Spring Kite Farm: A bean-stomping, hard-working, manatee-baseball-playing great trip!

October 15, 2013 By

Last month, I volunteered to chaperone Hadley’s three-day class camping trip to Spring Kite Farm in Fort Collins, Colo. The conditions were idyllic, juxtaposed against their visit to the farm last spring where a torrential downpour was unleashed on them.

I wasn’t too sad about missing out on that one.

Both sets of my grandparents were farmers and weekends and summers were spent on my Grandpa Wilde’s farm. I was a city girl who had little/no interest in farming. Even today, though I love beautiful, lush gardens, my thumb is more black than green. I’ve left the gardening to Jamie and the kids.

But staying on Spring Kite Farms ignited something within me that maybe, just maybe, I could get into this. The couple who lease the land–Meagan and Michael–aren’t what you’d envision as farmers. Hip, young and good-looking, they are passionate about their biodynamic and organic styleompanion planting techniques. Spring Kite is a CSA (Community Supporting Agriculture) where members buy a share before the start of the growing season. Mike and Meagan also sell to area farmer’s markets. We found the whole thing fascinating.

I really love Waldorf schools’ experiential model of teaching so this wasn’t a leisurely field trip. For three days, they worked hard picking potatoes, tomatoes, beets, watermelon, squash and doing farm chores like feeding the pigs, turkeys and alpacas. Every kid should work on a farm for a few days to learn what real work looks like and the amount of sacrifice it takes to provide sustenance to survive.We ate like royalty every day. I should know.  I was one of two parents who cooked breakfast, lunch and dinner for all 30 of us. It was exhausting but so delicious as we were able to pop over to the gardens when we needed another ingredient. One night, I grilled potatoes with leeks, onions and olive oil and fresh herbs. Another night, we made fresh vegetable chili. And we setup chopping stations for the kids to make their own salsa.

Fortunately, we didn’t have any trips to the hospital so I’ll count that one as a win.

We learned about sustainability and the fertility cycles in the most surreal of settings.

And there was still plenty of time to combine work and play. This bean stomp turned into one big party.

What do you do when you don’t have any sporting equipment? You take Ryan’s stuffed manatee Herbert and invent Manatee Baseball!

Note: Hadley’s seal Zoe was used as the ball. No stuffed marine animals were injured in the process.

Hadley’s favorite part was playing with Tomato, the farm’s dog.

I enjoyed the fireside chats, readings, s’mores and banjo jams.
Most of the kids were really great. Best of all was Hadley and I really bonded and her friends fell in love with me calling me “mom.”When I stopped for Slurpees on the drive home, I got several adoption requests.

It doesn’t take much with these girls.

As for the boys, they were a hoot. Things you never thought you’d say to 10-yr-old boys: “Hey dudes, let’s not body slam the porta-potty when your buddy is in it, OK?”

At one point, Dell (one of my fellow chaperones) left to get some medicine. I was hanging out in our cooking area with one of the boys, J.D., when he smelled something burning and added, “it smells like my grandparent’s house.” I’m sure they’d be thrilled to hear that.

We discovered that Dell had left a dutch oven of blueberry muffin mix cooking on the camp stove. I immediately removed it and was able to salvage it except for the very bottom, which was burned. When the kids came back for a mid-day snack, they were delighted to eat it but these boys took it one step further: they devoured the charred remains.

I think Wyatt’s face says it all.

My fave moment was when Hadley was packing up and discovered her brother (who had used the sleeping bag a couple of months ago) had left his dirty underwear and PJs at the bottom.

Not surprisingly, it was her least favorite moment.

We were excited to return home and shower but I’m not sure our boys were very happy to see us as evidenced by the phone conversation I had with Jamie on day two.

Husband: Bode was early to school today.

Me: Why?

Him: We went and got doughnuts.

Me: Doughnuts today, Chuck E. Cheese last night. He’s not going to want me to come home.

Him: It has its advantages.

Filed Under: Bode, Humor, Jamie Tagged With: ,

When a Woman Loves a Man: The Pumpkin Version

October 4, 2013 By

I’ll admit it: I rarely go out to the pumpkin patch. I venture over there a few times a year to help Jamie with a few tasks but mostly, I watch the pumpkin’s progress from our porch or bedroom window. And I hear about the pumpkin 24-7 so it’s not like I’m absent from the process.

But the day of the pumpkin party, Jamie had a request: could I please come help him take the pumpkin’s final measurements? If you will recall, it was raining. Hard.

“Just wear some shoes you don’t mind getting muddy,” he counseled.

I did just that. As we were walking out to the patch, he noticed them.

