Harvest once again

 

Once again, I am in Montana.  This time I didn't come out to help with harvest, but to see my mom and dad....at least I didn't THINK I was coming out to help.

A little more than a week ago my mom blacked out and fell, breaking three ribs.  In reality, I originally came out to see my dad whose heart is weakening.  I arranged it between chemo treatments....

While here,  have either been doing harvest meals n my own (twice) or acting as sous chef for my sister (lots of chopping).  This year has been a little nuts as we don't know if we are going to have seven to feed in the field or 12. ....and they eat lots.

Yesterday, I made Bott Boi (a.k.a. "Pot Pie") a German dish  which is made by the Pennsylvania Dutch, the Amish and the Germans around my area of Ohio.   It is wonderful home-made egg noodles traditionally cut in squares, with chicken....basically chicken and noodles....but then...at least back home, the whole ooey gooey mixture (which is more like gravy from the noodles than broth) is served over mashed potatoes (or in some areas, but not mine, chunks of potatoes).   I love it...So.....I made the broth and stripped the chicken and yesterday made the egg noodles.  I used my sister-in-law's Atlas pasta machine as the last time I made it my noodles were tough....I couldn't get them thin enough and the dough is soft so I had to keep on adding flour to keep it off the rolling pin.

I was in a panic as I didn't know how much the recipe would actually make..the one I used said it would make 6 servings...but I remembered that the last time I made it I fed the ladies of my quilting group as well as saving some for home and freezing a lot since it feels good on my chemo ravaged tummy.  So.....I made a second batch of noodle dough to hold in reserve.

I sort of  cheated as I usually slip in veggies to make it more wholesome than just pure starch.  Celery, peas and carrots found their way into my pot.  It tasted heavenly....and made a huge stock pot full. I fed the field (that day 9 men), saved out half cup servings for my mom, dad, sister and me, and there was still enough left to put in containers for my brother to eat for breakfast.  I wondered if they guys in the field had ever had home-made egg noodles. Mom made them rarely, but I loved them.  As I worked on this she kept on saying "why bother? I just buy the dried egg noodles."  Nope.  Not good enough, and actually noodles aren't that hard to make. This website is basically the recipe I used, and the noodle recipe is the best.  I didn't put it over mashed potatoes as  I have always thought that was overkill...and we have from 2 - 4 diabetics working for us.

http://chezpim.com/cook/pennsylvania-du

This lovely photo is wheat harvest in Spokane, in 1926.  Thank goodness I didn't have to feed horses too!

I'm leaving soon...I wish I could stay longer, but my ribs are saying "are you nuts??" from all the standing.

A Pleasant Surprise: Nancy Erickson

Nancy Erikson's works at Montan Art & Framing

I went to Montana Art and Framing just to see Heidi Zielinski's work....The gallery is quite small, but behind the featured artist's gallery as another show, and then off to the left were what I suppose is the gallery's "stable" of artists.  My jaw just about hit the floor when I turned and looked at this small wall.  I recognized the artist immediately as Nancy Erickson.

I have admired Nancy's work for ages.  Granted, I only knew it from seeing pieces in books, then at Quilt National.  Her style, like many top quilt artists, is a signature style.  The pieces which the quilt world are probably most familiar with is one reminiscent of pre-historic cave paintings...but with a more direct contact.  Her oil paintings and drawings with paintstick are also my favorites.

Nancy Erickson Golden Wolf #2 (Toklat Pack) ©2009  $450

You'll probably recognize it from this piece, "Golden Wolf #2 (Toklat Pack).  I love how she suggests things without making full marks.  I love how the eyes engage you and glow...giving you the essence of the spirit of the beast she is capturing.  The Toklat Pack is one of the most famous American wolf backs, inhabiting Denali.  It is threatened, and you get a sense of the fierceness of the creature in this fabric portrait.

I was also very pleased to see some of her other work there...She, like so many other artists I like, works in a palette I adore: golds, turquoise, red orange, burnt sienna, yellow umber, raw ochre....She manages to tell so much in just the quickest of lines, line which isn't necessarily completed, but suggests movement and texture.

