I have always considered myself to be city-bred. Don’t snicker. Just because Cedar Rapids, Iowa’s population was only 60,000 during the years I was corn-fed there, doesn’t mean I’m not accustomed to the high-living cosmopolitan city life. We even had indoor toilets, a public library, iceboxes, streetcars, and a semi-comfortable city jail where miscreants could be incarcerated instead of whipped in the public square or burned at the stake. In other words, a sophisticated midwestern city of the future and of leading edge technology such as production of Captain Crunch and lots and lots of cornhusks.
Of course, since then, I have dwelled in other large cities, too. During the 10 years I was pregnant, I regularly threw up in some of the most advanced metropolitan citadels of the world – New York City, Washington D.C., Schenectady, Dubuque, Iowa City, Detroit, Miami – so you can’t say I haven’t been around a block or two. Like the good Girl Scout I wasn’t, I always tried to “Leave a Place Better than You Found It”, – and to leave my mark so they’d always know that Octo-woman had been there. Fertilizing it, so to speak.
Tragically, during my first 6 weeks living on an actual farm among the donkeys, horses, ponies, dogs, cats, and ducks, I have become keenly sensitive to the fact that they definitely don’t need any more fertilizer here, so I’m going to have to learn another way to make my mark.
At the moment, now that daughter and son-in-law Susy and Curt will be assuming some of son Matthew’s caregiving, I am considering amplifying my income by taking up a new career as a bootlegger. This is necessary because some of my strait-laced relatives have been critical of my past life as a marijuana farmer in the Laurelhurst neighborhood of urban Seattle. (But more about my exciting planned career change below. Stay tuned.)
Fortunately, I’m very adaptable. To fit in, and to adjust to life in rural America, I’m planning to acquire a new vocabulary, including such colorful lingo as “‘Tarnation!”, “Gosh, dern!”, and “Where’s the outhouse?” To bring in today’s mail, for instance, I can tell you for a fact that the mailbox isn’t on the front porch. It’s “just over yonder a piece down the road”.
It seems that Susy and Curt haven’t learned the lingo yet, but I’ve always been a quick study myself and as soon as I get my new bib overalls, straw hat, a shotgun, and l’arn to spit chawin’ tobaccky, I know I’m going to fit right in with the best of the sodbusters, by cracky!
Now about my new career. I know I have a lot to learn about making moonshine and setting up my own still, but how hard can it be for somebody who knows how to make Hamburger Helper or Kraft Dinner? You simply have to follow the directions on the box. And that’s why I have to learn to talk Rural. It’s no use trying to be a successful bootlegger if I can’t translate instructions like: “Get you a copper kettle, Get you a copper coil, Cover with new made corn mash”.
Right away I have a problem because I don’t have a copper kettle or any corn mash, whatever that is, or for that matter any corn (unless you’re unkind enough to use the term to describe my writing style.) Nonetheless, I am undeterred. Where there’s a will, there’s a still.
It’s time to be creative. Who needs corn, anyway? Everywhere I turn on this property there are trees and vines heavy with all kinds of fruit that none of the residents – unless you count the ones on four-feet – are standing in line to eat. Apples, pears, figs, grapes, blackberries. So what I’m going to do – maybe you should write this down – is mash them up in the Cuisinart. After that, all I have to do is find a copper coil, maybe on amazon.com, and then look up the rest of the recipe for making good ol’ mountain dew.
Some of the fruit awaiting harvest
For a catchy name, I think I’ll call it “Octo-woman’s Fruity-Dew”. I’m pretty sure the entrepreneurs on Shark Tank will be crazy about it, and you can always remember that you read about it here first. Come to think of it, in case you’ve been looking for a hot investment for your life savings, I’m willing to let you in on it! (This is where you can yell Yee-HAA! I know you’ve been wanting to. After all, not counting some possible jail-time, what could possibly go wrong?)
Yeehaw and welcome home!
Your and Matt’s overalls and rubber boots will be arriving from Amazon shortly. We’ve gots lots of work to do on our productive little farm.
Can’t wait to taste Fruity-Dew!
Great pics and we will be adding FORD to our mailbox soon. So happy to have you and Matt settled in. We love your sense of humor!!!
“Where there’s a will, there’s a still.” Haha I’ll have to remember that one. Thank you for this timely post, as I’ll soon be making the transition from city to farm life as well, and this humor really captures the feeling.
By the way, when I was living in Japan, a lot of my neighbors had fruit trees which just produced way more fruit than they could eat, so one thing they would do was make something called “umeshu.” Literally, “plum wine,” though I think Grandpa would probably correct me and say that “liquor” would be more accurate. The method is pretty simple as I understand it, you basically pack a big jar with slightly unripe plums, roughly half their mass in rock sugar, and your preferred spirits (shochu being the most commonly used in Japan, but whiskey is also a favorite), and let them ferment for as long as you like (but at least six months). The best umeshu I’ve ever had was made by a neighbor lady and fermented for five years.
Clearly, the semi-comforts of the Cedar Rapids jail were discovered through personal experience.
Hmm, those donkeys seem to be a bad influence on you! Moonshine, marijuana…what’s next? Mayhem, I fear!
Sounds like you are fitting right in! Thank you for another good laugh!
Very funny blog /letter/story. Not sure what I should call your literary musings. I loved this ‘new life in rural America’ posting. However it did make me hungry as I read it. Also it gave me “flashbacks” of my Corn Rogueing days in Iowa.