Field Trip - Heritage Gardens, Belvidere, Illinois

Today we're going on a garden tour field trip at the Heritage Gardens in Belvidere. These gardens are part of the Boone County Conservation District and they're a great example of bringing history alive. We're going to have some fun and hopefully learn something new.

My sister works in the gardens and she will be interpreting one of the five heritage gardens for us.

The gardens were started in 1983 as an integral part of an education program instituted by the conservation district. The decision was made to showcase the history of European settlement in this area by recreating their gardens. The gardens represent the population that lived in this northern Illinois area in the early 1800's.

My favorite is the Potawatomi garden which represents the native people who lived in the area when settlers first began arriving. The other four major ethnic groups include German, Norwegian, Scottish and Yankee.

The staff researched and planted heirloom varieties that would have been authentic for each group. Only open pollinated heirloom varieties are included. It's like an open air growing, green museum!

Let's get started because we've got lots of ground to cover. I hope you brought some comfortable shoes.

There are several nice gardens near the administration building but we're going to concentrate on the ethnic gardens today.

There's a nice pathway leading to the first garden. Just to the right of the pathway we find the German garden.



The German garden reflects the sensibilities of the early German settlers. They put all the space around their homes to use growing useful plants. Some of the varieties grown are: “Old German tomato”, Yellow Hinkelhatz Hot Pepper, Forellenschuloss Lettuce, Huberschmidt ground cherry, French breakfast radish, Early blood turnip beet, Black turtle soup bean, Purple and white kohlrabi, West Indian gherkin cucumber, Mangle Wertzel beet, Virginia smoking tobacco.

A little ways down the pathway is the Murray cabin, a mid-1800's typical woodlands cabin. It was necessary to protect yourself from the northern Illinois elements, windy, hot in the summer and freezing cold in the winter. There were plenty of vermin to deal with and it was generally unpleasant.



Although the interior looks pleasant, I cannot imagine living with an entire family in a space smaller than my bedroom. The interior walls are calcimined in an attempt to reflect light and create a cheery interior. This would have been a typical cabin inhabited by a Scottish immigrant family.



Behind the Murray cabin is the Scottish garden. The Heritage Gardens are lucky to have the Walker Shortbread company as a sponsor of this garden.



One of the interpreters tends to the garden.



Have you ever seen a wattle fence? Here's a good example.



Immigrants were forced to used what they had on hand. A wattle fence is constructed using tall sticks, bound together. It was necessary to protect their gardens from animals, pests and weather. Losing a crop could mean starvation.

Let's continue along the path to the Norwegian garden.



There were many Norwegians who settled in northern Illinois. They tended to locate their gardens a distance from their house and grew lots of root vegetables, which stored well.

The Yankee Garden was copied from an actual plan published in the 1855 Wisconsin-Iowa Farmer by Mr. Powell of Janesville, Wisconsin. The Yankees were more experimental than the immigrants, who tended to hold on to their old world ways.

I loved the white fence with the corn planted behind.



The next garden is my favorite, the Potawatomi Garden. This is an example of the garden used by the native woodlands tribes. Central to these gardens were the three sisters - Corn, beans and squash. The corn would be planted first and allowed to take hold. The beans would be planted and the established corn plants would serve as bean poles. The squash would be planted last and would spread their prickly vines along the garden floor, discouraging animals from raiding the garden.



Scientific studies have proven that a diet of the three sisters is sufficient to provide all the amino acids required for a healthy life.

The immigrants occasionally married a native and the resulting people were called mete'. Here's my sister Pam. I suppose we could be considered mete', since our great-grandmother (a Seminole) married a white man in the early 1900's.



She's incredibly talented. She made this skirt with it's traditional ribbonwork border. (This is not the clothing of our grandmother's tribe, but reflects the woodlands tribes). Oh, she made the mocassins also.



Here are handcrafted gardening tools.



In the summertime the Potawatomi would live in an open aired structure but in the winter they would live in a wigwam like this one. It would be covered with mats or hides.



