December 2011
What's in Your Gift Basket?
by Karen Boehler
Karen Hartshorn says she's not a joiner—"I don't like to be on a board and go to meetings," she says. "I tend to get too restless, and I either want to fall asleep or I want to get up and move around and do stuff. I'm not a sit-down person for very long"—which might make sense for a person who spent 10 years living off the grid in a teepee.
But that doesn't mean Hartshorn doesn't make a big contribution to the small Mora County community of Ocate, where she now lives. She's provided all sorts of baked goods—as well as gift baskets —to the Ocate-Ojo Feliz Community Center for their various functions.
"First, I just started taking pies for events," she says. "Then I got more adventurous and I started baking cakes. Eventually, I started baking cookies and cookie bars." The pies came naturally to Hartshorn, who'd been making them since she was 11 years old, "for my dad, because he didn't like cakes, he liked pies."
Name
Karen Hartshorn
Resides In
Ocate
Co-op Member
Mora-San Miguel Electric
Occupation
A job in itself, she bakes pies cakes and more
Reaching Out to The Community
She fills baskets with homemade goodies for the elderly during the holiday season
In Her Words
"I just started taking pies for events. Then I got more adventurous and I started baking cakes. Eventually, I started baking cookies and cookie bars."
About 10 years ago, Hartshorn started making senior baskets for the area's elderly. Some years she donates handmade key chains to raffle, and also makes what she calls "scenery cakes" for children.
The Arkansas native has clearly settled in well after a most interesting life leading up to where she is today. She landed in New Mexico by chance. "I was heading to Montana but I ended up going to Fiestas in Santa Fe and just loved the area so much that I just stayed," she says.
She got a job caretaking a piece of property to keep trespassers from cutting wood. But land was all there was, and Hartshorn and her son, Chris Robins, spent their time in a teepee—two teepees, after Robins got too big for the small space.
While Robins rigged up a solar cell that gave him television and electric lights, Hartshorn had kerosene lamps. The pair hauled water from Santa Fe and cooked over a campfire. And for 10 years, that's where they lived. Eventually the property owner decided to sell, and while she was working at the Ocamora Retreat Center in Ocate she mentioned she was looking for a new place to live. An offer was made to sell her several nearby acres and she's been there since.
She and her husband, John Williams built an adobe home, and planted more than 100 trees, including fruit trees which provide ingredients for her pies and cakes.
But it's the annual Christmas party—which this year is set for December 11—that sees much of Hartshorn's largess. She fills the senior baskets with a variety of items, ranging from candies, home-canned fruit and nuts to lotions and "little presents; things that I find throughout the year." She also tries to add in something the seniors can use. Last year, she put in small heaters and has some interesting surprises for this year's baskets.
And while the seniors each get something, youngsters get to put their names in a hat to win a scenery cake. A cake covered with white frosting to look like snow, with cake hills, chocolate rocks and a piping-gel river. "Different scenes every year, and I have a lot of fun making those," Hartshorn says.
With this year's party drawing near, Hartshorn is busy gathering goodies for baskets, and toys and trinkets for the cakes. Then, about a day before the get-together, she'll get busy baking so, like Santa on Christmas Eve, she can bring joy to all those who come to the rural community's annual Christmas party.
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