Kirstin Vander Giessen-Reitsma – Page 3

Work and personal retreats

By Kirstin Vander Giessen-Reitsma | October 31, 2020

Each fall, we go on retreat for a weekend with our close friends who work with us at the Huss Project to look at the year past and plan for the future. Knowing we’d need to gather outside this year for COVID safety, we pushed up the date to the first weekend of October, which was our first weekend since June without a farmers market. Little did we know the temps would drop suddenly, leaving us camping out in 30-some degrees overnight! But we kept hot water on for tea, stoked the campfire, and managed just fine, with lots of good conversations. It was actually quite fun to sleep out in the woods on the property, which we’d never done before. We’re really looking forward to including our kiddo in these kinds of events and seeing them enjoy having so many honorary “aunts” and “uncles” in our community!

Of course, the following weekend was warm and sunny, so we took advantage of the weather to spend the day at the beach. We brought snacks and books, took naps in the portable hammock, and skipped stones into the lake. Lots of families were out enjoying the beautiful day, and we stayed long enough to enjoy the gorgeous sunset.

Though the farmers market is done for the season and we’re starting to put the beds to sleep for the winter, there are still quite a few veggies coming on, so we’re still canning and freezing for the winter. Kirstin’s also been busy coordinating COVID-safe activities to celebrate the 25^th anniversary of the retreat center where she works.

Preserving vegetables — *Preserving peppers*

At the end of all of this busyness, we rested and renewed our energy with a two-week retreat at the center in our favorite guest house, which sits at the edge of a small pond near the pasture where the resident pony and goat live. We took lots of long walks through the woods to the nearby monastery and enjoyed rowing around their small lake (see above). We even saw a mink on the pond by the house! All in all a much-needed time away from the year’s noise, especially as the coming election grows near. We’ve spent a lot of time at this house and can’t wait to enjoy quality time here with our child, exploring the woods and shorelines, putting together puzzles, and snuggling up by the fireplace with a good book.

Connecting through art and water

By Kirstin Vander Giessen-Reitsma | September 30, 2020

We can’t believe summer is starting to wind down already! In the midst of the pandemic, time has been very strange—moving so slowly at times, and moving so fast at others. Our fuzzy little chicks that arrived in June have gotten so big! They’re scratching around for insects and gobbling up any veggies we toss in, though it will still be a couple of months before they start laying eggs.

One of the few social events we’ve been able to host at the Huss Project this summer has been Open Mic Night, which would usually take place the first Thursday of every month downtown at Lowry’s Books. There’s always a variety of genres and ages represented at the mic. This month, Jordan Hamilton returned for his second feature performance—such an amazingly talented musician. Between Open Mic Night and the downtown theatre and art center, we’re grateful for all of the great art we get to experience right here in our small town.

Kirstin has spent a lot of time in August and September in the bittersweet task of packing up the family cottage on the lake to prepare it for sale. As many wonderful memories as the family has had at the lake, the time has come to move on. Thankfully, we have many other connections on nearby shorelines as well as our own kayaks to continue enjoying the abundant waterways in our area. We’ll never be short on places to boat and swim with our kiddo, including a great wading river right outside our back door!

In addition to the river being so close, we’re also grateful that even though we live right downtown, we have a sweet back yard with lots of room to explore and play. As we continue to stay safe during the pandemic, it’s been a great spot to relax with friends around the fire pit…or you know, take a nice nap in the hammock.

Doing the work

By Kirstin Vander Giessen-Reitsma | August 31, 2020

Throughout the summer, folks throughout the country and the world have been demonstrating and continuing to work for racial justice, particularly following the murder of George Floyd in May. At the beginning of this month, we came together with a group of neighbors to help repaint a Black Live Matter street mural that had been vandalized. The small rural city where we live has a lot of work to do to be truly equitable for all our neighbors, but we’re grateful for many amazing people in our community who are doing the work and standing together for justice.

August has been another month of transition as we said goodbye to our summer AmeriCorps folks who helped out at the Huss Project. We had an amazing crew this summer, and we’re very sad to be saying goodbye. We all really appreciated one another’s support and silliness through this strange time.

This month has also been bringing on the vegetables in earnest, and ramped up food preservation season. Each year, we work to fill our freezer and our basement shelves with lots of good food from the farm that we can enjoy through the colder months.

