New Age Shopping

Okay, I’ll admit it, I’m hooked. I love on-line shopping, especially Amazon. It’s just so darn handy! I am centrally located on a farm about 65 km from four small  towns and 175 km from a city centre. Shopping means time spent on the road and gas money, and there’s times I don’t even find the product I’m looking for. If I’m not in a big hurry I can order what I need on-line and pick it up at my mail box. If I lived in the city my purchases would come right to my door. Hard to beat that! I can even buy for someone else and have it shipped directly to them. When my sister was in a retirement home 1500 miles away from me I could get her the things she needed with the tips of my fingers, right down to TV snacks, food supplements, socks, personal care items, cat food and kitty litter! And shipping costs are negligible. The cost of an Amazon Prime membership is less than the cost of one trip to town per month - with Prime there are no shipping charges.

Yes, of course, I have concerns - small business closures, lost jobs, the possibility of luring an unsuspecting public into a convenient system that becomes a monopoly when all the other options have been swallowed up. Nevertheless I think this is the wave of the future. Price, availability, convenience - that’s tough competition.

People tend to resist change but slowly it seeps into normalcy. Who would have thought, 20 or more years ago, that a business model such as this would catch on? Funny how science fiction becomes science fact. We’ve seen it often in the last 50 years or so.

How can small business stand in the way of a moving freight train - compete with the massive buying power, acres of warehousing facilities, door to door service, and corporate postal agreements of companies like Amazon? Pretty hard formula to beat! Now add a pandemic to this equation… The future of small business in-person shopping looks a bit glum.

On-line shopping is not the only culprit. Big box stores can slit the proverbial throats of many a small business when they arrive on the scene. That centralized location of mine gives me an opportunity for direct comparison of the downtown section of two communities, one with a vibrant downtown, the other one with lots of room to park. Guess which one has big box stores.

Some people like to shop, browse their way through the malls, pick up fresh foods for dinner, stop for lunch with a friend, check out new fashions, take advantage of sales. Most of these people live in a town or city, and these are the folks who are most likely to keep local shops thriving.

But, with computer shopping cornering more and more of the market it’s important for local outlets to pay attention to those qualities that attract customers to their door. Knowing your customers needs and making sure you are well stocked is important, but ambiance (as in the case of restaurants); clean, orderly and attractive display of goods; discounts (seniors love these), reward programs, membership rebates; competitive pricing; and catering to product requests can also make a difference. For me the single most important reason to shop in a particular store is courteous, friendly, knowledgeable SERVICE. A business that treats its customers like a valuable asset is a business that will retain customers. This is where good staff comes in. When I go to a store where the staff stands around chatting away with other staff members or on the phone, where they don’t know where products are located, have no product knowledge or if they even sell those products, where they treat me as if they’re doing me a favour by taking my money… well I find another store. 

Having said all this I need to stop and make an Amazon order. I need canning jar lids and they’re a hard commodity to find these days. The interrupted supply chain and an unexpected increase in demand seems to have caught local stores by surprise.

mltipton.blogspot.com, https://www.facebook.com/Northof543/, Nov. 1, 2021

Hot Chilli Peppers

It all started with the purchase of a pack of “fresh” hot peppers, on sale, 1/2 price. Who am I to pass up a bargain? Besides there’s all those tomatoes ripening upstairs and salsa is on the canning agenda. But, in the mean time there’s that BBQ sauce recipe that calls for 2 jalapeños… (The package said Thai peppers, I assumed a hot pepper is a hot pepper…?)

I found out when making my spaghetti sauce that reducing the abundant liquid found in tomatoes requires at least twice the time the recipe is willing to admit. The spaghetti sauce recipe I used called for 25 lbs of tomatoes and said simmer for 6 hours, stirring every 15 minutes (yes, really, every 15 minutes!). It was super runny after the first 6 hours. 

