I often caught myself spending too much time on social media and fortunately my job with the PA Shopper has increased this awareness and prompts me to spend more time looking for things to do and to write about.  Score!  Although I’ve made thousands of connections through social media one connection that is always treasured is with my people.  I visited my only living grandparent this weekend – she is a wonderfully strong and positive woman who has overcome many challenges in her life but always chooses to focus on moving forward.  My grandma Phyllis has been a rock for all of our family and one of the most influential women I can think of.  I love her dearly and appreciate everything she has given to all of us for over 80 years!  We talked about writing a bit of her history which I look forward to doing as I’m not as knowledgeable with my paternal roots as I am with my mother’s side of the family (which is huge!)  

Several years ago I was able to trace my maternal roots back to the 1500s.  Seven generations back lived one of my grandmothers, Josephte Assiniboine although I couldn't trace her roots back any further as I could with all my French relations.  Josephte must have been a remarkably strong woman as she was mother to Louise who was my great, great, great grandmother and her brother, Gabriel Dumont, who helped to lead the Metis rebellion, a very important part of Canadian history. I believe Josephte thought about me and all of her future grandchildren; it's incredible to sit back and think about seven generations from now and how the world, as we know it, will be so different for them.  Today I am also thinking about my great grandchildren who will be living a hundred years from now.

As I think about them, the children who we borrow the earth from, I wonder how I can make an impact in the best way I can and the only way I believe I can is to teach my own children lessons that can be carried on in the form of traditions or story telling or simply their choice of lifestyle.  This is a priority for me and helps to tell the story of how and why I’ve chosen to make the outdoors such an important part of my life.  In my earlier years I was trained as a teacher and loved the job – I enjoy watching the spark in a child’s eyes as they catch on to something they learn about and find pure enjoyment in it.  Last week, my kids and I did something really cool and fun that hinted to my past and possibly reached out to my future – we made butter from scratch!  My paternal grandfather loved butter and was always looking for the best deals around town so this was a greatly endearing and rewarding experience.  

It is incredibly easy to make homemade butter and all you need is heavy cream and a jar – mason jar, old spaghetti sauce jar, it doesn’t matter.  Fill the jar up half way with cream (I used 35%), stick the lid on, and shake for approximately 8 minutes; elbow grease is definitely required here.  You will notice the cream eventually separate into butter and buttermilk.  Drain the buttermilk into a separate container and definitely use it to make muffins or pancakes which is precisely what we did. They were phenomenal.  The butter is then kneaded and rinsed several times in cool water, in a separate bowl, to make sure all the buttermilk is separated from the butter.  You can choose to add salt to the cream prior to shaking, if you prefer a salted butter, but I skipped the salt and added honey and cinnamon after the process was completed to make a honey butter.  Spread on the pancakes there was nothing quite like it.  The kids really enjoyed the experience and I can see us making butter like this for years to come.  

There are many ways to engage our children and teach them the importance of being resourceful and mindful.  Although my butter making skills were definitely not passed down from my grandparents, perhaps my positivity and strength was.  There is a good chance my kids will remember this themselves and will possibly teach their own children how to do so down the road. I like to imagine that seven generations from now my future great grandchildren will wonder if I was thinking about them; staying connected to my roots, and to the land, is one way I do it.