And on this farm....

A change of direction

2012-01-30T10:58:00.000-08:00

As you might've noticed, this blog has changed direction of late. I haven't posted any farm-related entries in a few months. This is partially due to the fact that during winter, not many tangible things happen on the farm that would warrant my limited description.

But there is another more recent reason for my direction change.

And that is this: Farmer decided a few weeks ago that it was time to let go of his management position here on the farm. It was a very tough decision that caused some stress and hurt both in our lives and in the lives of a few others. Fortunately, most people were very supportive and understanding of the decision.

It is time for change. But isn't it always?

As for us now, we have the luxury of choice. And I do believe it is a luxury. We are aware that not everyone has that choice. So I will try to be thankful for this limbo. We're thriving and not just surviving. We have a little time.

Farmer looks for jobs and we pray to be open to glorifying God. We are still at the community with no definite plans to leave.

In the meantime and for the future of this blog, I will probably focus more on my own artistic interests. I realize that I might lose those of you who read this blog because of your interest in farming. I hope you'll stick around anyway. I am often reading about food and gardening and I hope to continue growing and preserving our own food in the future.

I love the places of connection between art and theology. Actually, as a Christian, I believe they are inextricably linked. The search for God, for meaning and for beauty pervades everything I do and I hope you'll join me on this continued seeking, this often challenging journey through reading, marriage, writing, motherhood, community, food life, and the church (in no particular order).

Blogging can be a lonely pursuit and I don't always know who or if anyone is listening. I welcome your responses, comments, questions, observations.

And maybe some suggestions on what to call Farmer now that he is no longer 'farming' at this particular time (although perhaps he may again someday).

January's Senses

2012-01-12T10:27:00.000-08:00

Look:

One Thousand Gifts by Ann Voskamp

Listen:

Gungor, This is not the end

Taste:

Angel Biscuits
from John Besh's My Family Table

Ingredients:
1 package active dry yeast
5 cups all purpose flour
1/4 cup sugar
2Tbl baking powder
1 1/2 tsp salt
2 cups buttermilk or sour milk
1 cup (2 sticks) butter

1. Dissolve the yeast in 1/4 cup warm water. Sift together flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt in a large mixing bowl. Add the buttermilk and dissolved yeast and mix well. Using a pastry knife, cut the butter into the mixture.

2. Since this makes a light, fairly wet dough, sprinkle 1/2 cup of flour on the counter before you roll out the dough. Roll out the dough into a rectangle. Fold the two sides in, making a triple layer of dough. Cut the dough into 3-inch circles or squares. Place on a nonstick baking sheet, cover loosely, and refridgerate overnight.

3. The next morning, preheat oven to 400º. Bake for 15-20 minutes until golden brown,

Smell:

Lampe Berger Paris

Touch:

The first snow of winter

A few graces

2012-01-03T12:47:00.000-08:00

When my three-year old doesn't have a meltdown because her shirt-sleeves gets bunched up when she puts on a sweater.

When little fingers fit just so into their little places inside little stretchy gloves.

When two munchkins sleep simultaneously in the afternoon, even if it's just for ten minutes.

When Farmer is excited, really truly excited, for the first time in months.

When Little Leaf laughs as he dutifully empties a cabinet of all its grape juice.

When a few hours of nighttime doubting are answered by a morning Psalm.

"As a father has compassion for his children,

so the Lord has compassion for those who fear him."

Psalm 103:13

"Ask and you will receive,

so that your joy may be complete."

John 16:24

Rejections: One living stone

2012-01-02T11:21:00.000-08:00

As many of us know, life can be full of rejection and discouragement. Those of us who have ever gathered up the courage to release the art of our solitude into the cacophony of public consumption have probably been rejected a time or two. I am in a period of discouragement with writing, "Rejection!" currently being the most common response to my submissions.

So, in an effort to absorb and discard this discouragement, I am releasing some of my rejections into the hearts of my readers. Thank you for your time.

Here is a poem I wrote about the feel of community life.

Sometimes like sandpaper...sometimes like the softer waves of the sea.

One living stone

She squats in the dirt and picks them up

Then lets them slip through the spaces between her fingers

“Rocks!” she says, learning new words.

They never had life, these pebbles

Only moments of friction as they drop on each other

But never grinding together

He rests against a rock, the dry earth on his lips

Stones fumble in his raging empty belly

“Turn those stones to bread,” says the beast’s voice

Mocking with its moist lips

He turns from the beast and picks up a rock

He knows that alone, these pebbles are not living

“No,” He says, “I will be the bread.

And upon Simon Peter, my own stone,

will I build life in the church.”

So, they come, these little rocks

They gather together in tight spaces

They grind and growl

They roll together and spin

Some sigh away from the pain

But many stay and are smoothed into shapes of hard beauty

Points of life spark between them

One living stone is rolled away

And chafes with the little rocks that have come to join it

So their sparks blazes out into flames

And light the hill with glory

Kindling

2011-12-31T08:39:00.000-08:00

“Distraction is the only thing that consoles us for our miseries and yet it is itself the greatest of our miseries.”

--Blaise Pascal

I've been ideologically opposed to Kindles since they came on the scene. This has less to do with technology itself and more to do with what Kindles are replacing: books.

I love the feel of books, I love the smell. And I know I'm not alone.

I love going to others' bookcases, bending my head, straining my neck to learn more about their owner, my eyes pausing on a title that connects my heart to the book owner in a moment of recognition. I have that book too! Or I've been wanting to read that for years. How was it?

Books on bookshelves. Sideways titles on spines. They are ways of connecting us with other people through a love of ideas and the patience to sit and imagine and be swept into the same worlds and notions.

I received a Kindle for Christmas.

I was nervous to buy my first book. Was I giving up on my principles? Was I contributing to the demise of my beautiful, fragrant bindings of pages and ink?

Immediately, I read thirty pages of my first electronic book. It was pretty simple to do. The screen is not like a computer and makes for easier reading.