Because of the busyness of the farm season and now the pandemic, we weren’t sure if we’d be able to go anywhere this summer, but we did manage a short weekend camping trip to the small farm where our friend Emily (who’s really more like family) has been living and working. It was a true delight to see the place where she’s landed and meet some other folks doing an interesting farming project on a small scale. We’re really looking forward to raising our child close to the land with knowledge of where our food comes from and love for all of the incredible gifts of the wild, wooly natural world.

Spending time outdoors

By Kirstin Vander Giessen-Reitsma | July 31, 2020

As the pandemic continues into the summer, many of our usual patterns have shifted. We’ve had to cancel a lot of events we’d usually help organize, like storytelling nights and a summer festival, but the new farmers market has been thriving as a place for folks to get fresh food and also a little social time.

We were grateful to have a little bit of time visiting outdoors with Kirstin’s family at the lake this month, including an aunt and cousins from Georgia, uncle and sister and nephews and niece from Indiana, and Grandpa Duke. We’ve also had some nice socially-distanced outdoor visits with Rob’s parents. This time has really emphasized the importance of being intentional about connecting with loved ones.

Our community of friends who work and volunteer together at the Huss Project has been enjoying weekly outdoor gatherings, as well as a couple of days of workshops and conversations around our work in the community. As much as things have changed this year, we also feel like the relationship-building and food production we’ve been doing for years has prepared us to support each other and our neighbors in this difficult moment.

We’ve continued to enjoy many walks around our small rural city and the weather has been especially beautiful, with big blue skies reflected on the many waterways nearby. Kirstin probably has several thousand photos on her phone at this point, documenting the changes of seasons and the small moments of beauty. Oh, and we’ve started feeding the birds more regularly in the pandemic, which has been a very welcome addition for our cat!

Saying goodbye to Grandma Beverly

By Kirstin Vander Giessen-Reitsma | June 30, 2020

June was…let’s say a month of contrasts. After a sudden and quick decline, Kirstin’s Grandma Beverly passed away. All through her growing up years, Kirstin never lived more than a half mile from Grandpa Duke and Grandma Beverly and has many happy memories of sleepovers, holidays, and Sunday dinners. Grandma was generous, funny, fiercely independent, and always fashionable. She never let a phone call or visit go by without saying she was praying for you and loved you very much. “You’re precious to us, you know.” As a young teacher, Kirstin’s grandma had Rob’s mom for a student in second grade—how’s that for “going way back”? Since we started dating when we were 15, Grandma Beverly was very special to Rob, too, and we’ll dearly miss her prayers, hugs, visits, treats, and many kindnesses.

Alongside deep grief: new beginnings. Namely a new Saturday farmers market at the Huss Project, designed to bring food from local farms (including our small urban farm) to our neighbors safely during the pandemic. We’re starting small with what’s available early in the season and just a few farms represented, but we’re hoping it will grow throughout the season. We’ve also restarted our beehives and got 27 fuzzy little chicks in the mail, so here’s to honey and eggs before too long.

Though we feel Grandma’s loss every day, we continue to enjoy the beauty of the place we live in because of her adventurous spirit. It was Grandma, after all, who suggested the leisurely drive to Pleasant Lake, where she and Grandpa ended up buying a cottage in 1976. Little did they know that 44 years later, their grandkids would be wading in these rivers and longing to share such joy with their kiddo before too long.

Transitioning to Spring

By Kirstin Vander Giessen-Reitsma | May 31, 2020

May has been a month of transition in a lot of ways. Where we are, this month tips the scales for fresh, local food and a lot of delicious things start coming on—rhubarb, asparagus, and lots of herbs and greens. We had fun at the Huss Project making “hand salads,” or one-bite salads, out of a variety of edible plants, including flowers.

The seedlings that Rob has been tending in our basement for the Huss Project Farm have been going crazy and we finally reached days in the middle of the month that were warm enough to get them in the ground. Thankfully we’ve had lots of help from Dan and Margaret, as well as a new group of folks who moved to Three Rivers through the AmeriCorps VISTA program to work with us for the next year. It’s been an interesting experience getting to know new people through quarantine and social distancing. The sad part has been having to say goodbye to friends who finished up their year-long term of service here and moved on to what’s next. We couldn’t have the goodbye party we would have hoped for, but found other creative ways to send them with encouragement and well-wishes.

Kirstin started going back on site for work some days, with many safety precautions in place. It’s been really good to reconnect with dear co-workers face-to-face, including Puck (the goat) and Minna (the pony). These happy, wily critters have no idea what’s going on in the crazy world around them, and it’s just as well. They bring comfort and joy to many just by being alive and reveling in spring.

Author: Kirstin Vander Giessen-Reitsma