Wrenshall News: From Covid worries to Thanksgiving blessings

Like for plenty of other folks around the country, our Thanksgiving looked quite a bit different this year, but we still celebrated our immense blessings around a dinner of poultry and savory spices. This year I felt especially thankful for the health and safety of my family. My husband, Janaki, contracted Covid-19 sometime in early November and has since recovered, but the repercussions from even one mild case are a good reminder of the precautions we all should continue to take to keep each other safe.

Out of all the people on the farm, Janaki was the last one we thought would get the virus. He spends weeks without leaving the front gate, preferring the confines of "Lily the tractor" or the root cellar. I teach on the campus of UWS and even our folks spend more time running errands in the "outside world." But things occasionally break, and a busted hydraulic hose sent him to a number of parts stores looking for a replacement. While Janaki is careful about wearing a mask whenever he is in public in order to protect others around him, at one establishment the employees helping him chose not to wear masks and at another store some of the customers similarly disregarded state regulations.

Sure enough, a week later Janaki started to feel crummy and went to the Duluth DECC for a "spit test" to see if he had contracted the virus. My two young boys and I all followed suit, and while we tested negative, Janaki's test came back positive. Our parents all have close contact with their grandkids and, luckily, they were negative for the virus, as well as the entire farm crew.

We are fortunate enough to have a small cabin with a wood stove on the farm, where Janaki quarantined away from us, while the boys and I stayed in "the big house" for 14 days. It made us incredibly thankful that the farm had been observing careful mask wearing and Covid protocol in cleaning and packing food. This meant that we had kept other employees safe and able to continue farm operations despite Janaki's diagnosis.

I feel so thankful to friends like Valerie Coit and my in-laws, Jane and John Fisher-Merritt, who cooked for my family, and for my parents who delivered eggs to our farm members and packed orders. I feel so thankful for our farm workers, especially Patricia Clure, who put in extra time bagging carrots and coordinating working shifts. While we live in a rural setting, this kind of disruption reminds us what a web of connection we have to others.

During our family's separation and my two weeks alone with the kids while trying to teach five college classes, I thought a lot about military families who often spend long stretches of time apart, including holiday dinners and birthday celebrations. One of the teachers at my kid's nursery school has a spouse who is a firefighter. This fall he had to drop everything on a moment's notice and leave for a month out west. In the case of our current global pandemic, however, small personal choices can mean that families get to stay together. I thought a lot about single parents who don't have the same networks and have to juggle work, family, homeschooling, and other responsibilities as the status quo, rather than just the 14-day reverse vacation that we had.

Our experience with the coronavirus ended well. While the college students I teach were treated to multiple toddler meltdowns during lectures on Bauhaus architecture, those who are nearest and dearest to us were kept safe and out of already overstretched hospitals. In this season of giving, please do your best to keep this virus to yourself by wearing a mask, washing your hands, and staying home when you are able.

If you have Wrenshall-related stories to share, contact Annie Dugan at 218-310-4703 or [email protected].