CRAZY SHEEP AND CRACKED CROCKS
I’m a sucker for antiques. Especially the kind I think I might actually use. Back when we had milk goats I bought a big old cream separator with ideas of making our own butter and ice cream prancing in my head. After a copious amount of cranking and sloshing, we managed to produce exactly two thimbles of what may or may not have been cream. After going through the ordeal of sterilizing all those bits and pieces of metal I decided that butter and ice cream had no place in a healthy diet anyway.
I still have the cream separator, but instead of filling the big silver bowl with milk, we fill it with old newspapers for starting fires in our wood stove. I pretend that one day we’re going to get a milk cow and it will be put back into action with more productive results, but deep down I know that will never happen. For one thing, where would we keep the newspapers?
However, we did recently get a small flock of Icelandic sheep which are known as “the poor man’s cow” in their native country. They are said to produce a yogurt that is so sweet it can be served as a dessert without any sugar or honey added. That may well be, but first I need to cure the sheep of their charming habit of sailing over my head every time I walk amongst them. To say they’re a tad on the wild side is like saying Canada gets a wee bit of weather. Exactly how I am going to get close enough to milk them twice a day boggles the brain at this point, but I am ever the optimist!! Yesterday I swear Rowdy had a friendly look in her eye as she rocketed past me. And Hairy Eyeball actually paused long enough to grab a mouthful of oats before vaulting for the fence line, so you never know. I may be pulling up a stool beside them yet . . . a little three legged antique one would be nice.
In the meantime, the newspaper sits in the cream separator and our kindling rests in a crock. The same crock I swooned over at an auction and made Darcy promise to bid on if it came up while I was off getting a coffee. I returned in time to spot Darcy on the opposite side of the ring dutifully bidding on the crock. A woman beside me snorted in disgust.
“Look at that man over there bidding up that crock. The thing’s got a crack down the inside of it, don’t you know. It’s useless for kraut. And one of the
handles is broken. City people are idiots. They’ll bid on anything.”
I politely smiled and nodded, while discreetly making violent cut off hand motions which Darcy mistook as a signal to keep bidding or he was a dead man.
Later, as we were lifting the cracked crock into the back seat of the truck, I noticed the same lady standing stock still on the edge of the lawn gaping at us. I smiled and waved with my free hand, but she just shook her head and turned away. Oh, well. The cracked crock may not keep kraut, but it keeps our kindling just fine.
My most recent purchase was a set of delicate forest green water glasses circa 1950’s that I picked up at an antique sale in Grande Prairie. It’s the environmental thing to do, you know. Buying dishes that are already in circulation instead of encouraging factories to spew chemicals into the sky and deplete our resources to make more of what’s already out there. Doesn’t that make me sound noble? I’d be so special I could practically pop a shirt button clear across the room and hit you smack in the eye, if it weren’t for the real reason I bought them – the glasses were beautiful, cheaper than new ones and I wanted them. Best of all, not one of them was cracked. We checked; twice.
Shannon McKinnon is a humour columnist from the Peace River country. You can reach her at contact@shannonmckinnon.com
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