Baltic Christmas Day 17 - Searching for a taste of home

It’s across the Atlantic to the UK today on Day 17 of 24 Days of a Baltic Christmas. Please welcome back Margaret Drummond, with her post on Kūčios in London, then and now!

“Searching for a taste of home....” Kūčios in London then and now.

When I was a child growing up in London in the 60’s, my parents were friendly with a fair number of Lithuanian families in the city. Actually, my parents were probably acquainted with every Lithuanian family living in the capital, because in those days there were just 1,000 of us living in London- and only 4,000 altogether in the UK. Most, like my dad, were Displaced Persons who arrived after World War II, with a few “old Lithuanians,”- people whose parents had come between the wars.  We grew used to explaining- “no not the Balkan- the Baltic States,” “no we’re not Polish,” and “no, my dad is not a Russian spy”- this last comment to the girl at school who asked me that very question! We clustered around the Lithuanian Church in Hackney. Dad would pop into the club in Victoria Park to hear the news, any news about what was happening in Lithuania, to borrow books, papers, records from friends who had obtained them somehow and to hear the gossip. Someone who had heard from his sister in Chicago that a cousin in Vilnius had heard that in Gaiziunai......You get the picture. They soldiered on. They had their church, the choir, there was a Saturday school, the Scouts, the dance group, Sodyba in Hampshire, and of course the weekly newspaper printed in West London. However, it was hard, especially for the older people, to retain what they had remembered, or thought they remembered, about the country they had left so long ago.  

However, since Independence and Lithuania’s accession to the European Union in 2004, times have changed! London now has the largest population of ethnic Lithuanians outside the Republic of Lithuania – with approximately 100,000 Lithuanian residents, the majority residing in the eastern boroughs of Newham, Redbridge and Barking and Dagenham where I grew up and where I still live today. With that wave of migration came a new form of Lithuanian culture, one that differed from the one my dad and his friends remembered, but one with some traditions that were familiar all the same.

Take Kūčios. Years ago, when no one had ever heard of Lithuania, my parents would struggle to find things for Christmas Eve. Firstly, there was the problem of whether my sister and I would even eat anything. The texture of salted herring proved very difficult to sell as did the acidity of beets and gherkins- and then there was the much greater problem of actually finding the necessary items in the shops.

Some years there would be a quick trip to Baltic Stores on Hackney Road run by Mr. Juras. Given the fact that his suppliers were mostly behind the Iron Curtain, the availability of products and their practicality for a small family were always unpredictable. 

“Juras has salted herrings,” my dad would announce excitedly, after attending Mass at St Casimir’s, “but they come in a big catering tin and need soaking.” Often it was judged too inconvenient to go off and buy such items. How many herrings would the four of us consume when my sister and I would only eat them reluctantly? And we also lived in an area rich in Jewish delis. You could get almost anything at the deli, and our lovely 2^nd-generation Litvak neighbours would recommend where to go and even offer recipes. Then it transpired that the fishmonger next to the deli did special orders on Christmas Eve for Polish customers, and just before Christmas he would go off to Billingsgate with a pocket full of orders from those in the know.

Later in the Eighties we attended an authentic Kūčios at Headley Park and discovered that our version of Kūčios had been but a pale imitation of the real thing; the drive for authenticity became even more competitive. I remember one year at Headley, someone had even gone as far as to snare a fearsome pike from a local lake, hunter-gatherer style. Fishmongers were strictly for softies. We attempted to make poppy seed milk with an old-fashioned pestle and mortar like our grandmothers had done, and poured this over the little biscuits we baked using recipes from the one or two Lithuanian cookery books we possessed- recipes which began “Take twenty-four large eggs.....” We sought out strange grains in health-food shops to eat with honey, and just like our grandmothers who spent hours slaving in their kitchens getting it right in the inter-war years when most farms had neither electricity nor running water, so did we in the West spend the weeks before Christmas Eve running ourselves ragged, tracking down suitable items for the table in a bid to make it all as authentic, as traditional, as possible. Ironic, really…. our cousins on the other side of the Curtain spent their lives carrying their string bags in the hope of suddenly finding something in short supply and bemoaning the fact that there was nothing to buy in the shops, and here we were, scouring East London shops in a bid keep it all alive.

But that is all in the past.