This is a Potawatomi drying rack. Food was dried and preserved for later use.



The Indians grew tobacco, which was grown in a circle and considered sacred. They believed that the rising smoke carried one's prayers to the Great Spirit. It was used for religious and other special purposes. This is Nicotiana rustica, which once grew wild in the midwest.



These are beans grown by the Indians known as Black Coat beans, named after Catholic priests traveling with the French.



Pam holds a string of dried pumpkin slices.



These were added to soups or stews, absorb the liquid and thicken the mixture.

Fire pit inside the wigwam area.



Pam demonstrates finger weaving a new sash for her period clothing.



She's making progress.



Thanks so much for joining me on this walk through Boone County's Conservation District Heritage Gardens.

My sister publishes a blog chronicling the year-round progress of the gardens.

A Year in the Heritage Gardens.

If you're interested in reading a book about the Norwegian immigrant experience I recommend:

Giants in the Earth by Ole Edvart Rolvaag



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HERITAGE GARDENS FIELD TRIP GIVEAWAY



Thanks to my sister Pam, I'll be giving away the Three Sisters. Included is one package of Black Turtle Beans, one Mesquakie Dent Corn and a Winter Luxury Pie Pumpkin. Also, courtesy of Walker Shortbread you'll be receiving a small package of their authentic shortbread.

You know the drill. Leave me a comment before 6 p.m. on Sunday, August 2nd. The winner will be announced at Monday Morning's Staff Meeting.

Good luck.

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Further resources:

RIBBON WORK TUTORIAL

As Seen on TV

There's a special place in hell for people who prey on senior citizens. That include large conglomerates who base their success partially on that fact that some seniors are lonely and isolated which somehow translates into a shopping addiction.

Online shopping probably isn't in a senior citizens universe but those TV shopping networks and the insidious mail order businesses certainly are. I won't mention names but let's just say that Ed McMahon has passed on to the happy hunting grounds and can no longer represent them.

I wonder what the mail carrier thinks when they drop off 6 or more packages a week from this business. I can say for a fact that 99% of it is just junk.

These appeared one day. They are beautiful blown glass but apparently they don't work because they're now relegated to decorating my countertop.



The large plastic bags and jellified filling that were supposed to hang from the deck and grow tomatoes without soil have been unceremoniously dumped in the trash. That product contained two, count 'em TWO, tomato seeds. I shudder to think what that cost.

Occasionally something will makes it way into the house that is actually useful. Take this for example.



It's a crocheted pot scrubber. I love all things crocheted, so this found an instant way into my heart. The front side is made with some type of nylon cord. The back side, which is the scrubby side, is a scratchy material.



On closer examination it appears to be coarse nylon netting that is cut in strips and crocheted.



I love this thing. It works great and feels so wonderful in my hands.

As a newlywed I used a sponge. You know, the ones with a scratchy side. My mom however, was committed to the cotton dishcloth. She soon converted me, pointing out the fact that you could throw them in the laundry to disinfect and refresh them.

I'm always open to new household products, but they only get one shot. Speaking of which, look what showed up in my mailbox.



Yes! The Smelly Washer guy sent me the promised sample. I don't have a smelly washer (we recently had to buy a new one), but my sister does! In the next couple of weeks we'll be traveling out to her house to put this to the test. I was happy to see that not only does it treat washing machines but it can get mildew and sour smells out of towels. That's occasionally a problem around here. Stayed tuned.

Tell me, have you ever tried those "Shown on TV" products? Any success stories? Failures? How about favorite household products?

As for me, I'm in love with my Extra Moisturizing Pledge with lemon oil. And NO...they don't pay me to say that. HA!

Sausage Gravy - Cooking by the Seat of Your Pants

Enough of this deep thought we've been doing. My head hurts from all the ruminating. Thinking too much makes me hungry, so let's cook something.