Reducing the BBQ sauce to the desired thickness took three days, including shoving the whole works through a sieve and blending it with my hand blender. I also added 3 times the amount of sugar the recipe called for to alleviate some of the heat produced by 2 wee jalapeños! Twelve pounds of tomatoes yielded 3 pints of super zinger BBQ sauce. I might tuck this recipe in the back of the book, with some warning notes.

And then there’s the small pot of chilli I made - to use up some of those tomatoes…and chilli peppers.

“Hmmm,” I said, “this pot of chilli got out of hand, not the one meal portion I had in mind. Maybe we should invite the neighbour down for supper..?” 

Oops. Good thing we had a bottle of antacid tabs and enough bread to cool down the heat of our hot tamale soup. Next day it was back to the wood stove in an attempt to reduce the liquid to a chilli consistency. I also added lots and lots of stuff to counteract the effect of the jalapeños! In went 2 more cans of beans, another pound of ground beef, numerous tomatoes, 2 quarts of spaghetti sauce (they didn’t seal when canned and were still in the fridge) and some flour mixed with the hot liquid. This was no longer a one day meal! As it turned out I had exactly 7 quarts of chilli - a full canner. Nice when things work out like that. So 10 lbs pressure and 90 minutes later I was finally done with the chilli…well nearly. Next day when I checked the jars I discovered 3 out of the seven didn’t seal. Some days a person should just sit in a swing and stare at the beautiful autumn leaves.

Remember that salsa I said I’d make? Nope, just making stewed tomatoes from now on. I don’t think much can go wrong there, you don’t add anything but salt.

mltipton.blogspot.com, https://www.facebook.com/Northof543/, Oct.5, 2021

Tomatoes, Tomatoes, Tomatoes!

Only 4 full sized tomato plants of unknown variety, possibly Bonnie’s Best, yielding about 80 beauties per plant. The little ones shown here are called Tumblers & are great for snacking. We have been eating ripe ones directly from our 2 Tumbler plants for quite awhile.

This tomato crop may seem insignificant for someone who is gardening and preserving for a family of growing children, but for my household of two seniors it’s a bonanza! In all my years North of 54 I’ve never had such a bountiful crop, and several of the large ones even ripened on the vine. 

Now, as the green tomatoes ripen under their cozy covers, I keep an eye on them, collect those that are ready, and make tomato stuff - a sometimes daunting, time consuming, yet rewarding process. Our favourite lunch has become buttered toast, layered with tomato and topped with cheese, then baked or broiled till the cheese melts. Scrumptious! I used 25 pounds to make spaghetti sauce, plan on using 12 pounds for BBQ sauce, made green tomato relish, will probably make salsa, and am thinking about Bruschetta. The rest I will can as stewed tomatoes. Hopefully by Thanksgiving (Canadian) the tomato bonanza will be stored away for winter - the last garden task until next year. Will I grow fewer tomatoes in 2022? I’ll decide by what’s left in the root cellar come Spring.

These are called Juliettes.They are a bit like a Roma but smaller - meaty with tough skins. Juliettes are an heirloom variety. Heirloom tomatoes are annual vegetable plants that have not been crossbred or hybridized for at least 40 years. They are open-pollinated, meaning the seeds will produce plants identical to the parent plant. This means you can save your heirloom tomato seeds and grow the same tomatoes next year. I had only one plant but it was prolific. Just yesterday, after frost finally scorched its leaves, I picked another half basket.

mltipton.blogspot.com, https://www.facebook.com/Northof543/, Sept. 27, 2021

Success at Last… Carrot Seed!

