De-Vinely Delicious

Roasted Tomato Basil Soup    (for dummies)

Preheat oven to 450 degrees

Use an 11×17″ baking sheet.  Fill it with tomatoes that are cored and halved.  I use a combo of Roma and red ripe ones (about 2.5 lbs).

Dump the roasted mixture into a big stock pot, including any liquids on the baking sheet.  To this add:  3 cups of chicken broth (I use Knorr in the little cups), and 1/2 stick unsalted butter.  Simmer 20 minutes.

Add 1/2 cup chopped fresh basil leaves and puree the soup with an immersion blender until smooth.  Alternative method:  puree in food processor.  Then add 3/4 cup heaving whipping cream and stir.  D O N E

30 Years, Hopes and Fears

12.17.1981  Thirty years ago TODAY, I became a mother.  A young woman is just a girl until she has a child.  At the exact moment a brand new cry startles the room, hot tears streak her cheeks and her heart is peeled open, almost wounded or branded.  The girl is gone.  In her place is a woman with unlimited courage, righteousness, and virtue.  She will protect and defend.  In that moment, really, two beings are born:  the she bear and her cub.  She thanks God for deliverance.

From that instant, she has to think twice–once for herself and once for her child.  Over the next 18 years, she applies Band-aids and justice,  builds character, and holds high expectations.  It all starts in the silence of night, when a mother rocks back and forth, back and forth, clutching her baby, soothing it.  Her dreams are released and float up from her heart, to God’s ear, as she whispers them to a baby kept warm and safe in her embrace.

Diapers, school plays, and decades roll by along with Halloween costumes, science fair projects, and driving lessons.  Stories are told and retold, weaving a strong family fabric with a sense of self and pride.  She focuses on the big picture, providing experiences that enrich and educate.  She worries.  She smiles.  She bakes. Sometimes she cries.

He grows up and leaves home and she pretends it is okay.  Her head says one thing but her heart, another.  Her work is done:  there are others.  He is her finest moment; her pride, her joy.  She takes comfort in knowing that within him lies immortality.

Food for Thought

Sandy Beaches, Grand Hotels, and Pole Dancing

Man Towing 1947 Airstream with Bicycle

dictionary.reference.com/browse/collude

verb (used without object), col·lud·ed, col·lud·ing.

1. to act together through a secret understanding, especially with evil or harmful intent.

Here’s the not-so-secret secret:  understanding what it means to possess one of these iconic trailers starts the day you hook one up and bring it home.  Think shiny, pretty.  Think round, happy thoughts.   The shape sets us apart; Airstreamers are secretly pleased with themselves for thinking outside of the box.  We (think we) have an elevated understanding of style, durability, and value without being snobby about it.  Was that snobby?  We feel responsible for the life of our trailer–knowing where she’s been before, if buying used (as most of us do) or if she’s been restored.  Those leaving a dealership keep meticulous records to pass down one day–if that day ever comes.

Facts from Airstream, Inc.  

Airstreams are made in the U.S.A.

Airstream is a state of mind … the company’s silver-bullet travel trailers have been streaming down the nation’s ribbons of highways for more than 75 years and have become as common and well-loved in the culture of America as blue jeans and tees.

Founder Wally Byam began the enterprise in the 1920s by selling plans for building trailers, which led to the design and launch of “The Clipper” in the early 1930s. The company makes travel trailers primarily, but also produces its Interstate touring coach with full amenities. Airstream has produced about 140,000 travel trailers and motor homes since it began, and roughly two-thirds of them are still making trails. Airstream is a subsidiary of Thor Industries.

Alumapalooza 2012, at the factory grounds
in Jackson Center, OH

Through the use of a website called Air Forums, we exchange maintenance tips, road trip stories, organize rallies, dream, fly flags, and explore.  

