Keeper of the Flame

Someone, preferably in the family, has to be in charge of knowing “HOW” to do things. This is way too large a job for just one person; so all volunteers are immediately accepted and welcomed. It’s fine to buy your bread at the store, but home-made, oven fresh bread is really much better; isn’t it?

Wouldn’t it be a good idea if someone knew how to make beer, just in case? Or grow and preserve (can) fresh vegetables? Just in case… Besides, no matter how time consuming these efforts may be nor how economically unfeasible they end up; somebody should know how to do these things; and many other things as well. It wouldn’t hurt, and the worst that can happen is time spent, with the bonus of good, fresh, home-made, no preservatives added food.

We hear the term Garden-Fresh Salad bantered around often. Really, garden fresh? Pull your lettuce, tomato’s, peppers, onions, squash, beans, etc. right out of the ground, wash and prepare your salad immediately; then say garden-fresh.

Sure there’s some work involved but ‘tis very, very good, and as the point of this story states unequivocally; someone should know how to do this, and that someone should find someone else to pass along this important information to; thereby keeping this essential secret alive and not just in the hands of a few, who could then charge whatever the market will bear for their knowledge and products.

Maybe you don’t want to clean and pluck the feathers off a chicken or catch and clean and prepare a fish but shouldn’t somebody in your circle know how to do it? Bread has been called the essence of life, shouldn’t somebody know how to grind the corn or wheat into flour; as well as knowing how to grow the corn and wheat to begin with? In my family, good hard liquor is the nectar of the Gods; many of us know how to make it though we rarely do, and there are fewer and fewer of us every passing year….

If you are fortunate enough to know a person who has any of these special talents they should be held in high esteem and given any assistance they may require that you can give them. By all means listen and learn from them, unless you don’t want the job of “Keeper of the Flame”. It’s a worthy job, however, with many benefits.

Much of what we do is non-productive. Wash the dishes, next day wash them again. It’s never ending. Mow the grass, mow it again next week. Change the baby’s diaper, wait a bit, and change it again. Clean your house, clean it again soon. Preserve strawberries, however, and you have fresh jam for months. Can your home-grown tomato’s and enjoy them all winter. That’s very productive and it’s nice to have something a bit more lasting to show for one’s hard work. You know exactly what’s in the jars, too; only what you put in, nothing else. There are far worse hobbies or habits. As I like to say; “It keeps my wife and I out of the bars…”

We’re still waiting for a volunteer or 2, someone to pass the information along to; no takers yet. Hopefully other “Keepers of the Flame” are having better success finding an heir, as we are not getting any younger. Everything passes, I suppose, though knowledge needn’t…