It’s raining, precisely when it shouldn’t be, at harvest time. We needed it earlier but got drought instead, and ever since Spring farmers and gardeners have been coping with a strange and none too friendly growing season. But at the moment I’m rather a jolly person because I did it! At least I think I did. Short of a germination test I have finally, after 3 years, managed to produce mature carrot seed. For those who are unaware of this, carrots are biennials, meaning they produce seed in their second year of growing. In central Alberta it gets a might too cold in winter to grow carrots for two years. We dig them up and store them for winter eating, replanting new seeds every spring. I have seen the occasional missed carrot pop up and grow some foliage, but have never seen a volunteer carrot flower. So for 2 years I planted nice looking last year’s carrots from my cellar, ones with a bit of greenery showing at the top, and watched them produce flowers but never mature seeds. This year I planted one carrot indoors in a deep pot, then planted this well started carrot outside in late May when it had warmed sufficiently to plant the rest of the garden. The flowers grew, and this time the flower heads produced seed. Voila! Magic"

There’s a good video called “How to Collect Carrot Seeds” by Gardener Scott. He explains the process of picking and cleaning the seeds in clear detail. Last year I collected a few and followed his method to clean them. A few of those seeds did germinate when tested, but they were small. I have much higher hopes for the seeds I’ve grown this year as they look quite mature.

I also planted a beet this year - they too are biennials. I think maybe I’ve succeeded in producing beet seed as well, but they don’t look as good as the carrot seeds and it’s my first try. I plan to collect and save tomato seeds as well, an easy process for which there’s also a good YouTube video. I’ll save seeds from my butternut squash (I’ve already stored away 14 lovely squashes), zucchini, and many flowers - marigolds, poppies, pansies, snap dragons. Cucumbers were a bust this year, as were beans and peas. They just didn’t want to come out of the ground and by the time they did it was too late to produce much of anything. So no seeds there. Oh well, Alberta is next year’s country and every year presents new challenges.

mltipton.blogspot.com, https://www.facebook.com/Northof543/, Sept. 1, 2021

The Seductive Power of Convenience

The other day when chatting with some friends I said I couldn’t understand the allure of pancake mix, why people buy it. Pancakes are so easy to make, I said. I know the recipe by heart - 1 cup of flour, 2 t baking powder, 1/2 t salt, 2 T sugar, 1 egg, 2 T melted butter, milk to make a batter that’s thick but pourable. The responses I got were things like - But have you tried this or that brand? So good and all you have to add is water! True, there’s no measuring spoons needed, no thought, no need to keep all these ingredients on hand, and pretty good pancakes too. Why should we take those few extra minutes to make them from scratch? Our time is valuable after all.

In my mother’s generation (she was born in 1910) convenience meant a fridge replacing an ice box, an automatic washer instead of a ringer washer. In cookery came Bisquick (the beginning of pancake and biscuit mixes), margarine with the colour pre-mixed in, and frozen TV dinners. My mom loved TV dinners right up until the end of her life and, having cooked meal after meal for over 50 years of marriage, it isn’t hard for me to understand why. But we’ve come a long way since my mother’s time. Convenience has taken over the market place.  We do not want to do anything menial. We have not taught our children how, we have forgotten how ourselves. Our expectations have gone miles beyond necessity. We have embraced easy solutions in the name of gaining time to do things we perceive as more important. We have become lazy, unwilling, or unable, to perform even the simplest of tasks. It seems we now need individual packets of nearly every food, coffee packed in single serve pods, full meals delivered to our door, frozen biscuits... Few households lack dishwashers, washers, dryers, blenders, fryers, crock pots… Many families have 2 or 3 vehicles, an RV, a boat, a 5000 sq foot home… Yet we say we struggle to “make ends meet”. Really?

Clever marketing has convinced us to buy and buy more. Quality is sacrificed for quantity. Things are not built to last. The ever growing and totally unsustainable GDP has become the mantra of our market driven capitalistic society. Without new and better things, we are told, we will not be happy or successful.

