2022 Christmas letter

December 2022 (except by now it’s January 5) (make that 8)

Dear friends and family,

As I write this paragraph, the SD winter rages outside and we find ourselves in the second statewide “no travel advisory” in one week’s time; we are happy to oblige! Today’s high was -9 with wind chills in the -40s. Tonight I gathered eggs that had actually frozen on the gathering belt and cracked open. And when I walked through the chickens, I discovered that in one room, the water in the automatic waterers was frozen in the basin. And that’s the scenario for the indoor livestock! On days like this, we do what we can for our outdoor livestock and hope for the best, but it’s tough. Nothing works as it should, making every chore more difficult and more time-consuming than usual. What’s being called a once-in-a-generation event happens to fit perfectly into the theme I’d chosen months ago for this letter: a real doozy!

Even by our standards, 2022 has felt uncharacteristically full–unnecessarily full, really–of such events, those “outstanding or unique of their kind; extraordinary;” occasionally positive, but more often associated with trouble or difficulty. We’ve experienced both types.

The first week of January was a doozy. That’s the week the Schmeckfest musical Matilda was canceled–for the third year in a row. In early December, director Will notified the cast that he planned to assemble them soon after the New Year. In late December, he asked their help securing several more male cast members who could no longer fulfill their original roles, and expressed concern about rising Covid cases. (Back in November 2021, when the program committee had decided to stage the show this spring, South Dakota was seeing approximately 400 new cases per day; by late December, that number had risen to 8,000.) Regardless of where Covid stood by festival time, these decisions would need to be made relatively soon. This prompted Will to send a third email in early January, requiring that all cast members be vaccinated prior to beginning rehearsal. You can probably all guess how popular that was.

The very next day, Will received a call from a parent that helped him realize, despite his fervent hopes, people simply would not be honest about their vaccination status anyway. Canceling Matilda was agonizing for Will. Beginning in 2019, he’d put incredible amounts of time into preparing it, only to have it postponed the week before it opened. He’d kept it in the back of his mind for the next two years, hoping all the while that Bruce’s (i.e. Solomon’s) voice wouldn’t change and Matilda wouldn’t grow too much and Miss Honey wouldn’t conceive. He’d looked forward to being on stage with two of his sons. He’d relished the chance to play Mr. Wormwood. But given the fact that both Will and his rehearsal accompanist/orchestra director are immunocompromised, resuming rehearsals without every possible mitigation strategy was a risk he simply was not willing to take. And you can probably all guess how popular that was. But, as you’ll read, he would feel vindicated soon enough.

The second week of January was a doozy. That’s the week we were registered for the Homemade Ice Cream Short Course in State College, PA. The boys would stay home alone for the first time. As the Omicron variant reared its head, much came into question. “What are the chances,” I wondered, “that this whole family can last nine days halfway across the country from each other unscathed by Covid?” But Penn State confirmed that the course would proceed in person. So I spent hours crafting a Google calendar that outlined daily chore duty, instrument practice, and other tasks and events; where boys could find food each day; and how they would get where they needed to be when. 

For our part, Will and I chose to drive rather than fly, to mask religiously (as the university required anyway), and to distance from classmates whenever possible. The day before we left, an email arrived from the boys’ school announcing that Covid boosters were now available for their age group; I just didn’t have time to deal with it.

So we left on Friday as planned, and everything went fine…until Monday afternoon, when Liam found himself in quarantine…which could have been avoided had I prioritized that booster. From six states away, I could see the Google calendar blow up, my color-coded masterpiece that had assumed five days of school lunches and Liam as chauffeur. Thank goodness for grandparents who could step in!

Meanwhile, the two of us spent seven days learning about the physics of making ice cream, recipe formulation, frozen yogurt and gelato, milk composition, freezing techniques, sanitation, one session each devoted to chocolate and vanilla, and more. Our niece Vanessa and Hans drove from Lancaster to meet us for supper one evening, as did Brent, Esther and Doris on our way home through Indiana.

