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Hi Everyone,
Life here on the farm last week went on as usual—we packaged eggs, weeded in the garden, transplanted flowers from the greenhouse to the garden, canned potatoes, put together orders, made deliveries, harvested vegetables from the garden, cooked home grown meals, and I even got a little sewing in.
Come Friday night though—we went into Celebration mode. It was the 4th of July weekend, and we took advantage of everything that we could. On Friday afternoon Mom and I had to do some grocery shopping. One of the items that I needed was some apples. While I was looking for a bag of Gala apples, I saw some Granny Smith apples and I thought—“What could be more American on the 4th of July than an Apple Pie?” So I grabbed a bag of Granny Smith apples too—for the best pie apples are tart ones. As I was going up and down the aisles I kept crossing paths with a very sweet black lady. At one point I saw her take two bags of brown sugar off the shelf, but I saw that she already had two apple pies in her buggy, so I couldn’t resist asking her—“What do you plan on baking, you already have two pies?” She told me “baked beans!” That brought back good memories as I remembered right away that my Grandpa Jim always used a whole box or more of brown sugar to make baked beans—they tasted good!
It was after 6:30 by the time we headed home from the shopping. I had planned hamburgers for dinner—because it was Friday night, and that is what we eat every Friday night. On our way home though I told Mom that hamburgers are what you are supposed to eat for the 4th of July. We planned our 4th of July menu on the way home—Hamburgers, Sweet Potato Fries, Stuffed Eggs, and Apple Pie. Then we had the problem of what to eat for dinner, since it wasn’t going to be hamburgers. We decided to use some of the hamburger meat (since the butcher could only package it in 2 lb. packs) to make apple/maple/sage sausage—may I say that they were delicious!
Maple-Apple Sausage
1 lb. hamburger
1 large apple, peeled and finely chopped
3 tablespoons maple syrup
1 tablespoon sage
½ tablespoon salt
Mix all together, make little sausage patties, and cook in your skillet in a little bit of olive oil on medium heat until done.
Along with those sausages we had eggs and waffles. Once diner was done, we gathered in the living room to watch President Trump’s Mt. Rushmore speech. To my dismay South Dakota is 2 hours behind us—and my body does not do well when I stay up late. While the speech started around 8:00 in South Dakota, it was around 10:00 here. I went to bed—but Mom and Dad stayed up.
The 4th of July started with a grand display in the milking parlor—our Red, White and Blue clothing became Red, White and Brown. We had fireworks of the chocolate kind, and not all of it was caught in the bucket. Mom had to just take a hose to her jumper for she was splattered pretty badly. We survived though, and when we were done milking we packed the orders, harvested the veggies and finished up the receipts so that Papa could make the delivery to Gainesville. Once Papa left for Gainesville, Mom and I sat down to watch the Mt. Rushmore 4th of July Celebration from Friday night—since I had missed it. It was really good, and if you didn’t get to see it, I encourage you to click here and watch it. The fireworks at the end were spectacular too.