“But those are my shoes you’re wearing.”

“Yup.”

Smart wife, non?

You haven’t lived until you’ve measured a giant pumpkin in the rain. He uses an over-sized tape measure and barks orders of where to hold it to get it exactly right. The pumpkin was wet and slippery so it took several tries but we finally measured the beast and emerged muddy and soaking wet.

The takeaway? Greater love hath no wife than she who measures a giant pumpkin with her husband in the rain.

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In case you missed it:

Drumroll: And the Great Pumpkin’s Weight is….

Like a giant pumpkin to the slaughter: a pumpkin party to remember

Stanley the Pumpkin Does Colorado Schools and the Fun Run

Recipe: Delicious Pumpkin Pie Crisp Bars

 

Filed Under: Humor, Jamie, pumpkins

(Drumroll) And The Great Pumpkin’s Weight Is….

October 1, 2013 By

After a thoroughly exhausting, fun and wet pumpkin party, the day of the weigh-off was even more chaotic as we juggled Bode’s soccer and my volleyball game (thanks to Aunt Lisa for coming to the rescue with rides!)

Jamie says he loves driving the Great Pumpkin to the weigh-off because of all the stares and cheers he receives.

And who can blame them with this cargo?

The festivities are at Jared’s Nursery in Littleton and have grown from a little podunk weigh-off to a veritable harvest festival with a haunted house, face painting, mazes, bouncy castles, games and food trucks.

But still, the highlight is always checking out the giant gourds.

It feels a bit like you’re wandering around the Land of the Lost with these 100-pound pears. And of course, all those pumpkins.

I felt really happy for Jamie because, for the first time, his pumpkin was among the largest and was the one people singled out for pictures.

Of course, we had to pose for our requisite family photo with the other woman. Though in this case, she’s a man named Stanley in honor of my dad and Jamie’s best friend. My friend Fiona called us the “Mannings of the pumpkin growing world.”

I’m sure that means we must be millionaires.

The kids’ division was first. Early in the season, Hadley lost her pumpkin so they both grew Bode’s pumpkin, which is just a nice way of saying he did most of the work but she wants part of the credit.

Regardless, they blew away the other kids and won with their biggest pumpkin ever: 429.5 pounds! It went 15 percent heavier than its measurements.

Up next was the adult division. Jamie’s pumpkin developed a small crack five weeks prior, which automatically disqualified it from competition but he still wanted to weigh it. It was measuring out to be over 1,400 pounds, which would have beat the 1,308-pound Colorado state record.

But it wasn’t to be so. Though Stanley was a beast, he went “light,” which in pumpkin terms means he wasn’t as thick on the inside so turned out to be about 200 pounds lighter than Jamie had hoped.

A man and his giant pumpkin

But 1,220 pounds is nothing to be sad about. Stanley was a few hundred pounds heavier than Jamie’s personal best and was one of the biggest grown in Colorado this year. His friend Joe ended up growing a 1,478-pound pumpkin and won the competition. Which just means there’s an even bigger goal for next year.

Congrats to my cute family on a job well grown!

 

 

Filed Under: Bode, Family, Hadley, Humor, Jamie, pumpkins Tagged With: ,

Like a Giant Pumpkin to the Slaughter: A Pumpkin Party to Remember

September 30, 2013 By

Last week was a blur as I chaperoned Hadley’s three-day camping trip and returned home to throw our annual pumpkin party the next day, followed by the chaotically fun giant pumpkin weigh-off.

Translation: I barely slept.

We always invite oodles of friends and setup the party in our backyard, which, between that and our neighbor’s lot where Jamie grows the pumpkin, there is plenty of room to roam. But this year, we had a further complication: lots of rain. We have a good-sized four-bedroom house but it is certainly not big enough to comfortably house 60+ people but that’s exactly what we did.

That was only the tip of our muddy iceberg that night.

I expected people to un-RSVP due to the inclement weather and, if we’re being honest here, I kind of hoped they would so we would have a more manageable crowd. But we have wonderful, supportive friends (yeah!) and a deluge of them waited until the very last minute to say they were coming (not yeah!)

The motivator was probably my Facebook post that announced the party was still on despite the rain with the promise of mud wrestling in the pumpkin patch.

We told our friends to dress for the weather and that they did. Though Meredith went a wee bit overboard with her dorky umbrellas.

If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.

Admission to the pumpkin party is your favorite pumpkin dish and we had two tables full of pumpkin rolls, pies, cookies, pumpkin seed guacamole, cinnamon rolls, cakes, dips, pumpkin-spiced hot chocolate and so much  more. I made two new treats that will become permanent fixtures–pumpkin magic cookie bars and pumpkin oatmeal bars (recipes forthcoming). It was one of my favorite spreads ever.