The internet, movies and TV have stoked a worldwide desire for the perfect middle or upper class comfortable life portrayed in the majority of films produced. If we don’t live this way we want to - we feel we have a right to - we feel oppressed if we are unable to achieve this expected lifestyle. In Canada, although we may do the final assembly, we have nearly stopped producing the components of most products. We embrace the global economy because it makes it possible for us to obtain goods at low prices, delivered right to our door. We say we love the planet and its people, but our greed for more and more of everything at a “reasonable” price has enabled giant corporations to become “too big to fail”, gaining the good will, including subsidies, of our government, making billions in profits while locally owned and operated businesses struggle to survive. We salve our conscience by getting on one bandwagon or another - save the old growth trees, boycott palm oil, stop eating meat… We all try to do something - conserve, recycle, vote out backward thinking pundits, make a scratch cake, ride a bike... But no one wants to go back to the good old days except with memories. We, the citizens of first world countries, continually strive for an easier life even though by world standards we already have an easy life.

The cost of maintaining our comfortable life style is not reflected in the dollar amount we pay. We ignore the fact that nearly everything is manufactured all or in part in countries where wages are well below the poverty line and environmental standards are nonexistent. All this stuff  is shipped to our shores in giant fuel guzzling container ships, then trucked to its final destination. The gap between those who have and those who don’t is widening. Inequalities, real or perceived, are stoking fires of resentment. It’s a cauldron of despair, simmering its way to the boiling point and nearly ready to spill over.

The pandemic has illustrated some of the weaknesses in our global economy. We are being inconvenienced by a lack of products to buy, slow shipping, unavailable replacement parts, but until/unless the economy actually collapses we will likely continue to sail along, never satisfied that we have enough, oblivious to any harm we are causing. 

Has our unabated desire to consume trapped us in an endless spiral? Natural climate change has been exacerbated by poor, unthinking practices in the realms of resource extraction and manufacturing. The earth’s population continues to increase. Our present course is unsustainable. Survival may require us to embrace community over individuality. We may have to be satisfied with less. 

I guess I am not the only person thinking along these rather gloomy lines. But I don’t think it’s hopeless. I see incredible innovations, inventions coming about, as well as a shift in philosophical thought. I've met lots of intelligent, energetic and caring people, many of them still young. Change is on the wind. 

mltipton.blogspot.com, https://www.facebook.com/Northof543/, July 24, 2021

Nature’s Balancing Act

For every action there is a reaction. It’s a never ending process. Life moves continuously from organization to disorganization and back again. Nothing stays the same. Humans arrogantly think they can mess with nature, even control it, but nature wins in the end. Here’s what I’m seeing as a consequence of one of my favourite nature activities - bird feeding. I just love watching birds, trying to identify them, listening to them sing, watching how they fly and interact with one another… Seems like an idyllic picture, yes?

They say once you start feeding the birds you need to continue. You have made them dependant on this food source and withdrawing it could cause…what?…would they go hungry? Perhaps they’d get so fat and happy they’d neglect to teach their little birdlets how to forage. Some days I forget to feed them, on purpose, teach them the harsh realities of being a bird. 

I’ve heard they make bird feeders that squirrels cannot access. Maybe. We have very intelligent squirrels North of 54. Too often I see a squirrel lounging in the feeder while she fills her cheeks full and chitter chatters at any bird who dares to question her right to be there. I have accepted this but our Border Collie puppy, Scout, is not so amiable. He is, in fact, downright upset about it. The feeder is just outside our kitchen window and the presence of a squirrel causes Scout to escalate his puppy cuteness to a state of frenzy. Window hangings fall; the window itself is in jeopardy. His natural killing instinct is aroused. What to do…? I can’t let him out to chase the squirrel away. His herding instincts would soon kick in and he’d wander away from squirrels and fixate on sheep. A yet to be trained Border Collie can cause major chaos in a flock of sheep. I could move the feeder away from the house but don’t want to. I’d lose the pleasure it provides.

