“And over here is the Lost Arts House. Come in and see what we are doing to bring back the skills that are disappearing over time.”
It’s always fun to watch the reactions when we have visitors to the Blue Hen Farm – Lost Arts House. Surprise and curiosity mostly, often delight. That’s the most fun!
It’s not your traditional use for a house. But it is a great adventure developing a folk school, especially a non-traditional one. Spinning, weaving, bookbinding, cooking, and music…. everyday goings-on at Blue Hen Farm. And most importantly, storytelling!
Everybody is different, likes and dislikes, perspectives, beliefs, tastes, personalities, homesteads, and stories. We collect stories…from friends, relatives, people we grew up with, people we shared experiences with as we grew, and of course new friends – Tales from the Farm.
Come and see us. Add your family to the bookshelf.
The very hardest part of any building project is soil-building…laying the foundation. The reality is that if you don’t have a strong and healthy foundation, the project will not be successful in the long run. Of course, it may succeed short term, but that can be deceiving.
It’s easy to assume that a project will keep going indefinitely when it is in fact losing momentum and running down…falling apart. (Take our planet for example!) To continue, we have to find a way to infuse energy back into the project, nitrogen back into the soil, health back into the system.
We know that organic patterns have counterparts in society. And patterns that we see in society have their counterparts in nature. What does this mean for us? Is it possible to study what happens in the garden to solve our social problems? It’s an interesting idea.
The image above shows the roots of a cover crop. The little white nodes are nitrogen. The plants are putting nitrogen back into the soil so that the soil is healthier for the next crop. Once the cover develops the nitrogen nodes, the greens are cut off at the soil line, or turned in lightly, and the next crop is planted. The crops are rotated; each is there for a season and then is grown again in another space.
How does soil building apply to our lives? What is social soil building? Perhaps it means that as we grow, we should maintain our roots to benefit the next generation. As we mature, we should develop valuable resources for others to use for their own healthy growth. It could mean that we should move between spaces, but purposefully.
The key to building healthy soil is diversity. If you think about a healthy community, you realize that it is not a group of people who all think alike. A healthy community is a group in which everyone has different interests, different skills, and different perspectives, each contributing something of value, each putting valuable nitrogen back into the soil for the next crop.
How do we go about getting started? That’s another story…
Holiday Almond Sticks are yummy. The filling is almond paste, we got ours online, but you could try the baking section of your favorite grocer. It comes in 7oz size tubes…small enough quantity that you need to buy more than one for a single recipe! Deceptive marketing, but who’s keeping track. The paste tubes are about $4 each.
The recipe below makes eight sticks. There is twice as much filling as you need, so we suggest cutting the filling quantities in half. At that rate, you’ll only need 1 1/2 tubes. Cutting the filling recipe in half, here’s 3/4 cup of the villian sugar…but if you only make these once a year, you’ll be fine.
Filling:
2 c. (21 oz) almond paste
2 lg. eggs
1 1/2 c sugar
1/2 tsp lemon juice
Crust:
3 sticks (1 1/2 c) butter, (divided: 2 sticks cold, 1 stick softened)
3 c all-purpose flour
1 c cold water
Beat almond paste, eggs, sugar, and lemon juice well. Refrigerate.
Mix 2 sticks (1 c.) butter and flour with pastry blender.
Add water and mix with fork.
Divide into 8 sections. Wrap in waxed paper and refrigerate.
Remove one section of dough from refrigerator at a time.
Roll out to a small rectangle, spread with 1 Tbsp soft butter. Fold in, by folding over the two sides and two ends to make a smaller rectangle.
Roll out to a rectangle approximately 12 x 8.
Put 1/8 of the filling on the top edge of the rectangle.
Roll up, seal ends, and place on cookie sheet.
Repeat for all sticks.
Before baking, brush with egg whites and sprinkle with cinnamon sugar.
Bake at 375 degrees for 30 minutes.
This filling makes twice as much as needed for the amount of pastry. Make the sticks larger, double the pastry recipe (lots of work to roll all those out…are you doing this with a friend?) or cut the filling recipe in half!
