The Minnesota Farm Woman

by Chris Quaal Vinson Pomp and Circumstance I have always thought that raising teenagers is like patting your head and rubbing your belly at the same time you are listening to someone scrape their fingernails over a blackboard again and again. We wanted to be active involved parents. I volunteered in the...

The Minnesota Farm Woman

by Chris Quaal Vinson The ‘morel’ of the story My friend Terri and I have been friends since I was in the first grade and she was in the second. She will be the first to tell you that picking berries and gathering mushrooms are some of her favorite things to do. My sister and brother-in-law are also...

The Minnesota Farm Woman

by Chris Quaal Vinson Strawberry fields Once again, a mail-order garden company has let me down. Oh, don’t get me wrong, I got my honeyberry plants in good shape…and about six weeks too early. They are now being coddled and stroked on my kitchen windowsill, and I hope they live long enough to put in the...

The Minnesota Farm Woman

by Chris Quaal Vinson The Chicken Whisperer Before I started raising chickens, I had big plans. Big plans for a refrigerator overflowing with eggs and a freezer full of meat. Big plans for plump hens sitting on nests and peeping little yellow chicks every spring. While I was busy counting my chickens before...

The Minnesota Farm Woman

by Chris Quaal Vinson In and out You know what they say….women always visit the restroom in pairs. Perhaps that is why my dad built a two-seater outhouse in the woods behind our cabin on Bello Lake. My sister and I usually went together when we were little girls. We were in and out of there as quickly as...

The Minnesota Farm Woman

by Chris Quaal Vinson Mistakes and other cakes My mother told me the story of the “Never Fail Chocolate Cake” when she called me to tell me that I had messed up her recipe. At age 86, she has made that cake about 572 times and knows the recipe by heart. Her almost-54-year-old daughter? Not so sharp. I...