The next night as I opened my Kindle to keep reading, I realized I could download a free word game. So I did and I spent an hour playing the word game instead of reading. Like so many times, I chose a more mindless form of entertainment instead of broadening my mind with reading or writing.

I write this post not to demonize the Kindle or the internet or games. I think they all have their place and I'm quite sure I will read more on my Kindle and enjoy taking it on trips with me. And much to my cautious delight, I've heard that some libraries are beginning to allow you to check out books on your Kindle as you would a hardback.

As the Pascal quote above suggests, my point is more about distraction. Entertainment is certainly not a bad thing in itself and I partake quite frequently in movies, television, and silly websites like awkwardfamilyphotos.com. But I find myself doing this to the detriment of my brain and heart. I never feel emotionally, spiritually or intellectually lifted after reading a snarky blog or spending hours clicking from link to link to link (even if it is just news sites). In fact, I feel just the opposite, like a I need a brain bath. Or a brain rest.

Thomas Merton said that “Man was made for the highest activity, which is, in fact, his rest." A recent NYTimes article talks about how many people are seeking solace from the distractions of the screen. Some writers (and I can sympathize) actually pay for programs that force them offline during their writing hours.

Farmer and I are thinking of banning mindless computer searching after a certain time in the evening. A little extreme perhaps but I think we need it sometimes. I spent a week in Texas with family for Christmas and I was so relieved to have left my computer at home. Why then do I return to my habit as soon as I get back? Even though my brain is sometimes fried from parenting two active children, could I relax and renew my spirit more adequately by reading or writing instead of surfing?

More important than turning all our screens and technology off, I hope that we are conscious of the things in which we invest our money and energy.

"There's a meeting of minds slowly designing our future days...

Who's gonna stay here and think about it

Who's gonna stay

Everybody's left the room

There's no one here to talk it through

Now stay, stay, stay

Eyes wide open and your jaw on the floor

We see science fiction ain't fiction no more."

Sara Groves, Scientists in Japan

A much better alternative to screen time: my new nephew!

The best Christmas package!

That tiny needle eye

2011-12-18T19:54:00.000-08:00

For a follower of Christ, it might sound controversial to say that growing up, I didn't feel a strong connection to the person of Christ. What I did feel was the presence of God the Father. Maybe because I had a loving father, this was an easy leap for me to make. I could understand a heavenly Father who was merciful yet insisted on discipline, one full of love and grace, yet requiring of holiness and righteousness (not that I was always righteous or holy myself).

But Jesus, I just didn't understand Him. Intellectually, I believed he was both God and man, that He lived, died and was raised. I understood all of that.

But I didn't get it.

However, I've recently been confronted with a reality.

Perhaps it's because I'm living and worshipping among Mennonites whose theology and way of reading Scripture is focused on Christ. Maybe it's the studying I've been doing for adult Bible classes at our church. Maybe it's the reading I've been doing on late nights when I'm the only one in my house with the light still on.

Or maybe it's my recent conviction that I need to be giving my time to serve other people.

A few weeks ago, I was reading a book called "Evolving in Monkey Town" by Rachel Held Evans.

Evans writes:
"From the start of his ministry, Jesus had a special relationship with the poor and the oppressed. He even singled them out as special recipients of the gospel, saying, 'The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach the good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor (Luke 4:18-19).'...While earthly kingdoms belong to the rich and powerful, Jesus spoke of a kingdom that belongs to the meek and the gentle, the merciful and peacemakers...Perhaps most disconcerting to those of us who enjoy relatively affluent lifestyles, Jesus said that his kingdom is more accessible to the poor than to the rich...It seems that in the kingdom of heaven, the cosmic lottery works in reverse...all of our notions about the lucky and the unlucky...are turned upside down. In the kingdom of heaven, 'the last will be first, and the first will be last (Matt, 20:16)'...Widow and orphans and lepers and 'untouchables' enjoy a special access to the gospel that I do not have." (p 150-152)

The reality that finally got my attention is that Jesus is the God of the poor, the oppressed, the weak, the widowed, the orphaned, the trafficked, the abused, the persecuted, the meek and the imprisoned.

And finally, I was struck by the reason I hadn't understood this Jesus-guy in the past.

I've never been poor, oppressed, abused, persecuted, imprisoned, and ahem, meek. I didn't have that immediate understanding of Jesus that many people who have been poor or oppressed do that "real power belongs not to the strong but to the merciful." I was never going to be the first because I was already born that way.

At first, this made me feel a little depressed. How could I ever hope to have a relationship with this Jesus when access to Him was denied by the very accident of my birth? I was now the 'unlucky' in this flipped 'cosmic lottery.' This was bad news for me.

And then I felt a little relieved. Because after I got over my pettiness at not being the first in the kingdom of heaven (boohoo, get over it), I remembered that there was more to the story

Sure, the rich can have a more difficult time understanding who Christ is (you know, camel through the eye of the needle stuff). But with God, yes, all things are possible. As Evans says, "I'd like to think that I'm a part of this kingdom, even though my stuff and my comforts sometimes thicken the veil. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control--these are God things and they are available to all regardless of status or standing." (p 153)

So, where does this leave me? I have to ask myself that if Jesus is the God of the meek, the poor, the hungry and the sad, what do I do?

I think it has something to do with loving the people that Jesus loves. Not in pity or as a way to get myself closer to the front in the kingdom. But out of a deep compassionate love. Because I was loved first.

Unfortunately, I don't have that love. But I peeked through that needle eye and saw that with God, all things are possible.

"He says, more than just your cash and coin/ I want your time, I want your voice/ I want the things you just can't give me." (Derek Webb, The Rich Young Ruler)

Liturgies of life

2011-12-14T19:10:00.000-08:00

It's been raining all day. A grey day that might have been dropped upon us right out of springtime mud season. And I am thinking of the changes a year brings. Because this time one year ago, I was birthing a baby during a snowstorm. A little piece of God's creation that He must've spent a bit of time knitting together inside. Little Leaf was long and heavy, not like a newborn at all, and the nurse gasped when she put him on the scale.

