I am not a cook.  I am not a chef. I am not a grill master.  I am not party planner.  I am not an event organizer.

I wouldn’t even refer to myself as handy in the kitchen.

But I would say that I have been taught very well the lessons of basic hospitality.  The art of making sure that your home is welcoming, inviting, and at its very core, community building.

My folks were masters at it.

There were the formal events, the once a year card club night at our house, when card tables would be set up throughout the house and couples would come over for a night of whist, food, and merry making.  Then there was the once a year homemakers “meeting” - where gossip, good food, and good cheer was shared.

Then there were the formal family events:  Christmas, Easter, Mothers Day, Father’s Day, and Thanksgiving.  The times when big meals were set out for family, extended family, and the occasional friend.  Rarely can I remember a holiday without at least ten people seated around the table.

There were the big events: graduations, confirmations, baptisms, first communions, anniversaries, weddings, funerals, family reunions.  The times when family and friends would gather with a buffet set out on the dinning room table and table and chairs were set up in the garage for the men and the living room was surrounded with chairs for the women.

There were the random, common, Sunday afternoon visits.  “Clean the house kids, we are going to invite a few folks over this afternoon!”  Was the often heard refrain on Sunday’s after church.  Frantically we’d clean the downstairs as Mom whipped up some bars, cookies, kool-aid and sandwiches.

There were the official meetings.  The township board meetings, ladies aid meetings, insurance visits, financial reviews, farm bureau committee meetings, or business discussions held over a plate of bars or cookies and a cup of coffee.

There were the all work dinners.  The table laden down with a full compliment of foods - meat, potatoes, fresh vegetables, pickles, bread, and all the of the fixin’s for the hay crews, silage makers, or various other labor - hired or volunteers that happened to be on the farm that day.

There were also the portable feasts.  The hotdish going to neighbor who was sick.  The ham going to the family of a church member whose husband passed away.  The pan of bars for the family that had the new baby.

There was also food for the community events - school bake sales, church festivals, funerals, ladies aid fund raisers, PTA events, potlucks, craft sale food stand, town celebrations and a host of other events.

On the surface, it was all about food.  It was about the roasts, the baked goods, the vegetables, the sweets.

At its root, the real meat and potatoes (pun intended), was more about community.  The food was the excuse, but the real treasure, the real nutrition came from gathering together, to lend support, to serve one another, to extend a helping hand when needed, to celebrate, to mourn, to be a member of the community - no, more then that, to be a neighbor - to be a friend.

 Education was a priority in our family.  Both of my folks lacked much formal education, but Mom would read through books like they were candy and Dad could do complex mathematics that would leave most people cross eyed in his head.  In short, my folks made sure that unless you were in severe pain, suffering from undeniable signs of pneumonia, or majorly contagious, you were going to school.

That was why you could see the visible pain on their faces when they discussed taking us out of school to help on the farm.  It wasn’t something that either one of them wanted to do, but in the spring, you needed to get the crop in the ground.  Every spring, the weather would always leave a window of doubt if it was going to cooperate or not and my folks would have to have the debate.

In the end, we usually took some time to help with the spring work, much to my parents chagrin and us brother’s enthusiasm.  We would fight with each other to see who would get the thrill of staying home and working.

Not that we hated school, but there was just something thrilling about doing the spring fieldwork.

The one of us lucky enough would get to stay home and help finish up the morning milking and chores while other would have to get ready and go to school with our little sister.

“Have fun at school today!” We’d chide as they left the barn ready for their fate in the classroom.

After chores and a quick breakfast with Dad, we’d get to work.  The first job was fueling up the big International 806, making sure to check the oil and transmission fluid, making sure that everything was set for a long day in the field

Then, with a quick shot of ether and a rumble and a roar, the big beast would roar to life.

“It’ll be the forty up by Urban’s this morning, you’ll need to go through the hayfield,” Dad would advise, “Be careful crossing that ditch.  I’ll be there to pick you up a little before noon.  We may check the eighty next to the pasture.  Was hoping that peat would be dry enough to go tomorrow.  I’ll be seeding barley behind the barn if you need me.”

Jumping down from the steps of the cab, and slamming the door behind him, he would pat the big duals and wave a jaunty wave, saying get going and stop burning daylight.  With that, the 806 and digger would be backed away from the diesel tank and away down driveway and out onto the road - full speed ahead.

For the next several hours, back and forth we would go across the field with the mighty 806 and the eighteen foot digger pulling behind until shortly before noon when you could see the dust from the family’s green pick up truck the several miles away as it pulled out of the driveway.  Dad coming to pick you up for a good crock pot dinner of meat and potatoes (after Paul Harvey’s mid day comments).

