The Rural Diaries

by Hilarie Burton

  It was hard work, and it took a toll on me. I would take Gus to school in the morning and do manual labor on the farm all day, so Gus was lucky if I didn’t show up smelling of poop, with clumps of fur and feathers sticking to various parts of my anatomy.

  One day, running late to pick up Gus from school, I slicked my hair back into an Evita-bun and threw on Jeff’s Carhartt pants, his flannel shirt, a jacket, and boots. I pulled into the school parking lot and noticed that one of the other mothers, whom I’d known for more than a year, was craning her neck to get a good look at me. I looked over my shoulder, but no one else was there. As I got closer, she looked at me with a horrified expression.

  “Hey, what’s going on?” I asked.

  She blushed. “Hilarie! I’m so sorry. I thought you were a cute new dad.”

  At least she thought I was cute.

  Any vanity I’d once had was now diverted to the farm. Why color my hair roots when I could spend that time planting outrageous bursts of catmint? The money I once would have put into vintage clothes or the obligatory Los Angeles pedicure went into hydrangea bushes and gallons and gallons of paint. The upside was, I had never been in better shape. I spent my days shoveling, lugging, and digging. Manual labor on the farm was the new SoulCycle.

  It was worth it. I became giddy as I looked at the splendor of the multitudes of awakening bulbs—crocuses, daffodils, hyacinths, tulips. The typical mature bulb can multiply itself by twenty every five years, so an entire history of floral fortitude showed off in the yard.

  My Magic Potion

  From the age of three until, well . . . now, Gus has told his peers, doctors, teachers, and anyone else who will listen that his mother is a witch. It began with a “monsters in the closet” situation, where I cast a protection spell on his bedroom and assured him I could hex anything. Including my age. Young Gus believed that the blood-red liquid in my glass each evening was a supernatural elixir meant to disguise my true age of 108 and keep me young forever. Close. It was really a mixture of raw apple cider vinegar, lemon juice, and beet juice.

  Coming off of One Tree Hill, my whole body was toxic. I’d had a hell of a good time getting into such bad shape. But if I was gonna be a back-to-nature earth mama, I needed some natural support to get back on track. Hence, my potion.

  First, the lemon juice. Lemon has been credited with relieving stress and energizing your body, while lowering blood pressure, flushing out toxins, reducing the production of free radicals, which age you, and keeping your teeth and mouth healthy. Beet juice helps me with my low iron. (Ladies, ever feel like your hair is thinning at the temples? I did after childbirth. Low iron is the culprit!) Headaches? Shortness of breath? Dizziness? I used to think in my late teens and early twenties that I was having anxiety attacks. Nope. Iron again. Beets have all the earthy goodness that we need to recoup after a hard day and replenish energy. They are a magical root that grounds your body.

  And then there’s the most important ingredient, apple cider vinegar. I could go on and on about the advantages of ACV, which has been used for thousands of years as a cure-all. But for me, its most important job was fixing my skin. I had horrible, embarrassing acne for years. Dermatologists threw all manner of chemicals at me, but nothing worked. In the end, I realized that my body’s pH was off—probably from eating too much sugar. Consuming ACV reset that. And facials made of ACV, local honey, and a touch of lemon did wonders to clear my skin and lighten up any dark scars.

  Hilarie’s Magic Potion

  8 ounces apple cider vinegar

  8 ounces beet juice

  4 ounces lemon juice

  Water

  In a large jar or pitcher, mix together apple cider vinegar, beet juice, and lemon juice. (I keep this in the fridge, and it lasts a little longer than a week.) Each night, fill a glass half full of the mixture and then dilute it with cold water to fill the glass.

  It takes a minute to acclimate to the taste, since it’s puckery and earthy. But as I explained to Gus, it’s magic, a potion that contains the elements of nature. Water. The beet represents earth. The lemon is light and bright like the air. And the apple cider vinegar burns like fire.