"Solitare", Nancy Erickson ©

Her pieces also show the strength and often the struggle if the animals she depicts. In "Solitaire" she captures the polar bear perfectly...for much of their lives, they do travel solo...and I have often seen pictures of them with the yellow/orangy cast on their fur.

"Where's the Ice"  26"H x 40W, 2008  ©Nancy N. Erickson    oil paintsticks on archival paper

In "Where's the Ice" you get an understanding of the bear's personality....as well as their predicament.  I love the floating on the ice patch, fiddling with his toes while a large seated bear looks on...reminding me ever so much of some weekend warrior sitting in front of the television drinking beer...

You can see Nancy's work and find more about her on her website, http://www.nancyerickson.com  I hope you enjoy her work as much as I do!

I have been participating (or trying to participate :) ) in Nina-Marie's Off the Wall Friday's creativity blog... You can see her work and other participants links here:

On the Outside Looking in- two Montana Quilt Shops and Avon, Montana

Birdseye Mercantile, Avon, Montana

My niece and her husband have moved to Deer Lodge, and on one of the days they had off, they graciously accompanied us on a little excursion.  They first took us (my sister Mary, me and Trucker the Wonder Dog) to Avon, Montana, a cute, if once less than it once was, town northeast of Deer Lodge.

Someone said to me the other day that in Montana, a Bar and a gas station constituted a town...well...in some cases that could be said as true.  Montana does boast the population density of 6 people for every square mile. In reality, thats sort of a misleading fact, as 54% of the population is concentrated in the cities....with the largest being Billings (pop. 100,317), Great Falls (64,387) and Missoula (69.491).  Many little towns sprang up around mines, crossroads, logging areas, or fords across rivers and passes across mountains.  Many of them, like Avon, used to be much more prosperous than they are now.  I spotted a building which I suspected was a blacksmith/Livery in earlier days, a Church and a few other buildings.  This one is the most notable and houses an antique shop and quilting shop.  It's Birdseye Mercantile and is in a building which was built in 1887, back when Montana was still a territory (it entered into statehood in 1889).

Drew and Beth brought me here because of my former life as a museum curator and of course, my quilting habit.  Unfortunately, it is only open the later part of the week.  We did satisfy ourselves in peeking in the windows, and I toddled down the street shooting pictures of interesting buildings.

Quilter's Corner, Deer Lodge, Montana

Drew, Beth's husband, was kind enough to take me to Deer Lodge to see the Quilter's Corner which WAS open.  This too was in an historic building, an old bank which was converted to a lovely quilt shop.

The counter was the original bank counter, lots of marble, fancy woodwork, pressed tin ceilings and brass abounded.....as well as quilting supplies and fabrics to suit almost every interest in quilting. Lovely batiks almost found their way into my luggage, but since I am bound and determined to reduce my stash, I only bought a variety of Perle Cotton threads to work on the project I was completing out there and a length of clearance fabric which

Quilter's Corner, Deer Lodge, Montana

were in Beth's favorite colors as I thought I would try to make her a little something for her new house.

Little Blackfoot River at Avon, Montana

From Ridge just south of Avon, Montana

Trucker, the Wonder Dog.

After we stopped at the Mercantile in Avon, we headed across an old girder style bridge over the Little Blackfoot River....which was gorgeous in the late summer light.  We headed up into the ridges to have a picnic lunch while looking at the land.  The sad part was that so much smoke from the forest fires north and west of us meant that the sky wasn't as clear and crisp as Montana skies normally are.

As you can see below, it was still pretty.


Trucker, my niece's English Shepherd kept us grizzly free...or maybe cougar free...We didn't see any here (which I have seen both of at my brother's in Cut Bank), but we did see mule deer and antelope, and lots of Elk scat.


Trucker was content to just stand and look regal...in reality he snoozed while we munched our sandwiches.

 English Shepherds are pretty interesting dogs used as working dogs on farms in Northern England/Southern Scotland.  Although I had a collie in high school, Trucker has the hard stare-down of a real herder.  You can find out more about this working breed here.