Happy birthday, my son from womb, earth, ash, and God. As your name means, you have truly been a gift to us that demands much "praise and thanks."

The changes of a year are vast and all so small in time. We grow and die, eat, love, sleep. We agonize over things that won't go with us into any kind of eternity.

I wonder over my writing a lot, wondering and not writing, that words and articulation are slipping away from me as I choose this liturgy of life and motherhood: wake, feed, read to, entertain, interact with, cook, clean, rest, read to, play with, clean, cook, eat, rest.

But I pray that words will come again when my rituals have changed and that the words will be richer because of these young creatures of beauty that God knitted together in mine and Farmer's lives. And when I am tempted to pity myself about my lack of word life, I will remember that something of my children will be eternal beyond my books and poems. They are a joy, our Dandelion and Little Leaf and I would gladly give up every letter, word and paragraph for them.

My poem about writing and motherhood.

"The calls"

The garden calls

Certainly, the weeds don’t want my

attention.

But the zinnias wilt in my general

direction

begging with drooping yellow leaves

to be rescued from thirst and heat,

from the clover and dandelion that vie with its roots

for earth.

Please nourish me.

Please protect me,

they call.

My infant calls

and so does my two year old.

They wake from naps

hungry and angry, respectively.

He searches for my breast in a

whimper like a desperate giggle.

She wants my laden arms for herself.

They exist in a state of unsatiated thirst

He for bodily nourishment

She for learning the words, the meanings, the colors of living in

her own universe.

Please nourish me.

Please hold me and teach me and tell me,

What is that?

The words call.

They are wilting in the darkness of the

unwritten

Black lines, dots and circles, disconnected

in the absence of heart and brain

and energy

Sometimes I can’t hear the words

anymore

The weeds of lost time and

unpractice

wither and weaken old and new paragraphs.

Please call me forth

Please imagine

Please conjure and articulate

This garden as it begs rain

This baby as he cries

This child as she learns

This word life as it slips away

and back towards me

In an aching and unbreakable link

of life to words

words to life.

One year ago

Daddy and Superboy

Brother and sister hugging

Brother and sister meet for the first time

Ten favorite children's books

2011-11-15T18:28:00.001-08:00

This is not an idea originating with me (see Baby on Board) but I thought it might be fun to list some of my favorite children's books. Let's admit that children's books are what mothers and fathers of young children read the most. And we also know that children love to read their books over and over so we parents have analyzed many of them beyond what is fair to the authors and illustrators.

Although as a writer of young adult fiction and one who has dabbled in children's books, I know from experience that it's a lot trickier than it looks...yes, some of board books are totally inane but there are absolute gems that I actually scramble to find before my daughter reaches for "Elmo Can Use the Potty" or the "Search and Find: Strawberry Shortcake (no, I don't care where Plum Pudding hid her picnic basket)."

Anyway, here are ten of my favorite children's books (in no particular order) that I don't always mind reading over and over (I could do a whole other list for young adults...perhaps another time):

P.S. Although I do love "Where the Wild Things Are," and "The Hungry Caterpillar," I tried to go with a few less obvious ones.

1. "Annie and the Wild Animals" by Jan Brett

Many of Brett's books are good. They're all beautifully illustrated but what I like about this one in particular is that each page is lined with panelled illustrations that foreshadow the action in the text (it took me a few reads to realize this). The story is of a little girl whose best friend, her cat Taffy, disappears in the middle of winter and in order to find a new friend, Annie sets out corn cakes every day to attract other animals. None of them are quite right but maybe Taffy will return with a few surprises in tow.

2. "All the Places to Love" by Patricia MacLachlan, Illustrated by Mike Wimmer

From the beloved writer of the "Sarah, Plain and Tall," this is a feast for the eyes and heart...cheesy, yes, but I cry every time I read it. And I'm not a crier when it comes to books. The writing is so softly poignant, a boy's retelling of the beautiful places he loves on the farm where he grows up. The last page (the front cover of the book) has the boy dreaming of the day when he'll tell his new little sister about the places to love on the land where they'll grow up...tearing up just thinking about it.

3. "Babushka's Doll" by Patricia Polacco

I may well put another of Polacco's books on this list because hers are some of my favorites that I read to Dandelion. And thankfully, Dandelion loves them too, especially this one. I love the Russian influence of her stories and illustrations (she is a child of immigrants). Natasha is a slightly naughty and demanding granddaughter and when her Babushka (grandmother) leaves her alone with her old doll, it comes to life and teaches her about how demanding a little person can be. A perfectly delightful lesson.

4. "Toot and Puddle: You are my sunshine" by Holly Hobbie

I find it difficult to pick a favorite Toot and Puddle book because they are all adorable, but this one is especially sweet as one of the main characters, Toot, who is generally very adventurous and spontaneous, mopes for days and days. His friends try everything to get him back to the old Toot but only a good thunderstorm can change things. As Puddle says, "Everybody mopes." Enough said.

5. "Max Cleans Up" by Rosemary Wells

The Max and Ruby books are clever in a very simple way (at least, I think they are. Or have I been in the company munchkins for too long?). Max is the little brother who gets into mischief and Ruby is the incredibly bossy older sister who acts like his mother. I have a feeling we might have a Max and Ruby in our house...anyway...In this particular story, Ruby forces Max to clean his room but Max has his own "cleaning" style. Hilarity ensues...