We put up with Scout’s frenzied behaviour for quite awhile but eventually we began to convince ourselves that it was time to take drastic measures. The squirrel has no right to be there! It’s a bird feeder after all! (Disney style animal lovers beware - I could write a thesis on the damage these cute rats have caused on our farm.) Out came the 22 and one squirrel was eliminated. But all squirrels look alike, turns out there was more than one and she was teaching her children about this cornucopia of abundance. So far 3 have bit the dust - hopefully that’s the end of it. Scout guards his “kills” faithfully, tries to bring them into the house but is strongly discouraged. Last night though, when heading to bed, I felt a sock on the floor with my bare foot only to discover the sock had a fuzzy tail! Puppies can be trusted to test your patience while teaching them their household manners.

A few days ago while getting a book off the shelf I noticed there were sunflower seeds stashed behind it, lots of sunflower seeds! Seems I’m feeding birds, squirrels, and mice! And perhaps I’m inadvertently feeding another of nature’s children - ravens. This year I’ve noticed a much larger presence of ravens on our farm. They’re very noisy neighbours, screeching and squawking while they dive about looking for food.  

“Common ravens have coexisted with humans for thousands of years and in some areas have been so numerous that people have regarded them as pests. Part of their success as a species is due to their omnivorous diet: they are extremely versatile and opportunistic in finding sources of nutrition, feeding on carrion, insects, cereal grains, berries, fruit, small animals, nesting birds, and food waste.” (Wikipedia). 

I would add dog food to that list. I think they get at least 50% of what we leave out for our guardian dogs when we go away for a couple of days. Also, in the 40+ years we’ve raised lambs this is the first year I’ve seen a huge raven hopping his way toward a weak and tiny new born lamb with obvious bad intentions. Are the ravens here because the birds, squirrels and mice are so plentiful? Would these critters be as plentiful if I weren’t feeding them? What about the sunflower seed growers? They have to eat too! Am I overthinking all of this? Probably.

We’re humans, top of the food chain, use or change whatever we want to make our existence more pleasant and comfortable. Some say God gave us the natural world for our use. But in our arrogance we forget there’s an attachment to that thinking - we have a responsibility to be caretakers as well. 

Nature out of balance teeters awhile until it rights itself. 

Such a simple thing - feeding birds….

Three days later…

I just saw a red winged black bird chase a raven clear across the yard. 

Gotta love life!

Solitaire and Bird Watching

I’ve caught myself playing Solitaire on my iPad a lot lately. It tends to blot out other mind buzzing thoughts - like thinking about the government’s response to COVID-19, the on and off lockdowns, the social dilemmas that crop up. There is so much information/disinformation out there in the media (mainstream, social, & alternative) for people to sort out......what is true or untrue, scientifically sound, conspiracy driven, politically driven? It’s been a long haul and most of us have more or less determined our own path to follow down the information highway. If a friend, relative or neighbor thinks your path is crooked so be it. You think theirs is twisted! A friend of mine stated the mindset of folks very well, I couldn’t do it better so I quote, “What’s on my mind is that people are getting mean.  Typing things that would get them slapped in person. Division amongst the people is real and felt even in small communities where there used to be a sense of closeness. Like a big family. Not anymore. Opinions are getting stronger.  Unnecessary shaming is getting to an embarrassing level of stupidity. Both sides are adamant and there is no room for discussion. Sad to see...”

The social and economic pain resulting from this pandemic has been enormous. Has it caused a permanent change in our society, in the way we perceive others, in our level of tolerance, in our level of empathy? Has it made us permanently paranoid? Will we bounce back? 

Considering the lamentable way we treat our environment, this will probably not be that last pandemic we face. I hope this test run has resulted in some learning for the next time around. As it is now both the disease and the response are causing a great deal of harm. There has to be a better way.

I feel the underlying tension all around me and am so grateful that I live in a rural setting. I can go for days without encountering a single person. I can care for my lambs, walk my dogs, sit out in the sun on warm days, plan my garden, tend to my bedding plants, play Solitaire, watch Netflix, enjoy the birds at the feeder, the geese grazing on the lawn, and the frogs croaking their tune on the lake. What an amazing privilege shared by so few! It isn’t always easy, but I will never regret the day we turned our backs on city life. For me, city amenities hold no allure compared to the beauty and serenity of the natural world. 

