I would refer to Christmas Day here on-farm as Rockwellesque, except that some folks might point out that a bong, even a well-chambered, twelve-year-old gem, does not conform to the stereotypical All-American image.
Nonetheless, or maybe even more so, our Big Day was celebrated in a low-key, non-choreographed fashion, with the ebb and flow of the day determined by whimsy. I was still whimsically pot-walloping after a sumptuous repast of home-grown pork sausage patties and bacon, fresh organic eggs and a passel of blueberry waffles, with piping hot maple surple, when the idea of taking a morning stroll began to take form.
Surple? Sometimes you just have to let your fingers do the walking, and see what kinds of mischief they can get into. There was little mischief we could get into meandering our way up the quarter-mile-long driveway to Bell Springs Road, but that did not detract from the experience.
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| Our driveway |
The day was sunny and cool but the climb up the steep driveway drove that brief impression right out the window. My tee-shirt was more than adequate for the excursion, which if you are not going to have a white Christmas, is the next best thing. We headed north toward Blue Rock, with no particular ambition of actually hoofing it all the way.
We have done so often enough in the past, but we were also allowing for a slightly more-modulated pace from Gluten-Free Mama, whose valiant efforts in the kitchen, made double-timing it seem unreasonable. Let’s be practical here: With dinner still in the refrigerator, we did not want to hamper the golden goose.
And oh yeah, we had the fab four of (In order of appearance on-farm) Emma, Large Marge, Ellie Mae and Delta, an assortment of doggies ranging from more-or-less 100-pound Emma, to 11-week-old Delta, visiting with Ben-JAM-In for the Holiday weekend.
Gluten-Free Mama had requested that all three of her sons spend time with her this festive time of year, in lieu of other gifts, and they presented themselves accordingly. Hey, it’s a tough job to have to try and keep up with the incessant flow of Holiday delicacies being presented, but if there is a more dedicated squad, I am unenlightened as to its existence.
We wandered up to the ranch house to say hey to Jeff, and then moseyed another short stretch of the legs, before we decided that Frank Capra, Jimmy Stewart and Donna Reed were beckoning a little too strongly to resist much longer.
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| Margie, Emma and Ellie Mae (or may not) |
The doggies were stoked to be able to sniff and smell, but the more they discovered, the less they told. Truth be told, my guess is that Emma knows far more than she’s been sharing all along, but that is just my intuition prattling on.
All four snoozed in four-part-harmony upon our return, as we tuned in once more to “It’s A Wonderful Life,” a story about values and sound principles winning out over dishonesty and greed.
No wonder it is an iconic film in our culture; it has such a fairy tale premise.
Munching on Tamari/nutritional yeast infused popcorn, and sipping on a port wine, I was plodding away at the fifth-or is it sixth?-jigsaw puzzle of at least a thousand pieces. The one I had just completed was highlighted by my overturning a full mug of H2O, and seeing it rapidly flow over, through, between and among about 20 percent of the puzzle, or two hundred pieces.
Even for me this was classic.
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| Almost added a pond, but it dried. |
No panic because water dries out. The first thing I did was rinse the bong and take a bodacious Holiday rip. I reserved judgment for the time being, to see whether there would be warpage or even a separation of the picture part of the surface of the pieces from their respective bases, but nothing of that nature took place.
I assembled three of my square-foot chunks of cardboard, placed a paper towel upon each and distributed the bedraggled puzzle pieces evenly, and waited until the next day for results. Without issue I completed the puzzle, marked it as having all pieces present and accounted for, and sent it off to hibernate.
BossLady expressed an interest in “A Christmas Story” and the words were no sooner out of her mouth, than the film was rolling and we were once again writhing in discomfort at Flick’s agony over having his tongue frozen to the flagpole.
Prizes were exchanged after the film was over, Gluten-Free Mama and Small Boy seeming to divide the distributing between the two of them. The boys were going to wheelbarrow those truckloads of seasoned, bone-dry oak/manzanita mix into the house, but stopped short when informed that dinner was about to be served.
Our pigs, Pork or Beans, contributed, as did one of our chickens, looking more like a small turkey. Roasted beets, turnips, cauliflower, broccoli and leeks accompanied the roasted chicken and the smoked pork ribs and pulled pork roast that went along. The pumpkin in the cheesecake came from on-farm, but the chocolate for the cream pie did not.
No one boycotted the chocolate pie.
This time the whipped cream had organic sugar in it, quelling a possible rebellion if the Thanksgiving Day Whipped Cream Travesty were to make an encore. I’ll stop short of calling said efforts “a mission from God” but just barely.
I got into pot-walloping those dishes again, after dinner but before dessert, simply because I liked Gluten-Free Mama being free to just sit and converse, without having to move. Later, games were in store, but not Monopoly, I understand.
I do know that Ben-JAM-In won on Christmas Eve, in the midst of swirling allegations from the days of growing up in the house. The boys used to wage marathon contests, lasting eternities and involving borrowing large amounts of money from offshore bank accounts, with HeadSodBuster seemingly always coming out on top.
Again, unfounded (and unquestionably libelous) finger-pointing indicated $500.00 bills being lifted by sticky fingers-outright-from the on-site bank, a rumor of devastating implications when one considers HeadSodBuster's track record of success. As I drifted off to sleep at my customary time, however, they were embarking on a rousing game of RummiKub.
It did occur to me that this was one game which was not a part of their upbringing.
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| Gobble, gobble? |
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