The Life and Times of the Plume — Page 37

Straight Shooter

September 11, 2019 by The Noisy Plume

I came up with this simple hoop design earlier in the summer and am finally offering some pairs in my shop. These have been some of my favorite earrings to wear this season — classic and effortless.

+Of The West+

Filed Under: Uncategorized

Join The Rebellion, Eat Things That Grew In The Dirt

September 8, 2019 by The Noisy Plume

I’ve reached a crystal clear opinion on the topic of food. It’s holy work. The growing of it, the raising of it, the hunting of it, the harvest of it — holy, illuminating work that can lead us forward into gratitude, fullness of heart, clarity of soul and even worship. I see people spending more and more money on supplements, food in capsule form, fake milk, fake meat, fake bread, processed health junkfood labeled as something that will save the planet. We buy, buy, buy, eat, eat, eat, and never feel full, never know satisfaction. We grow sick. I see people everywhere squandering the money they worked hard for on food that is nutritionally empty, oozing with harmful chemicals, void of value…fashionable food…because someone told them to, because they heard about it on NPR. I see people failing to support their local fisherman, farmers and ranchers and then loudly join in the hysteria of the food crisis. It disturbs me. Eating is supposed to be a pleasure, it’s one of the deadly sins for goodness sake! And now, this glorious thing that is meant to awe us, fill us with wonder and throttle our tastebuds up and over the moon, this thing that is intended to keep our bodies and minds healthy and strong is being reduced to tiny concoctions we pop in our mouths as we run out the door in the morning to take up our positions as more cogs in the machine that is slowly running this world into the ground and stripping away our individuality, our health, our freedom to choose what is best for our bodies, our families and our communities.

I don’t want to be one more person who tells you how to live, what to think, how to eat. I will never treat you like you have the exact same nutritional needs as me. You are unique. Your body is unique! It’s what makes you beautiful. There is one thing we have in common though, when we do food the right way, with compassion and care, with a sharp knife and a warm stovetop, with fresh garlic and parsley, with rendered fat and marrow, we are filled (literally and figuratively) with joy. Praise to God! Praise to the cook! We lift a fork to our mouths, close our eyes, chew and swallow, and sigh. What glory. What rapture! What holy, holy work.

I am sharing my opinions on food today because I care for you, I care for my little farm, I care for my little ranching community and I care for our world.

I know that not everyone can have a little farm or a ranching operation. Not everyone can hunt. I know that not everyone dreams of having a patch of dirt to grow their food in, but by God, people! You need to join this rebellion! You need to eat food that grew in the dirt! Whole, simple food, that was tended to carefully by a farmer. Beef that ranged on grass and had a good life and a good death. Lamb that grew strong walking between the high desert steppe and the Sawtooth Mountains. Venison and elk that died well when struck with a well placed and merciful bullet or arrow. Turnips, celery, blood-red beets, rainbow chard, spinach, winter squash from the organic farmer who never cleans under his fingernails. Butter, eggs and milk from the quirky little farm girl down the road who keeps livestock because she loves animals and they keep her from being lonely. It has never been more important to support the people who are raising and growing food in your little community or on the outskirts of your metropolis and it’s never been more important to eat as locally as you possibly can. Every nickel and dime you surrender for your food matters. This is not a fad. This is the way things used to be before mega-monocropping and round-up and feedlots, back when there were still bees to fly about and apples had worm bites and grew to be a normal size.

Every day now I am dreaming about what I want this little farm of ours to be. I dream about how best to use our piece of earth to feed ourselves, how best to feed the dirt that grows our food. I dream about the ways we might serve our little community with our wee farm. I don’t need to feed the masses but I do think every little farm has the opportunity and the duty to serve friends and neighbors and generate community spirit. Every little farm can share. Every little farm should care. And it would be so nice if everyone else cared, too.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: community, food, rebellion, sundries farm

Canned Plums

September 6, 2019 by The Noisy Plume

These are canned peaches. I want to tell you the story of my mum’s canned plums.

I have a memory of my mother’s canned plums. I share this memory with my two sisters. Whenever one of us speaks the memory aloud all three of us squint our eyes and will our tastebuds to travel back in time to Sugarloaf Warden Station in Riding Mountain National Park, Manitoba. When the winter nights roared with wailing winds and sideways snows we would clear the dinner table of dirty dishes and my mum would say, “Should we have plums?”