Now in East London you can get everything, and not just in tiny corner shops but in large ethnic supermarkets like Lituanica* in Beckton.  I discovered this culinary palace a few years ago, and this year the management was kind enough to allow me to take some photos to show the variety we now have here in London after all those years of making do. The Lituanica company started in Ireland 20 years ago and has been trading in the UK for the last 15 years. With a number of branches in the London’s East End, the traditional area for Lithuanian settlement, there are also stores further afield in places like Birmingham and Bedford. Lituanica is now the UK’s oldest importer of Eastern European food and its leading wholesaler. The complex in Beckton which I visited also boasts a cosy restaurant, selling authentic ethnic food and delicious coffee & cake, a hairdresser’s, a beauty salon and a wonderfully eclectic bookshop. Sadly, my parents are no longer here to see it but if they were, surely, they would be quite overwhelmed. My Dutch mum used to talk about the early days of her marriage, spent in a bed-sit in Notting Hill Gate, a stone’s throw from Lithuanian House. In those days, she used to say, you couldn’t get salami or even coffee easily in England.

When I visited this year it was too early for my Kūčios shopping, but later this month I will be returning for some herring salad in beetroot and Kedainiai cucumbers which really are the best in the world- well I would say that as that’s where my ancestral roots are- and I shall also buy some of their excellent rye bread to serve with my homemade mushroom soup.  However, I shall still go down the road to the Kosher deli for the salted herrings- the oily ones are not to my taste and those salty Bismarck ones remind me of Christmases past and the special trips we had to make to source them.

Christmas biscuits

And therein lies the nub of the matter. Everyone wants to recreate that Christmas magic that is so special to their own individual family, but how much have tastes and customs changed since my dad left his farmhouse in the forest nearly 75 years ago? Was he striving to recreate that special Kūčios moment for me all those years ago, the same one his mother created for him? Things have moved on everywhere.  How much did tastes and expectations change in Lithuania during the years of Soviet rule? Indeed, how well did our parents remember how and what our grandparents cooked for Kūčios?  And haven’t our palates also changed even in the last twenty or so years in the West?  Lituanica is a taste of home for modern Lithuanians but for those of us who have been longer in the UK, it is best viewed as a holiday to rediscover our roots, rather than a place to find old favourites from the past. Most of those Lithuanian brands are probably thirty or so years old- and modern. Instant Kisielius and ready-made poppy seed milk. Would my močiutė have approved? But then why not, if it makes life a whole lot easier? And I also wonder about the older generation back in the Baltics, today’s grandparents, who grew up under Soviet rule. Do they too hanker after the taste of home?  If you’ve ever seen the film “Goodbye Lenin” and remember the saga of the Spreewaldgurken – where the main character hunts for old East German versions of his mother’s favourite food before they all disappear - you will understand my point.

However, whether you want to celebrate Kūčios as they do today in Lithuania, or if you want to re-create that do-it-yourself version that you experienced as a child, Lituanica is really a top find and like the other new Baltic stores in my area is beautifully clean and reasonably priced with helpful and polite staff. Interestingly it is on a site next door to an Asian supermarket and opposite a Chinese one. Do many customers visit all three just to browse?  Lithuanians are the new kids on the block in our area. Being so close to the Thames there has long been a significant Chinese community in the area and for the last fifty years our suburbs have become a favourite spot for first- and second-generation families with roots in the Indian sub-continent.…….. East London is, and always has been a melting pot, and on a Friday or a Saturday night residents of all ethnicities will “go out for an Indian” or “go out for a Chinese.” So maybe Baltic cuisine will be the next big thing. Cepelinai anyone?

* Special thanks to the staff at Lituanica in Beckton who were so hospitable. You can find out more about them at https://lituanica.co.uk/

Ačiū, Margaret! It is definitely easier to find Latvian foodstuffs and similar products here in the US as well, if not in a shop, then online. However, I still wish for a store like Lituanica, where I could buy authentic rye bread, yeast cakes (instead of active dry) for baking, pelēkie zirņi (grey peas), not to mention things like pīrāgi and piparkūkas! It is exactly as you pointed out – I could make everything from scratch, but the time required (not to mention things don’t usually turn out exactly as I remember they should), makes it impractical in today’s world.

Margaret Drummond grew up in a Dutch/Lithuanian home in London. She is a translator and retired teacher and is interested in how cultures merge and change. You can read last year’s contribution to this blog here: “On the pitfalls of buying a carp for Christmas.” You can also sometimes find her on CafeLit and on the Central and Eastern European Review blog.