And I’m not just talking about the middle-aged spread I had after sampling them all.

Usually when it’s time to cut the pumpkin off the vine, everyone races out to the pumpkin patch but we had three kinds of people.

1) The “been there, done that” types who opted to stay inside.

Note: My unsupportive children were numbered among them. The Pumpkin Man may disown them for this major trespass.

2) The “I’m intrigued but I don’t want to get wet” types. These people crammed inside near the back door and the more interested sorts stood on the deck so they were able to dash back indoors if they got too soaked.

3) The “I’m all in” types.

These hearty  souls were rewarded with quite the show and major complications surfaced because:

1) It was raining. In case you’d forgotten that.

2) It was muddy.

3) Stanley the Pumpkin weighs several hundred pounds more than Jamie’s previous gourds.

Usually, Jamie and a few of his buddies adjust lifting straps around the pumpkin, they attach it to the forklift and the machine very carefully lifts it off its bed of sand onto the flatbed trailer while the crowd cheers.

But this year, there was muck everywhere so the backhoe could not get enough traction to lift the pumpkin out of the patch. After several failed attempts (and a backhoe that literally almost tipped over from the weight of the pumpkin), Jamie and his pit crew changed strategies. They  knocked down one of the poles supporting the hail netting so the backhoe could go in at another angle.

As we watched the drama unfold, one of our drenched-to-the-bone neighbor’s daughters raved to me, “This is your greatest pumpkin party yet! The rain! The mud! And they might not even get the pumpkin out of there!”

She sure has a differ view of greatness.

After what seemed like an eternity, the deed was done. Jamie and his buddies looked like the Swamp Things as they emerged from the patch and I was horrified when I saw one of them had blood all over his face.

“What happened?”

“I’m not sure. I was trying to push the backhoe when it got stuck and I got bloodied up.”

It was the Great Pumpkin’s first sacrificial lamb. But I’m sure it will not be the last.

Be sure to read the details of the weigh-off and the Great Pumpkin’s final weight!

Filed Under: Humor, Jamie, pumpkins Tagged With: , ,

The List: Outtakes from a Marriage

September 25, 2013 By

Last week, I was crazy-busy with a deadline, making dozens of cookies for the local flood relief command center, doing laundry and dinner preparations were on the forefront of my mind because we had invited the woman I visit teach over for FHE as well as a new couple in the ward. Jamie, like the saving angel offered:

“Do you need me to go to the store?””

“Yes, you would be a lifesaver, THANK YOU! Let me write a list of a few things.”

“OK.” I wrote the list and handed it to him.

“Oh wait. I just remembered something else.”

“OK.”

A few minutes later, after I’d made a double-batch of cookies, I realized I was out of brown sugar. I was remiss when I thought he had already left for the store. But then, WINNINGLY, I spotted him in the backyard!

“I just remembered something else: brown sugar.”

“You see, this is why I hate going to the store for you. You keep adding things to the list. And you already put brown sugar down.”

I should be married to myself; I can anticipate my own needs before I even know about them.

So, off he went to the store and I had a conference call. A few minutes, I heard him try to beep through on my phone. I didn’t pick up; what else could he possibly need? I had pretty thoroughly expounded upon everything with the list.

I grabbed a second phone and tried to call him back while juggling my other line. He didn’t pick up.

When he arrived home with a few grocery bags, I queried:

“I tried calling you back. Why did you call?”

“I lost the list.”

Filed Under: Humor, Jamie

On Being Unaccepted

September 9, 2013 By

In the LDS Church, everyone is assigned home (men) and visiting (women) teachers to come by once a month to check in with their assigned people in the ward. Yesterday, our home teachers Kent and Jordan came by to visit and impart some words of wisdom.

Of course, we can never make things easy on anyone.

Kent shared a nice story by Elder Kopischke from LDS General Conference (read the full talk “Being Accepted of the Lord” here):

When I was a boy, I remember my father sometimes taking me with him to work on projects. We had a little garden a few kilometers from where we lived, and there was always so much to do to prepare the garden each season. We worked on the gazebo or built or repaired fences. In my memory this work always occurred in the freezing cold, heavy snow, or pouring rain. But I loved it. My father would teach me how to do things with patience and acceptance.