It was around 4:30 when we finished watching the Mt. Rushmore celebration, and it was now time to cook dinner—at least start the pie. We turned on some patriotic music, and then we had to make room on the counters to bake. We had a huge section of the counter was covered with the jars of potatoes that we had canned—so Mom washed and I rinsed. Then while I washed, peeled and sliced all the apples (with an apple peeler), Mom washed the rings of the jars. Then as I mixed all the pie ingredients together, Mom made the crust. It was a little challenging—maybe due to the rainy weather, but she got it accomplished and it tasted superb! The pie would take an hour to bake, and I remembered that we were supposed to have sweet potato fries with our hamburgers. We were tired so we scratched the stuffed eggs from the menu, but we really wanted the fries. I grabbed three sweet potatoes and was just fixing to wash and peel them when I realized that I had no way to bake them. The pie was cooking at 350, and the fries needed to cook at 420. I thought about using the other oven—but when I made my salves a few weeks ago the beeswax seeped over the edges of my container and filled up in the bottom of the oven. Mom cleaned up the thick mess—but there is still a thin beeswax coating on the floor of the oven. Therefore, the oven is useless until we can figure out how to clean it. If we make the oven hot, then we can wipe it up—but we run the grand risk of burning ourselves on the hot coils. If we wait until it cools down some—then the beeswax hardens. So I was left with only one oven to cook from and it was cooking a pie, therefore, we scratched the fries too. Then we ran into a big delay—Papa had to turn off the water to put a new part on the water tank at the well. We couldn’t advance with our dinner—because it is quite difficult to get greasy hands clean after making hamburgers. It was after 7:00 when we were able to finish dinner. Our original plans were to get dinner done soon, get the dishes done and get our showers by 9:00 so that we could watch the fireworks in Washington, D.C. I do not do well staying up late, therefore, I did not want to go to the local fireworks that wouldn’t start until 9:30, and would get over at 10:00. It would be around 10:30 by the time we got home and got to bed—so I wanted to stay home and watch them online, especially since we had to get up a 5:00 this morning to milk cows. BUT……..plans do not always go as planned. As I said, dinner was late, and then Mom really wanted to hear President Trump’s “Salute to America” speech and watch the fly overs of the military. Since our dinner was late, we didn’t get to watch this on time, so when I had planned on doing dishes and getting a shower—we were watching President Trump’s “Salute to America”. We did manage to get the dishes done, and then it was 9:00—and believe it or not, we just couldn’t find a good channel to watch the fireworks. Do you know how stressful it is to look for something that you cannot find? We all wished that we had just gone 15 minutes down the road to watch the local live fireworks. Thankfully our neighbors were putting on their own Firework show, and I went outside where the crickets were chirping, the moon was full and bright and all around the sky was being lit up with fireworks and their BOOMING sounds. About 9:20 I tried to go and get ready for bed so that I could be there by 10:00, but while my adult mind was saying “Get ready for bed!” every time I heard a BOOM the child in me ran to the window to see if I could see the latest firework explode in the sky. Needless to say—it was 10:30 when I climbed in bed.
I grew up in a church that was very Patriotic. Every 4th of July many of the churches in town would gather on the lawn of the First Baptist Church hours before the fireworks were to begin. The church choirs would join together on the balcony and sing Patriotic Songs. We all had on our Red, White and Blue clothes—many times making new skirts or dresses for the occasion. Then when the music was over we would all go down around the lake and sit together oohing and aahing at the fireworks. I grew up in schools that taught Pride for our nation and our flag. I grew up being chosen to sing the National Anthem with a few other chorus buddies at one of the School Board Meetings. In the last 20 years things have changed though—children are no longer taught to love our nation, they are not taught why it is great, and they are not taught true American History. When you do not know the “Why” of something, you cannot fight to defend it. George Washington said that what makes the difference between Christian Americans and people from other countries is that Americans will die standing for what they believe in, before they will live kneeling in surrender to those who want to destroy our God given rights of Freedom, Liberty, and Justice for All. Why don’t you take the time this summer to refresh your American History knowledge—especially if you have children. Do you know how many college age students do not know when America was founded? Who Christopher Columbus was?—and many other important facts about America. Hillsdale College offers free online courses on many topics relating to the founding of America and our History. One of those courses is called the Great American Story, and you can find it here: https://online.hillsdale.edu/landing/the-great-american-story . If you like to read you might want to find the book Land of Hope: An Invitation to the Great American Story authored by Wilfred M. McClay. You could start with a quick lesson on how the National Anthem came to be written, and be reminded that our flag stands for FREEDOM! When it falls, our freedom becomes a thing of the past. Here is the link to the Story Behind the Star Spangled Banner.
I hope that you had a wonderful 4th of July weekend, and as the days get hotter we will continue. . .
Serving you with Gladness,
Tiare