A Traditional Farm Life
By Shasta Hamilton
Greetings from Enterprise, dear friends! It’s often said that children “grow like
weeds,” and I can see the connection, although our children haven’t had to wait
for spring to begin a cycle of new growth.
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My husband happened to be standing next to our oldest son in
front of a mirror this week and was surprised to see our first “baby” was now
as tall as he was! A quick measure for
height without shoes revealed our “little boy” only has a half-inch to grow
before he catches up with his Papa.
As all you parents know, children’s growth is not just
limited to physical stature. Over the
last year, we’ve been amazed at what our 12 and 14 year-old boys are capable of
accomplishing. Most recently we’ve been
impressed with their growth as teamsters with our draft horses.
One afternoon this week they hitched up the Hafflingers to
the forecart and prepared to move some very large branches that had fallen
after last winter’s big ice storm.
Michael gave them some assistance with chaining the first branch to the
forecart and then we stepped back and watched them pull away. The log was heavy enough the horses had to
work pretty hard to get it moving, and there was a moment there at first where
my mother’s heart just about stopped beating.
Our oldest son, who was driving, handled the balking horses and soon
they were safely off, much to this mother’s relief.
I have never given much thought to the modern term,
“helicopter parenting,” but now I think I get it. It’s very tempting to “hover over” our
children in order to keep them from making mistakes, attempting to protect them
as much as parentally possible.
However, it just so happens that making our own mistakes is one of the
best learning tools available.
We are now entering into a new stage of parenthood where a
little more room can be given as maturity is shown, and, boy, is it hard. We’re not only trusting our children’s
ability to handle new responsibilities, we’re trusting the training we gave
them was (hopefully) sufficient, as well as trusting our Heavenly Father to
watch over the results.
This is nothing new, of course, as parents from time the
days of Adam and Eve have been forced to “let go” and trust their children’s
lives to Divine Providence.
With the 150th anniversary of the Chisholm Trail
very prominent in our local news recently, my thoughts have roamed to how
difficult it must have been for families to see their young men head out on the
trail—with little to no communication—for many months or even years until their
return. In these days of instant
communication, it’s not only hard to imagine the reality of so much time apart,
but the incredible amount of responsibility on the shoulders of the young
cowboys, as well.
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Food out on the trail most likely made those boys long for
the comforts of home cooking. Provisions
on a chuck wagon had to be portable and keep well-- coffee, dried beans and
fruit, flour, sugar, etc.
It’s been said that every cowboy kept some hard tack in his
saddlebags. I don’t have any evidence to
prove this, but I have read that hard tack was a key provision for both the
Union and Confederate troops during the War Between the States, so it would
stand to reason it would still have been widely used during the cattle drive
era.
While hard tack boasted extreme portability, it lacked
palatability. Hard enough to break your
teeth, and often infested with weevils, hard tack could be made slightly more
palatable by shaving bits with a knife into coffee to soften it or to thicken a
thin, brothy soup.
The simplest hard tack does not even contain salt. I chose a version with salt, and using the
full tablespoon renders the taste akin to a very, very hard pretzel.
This recipe is simple to prepare, but not so simple to
eat—the finished product is hard as a rock.
However, if you have strong teeth, are feeling a little adventurous, and
would like to try a recipe with a long and storied history, making hard tack is
a great weekend living history lesson.
Hard Tack
2 cups (8.5 oz.) flour
(all-purpose or whole wheat)
3/4 cup cold water
1/2 to 1 tablespoon salt
1. Preheat oven to 300 degrees.
2. In medium bowl,
stir together flour and salt with a fork.
Add water and stir until a ball is formed. Knead about 10 times to form a smooth ball,
adding a little more flour if sticky or a little more water if dry and crumbly.
3. Place dough on a
sheet of parchment paper lightly dusted with flour. (Parchment paper can be already on a cookie
sheet or placed on after rolling.) Dust
top of ball with flour and roll with rolling pin until 3/8” thick. Using ruler and pizza cutter, cut into
three-inch squares. Prick 9 holes into
each square with a chopstick or other pointed utensil.
4. Bake 2 to 3 hours
until lightly browned and rock hard, turning half way through baking time.
(Small pieces of the ragged edges will finish much sooner than the squares.)
Cool completely on wire racks before storage.
5. Load your
saddlebags and hit the trail!
Yield: 6 squares of
hard tack plus ragged edges.
Copyright © 2016 by Shasta Hamilton
Shasta is a fifth generation rural Kansan now residing in
Enterprise, Kansas. She and her husband
own and operate The Buggy Stop Home-Style Kitchen with their six home-schooled
children. You can reach The Buggy Stop
by calling (785) 200-6385 or visit them on the web at www.thebuggystoprestaurant.com
.
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