Coming up tomorrow, on Day 18 of a Baltic Christmas… Rīga in the winter!

Baltic Christmas Day 12 - On the pitfalls of buying a carp for Christmas

It’s across the Atlantic to the UK for this piece by another first-time contributor to the series, Margaret of the blog Balt in the box room. Please welcome Margaret, and enjoy her Christmas fish tale…

This post was first published on the blog Balt in the box room.

On the pitfalls of buying a carp for Christmas

The carp is a dirty fish, or so my French friends tell me. It is a bottom feeder, lurking deep in the debris and mud at the bottom of the lake and eating the residue there. The French say it is inedible- It tastes of mud and muck. However Eastern Europeans would disagree. Keep it alive in fresh water for three days or so, they say, to allow the mud to be flushed through its fishy entrails and the carp will miraculously taste fresh and sweet. Thus the Daily Mail regularly runs stories throughout December about Polish plumbers poaching carp from local lakes in the UK and keeping their catch (not their coal) in the bath. Sounds plausible, eh? It seems that my grandmother and her grandmother before her had mastered the art of carp cuisine. Carp regularly features in all the cookbooks as a dish enjoyed throughout Europe at Christmas time. Well we had had a carp at Christmas this year and sadly it did not live up to the high expectations we had assigned to it. Scraping the not so insubstantial remains of the carp onto the cats’ plate at midnight on Christmas Eve I vowed that this would be a once-in a life-time experiment.

That small fish- a mere £4.50 had cost me dearly in time and effort and remained virtually intact on the table at the end of our Kūčios meal. I understand that the tradition is apparently that you give the left-overs of the Kūčios meal to the farm animals. The cats refused the carp, turning up their noses and sitting insistently by the cupboard waiting for Whiskas. Even the urban foxes eschewed the fish, preferring instead to rummage in our dustbin in search of something better. No, never again…… this is one custom I will not be passing down to my children.

Competitive culinary sourcing was to blame. When my brother-in-law threw down the gauntlet by announcing that the turkey on Christmas day had to be sourced from Smithfield market, my husband could not resist the challenge. He decided that the fish we were to eat had to come from Billingsgate and obviously this would involve getting there at 4.30 am, thus ensuring that all in the house were woken by his early departure. The salmon I had asked for was duly purchased (with head, though thankfully gutted) but he apparently could not resist the slimy brown carp on the slab and brought it home triumphantly double wrapped in two bin bags. He then thoughtfully woke us up again on his return as he noisily struggled to rearrange the fridge to accommodate his purchases.

My first problem with the carp was that it had not been gutted. “Couldn’t you have asked the fishmonger,” I asked him? He shrugged, and my daughter, who had accompanied him on his early morning mission giggled nervously. Obviously the thrill of sourcing- yes that word again- the carp had overtaken him in the market and he had not thought to ask. Wisely he made himself scarce, claiming he had errands to run, and squeamishly I did the deed. For a small fish there was an awful lot of gunk and blood, mud perhaps???- I washed down the small ugly brute and searched in vain for a recipe, just the thing on the morning of Christmas Eve when you have eleven other dishes to prepare.

It seems you need an awful lot of things to make carp taste good. Polish beer, juniper berries, allspice berries, lemons, sauerkraut, garlic…..the list was endless. The fish only cost £4.50- I estimated that I would need to spend at least £10 on extras to make the recipe and that on Christmas Eve when the shops were heaving and everything was upside down.

So I did the best I could with bits that I had. At lunchtime I wrapped it in foil and shoved it in the oven, continuing all the while to wash the carp’s blood and entrails down the sink as I waited for the transformation…

And the result? Of course they were all polite about it, all keen to try. No one expressed any enthusiasm for it though, and the poor carp lay neglected on its side whilst we discussed the suppliers of the various herring dishes. At the end of the meal it lay barely touched in its dish.

Could I blame them? Of course not dear reader, for I myself could barely manage a mouthful. Should you ask me now what the carp tasted of I will have to be honest. The flesh has a flabby, watery texture which does not excite the palate and the flavour………well let’s just say that I know now why carp is not eaten in France – haven’t we all made and tasted mudpies as children? Let’s just say it was a Proustian moment.

Just a footnote to add that Mr. D has over the years been a valiant supporter when it comes to Kūčios! Not many Englishmen would drive all over East London for herrings… or sample them for that matter!