The third week of March was a doozy. That week, the Freeman Academy/Marion Bearcats headed to the state Class B basketball tournament for the first time in FA’s history; at 122, the school is 12 years older than the tournament itself. Liam was fortunate to have a spot on the varsity team and got to log a minute in the final game which was played on his 16th birthday. Though they came within sniffing distance of upsetting No. 2 seed White River in the first round, the Bearcats were ultimately 0-3 at State, but this community celebrated them all the same. As they advanced through the post-season, many locals became increasingly relieved that Matilda (and, subsequently, Schmeckfest itself) had been canceled; the first weekend of the festival coincided with the State Bs! But that’s not why we’d feel vindicated….

The last week of March was a doozy. It started with a visit to Dr. Gupta, a pediatric endocrinologist in Sioux Falls, which itself had been nearly a year in the making. Late Spring of 2021, we had tried to suss out from Solomon whether or not he was concerned about his height; after years of hovering around the 25th percentile on the growth chart, he had slipped down to the third or fourth. He was reluctant to investigate anything yet at that point, but said if he hadn’t grown by the end of summer he’d be ready. Summer came and went and, once school was back in session, we reminded him of this. He finally agreed and we set the wheels in motion. From September to December we jumped through the hoops required to even get the referral to Dr. Gupta, and then we waited till the very end of March for an opening. Even though the doctor didn’t see any medical explanation for Solomon’s slow growth, he wanted to see him in six months to ensure that he had, in fact, grown. More on that in a bit.

That week was also the deadline for a grant from the Dairy Business Innovation Alliance (DBIA), the same grant we’d received the year before to help develop our ice cream business. This year’s application was for two pieces of specialty equipment–a commercial batch freezer and blast chiller–and was one of two applications that took a lot of my time this spring. 

I celebrated the grant submission with a purely indulgent solo trip to Iowa, where I took in the Mennonite choir festival at my alma mater, Hillcrest Academy (née Iowa Mennonite School). Covid had derailed plans for a national festival, so Hillcrest, Freeman Academy and Central Christian from Ohio planned their own small-scale event. I surprised Liam, who was a member of FA’s chamber choir and, as a bonus, got to see several acquaintances from my high school days, including classmates who also had children participating. I also visited some family in the Mt. Pleasant/Wayland area. One special highlight was spending an evening with some of my mom’s Wenger cousins, hearing what they remembered about my great-grandma Elizabeth (Good) Wenger. 

While I was gone, Will secured another reason to celebrate: loading out the last of the purple corn. Of all the agricultural doozies we’ve experienced since moving here to farm, purple corn is, hands down, the dooziest. I first mentioned the crop in a Christmas letter in 2017. It proved to be lucrative and we went all in (i.e. we planted no yellow corn for two years, out of an abundance of caution to avoid cross-pollination). But that second year we realized just how undesirable volunteer 2017 purple corn is in 2018 black beans. Though Will cut out the corn, the ear was apparently already developed. And since black beans are harvested lower on the plant than other varieties, enough corn ears that were lying on the surface went into the combine so as to create a real problem. That’s because, in order to sell said beans, they needed to be devoid of said corn. But here’s the thing: a black bean and a kernel of purple corn are virtually identical in both size and color, rendering them impervious to even sophisticated grain sorting machines. 

So we arrived in 2019 with corny beans that we couldn’t sell. And then, the corn itself started being rejected for reports of mold that hadn’t been a problem the previous year. Will did somersaults calling and, in some cases, driving all over the state to locate contraptions that might help him clean up either crop sufficiently enough to sell! After each attempt, he’d send off a sample to an independent lab, receive a satisfactory result, only to have the contract-holder reject the sample agin. Ultimately, the buyer broke the contract entirely. What we didn’t know until much later was that this was the experience of every. last. grower. of purple corn that year! 

