Creative Juices: Processing Easter

Easter brings to mind; traditions and how they begin. Some of the best traditions are by accident, meeting people that you come across in life and incorporating something of their history into yours. Some are by convenience, and others are based on fond memories of your childhood. My Mom likes to give Easter baskets filled with candy and that irritating fake grass that hides your jelly beans so delightfully. I asked her why she still does it every year because her grand-kids are adults now as well. She told me that it was something her Mother always did for her and her brothers and she loved it and loves carrying on the tradition. Last night I came home from work and there were three Easter bags on the counter one for me and the other two for my sons. I peeked in their baskets and then took mine with me to bed with a movie.

Me I like the simple things. Or perhaps I'm just cheap. But no I really like the simple traditions; my annual Easter basket from my Mom and her homemade orange rolls. The orange rolls an old family recipe that came from a neighbor on the Air Force base we lived on in Michigan when I was little. And Easter Sunday spent at my in-laws (prior) farm in Warden for the processing of the spring calves.

The Grand-kids; the youngest two now seventeen, all gather and still have an Easter Egg hunt first thing in the morning. The money eggs get more expensive each passing year. I have pushed for condoms in the plastic eggs but have been vetoed as not appropriate. My desires of not wanting to be a Grandmother anytime soon, outweighed by resounding no's. I still think it's practical and smart. The mix of plastic and real eggs are hidden in the surrounding ten acres of grass and orchard. The Grand-kids; one a parent now herself (...just saying...would have been practical for her to find a plastic egg about three years ago with a rubber inside when she was a teenager...) run through the yard hollering and loping like they did when they were little. Rounding up the dozens hidden around the farm and occasionally not the current years eggs.

The baskets of found colored eggs are removed from their bright primary colored shells, sliced and stirred into a large pot of white gravy. Towers of golden toast are laid to rest on the table. Easter breakfast is ready. It has many names; Shit on a shingle, Egg paste (my contribution in the late eighties) and just plain old Easter breakfast. The toast is ripped into chunks and the thick gravy is spooned on in dollops on top of the bread, add some salt and pepper and dig in. Simple fare that is addictive.... I swear.

Rounding up of the calves begins after breakfast; Grampie rounds up the kids, assigns them positions in the pasture and then grabs his golf cart for some hope of control over the chaos that always ensues. Know matter the amount of planning, the management of moving cows from where they want to be to a location where they are separated from their babies always creates chaos. It's my job to organize the tags, syringe and antibiotics for inoculation. Also I grab the bag of thick miniature rubber-bands and the tool of which I do not know the name, but you place the rubber-band on this device so that the guys can stretch the band open and place it around the calves balls. Strangling any hope of future life from them and eventually the balls fall to the ground of the pasture floor shriveled and useless. The boys get the job of conducting cow traffic into the chute and into the contraption that rotates as it holds the calf still. The girls assigned to direct the finished victim traffic. The calf is identified as male or female and is promptly inoculated, has it's ear pierced and branded and if it has swinging balls they are strangled to the slow death as previously mentioned. Every year there is always one calf with balls so big its takes three to tango with them and just once out of ten years one lucky legend had such big ones he got to keep them for future use.

After all this excitement we go golfing which was in invented in Scotland and that brings to mind the United Kingdom as a whole. The rolling hills of Scotland dotted in sheep and the forty thousand shades of green in Ireland and it's very happy grazing cattle. In the UK they now call prophylactics the lovely name of latex. Condoms once upon a time were made out of linen, animal intestines and bladders (many were sheep). However, they were quite expensive and the unfortunate result was that they were often reused. In 1666, the English Birth Rate Commission attributed a recent downward drop of the fertility rate to use of 'condons', the first documented use of that word (or any similar spelling). Condon (Latin for receptacle), Condoms, rubbers, latex, prophylactics have a long and fascinating history check it out on Wikipedia.

In closing from the words of our military and one of it's slogans for the promotion of condoms.
"Don't forget — put it on before you put it in. On the other hand, if we didn't forget once in a while and have accidents we would not be able to carry on family traditions.

Happy Easter.