Instilling the Desire for Consumption in Little Kids

Jacob and I noticed twice already that mall-bought jeans/pants for toddler girls, very occasionally given to Josie by relatives, are cut in a way as though to make them look like little women - tight around the butt and all (because she only ever owned 2 pairs of such). Do you think it's part of a general trend to make children want to grow up/feel like they are growing up/becoming like adults earlier in order to instill in their little hearts a desire to consume from the early on? I think it's fine for her to enjoy wearing several fancy clothing items that she owns, but it's a part of my general philosophy of child-rearing that the desire for shopping and consumption should be kept at minimum (without children feeling deprived, however, as "crash-dieting" doesn't work and makes no sense either). That's, in part, why it's so important to me that she goes to school where people share a similar philosophy of life, and where there's little or no peer pressure to own certain brands (and also why I refuse to allow a TV in my home). The Waldorf elementary school in town used to (and probably still) have a rule where children were not allowed to wear to school anything with brand names/pictures, unless the brand name could be covered by a hand (a very small-size brand labels only, in other words). There was some controversy around it - but now, while I think that pictures of the most innocent nature are OK (flowers! butterflies!), it's great that brand names are banished.

Updates

I know I haven't blogged for a while! Let's see what's been happenig to me recently.

I went on another great birding event down at the Kickapoo Valley Reserve, where I got increasingly better at identifying birds by sight and by sound. When Jacob and I repeated this trip on my birthday earlier this week, I was actually able to point out to him a whole bunch of birds - green heron, a common yellowthroat, yellow warbler, a female and a male orchard orioles, catbirds, house wrens, and more. He, on the other hand, spotted a male roufus-sided towhee, which I also identified for him. I am getting quite good, actually, but I also learned that it's best to go birdwatching with someone who knows more than you!

I got a gift certificate to the nicest nursery in town, and am going to buy myself a rose bush to plant on the side of the deck, next to the climbing red rose bush my best friend Ann gave me for my birthday last year. I love planting trees and bushes, in general. They are a bit like stock market investments (I learned this year!) - no good to you for the next ten to twenty years, but deeply satisfying when you get there.

I spent a bunch of time mulching today - weeded and mulched my lily-of-the-valley patch, as well as the said rose bush and the cornellian cherry tree (kizil in Russian, I believe), that Jacob picked out and gave me for my birthday last year. See, I am trying to increase the diversity of fruit I can grow on this farm, to add to my budding jam making business (something I am going to try this summer, see how it goes!). We already have a massive amount of elderberries, a large red and black raspberry patch, a sour cherry tree, an apple orchard, and a strawberry patch I personally planted two years ago. This year has been very cold, however, so there were barely any blossoms on any of the trees, and the strawberries are just starting to form. Can you believe it? We haven't even put in tomatoes and peppers for that reason, and it's already June. Little Josie helped with the mulching and is now uniformly covered with what we call "bullshit" - that is, literally the bull manure from the local bull sperm bank operation, mixed with sawdust, which served as bedding. (Don't worry, it's long ago composted into beautiful black dirt mixed with wood chips, and is not what you think).

Jacob and I planned our trip to NYC this summer, and made necessary arrangements armed with our debit card. I can't believe how expensive it is to stay at a hotel in NJ where my cousin's wedding is, but what you gonna do - I am planning to get wasted, and there's no question of driving. I am very much looking forward to seeing Ksusha and hopefully Ira in NYC during our stay - we are arriving on the 1st, and I am leaving on the 7th. I will be flying out of NYC instead of Boston, as originally planned, because it's simply not gonna work - sorry, K and Yorik! We'll be flying out of Milwaukee, where we have quite a few relatives, though, unfortunately, my favorite of Jacob's cousin's Peter is not going to be there, as he's currently in the army at Fort McCoy. Too bad, because the guy has a great take on the world.

Jacob and I went to watch Sex and the City: TM. I liked it, though I think the show worked best in 30-minute segments. I am now catching up on the 6 seasons of the show, of which I only watched a bit at AUBG. I am now on season 2.

I discovered a disturbing fact that the female bluebird is building a new nest. I don't think any babies hatched from the old nest, there used to be two blue eggs in there, now there's only one, and I have no idea what's going on - I wonder if it has to do with my touching the eggs back when I first discovered them. This time I didn't touch the egg but used a hand mirror instead, which is what you are supposed to do. I also discovered that the wrens, did, after all, stay to nest on my land, only instead of the front yard (where I could enjoy them), they made a nest in an old pole along the fence row on the back pasture. That's OK - I can still hear them on this side of the house. I also discovered a whole bunch of barn swallow nests. Gosh, I love birds.

I am going to La Crosse tomorrow, to the mall - something I do very rarely - so I can get myself a nice dress for that wedding in NYC. It can't be black - better be nice green or blue or my all-time favorite, red.

The grapes are looking good so far this year.