We are indebted to the grain brokers at National Farmers Organization who persisted in finding a market for that blasted corn. We’re aware of farmers who actually lost their livelihood over this debacle; Will considers it one of his finest achievements that we were able to weather this financially (and all the while renting bin space for successive crop years). Our first load of 2018 purple corn finally sold in February of 2021, and the last load left the yard this past April 3. Understandably, Will didn’t even mind that it fell on a Sunday!

We are gradually using up the remaining black beans in animal feed.

But I digress. Once home from Iowa, I resumed work on the second grant application, this one much more involved. The final week before the deadline, I logged consecutive 12-hour days on Zoom with my new bestie, Cheri Rath, of South Dakota’s Value-Added Agriculture Development Center. This time Will and I celebrated with a long-promised purple-corn-selling date night at Carnaval Brazilian Grill, a once-every-five-years kind of place in Sioux Falls.  

May 12th was a doozy. That afternoon a derecho hit this end of the state, including our farm. Shortly before 4 pm, I went to gather the eggs as the wind picked up and the sky darkened. Since I couldn’t be sure to receive a severe weather alert, given the spotty cell reception in the chicken barn, I relied on nephew Austin, who was mowing his yard next door, to be the canary in my coal mine. “As long as I can hear that lawnmower,” I reasoned, “I know it’s still safe to be here.” By the time I finished the chores, the sky was more menacing and I full-out ran back to the house. I couldn’t believe it when I burst into the garage, intent on getting everyone to the basement, and found Will and two boys looking out the door taking video! We huddled in the fruit room, peeking out to marvel at the sheer blackness, making frantic attempts to reach Liam at track practice, and trying to comfort boys who wondered what they’d done to deserve this particular death. (The storm’s impact on the boys, particularly Christian, was lasting. All summer long, he freaked out at any cloud in the sky and, to this day, he resents me wearing the everyday shirt I happened to wear that day: a bright green V-neck tee with a single word scrawled in white letters across the front: “Lucky.”)

We lost a storage shed in the front yard, our favorite spruce tree, the porch Will had labored on all fall, a majority of our shingles, a couple of south windows, a cargo trailer and ice cream equipment inside it, and 90-some chicks who completely lost their sh** and piled (as they are prone to do) in the subsequent power outage. In the midst of surveying damage and trying to restore power, I received the email I’d convinced myself was not coming, the one notifying us that we’d received the DBIA grant. And I afforded myself a moment to cry a little and hug Will and say, “I needed that today.”

So we spent Friday the 13th cleaning up with help from the boys’ friend Sam and our friend Anne and our 70- and 80-something-year-old parents. But before we could start that, I needed to contact DBIA to divert any unused funds from our first grant toward replacement supplies for the upcoming ice cream season just a few short weeks away. We found a trailer on Craigslist, secured a new dipping cabinet, ordered new cups and spoons, and had it all in place by June 11 for the first festival of a busy summer event season. The accursed storm meant another delay in construction of the creamery, originally scheduled for the previous fall, but for the late arrival of the building panels until just after the first snow had fallen. Now replacing our house roof took precedence and by the time that was done, field work was upon us.

The last half of May brought us 

• a quick Mother’s Day visit from Brent, Esther and Doris, including a traveling production of Come from Away;
• Yvon Nouws, a 22-year-old student from The Netherlands working on her thesis. She was taking what she termed a “regenerative road trip” across the Midwest and spent multiple days at each of several farms she visited;
• another state athletic event, this time track, where the FAM Bearcat boys team placed 3rd and Liam’s medley relay placed 2nd. 

No one was more ready for the school year to end than Solomon, who chafes at sitting still and being cooped up for roughly eight hours a day, especially as the weather warms and he knows farm work is beginning. This year was especially unbearable because he spent his first two weeks of summer vacation in Driver’s Ed, sitting still and cooped up for eight hours a day.

