed.  I think I am just not paying enough attention to the soil.  I do think we have nitrogen deficient soil.  I've been putting coffee grounds sporadically around the various plants.  We've gotten a steady trickle Italian plum tomatoes and some cherry tomatoes.  But we've only had one big salad tomato (which was absolutely scrumptious) and hardly any of the other tomatoes.  What happens is they are growing very slowly and not ripening.  I am sure I need to do research into how organically to help them out.  But my brain can only handle so much information and I am scattered in all the different things I am doing rights.  
• No melons have started growing. None.  They flower, but no fruit.  Same with the pumpkin in the front yard.  What gives?  
• I planted two bell pepper plants.  One fruited one pepper which went bad on the plant.  The other gave me one pepper that we ate.  That's it.  Then they got diseased.
• I planted two cucumbers - one bush and one vine.  The vine one got attacked by some kind of pest.  The bush one has been the most productive thing in my veggie garden.  We have gotten really delicious cucumbers off of it.  I am going to plant that again next year.  
• I got one cutting of lettuce from my butter crunch spring planting.  
• The onion chives, basil and mint have done well.  Hooray!
• I harvested a bunch of tiny bitter carrots.  We ate a few in salads where they were mixed in with lots of other things and salad dressing to make them palatable.  Then I just forgot about the rest and they went all soft.  I'm not sure how to keep carrots crisp.  So I dumped them in the compost.
• We planted corn and I think chipmunks ate all the kernels because nary a one came up.
• We planted a bed of sunflowers.  So far only one had blossomed.   Next year I am going to plant sunflowers in a regular garden bed and use that 5th raised bed for veggies.

Fall Garden plans:

• I am not giving up!  I took the old failed bed for corn and planted it with a new kind of carrot and radishes for the fall. First I added some composted manure and organic topsoil.  I am trying to germinate them under burlap.  I just planted this yesterday morning.  We'll see!
• I bought 4 little arugula seedlings and just planted those where I had the carrots.
• I am trying to germinate romaine and another type of butter lettuce in the fridge.  I have three cardboard egg cartons which I planted with seeds and then stuck in the fridge for 4-6 days.  No germination so far though.  Then I am supposed to plant them in the bed and cover with mulch to keep roots from getting too hot.  
• I also plan to try broccoli and red cabbage.   And sugar snap peas, at some point in the near future.  I am going to have to take out some of the unproductive tomato plants, amend the soil and then plant.
• Even though I feel like a crappy gardener, I am undaunted (so I tell myself).  I need to persevere.   I think I am only going to learn by doing.  I just don't take instruction well from reading about stuff.   Watching videos helps some, but mostly I think the only way for me to learn is by experience.

The Home Ranch - Book 34

If you like reading about cowboys and what they do all day, this book is for you.

The Home Ranch is the third (chronologically) in the Little Britches series by Ralph Moody.  In this story he goes back to the summer he worked as a cowhand at Mr. Batchlett's home ranch.  He touches on this briefly in a chapter in the second book, Man of the Family.  But in The Home Ranch he takes a whole book to talk about what he did that summer.  I enjoyed this book but perhaps not as much as the first two.  It turns out cattle ranching and working with horses gets pretty technical and I just couldn't get interested enough to really understand what was actually going on. How exactly did the horse 'cut' the calf from its mother cow?  I'm fuzzy on it.  Why exactly did they have to take the herd to some such destination over miles and miles of vast territory and through terrible weather?  I think they were finding traders on the way?  But the whole financial thing was hazy to me. 

Ralph meets a whole new slew of people living and working at the home ranch (which I gather is the opposite of the ranch closer to town)  Mr. Batchlett deals in milk cows who aren't currently producing.  But he's also got steers to trade as well.  We meet some character types, Cowboy Sid who loves Jenny, Hank the old braggart, Zeb, slow, quiet and competent, and the new cowhand, brutal Trinidad. And most importantly, Mr. Bendt, whose daughter Hazel becomes Ralph's best friend.  Moody does a wonderful job at sketching her character, smart, determined, bossy and overly sensitive.  Exactly like a 12 or 13 year old girl.  But they both loves horses and the ranch life and Hazel wants to learn those riding tricks that Ralph can do.  She knew about him before he arrived for she'd saved a clipping from the local paper from when Ralph and Hi won at the rodeo.

I thought the book didn't really get absorbing until about half way.  Then things started to pick up.  If you love horses, read this book.  There are several horses with personalities in this book.  One thing I noted though is that the women in this book are as hard working as the men and treated as equals.  It made me recall how those western states gave women the right to vote before the 19th Amendment made it constitutional law.  I can see why those western states were more advanced than the east coast.  Everyone absolutely had to pitch in to get things done.  I think the men truly appreciated the teamwork women offered.

For more book reviews go to Read 52 Books in 52 Weeks.

Letter To A Suffering Church - Book 33

This little book is only 105 pages long, so I don't know if it quite qualifies in the 52 Book challenge, but it's a book and I read it!

Letter to a Suffering Church is by Bishop Robert Barron.  It is subtitled A Bishop Speaks Out On The Sexual Abuse Crisis.  In it, in his amazingly compelling and concise style, Bishop Barron puts the whole crisis in context (both scripturally and historically) and exhorts us to stay in the Church and fight the battle!  As he says, we know the story of the Church is a divine comedy.  We know it will have a happy ending so we should stick it out and fight the wickedness and corruption.  And we fight by speaking up whenever we can, getting more involved in church life so we can really see what's going on, and working on our own holiness through prayer, devotion, study.  Holiness is the goal.  We need to be the new saints of the Church, always working for reform.  This is our time!

I think the bishop speaks the truth.  I went through a period of about a month, right after the Cardinal McCarrick news came out when I had such disgust and such a cold fury seized my heart that it was very hard for me to go to Mass.  I sat in the pew so alienated and angry.  But once my initial anger worked off, I began to see that the answer was not to flee (as repugnant as the whole crisis is), but to wade into the fray.  I even went to protest outside McCarrick's door to ask him to resign (and repent!).  My own parish is aging.  It was started by baby boomers right after Vatican II and the population is aging out with not enough new parishioners to replace them.  Masses that used to be full with standing room only when I joined 18 years ago, now have big patches of empty pews.  The demographics have shifted so dramatically since I joined.  But I feel this is where the Holy Spirit has put me and I will do my best to be a contributing member trying to work out my salvation along with the community of believers I share parish life with.

So if you are feeling despair over the state of the Catholic Church, this is a great heartening read.  God bless the good bishop for writing it!  The link above is to the amazon kindle edition.  But if you want the slim paperback version, which is what I bought, you can buy it here.

For more book reviews go to Read 52 Books in 52 Weeks.