Thank you Margaret for joining us on 24 Days of a Baltic Christmas! I'm amused, as carp is popular here in the southeast (US) where we live; however, I've never tried to prepare it, and having read this, I might put it off for a few more years... 

Margaret Drummond comes from a Dutch/Lithuanian family and has spent most of her life in the UK. Now retired, she taught languages for many years in London secondary schools. She writes articles and short fiction for various national and local publications, and sometimes blogs as Balt in the box room. She is especially interested in how nationalities and cultures merge and adapt in a changing world. She lives in London with her family.

Please join us tomorrow on Day 13 of a Baltic Christmas as we pull the log with Banuta!

Baltic Christmas Day 8 - A Baltic Christmas in Britain

For Day 8 of 24 Days of a Baltic Christmas we travel from Atlanta, GA to Britain! Please join me in welcoming Emily Gilbert, author and blogger at Changing Identities: Latvians, Lithuanians and Estonians in Britain!

Estonian Christmas tree, Photo: Reet Järviks

Christmas is a time when many Latvians, Lithuanians and Estonians in Britain recreate the traditions of their homelands and their parents’ homelands. Among the families of those who were forced to leave their homelands due to the Second World War, the unique traditions surrounding Christmas are of great importance, and provide an opportunity to reconnect with their Latvian, Lithuanian and Estonian heritage.

Anita Woronycz, a second-generation Lithuanian living in Wales, recreates the traditions of 1930s Lithuania with her Lithuanian mother, who came to Britain after the Second World War. She described to me how they mix the traditions of Lithuania and Britain, so that all three generations in the family can enjoy this special time and celebrate their unique heritage. In Lithuanian tradition, Christmas Eve is the most important meal during the Christmas period and many Lithuanians in Britain have carried on this custom, known as Kūčios. In Anita’s family, the table is laid to seat all the generations, and red candles lit.

Anita's Family's Christmas Eve table

Anita’s mother and her Lithuanian sister-in law prepare many of the traditional twelve dishes eaten on Christmas Eve in Lithuania, but adapt them to suit their tastes. Kūčios is a meatless meal consisting of mainly uncooked dishes, including fish & vegetable dishes and bread. Anita’s mother prepares kisielius which is a cranberry dessert or drink of varying thickness. Anita’s late father, also Lithuanian, modified this dish to include the Lithuanian Christmas biscuits made with poppy seed, known as kūčiukai (šližikai), and Anita continues this family tradition: "Every family has their own traditions, just as the Brits do. I throw my Christmas Eve biscuits into my cranberry kissel (kisielius)!" Anita noted that at this meal they also eat coleslaw and crab sticks, which are "definitely not traditional!"

Before the meal, Anita noted the importance of the sharing of the "blessed Christmas wafers (plotkele) before eating." In Anita’s family, these are sent over from Lithuania by a family member.

Anita’s kūčiukai in kisielius

Latvians in Britain also prepare Latvian food for Christmas, and adapt it to varying degrees to suit their tastes. A Latvian woman who came to Britain in the late 1940s noted that she always made pīrāgi (a Latvian bread roll containing bacon) around Christmas time, in a similar way to how many English people make a batch of mince pies for the festive season.

Latvians, Lithuanians and Estonians in Britain find it much easier to maintain traditions today than during the first decades after the war due to the wider availability of foodstuffs, which has increased further due to post-EU immigration from the Baltic countries. After the war and throughout the 1970s and 1980s, Latvians, Lithuanians and Estonians in Britain relied heavily on Polish products - which were the only similar food available in towns and cities outside London. A second-generation Latvian, Pauline Szelewski, noted that her family used to buy Polish products for Christmas: "Dad would seek out Polish products, which were the closest he could find at that time, I guess, i.e. sprats, black rye bread." As a second-generation Latvian living in Britain, Pauline notes that nowadays: "We have recreated our own low-key celebrations where we go for a walk in the country and enjoy a relaxed meal at the end of the day. We usually play charades, Scrabble, or watch a film."