 We connect, cook, cribbage play, convey, critter watch, cajole, create, and sometimes a rally morphs into EPIC proportions.    Such was the result when 25 Airstream trailers rolled in from GA, OH, IL, MO, OK, MI, IN and Canada to Mackinaw Mill Creek Campground at the tip of Michigan’s Mitten near Mackinac Island and its Grand Hotel.   Many do not realize that Michigan is a state of two peninsulas, the upper and lower, which are surrounded by Great Lakes Michigan, Huron and Superior.   That being a fact, we hauled up a tournament salmon fishing boat for personal tours of Mackinac Island and blasted under the Mighty Mac a.k.a. the Mackinac Bridge, one of the longest suspension bridges in the United States.

Captain Adam pilots us under the bridge.
Photo Credit:  Ed Rottinger

Our Caravan
Pole Dancer, Tin Loaf, Hen House

This rally had everything including eye-candy photography and fudge.  Lots of fudge.  The shops on the Island cook up a nasal assault as they pipe the smell of fudge being

Photo Credit
Steven Mentz

made into the streets.  Horse power is the only power on Mackinac Island.  Visitors are clip-clopped back in time as hooves meet the street.  Couple this destination with some folks very experienced in photography, and EPIC starts to evolve.  For starters, the August moon was full and one of our Airstreaming couples set up a large, professional  telescope on the sandy beach one evening.  The “Troll Pot Luck Dinner” was filled with raffle prizes, wine, and a buffet that rivaled the Grand Hotel’s buffet lunch.    Some of us landed king salmon,  toured a lighthouse or two, or slathered ourselves in suntan lotion on the dunes beaches.  We trolls, living under the bridge, showed those Yoopers a thing or two when we kayaked Drumond Island, drove the Historic Tunnel of Trees Route 119, and hit the Casino in St. Ignace.

The Grand Hotel’s
Buffet Lunch Table Setting

The photography in the YouTube video alone is worth the time to watch it.  It began with a pre-rally on our farm near Flint, MI and features the Grand Hotel and Mackinac Island horses and homes.  It ends with a “We make ‘em, You take ‘em” pancake breakfast on the last day.  Enjoy!

Shapes and Sizes

The Last Supper

Practice Makes Perfect

From my desk upstairs tonight, well past midnight, I heard a ruckus going on in the side yard, near the barn.  This farmer’s wife knows the sound of livestock in trouble.  John had gone to bed so I, quick, grabbed his Kimber 45 with the laser grip, popped in a clip, racked in a shell and turned off the safety.  Whatever it was out there, it was gonna die.  Good thing I did some target practicing last week using an old campaign sign–kind of poetic, eh?

John made me laugh as he shot up his own sign. Love his tee shirt, too. That’s my man!

A heavy drizzle was coming down, creating ghostly shadows against the barn lights.  There was a small LED flashlight in my rain gear which came in handy as I neared the chicken coop and saw some of my girls running around outside in the dark. Chickens are blind at night and roost; this could only mean trouble and an unhappy ending for the trouble maker.   I was surprised that an intruder got through the coop’s electrified fence.

I killed the power, opened the gate, and peeked through the pop hole. The glassy eyes of a big ‘ol egg eating opossum stared back at me.  That explained the frantic cluckers and all their squawking.  The only good opossum is a dead one and this one was going down.  You can mess with a lot of things on my farm, but NOT my girls.

He found a hiding spot in the corner of the coop and it was a tough shot.  I put a red bead on his body and fired.  He began to drag his carcass out of the hen house and I could see yellow egg yolk all over his face.  That dirty ‘ol egg sucking bastard.  Opossums will eat the eggs first and the hens next.  My mind began to flash with movie quotes from Al Pacino in Scarface:  “Say hello to my little friend.”    I couldn’t believe the thing  was crawling right at me, almost over my boots.   “Oh, so you want to play rough.”  I popped another cap into him and thought “For a green card I would carve him up real nice.”

People think farms are happy places where the sun shines and the sheep,  pigs, and horses graze.  In reality, there is a lot of carnage as we try to protect the lives of our animals who can not protect themselves.  We worry about coyotes, skunks, and especially raccoons.   I did what I had to do and laughed to myself that my big, strong swamp buck hunter of a husband heard the shots and rolled over in bed, confident that The Farmer’s Wife had taken care of business.