One of the best parts of visiting Grandma for the weekend was having biscuits and gravy for breakfast. My grandmother was a born and bred southern belle and she could cook great meals without a single recipe or measuring cup. As we've discussed before, the secret of cooking by the seat of your pants is knowing proportions. If you know the proportions you can cook for 1 or 100.

Sausage gravy starts with sausage, of course. This is a package that the Other Mother got at the grocery store.



The package says it's made in Sheboygan, Wisconsin. There is a lot of great food that comes out of Wisconsin, cheese and bratwurst comes to mind but breakfast sausage is the territory of the south.

These are pre-formed patties. Get yourself a nice heavy iron pan and put it on medium high.



I'm not liking this sausage. They've somehow made this so that it doesn't fall apart or shrink. But it's wierd and rubbery. I'm not loving this. I will admit that I'm a breakfast sausage snob. There's nothing better than southern sausage with tons of sage and pepper. My grandmother would buy a brand that was packed in a cloth bag. We'd slice through the cloth and all. It would fry up leaving some nice brown bits and fat in the pan to make the gravy.



This sausage did not leave anything much. If this is the case, you need to add some butter to the pan. Here's the proportions - 1 TBSP. fat to 1 TBSP. flour and 1/3-1/2 cup milk.



Crumble some of the sausage into the pan. Add the flour and stir will to incorporate. I've added 3 TBSP. butter and 3 TBSP. flour.



Stir and cook the flour for a few minutes. You need to do this so that the gravy doesn't taste pasty.

While the gravy is cooking, make yourself some coffee. This is what we use in this house.



It's from the '50's I think. The Other Mother worked at Sunbeam and had lots of these old appliances. No electronic components. You could run over it with a truck and it would still make coffee.

Add 1/3 to 1/2 cup of milk for each TBSP. of fat. You'll need to add enough to make it to your desired thickness.



Keep stirring until it gets thick. Taste and season it with salt and more pepper, if needed.



When it's thickened, you're done.

Serve it with the sausage and some biscuits.



Sorry, no pictures of the biscuits. They're still in the oven and I've got to get this posted so that you have something to read!

Have a great day everyone.

In Order of Importance

important (im port nt) <strong>adj. 1. meaning a great deal; having much significance or value 2. having, or acting as if having, power, authority, etc.

Continuing our discussion of weddings, do you remember people telling you it was the most important day of your life?


Bride and groom in Miami.

I've found that rarely, if ever, do the days that are declared by all to be most important, actually hold that place in my heart.


Quiet moments, just being together.

Important days are as personal as fingerprints and don't always have a positive and happy aspect.

For some women the most important day is not the day the stood in front of the preacher and said "I do", but the day that they grab their kids and flee with nothing but the clothes on their backs.

For some it's the moment they take responsibility for their lives, putting down that drink or that drug for the last time.

Important moments are usually quiet moments, not shared with rooms full of people. Perhaps a moment with your child when you realize your life will never, ever be the same. Maybe it's the instant you step out of denial.


Me, with mom and dad, 1948

The most important day changes over time. The things we thought were important when we're 19 seem silly when we're 64.

Isn't every day important? I believe it is. Even the most mundane has the power to shape us. We cannot know the effects of even the smallest decision, and as several of my friends have discovered, our lives can change forever in the blink of an eye.


Liz & Tony's daughter was killed by a wreckless driver. Diane and Jimmy lost their beloved Linz.

Looking back, the single most important day of my life is the day when I fell apart. Literally. In the old days it was called a nervous breakdown. Humpty Dumpty, in a million pieces on the floor.


Humpty Dumpty falls.

Why would I deem such a horrible day the most important? Because that total collapse forced me to examine those pieces to see where I'd gone wrong. I allowed me to build myself from square one, discovering who I really was, not who my friends or my mother or society wanted me to be.

Finding myself and getting real with the truth was the most important thing I've ever done because it allowed me to truly be there for others.

My children.

My Farmer.

My friends.

You know, all those important people.

Do you have a watershed moment you'd like to share?