It was great to be around a dog again...and it was amusing how he came into my room on the last morning I was there and laid his head next to mine on my pillow...However....I am NOT going to get another dog (she says repeatedly to herself).

Cut Bank is Pretty Cool

Cut Bank is a pretty cool place...as the famous penguin which welcomes you to town can attest.  There's always something to photograph.

Here are a few choice tidbits...I am pleased with the fantastic welded art...I haven't gotten a shot of the group of mounted Indians in front of the casino on the way out of town towards Browning, nor the cross and priest on the opposite side of the road, and this doesn't even begin to count the cool buildings and the elevators....I'm constantly fascinated by elevators...and piles of discarded farm machinery and vehicles.

Here are a few things to contemplate.

 The "Hi-Line" is what they call this country..one reason for the name is because of a raised road intended to keep the snow from drifting.  This pair of tin snips has to be about 10 feet long.

 Sign done with a cutting torch.  The left side shows the elevators which are right behind the RR Car lot.

C

 Sign painted on the side of a building...I'm guessing from the 1960s.  The anthropomorphic water system is labled "Bill Ding."

 I'm sorry that this shot doesn't capture the beauty of this outdoor sculpture of wheat...it sparkles and is new within the last 2 years.

The bench at the left is cut iron showing clouds. The bench at the center rear, just in front of the grass shows the mountains.

Banishing the Design Doldrums

I'm having a struggle.  I agreed to enter the SAQA Regional exhibition, "The View from Here."  The problem is, I was so busy before I left, I only had ideas in my head.. I dutifully printed some photos of shots I had taken to give me inspiration and guides for making the pieces, and thought since I am going to be spending 12 hours in a car, 8 hours on an airplane, and while visiting Montana, there is no television so in the evenings I thought I could stitch.

However, I forgot the photos and don't like the sketches I have done for the concepts.  So...what to do.  Well, since I'm in Montana farm country, the land of rusty bits, I decided I would rust dye some fabric for the ground for one of the ideas I had.

So, here's what those wierd little packages yeilded.  Some possibilities....I think I'm going to add some tea to a couple of pieces to see if that makes a better ground for what I'm thinking of.  I also painted some sky fabric.

And...I made a little piece for the Fast Friday Fabric Challenge.  I'm late on that too...no surprise, but I expect to finish this for tomorrow.  I was going to do a school of fish based on a sketch I did for Elizabeth Barton's Quilt University class, "Inspired to Design." But, since Ann Ruthsdottir already showed her piece based on the school of fish, I decided to do something else.

 So...here's my "Leap of Leaping Leopards." I Mistyfused the pieces down, and tomorrow I will quilt it. The background it is sitting on a just a piece of rust dyed fabric....mom had a red table cloth on and getting a background was hard...so just look at the stuff on the blue.

 I wasn't sure if I wanted to put a pale moon in the upper corner or not. My mom is not a person inclined to use yellow, so the only thing I could find to audition the color was a piece of yellow paper.  I'm thinking the edges should be not as sharp, and the color paler.

What do you think?

I think sometimes diving in helps break the design block... at least I'm hoping it does as I really have to get these fingers flying.

I'm participating with Nina-Marie's Off the Wall Friday art quilting blog.  You can find it here.  You can find links to other art quilting blogs on her site.

Clean and Sparkly Montana

When I was in Montana this summer and I was posting, Sunita, who lives in Mumbai, India commented that Montana seems so pure and clean.

Well, I have to admit, the air is pure and for the most part, the water is clean as well. The vast space with sparse population kind of allows for that....but up until the mid to late 1970s or so, and maybe in some respects now, man has left his mark in piles of trash.

There's a reason for this. Since there are so few people and since the attitude of getting rid of your trash has changed from "let's fill in the land that has no use" --gullies and other areas which couldn't be tilled, the method of getting rid of trash, old farm implements and worn out vehicles was to just drive them to the edge and heave them in.

Presently, that has been changing somewhat as people now take their trash into the landfills or transfer stations and when the cost of scrap metals rises, then people start raiding their dumps and bring in literally tons of scrap iron.


Indeed, my sister-in-law has made short work of some of the piles of discards on the land immediately around her house.


