Author Archives: Erik Kindem

Maple Sugaring at Natick Community Farm

By Naomi

Today we visited the Natick Organic Farm in Natick, Massachusetts.  This farm was first established way back in 1651 by Rev. John Eliot.  We saw 11 piglets, born on Valentine’s Day, and goats, sheep, two cows, bunnies, and chickens.  The name of our tour guide was Karen.  She and her friends showed us how Maple sap was turned into Maple sugar and syrup, both in olden times by the Native peoples of the region, and by colonists, and also how it’s done today.  Because of the cold winter, the sap wasn’t running very much yet, but today it warmed up enough that I got to put my finger out to taste a sample as it was coming out of the tree through the spile (that’s what the metal or wooden tube that they drive into the tree is called) and into the bucket.  It tastes like water and you can barely even taste any of the sweetness.

The sap rests in the roots of the tree, and in the spring, when it warms up, it starts running up through the trunk and out through the branches to feed the growing buds.  The sap is almost all water (97%) and only a tiny bit sugar (3%), so you have to boil it a long, long time before it becomes syrup and even longer to make maple sugar.  It takes about 40 gallons of sap to make 1 gallon of syrup.  And another thing is, a tree can’t start sharing its sap until it’s 40 years old (so the number 40 is the magic number for sap).

When we were learning about olden times, the guide needed a volunteer, and that was me!  I stood up and he placed a yoke on my shoulders, and then put a bucket on each end of the yoke.  A yoke is a long piece of carved wood that you put on your shoulders.  Then he pushed down on the yoke and asked me to take some steps to see how heavy it would be to carry if the buckets were full.  It was very, very heavy…but I would be able to do it.

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Visit to Walden Pond

Kai meets a new friend, Henry David Thoreau. Replica cabin in background.

Kai meets a new friend, Henry David Thoreau. Replica cabin in background.

Inside the replica cabin
Inside the replica cabin
Walden Pond

Walden Pond

Stone marking the original cabin site
Stone marking the original cabin site

Today we traveled to Walden Pond (which is not really a pond but actually a small lake, but they call it that because in England they call lakes “ponds” and this is NEW England).  Walden Pond was made famous by Henry David Thoreau, who lived there in a one room cabin for two years, two months and two days, starting on the 4th of July, 1845.  During his stay he kept a journal writing down everything he witnessed and learned from nature.

When we first arrived, we saw a replica of his one room cabin.  Inside was a wood stove, a bed low to the ground, and a writing desk with a guest journal in which I signed my name.  Right by the cabin was a statue of Thoreau, which was exactly my height.  Across the road was the Pond, and we started walking around it.  The total distance was one and one-half miles, and it took us a little over two hours in the snow and ice.  The Pond was frozen, and we saw an ice fisherman out on it, using an auger to make holes.  As we walked the perimeter, we heard a low rumbling, gurgling sound like when you turn over a five gallon jug into a water dispenser and it goes “blub, glub, blub.”  It was like the lake was talking to us.

About 2/3rds of the way around, we found the original cabin site, which was discovered on November 11, 1945.  There was also a quote from Thoreau, which I read to our family.

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life.  And to see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.” 

After our hike, we stopped by the gift stop, and my Dad picked up a book for me, entitled:  A Mind with Wings, The Story of Henry David Thoreau, by Gerald and Loretta Hausman.  I can’t wait to finish reading it!

Mourning Victory

Our tour guide at Orchard House, the Alcott family home, was right.  She’d told us how Louisa’s sister, May, an accomplished artist, had been approached by the mother of a local boy who, from a young age, was putting knife to potatoes to carve figures, and who seemed to possess a native talent for sculpting.  Would May, she wondered, be willing to take the boy under her wing and teach him what he might be willing to learn?  The answer was yes.

That boy, Daniel Chester French, became, by the first decades of the 20th century, one of America’s leading sculptors.  The Minuteman statue we saw adjacent to the North Bridge in Concord was his, completed for the 100th anniversary of the April 19, 1775 skirmish between British Regulars and Colonial Militia and Minutemen that sparked the war for independence.  And in 1922, he collaborated with architect Henry Bacon to create one of our nation’s best known works: the Lincoln Memorial.

Our guide had said we could see an exquisite example of French’s work at the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Concord, a memorial to three brothers lost in the Civil War.  It was, she said, an extremely moving work, and perhaps the piece most beloved by French himself.  And so we went.

Mourning Victory by Daniel Chester French Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, Concord, Mass.

Mourning Victory is the name French gave his angelic, female figure, resolute and half clothed, who appears to be walking out of the stone, a victory bouquet of laurel leaves thrust outward in her left hand, while above her head her right hand pushes upward the folds of a shroud, as if to say, “death may have its day, but the final victory belongs to life.”