6. "My Very First Mother Goose" by Rosemary Wells and Iona Opie

There are a lot of Mother Goose books out there. Believe me, I think I own five of them. The Texas version I found is pretty clever and the original is a good classic. I like that I own a copy of it (Dandelion likes it too) but let's face it, some nursery rhymes are weird, old-fashioned or just plain misogynistic/racist/something bigoted but I can't figure it out because of the funny language.
Of course, many of them are wonderful and fortunately, Opie has edited them down to the not-so-strange rhymes (although plenty are odd) and Wells has illustrated them with the same whimsical style she uses for her Max and Ruby books. Dandelion can look at a picture in this book and remember the rhyme on many pages.

7. "Babushka Baba Yaga" by Patricia Polacco

Another Polacco book about a Russian grandmother, but this one is a fierce fairy creature who is reviled in the village stories but really just longs to have a grandson of her own to take care of. This is a lovely story that touches on themes of a desire to belong and reserving judgement of others.

8. "Thunder Cake" by Patricia Polacco

I couldn't resist one more Polacco. This one is so good that Dandelion and I actually made Thunder Cake from the recipe in the back of the book. This is about another Babushka who is trying to teach her granddaughter not to be afraid of thunder. Her solution? Make thunder cake...after all, without the thunder, it wouldn't be so special.

9. "Hop on Pop" by Dr Seuss

So I know Dr. Seuss is an obvious choice but I don't love to read all of his books repeatedly...after all, they are very repetitive, especially "Green Eggs and Ham"--sorry to say, that one grates on my nerves. I also cannot stand (sorry for those of you who love it) "Oh the Place You'll Go"--this is NOT a children's book. Back on topic...for some reason, I love Hop on Pop. It's absurd (they all are) but hilarious and good for teaching rhymes and phonic reading skills. And really, there are times when you need to say "Stop! You must not Hop on Pop."

10. Sandra Boynton...any book, especially such classics as "Barnyard Dance," Belly Button Book," "But not the Hippopotamus," and "The Going to Bed Book."
Always zany, clever and cute. Memorable and simple words with offbeat concepts.

One more for good measure: "20th Century Children's Book Treasury"

This is kind of a cheat because it has so many of the classics in it: Madeleine, Chicka Chicka Boom Boom, The Snowy Day, Where the Wild Things Are, Goodnight Moon...But it is a really good way to read a bunch of well-written kids books while allowing you to be very lazy and not get up to get another book. Also, you can flip past the ones you hate without kiddo realizing it and there are plenty to love. Spooky Old Tree by the Berenstein Bears is a favorite of both Dandelion's and mine.

Okay...done...although I'll probably think of more as soon as I post this.
If you've managed to stick with me through the whole list, I thank you.
And if you have your own favorites, I'd welcome new reads too.

Don't fear the dark

2011-11-07T20:39:00.000-08:00

It has only been in the last few years living in the midwest that I've begun to understand these distinct things called seasons and what they have to offer our bodies, minds and spirits.

As we begin to tuck in here for the coming winter, I find myself feeling a little darker than usual. In the past, I might've fought these feelings, thinking I should resist this touch of death that casts a grey pallor over the land and all of God's creatures. But this year, I begin to see that a connection with death, darkness and depression might just be part of the Christian life.

As my friend Derran so eloquently put it in his blog entry on Death, Resurrection and Prayer, many of us (myself included) find it easy to ignore or at least quickly move past the horrific parts of the Christian story. We pass over Christ's crucifixion and move straight to the salvation we have through his resurrection. We forget that we who believe are 'crucified with Christ.' We pass through death. I don't think that means that we need to constantly dwell on death but I do think it means that death and silence are a part of our relationship with God.

Winter is in some ways about this silence.

Winter is muted colors, grey and white. Winter is full of the experience of death. Plants die and are covered with cold. We stare at them out our windows, trying to stay warm, longing to enjoy the walks we used to take in warmer weather. We and the land are silenced, waiting for that first flash of green.

We who doubt, who fear the moments when we are supposed to be full of the presence and voice of God but are left with silence and the muted colors, who feel darkness when we think we should be feeling light are not alone. Winter is all around us, absorbing the great color and noise of life.

Does this great season of death help us understand in small ways the feeling of despair in those days after Christ's death? Does it help us better rejoice when new life comes? I hope so.

I have become attached to a song by Scottish singer Emily Smith called Winter Song.

My favorite line is: "I hear the old folk and the country people say/ Don’t fear the dark, nature has it all in hand/Time to reflect and renew the tired land."

Here are some of the lyrics:

The leaves are falling from the trees
Farewell for now warm summer breeze
Weather has been good this year
Now the winter will soon be here
The nights are drawing into shorter days
I hear the old folk and the country people say
Don’t fear the dark, nature has it all in hand
Time to reflect and renew the tired land

So we’ll stoke the fire and light the lamp
Turn our backs in from the damp
Settle down beneath the starry sky
Endure the winter passing by

Camp out

2011-10-19T11:58:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago, Farmer decided he wanted to take Dandelion camping. Since she is only almost three, we both decided it might be best if they started in the backyard. For weeks, we talked about camping and how fun it would be to build a fire, roast marshmallows and sleep out in the tent with Daddy. For the most part, she seemed excited about the prospect of time with Daddy in a new adventure.

But the day Farmer set up the tent in the backyard, her emotions relating to the event (which she could witness from our living room window) were varied. She was excited, then she decided she didn't want to do it and at one point, she actually had a meltdown about going outside to see the tent she'd been watching Farmer assemble all morning.

She finally acquiesced as long as I went with her. Farmer and I looked at each other: this was probably not going to happen...and that was okay.

That evening, with Little Leaf in bed, the three of us sat outside by the fire (don't worry, I had the baby monitor on) and had s'mores. Dandelion was delighted and delightful as we all stared at the flames and talked about what colors we saw before us. We sang songs and said silly things.

Then, it was time for bed.

To my surprise, I took her to the tent and she made it very clear that she was ready for me to leave. Her bed was cozy and exciting and she got to be with Daddy.

I left her for my own bed and didn't hear a peep from them until they came in for breakfast.

What a trooper!