Solomon and Christian’s plan to sell produce at the farmers market this summer didn’t pan out. But Christian went faithfully with me to sell ice cream, and was delighted by each sale of cornmeal, black beans, or wheat flour he had packaged. He is such a social being that he made fast friends of the jam people on our right, and the pie lady on our left. The market took place in Freeman’s City Park and he enjoyed playing with the kids from Cherrybean Coffee, but was usually pretty good about keeping one eye on our own booth and rushing back if it got too busy.

The farmers market replaced Saturday nights at our pop-up shop in Freeman, but we still opened at the restaurant each Sunday evening from Memorial Day to Labor Day. Again, Christian was our weekly companion, and together, he and Will conquered many levels of Candy Crush during the downtimes.

The third full week of June was a doozy. That Monday we had buried our good friend, Dave, who died suddenly from a presumed heart attack; he was 54. Dave was one of the good guys, period. In our younger days, we had served as church youth sponsors with him and Elizabeth and Will considered Dave one of his closest church friends. After years of talking about it but never getting around to it, we were so grateful the four of us had gone out for supper real soon before he died; though we will surely leave this world with regrets, that won’t be one of them. I’ll tell you another thing about Dave: he was content to let you be you. He wasn’t threatened by the choices others made. He scratched his head a plenty at those around him, but I never heard him condemn a single one.

On the heels of that heaviness came Friday, June 24. June 24th was a doozy.

July 2nd was a doozy. We hauled the ice cream trailer down to Norfolk, Nebraska for Big Bang Boom, the city’s Independence Day celebration. My cousin Angie, whose long career at US92 radio had made her a local celebrity, had helped organize the annual weekend bash for many years and told me who to contact about becoming a vendor. A long, slow afternoon had us questioning whether the trip would be worth it, but such thoughts ended abruptly around supper hour when things got absolutely crazy. For two and a half hours straight, right up until we had to kill the lights for the fireworks show

• Will and I scooped as fast as we could;
• the boys and their cousin Josie relayed and delivered orders;
• Angie’s husband Jeremy was six places at once, separating the bagasse serving dishes and making emergency runs for root beer and rounding up extension cords and lights;
• Angie handled the unrelenting line and an impossibly slow credit card reader like a complete boss;
• and the whole time, Solomon excitedly bounded in and out and all around, saying “Great job–you got this!” 

Meanwhile, Gary and Gloria were parked behind the trailer in lawn chairs, Dad armed with a spoon, ready to clean out pails as we emptied them. At one point, a young kid up the bank caught his eye and challenged playfully, “The next one’s mine.”

One week later I was back in Iowa for my Aunt Marilyn’s memorial service, which took place at Sugar Creek Mennonite Church on Saturday, July 9. I’ve played keyboard for many such services over the years, and each brings with it a certain reward of trying to give the deceased one final gift or measure of honor. But it’s hard to describe the extra effect this particular service had on me. “Doozy” seems too casual and irreverent; what’s a more sacred synonym? 

There I was, playing at Sugar Creek for the first time, probably, since I was in high school, surrounded by faces from my childhood. There was Reynolds Roth from Sugar Creek, running sound. There was Wendy Leichty from Bethel, who had sung with Joysong, the ladies trio I admired. There were all the faces that had nurtured me at my own beloved Pleasant View, some of whom had left the congregation amid one conflict or another, some of whom later returned (as Marilyn herself had), some of whom were still there when the building sold earlier that spring. Thirty years hadn’t aged these people at all in my memory; some of their names came a little slower by now, but I felt the same kinship with them as I had growing up. I struggled to articulate what I was feeling until a friend described her own similar moment a few weeks later: “Nothing had changed, and everything had changed.” It was as if, for a couple of hours on July 9th, we could suspend disbelief where politics and theology and personal brokenness were concerned. At least for a moment, that group gathered in southeast Iowa occupied this perfect bubble–able to relate as comfortably and cordially as when I was a teenager–because we didn’t know what all each other had been through or what different people we’d become since then. 