  * * *

  Even with all the blood, sweat, and tears, I felt like I was coming back to the truest version of myself. The Hilarie before MTV or TV shows. Before self-consciousness had entered my orbit. I was Virginia Hilarie again. Planting bulbs and seeds, working with manure, reminded me of a time when I was eight years old, and a pickup truck of horse manure was delivered to our house along with a miniature horse. (Not a pony, mind you. Don’t you dare make that mistake.) Although my brothers and I were mildly interested in the not-pony, we were more interested in the manure. It was standard practice for us Burton kids to get really dirty in the backyard and for my parents to just turn the hose on us. (You can’t bathe four kids in a bathtub at the same time.) No one else in the neighborhood had a huge pile of poop in their yard. It was exotic. And I knew all the other kids were looking over the fence thinking, What fun is going on in the Burton house?

  Raking manure across my garden bed also made me think a lot about my mother and her garden, which had started as an act of self-preservation. She was nineteen when she met my father and not much older when they were married. Having no money, but a big imagination, flowers became her way of expressing herself. My mother could grow roses bigger than my head, and as a young child, I thought she must have had some kind of magic.

  After a few years and three more kids, we moved to a two-story house on the south side of town. As a kid, I had no idea how dire our financial situation was. We had stairs and a laundry room and a big flat backyard! We were rich! I thought. But looking back, I can see my mother moving in, clocking the chipped-up linoleum floor and the marigold-colored appliances, the ripped-up wallpaper and the endless projects ahead of her and my dad. “I will plant a garden,” she must have said, surveying that vast yard of dirt patches and crabgrass.

  She started off with a little strawberry patch and then expanded. She had corn, beans, tomatoes, cucumbers—and she grew flowers: daylilies, all her Dutch-heritage bulbs, and black-eyed Susans. The garden was an epicenter of activity. Even when we were inside, life was infused by the garden. We were a windows-wide-open family. The scent of cut grass, tomatoes, dirt, and vinegar—those were the smells of my childhood, and I was so happy to be giving that to Gus. When he wasn’t in school, he was out in the dirt with me.

  One summer my brothers and I discovered that you can eat daylilies. Tentatively at first, Billy and I split a petal and nibbled at its edges. As the older kids, it was our job to risk our lives in the name of science. “It’s good!” we informed the others. We ate flowers like we were gobbling up sunshine.

  “What have you done?” my poor mother cried. She didn’t have to worry about deer or wildlife chewing her flowers; it was her children. Guilt still tastes like orange lilies to me.

  * * *

  Later that April, I was in our bedroom, hanging new curtains and lamenting that I wasn’t outside, when my phone buzzed. It was a text from Janice, who owned the antique shop in Rhinebeck next to Samuel’s.

  Honey, call me.

  That was odd. Anyone who knows me understands that I don’t like to talk on the phone. So something must have been wrong.

  I looked out over the pastures as the phone rang.

  “Hello,” Janice answered. Her voice was thick with tears.

  “Oh no, what’s wrong?”

  “Ira is gone.”

  Everything else she said became a blur of noise far away. My brain became gauze. Questions lodged, then disappeared.

  Ira, who was always so fiercely alive, had been sick. Ira, who had been our guardian angel, had been working too hard. Ira, who was only ten years older than Jeff and was active and healthy, had collapsed.

  Ira, who was good and generous and had a heart of gold, also had a heart that quit.

  “I just know how close you guys were with him,” Janice said. “I
didn’t want you to hear it through the rumor mill.”

  I dropped to the floor in the middle of the room. “Thank you for telling me.”

  After we hung up, I wanted to talk to Jeff, to tell him myself, but he was out of cell range in Durango so I texted him.

  Babe, I really need you to call me when you get a free moment.

  Bisou ambled over and put her head in my lap. I ran my fingers through her thick fur and inhaled dog and earth and farm. I was still holding my phone and realized I wanted to talk someone. I was itching to do something, to help. I wanted community. But what I really wanted was to drive into town and sit with Ira.