During the period of war and displacement in the 1940s, it was particularly difficult to maintain the culinary and cultural Christmas traditions of the homeland. However, once in the safe havens of the DP camps, the refugees tried as much as possible (despite scant rations) to recreate homeland traditions. A Latvian woman described the food they had eaten in the DP Camps in Germany: "I know one Christmas Eve…. in the camp… all we had on that Christmas Eve – because I think they saved the nicer things for Christmas Day – we had boiled swede and sort of fresh herrings cooked in water. We didn’t even have fat. I will always remember that. But then on Christmas Day, I’m sure we had something much nicer. [But it was] not enough, no." A Lithuanian woman in Nottingham who was a child in Meerbeck DP camp also recalled that "…in Meerbeck, Father Christmas would bring us an orange. Now for me an orange… was fantastic. It was absolutely fantastic."

Pīrāgi (Photo: Alex Māzers)

After they arrived in Britain, Christmas became one of the most important ways to recall and celebrate customs of the homeland. In many cases traditions were adapted; for example, among intermarried couples, Christmas celebrations mixed two or more cultural traditions. An Estonian, Heino Poopuu, described how it was difficult to fully maintain the Estonian traditions with having an Irish wife: "At Christmas time we want to be feeling sort of nostalgic and listen to music, and well, we can’t listen to the same music. That’s one thing, and there are a great many other things."

Heino described how Christmas had been celebrated as a child on Saaremaa Island: "The evening of Christmas Eve was traditionally devoted to the observation of piety and might include going to church in the late afternoons, but the highpoint of the evening was the dinner of pearl barley sausages followed by carol singing under the candlelit Christmas tree. Children received one or two presents each – usually something to wear. The remaining three days were taken up with visiting and entertaining visiting relatives at home. When I was still very small, the custom of bringing straw indoors was still alive, enabling the children to play boisterous games which, I believe, was the reason mother stopped it as being too messy."

In Britain, the observance of religious traditions around Christmas continued to be important among all three Baltic communities, with Christmas church services taking place across Britain in the mother tongue. The communities also organized a variety of Christmas celebrations in clubs and associations across Britain. The picture below shows a Christmas party at the Estonian Club in Bradford in 2009 with Jõuluvana (Santa) and his helper (Päkapikk).

Photo courtesy of Reet Järvik

Another important aspect of Christmas among all three communities which differs from British tradition is the lighting of the Christmas trees with real candles. A second-generation Estonian in Britain, Reet Järvik described the importance of decorating her tree every year with wooden ornaments and real candles: "It is imperative that Estonians have a real Christmas tree with real candles. We have real candles every year."

In these ways, a Baltic Christmas in Britain is a mix of Latvian/Lithuanian/Estonian customs and British Christmas traditions, and even those of other cultures among intermarried couples. It has been fascinating to learn about how Latvians, Lithuanians and Estonians in Britain celebrate Christmas, and I would like to wish everyone from all three communities in Britain and across the world, a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!


Thank you Emily, for the illuminating look at Baltic Christmas traditions in Britain! Emily Gilbert is author of Rebuilding Post-War Britain: Latvian, Lithuanian and Estonian Refugees in Britain, 1946-1951, Pen and Sword, 2017. For more from Emily, please visit her blog, Changing Identities: Latvians, Lithuanians and Estonians in Britain.

Tomorrow on Day 9 - the animals of our Baltic Christmas!

In the darkness over Richmond

High up on a hill overlooking the city of Richmond stands a monument, lit up at night like a beacon to the heavens. We first noticed it after dinner at the Boathouse at Rocketts Landing, the illuminated obelisk demanding attention even as we had plotted our course back to the hotel for the evening.

The lighted pathway leads the eye right to the monument, upper right

We zigzagged up the hill just a few short blocks from Great Shiplock Park, the historic canal park our explorations had led us to earlier in the day. For a moment we thought we would be unable to reach it, as our route had taken us to Main Street where we would face a steep (dark) uphill hike even if we could find parking. But after turning on a maps app we discovered the roundabout way to reach Libby Terrace and found ourselves standing at the base of the Confederate Soldiers and Sailors Monument.

The memorial is located on the southeastern spur of Church Hill, in Libby Hill Park. The impressive view over the city, the James River, and what used to be the Confederate Navy Yard guarantees its suitability for a rather impressive monument. Plans had originally called for a statue commemorating Robert E. Lee, but when one was erected on the other side of the city, the Confederate Soldiers' & Sailors' Monument Association was born. The memorial was modeled after Pompey's Pillar in Alexandria, Egypt, and depicts a Confederate private standing on top of the pillar. 13 granite blocks make up the enormous pillar symbolizing the 13 Confederate States. Completed in 1894, the total cost is estimated to have been over $30,000.