And here's my other trooper taking some steps!

2011-10-06T13:27:00.000-07:00

As Asian beetles tap against my window, swarm onto my hanging laundry, into my hair and inevitably in the coming months, into my food and water glass, I think through all the other autumns we've spent at the farm. Our first autumn was new and the infestation of beetles (lady bugs) was a little horrifying. I was gathering fresh knowledge about the seasons of produce and looking forward to our first snow.

I was pregnant with Little Leaf in our second Autumn and I relished the cool weather because I was so perfectly insulated for winter. Dandelion began to find great joy in being outside and I, in turn, took great joy in watching her learn the earth.

Every child needs a messy table picture...introducing Lasagna!

Everything is again dying in the newness of every moment in Fall. Yellow, bright red, pink, brown, green and orange. Who knew death could be so beautiful? I've tried to explain the falling of leaves to Dandelion in several ways. My earth science is quite primitive but it has something to do with the process of death and new life and the growing of trees and leaves that allows us to breathe on this earth. It is not unlike my spiritual explanation: that God shows His love to us in this death and new life but He also shows His great delight in beauty. Why? she asks. I don't know why. He loves us and He loves His earth. I think God delights in His creation for its own sake. I think He has a relationship with nature that Has nothing to do with us. I like that.

On our walk

Picking (and eating) raspberries

Collecting leaves for a collage

Although autumn means preserving applesauce and green beans, gathering a few mini pumpkins and butternut squash, October is the start of a different kind of busy season in our household. Dandelion turns three at the end of the month and we've almost been married four years. Little Leaf has always made his presence known forcefully and at almost ten months, he took his first few steps this week.

Chest freezer

Our freezer is full for the winter. We just bought fourteen frozen meat birds from a nearby farm and last week, our beef (from the steers raised by Farmer) came back from the meat locker, processed, packed and labeled in so many cuts. That packs the chest freezer to bursting with strawberries, blueberries, corn, beef, a little pork, fish from Farmer's trip to Canada, chicken and hopefully some venison in a few months. Farmer gets excited about meat. A good balance to my fixation on vegetables and fruit. Between the two of us, our family stays pretty well-fed, I think. God has given us a bountiful harvest!

Eggplant Cake

2011-09-08T19:41:00.001-07:00

While Farmer took a much needed vacation with his dad, I went to be with his mom in Missouri for the week (with Dandelion and Little Leaf in tow of course). We had a grande ole time visiting zoos (yes we went to two of them), swimming, taking trips to Barnes and Noble, going to Mansfield to see Laura Ingalls Wilder's home and visiting Baker Creek farm and pioneer village nearby.

We also decided to have a some pictures taken with the kiddos. The wonderful Timara Runner took the pictures for a reasonable price and although Dandelion was in a contrary mood, she was able to take several really good ones of the kids.

The excursions to Laura's house and Bakersville were particular highlights for me. As I've mentioned before, like many readers, I am fascinated by the Little House on the Prairie series. Having only a small taste of farm life myself, I am even more amazed at the things Ma, Pa and the girls Ingalls were able to accomplish without modern conveniences. The house in Mansfield is one that Almanzo built for Laura one room at a time as they could afford it. The kitchen was the first room and it reflected Laura's small height, which was 4'11''. The cabinets were quite short and when they had enough money to buy a refrigerator, it turned out that the appliance was too deep to fit into the space made for it. Instead of sending it back, Almanzo built a cubby onto the front of the house to make room for it. Talk about a husband's commitment to his wife's kitchen.

The other place we visited in Mansfield was Baker Creek Farm and Pioneer village (Bakersville). Constructed building by building by a young seed lover and his family, the village boasts a working seed store and restaurant, a working bakery, a pretend jail and among other things, a gorgeous garden in the center that provides food for the restaurant which serves lunch and is paid by donation only. The owners, Seventh Day Adventists and vegetarians who are committed to furthering the local and non-GMO food cause, distribute the Anthropologie of heirloom seeds catalogues. Beautifully photographed, the produce from their heirloom seeds is often exotic and always colorful.

We ate lunch at the restaurant and the food was amazing. My particular favorite was the dessert: eggplant cake. I asked for the recipe and was told it was in the seed catalogue. So I made it when I got home and it was a hit with Farmer.

Here is the recipe with a few substitutions on my part:

Eggplant Cake

2 cups pureed eggplant (peeled, cooked, pureed)

1 cup vegetable oil

2 tsp vanilla

2 eggs

3 cups all-purpose flour (I did 1 cup wheat/2 cups white)

1/2 cup brown sugar

1 1/2 cups white sugar

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp salt

Preheat oven to 350. Wash, peel, cook and puree eggplant. Pour puree in colander and press out excess liquid. Mix dry ingredients together in a separate bowl. Mix wet ingredients together and add to dry. Pour into a well-greased 9"X 13" baking dish and bake in a preheated oven for 30 minutes.

While still warm, drizzle with butter cream icing. After cooled, ice cake lightly.

Laura's and Almanzo's house

Dandelion in the bonnet I couldn't resist buying her at the gift shop

Baker Creek Seed Store

Pioneer Village (Bakersville)

Our yummy lunch at Bakersville

The apothecary

Self-explanatory

With Nana and Gigi at the pool

Time and Vacations

2011-08-15T11:16:00.000-07:00

I can't believe that Little Leaf is eight months old today. The months since his birth have flown by so much faster than they did when Dandelion was a wee one. I guess I had a lot more time then.

Time is slipping by us in many areas. Fall weather is teasing us this week. The breezes are cool, the nights are cold and everyone is a little bit more energized. What a relief from the heat.

Farmer told me that he had a month left of farmer's markets in Peoria. One month! I feel like he just started going. And I feel like I've hardly preserved any food this year. I've only done one batch of tomatoes so far and one batch of corn. I think this is partly due to my Farmer's compassion. He's been trying to keep me from being overwhelmed this year with another kiddo in tow. But I have to admit that I miss the preserving, not always the actual moments of standing in a hot kitchen filling hot jars. But I do find it extremely satisfying afterwards.

