This past week I got four pounds of green beans and three dozen ears of sweet corn at the Leadmine auction, along with a large raspberry Danish twist, fresh loaves of cinnamon and whole wheat bread from the bakery, and a gallon of raw milk and groceries, including cherries, a cantaloupe, and lunch meat from other establishments. I fixed the green beans, some corn, and cantaloupe with left-over chicken for supper that same night. We had beans, corn, steak and more cantaloupe the next evening. We froze the extra beans for later since we’d already canned two batches amounting to twenty-six quarts, half of them with some exceptionally tender and delicious Italian Romas.

It was a month ago that I started buying the raw milk of grass fed cows from Travis and Melissa, a young, thirtyish Mennonite couple with three small children. Like many in the community, they engage in multiple economic pursuits; Travis is also a farrier, providing hoof care to the many horses in the area. 

My last stop of the day is picking up milk. While filling my jar, Melissa told me that Travis got a bad cut when a horse he'd just shod raked a nail against him. A registered nurse was there also, having some pleasure horses shod.  She asked Melissa for some iodine and superglue, and apparently she then used them to glue Travis back together!

I had seen this same nurse in the morning as she dropped off a couple of gallons of milk with Sherry, Melissa’s sister-in-law, at the bakery. I saw her again at the auction around noon, before I realized how she had helped Travis. I never did get a chance to speak with her about it. I talked to Travis later but did not see the cut, and he did not mention it as he was busy working on his sickle mower.

The mower is a funny hybrid contraption, the base an old horse drawn, traction sickle mower like one I used to ride, pulled behind my grandpa’s tractor. Howevver, a small five or six horsepower gasoline engine has replaced the traction drive on the back (which already had been converted to a PTO shaft for a tractor). Travis has it hitched to an "Amish tractor," two wheels under a seat for the driver with a shaft for connecting the draft horses and a hitch on the rear for linking up other equipment. The "ordnung" (rules of the community) prevent the use of tractors, but do allow engines on equipment (like the mower or a hay baler) that they pull with horses.

I told Melissa that Sherry’s cinnamon bread made the inside of my truck smell so good (closed up inside while I was at auction and the grocer) that I might not be able to stand the twenty minute drive home without tearing into it, washing the sweetness down with some fresh, ice-cold raw milk. Melissa wryly replied I was lucky that my truck was closed up, or chances were pretty good we'd have found her children in the truck gobbling up the baked goods and milk for themselves.

Just the week before I had asked Melissa’s advice on making butter from the milk’s cream. We usually skim off the cream for coffee and whatnot, using the skimmed milk separately. Melissa told me that they let the cream “ripen,” resting overnight or longer at room temperature. They then shake around a pint at a time in a quart sized canning jar until it turns to butter. That can be a lot of work. I mentioned that my grandmother used to make butter with an electric mixer, momentarily forgetting that the Old Orders typically don’t use much electricity or related appliances. With a smile on her face and a strong Germanic accent, Melissa said she had heard of a woman who once attempted to make whipped cream that way.  The woman had become distracted and returned to find she had butter instead.