Nervous Nellies Jams & Jellies

Nervous Nellie Winter News

Weather and wildlife

The calendar says winter, but the landscape says withered, with a few icy patches.  I've been snowshoeing only once all winter, bushwacking (an apt description if ever there was one) out the back door.  After a satisfying hour and half of thrashing through blowdowns, scaling ledges and emptying branch-laden snow down my neck, I made for the nearest driveway and was home via the road in ten minutes.  We are promised an icy mix changing to rain yet again this week, a most disagreeable pattern, especially for those of us who aren't sitting on plane tickets to a place that has palm trees.  The USDA has apparently just announced that they've redrawn the color-coded maps of growing zones.  Southern Maine and parts of the coast that were once 5b are now 6a, the same as northern Connecticut and parts of Massachusetts!  We are still 5b here, just barely.  I wouldn't mind a longer growing season. . . for tomatoes, not zucchinis.

Common Ground
Every election year I get caught up in the cacaphony, my natural optimism scanning for hopeful signs in the inevitable changes to come.  We don't have a TV,  getting most of our news from radio and newspapers, so are blissfully spared the assault of advertising and its negativity.   I recently read that two political scientists have devised a means to measure and compare the ideology of our members of Congress.  It turns out that in both the House and the Senate, the most conservative Democrat is well to the left of the most liberal Republican who, as it happens, is Maine's Olympia Snowe.  In other words, no overlap.  No common ground.  Not a hopeful sign.  Apparently this polarity in Congress has been widening for many decades, though no doubt this will shift and move in the other direction, in the inevitable cyclic rhythm that seems to govern all life, including "governors."  Pouring and capping 300 jars of jams a day gives two people plenty of time to talk things over and we traverse this newly-charged political ground almost every day.  We talk about island life, too, replete with its own menu of us-them -isms.  Our common ground here on the island is clear.  It's a not-so-big hunk 'o granite thatched with spruce and pocked with dwellings for a few thousand people.  Fortunately, despite our many differences of viewpoint, experience, and economics, our lives intersect in countless ways and we, at least, seem to be moving toward yet deeper common ground in our dealings with each other: a consolidated school system; dense volunteer networks for peoplecare, the fisheries, conservation, education and culture; a faint blurring of the "native vs from away" divide as the children of newcomers complete their schooling on the island and raise their own families here.  I like the view taken by the writer Tom Robbins: Our similarities bring us to a common ground.  Our differences allow us to be fascinated by each other.

Valentine's Day
I'm kind of holiday-ed out myself, but Valentine's Day is relievedly sweet and simple, compared to its December relative.  And we aim to make it even simpler by offering a few sweet treats http://store.nervousnellies.com/cart/category /2002/Valentines_Day_Gift_Boxes/1/, topped with a heart-shaped card, which we will cause to magically appear on the doorstep of the sweetie of your choice.  Just say the word.  Cindy Hendrick's wonderfully-illustrated cards include these two heart-ful ones.  http://store.nervousnellies.com/cart/product/8274/Woodfield_Press_Notecards__Singles/#

Last Year
One thousand, three hundred and four.  That's how many packages we shipped on the twenty shipping days between Thanksgiving and Christmas.  Nearly 7,500 jars of jam and chutney.  It's intense.  It begins in summer when, in slack moments, our Cafe elves cut hundreds of ribbons to fit each of our three gift boxes and slice discarded cardboard into useful sizes for cushioning packages. In October, the catalog goes out to about 20,000 people and the orders begin to trickle in.  I review our inventory of supplies--from maple candy to shipping cartons to gift cards--literally hundreds of items that can take days or months to obtain depending on the source, and come from just about every county in Maine, mostly from small, family businesses like our own.  Over Thanksgiving weekend, Jeff Cobb brought over a couple of truckloads of freshly-cut balsam fir, yielding a massive, forest-scented pile in the now-freezing and empty Cafe where just months ago, people in flip flops and shorts sipped coffee and nibbled scones . . .  and will again in another few months . . .   I did a tally of packages shipped in Christmases past and though we have not returned to the heady numbers of 2006 and 2007 (1,570 packages followed by a plunge to 1,220 in '08), we are still firmly in business, with no layoffs, grateful for the slow and steady growth that spells sustainability.  (I've become wary of the capriciousness of success.)

Stories
Peter is growing the "village" with a spate of construction that took place in the fall.  Today, he sits before a toasty wood fire in the Saloon writing Episode 7 of the Nellie Story, which includes an allegorical take on the Civil War, an era that becomes more fascinating the deeper one delves.  It surely is the most tragic and heroic of all American stories, containing, as it does, thousands upon thousands of smaller stories that continue to touch the lives of virtually all Americans living then or since.  Peter's great-grandfather, whose sword still hangs on the wall of the family home, served as Union physician.  He was captured when a rebel officer intervened as he was about to be shot for his boots and he spent months imprisoned behind rebel lines.  His loving and fiesty fiancee was able able to secure his release by taking a train to Washington and requesting an audience with President Lincoln, who routinely set aside time to hear such personal pleas.  Her affianced suffered from but survived the ghastly, often fatal, conditions common to prisoners of war.  The two married, had children and Peter is here today to spin the story in his own way. This summer, look for a Chinese laundry, jail (the window bars come from the former Lewiston jail house) and sheriff's office.  Readers of The Nervous Nellie Story might recognize the evil Baron von Krankshafft occupying the village in yet another guise.

That’s all for now,
Anne