I recently insisted that he tell me when they were overloaded with tomatoes, corn and green beans so I could decide for myself if I had the energy and wherewithal to do canning. I think I can I think I can I think I can can...

While my husband worked hard on the farm, I got a week-long vacation in Colorado with my Texas family. I'm beginning to see that Dandelion might just defy expectation and be an extrovert. She gathers so much of her energy and excitement from being with people and being outside. This was, therefore, an ideal vacation for her, surrounded with five cousins, aunts, uncles and grandparents (and one great) and the chance to horseback ride, fish and picnic in the mountains. She loved it.

All of the cousins

Most of the crew, minus two husbands

Dandelion's first horseback ride

Little leaf gave it a try too

With Abba

Children and plants

2011-07-11T10:25:00.000-07:00

Since last I wrote, Farmer (I'm trying this nickname out for my husband) and I butchered the final two chickens. Very sad was I. But what's done is done. And they will feed us in a soup one day soon.

From my perspective, farm work seems to be running along if not always smoothly, at least enduringly. The wheat has been cut for straw, we are tasting zucchini and summer squash and I had my first juicy slice of cantaloupe a few mornings ago. Blueberries are being picked and frozen and picked some more. Last week, a friend and I loaded her son and Dandelion (daughter's new nickname) in a red wagon. With Little Leaf (my son's new nickname) on my back, we hauled the kiddos up a steep trail to Blueberry Hill so they could entertain each other while we picked for our families.

Like much of the country, we are in need of rain with no expectation of it in the next week. Having my own garden has made me even more aware of our dependance on the weather.

Perhaps it sounds a little odd but I've discovered an interesting parallel between gardening and parenting. Because my almost three year old is expressing her will more and more, my mother was sharing parenting/discipline wisdom with me recently. She observed that when you are exploring the ways to discipline and raise your children, you will have many occassions to try and fail and return to try something different. She says that one of the gifts of parenting is that you have the space to change your approaches without doing permanent damage (within loving parameters of course).

I was thinking about this when I commented to Farmer how nice it was that plants show you when they need more water or sun. After a few weeks with very little rain, my zinnias in particular were wilting and very evidently in need of drink.

But here gardening and parenting part company because Farmer responded that once plants are showing evidence of a lack, it is nearly too late to help them. He said that they might still produce but they won't ever be as healthy as they had been without the proper amounts of water and sun. This seriously challenges my struggles as a procrastinator.

Of course on one level, what is true for plants is true for children in terms of their basic needs: love, food, shelter, clothing. Without those needs met, children will be unhealthy and perhaps permanently so. But unlike my approach to gardening, I have room in my parenting to make mistakes. That is comforting as a mother who worries and is disappointed when I don't act like the mother I want to be (I imagine most mothers are this way). Thankfully, when it comes to parenting, children are a lot more resilient than plants. I hope that one day, they are a lot more forgiving too.

Final strawberry picking with Daddy

Strawberry jam

He's so proud of himself for pulling up

Miscellaneous

2011-06-26T12:26:00.000-07:00

I can't believe I've barely written a post on strawberries and they are already almost gone. The annual Strawberry Festival was a few weeks ago and went very well, especially given the fact that the farm had half the strawberries that it has in the past. The rows were picked clean and I got fourteen jars of jam for the year.

My goal for my beloved blueberries is to take the kids up to Blueberry Hill at least twice a week in the mornings and pick for the year. I've already frozen a gallon of them and this is only the first week of U-pick. I love blueberries!

We chicken owners made an executive decision to butcher our remaining chickens. When all was said and done, we only had four (out of twenty adults and twenty chicks) left and no humane place to keep them where they would have ready access to grass and still be alive in the morning. So tonight is the night. I'm not looking forward to it.

On another note, because this blog is open to the public, I've decided to employ a little protective literary device and nickname my family. But I need a little help. All I've come up with for my husband so far is "Farmer Brown." For my daughter, I've thought of "Farm girl," "Snow-girl (her name means snow)," and "Dandelion (there are many of those around here)." For my son, all I could think of was "Little Leaf" or "Farm boy." I'd welcome suggestions or a vote on which ones you like.

On Food

2011-06-18T19:32:00.000-07:00

A few days ago, Dandelion was pretending in her playtime activities. I was outside weeding and she stole away to our neighbor's porch, dubbed it her "home" and started "cooking" breakfast and all manner of foods for me.

"Here are some potatoes, Mom."

"Mom, do you want applesauce or pasta. Pasta? I don't have any pasta. You can have applesauce."

I realized as I watched her that much of her pretending has to do with food. Either she's pretending to eat, cook, clean up or serve it to someone else. She loves eating and always seems to be the last child still munching on snacks at playgroup or much to her mother's chagrin, asking her playmate's mother (without having been offered) if she can have a snack.

At first, I must admit I was a little anxious about this because I had a poor relationship to food in my younger years. I've often feared that she would struggle with the same things and that, like many women in our culture, she would hate her body.

Perhaps this was too big of a leap to make from pretending with food to struggles with body image but that just indicates my level of worry about this issue for her.

And then, I had a thought.

What if her playacting indicates a purer relationship to food? What if we, as humans, are supposed to think about food a lot?

I imagine that our ancestors who had no electricity and no trucks or airplanes to carry their food to them from across the state, the country and the world, spent a good deal of their energy on food. It was in the planting, the weeding, the harvesting, the building of the fire to cook, the preparing and cooking, the eating and the cleaning up afterwards. Their energy was in the storing of the food in a place cooled by ice that had been cut and dragged by horses from the frozen river and then covered in saw dust. It was in the pickling and brining, the drying and dehydrating.

Their lives revolved around food. They thought about it a good deal.

