Prairie Madness: The New Aesthetic

Move over #CottageCore

The Prudes take a convincing stab at “tilling.”

It’s May again, and women everywhere know what that means: it’s time to pretend you’re an Earth Mother. Maybe you were sipping your Kombucha and felt a stir of excitement, watching that pale bacterial disk float like a dead fish through its murky depths. Or maybe you were seized by a frenzied need to knit a potholder, now, immediately! But more likely, #cottagecore got its hooks into you over the long cold winter. Whether that whisper on the wind is the siren song of a domestic goddess or the ghostly shrieks of last year’s tomato seedlings, tormented in the hell to which you consigned them—don’t ignore it! Pull on your leather clogs, wind up your linen head-wrap, and head out to the barnyard, backyard, or balcony for some time with Mama Nature.

Start with Chickens

Everyone starts with chickens.

Chickens are one of the easiest ways to return to your homestead roots. Nothing says self-sufficiency like a flimsy coop, a fresh flock, and a nearby raccoon doubled up with laughter.

It’s worth noting that pansies, baby’s breath and chickens are annuals not perennials. After my fourth spring flock, this was explained to me by a local farmer, between inexplicable coughing fits. This means that come next May, you’ll have to get another pack of chicken seeds, but don’t worry. Chickens are cheap and low maintenance, and the chick stage is the cutest anyway. These doomed little fluffballs will be racking up Insta likes faster than you can say cage free.

Nature’s Accessories

May is the magical time of year when women everywhere start chopping random produce and dropping it in pitchers of water. It’s called an infusion, ladies, and it signals to everyone that you are in touch with the goddess within. Depending on what you chop, you may also develop a very close relationship with the demon within—get to know your particular garden of Eden.

It’s also time to familiarize yourself with the concept of a sprig. Sprigs should be topping anything edible come May: popcorn, pancakes, Mac and cheese—head out back, and get to pinching. Anything green is fair game. Most rashes disappear within 24 hours, and if they don’t, there are plenty of all-natural concealers on the market now.

Rise to the Occasion

You’re not fooling anyone, we saw you take the sleeve off that baguette before you tucked it in your little hand-painted canvas tote bag. And we don’t blame you. Sourdough is the final frontier, you were the Donner party. Maybe there was a rogue GMO in the flour, perhaps a rayon wandered into the linen blend…whatever the case, the perfect loaf proved over, under, and elusive.

But as the old saying goes, “if at first you don’t succeed, put your family through hell.” It is May, ladies. No store-bought loaf will pass over your threshold in this sacred month. Roll up the sleeves on that oversized smock—roll them up again—and get kneading. Then roll them up again. Maybe go change into a regular t-shirt for this one.

Heading back from Kroger.

Home Grown

Of all the time-honored feminine rituals of spring, the most important is the telling of the Great Lie. You’re going to eat fresh all summer, stock your pantry, and make a little spending money at the Farmer’s Market. Never mind that the harvest which issues from your cursed soil gives a whole new meaning to the phrase gross domestic product.

Nobody told you that worms the size of a standard pool noodle were going to start spontaneously emerging from anything in the “leafy green” category. The spiders that stake their claim between the peppers and tomatoes are like something out of a horror film—invisible until your foot hits the dirt, and then they're everywhere, flickering over the soil like a biblical plague, hustling their enormous egg sacks from one hellhole to another with a defensiveness that is entirely uncalled for—no one is after your egg sack, Beelzebub!

Even if you get past Satan’s squadron, Mother Nature herself won’t be onboard with your cute little self-sufficient vision. Get ready for a game of remedial whack-a-mole as you try to stave off the never-ending waves of blight, wilt, fungus and infestation. The wicker basket sits like a barren woman at the back door, and you’ll have to face her patient sorrow every morning as you don the leather clogs, which will lose all their charm. One morning, you may find yourself filling her with a couple Walmart romaine hearts, just to appease your own guilty conscience…

BUT NEVER MIND ALL THAT! Grab a handful of dirt and let it stream between your fingers—is somebody filming you? Post it quick! The chicks are still alive! The new seedlings are standing tall and proud! Your apron looks like 100% cotton from a distance. And thank God, it’s almost June.

-CC

There, there. It’s almost #BeachLife Aesthetic Month.