Cracker Barn! (Tales from the Vault)

Some Midwestern Spring Day, 1997

Yesterday, Shayne asked how paper is made. We talked about trees, waterways, paper mills…and then I mentioned, “Mommy makes paper sometimes.” So today, at Shayne's request, Shayne and I made paper.

We’ve actually enjoyed this activity together before, but Shayne’s curiosity did not extend beyond swirling his hands in the slurry of pulp and flowers in the mixing bowl. To him, it was probably just another curious thing Mommy does when she might otherwise be mopping floors.

Today was different; he was pursing his own interest in the art of papermaking. We gathered our materials:

• Blue piece of construction paper and some leftover brown package wrap
• Casting molds by Paper KrazeTM 
• The Blender!
• 2 entire sets of mixing bowls (Shayne enjoys kitchen accessories almost as much as Lego blocks)
• Essential oil of lavenderarious dried flowers and seeds 
• Enough water to make mopping the floor later a cinch

In my opinion, the most tedious part of papermaking is the tearing. I usually do this while reading or talking on the phone. Shayne, however, being the consciously-living soul that he is, found this part of the process most rewarding. Something about watching a child moving objects, releasing all of that energy, brings new awareness to mundane tasks. I began to relish the satisfying act of freeing paper fibers from the bonds of uniformity—Fly, little fibers, fly!

Ahem. OK. So, we amassed enough confetti for a crude celebration, and dumped it into The Blender along with a couple of mugs of water. Shayne added essential oil of lavender, and all I can say is my cabin fever headache vanished at the first whiff—go aromatherapy! I would normally recommend a couple of drops of oil, but 17 drops seemed to work well for Shayne. Maybe we will use the finished paper ornaments as tennis shoe sachets…

Once Shayne’s ears were covered, I switched on The Blender and swirled our paper squares into a pulpy, purple soup. To this we added leftover seeds from last season for texture, and to stretch the dubious worth of our project past its aesthetic limits into yet another level of recycling: Seed paper can be planted in the earth! (In fact, a few years ago the dregs of one batch of paper I made for Christmas sprouted a garden of marigolds beside our composter the following spring.) Shayne dumped in small sunflower seeds, while I sprinkled in mesclun salad mix seed and flax seed. To compliment the generous measure of oil, we added dried lavender blossoms and tea rose petals.

After enthusiastically stirring our liquid paper, Shayne chose a mold tray with a birdhouse theme. I showed him how to lift the mix out of the bowl by the fork-full, allow it to drain a bit, and then pack it carefully into the depressions in the tray. He preferred the task of pressing our designs with a natural sponge to absorb the excess water. 

After the tray was filled with damp pulp and set aside, I slogged off to the garden to dispose of the leftovers. Meanwhile, Shayne located a chopstick and began banging out a tune on the empty mixing bowls and blender. When I returned, we filled the bowls with water to different depths. Shayne then proceeded to drum a convincing rendition of "All You Need Is Love", as I rescued my seeds, tossing a cracker into the zip-lock bag before closing it. 

"Why are you doing that?" Shayne wanted to know. I explained that it absorbs moisture in sugar dispensers, and I was trying the method with our seeds. "Can I have a cracker to absorb all this water in my bowl?

"Uh, sure. But you might need quite a few…"

The cracker rafts sopped up all the water they could hold, as Shayne propelled them around the bowl with his chopstick, humming an invented song. Suddenly, he froze and fell silent, the universal sign of eureka. A moment later, Shayne dispatched me to rescue one of his crackers from certain disintegration. 

"Lift it up," he instructed, directing me with his hands. "Now, put it in the this farm mold very carefully."  I complied, as he began singing, "A cracker barn! A crack-er barn!" piggy-backing another Beatles tune.  Then he carefully smooshed the wet cracker into the mold's hayloft crevices, just as I’d shown him with the birdhouses earlier. After sponging off the excess (slimy) water, Shayne sighed with satisfaction, and hopped down from his chair to set the barn tray beside the others on the dining room table:

Recycled Cracker!