After the noon day dinner, and after checking a few more fields (”Move onto the eighty next to the pasture - but be careful in that peat…”) we would be left alone again with the mighty 806, slowly tilling the good earth behind us.

(Tom Jirik wrote columns in several newspapers in Iowa from the late 1980’s to the mid 1990’s.  This column originally appeared in the The Boone Today) 

It’s been a tough spring for farmers.

During April, Boone received rain on the 15 of the month’s 30 days, May’s first few days were soggy as well.  There’s precious little time for farmers to prepare the seedbed and plant their crops.  Even now, eyes are trained on the southern and western skies.  We wonder when the next storm system will appear on the horizon.

Those of us who are a removed generation or two from the farm, forget spring’s stresses and frustrations.  To us spring is a time of rebirth and renewal.  Trees buds.  Flowers bloom.  The weather moderates.  Spring is glorious.

It’s all those things to a farmer too and more.  The soils warms.  It is time to plant the crops.  The tiny seeds sprout and soon green rows stretch to the horizon, giving a promise of the harvest t come.  To the farmer, spring signals the start of another crop year. Success and prosperity depend on spring’s arrival. 

Spring brings stress for the farmer.

Already, at this early date in May, Boone County farmers are racing the calendar. The best-yielding varieties of corn require a long season.  Cool fall weather and frost could damage the crop before it is mature.

A delay is corn planting may upset the schedule for planting beans later in month.  If plantings are not carefully coordinated in the spring, harvest schedules could be thrown askew and valuable crops could be vulnerable to insect and weather damage is harvest doesn’t proceed fast enough.

If there is anything more stressful than a wet spring it is watching crops wither and die later in the season under a relentless sun. Soil moisture reserves built now are some insurance against dry weather later.  Memories of two dry years are still fresh in the minds of Boone’s County farmers.  For that reason you won’t hear too much complaining about the rain.

Yet.

If spring is a time of rebirth and growth, then it is fitting that graduation is held in during this season.  Students in high school and college soon will go off to face new challenges and begin a new phase in their lives.

Many are like a friend of mine, Lonny Cabelka, a student from Boone who will graduate from Iowa State soon. Lonny is eager to get on his way.  He is confident that a new job in Phoenix will bring him fame and fortune.  He thinks the Arizona climate will suit him better than Iowa’s, too.

Other students from the area also will find themselves in a change of climate as they head off the new jobs or higher education.  Still others will choose to stay in Iowa or the Midwest, seeking their niche closer to home.

Whatever you do and where ever you go, good luck.  You too, Lonny.

I got the dirty jobs.  Shoveling out the bin of barley?  That was me.  Pitching the moldy hay out of the hay barn?  My chore.  Feeding the cattle the dusty grain mixture with the five gallon buckets?  You guessed it.  Chopping down thistles and grass in full bloom around the electric fence with the sickle?  All mine.My older brother suffered from hay fever, but me?  I was indestructible when it came to dust, mold, mildew, pollen and anything else that could wreck havoc on my sinuses.  As a result, anytime there was a dirty job on the farm, it fell to me.

While I often times grumbled about it, I also understood.  The work had to get done.  Plus it brought a bit of pride to be able to do the jobs that no one else could do.

I was impervious to scourge that are allergies.  I laughed in the face of hay fever.

All of that changed my junior year in college when I was laid low by the nastiest case of allergies I’ve ever experienced.

Walking to class one nice spring day, when the tree’s were budding and the grass was greening, I felt my eyes suddenly beginning to swell shut.  Within an hour, I could barely see out of the slits that were my eyes as my entire face swelled up to the size of a watermelon.

The amazing thing was, I still felt remarkably well.  Rational, coherent, able bodied, except for the fact that my entire face was swelled up like a blow fish.

It was after the swelling went down that I knew I was in trouble.  I just didn’t feel right.  Confused, off balance, dizzy, forgetful, and very, very, very tired.

I went back to our fraternity house on College Street and slept.  I didn’t realize I was in trouble until I tried to gather our group for our Tuesday-Thursday 8:00 am Crop and Weed Science class.

“Matt, aren’t you going to Crop and Weed Science class today?”  I asked.

“What are you talking about,” Matt muttered down from his bed, “Today is Friday.”

“No, today is Thursday!”  I said.

“Your nuts.”  Matt replied turning over to go back to sleep.

Turns out Matt was right.  I slept alright.  FOR ALMOST THIRTY HOURS!

Proceeding to my Friday classes, still pondering how I could have possibly slept as long as I did, I felt a now all to familiar feeling in my face, my eyes were puffing up again.  I was scared.  I was very scared.

