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The Craft of Living

When I was a kid, I had a favorite aunt. Actually, she was a great aunt, although she wasn’t much older than my mother. She and my uncle never had children of their own, but she totally got kids — gave them her undivided attention when she was with them, listening intently like she didn’t want to miss a thing. Just being in her company was exhilarating enough. But the northern California ranch where she and my uncle lived with a small posse of dogs (mostly rescued from shelters and the streets) was a huge draw as well.

It wasn’t just the space and the animals though. In my aunt’s house, there was no special living room off limits to kids, no furniture or knickknacks to be careful around. Not that it was untidy; everything was just well used, and useful. It was a home with a purpose. The slightly sagging couch with the blue and green afghan was where my aunt knitted and my uncle read the newspaper in the evenings. At the long wooden table in the kitchen, my aunt kneaded bread dough and made sausage from the wild boar they hunted on the ranch. In the big farm sink, she washed lettuce, tomatoes, beans and squash from the garden. The white enamel stove cooked countless meals, baked pies from whatever fruits were in season, and the pantry was always stocked with homemade jams and jellies, and canned fruits and vegetables.

Maybe it was having grown up during the depression, but my aunt was nearly obsessive about letting nothing go to waste. She even made her own dog food from leftovers which she refrigerated in large coffee cans.

Young though I was, I appreciated the quality of the food we ate on the ranch, as well as the slow and steady pace with which we did things. There was no need to drag out the arts and crafts to keep the kids occupied. The craft of living was entertaining enough. I loved rolling out pie dough, feeding the chickens and gathering eggs. Maybe life on the ranch captivated me because it was just so different from home, where my working mother, exhausted at the end of the day, often relied on the instant foods that were popular at the time.

Now that I’m a mother, mostly working from home, my own style of providing for my family is somewhere between my aunt’s and my mother’s. Some things I make from scratch; some I buy ready-made. I’ve had large gardens and no gardens, depending on where we lived.

urrently, I frequent my local farmers’ market for the whole foods and organic vegetables I love. I bake pies using my aunt’s recipe for the crust, but according to my family not often enough. My son likes to roll out the dough.

I would love to live like my aunt. Tera Schreiber’s article in this issue, “Reviving the Domestic Arts,” is full of inspiration and good tips to that end. Even if we’re not trying to stretch a dollar, it’s worth considering whether it’s better working to live, or living to work.

Karen Reed-Matthee
Editor and Co-founder

©June 2009 Caliope Publishing Company