Spring, it’s bound to be followed by Summer.

.

Oatmeal Omelette

Oatmeal Omelette

My husband was browsing his way through the internet the other day and got super interested in a recipe. Yes, you heard that right, a recipe. “Listen to this,” he said, “maybe we should try this for breakfast!” The recipe was in video format, not in English but with sufficient subtitles.

“Well, why not,” I said, “it would be nice to eat something besides bacon and eggs for a change.” The quantities were in metric which throws me, but I think I got the measurements more or less right. The video cook used ordinary spoons, not measuring spoons, so I figured out that winging it a bit would work out okay. 

My omelette (pancake?) didn’t poof up quite like it should, maybe because I couldn’t resist adding about 4x the amount of cheese. Here’s the basic recipe.

1 cup oatmeal in 1cup warm milk, leave sit for awhile and mush it around so it blends some

Add 1 teaspoon each of salt, pepper, and cumin

Add 2 eggs

Add 1 Tablespoon grated sharp cheese

Mix all well

Put 1 Tablespoon (or so) of olive oil in a medium sized fry pan and spread it to cover bottom.

Add your omelette mix, cover, and cook on a low heat till it poofs up, preferably fairly high.

Remove cover and turn over, cook until browned evenly, can lift edges to check.

Done!

Quite good actually, a nice alternative to regular oatmeal. We added nothing on top but maybe you could - butter? maple syrup? jam? fresh fruit? Maybe you could throw in a few pumpkin or sunflower seeds, or alter the spices.

To make it easy here’s the link to the YouTube site: https://youtu.be/Jjge2pYKuUM.  Definitely worth a try. Might be worth checking out some of the other recipes there as well. 

Hollywood Script

Is life in the US following a Hollywood script? Has anyone else noticed that the media clips of the recent storming of the White House would fit in perfectly with 90% of the movies on Netflix? It’s a little weird - the costuming of the “marauders”, the crouching, fleeing Congressmen & women, the National Guard asleep on the Capitol’s steps, the walls topped with razor wire. Yikes! I never really expected to be watching movies on the news. But here we are - “The Pandemic”, “American Coup”, and coming soon to your screens - “The Fall” (of Democracy)...? 

Does the film and television industry have a hand in forming our values, or does it reflect them - or both?  Much of what we see in movies, and on some TV reality shows, depicts the ugly side of humanity. The majority of movies we see are fast paced, exciting, violent, sexy, and full of special effects. The really-bad-guy is often pitted against the not-so-bad guy. We identify with that not-so-bad guy. Life has unfairly dealt him a lousy hand of cards. It’s okay when the not-so-bad guy leaves chaos and destruction behind him because his mission is good and he is trying to bring the really-bad-guy down. And the good-guys these days? They seem to have disappeared from the screen almost entirely.

And then there’s TV and the Internet. We are living through a pandemic. Restrictions placed on everyday life have caused a great deal of hardship, especially for less affluent people. Adding to these difficulties our mainstream TV news media fills our screens with pandemic stats and short clips of horrendous events - wars, extreme poverty, floods and earth quakes, military coups, murders, child abuse, theft, drug busts. Social media is riddled with half truths, lies and, more and more, outright hate. How much of this can we absorb without becoming detached, desensitized, depressed, paranoid? Is it possible to be bombarded with all of this without suffering some effect? 

We know that a thumbs up or down on Netflix will eventually yield viewing suggestions more to your liking. We know, or should know, that liking/sharing/commenting/ on social media drives algorithms to feed us more of the same type of content. So changing the way we engage with social media can change the flavour of the experience it delivers our way. We should realize that all news media is biased and plays to its base, but there are alternatives not afraid to challenge the status quo. You can write you own script. You do not have to be a media sponge.