This is where things get a little hazy.  I know it was Friday afternoon.  Piecing things together later on, this is what I have been able to decipher:

Saturday morning, my fraternity brothers knew that something wasn’t right when they saw me in bed for day number three.  My good friend Jed drew the short straw and came in to wake me and see how I was doing.

Apparently, I wasn’t doing well.  Didn’t know where I was, who I was, or what I was doing.  Just wanted to sleep.  In their wisdom, they decided to bring me to the emergency room.

Allergies.  The pollen in the spring air was impacting my sinuses and my inner ear which was throwing me off kilter.  Over the counter medicine and sleep was the recommendation.

It was very humbling.  First, being brought low by an allergy, something that I had prided myself on being immune too.  Second, relying on friends to take me to the doctor - I prided myself on my self reliance and ability to take care of myself.

But perhaps the most humbling, the thought of having such fantastic friends.

My younger sister is sixteen years old. This is where she would become indignant and remind me that she is almost thirty.  But I don’t care.  She will forever be the young, stubborn girl that I battled wits with so long ago.  She can’t grab a beer, visit a casino, or talk about her boyfriend without me blurting out, “your too young to do that.”

I don’t think she appreciates my point of view, but in fairness, we weren’t prepared for a little sister.  I don’t think anyone was planning on her arrival. 

I was named after my grandmother - my mother thinking that her fourth child would her last and Mark was the closest she would come to her Mother’s name, Margaret…yet four years later, Margaret was born.  All four of us boys, born in the same small town hospital, where sent home in pink baby blankets, because they didn’t reorder until they were all gone.  When they discovered that my mother was pregnant with child number five, they doubled ordered the blue baby blankets to make sure that if it was a boy, it went home in blue.  The bad news was they ran out of pink blankets by the time Margaret was born….so of our five children, she, the girl, was the only one to come home in blue.

Not that it mattered, it was clear she was a girl and the princess in the family.  Our house switched from blocks, farm animals, toy soldiers and trucks to blocks, farm animals, and Barbie.  We were horrified the first time we saw that our “Johnny West” cowboy action figures were hanging out with Ken and taking Barbie out on the town…it just didn’t seem natural.

I grew up in a fairly traditional upper Midwest farm family, where common sense, hard work, and stoicism were not just respected, they were requirements.  There were to be no frivolities.  Being the fourth of four boys, I got heavy doses of maturity and masculinity.  We showed affection by punching each others arms.  When we got mad, we fumed to ourselves.  When we got really mad, we yelled and fought and wrestled…as long as it never interrupted the work at hand.

But my sister was something unlike anything we had dealt with.  Being the only girl, she fell under the strict protection of our parents.  Look at her crosswise and she would let out a blood curdling scream that would get our folks running, “Don’t pick on your little sister.”  They would scold as huge crocodile tears flowed down her cheeks.  As they turned to go, she would throw us a devilish smile.

She is a reader, a dreamer, and a free spirit, as smart as a whip, and darn stubborn to boot.  She still doesn’t drive, “I just don’t see the point.”  Smarter then the rest of us (a 34 out of 36 on her ACT), she is still trying to find herself in college.  When we heard that she was in a voluntary evacuation area during the flood in Fargo, we all called her to get out of there…but to no avail.  “I have food and water and will go sandbagging.  I’ll be fine.”  She said.

In some ways, she is so familiar to the rest of us (quiet, introverted, and thoughtful), yet so different (engrossed with Irish culture, taking dance class, heavy into computer games).  She is a link to the past, comparing her first communion picture to our mother’s and our grandmother’s it is hard to tell the difference, but a glimpse into the future, one of our mother’s family traits is taking a few years to “find yourself” and already my nieces are showing some of same intellect mixed with stubbornness that was feature of my sister at their age.

In short, she has, is, and probably always will frustrate the heck out of us.  But we all love her all the same. 

(Tom Jirik wrote columns in several newspapers in Iowa from the late 1980’s to the mid 1990’s.  This column originally appeared in the The Boone Today) 

It was as if the magical elements in the cold earth and the warm spring wind combined to awaken the spirits of our ancient Iowa ancestors.

It is likely that prehistoric Iowans gathered at the stone bluffs near the Des Moines River to celebrate the coming of spring.  I imagine them lighting great fires that would burn long into the night.  I can see them dancing there in the flickering light, telling stories and singing of the good times to come when summer game is plentiful and winter hunger is only a dull memory.

Although we have invented the Swiss army knife, the 32-quart ice chest and the two-man dome tent to help us survive outdoors, I suspect that we are not all that different than those primordial campers.

