Where do you create?
November 17, 2011 § Leave a comment
Keep sending in those photos! I’m curious to see the places that you claim for your creative projects. (Click here for the initial post about this request and giveaway.)
You might also mention what specific kinds of art, crafts, trades, and projects you like to do in your creative place. . . from making snowflake cookies in the kitchen to shaping wooden spindles in the back shed, from sketching in the office to collecting scraps of fabric from thrift stores.
What’s in it for you? Why take the time to snap and send a picture? In addition to building the artistic community simply by sharing with one another, (1) the first people to submit will receive packets of blue pumpkin seeds, and (2) each person who sends a photo or two will be entered in a drawing for a copy of Storey Publishing’s Country Wisdom Almanac: 373 Tips, Crafts, Home Improvements, Recipes, and Homemade Remedies. Send your photos to birchbark (dot) erica (at) gmail (dot) com.
I’ll be checking my inbox . . .
Amen, sister!
November 14, 2011 § 2 Comments
That’s what my roommate said when I read her this excerpt from farmer/writer Jenna Woginrich’s blog, Cold Antler Farm:
The morning started with a two-hour interview with a journalist from New York City. She was writing a book on the resurgence of domestic arts and DIY culture across America and the role of homemakers. We had a good talk, and I showed her around the farm. By the time she was packed up and waving out the driveway, I realized I had never thought about many of her questions before she asked them. She wanted to know about my thoughts on feminism and homesteading, about the role of women, about trend in suburban moms getting chickens and herb gardens. Some of the answers surprised me, and I realized how much of a traditionalist I am at heart. I might be a woman with her own empire, but at the end of the day I just want to be taken care of, and take care of things. I want this because I feel like it’s my biological right as a member of my sex, and because it makes me happy. I don’t think wanting to be a wife or mother makes me any less a feminist than wanting to be a welder or an Air force Pilot. Nor do I dare say my desires should be anyone else’s. But when it all comes down to it: I’m a simple gal. If I ever find the right man I’ll happily get hitched, take his last name, and stay home to take care of the kids and dinner. I got the 14th amendment and a mortgage with my name on it. I’m all set.
I think I smiled and repeated that Amen. You can read the rest of the post here.
Here’s a somewhat related magazine publication: Darling Magazine
And here’s a hardly related, but totally darling song: Amen by Eden's Edge
And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to play with two dogs, make a loaf of pumpkin bread, feed and water 34 horses, buy some paint, and craft a display to go over the fireplace.
Creative spaces, a pale blue pumpkin, & a giveaway!
November 13, 2011 § 4 Comments
Have you heard of the publication Where Women Create? It’s an entire magazine devoted to exploring the work spaces that women shape around their creative endeavors. Being a woman keenly aware of and influenced by her surroundings, I have found this publication to be at once surprising, unique, and inspiring.
I have yet to attain the dream home with its well-lit studio room or renovated loafing shed. And I rather wish I could be leasing a 100-year-old house or a flat in an old brick building where I might claim unique spots near windows with detailed trim. But I’m currently making the best of yet another cookie-cutter apartment. It’s not perfect, gorgeous, or quaint, but a girl does what she can. Lately I’ve been finding my creative spot on a quilt my sister gave me for Christmas, nestled with cushions in front of the fireplace. Add a cup of coffee and a handful of writing ideas, and I am set.
This is where I create.
Tucked in corners around where I create, I still have pumpkins! My favorite has been one I just had to take home from work, because it’s a very pale baby blue. See?
But, as you might also notice, the pumpkin was starting to get soft and brown near the stem today. This means Cook Me Now. So I cut into my blue pumpkin and set it on a baking sheet. Do you know what I found inside? Lots and lots of seeds. The seed cavity was huge, although there is still a good bit of flesh to eat. And no, the flesh is not blue (that would be weird, right?) but typical pumpkin orange. I can smell it baking right now. And I am feeling generous.