What is left, often leaves good fodder for photos. :0

More Questions than answers

This is one of my favorite family photosgraphs. It shows my great grandmother, Helen Johanna Dempsey Ellis (known as "Josephine" or "Josie" as she hated the name "Helen Johanna") proving a land claim. According to my grandmother, this was the claim in Havre, Montana. Grandma Josie told me that the dog was given to her by a cowboy.

My great-grandfather, Elmer Esmond Ellis, was a banker and worked in town. Grandma stayed at the landclaim and made a home...as you can see, it wasn't much of a home, but these shacks were common in the early years of Montana and you can still see them dotting the landscape. Many were the initial homesteading claims, some were oilmen's shacks and others were for the herdsmen, whether sheep or cattle. Every day, a cowboy would ride by and (according to the tale) tip his hat at my grandmother before moving on. It turns out he was worried about this single lady on the plains and in order to help keep her safe, he gave her this dog which looks to have some boxer or Staffordshire terrier in his lineage.

I don't know much about Elmer Esmond Ellis, other than the fact that he was always trying to get ahead. He died in 1942 in Dawson's Pass where he went to mine gold..now mind you, he was middle aged at the time and my mother (his grandchild) was about 12 years old. I think that this is the only photo I have of him. He's standing here with his girls, he never had any boys, but he gave them all "boy" nicknames. My grandmother was "Jimmy." Her sisters were "Stubb", "Spike", and I foget the third one. My grandmother's name stuck...and she went through life as "Jimmy", far better than "Leona" which was her name.

I remember my great grandmother most from the visit we made in 1972. Here you see my dad, my uncle Ray, my grandma Jimmy, my mom, Aunt Mayme, Grandma Josie, Aunt Ceil and me. We flew out in my dad's Beechcraft Bonanaza from Michigan in order to settle my mother's aunt's estate.

While I was visiting this time, my sister and my niece drove down to Havre to see the land claim. My niece had researched the claim and found the records for two 90 acre claims. The first peculiar thing about this was that the claim was dated 1922, which doesn't much fit with the photograph. By 1922, Grandma had 3 kids, and I doubt that she, the girls and my grandfather could have all fit in the shack. In addition, I think the photograph is much earlier, based on the clothing. The photograph of Grandpa Ellis and the girls would have been about 1925, about the same time as the land deed was recorded.

When we got there, we were even more puzzled by the piece of land. Here's the access...the area adjoining what was the Ellis property is now the landfill.

It is a plateau, with a climb of about 30 - 50 feet to get to the top. Once we were there, we could find no evidence of habitation, even on the bottom before the climb there was no disturbance to indicate any kind of shack, and this soil tells you whatever has happened to it.

Along the fence line, there had been a graded road, but that's just about it. The land wasn't tillable, and could only have been used for pasturage. With it only being a total of 180 acres, that wouldn't have been enough to do much with.

So, was the photo of my grandmother and the shack from an earlier claim? She supposedly lived in a soddy in Morris, Minnesota before coming out to Montana....We know she was a linotype operator and left her home alone and came to Montana to take a job as a young woman....she was a very adventuresome.

Unfortunately, we can do very little hunting or tresspassing in order to find out the real story.

Do you do Hoodoos? I do! Jerusalem Rocks, Montana

I have been going to Cut Bank, Montana for years, at least since about 2000. However, this time I went to an area I didn't know existed even though it is only about 45 minutes from my brother's place....closer if I could fly!



Jerusalem Rocks are located in Toole County in northwest Montana and they are breathtaking! I couldn't believe that I hadn't heard of them before. My mom grew up in the Great Falls area and she and her father did a lot of traveling across Montana....but she never mentioned these.



Hoodoos are pinnacles of sedimentary rock which are topped by a harder layer. The area erodes, leaving these great spires topped by rock much like a stone totem pole. They can be man-sized to over 100 feet tall and are often found in high plateaus which is what this country is.




I simply couldn't stop taking pictures....and I still wish I had more!





One of the things which intrigued me was that there are dates and names scratched into the rock, but I couldn't find any more recent than in the 1980s. My niece Beth suggested that perhaps that's only about how long they last because of the incessant wind eroding them away.






