View From a Prairie Home

by Hege Hernfindahl, Columnist

It’s late afternoon and I am tired. I have worked in my garden all day and now my body hurts; my knees, my back and even my wrists. It is the bending. The raking. The crouching and even the crawling. All I do to get my garden ready. Grant has tilled the soil and I have raked it. All to get it ready. And I can’t reduce the size of my garden, because it is fenced in to protect it from the deer, but the rabbits seem to be able to get through. Last year, they ate all the carrot and beet plants before they had the chance to grow. I have an idea what the rabbits like to eat, so I told Grant to make another raised garden. So tall, the rabbits can’t hop in.

I am planning the usual vegetables. After they are ripe, we have meals from the garden. We have developed recipes that utilize what is ripe. Like ratatouille, a delicious vegetable stew, the idea of which I got from watching a heart-warming cartoon of the same name. But we can’t eat all the vegetables when they are ripe. I like to give some away, but there are limits how much my friends need. I also give some to the food shelf. They like to get potatoes and apples.

But, most vegetables I freeze. Once I knew I could freeze my veggies, it became a habit. And now, in the spring, when peasants of yore would be close to starvation because their supply of food laid up for winter would be almost gone, I go to my freezer and see that here too, there are very little left. But unlike the afore-mentioned peasants, this peasant woman can go shopping for the food she needs in April.

Anyway, I was going to write about making soup. It is my favorite activity in the kitchen. Making vegetable soup. First, I sauté the onions. I don’t like bland soup, so I add a little red hot pepper. There is a trick to that. If I add too much, the whole soup will be ruined. So I also add a little honey and wine. This, hopefully, will mellow the taste of the red pepper. I will go to the freezer and bring up the very last bag of frozen green pepper and another of celery. When I found out I could grow celery in Minnesota, I was so excited. And I found out that Minnesota celery has a different taste than the one you can buy in the store. It has a stronger taste, better fit for soups. I have only three jars left of tomatoes. I also put in potatoes, carrots and cabbage; all from the store. Then, I put in boullion, water and some herbs. I simmer the soup till the vegetables are almost done. At the end, I add milk and cheese to mellow the soup. And I taste it. Too much red pepper! I try more milk. It helps a little. We eat the soup, but the red pepper taste is overwhelming.

Later, I ponder what I did wrong. And I imagine the red pepper as a metaphor for my grief. It is there always. It doesn’t matter how much I try to “go on” with my life. It doesn’t matter how much I try to smile and try to be excited about other people’s lives, the grief is always there. I can escape for a while. Reading, watching movies. But the grief comes back. The sadness persists in the bottom of my soul. It is who I am now. Like the red pepper dominating all the vegetables and herbs and milk and cheese, this grief can color my whole world at times. We are our experiences, the happiness and the sadness, the successes and disappointments. And the grief.