Monday Morning Staff Meeting

Good morning everyone! I know that not everyone joins us first thing in the morning, but it doesn't matter. Since this is a cyber meeting, you can join in any time during the day. And besides, it's always morning somewhere in the world.

The first order of business is the food. Yes, the food. This morning we are having yummy chocolate cupcakes, piled high with creamy frosting. Don't worry, I tested one and the frosting is light and fluffy, not sickening sweet. These are compliments of the Italian bakery.



They got a little smushed in the box on the way home but the taste is not affected by that. You simply turn the cupcake around so the smushed side is in the back.



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Yesterday I posted that wedding video and it got me to thinking about our wedding. It involved a cake accident (much worse than a smushed cupcake), a horrendous snowstorm and not being able to have my mom and stepdad attend the party.

The Farmer and I have always been go-with-the-flow kind of people and it's a good thing. If we'd been super-duper planning people, attached to the idea that everything must be perfection, we'd have been very unhappy wedding campers.

We didn't want any kind of formal wedding. Since we were paying for the wedding ourselves the budget wouldn't support such an idea and we weren't in any position to go into debt over nuptials. We were married at the county courthouse in judge's chambers. My grandmother and the Farmer's friend were our witnesses. My grandmother didn't know until we got her in the car because we couldn't count on her to keep a secret. Nobody knew we were getting married.

The next day we flew down to New Orleans for our honeymoon and mailed the invitations on our way to the airport, inviting everyone to join us for a party on our return.

New Orleans was fun. We sat on the floor at Preservation Hall and listened to jazz and walked over to Cafe du Monde for beignets and chickory coffee at 1 a.m. On the TV in the evening we watched the news of a horrendous snowstorm descending on Chicago. No worries for us, we were in the south.

We should have worried. The snowstorm started up anew when we returned home. It raged on and off for two weeks. My mom and stepdad came up from Nashville for our party. Another storm dropped snow that closed down the city. Literally.

The Farmer and I drove to pick up our wedding cake. From there we inched our way to the dry cleaners to pick up his suit. The streets were treacherous and the snow was piled 7 feet high on the sides of the road. There was no place to pull over, so the Farmer dropped me off and made a turn around the block while I went inside to get his suit.

I stood waiting for him as the snow continued to fly. He pulled up, I jumped in the backseat and noticed his face was pale.

"What's wrong honey?" I asked.

"There's a problem with the cake," he offered.

"What?"

He lifted up his arm to reveal white and purple frosting smeared on the sleeve of his jacket! The car had slid on the ice and the cake had also slid - across the front seat and into his arm.

What could you do but laugh? And, we did. I couldn't lose sleep over a dented cake. But the disaster continued to grow. The next morning the restaurant called to say that there was no way we could hold a reception that day. The snow had continued overnight and even a snowplow couldn't make it into the parking lot to clear out the snow.

This was no news to us as we realized upon awakening that our reception wasn't going to happen. Again, neither of us lost sleep. We worked with the restaurant to reschedule, even though that meant that it wasn't possible for my mom and stepdad to make the trip from Nashville a second time.

The wedding cake? We found a freezer big enough to store it for two weeks and that's what we did.




We unfroze the wedding cake and turned it around so the smushed part was in the back.

The party was fun. Finally! None of the trappings were really important to either of us. We were just anxious to be together and get on with our lives.

P.S. I ain't ever getting married again. I've had two, count 'em TWO wedding cake disasters. My first wedding cake was displayed on a table whose legs collapsed at one end. The cake slid down the table and was caught (and smushed) by one of the guests.

Read more about our wedding cake here:

WEDDING CAKE

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Now it's time to draw the name for the backstage Pony Pass. I know you've always wanted a backstage pass!



The winner is........

"C" - the Stickhorse Cowgirl


Thanks for playing along.

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That's all I have for today. What about you? The floor is open. Funny wedding stories anyone?

Ask away.... discuss away.... sing, whatever!