Once we had reached our beacon we discovered the real treasure of Libby Hill Park – the view. William Byrd II is thought to have said that this view resembles the view of Richmond upon Thames in England, and so the vista earned the reputation as the "View that Named Richmond." A plaque informed us that the curve of the James River and the steep slopes are similar to the features of the River Thames in England, and when William Byrd II was asked by the House of Burgesses to plan a town at the Falls of the James (the same falls than necessitated all the canals and locks) in the 1730s, he named the new town Richmond.

A little hard to see, but the tower to the old Lucky Strike factory (now lofts) is visible on the left

We couldn’t have asked for a more suitable final perspective on the historical city that we had been exploring for the past few days. Despite the pull to explore the park more fully (even in the dark it was beckoning us down its cozy pathways!), we loaded the sleepy children back into the car and descended into the lights that we had just been admiring. Tomorrow was a brand new day, and our plans were to head east, towards Chesapeake Bay and the Colonial National Historic Park. 

Upstate Farm Tour part 1

Every summer locals (and visitors) to the Upstate have the unique opportunity to tour dozens of sustainable farms right here in our backyard; not only to discover the delicious meat, dairy, fruits, veggies and other commodities produced right here in the Upstate, but also to learn more about the workings of our local farms and to stock up on all sorts of goodies! This annual self-guided tour is organized by the Carolina Farm Stewardship Association (CFSA), a farmer-driven, membership-based non-profit organization that helps people in the Carolinas grow and eat local, organic foods by advocating for fair farm and food policies, building the systems family farms need to thrive, and educating communities about local, organic agriculture.

City Scape Winery pet goats

Participating in the Upstate Farm Tour is simple. We bought our button (a ticket, if you will) at Swamp Rabbit Cafe and Grocery, then downloaded the Upstate Farm Tour Guide. The guide includes a map and description of the participating farms, and we chose four to five to visit each day (Saturday and Sunday, 1-6pm). Then on the weekend you load up the car and take off, remembering to bring a cooler so that you can take home some of the fresh farm products available for sale at the various farms. Shortly after lunch Saturday we headed east from Greenville to Woodruff SC, home of Kornerstone Farms – one of the 7 new stops on this year’s tour. It isn’t possible to visit all 20+ stops in the two days as they are spread throughout Abbeville, Anderson, Cherokee, Oconee, Pickens, Greenville, Laurens, Greenwood and Spartanburg Counties, so we had chosen an itinerary based on clusters of farms. Family owned and operated, it was members of the Kaiser family who gave us the tour, showing us first the 6 acres of forest where their pork products originate, next their free range laying hens, then finally their pastured meat birds, which we visited via hay ride to the back pasture. Items for sale included eggs, chicken, pork, turkey and goat milk soaps.

Kornerstone Farm hay ride

A short car ride away in Gray Court was our second stop for the day, Bethel Trails Farm. Another small family farm, the animals are raised without the use of hormones and antibiotics, free ranging on pasture. Several popular Greenville restaurants including Stella’s and Bacon Bros. Public House use Bethel Trails as a source for their meat, which was also available for purchase on location. The boys were most intrigued by the guard emu, which protects the animals from predators.

Bethel Trails Farm emu

Not an official stop on the 9^th Annual Upstate Farm Tour, but necessary to stave off farm tour revolt was a stop at Happy Cow Creamery. With an on-the-farm milk bottling operation the farm can offer fresh milk directly from its own dairy cows: whole milk, chocolate milk, cultured buttermilk, and strawberry milk are just a few of the products offered at the on-site-store. We settled in at a picnic table adjacent to the pasture with vanilla ice cream, and cheese and milk were tucked into the cooler before we continued west to our next stop.

Happy Cow Creamery store

At the City Scape Winery in Pelzer we strolled through rows of muscadine grapes and sampled a few wines made of local grapes as well as blackberries and peaches. The kids had a blast feeding the pet goats, and although they were a tad disappointed the fantastic-looking tree house was roped off (safety first!) they were quickly distracted by running up and down the rows of grapes. Yes, those were my kids. No, they didn’t tear anything up. Yes, we bought a few bottles of wine to make up for our sporadic participation in the tour.