And that got me thinking: maybe we were meant to think about our food in such a holistic way. Maybe we were created to have this integrated partnership with food.

But we don't have that relationship to food anymore, do we?

We've lost many parts of the whole and some of us are left with no more than eating. In a culture plagued by eating disorders, fad diets, body issues, heart disease, diabetes and other food-related illnesses, could a solution be to spend not less but more time with our food? I'm not suggesting we disconnect our stoves, microwaves and refrigerators and cook our food on a fire. Nor am I suggesting that we can all live on farms and grow our own food (after all, farmers need customers). I know that our lives are busy with things that are, in many cases, more important than food. But what if we prioritized our food so that it was more important to us than entertainment? What I mean by entertainment is not that we refrain from participating in artistic endeavors or that we isolate ourselves from any type of fun. I believe wholeheartedly that art is one way that God shows himself to his creatures. But what if we spent less time on mindless things, slowed down with our food and took one step toward mending this fractured relationship? Perhaps a different type of enjoyment would emerge from this simplicity.

Just because I live on a farm doesn't mean I have stopped struggling with my broken relationship to food. But what I am discovering is that there are great rewards in entering into a relationship with food that connects me to its source, that literally moves my body with the seasons, that places my hands upon soil and seed and, at the very least, that urges me to care about who is caring (or not caring) for my food.

The rewards have been surprising and meaningful.

Dead Chicken Alley or The Futility of Farming

2011-06-09T20:21:00.000-07:00

Farming can break your heart. This is something I've written about before and that my husband has emphasized on various occasions. But today is the first time I've experienced this heartbreak first hand.

My husband gives his heart, energy, body and often sleep to this breathing thing called farming. He bends toward it, fighting to keep alive and help grow. He returns in the evening bleeding, stung, shocked, sun-burned, sweaty, dirty, dusty. But there is life in his blood-letting and wounds. And there is often life that grows from his labor, sprouting and green.

But sometimes his work is in vain. Sometimes the rain won't let up and the soil isn't dry enough to plant. Sometimes three queen bees die in a row and you can't save a hive you spent all winter nurturing. Sometimes the weeds are too many for the workers and a large crop that took days and days to plant is lost. Sometimes bugs and blight and deer eat their fill of your labor.

Sometimes we can't hold the fruit in our hands and it falls. This bitter humility teaches us that we can't ultimately control this thing that steals our sleep.

How did I feel this today for the first time?

A raccoon ripped its way into our coop last night killing four adult chickens and the last four of our chicks that cowered in a wire-enforced dog cage. EM discovered them. I had to clean up their mutilated bodies that buzzed and droned with flies in the manner of a terrifying discovery only reserved for horror movie soundtracks.

All of our labor and care over the past few months, all the daily feeding, watering, moving, opening up and shutting in, all of this was for naught. All of it was futile.

Now we have eight chickens left to keep alive. After that, I'm not sure that either of us has the heart to bring another poor creature into this den of death, this Dead Chicken Alley.

Alive enough and updates

2011-06-01T11:11:00.000-07:00

I recently listened to a wonderful program called Alive Enough on the radio show "On Being." This is for anyone who is fascinated by the ways in which cell phones, the internet and in particular, social networking have changed our habits, ways of thinking and personal interactions. The program is NOT anti-technology. Instead, it offers us insight into the implications of our habits and encourages discussion within our family and other important relationships.

This is something Farmer and I have discussed in relation to our role as parents. We don't want to shield our kids from technology and in many ways, it is important that we "keep up" with our changing world for their sakes. But we have to acknowledge, as this radio program does, that things are lost that we can't get back. Some of these things are not that important like the fact that instead of our pictures being kept in boxes on shelves, they fill our computer memory. But other things are vital to the health of our relationships, like insisting that we (as much as our kids) are present in our families instead of being constantly logged on or wirelessly connected. It is something that we should at least think about, rather than blindly accepting every new advance that comes our way.

I also like what this program says about how important it is for our kids to learn how to be quiet and alone.

On another note here are the farm and personal produce updates:

The first CSAs of the year left yesterday morning in a truck bound for Chicago. Produce is not yet plentiful but it is beginning. We also tasted our first strawberries for they year. They are almost ready and U-pick is expected to kick off next week, followed by the Strawberry Festival in town.

Last week, I used up my final quart of canned tomatoes from last year. Unfortunately, we won't have fresh tomatoes again until later on in the summer but this just gives us an opportunity to miss them before they become prevalent again.

More chicken tragedies:

Either we are the worst chicken owners ever or the predators in our area are especially diligent and a little bit nefarious.

As I wrote a few months ago, we bought twenty chicks from an auction to raise into layers and roosters. I've been taking care of them, first in our home, then in the greenhouse and lately in the chicken coop. They are still too small to allow to roam free in the chicken area so I placed them in our dog's old cage and spent a few hours tying chicken wire all around the cage.

I was careless one evening when I left them outside our back door in the cage. My mother, who was visiting, woke me up in the middle of the night to say that something was getting our chickens. I raced downstairs in my pjs and immediately saw a creature running away. Unfortunately, it left a dead chick behind.

So, we moved the cage into the chicken coop at night, confident that they would be safe.

It was not to be.

EM opened the coop to find the bodies of several chicks that we had only four chicks left alive.

Yes, that's right. We started with twenty and now we have four. I can't believe it. We are both heartbroken...the poor chicks...and poor us for all the time and money we spent raising them.

So, we proofed the coop again last night hoping also to catch a racoon in a trap.

We have a terrible track record with our chickens. Terrible.

My irises finally bloomed!

Solo gardening

2011-05-19T13:01:00.000-07:00

Little Leaf likes to slip out of his swing and car seat

Not the greatest picture...but he is five months old!

No that is not a middle-aged woman,

it is my toddler playing dress up.

I love gardening.

I didn't know I would until about a month ago.

But I do.

