White

To a minimalist, there is nothing more gratifying to look at than white.  It's clean, motionless, and absent of drama.  Yet it is the contrasting backdrop that allows us to see color, shape, and pattern in it's most dramatic form.  January in the country is white.  I don't remember all my years growing up in Duluth seeing the vast miles of pristine snow.  Untouched, undisturbed.  Stretched across flatland and the perfect backdrop to the red barns, gray silos, and gold cornstalks poking through.  It's almost unnoticeable, without change, yet I find myself just wanting to look at it. 

My apologies for being absent for so long.  I can't believe I haven't written for over 2 months!  So much has changed over the past 6 months for our family, and I just can't express how content I feel in this life.  And now it's a new year!  A rebirth, a time to reflect as we turn a page.  So, what are a few of the interesting changes we have experienced moving from Vegas to Baldwin?

1)  Perceived Distance:  I used to think Henderson was soooooo far away.  I despised having to drive there, especially during rush hour.  If I was "running to the store" from my condo, it was a store I could have literally run to.  I rarely ran to the store.  Now, we run to the store, in the next town, through miles of cornfields and the sporadic home or bar (this is Wisconsin, afterall),  but it still only takes 10 minutes to arrive.  Ten minutes on the road in Vegas got me down the street.  A neighborhood block, a city block, and a country block are such different things.  I find the country block the most enjoyable to walk.

2)  Trash Disposal:  As urban dwellers, we filled our kitchen trash can at least 3-4 times a week, and took 5-6 bags of waste a week to the community dumpster .  EVERYTHING was thrown in the landfill trash.  Gulp, I'm saying it on record, we did not recycle ever in Vegas.  We could have, though not easily (no community pick up at our condo complex), but we could have.  I say that, because we go through great efforts now to reduce our trash.  Maybe because we drive 15 miles to drop it off rather then having it collected.  We can save time and money that way, and we have so many alternate ways of disposing and sorting our waste (kitchen scraps to the chickens, burnables to the burn barrel, recycling box for glass, plastic, and metal, and the compost pile).  Doing this has reduced our landfill trash to about 1 bag a week.

3)  Food Sources:  The other night I made an amazing stuffed Acorn squash.  As I was eating it, I realized all the various places the food inside came from.  The squash itself came from our local farmer's market in the fall.  The pork sausage we recently picked up from the processing place in Amery (about 12 miles away).  The pig was killed, processed, and in our freezer within a month, and Chris actually met the farmer in Baldwin where it was raised.  The onions were purchased at a grocery store, and the blue and cheddar cheeses came from the Ellsworth cheeseshop...where they make and sell the cheese, and other dairy products just a few miles from our home.  We drive quiet country roads to buy farm fresh eggs for $2/dozen.  We drive up, honk the horn, and eggs are brought to the car.  It's amazing.  Our "medicine" cabinet is stocked full of local honey products from the Wolf Honey Farm in Baldwin, and our quarter cow will be ready this month, giving us about 200 pounds of local, grass fed beef.  In Vegas our food came from a mix of stores; Costco, Trader Joe's, and Albertson's primarily, and occasionally we would visit the local Farmer's Markets and stock up on "local" vegetables...generally driven in from California. 

Of course, much has changed beyond these things for us specifically, but, in general, I think these are changes most city-to-farm transplants experience, and embrace.  I know we are.  And, hey!  One of my New Year's resolutions is to start blogging more often!  My other one?  Find out in the next post!  Cheers to you and your families!  Welcome 2013!