Standing in the snow in front of her I was deeply moved, and as I began reading the memorial attribution incised in stone below her, I had to stop.  Why the tears?  Was it because this memorial was dedicated by the surviving brother, James Melvin, to the three brothers lost in the Civil War, and as one of six brothers myself, I could intuit what such a loss might mean?  That was part of it, I think.  Was it because James Melvin had commissioned the sculpture from his boyhood friend, Daniel Chester French?  This, too, I found significant.  But it was the work itself that spoke most eloquently to me.  Even now as I write more tears, unbidden, come.

Mourning Victory.  Resolute strength wrapped in vulnerability.  French has caught her in midstride, as if she’s about to leave the monument—and death itself—behind forever and stride into the light of that Bright Day.  Inscribed at her feet, these words:

In memory of three brothers born in Concord

who as private soldiers gave their lives

In the war to save the country

This memorial is placed here by their surviving brother

himself a private soldier in the same war

“I with uncovered head

salute the sacred dead

who went and who return not”

American Revolution

Beneath the Minuteman statue sculpted by Daniel Chester French

Today we went to the North Bridge in Concord.  This is the place where the American Revolution started, when British troops fired at the Concord Militiamen on April 19, 1775.  After the British soldiers fired, the leader of the Militia said, “For God’s sake fire!”  To the Militiamen’s surprise, the most powerful army in the world (at that time) turned and ran away.  Overnight the word was spread that arms and volunteers were needed, and within a few days, 20,000 Militiamen answered the call and surrounded Boston.  The statue I’m standing next to with my sister Naomi is called “The Minuteman,” and stands at the edge of the North Bridge over the Concord River.  It was sculpted for the 100th anniversary of that battle by Daniel Chester French, age 23, a young man from Concord, who would go on to sculpt the Lincoln Memorial statue in Washington DC.

 

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Minutemen return fire against British regulars at the North Bridge

Learning the factors that ignited the American Revolution.

Learning the factors that ignited the American Revolution.

The shot heard ’round the world

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The North Bridge, Concord, Massachusetts

“By the rude bridge that arched the flood,                                                                                                 Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled,                                                                                                             Here once the embattled farmers stood,                                                                                                         and fired the shot heard ’round the world.
The foe long since in silence slept;                                                                                                                alike the conqueror silent sleeps;                                                                                                                  And time the ruined bridge has swept                                                                                                       down the dark stream that seaward creeps.
On this green bank, by this soft stream,                                                                                                         we set today a votive stone;                                                                                                                           That memory may their deed redeem,                                                                                                           When, like our sires, our sons are gone.
Spirit, that made these heroes dare,                                                                                                                  To die, and leave their children free,                                                                                                                   Bid time and Nature gently spare                                                                                                                       The shaft we raise to them and thee.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

A sense of history

photo (8)By Chris

On our first day in Massachusetts we visited the Orchard House, the family home of Amos Bronson Alcott, a teacher and Transcendental philosopher, his wife, Abigail Alcott, an independent-minded 19th century woman who was one of the first paid social workers in Massachusetts, and their children ~ Anna Alcott Pratt, who had a flair for acting; Louisa May Alcott , well known author and advocate for social reform; Elizabeth Sewall Alcott, a talented musician and the “Angel in the House,” who died shortly before the family moved to Orchard House; and May Alcott Nieriker, a very gifted artist.photo (9)

We stood in the very rooms where the young Alcott women entertained their parents and others with original plays penned by Louisa; we saw the desk — built for her by her father between two windows in her upstairs bedroom — where Louisa wrote “Little Women” over the course of six weeks, (often writing up to 14 hours a day!); and witnessed fine examples of May’s accomplished art.  The Alcotts counted among their friends the likes of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Nathanial Hawthorne, and were part of a vibrant literary and artistic community during the middle years of the 19th century.  Far ahead of his time, Bronson Alcott encouraged his daughters to pursue fields of endeavor to which they were drawn and in which their gifts lay rather than fulfill standard roles assigned them by gender.  Of equal importance in the Alcott family was the expectation that one should live out a life of service to others.  Bronson, Abigail, and their daughters did this on a daily basis without reserve, and with a generosity of spirit, time, and talents that was, to them, second nature, but was, and is, to others an exemplary lifestyle to be emulated.

As we walked through the Alcott’s home and listened to our tour guide telling us the stories of their lives I found myself deeply moved and inspired.  In spite of great physical hardship, this family lived rich lives of thankfulness and abundance — not abundance in the sense of physical possessions, but abundance in community, friendships, talents, passion, intellectual curiosity, and love.  Standing in the middle of the family’s common rooms, it was as if I could actually feel the love and camaraderie, the warmth and devotion that these family members shared.  I think this is what moved me as much as anything else — their appreciation for the gift of family and the joy they seemed to take in living our their lives together with such a sense of creativity, appreciation for one another’s gifts, selflessness, and generosity.

What is it that makes it possible for men and women to entertain thoughts and ideas that run so counter to the prevailing attitudes and expectations of their time? How was it that in and around this small community of Concord there was such a concentration of free thinkers and gifted writers and artists?  We have found ourselves pondering these questions as we spend time in this historically rich corner of our country!