Flipping through a new cookbook, just glancing at the pictures can make your mouth start to water. But before you pay for the cookbook based on salivary appeal alone, take a second look, and see if you can actually make the recipes included. Is it so gourmet that it calls for ingredients that aren’t in…
Mondays are usually laundry day here on our corner of the farm. Unless we’ve used our day off from tending the store to go to town, I usually tackle sorting the loads of laundry as soon as Merritt’s off to do his day’s projects. It’s the kind of thing one wants first-of-the-week energy for. Especially…
Becoming a parent turns the topics of burps and messy diapers into everyday conversation. It also makes you a connoisseur of baby products. Don’t get Merritt and me started on collapsible baby gyms, one-piece potty chairs, or folding baby swings. Things have changed a lot since our youngest siblings were born 10 and 16 years…
I guess I’m a real farm girl now. I have baby chicks in my kitchen. Their adorable little peeps fill up our house. Ruthie loves to watch them. (Just wait until next year…!) But they get a little worried when she cries. We went to the feed store yesterday morning to see about ordering the…
“I need say nothing of household economy, in which the mothers of our country are generally skilled, and generally careful to instruct their daughters. We all know its value, and that diligence and dexterity in all its processes are inestimable treasures. The order and economy of a house are as honorable to the mistress as…
(a letter from Ruth Wiechmann in response to Sourdough, Laundry, and Tea…) Dear Gretchen, We have had a few days of spring weather here in south-western South Dakota, and yesterday I heard the first robins singing in the cottonwoods by the creek. It’s a Sunday morning, and I suppose we should be in Church, but–guess…
We have something I wish more young married couples had–a fast internet connection. And by “fast” I don’t mean the lightning speed of satellite, DSL, or cable. I mean, fast on, fast off. Pull into the empty library parking lot after church, click “Send and Receive”, and check our list of websites for the week…
My state and rain. The two are synonymous. I was born and raised here so I love it, though I’m accused of having webbed feet. But there’s nothing like the first rain of fall to remind me anew why I love the rain. It is so cleansing, so refreshing. The rain makes me think of…
Sitting here looking out the window on this rainy June morning in Washington, it is hard to believe that it was more than a year ago now, on another rainy morning in another state, that I became his wife. And what a year it has been! Finishing our little home, riding in the tractor together…
My Great Great Aunt Ruth died on Good Friday. This July 4 would have been her 100th birthday. She almost made it to 100–she was sure planning on living that long. But she missed Uncle Charlie. And after being married over sixty years, who could blame her for finding the last seven years without him…
“[There is] no furniture so charming as books, even if you never open them, or read a single word.” -Sydney Smith, in A Memoir of the Reverend Sydney Smith, by Lady Holland, 1855 I can spend hours looking at books. Absorbing the clever titles (My Lady of the Fog, mysterious, Their Yesterdays, intriguing), unique bindings…
(written November 6, 2001) I have a love for capturing memories on film, and then chronicling those pictures in scrapbooks. And it is not just a mediocre liking—this is something I am passionate about. I’ve filled many albums with my pictures and memories, and have many more to go. Jim Elliot, martyr of the Christian…
The End.
The End.