Kristmas in Kansas

Christmas 2008 was my third Christmas away from my Winnipeg home.

Ben and I are trying to stick to the every-other-Christmas schedule, so this year was our turn to stick around here. And it has been lovely. Of course, I still did get homesick at times, especially in the beginning of December, when I imagined our house in Winnipeg being transformed into what I like to call a Wonderland. My mom is so good at making coming home feel good. I remember coming home from a dreary day at University on miserably cold nasty days, and knowing that in a few moments I would walk into my safe, festive and cozy house, usually to the sound of some great CD playing, usually to the smell of something good baking, and knowing that there was very likely going to be someone home who was just waiting to sit down over a mug of tea and talk.

Certain Christmas songs like O Du Frohliche make me want to bawl everytime. And of course, Christmas Eve has a soft spot in my heart that literally feels like a punch in the gut when I'm not able to spend it with my family. This year, however, I felt a lot more prepared than last time. I purposely volunteered to help lead the Christmas Eve service so I be able to expend my energy elsewhere besides being homesick and although I still miss the feeling of a full house, I feel very at home here, and we always make sure to have a lot of people over.

Ben and I decided to continue our tradition of making bad verenike on Christmas Eve Day. We successfully ruined them again. This time it was because I bought the regular cottage cheese instead of the dry. What a wonderful and time consuming tradition. (We actually really did have fun.)

After the Christmas Eve service, we made a fire on our driveway. It was a perfectly still, mild night, and we sat there swaddled in blankets with mugs of steamy goodness. It was no Klassen family gathering at Tante Karin's house, but it was a close second.


The festivities are still going on, with several more family gatherings to come. We feel so blessed and fortunate to have so many people, both in Winnipeg and Newton who make our lives so rich. Maybe we'll post some of our New Years pictures in our next post. I think we're having a party...(but don't tell everyone).

Interlude

I thought I'd do something a little different and post a bit of music here.

Andrea bought me an octave mandolin as a Christmas gift two years ago, and I've really enjoyed playing it. It has a nice full sound that sounds good even when it's played solo (as opposed to my normal mandolin, which sounds great in a band but is a little too tinny when it's by itself).

St. Anne's Reel is an old fiddle tune that I've been playing on the octave for quite a while. It has a nice melody and it just seems to fit the sound of the instrument very well.

Recently I reworked the song to make it a little more my own. The melody is basically the same, but I stretched it out to twice it's original length (64 bars instead of 32). I didn't want it to sound slow, though, so I grouped the melody into quick little runs and used the extra space I had between the runs to put in more of a chordal background.

Anyway, here it is. It's not a Christmas song, but Merry Christmas all the same.

It's the Christmas Tree

First, one of the creepiest photos of me that has ever been taken. Even Andrea looks a little scared.


Today we went out to Dwight's pasture to cut down a Christmas tree for our house (Dwight is my uncle and lives half a mile from our farm). Dwight's pasture is known for having a large variety of magnificent, brown, patchy Christmas trees.
They are also free.

Plus, it's almost like a fun adventure to go out into the untouched wilderness behind Dwight's house and search out the least ugly tree possible. It's fun for me because I grew up exploring that pasture as a kid, and know every corner of it. It's fun for Andrea because she really hasn't spent much time there at all and can easily be convinced that we are completely lost, or that I *might* have seen a mountain lion slink behind those bushes.

We had a great time. Here is our tree (it's the one I'm holding):


We put it in the back of the Prizm and secured it with a bungee.

Andrea decorated it while I took a nap on the heat register.

Merry Christmas, Everybody.

Butchering

This is Ben, and this post is about butchering. But for those of you who are made queasy by this sort of thing, you don't need to worry. I won't go into detail, and I won't post any pictures that might make queasy people queasy.

If you want to see the queasy pictures, you can see them on our picture page here:
http://picasaweb.google.com/andrea.and.ben/Butchering

Butchering takes place on two consecutive days.

The first day is the gross day, and only a few people come. Generally, if your family is getting meat, it is expected that you will send a representative to help with the gross day. We butchered three hogs, and with maybe 9ish people helping, the gross day took us about four hours. When we were done the pigs were no longer pigs anymore but had magically become meat and were ready to be processed the next day.

I don't have many pictures from the gross day, as there are not many people who would want to see them.

The second day is the processing day, and pretty much everyone comes out to help. Here is a picture of a group of us helping Jerry wash some tubs:

Butchering is very hard work.

We process the meat (that basically means we trim the fat off and cut it into cuts of meat or slices for sausage), grind and season the sausage, cook the fat down into lard, and package everything up. I think there were about 23ish people helping, and it took us from about 7:30am to about 4:30 or 5pm. We had a nice big borscht lunch to keep us going.

Nobody really likes butchering (especially not the first day), but it is nice to know how your meat is processed and to be able to control how lean it is and how it is seasoned. Plus, processing fees generally cost about as much as the pig does so doing the butchering yourself effectively saves you 50% on your meat.