The celebratory fires burned again at the Ledges last Saturday.  It was our fist camping trip of the season and Mary and I were joined by Matt and Brenda Trewet, friends from Nevada.

The cold ground below still carried winter’s odor of decay.  But above us, the naked trees were just beginning to bud and the unmistakable smell of spring was carried on the evening breeze.  With a billion stars sparkling overhead, it was a magical night.

As the hour grew later, our fire seemed to grow brighter.  Handfuls of dry leaves tossed on the blaze sent bursts of heat and light flashing out against the black tree trunks.

As the flickering light danced across our happy faces, we talked of the good times to come.  We predicted many more mosquito-less excursions and vowed to improve our campfire culinary skills.  Hot dogs sizzled on sticks above fire as we talked of travel plans and camping destinations.

The four of us were soon mesmerized by the flickering flames.  We began to sing, quietly at first, then more boldly as we began to remember the words to well-known and oft-repeated songs.

We sang,” Here’s the story, of a lovely lady who was bringing up three lovely girls…” And, “Sit right back and you’ll hear a tale, a tale of a fateful trip, that started at the tropic port aboard this tiny ship…”

None of us knows any ancestral hunting songs or primeval chants to honor the gods of spring, so we settled for TV theme songs instead.  Fortunately, Brenda has an astounding memory for lyrics.

In ancient times, Brenda would certainly have been the tribe’s story-teller, charged with the important job of translating history into song and passing it from one generation to the next.

But there is no much call for story-tellers now so instead she helped us out with the themes to “The Brady Bunch”, “Gilligan’s Island,” “The Beverly Hillbillies,” “Captain Kangaroo,” and a host of others.

We leapt to our feet and danced about the fire as Brenda led us in a rousing rendition of “Bear Necessities” from Walt Disney’s movie adaptation of Rudyard Kipling’s “Jungle Book.”

It was a stunning finish to a strange evening.

Looking back on the weekend, the memory seems as odd to us as it must to you.  What motivated our outlandish behavior?  Were spirits of the ancients at work?  Did the fire work some hypnotic magic on us?  Were we merely shaking off a bad case of cabin fever?  Or did the beer have something to do with it?

The ancient spirits aren’t talking so I guess we’ll never know.

 Our carrots washed away, our melon seeds rotted before they could sprout and our corn doesn’t look at all healthy.

This never could have happened if I would have had a tractor.  I’d have one by now if I could convince my wife that it was in our best interests.  But she won’t budge.  “No tractors.” She says, sternly and consistently.

All I want is a small one.  My tractor won’t need four-wheel-drive or a cab.  It doesn’t need to be new and shiny, either.  An old John Deere Model B or a Farmall Model H would do just fine.  But despite my arguments, my wife is unswayed.

“There’s nothing you can do with a tractor that you can’t do with a rake, a shovel, a hoe and some elbow grease,” she say adamantly.

I’ve taken to reading the want ads and auction ads in the back sections of our local newspapers.  There are lots of perfectly suitable small tractors being bought and sold every week.  I’m sure that if I shopped around I could find the perfect machine for my agricultural endeavors.  And I’ll bet I could get it for a reasonable price, too.

“We do not need a tractor,” Mary says pointedly, tapping her finger painfully on my chest with each word to make certain that I get the point.

If I close my eyes, I can see the vision perfectly.  There I am on the seat of my beautifully restored tractor.  With smooth power, tractor and man move as one down the immaculate rows of carrots, melons and corn.  The corn reaches to the sky as giant ears sag slightly from under the leaves.  Our rows of beans and peas are vividly green.  They sag under the weight of their pods.  The rows of carrots as so bushy and healthy that the neighborhood bunnies are welcome to their share.

The garden is virtually weed less, thanks to my tractor-mounted cultivator.  There are no damaging insects, thanks to my tractor-mounted insecticide applicator.  The garden is surrounded by an immaculate lawn, perfectly trimmed, thanks to my tractor-mounted mower.  The neighbors gather each evening in awe to admire my tractor and my garden.

My wife notices that my eyes are closed and I am smiling.  She interrupts my daydream.  “Don’t even think about buying a tractor,” she says.

“Why not?” I finally demand.

“Because our garden is smaller than our living room and a tractor wouldn’t fit in here.  Would it?  Now, how do you expect to get one in our garden?” She asks smugly.

She’s right and she knows it.  As long as we have a tiny little garden, she won’t let me get even a tiny little tractor.  But that doesn’t help my vegetables at all. (They’d be beautiful if I had a tractor.)

So, if you’re driving down an alley on Boone’s north side and you see a garden that looks like a big dead spot in the lawn, remember it’s all Mary’s fault.