Making Good Food

We are still in Kansas getting ready to travel back home to our old boat up a river in Guatemala. Our time out here has been great but coming to an end soon. When Pam and I were young we wanted to buy and live on a working farm. I was raised on a farm but my Mother made my Daddy sell it when I was 16 so she could live in town. One year and 4 months later Pam and I ran away and got married not old enough to legally even have a job. With in weeks after I turned 21 we had very good jobs. We went to banks and the Farmer Home Administration to learn we didn’t qualify to buy a farm because we were not already farming. It’s that way today and maybe that is why there is no young farmers. Giving up on farming Pam wanted to travel and we have with what little money we have. Maybe we haven’t farmed in a commercial way but the farm life has always been with us. Out here it’s big farm country. We now own one little acre and a little house surrounded by farms as far as you can see. What to do with just one acre and a little house in farm country. Live like we are down on the farm anyway. We always make our own sausage where ever we are. We bought some pork from the store with a lot of fat in it and this makes great sausage. The old Pennington family recipe from long long ago.

We mix the ingredients as we grind up meat.

paddies ready to cook

We said in a past blog we were curing a ham. It’s snowing here again today and we cut a sugar cured ham we cured ourselves another very good thing lost from the past.

Curing worked well.

The best side of living down on the farm is good food. The worst part of traveling is the food. Sometimes I just crave good southern food. Some call it soul food. We were in a store out here and a women was talking to a man about how bad the food was in Georgia. Everything fried and greasy down there. Then she went off on how bad boiled peanuts are. I just said in this blog how I love southern cooking so maybe it’s what we grew up eating. Where ever we go we carry canned boiled peanuts if we can’t find real green peanuts to cook. If we are down south and can find fresh peanuts coming out of the ground we can bowl before they have time to dry. That is how good boiled peanut are made. As I just said we can our own when we can find them and always have them with us.

Store brought

On a cold snowy day open a can of green boiled peanuts and heat them up in the water they’re canned in. Out here no one builds snow men or makes snow ice cream. The snow man building is out at my age but let it snow and we have ice cream. As you travel it’s always what’s ahead that keeps you going. Some times it’s nice to just go back to your roots and live that way a little. New Year’s coming and we will be traveling back to our boat getting it ready for another trip out to sea. In our next blog we will tell our New Year’s resolution but I would bet you already know part of it. Safe travels.

Holidays in Kansas

It’s the day before Christmas and we are still in Kansas. We are beginning to miss our old sail boat in the Caribbean. Missing our friends down there more. Down there it’s still hot. Up here not so much but the last snow is mostly gone.

We ate fresh rabbit last week. I made a rabbit trap. Back in the Carolina’s where I was raised on a little farm we called then a rabbit gum. Every young boy back there back then on farms was proud of his rabbit gums. Rabbits love to stay in a hole when it gets cold and a rabbit gum looks like a hole. Even when it’s not cold they will go in the box just to look around. There is a simple trigger that shuts the door behind them. Mama rabbits dig a little hole in the ground and lines it with fur she pulls off her belly when she has babies. If you have strong spring rains and these rains happen at just the right times the baby rabbits will drown. Out here last spring it rained for weeks and this year there is not as many rabbits as I like but don’t worry there is still plenty of rabbits.

The Christmas season is in full swing out here. These old people were here at Walmart just walking around in the store. His beard is real and they look real. Maybe they are real and he is Santa Clause. Here in the US people love good food and Kansas is good food country. As I was saying about my past back on the farm we killed a pig in November an made fresh sausage and cured hams. Being out here we bought fresh hams and cured them the old way so we have ham for breakfast like our people had in time past. These old ways are mostly gone now. Our son has an egg incubator and hatched out two roosters they are old enough now that they need to be eaten so we will be dressing chickens this week. Hunting,curing pork and dressing chickens. This is farm country out here and maybe we are not living on the farm but we are living the farm life in a way. With the cows,wild life and chickens our son has a couple of puppies to make life a little more lively. Here is one that was playing hard before he laid down on me and just fell a sleep.

                 With all that we have going on I feel like that sometimes.

                  From farm country. “Merry Christmas Y’all”

Snow Event

We are still in Kansas setting by the fire. We did the art walk on the bricks in Hays last week and had a lot of comments saying how good the art was but didn’t sell anything. Lots of collage students there not really in to buying art. We still have and on going exhibit in the library in Hoisington about our travels. We made the local newspaper in a few lines saying we have a compass and a sexton on display. I was hopping they would say how hard it is the learn to uses a sexton to navigate and the compass is a real ships compass once used on a ship. This week we have another art show and we will see if it will be “We really like it or we want to buy something.” When I said setting by the fire, it’s snowing here today and that makes setting by the fire and Christmas coming soon easy to get into the Christmas spirit. Out here every where you see Christmas. Towns having hay rides. People going around caroling. Stores stocked with enough to make people back at our boat in Guatemala claim (as they do} we are all rich here in the US.

Here are two actors that walked the brick streets of Hays and did a reading of a ghost story. There is always something going on out here. Hunting out here is bad this year. Spring rains killed a lot of baby rabbits and game birds that nest on the ground this year. Not hunting I turned my spare time to the weather out here and built my own designed wood heater for our son’s shop.

The heat feels Good

For the handy man out there. There is a great feeling standing by a wood heater snow on the ground in an old shop working on and old antique truck for a few of us that love working with our hands.

More snow coming tonight.

To our friends in the Caribbean, “We are eating good steaks. Staying cool and will see you soon.” 

Busy In Kansas

In our last blog I said we were going to do and exhibit at the library in Hoisington Kansas. We did that using a stone knife from Guatemala along with a peace of volcanic glass the indigenous people in the old days would have used to make tools. Pam added some of her textiles she got from the local people there. In another part of the exhibit I placed our sexton off our boat and a prize procession we were given in Guatemala by a friend leaving Guatemala “a real ship compass”. Note we maybe are the only people in Kansas that have a ship compass normally setting in their living room. We finished the exhibit with a sundial watch and pictures from the Caribbean.

Now our next task is an art display of my art, Friday evening December 6th in Hays Kansas called Hays Winter Art Walk.                                       

                                                 Some of my works.

Here is a painting of a boat yard in the 1940s where there is very little metal. Oil on canvas.

 

Old farm truck painted with oil on old burlap bag.

                                                       Simple drawing in pencil,