This experience was fresh in my mind when an email arrived through our farm website. The subject was “moving to the area:” My husband and I are retired and currently living in Maryland with our two cats. Our first priority in finding a new place to live is wholesome, organic food. I was wondering if you have any suggestions about where we might begin our housing search, preferably within driving distance to your farm. Thank you.

Once the initial bafflement had passed, I replied. Little did I know this would turn into an ongoing exchange that quickly extended beyond the local housing market to encompass everything from snowstorms to dental work, state ag policy, homeopathy, aortic valve replacements (which she’s also had), the right to free speech, even taming feral cats! 

Years ago, someone told me that everyone needs at least one friend who blows their mind, and one friend whose mind they blow. I’ve run into a few candidates along my way, and am grateful for the mutual curiosity and respect that have accompanied this particular volley of emails. It has been refreshing to engage even when differences are exposed, and to glimpse beyond those differences a seed of friendship.

Those of you who know Solomon know that, since Day 1, he has been a boy in love with adult-sized–and adult-priced– toys. (We remind him that such toys also require adult-sized common sense.) Well, sometime prior to July, he became obsessed with dirt bikes. (I say “sometime prior to July” because by now, all these obsessions have begun to run together.) Our boy’s spirit soared when a neighbor offered him his old dirt bike for FREE, even though he qualified the offer with, “Now, it needs some work….” (Doozy alert, doozy alert!) After consideration, Solomon took him up on it. Long story short, adult-sized passions bring about adult-sized disappointments, and he doesn’t want to talk about it. Our middle child cannot come of age quickly enough for his liking, and we don’t know how to both help him pursue his interests and parent responsibly.

July 30, the day of the Chislic Festival, would prove to be a capital-D doozy. That night toward bedtime, after another full day of scooping, Will noticed that his heart was racing. The only other time he’d experienced this was after a caffeine overdose during his sophomore year of high school. We went to bed, hoping the heart would settle down on its own. But I woke up around 4:30 to see the den light on and, coming out of the bedroom, I heard Will on the phone describing symptoms. Yes, the Freeman hospital said, he’d better come in. So by 5:00 Sunday morning we were in the ER for what would be a long, worrisome day. When successive doses of one med failed to slow Will’s heart rate at all, his doctor administered a second stronger med, also to no avail. Will spent much of the day trying to lie still since any motion–even talking to the nurses–set off alarms and sent his heart rate soaring. He was finally released mid-afternoon with a new prescription and an order to not exert himself until he could see his cardiologist, who would call us the next day.

As promised, North Central Heart called with an opening at 3 pm Wednesday, which felt a short eternity away. Things got even more interesting Tuesday morning when I–and then, Will–tested positive for Covid. All plans were put on hold, including Solomon’s long-awaited appointment to get his driver’s permit that afternoon and, most devastatingly, our family vacation to Washington DC, scheduled to commence later that week.

How Covid might affect Will’s heart had been a chief concern for us since the start of the pandemic, and the reason we had complied willingly with precautionary measures along the way. But it took a Facebook message to make the connection that Covid was in our systems already at the festival and had, we came to suspect, actually caused Will’s heart problem. The good news was that, as his Covid symptoms subsided and as long as he stayed on the medication to regulate his heart rate for the time being, Will was able to resume normal activity while he waited for his rescheduled appointment. The bad news was that, by the time he tested negative, the earliest he could get in was Sept. 16! 

In the meantime, we rounded out the ice cream season with events in Yankton, Sioux Falls, and the State Fair in Huron; we received word that Cheri’s and my grueling April Zoom sessions had paid off and we received a USDA Value-Added Producer Grant; and we sent the boys back to school for their junior, freshmen and 7th grade years.

