Forest Fires and Strawberry Rhubarb Lemonade

Living in Northeastern Minnesota, surrounded by thousands of acres of federal land and the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, we are certainly accustomed to forest fires. Every summer, the familiar smell of smoke often disrupts our enjoyment of the outdoors. But it’s typically more of an annoyance than a fear.

But this year is different. It started with a stretch of extreme heat (for us- mind you, a typical summer day for us hangs out comfortably in the seventies, with nighttime temperatures in the fifties and sixties). Eighty degrees is hot. So when we get into the nineties and hundreds, we practically melt. Most everyone I know does not have air conditioning (including us). And because it’s such a rare occurrence, we simply weather the heat for the short time it’s here and then get back to business as usual.

My broiler chicks had arrived just a few days before the heat started and though I’ve raised chickens my entire life, this was my first experience with having to worry about chicks overheating. Normally, I’m running two heat lamps and trying to keep them from getting cold. This time around, I was filling their waterer with ice and putting quart containers of frozen spaghetti sauce wrapped in towels as mini air conditioners in their brooder, watching them huddle up next to it in relief.

I’d so been looking forward to the end of this stretch of misery, with temps promised to be in the sixties overnight. But just as the heat was about to come to a close, heavy smoke and ash made its arrival, forcing us to close our windows. Air quality hit levels so hazardous that pollution control crews thought that their equipment was malfunctioning.

It wasn’t.

A south wind had brought down the smoke of fires burning in the Superior National Forest, the BWCA, and in Ontario. The sky turned yellow and orange, an eerie blanket of darkness enveloping our surroundings. But because it was so hot, we took the three mile drive to the lake to cool off, despite the terrible air quality.

The sun burned red through the haze, its reflection zigzagging over the calm, cool water. I’d already developed a headache and was ready to go home almost as soon as I’d gotten there. I watched as a couple calmly made their way in a canoe, seemingly unaware of just how bad things were.

“Nice night we’re having,” I remarked sarcastically as ash fell around us.

The girl smiled. “It sure is! Not too hot, not too cold”- as she flicked a cigarette into the water. Better there than out the car window on the drive home. Better extinguished than tossed into woods so dry they seem ready to ignite from a single spark. Would she do that anyway, on her drive out? I sometimes wonder how people can be so unaware.

That night at home was awful. Our old mercury thermostat maxes out at eighty-five; it was at least that in the house. I slept on the couch, wondering how much ash was falling in the dark. The next morning, I went out to my garden and found it sprinkled with debris. It desperately needed watering, and as I did so I watched the water mix with the ash and fall from the broad leaves in gray streams. It made the garden feel not quite as nice as it did a week ago.

The last few days have been spent constantly updating ourselves on the progress of the fires, seeing the evacuation stages being announced for areas north and west of us. Having real conversations with our kids about what evacuation might look like for us. Getting important paperwork together and ready. Deciding what we would take with and what we would leave. Determining where the animals would go. Where we would go.

Of course, we pray it doesn’t come to any of that. But we certainly don’t want to be caught unaware.

But one thing these past few days have reminded me is how quickly ordinary life can change. How one day you think your biggest problem is how you’re going to get through a few days of heat, the next you’re contemplating what is most important amongst your belongings- and realizing how very little (materially) really even seems to matter.

We spend so much of life believing that tomorrow will look the way it does today. We make plans for next week, next month, next season. And most of the time, things do go according to plan. Things are as they should be.

But every now and then we're reminded that so much of life rests in hands other than our own, in situations and circumstances beyond our control.

So today we’ll keep doing the work we’ve been given, while praying for rain, for the firefighters standing between these flames and our communities, and for all those who have already had to leave home. Sometimes faith looks less like having certainty about tomorrow, and more like faithfully tending today’s responsibilities anyway.

When it’s hot, there’s nothing more refreshing than this strawberry rhubarb lemonade. I’ve made it so many times over the years. And with a bumper crop of strawberries this season (at least eight gallons so far!), and plenty of rhubarb in the freezer, it’s the perfect way to use what we already have.

Ingredients:

5 cups chopped rhubarb

4 cups frozen strawberries

2 cups fresh lemon juice

2 cups sugar

2 cups water

6 cups cold water

Directions:

Put 5 cups chopped rhubarb into a sauce pot with 2 cups sugar and 2 cups water. Bring to a boil, turn down heat, and simmer for 15 minutes. Strain liquid through a fine mesh strainer; save solids for another use or compost.

Pour the rhubarb liquid into a high powered blender along with 4 cups frozen strawberries and 2 cups lemon juice. Blend until completely smooth. Pour mixture into a gallon glass jar and stir in 6 cups cold water. Chill completely before serving.

That’s all I have for you this week, my friend. I took a couple of weeks off of writing as the first half of July was quite busy for our family, and then this last week with the heat and the smoke, I’ve just gotten so far behind on work and tending my house the way I like to, so I need to get to it. But thank you so much for joining me for this week in season. I will see you again very soon. Until then, take care and be safe!