One day he invited me to tighten a screw and warned, “Remember, if you put it in too tight, it will break.” Proudly, I wanted to show him what I could do. I tightened with all my might, and, of course, I broke the screw. He made a funny comment, and we started over. Even when I “messed up,” I always felt his love and confidence in me. He passed away more than 10 years ago, but I can still hear his voice, sense his love, enjoy his encouragement, and feel his acceptance.

Kent turned to the kids.

“I’m sure you guys help your dad with stuff, right?”

Long pause. “Not really.”

I jumped in. “They help Jamie with the garden but mostly, they help me and I’m always working with them on cooking and housework.”

Kent: “Oh.”

Me: “But kids, what is the moral of this nice story Kent shared?”

Silence.

Jamie jumped in: “THAT THEY NEED TO HELP ME OUT MORE!!!”

Better luck next month, Kent.

Filed Under: Humor, Jamie, LDS

A final glimpse at summer 2013 (in pictures)

August 26, 2013 By

I purposefully planned our summer to be busy in the beginning and middle and then to just take it easy the final few weeks before school. It turned out marvelously.

June was crazy with trips to The Broadmoor, Chautauqua in Boulder, Breckenridge and Frisco in the mountains, not to mention Hadley’s overnight camp, Bode’s first solo flight to visit Grandma in Utah, our hailed-out camping trip, a Sunday drive to 14,265-foot Mt. Evans, summer hiking group and two weeks of swim lessons.

The Broadmoor, soaring at Chautauqua, first solo flight & atop 14,265 ft Mt. Evans

Camp Chief Ouray, YMCA of the Rockies & at Camp Dick. Not pictured: Avid4Adventure Survival Camp

Breckenridge

Frisco BBQ Challenge

Summer hiking group

In a word, whew!!

And then, of course glorious July was dedicated unto Independence Day and then a three-week-long road trip to the Motherland where great times were had with my family in Calgary and then on Okanogan Lake in British Columbia. On our way back we stayed with my former mission companion in Boise and Jamie’s wonderful family in Utah.

Independence Day

Mom’s birthday dinner in Calgary

British Columbia

Idaho and Utah

Then, we were home for some R&R! Or not.

Think: Annual hike to St. Mary’s Glacier, Water World, Elitch Gardens, pool parties, tennis, the 9News back-to-school fashion show and many glorious bike rides.

Hiking St. Mary’s glacier

Water World

Elitch Gardens

Multiple pool parties

Tennis

9News fashion show

Farewell to summer sunset

Summer 2014: you’ve got a tough act to follow.

Filed Under: Bode, Colorado, Family, Family travel, Hadley, Jamie, travel

Reflections from Job’s Wife After the Crash

August 25, 2013 By

“It so rarely rains in Colorado. Why can’t we just have normal rainstorms instead of these crazy hail storms?”

Jamie and I were watching the news last week and I commented upon the flood of hail that swept through the Denver metro area.

When it rains, it pours and we’ve had a deluge lately. On Friday morning, we awoke to a police officer’s card in our door informing us Jamie’s car had been involved in a hit and run. Despite neighbor’s attempts to pound on our door to wake us up at 11 p.m., we slept through the crash and aftermath thanks to our noise-blocking attic fan.

We’re waiting to hear back if it’s totaled. The perpetrator pummeled into the back of it, pushing it several feet, and eventually slammed Jamie’s car into a now-defunct street sign. Glass and metal littered the street and the noise of the crash caused several neighbors to race outside to see what happened. A lady walking her dog wrote down what she believed to be the license plate number and our neighbor across the street likely caught it all on their security camera.

Luckily the next morning, the guilty party’s brother and then dad stopped by to exchange insurance information. The 17-year-old doesn’t remember what happened and spent the night in the hospital after slamming his head through the windshield, biting his tongue in half and suffering a concussion.

We were one month from paying off Jamie’s car with plans to upgrade my 10-year-old vehicle next summer. That won’t be happening anytime soon and now we’re a one-car family as we battle it out with both insurance companies (an interim rental car doesn’t look likely).

But this was only the tip of the iceberg after a trying few weeks. Our extended family has been dealing with some major health crises and heartbreaks. Jamie losing his pumpkin this week was a bummer but, in the big picture, not a huge deal. But then he went to the doctor on Thursday for yet another health situation and they scheduled him for surgery in two weeks. It could be only minor but, depending upon what they find, it could be major.

I’ve started calling him Job from the Bible and so what does that make me? Job’s wife. To humor myself, I opened up the Old Testament to see just what it had to say about the woman. I mean, it’s written from a man’s perspective…that all these horrid trials and heartbreaks happened only to him.