Liam had his first summer job off the farm in 2022. He worked about three days a week at Fensel’s, a regionally-renowned, somewhat iconic local business. The sprawling complex includes an electrical supply store, a motel, and florist and garden center. Liam spent most days watering and weeding, with occasional departures to collect cardboard boxes from the grocery store, clean out the motel gutters, tarp a greenhouse, or pick up the matriarch Joann’s groceries. As summer jobs go, I think Liam would agree that working at Fensel’s was definitely “unique of its kind” (i.e. a doozy).

And the day before school started, he had another one–a literal game changer. That day the soccer team took on Vermillion and Liam was in the goal, where he planned to spend the season after last year’s unintended breakout game. About nine minutes into the game, a Vermillion player broke past all our defenders and kicked the ball far in front of him. Liam, in order to avoid a one-on-one confrontation and almost certain goal, left the goal box and sprinted toward the ball. At the last second, his opponent tapped the ball out of reach of Liam’s slide tackle, already in progress. His resulting contact with the player meant an automatic red card, which disqualified him from that game and the next, and forced the Bobcats to play the remaining 71 minutes down a player. Upon this disappointing development, Liam conducted himself like a real gentleman and returned to the bench and to an assistant coach who was ready to commiserate. “Let it go,” he told Liam. “It was a BS call,” to which the head coach quickly interjected, “It was not a BS call.”

Fortunately, the next day FA’s newest international student arrived at practice for the first time. Simeon, from Serbia, had not played soccer since early grades. When Coach asked him how he’d feel about goalie, the senior said he was willing to try wherever he was needed. So he and Liam were sent off to learn the basics. Liam came home enthusiastic, describing how Simeon had stopped every ball Liam had tried to get past him: “Mom, he can jump higher off his knees than I can off my feet!” So in reverse course from the previous year, Liam ended up spending most of his season playing forward to Solomon’s wing and Christian’s midfield.

September 8th was a doozy. The day before, Will had left for OFARM board meetings in Elgin, IL. Since that left the rest of us with one vehicle, I took the boys into school that morning and came home to discover cows on the road. I hastily called Austin, who helped me pen them someplace more secure till Will returned in a few days. I was just heading back to the house when the school called to tell me Solomon felt sick; having seen or heard no evidence of symptoms just one hour earlier, I told him some version of “suck it up,” and prepared to leave for egg delivery in Sioux Falls. 

Upon returning home early afternoon, I found a message to call Tony at the State Department of Ag. I thought nothing of it, assuming he’d just been calling to check on the status of the creamery. Instead, when he answered, his first words were a terse, “I hear you’re selling ice cream.”

“Uh…yeah,” I said, uncertain where this was going.

“You can’t do that.”

Excuse me? 

A little history: back in our restaurant days, I’d inquired of the Dept. of Ag what would be required to retail Berrybrook ice cream. At that time, we were told that we were legal to serve at the restaurant and events like the Chislic Festival under our current licensure by the SD Department of Health as a food service establishment. The distinction was, in those settings, we were serving individual servings for immediate consumption, in the presence of the consumer. It was, we were told, at the point of slapping a lid and a label on the product that jurisdiction shifted to the Dept. of Ag, which required production in a licensed creamery. We were content to leave it for the time being and had continued making ice cream at the restaurant ever since.

I explained this to Tony and apologized if I had misunderstood something. His answer? “Well, you’re packaging it in something to transport it to these events.” Well, yyyyeesssss…. I mean, it’s true we weren’t mixing and freezing the product right then and there in the trailer, and spooning it directly out of the canister into customers’ mouths! I didn’t tell him outright that it seemed like a pretty big stretch to me. I did, however, ask him why, if we were in violation all this time, had the Department of Health continued to issue us event licenses all summer long for our weekly local farmers market and no fewer than five other events? And why, after inspecting our booth on multiple occasions and inquiring at length about our process, had they cheerfully passed us on those inspections and wished us a successful day? Frankly, at that point in the season, it wasn’t worth arguing about and it just reaffirmed our own vigor to get the creamery up and running ASAP. 

Oh, and because that hadn’t been enough for one day, the sewer backed up. Bigtime.