  One by one, everyone from town started sending me messages. Gus’s teacher, shop owners, parents from school: We know Ira was your friend . . . Ira loved you and Jeff . . . Did you hear the news about Ira? I texted Jules, then Phoebe and Andy, and they all asked me how they could help.

  When I picked Gus up from school, there was a parade of somber glances. I put on a brave face for my boy and spent the night doting on him. He fell asleep in my room watching a movie, his little head buried in my shoulder. My phone lit up on my nightstand.

  It was Jeffrey. It was late. He had been in the desert all day doing dangerous stunts. We were thousands of miles apart, and words were not the balm either of us needed. He isn’t someone who wants to talk when he’s upset. He just wanted to get home.

  “Will you go to the funeral?”

  “Of course.”

  “And find John Traver. Tell him not to close the shop. Tell him we will take care of it.”

  “Okay.”

  “Tell him anything that he needs, just let us know.”

  “Okay, honey, I’ll tell him.” I was saying okay, but I was thinking, What are you talking about? Close the shop?

  The next day, the bench in front of Samuel’s had become a shrine to Ira. Flowers and cards and stuffed animals were piled high, including a few of those beloved Sinterklaas teddy bears. A huge crowd had gathered in the shop. John Traver was juggling the tasks of comforting the bereaved and still serving coffee and sweets to the endless procession of locals. I gave John a wave across the room. “You okay?” He nodded bravely. Helping him was a high school kid, Vincent. These two young men were now tasked with holding up an entire town of Ira’s bereaved friends.

  The service was two days later. “I’m gonna get a sitter and go if anyone is interested,” I emailed Andy and Phoebe and the Rudds. Our emails spun into long, sentimental, and funny threads, and with Jeff off filming, it was good to be connected to close friends. It felt foreign to take off my farm clothes and put on a skirt and grownup shoes. The funeral home was down the street from the candy store, and when I got there the entire Rhinebeck community wrapped around the block, waiting to get in.

  I saw Barbara and Dick. They had opened up their department store around the same time as Ira had opened Samuel’s, so they had been with him since day one. Pam and Roger Hoffman saw that I was alone and took me under their wings. Ira’s family had traveled in from Westchester. His husband was in the front row. The whole town filled the funeral home. Ira was everyone’s adopted family member; we all considered him an uncle or brother or son—something closer, more integral than our friend.

  The place was bursting with flowers, grief, and love. Ira’s husband said that they’d been planning a big wedding celebration since their real wedding had been so small, and his eulogy included the vows they had recited to each other. Then he played “their” song, Roberta Flack’s version of “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face,” and I thought I’d crack open right there.

  After the service Roger and Pam and I went to find John Traver. He was with his wife, Ally, his high school sweetheart, and he looked a little cowed by the whole thing.

  I touched his arm. “How are you doing?”

  “It’s been awful. The store has been a weeklong wake that I’ve been hosting. It’s been hard to be there.” John was being so honest, but I could also see him choosing his words carefully. “I don’t know what I’m going to do. I hope I don’t have to close the store.” I still wasn’t sure exactly what he meant, but I understood that the words were code for shit has hit the fan. John was rattled. All eyes were on him. Every single person in town was asking, “What are you going to do?” And he didn’t have an answer.

  “Listen John,” I told him. “I spoke with Jeff, and we are here to help you with whatever you need. Just don’t close the shop.”

  Burton Pickle Recipes

  Mom’s pickles were a big deal. Our kitchen was always stocked with her mustard seeds, her dill, her sugar (depending on whether we were making sweet pickles or sour pickles), and a lot of vinegar. The pickles were one of the ways I could tell my parents really loved each other. It was chaos at our house during the day, but when Dad came home from work and saw Mom’s pickles on the table, his favorite, he would get that “I love you” look in his eye. You don’t have to say “I love you” when you’re acting it out. My parents don’t exchange cards and gifts, but they’ve always done meaningful things for each other to express their love.