Yes, I was bobbing around here with a broken pelvis....I tried to stay on the flat, even ground, but I really wanted to do some hiking. Fortunately, it is a very easy place to get to and you can stay pretty much on the level and not have to be a mountain goat.






The hills in the background are the Sweetgrass hills.

Can you get a sense of how high we are up? The gold is a combined grain field with a river running to the upper right side.

Harvest for the World: Thumbs up for the American Farmer

Here in Ohio, the corn and bean crops are being harvested. It's pretty much the beginning of the harvest for corn and the farmers are waiting for the fields and crop to dry out from recent rains.

In Montana, harvest is winding up. Winter wheat crops have been in for a while and the barley and camelina (a member of the mustard family grown for oil, potentially for fuel) and other lesser crops are probably pretty much in.

In normal years, my brother would still be struggling to get his crop in . While this year was a bumper crop, the first after 10 years of drought and sub-normal crops, he managed to hire a cutting crew and finished much earlier than usual.

This is one of his older combines with Mark Benjamin, my brother's right hand hired man, at the wheel giving the thumbs up.
Harvest with the custom cutting crew, a group of men and machinery who go from farm to farm hiring out with their machinery to harvest is a wonder to watch. In the fields of gold, great green machinery perform a ballet as the grain cart goes to the combine which offloads from their hopper directly into the grain cart without stopping or going back to where the truck is waiting. A good grain cart driver is hard to find. They have to be extremely attentive and remember what pattern they have done. The grain cart can take three combine loads before going back to the shipping truck. The driver here was Irish and was very good. Whenever the combine operator needed him, he was there and driving in perfect tandem. He then wheeled off and went to the next combine.

Here, one of my brother's combines is at the grain truck which has another wagon called a "pup" behind it filling the pup, while John the Irishman is offloading the grain cart into the main load of the grain truck.

The grain trucks when full lumber off the hill and go to the granary. Most farms have some bins scattered out through the farm. In this year, the harvest was so large that bin space was being rented as quickly as people could contract it.

This is one of the granaries. In most cases, the bins have great stirring mechanisms to keep the grain moved around so that spoilage is kept to a minimum. Many have dryers in them as well, but that wasn't (and isn't) always the case.

Farmers take the grain to the broker or bin operator and a sample is taken. They look for moisture content (neither to high or too low) and for foreign matter (weed seeds, rocks...you name it). The grain is docked (discounted) based on the findings. Sometimes it is a real pain. I remember one year my dad took two loads in from the same bin on the same day. One load was docked for too high a moisture content, and one was too low....impossible since it came from the same bin, but the farmer has to accept what the grain operator says it is....

Work continues into the night. The combines and trucks look like fire belching dragons accompanied by fat beetles.










Here is a grain ring. This is a temporary "bin" made of curved sections of corrugated galvanized steel bolted together at the base. The grain is dumped (hopefully) dead center and when the pile is full, a tarp is spread across the top.

Some spoilage occurs as there is nothing to keep the grain mixed and drying, but they are relatively inexpensive (I think my brother said they cost about $8,000 per ring) and can be moved from year to year and from field to field. He said the cost of buying a ring was about the same as renting a bin. The black spot in front of the ring is my 6' 2" brother in law, so that should give you a little idea of size. I think of these rings as grain yurts....

America's farmers literally feed the world. The yield that the American farmer is able to get is amazing. In some areas on my brother's farm, he was getting 70 bushels of barley per acre. The high protein barley he raises is used as rice extenders in Asia as well as being used in various high fiber products in the U.S. and Europe. If you have eaten one of FiberOne's products, then you have eaten grain from my brother's farm.

My brother does his best to farm using the best conservation methods available. Unfortunately, he can't afford to grow organic, although he did do a small amount for a while. It simply didn't pay. While he has well over 10,000 acres in cultivation (some are left fallow with a cover crop), some of the acreage isn't useful. Very little in this part of the world is out of production for wetlands or woods. Some areas are alkali beds which doesn't grow anything. The Alkaline salts from deep beneath the soil were brought up to the surface and won't allow anything to grow in these areas. I have seen some which leave a white substance on the surface which looks for all the world like snow.