There's also something to be said for being connected to the process that allows us to eat meat. When meat is packaged up in plastic in the store alongside hundreds of other things that are all also packaged in plastic, it's hard to be mindful of the sacrifice that meat requires. Butchering makes you face the fact that your diet has direct consequences for another animal. I'm obviously not a vegetarian, but I think it's important to acknowledge that sacrifice instead of trying to bury it.

I'm sure you are all wondering how Andrea reacted to her first butchering experience. Here is your answer (I'm linking instead of posting the actual picture because it does have raw meat in it): http://picasaweb.google.com/andrea.and.ben/Butchering#5274225393339249010

And here's a nicer one if you don't want to see the raw meat:

What the English word for 'unverschamt'?

Ich weiB nicht was loss mit mir ist heute Abend. Plotzlich vermiss ich diese Sprache. Diese interesante Sprache die ich uberhaubt NIE mehr benutze (as you can tell), aber die viel zu mich in meine fruhere Kindheit bedeutete. Es ist ein Stuck von mein Leben das ich nie benutze und das Leute hier nicht von mir verstehen. Und normallerweisse ist das OK.

Vieleicht wahre es verschieden wenn ich in Winnipeg noch wohnte. Dann wurde ich es mehr oft horen (in der Kirche, mit meine Oma, u.s.w). Aber hier in Kansas hore ich es nie-- nur selten wenn Leute ein paar Worter die sie auf Deutsch "kennen" und sagen wollen. Und es ist oft fur Leute die dies tun sehr spaBig und sie nennen es Deutsch aber es ist wirklich meistens Plattdiech und American accent. So werden meine Kinder (und ihre Kinder) auch vielleicht sprechen, aber fur mich ist es nicht wirklich sehr witzig; es ist nur schlechtes Deutsch. (: (Unlike this blog entry...ha!)

Aber es ist nicht dass ich eigentlich es benutzen will oder uberhaupt von es sehr oft denke. Nur selten. Aber heute war so ein Tag. Meine Oma hat wieder angerufen und ich konnte beinah nichts auf Deutsch sagen weil mein Gehirn nicht verwohnt ist in diese Sprache zu denken (as you can tell). Heute wollte ich etwas zu meine Freudin sagen von ein "large intentine" und (obwohl ich nichts zu ihr sagte), konnte ich nur an das Wort "Dickdam" denken. Und ihr weiBt warum, recht? Weil ich (wir) lernten Gesundheit auf Deutsch mit Herr Kampen in der sechste Klasse.

Hier sind ein paar Deutsch Worter die Ben muBte von mir endlich nur lernen weil ich nicht eine gute ubersetzung wusste: unverschamt, ausgelassen, zu drengen (doesn't come up very often), brumsch, Schippe (ok, ok---dust pan---but it never comes to me nearly as fast as Schippe), eisig kalt. And now perhaps 'dickdam'.

Hey, thanks for letting me get that out of my system. It was theraputic for me. Probably brutal to read, but theraputic.

-Andrea

Herds of ducks

There is a creek very close to our house, so we tend to get a lot of creek-loving animals like ducks, herons and raccoons around our place.
Although we've lived here for over 2 years now, I've never seen the ducks do this before:
They come in these big groups of maybe 15 and go all crazy trying to find as many acorns off the ground as they can and swallow them whole. Very weird.

-Andrea

Insulation

Ben here.

I'm currently trying to spend some of my free time adding a little insulation to our house. We have one of those old houses that seem to be so common around here that were, for some reason or another, built with very little insulation. Some parts of our attic have insulation, some parts don't. I don't think any of the walls do. So I'm starting in the attic, because it's the easiest to get to, and from what I read, it's the place that will make the most difference anyway.

The problem is that our attic is full of brown recluse spiders, and I'm just a little bit terrified of them. If you are not terrified of them, please look at this website: http://www.surviveoutdoors.com/emergency/spiderbites_recluse.asp
(it's gross. don't click it if you have problems with gross things)

So I tuck my pants into my socks and my shirtsleeves into my gloves, and I have one of those lights on the end of a extension chord so the little freaks can't sneak up on me and it's all working out pretty well until I start thinking about what would happen if my light burnt out and I'm stuck in the pitch black on the far side of the attic.

So I invented one of those camping headlight things that all the cool people have. I used:
1) A bike light
2) A hat
3) Duct Tape

This is how I look when I'm just a little bit terrified.

Patent Pending, by the way. Don't try to rip me off.

Perfect day for a ride...

Yesterday, Ben and I biked out to the farm. This is one of my favorite things to do. Especially on a beautiful, sunny Sunday afternoon.
These pictures were taken from the back of the bike. It took some skill to get the camera out while riding, but master it I did.
Biking to the farm is one of those things in life that I wanted to at least attempt to capture.

First of all, the disclaimer:

We've resisted the blog movement for a while, but as time goes on and more and more of our friends start blogs, we've realized that it's actually pretty fun to read your friend's blogs and look at their pictures. Plus, it's a let less invasive than mass e-mails.

So this is our blog. I don't know how often we'll update it. Read it if it interests you but we won't be offended if we meet you at a party and you don't know what our latest post was about.

-Ben

P.S. If you don't know, David and Elisabeth are our middle names. Security through obscurity!