Empty Bowls
Apr. 3rd, 2015 07:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
offcntrI grew up on a farm in Wisconsin, in what you'd call a cash-poor but resource-rich economy. We never wanted for food, nor wood for the furnace. Livestock feed was a little dodgier, what with weather being variable, but stuff we had to buy, like shoes and school clothes were sometimes a source of stress.
We never felt poor though, because most everyone we knew was in the same boat. Even the annual Parish Bazaar fundraiser. They sold chicken dinners, of course, but the major source of income was the annual cattle auction. All the farmers set aside a heifer or steer in winter, raised it and grazed it and then brought it down to Willard to be auctioned off. Sometimes another farmer bought it, though most of them went to the two local (competing) cattle buyers, Laufenberg and Panek. The church pocketed the proceeds, and the farmers were out only a calf, some time, and a bit of grass from the pasture.
This is why I feel so comfortable with Food For Lane County's Empty Bowls sale. I don't pony up a cash donation, but rather, livestock. Soup bowls, in fact. I use recycled clay, or sometimes donated clay from Georgies, fit them in around the regular pots, a few in every firing, and by the time the sale comes around in June, I've got a hundred head of soup bowls to drive away to their market.
I always take advantage of the process to experiment: try new forms, details, glaze patterns. Some of them find their way into my production pots, some disappear, never to be seen again. I don't know that the exposure translates into any sales in my own booth--though a lot of people stop by to tell me about their empty bowls treasures--but having been short on food in my adult life, I feel very strongly about supporting this charity.
We never felt poor though, because most everyone we knew was in the same boat. Even the annual Parish Bazaar fundraiser. They sold chicken dinners, of course, but the major source of income was the annual cattle auction. All the farmers set aside a heifer or steer in winter, raised it and grazed it and then brought it down to Willard to be auctioned off. Sometimes another farmer bought it, though most of them went to the two local (competing) cattle buyers, Laufenberg and Panek. The church pocketed the proceeds, and the farmers were out only a calf, some time, and a bit of grass from the pasture.
This is why I feel so comfortable with Food For Lane County's Empty Bowls sale. I don't pony up a cash donation, but rather, livestock. Soup bowls, in fact. I use recycled clay, or sometimes donated clay from Georgies, fit them in around the regular pots, a few in every firing, and by the time the sale comes around in June, I've got a hundred head of soup bowls to drive away to their market.
I always take advantage of the process to experiment: try new forms, details, glaze patterns. Some of them find their way into my production pots, some disappear, never to be seen again. I don't know that the exposure translates into any sales in my own booth--though a lot of people stop by to tell me about their empty bowls treasures--but having been short on food in my adult life, I feel very strongly about supporting this charity.