City Scape Winery

Our final Saturday stop was to the distinctively-named Possum Kingdom Kreamery. Named for the community near Anderson that is found by following the directions "just up the road a ways" or "just down the road a ways” depending on whether you ask the folks down or up the road, the physical address is in Belton, SC. A raw milk dairy and creamery, we saw goats, free range hens, ducks, Teddy the guard llama and a couple of Drum Horses. This relatively rare breed of horse gets its name from the two large solid silver kettle Drums they carry in addition to a fully outfitted rider in the Queen of England’s Band of the Life Guards. Controlled entirely by reins attached to their rider’s feet, their calm and quiet disposition was noticeable on our visit. However the llama was pretty calm and quiet too – I’m thinking it might have something to do with the serene surroundings. In addition to artisan cheeses and goat milk products for sale, there were a few other local vendors selling produce, including peaches from Gray Court which we enthusiastically added to our stash. After feeding the boys a snack and choosing a feta in smoked olive oil and a goat cheese spread from the creamery for our cooler, we were on our way north back to Greenville…

Stay tuned for part two of the 9^th Annual Upstate Farm Tour, including Berry Acres, Forx Farm, Split Creek Farm, Lucky Acres Farm and the Seneca Treehouse Project!

The Latvian holiday Mārtiņi and its equivalent across the world

Priecīgus Mārtiņus! (Warning, this is a dense post - but I promise you'll learn about a bunch of really cool holidays and traditions you've probably never heard of before!)

Mārtiņi (Martin's Day) is the name of the festival celebrated in Latvia on November 10^th, marking the end of the fall and the beginning of winter. Halfway between the autumnal equinox and the winter solstice, in ancient Latvia Mārtiņi marked the passage from veļu laiks (season of the spirits) to ledus laiks (season of ice). By Mārtiņi it was expected that all preparations for winter were finished, such as salting meat and fish, storing the harvest and making preserves. This day also marked the beginning of mumming and sledding, among other winter activities. Mummers, also called ķekatas and budeļi, are costumed and wearing masks, traveling from home to home bringing their blessing, encouraging fertility, and scaring away any evil spirits.

The seasons and their associated deities and symbols - source here

As with many of the ancient Latvian holidays, there are certain ways to tell your fortune for the following year. For example, young, unmarried girls must toss their skirt into the middle of the room before going to bed; the one she dreams picks up the skirt is the one she will marry. Superstitions were also numerous; supposedly to guarantee the health of the horses through the harsh winter a rooster should be killed in the stables. Coincidentally it is tradition to sacrifice a rooster in Ireland as well; the blood was collected and sprinkled on the four corners of the house to bring fortune in the following year.

Everything you might need to know about the holiday can be found in this book

For Latvia’s neighbor to the north, Estonia, Mardipäev symbolizes the merging of Western European customs with local Balto-Finnic pagan traditions. Mardipäev marks the end of the period of All Souls in the Estonian popular calendar - the season when the souls of ancestors were worshiped, which lasted from November 1 to 11^th). On this day the end of the agrarian year & autumn is observed, and the beginning of the winter period is celebrated. Children disguise themselves as men and go from door to door singing songs and telling jokes to receive sweets, similar to the processions occurring in Austria, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands, where children go through the streets with paper lanterns and candles.

Source here

Historically a widespread custom in Germany on Martinstag was to have a bonfire, called the Martinsfeuer. Still lit in a few cities and villages throughout Europe, it symbolizes the light that holiness brings to the darkness just as St. Martin brought hope to the poor through his good deeds. It is believed that the procession of lanterns replaced the large bonfires over time. Traditional foods include Martinsgans (St. Martin’s goose) and Martinshörnchen, a pastry shaped in the form of a croissant symbolizing the hooves of St. Martin's horse.

Source here

As we see with the German version, the day has blended the pagan with the Christian; the resulting variety of traditions is something we see across the continent. November 11^th is the feast day of St. Martin of Tours, honoring the friend of children and patron of the poor. In Slovakia, the Feast of St. Martin is like a 2^nd birthday for those named after the saint; they are given small presents or money. However it is also a day of foretelling the future, as if it snows then there will be snow on Christmas. This is a theme that repeats itself in the Czech Republic where the first half of November is the time when it often starts to snow. Czechs roast goose and drink Svatomartinské vino, a young wine from the recent harvest. Wine, a symbol of the harvest, is a recurring theme also; in Slovenia and Croatia the “must” (considered impure and sinful) is baptized and turned into wine, while in Austria Martinloben is celebrated as a harvest festival with wine tastings, art exhibitions and live music.