So here’s my giveaway offer this month, which is perhaps more of a trade: I’m curious to know about your creative spaces – even if they are just dreaming-of-creating spaces right now. Men and women are welcome to answer, by the way! So snap a shot or two, and send it to me at birchbark (dot) erica (at) gmail (dot) com. In exchange for your pictures, some of which I will post with credits on this blog, I’ll send you a packet of seeds from my pumpkin . . . until all the seeds are gone. (Be sure to provide me with your mailing address.) The sooner you submit, the more likely you are to have blue pumpkins growing in your garden next year! I’m looking forward to seeing your studios, workshops, wood tables, living rooms, attics, backyards, garages, barns, and wherever else you make things beautiful, make things messy, and make things up.
And this book is just stunning
November 11, 2011 § 1 Comment
La Tartine Gourmande is one of my favorite food blogs. Author and food stylist Béa tells stories of her life in the U.S., her childhood in France, her friends and family – all framed around creative recipes and beautiful photographs. Because she eats gluten-free, her recipes are, too . . . yet the focus is less on being gluten-free and more towards being gorgeous and delicious.
And she just completed a book! While it’s not officially released, it is available for pre-order here.
I would page through it just for the prettiness.
Half the reason I want this book is because it has a chicken on the cover
November 11, 2011 § Leave a comment
Make the Bread, Buy the Butter
For those of us inclined to make most things from scratch, this seems a likely and lively tutorial. AND it turns out the author also has a blog. I should have known; doesn’t everyone these days? Check out The Tipsy Baker for stories, recipes, and more about her recently released cookbook.
A November poem
November 9, 2011 § Leave a comment
Here’s one I wrote a couple years ago, back home in Iowa.
early november
the corn tilts
in the garden.
the dog bites at
empty shucks,
pulls them toward
her until a light
crack breaks the stalk.
I glance over from
where I am digging
the last of the carrots,
the soil wet as clay,
the snappy orange and
purple roots still smelling
fresh as spring.
.
she tosses her head,
tears open those crisp
tawny husks to find
a crumbling white
core. noses and huffs
at the chaff. only
leftover failures.
all the sweet corn
has been savored.
all the colored popcorn
lines the windowsills.
.
and certainly, this is not
the fat golden field corn
that she and our other
dogs steal from
the neighbors, to sit
down with the bright
yellow between their
paws, to chew off each
dry, dented kernel with
a hunter’s satisfaction.
On a farm in Dordogne
November 8, 2011 § Leave a comment
Any of you who know me well are aware of my love for France. I could go on and on! But rather than do that (again) here, I just wanted to share a France-focused web magazine with you – and my article they just published about one of the places I stayed and worked as a WWOOF volunteer in the spring of 2010.
On the Farm: WWOOFing in Dordogne
I will go back one day!
Something beautiful, indeed
November 5, 2011 § 1 Comment
I’m sitting at the table, making this a long morning, comfy in snowboots and a sweater. Dried flowers stand in a jar. My dog occasionally comes over to look at me with eyes pleading for a walk in the sunny outdoors. My hair is a mess, but I don’t feel like brushing it. I’ve got at least an hour’s worth of edits to make on this novel – dull but necessary changes to make before it can be published, before I can move on to the creative fun of another. As I work, options about the future, and the problems and promises of the present, keep floating in and out of my mind. And it is the perfect time for this song and its video. I don’t know what it is about needtobreathe, but their music tends to mend a little bit of my heart whenever I listen.