Hard work. A great amount of risk for their investment. Dangerous work. Bravo for the American Farmer!

Fractured Pelvises and bombing around Montana

Ok...So I dropped a little bomb in my previous post. I'm really sorry I didn't explain this further...I did on my breast cancer blog, so I'll fill you in.

I also have to apologize for the length of time in between blogs....I just got Photoshop and I'm trying to learn it....I am one of those people who jump in and expect to be able to get it right away and am dumbfounded when I can't. Of course, my computer is bewitched, so that doesn't help either.

Just before I went to Montana, I has having horrific pain in my pelvis, in the same area as where I had the breast cancer metastasis in 1997. I have been having trouble with that hip for the last year, but this was really different. I am, however, a person with a strong will.

I thought about this a good, long time, and decided that I would ask my oncologist to schedule my P.E.T. scan (due in January) early. I rationalized that even though if it were cancer (and there isn't anything they can do for me if it was...no new treatments have been developed and I have had two separate courses of very strong chemo--C.A.F, (cytoxin/adriamycin/5FU or flourilacil) and Taxol as well as radiation to the spot on the pelvis). The only thing they could do is to aleviate the pain if it were cancer again), I wanted to know about it so I could start making arrangements (read: get rid of some of my fabric and other stuff so my family didn't have to deal with it). So, I had my P.E.T. scan on a Tuesday and flew out to Seattle (I hitched a ride with my sister from Seattle to Cut Bank, Montana) on a Thursday morning.

After being there for a week, I got a call from my oncologist. Getting cell phone calls out there can be...an experience. When I finally got to talk to him he told me that I had a fracture in the same spot as where I had had the cancer and the radiation. I'm not sure what I did, but I think it was doing some sort of contortionist trick to get out of the passenger side of the car and my ligaments must have popped the weakened bone. The question is how well it will heal, or if it will heal because of the trauma that area has been through.

I'm happy to say it is a lot better than it was.

Behind my mom and dad's house is a small hill with an oil man's shack and the farm's junk pile. You have to understand, all over Montana, the method of dealing with out-dated or worn out farm equipment, cars, trucks and household goods, and just general run of the trash, was to sequester a little spot of land, usually in the deep coolies which you couldn't farm and just abandon it. To most people's minds, this is less than desirable. However, you can understand the problem. In addition, these pile provided parts and bits and pieces which could be made into something else. Parts could be ransacked off the machinery and made into other things.

Now, there are landfills and transfer stations. In addition, there's a scrap metal place in Cut Bank that when the price of scrap goes up, people start working on their junk piles. My sister-in-law has taken literally tons of stuff in.

The population of Montana is 6.2 people per square mile. There's 145,552.43 square miles in the state. 14% of the population lives below the poverty level. The median household income is $43,000 (for the U.S. as a whole it is $50,740).

The opening picture is the hill with the shack. Inside the barbed wire fencing is one of the junk piles. It was my destination. I knew how much rusty stuff was up there and I lusted after it to do some rust dyeing (that will be in another blog post yet to come).


So....I went up the hill. I was whining to myself as I lugged my carcass up the hill. I go up there every year. I've been up there in January. It is a steep little hike, but in the past it was nothing. This time I was going slowly and carefully like an ancient being...You have to watch the ground. Here is an old badger hole which could easily break a leg if you stepped in it.





The land here is quite arid. They get very little rain, but this year they have gotten more than in the past...and it has pocked the soil.










Tussocks of granna grass and other prairie grasses also make the going a little rough. I was wondering about how much difference a year can make in my ability to get around. . . and I'm far too young and active to be acting and feeling like this!

I made it to the top and gathered a bucket of bits and pieces. I would have liked to have hauled the old stove back down so that I could put flower pots on it for my mom. In the past, I've built garden angels for her....but the wind blew it down and my sister-in-law hauled the pieces away.

Imagine how happy I was to find that it wasn't cancer after all....and that next year, I'll be able to skip right up that hill....maybe I'll even be able to start running again. Who knows!