But she’s seen her life collapse, too. She’s lost 10 children and seen the family fortune disappear and she stood by him through it all but when he contracts a rather nasty disease and halitosis to boot, “Then said his wife unto him, Dost thou still retain thine integrity? curse God, and die” (Job 2:9).

“But he said unto her, Thou speakest as one of the foolish women speaketh. What? shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil?” (Job 2:10).

I think Job is a rock star. Not because he called her a foolish woman (because sometimes we are!) but because he’d figured out that if we believe that God is smart enough to know when we need a blessing, then we must believe that he is smart enough to know when we need a trial. And that the people who grow most bitter are the ones who ask why does God permit us to suffer when they should be answering how should I respond?

Jamie is a lot like Job. He pretty much lives in chronic pain and has been through more at his age than most but his response has been to remain faithful, wise, loving, unwavering and accepting without complaint.

My friend Lisa posted a powerful video that really hit home for me this week. I think a lot of us mistakenly don’t reach out for answers until something really devastating happens. Some find them but too many don’t. From the video Mountains to Climb:

“If the foundation of faith is not embedded in our hearts, the power to endure will crumble.” -President Henry B. Eyring

I can’t say it will get better because it doesn’t always. But with faith, there is always  hope in something bigger.

Filed Under: Health, issues, Jamie, LDS

How not to announce the demise of your giant pumpkin

August 23, 2013 By

The “evil split”

As I posted yesterday, Jamie lost his giant pumpkin that was on track to take the state record. He didn’t initially tell us about it; it was Bode’s first day of school so he waited until after we dropped him off because he “didn’t want to ruin his day.”

Though we’re all very sad for him, the only person whose day (and entire growing season) was ruined was poor Jamie. He sent out an email to our family with the subject line:

“Stanley is no more.”

The problem with this? My dad’s name is Stanley.

Better: “Stanley the Pumpkin is in Pumpkin Heaven” or “Crack Can Kill (the Pumpkin).”

Here’s for hoping for a better season next year.

 

Filed Under: Jamie, pumpkins

How to mend a man’s broken heart: fresh peach pie with shortbread crust

August 22, 2013 By

We had a heartbreak at the Johnson household yesterday. Jamie’s pride and joy (no, not his children but his giant pumpkin) blew up. We knew at the rate it was growing, it would be very possible for it to crack and that it did. He intends to caulk the split and hope it makes it to the weigh-off at the end of September but it is now disqualified, which is a disappointment because it was on-track to becoming a state record.

Jamie with 1,000+ pound Stanley the Pumpkin during happier times

He still has another pumpkin that is growing less rapidly as back-up but for now, the dream is dead.

So, how do you mend a man’s broken heart? Through his stomach, of course. As I was driving home from mountain biking, I passed Heinie’s Market, a family-owned and operated fresh produce market and spotted the  most glorious Colorado Palisade Peaches. One of Jamie’s favorite desserts ever is his mom’s fresh peach pie so I figured it would give him at least a little bit of a lift. A couple of my friends asked for the recipe so I’ll post it here.

What I like about this pie: I’m a crust snob and shudder at any recipe that says to use those crap pre-made or frozen ones. But I’m also not the best crust maker so this one calls for what could be classified as shortbread and is so so so easy to put together.

And there is nothing better than fresh peaches when they’re in season so why on earth do we bake them and suck all the glorious goodness out of them? The crust is baked but the peaches are not so the sweeter and better the peaches, the more delicious the pie. Trust me, try this recipe and you’ll never look back.

Oh, why peach pie to help salve the wound?

Because pumpkin pie would’ve added insult to injury, of course.

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Grandma’s Fresh Peach Pie with Shortbread Crust

Crust

1 cup of butter
2 cups of flour
1/4 cup of sugar (though I add a touch more)
dash of salt

Mix and press onto a pie plate. Bake at 350 degrees for 25 minutes and let cool.

Filling

2 cups of boiling water
2 1/2 cup sugar
1/8 tsp salt
1 1/2 cup of cold water
3/4 cup corn starch
1 3-oz package of peach Jello
1/4 cup of lemon juice
4-6 fresh peaches

Instructions: Boil 2 cups of water in a saucepan. Mix sugar, salt and cornstarch with the cold water. Pour the mixture into the boiling water and let it cook until it is thick and clear (about 5 minutes). Add the Jello powder and cook for another minute. Take the saucepan off the head and add the lemon juice. Let it cool. Peel and cut the peaches and stir them in. Pour into the pie shells and refrigerate until you’re ready to eat.

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To read about Stanley the pumpkin’s demise, be sure to go to denverpumpkins.com.

Filed Under: Foodie, Jamie, pumpkins Tagged With: ,
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