One of us would be asked to fetch the plums from the root cellar and the anticipation of dessert outweighed the terror of having to tromp down slatted stairs to the concrete basement where the wood stove glowed like a demon in the dark. In the root cellar, the potatoes were doing their terrifying mid-winter sprouting (nothing should have so many eyes) and one had to make quick work of grabbing the plum preserves off the shelf before scooting past the terrible potatoes and latching the cellar door shut. The final test was making it back up the stairs before the creature that lived beneath them grabbed ankles with a thorny, merciless grip.

Once back upstairs in the kitchen my mother would pop the mason jar open, spoon plums into bowls and drizzle cream over them. Plums and cream, the dessert of peasants. I have never tasted better dessert in all of my life. It was like eating sunshine in the dead of winter.

I’m in the kitchen canning peaches today. I have stripped them of their fuzzy pelts before slicing their thick flesh into quarters. I have brewed a small vat of syrup for the peach pieces to swim about in. The work is almost done for the day and I find myself looking forward to the winter. I know just how we’ll eat these peaches. We’ll come in from the howling wind after a day of hunting the dogs in the canyons and on the steppe. We’ll be windburned and tired and calorically deficient. We’ll feed the dogs and lean the shotguns against the wall to dry out and recover from the weather. Robert will clean the birds we shot while I prepare other aspects of dinner and we’ll cook our high desert bounty up into a simple, flavorful meal. We’ll eat at the dining room table by the fireplace. After dinner, we’ll look at each other and I’ll say, “Should we have peaches?” Robert will nod his head. I’ll take a jar down from the pantry shelf, pop it open and spoon the precious fruit into bowls with some yogurt or a drizzle of milk on top. As we sit and eat our fine treat, our peasant dessert, we’ll feel the sun of summer in our bellies and bones and we’ll sigh aloud as the wind bashes against the house and I’ll be thankful I spent today in the kitchen canning peaches.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: the farm

Farley

September 3, 2019 by The Noisy Plume

On the first day of his fifteenth hunting season, Farley died in his sleep. This dog inspired many of our close friends (and friends we have never met) to acquire their own gun dogs and return to the land to source their meats and satisfy their souls. His work ethic and composure in the field was legendary and I’m thankful this is the dog I learned to hunt behind. He was a true master of game and his comprehension of the upland country we call home was as deep as his bird repertoire. We are glad and thankful we can say we gave him a life most gun dogs can only dream of — we encouraged his instincts and did our best to help him develop his talents and gifts and he lived a truly glorious life as a working dog. When we bought the farm we basically brought him to DOG HEAVEN and his twilight years were spent digging up voles in the hayfield and eating them alive, napping in the sunshine and running the mesa with me. Farley felt affection for us but there was only room in his heart for one true love and his true love was the hunt which is how it should be with a bird dog. He was quiet, sometimes shy, aloof…he never needed to be the center of attention. He went about his work with an air of professionalism and class and loved sleeping bags. I could say a million more things about him but publicly mourning him begins to feel a bit self-indulgent so I’ll save those words for conversations with Robbie.

Robert and I married quite young and we grew up together and Farley grew up with us, too. We ran our household with a true canine pack order and asserted ourselves in alpha leadership positions over our dogs (which is how we still run our pack and household), but I think we also considered Farley to be a peer because we worked alongside him in the field. And maybe that’s what makes a partnership with a working dog so special, it adds complexity to your humanity…it makes your human heart half-dog…I’m not sure this happens when a dog is simply a companion. If you know what I’m talking about, then you know.

I’m taking his death pretty hard but there’s a lot of comfort in knowing that he could not have lived a better life or died a better death. He was one of my best friends. He is buried at the south end of the farm along the fence line between our property and BLM land with old growth sagebrush on one side and my flower garden on the other. Quail will run across his grave and the view over the canyon and the sage steppe is a pleasant one.

I have collected a batch of imagery in this post for you because I know some of you met this wonderful dog and loved him, hunted behind him, or simply came to love him because I spent fifteen years sharing him with you in this space. I also collected this batch of images for Robbie to look through — he flew fire out of Moab, Utah the day Farley died and wasn’t home to bury him or caress his face one last time or speak words over freshly shoveled dirt or weep for the loss. The only time I have seen my husband cry is when his dogs die. So Robbie, sit down somewhere quiet and look through these images and remember this pup of ours and think about how lucky we were to have him in our life and grow up with him. When you get home we’ll spend some time at Farley’s grave with our remaining dogs, say some words, give him a shotgun salute, and we’ll remember him everytime we hunt the canyons he was a master of.

We loved you, Farley, and we’ll never forget you.