  Of course I make pickles too. Gus is a pickle nut. He has to have them in his lunch box every single day. Jeffrey and Gus love everything really spicy so I began growing jalapeños and cucumbers in the garden to make sweet, hot pickles. My mom always wanted me to hold on to my Iowa roots, so she and I spent a lot of time together pickling and canning. I joke with my mother about writing a cookbook called Piss and Vinegar. These two recipes would definitely be included.

  Fresh-Packed Dill Pickles

  Making a fresh-packed pickle keeps the cucumbers crunchy, rather than soft and cooked when they are canned. That said, they don’t last as long either, so I make them in smaller batches.

  18 to 20 pickling cucumbers (3 to 3½ inches long)

  3¾ cups water

  2½ cups vinegar (5% to 6% acidity) (I use white vinegar, and Mom uses apple cider vinegar)

  ¼ cup + 1 tablespoon pickling or noniodized salt

  3 heads fresh dill

  3 slices onion, ½ inch thick

  3 cloves garlic

  1 tsp mustard seeds

  Peppercorns, to taste

  Optional: Jalapeño, sliced into ¼ inch pieces (if you want a kick!)

  3 sterilized quart jars (dunk ’em in boiling water)

  Wash cucumbers. Mix water, vinegar, and salt in a Dutch oven; bring to a boil. Add a head of dill, a clove of garlic, and an onion slice to each of three hot quart jars. Sprinkle the mustard seeds evenly amongst the jars and add jalapeños if desired. Keep in mind, the more jalapeño seeds you put in, the hotter your pickles will be! Pack cucumbers in jars, leaving ½ inch headspace. Cover with brine, leaving ½ inch headspace. Let cucumbers and pickling juice cool completely before screwing on lids and refrigerating.

  Store in the fridge.

  Quick Pickles

  My dad really likes quick pickles. He likes them sweet, so my mom uses rice wine vinegar instead of apple cider vinegar and sugar instead of salt.

  18 to 20 pickling cucumbers (3 to 3½ inches long), cut into round slices ¼ inch thick

  3¾ cups water

  2½ cups rice wine vinegar

  ¼ cup + 1 tablespoon sugar

  3 slices onion, ½ inch thick

  Mustard seeds, to taste

  Peppercorns, to taste

  Salt

  Optional: Chili flakes or chili pepper

  Wash cucumbers. Mix water, vinegar, and sugar; toss in onions, mustard seeds, peppercorns, and a pinch of salt. I add chili flakes or some sort of chili pepper to the quick pickles. (We make everything sweet-hot.) Everything should be to your taste; that’s the beauty of making things at home.

  You don’t need to cook the brine. Instead, pack cucumbers in jars, pour the brine over the cucumbers, screw on lids, and set the jars in the fridge. They’ll be ready to eat in a couple of hours; they’re even better the next day!

  Store in the fridge.

  And hon
ey, you can pickle anything you pull out of the garden—carrots, green beans, onions, watermelon rinds. Get creative! Hell, pickled tomatoes are better than any ketchup.

  * * *

  Part Three

  Harvest

  10

  I am beginning to learn that it is the sweet, simple things of life which are the real ones after all.

  —Laura Ingalls Wilder, “A Bouquet of Wild Flowers”

  I’m not sure how seriously John took me at the funeral when I told him Jeff and I were ready to help with the shop. The month of April dragged on, and John exhausted himself working six days a week, opening the shop early and then staying hours after closing to try to right the ship.

  One day in the store, I leaned on the counter. “Jeff is busting his butt to get home, buddy. He wants to help. What’s going on here?”

  It turned out the answer was debt. It was 2014, and the economy had been in a free fall for enough years that stores which sold frivolous things like coffee and candy had taken a hit. Bills were months past due. Various suppliers and merchants had done lots of favors for Ira, because he was such a great guy. Favors had accumulated, and now they were looming over John.

  “I really want to keep the shop open for the twentieth reunion later this month,” he told me. “That was Ira’s goal. You want to see something?” John pulled a worn photo album from the tiny back office. Handing it over to me, he explained, “It’s the opening day party. Look how young everyone is.”