In mid-September our family spent a weekend camping in the Black Hills to make up for our lost vacation. A whirlwind itinerary included the Crazy Horse Memorial, an aerial adventure park, Reptile Gardens, some hiking in the Badlands, and an indoor mini-golf place that struck us as pretty seedy apart from the gimmicky black light.

The last week of September was a doozy. Will’s eventual heart appointment had revealed that he’d been in “atrial flutter” since the Chislic Festival–a full seven weeks–and would need to undergo a cardioversion to restore the heart to its normal rhythm. Dr. Paa confirmed that Covid was almost certainly the cause; he had seen a similar reaction in many patients, including some with no previous heart issues! (And that’s why Will felt vindicated over Matilda.) The cardioversion was scheduled for 7:30 am on Monday, Sept. 26, and since the procedure required him to be sedated, it proved to be a highly entertaining morning for me!

As the sedative wore off, Will began asking repeatedly if he “flopped like a fish” or screamed when they electrocuted him. He talked about a “Barry Biden.” When I asked who that was, exactly, he didn’t know (but to his credit, he did offer to Google it). When the nurse shared something she had seen online recently about getting rid of hiccups (his were pretty violent), he replied that after his elbow surgery in 2006, he had told his surgeon what a beautiful necktie he had on. (In the coming days, Will confirmed to me that this is, in fact, true; it just struck the nurse and I as a curious time to mention it.) I decided to confiscate his phone when, in the middle of scrolling through some news story–perhaps one about Barry Biden–he began reading aloud how the Bingo money gets transferred directly to his account or, in another case, he could “click here to be put in contact with an individual in your area.” At one point, they offered Will breakfast, and he ordered a muffin and orange juice. Not five minutes later, upon taking the first sip, his eyebrows raised in unexpected delight and he said, “Oh, orange juice–sweet!” And, in rare moments of sense-making, he commented a few times that he could see why they didn’t want him operating heavy machinery for the rest of the day!

By 7:00 the next morning, Will returned to North Central Heart Institute for his annual surgical check-up. Fortunately, this showed no change in the ascending aortic aneurysm that an echo had revealed a couple years ago, and no further damage or inflammation as a result of Covid. 

Following his appointment, he stopped by the Honda dealership to get a replacement key for our van. We’d lost our first one somewhere in Kentucky or Tennessee last summer and only realized the remaining one was missing the previous Sunday when Will and Liam climbed into the van to join the rest of us at church and it wouldn’t start. Since I’d driven the vehicle last, I checked my purse and pants pockets. Nope. Shopping bags. Nope. Bed sheets, closet floor, garage floor. Nope, nope, nope. Had someone turned it in at the Freeman Shopping Center, the last place I’d been, where the key would have needed to be close enough to the ignition to get me home? Nope. To get a key, Vern Eide Honda told Will, the van needs to be present. They suggested calling Roadside Assistance to have it towed to the dealership, but not divulging why the vehicle would not start. And just how would they suggest getting the vehicle out of the garage since, without a key, we couldn’t even shift it into neutral? Will fetched a chain and the skid loader. Tread marks fade over time.

Solomon accompanied us on Wednesday–our third trip to Sioux Falls in as many days–for his follow-up with Dr. Gupta, who wanted to make sure he had grown. He had. Almost two inches (more than the combined previous two years). And when Dr. Gupta ordered him to “go home and have a nice life,” that poor boy practically grew another half inch just from having the weight of worry lifted off his shoulders.

The tow truck showed up that evening for the van; the first thing he asked for was the key. “I don’t have the key,” Will confessed.

“You don’t have the key?”

“No, they’ll have it at the dealership.”

Puzzled look.

“Yeah,” Will continued. “I was actually at the dealership yesterday.”

The driver shook his head in disbelief. “Those suckers,” he grinned. “Actually kept your key!”