St. Martin, source here

In Denmark Mortensaften is celebrated with traditional dinners, most often goose as in many other countries on this day, such as Sweden, where the entire day of Mårtensafton is a celebration of the goose. Other Martin’s Day foods abound, such as the rogale croissants in Poland. In Portugal magusto (chestnuts roasted under the embers of the bonfire) and água-pé (an alcoholic beverage which is a byproduct of wine) are consumed, as St. Martin's Day is the celebration of the maturation of the year's wine. However in Spain the goose is replaced by pork, in that St. Martin's Day is the traditional day for slaughtering fattened pigs for the winter. In Switzerland the 5+ hour long Repas du Saint Martin includes all the parts of freshly butchered pigs, while the Auvergne region of France (our home while we lived in Clermont-Ferrand) traditionally hosts horse fairs instead of feasts on this day – bringing us back full circle to the Latvian association of Mārtiņi to horses; on Mārtiņi we pass from the influence of Ūsiņš, the horse deity of summer, to that of Mārtiņš, a winter deity.

The preparation of magusto in Portugal, source here

In the United Kingdom, St. Martin's Day is known as Martinmas, when historically cattle were slaughtered and preserved for the winter. However November 11^th in England is now better known for being Remembrance Day, commemorating the end of WWI and honoring those that serve in the military as Veteran’s Day (US) and Armistice Day do.

The American cemetery in Normandy, France

Whatever it may be that you observe, Martinmas or the Danish Mortensdag, Martinpäivä in Finland or the Feast of Saint Martin, I wish you a beautiful day. Although we will be honoring our veterans tomorrow, today we will celebrate Mārtiņi – the first of many, as now we are blessed with a Mārtiņš of our very own, little Vilis Mārtiņš!

The Mārtiņš symbol, source here

London 2012

The London Olympics had me utterly captivated, and each evening found us watching NBC until much too late. Since we’re in temporary arrangements as we search for a house, it was very difficult to work out the live streaming via internet, and so some matches/races I followed by watching facebook status updates. But it was nice to catch a few highlights on primetime, such as the Latvians beating the US in men’s beach volleyball on their way to a bronze medal. I believe Pļaviņš and Šmēdiņš became national heroes overnight in Latvia, even if the audible confusion of Americans was somewhat disheartening. Are there really that many people who think Latvia is a made-up country, or don’t know where Latvia is? Some twitter updates had me in stitches, all basically wondering the same thing, how this tiny country with only 2 million inhabitants beat the superpowers.


Source: here

During previous Olympics I remember being very disappointed with the coverage. Latvia is alphabetically located in a group of tiny nations: Kazakhstan, Kiribati, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Lebanon, Lesotho, Liberia, Libyan AJ and Liechtenstein. During the opening ceremonies this seems to be the perfect time to cut to commercial break, and so we rarely saw the Latvian athletes walking into the Olympic stadium. This year the opening ceremonies were taped, and they did quick recaps upon returning from commercials meaning Latvia got its five seconds – a proud moment for all of us Latvian-Americans in the US.

Source: here

Even prouder moments were the medals. Pļaviņš and Šmēdiņš went on to lose to Brazil, but in the end went three rounds with Netherland to earn the bronze medal. And in cycling Māris Štrombergs from Valmiera is the ONLY gold medalist in BMX… (the sport debuted in the Beijing 2008 Olympics, but he’s got two gold medals!) Two other Latvians made the team, Rihards Viede and Edžus Treimanis, but they got caught up in a crash in the semifinals and will have to wait another four years for their next shot. Kind of interesting that Latvians are excelling in these extreme sports, don’t you think?

Source: here

I hope that one day I have the opportunity to go to the Games. As emotional as watching the Latvian National Anthem played and the flag raised during the gold medal ceremony on YouTube was, I believe my heart would just burst to be there in person. And I don’t discriminate, I’m just as proud of each and every athlete representing the USA, and my eyes tear up watching almost any athlete up on the podium receive the greatest athletic honor in the world. For a few weeks the economic crisis, the wars being fought in the Middle East, all the usual gut-wrenching drama that unfolds in the daily news was replaced by hope, pride and the belief that dreams do come true. Only two years until the 2014 Sochi Games!

My two gold medalists on the podium