It seems like we humans want to have causes. Something to latch onto, to drive us forward, to give us purpose. One of those, for many of us, is to make and share and discover beauty. Here’s one of my routes to finding it:
From reservation to boarding school
October 12, 2011 § Leave a comment
My first new-library-card book checkout has turned out to be a success. (No wanting to throw the book across the room because the writing style is so dreadful or the characters so stereotyped. Hooray!) Linda LeGarde Grover’s short story collection, The Dance Boots keeps me coming back, to be inside the world she creates, to try and know its inhabitants. Grover writes prose with a strong poetic quality, her lines rhythmic and her images rich. The voice changes subtly, but enough, as different characters narrate their stories. And her characters are vulnerable, strong, complex. You want to know them. A few times I did get a little confused as to where we were in time and who happened to be narrating, as the scenes frequently jump, but that’s my only complaint – and may not be an issue for readers with less of a tendency to daydream! If you’re looking for a primarily plot-driven book, this isn’t the one. If you’re looking for a book that explores the human experience – particularly, the influence of Indian schools and white culture on the Ojibwe of Northern Minnesota – this is one you’ll want to be sure to get your hands on.
Here’s an excerpt:
And mother was beautiful – the sum of all she was, was beauty. In her white low-waisted dress with the embroidery down the left side of the skirt. In the dress she wore to powwows, black cotton with red tape trim, cones rolled from snuff can covers sewn on the hem, the pleasant jingle they made as she walked and as she danced next to her dear friend Lisette, off to the side of the powwow circle, swiveling slowly, nine steps left, nine steps right. Lisette, she was called, and Mother was called Shonnud. Lisette was a maple tree, strong and stately, Shonnud an aspen that trembled to the music that moved the still air.
. . . Their dancing was hard work, controlled, disciplined, and prayerful; their calves were trim and very firm from this dancing, their feet muscular. And I watched them and waited for the day that I would be a young lady in a black dress and beaded jacket, waited and watched them dance as they had since they were young ladies, Shonnud and Lisette dancing side by side, dipping gracefully in a rhythm deeper in the hearts and souls of women than the drumbeat. (Grover 93-94)
The book won the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction, which is placed in such small print on the cover I didn’t even notice until a moment ago. This is encouraging – see, I do have good taste! More seriously, I am just encouraged by happening upon writing that insists upon being art, not just entertainment. Writing that reads naturally, that masks the effort put into the work. Like a ballet.
Waiting for frost
October 6, 2011 § Leave a comment
We check the weather every day. When the frost comes, everything changes, and quickly. What will survive – and for how long? What won’t?
Growers and producers set up farmers’ markets and CSA shares around specific dates, carefully defined growing seasons. But the frost makes the real call as to how long the farm will continue to be in production.
Do we humans control nature? Sometimes, and sometimes too much. But the weather reminds us that in the grand scheme of things, we have to fit within the earth’s habits and patterns. We can make the most of them, and adapt to them. We can use such things as hoop houses and greenhouses and row covers and mulches for the fields, sheds and heat lamps and straw and water holes and fans for the livestock, to support better and longer growth and survival. But we can’t force nature’s hand. We have to follow it, and pay attention to it. Sometimes we hate it. We learn to respect it.
My grad school friend Mae Rose Petrehn talks all the time about grazing practices, and holistic management in particular. (She’s currently grazing several hundred sheep on a ranch in Nebraska.) Here’s a link to an article in The Atlantic about cattlemen who are looking at new (old) ways of having ruminants on the land, grazing in a way that emulates how nature would have it done in the wild, in order to restore landscapes in addition to producing food.
Lisa M. Hamilton writes: “The basic premise of holistic management is to use livestock like wild animals. But whereas bison on the Great Plains moved through the landscape by instinct, now ranchers must supply that direction. Rather than simply turning cattle into a pasture, these ranchers conduct them like a herd, concentrating bodies to graze one area hard, then leaving it until the plants have regenerated. The effect can be tremendous, with benefits including increased organic matter in the soil, rejuvenation of microorganisms, and restoration of water cycles.”
Read the article! The Brown Revolution: Increasing Agricultural Productivity Naturally.
There is a kind of tension that can exist when one’s livelihood and/or survival depends on nature. But we are kidding ourselves if we think that only applies to some people. It applies to all of us, as nature’s resources feed, clothe, and shelter us – even if we have so distanced ourselves from the process of production that we forget this reality. So we would be wise to explore the tension, to avoid the downfall of domination, and to move as much as we can towards harmony.
Kinds of Honey 