Elsewhere in this momentous week

• the soccer team made the play-offs (equivalent to the state tournament in SD).
• Solomon landed the male lead in the fall play, a charming little rom-com called “The Inn Around the Corner.”
• Christian (remember, a seventh grader) was promoted to first trumpet for certain songs in the high school band.
• I caught a great horned owl in the chicken barn with my bare hands.

That gets us up to October, when I jotted down my first (and last) notes for this letter. Here are a few more miscellaneous updates to round out our year:

Farmwise, harvest was uneventful, though abysmal due to the widespread drought; the highlight for Will was harvesting his first kernza crop. The only effect we’ve seen from the Avian flu has been a sustained, unprecedented demand for eggs. I regularly deliver upwards of 400 dozen per week. Will and I continue to work steadily to get our ice cream to market. We finally got the creamery erected in October and he and the boys have been finishing the interior while I work on other managerial tasks like sourcing ingredients, working with the graphic designer, finalizing flavors and recipes, event applications, etc.

Musicwise, I’m doing some accompanying for Freeman Academy choirs this year, and am helping choose weekly hymns as a member of our church worship committee. Will hasn’t done any more composing, though he talks about it more regularly, especially as Liam shows an interest in improvising and music editing.

Otherwise, for the first half of the year I was part of a task force charged with evaluating the current model of Schmeckfest and making recommendations for resuming it post-pandemic. I thoroughly enjoyed this assignment and the eight other task force members. At our recommendation, the school is advertising for a paid festival coordinator to replace the volunteer executive leadership structure that developed the festival over the last 60+ years into what it is today. In a former life, I would have loved to be a contender for that position. 

Boywise, Liam now wears a perm and began catechism this fall. He earned All-State honorable mention for soccer, was named team MVP and made the starting five in basketball. (We’ll see how the season goes until last year’s starting point guard recovers from a torn ACL.) Liam is looking forward to Jr-Sr Banquet/prom for Mennonites in spring, and is beginning to think seriously about his post-high school plans.

Solomon“wise” (sorry, couldn’t resist), senioritis seems to have kicked in four years early; he reserves a special hatred for math. A budding swineherd, Solomon is in charge of pig chores on evenings and weekends. He is desperate for a phone. He excels musically, earning five I+ ratings of six total entries at the elementary music contest last spring. A highlight for Solomon this year was being occasional hired help for a neighbor on her farm. By now, his sights are set on a pick-up. 

In Christian’s perfect world, there are no square meals and near-daily rendezvous with his second cousins up the road. Christian is a true capitalist who keeps us all chuckling with his spot-on impressions, quick wit and almost total lack of inhibition! His basketball season just finished and we’re awaiting results from his Middle School All-State Band audition. One highlight of his summer was tasting the first peach from his orchard! 

Regardless of how dreadful the coming day appears, we can always count on Rusty to make us smile. “Trusty Rusty” makes the rounds with us each morning. His own chore checklist includes:

1. treeing his favorite squirrel by the chicken barn
2. harassing the rooster
3. licking at least one pig’s butt
4. if he’s lucky, stumbling upon a fresh source of luder–one that’s easy to roll in and capable of producing a good, proper stink.

In really hideous weather, Rusty has garage privileges. He often hopes we won’t notice that he’s still in there once conditions improve. By now we have a well-rehearsed choreography where the parent assumes a rigid stance, points firmly to the door and commands, “Out!” repeatedly as the canine progresses through a hilarious sequence that depicts all five stages of his grief: obliviousness, resistance, pleading, despondence and, ultimately, acceptance.

As I write this paragraph (two weeks after the first one), the SD winter again rages outside and the boys find themselves at home on what should have been their first day back at school after Christmast break. (And as I write THIS sentence–two days after the previous one!–we’re STILL waiting for enough snow to be cleared that school can resume.) So, while I’m dubious that it can maintain last year’s pace, it’s true that this first week of 2023 has been a doozy!

Take care in the New Year and feel free to look us up anytime!

Sherilyn