This weekend is the free for all fishing weekend when you can fish without buying a license, and Jacob, with his newly-discovered passion for fishing, is hopefully going to take me fishing for some trout. We both have no interest in any kind of hunting or fishing activity that doesn't directly translate into food on our table - so hopefully we catch the right kind of fish to keep.

I am warming up to John McCain, sort of, but I don't think Obama would be a disaster if he won. If he doesn't get assassinated or something. Unlike the majority of other people I know (except several Hundts, my husband, and my best friend Ann), I am not at all taken with Obama.

So that's what's new with me.

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening: Maple Sap Collection

So... if you like to go Bump! Bump! Just jump on the hump of the Wump of Gump. - One Fish Two Fish by Dr. Seuss

The best part about Jacob's family is the way they combine serious dedication to completing the task at hand with the contagious good cheer and a sense of adventure: think Protestant work ethic meets Indiana Jones.

A good example of that would be yesterday's maple sap collection. Being unsure of how much or little you happened to know about maple sugaring tradition, I will provide a brief overview: in the very end of winter you get about several weeks when the temperatures stay above freezing during the day but fall below freezing at night. This thaw-freeze-thaw cycle, essentially, causes the tree sap to run during the day, but stop at night and resume again during the day. This is a good time to tap maple trees for their mildly-sweet sap, which, when boiled down, produces a wonderful product that Canadians, New Englanders, and Midwesterners (and others, I am sure) are known for: maple syrup. It's got a wonderfully light texture and a fairly delicate yet distinct flavor, that is great on pancakes, breakfast sausage (sic!), and as a sweetener for various baked goods. You can also make my beloved maple butter - whipped butter with maple syrup that had been boiled down to the soft-ball stage, and snow taffy - caramel-like candy that is formed when a little bit of soft-ball stage maple syrup is poured onto the fresh, cold snow, causing it to cool and set rapidly. In addition it provides a great opportunity to run around in the woods collecting sap, as well as spend time by the evaporator in the later winter - about the time you are ready to be outside.

Jacob and I don't do it - we wouldn't possibly have the time, and, most importantly, we don't have nearly enough maples to make any significant amount of syrup - for the conversion ratio is 40 to 1 - as in 40 gallons of sap yielding a single gallon of syrup. But we do like to come up and help a little with the process.

So yesterday that involved taking a ranger (a mule-type ATV) down the steep, steep Driftless hills, over the river, and through the woods, in order to empty the buckets of sap that had collected over night (about 50 of them) into the big tank on the back of the ATV. At first we wanted to go alone, but another guy up there insisted that Henry - Jacob's younger brother, come with us - not only is he a better driver when it comes to driving off-road in the fresh, thick snow/mud, but also because one more person would make it easier (as in at all possible) pull the ranger out if it got stuck. Also, Henry knew the trail much better, because he did it everyday.

So, the three of us loaded into the ranger and off we went. Frankly, it was literally the most scary experience of the past few years of my life, and I mean it. The ride was extremely bumpy, the trails were extremely steep and narrow, and highly slippery at that. A roller-coaster ride is probably comparable, except that there's actually a real chance of the ranger rolling over, "resulting in serious injury or death." (That's what I thought, anyway, but the boys didn't seem to be nearly as concerned.)

It was fun though, too - we just kept cracking jokes and laughing. You see, we just kept joking about the possible dangers of the adventure (greatly exaggerated by the boys for the sake of good laughs), about my being abandoned in the woods, and other things along those lines. A couple times we had to get out to let the driver (Henry) make it up or down a hill without the passengers (or because I was too terrified to ride at that time). Jacob also pointed out the spot where "Papa [Jacob] shoots his bucks" - his favorite hunting spot, and that, naturally, filled me with the primal, ancestral pride a caveman's wife would have for her hunter.

In addition to all the light-hearted humor, it's was a great outdoor experience - the woods were spectacular in the soft light of the early evening, the air felt slightly chilly and moist - very different from the dry winter air that we were used to, and, of course, it was much, much warmer than most days in the last five months. The fresh snow covered the ground, and the woods were clear and transparent as winter woods can be. It was wonderfully quiet, too. Even the scary ride part was kind of fun, in retrospect, although my heart sank into the abyss of dread many many times. But we came back, laughing, slightly cold, and entirely alive, to warm up in the sweet, moist evaporator steam. (There was a cow giving birth on the background, by the way).

I guess the moral of the story is that though, in my opinion, this task was a challenging one, everyone enjoyed themselves very much, nobody quit, and was definitely going to do it again. It's this very special balance between work and play that drew me to rural lifestyle in general. It's a wonderful, wonderful life.

Voted for Clinton so McCain Wins

My favorite cousin Peter voted for Hillary with the sole purpose that McCain has a lesser opponent to run against in November. I thought this was very ingenious - such a thing wouldn't have occurred to me (not that I can vote, but anyway).