Farmer and I learned a little lesson this year. Sometimes we work better on things alone. When Farmer decided to hand over the garden reigns to me, I was able to plan, till, organize, rake, plant and water all by myself (with a little 'help' from Dandelion of course). One evening, he found me digging up the soil by the light of a headlamp. What can I say? The babies were finally asleep and I needed the exercise.

I have an herb garden with cilantro, basil and dill planted and room for parsley. I have a large flower patch with soon-to-bloom irises, five kinds of sunflowers, zinnias, cosmos and persian love-in-a-mist. Soon, I will transplant tomatoes, eggplant, celery and parsley from the greenhouse.

I've had failures already. I had to replant a few rows of lettuce and I've realized that sometimes I'm a little too careless with my seeds. I overplant and they get crowded or untidy. But I'm learning.

We moved our little chicks from the living room to the greenhouse. Eighteen out of twenty have survived and we hope to move them outside as soon as they are big enough to not be able to slip through the chicken fence.

The farm is finally living again!

Petri dish meat

2011-05-18T17:41:00.000-07:00

On the way home from the grocery store today, I was listening to "Fresh Air" on NPR. The segment was called (as I learned when I looked it up online),"Burgers From A Lab: The World Of In Vitro Meat." Doesn't that title say it all?

I was pretty horrified as I listened to the show. An expert of some sort was explaining that as an alternative to the cruel factory farms that raise much of the meat consumed in the US, scientists in labs are making meat in petri dishes. One of the issues to overcome, he explained, was that animals have muscles that must be worked in order to make good meat. The solution? Shoot electricity into the petri meat to stimulate the muscles and when that is too expensive, inject it with chemicals like the ones the animals would naturally have running through their bodies.

There are so many things wrong with this, I don't know where to start.

First of all, let me say that I agree that animal cruelty and the enormous amounts of meat that we consume as a country each year are both major issues that need to be addressed for the sake of our health, our environment, and the animals themselves.

But how did this become the solution? Instead of, oh, I don't know, addressing the issue of how to eradicate ethically questionable animal-raising practices, we skirt the issue entirely and decide to manufacture something to replace it. Fixing, or at least improving our food system is not an impossible task. Many European countries have reformed their food safety regulations amidst health scares like mad cow disease.

Living on a farm that raises steers, chickens and geese that are used for meat or food of one sort or another, I personally resent the implication that any animal that is killed for food is cruelly treated. Raising animals for meat is not cruel in itself. The cruelty comes in the manner in which an animal lives and dies. Steers that are fed antibiotics to protect them from the diseases they encounter wading around day after day in their own feces while being fed a mixture of GMO corn products that would eventually kill them if they weren't slaughtered beforehand, is unquestionably wrong in my book.

We just bought half a hog from another farm that raises them to be happy and fat instead of lolling about indoors with mega-sized vents that still fail to keep the smell from accosting every nose within a ten mile radius. My husband works very hard to give the farm's steers good pasture, fresh water, and lots of space to roam. They will live here happily until the very day they will be slaughtered for meat. EM and I move our chicken fence often to provide lots of grass for our chickens. Raising animals ethically takes more time and more space but it is our best and most natural, time-honored solution.

I believe that raising meat in a petri dish will have all sorts of unseen effects on our world if we allow ourselves to become accustomed to it. Just as we have numbed ourselves to the origins of the food we are eating right now.

Invitations

2011-04-26T14:05:00.000-07:00

My dear friend Jessica recently wrote an excellent blog entry called Lifestyle of Interruptability. She and a few friends have started a non-profit to sell the handmade goods of a group of Burmese refugees who are living in Texas. Jessica's point in her recent entry is that she and her fellow non-profiters, who are very involved in the lives of the Hilltribers, are trying to live with open doors. I don't mean they are literally leaving their doors open but that they are leaving their lives open to the many instances of interruption that come with loving one's neighbors.

I've been thinking about this all week, this idea so eloquently named a "lifestyle of interruptability." I've always struggled with giving up my own time. When I became a mother, I think God was allowing me the gift that would inevitably lead me to a place where I could more easily give up my time. I'm not saying that mothers shouldn't have time to themselves because I think that is very important but what I'm saying is that I have to be more open to the interruption of my time.

I think perhaps this is part of what God calls us to when he tells us to love our neighbors. When I really love my neighbor, I will accept her into my home at inconvenient times. Because really, is my time better spent dusting my bookcases or inviting a person into my space who is hurting or just needs to talk? Can I go beyond this even and seek out those who are neglected and invite them into my home? I hope I can learn from my friend Jessica's example and reach out to those who need comfort, who need a quiet space, who need practical things that I have in abundance. Maybe they have their own spaces to invite me into. I suspect Christ is in those spaces too.

Please check out their site and if you have a few extra dollars, buy some of their excellent and unique products. Their products are part of a true narrative that is worth supporting.

New residents

2011-04-24T12:33:00.000-07:00

We've had a lot of rain lately and although I'd like to, I'm not going to complain about it because my Texas family and friends are experiencing dangerous dryness. There have been quite a few wildfires in their area this year and we pray they have rain soon.

Having said that, the rain has let up for a day or two, long enough for a trip to the Park, some laundry drying on the line, and for some seeds to sprout. The sun is shining today on this Easter afternoon and we are caring for some new residents at the farm who have arrived just in time for the Spring season.

On Friday, we got our first flock of chicks. EM bought twenty Araucanas at an auction and now they are sitting in the corner of our living room in a tall box with a heat lamp over them. Unfortunately, two have already died but I'm told that's common and almost unpreventable (if anyone has suggestions as to how to prevent it, please feel free to comment).

Also, the farm has allowed a man from Princeton to put two of his heifers in with the farm's steers. The heifers are an unusual breed of cow around these parts but one that I'm pretty familiar with: Highland Cows (Hairy Coo), natives of Scotland. I never thought I would spend four years in Scotland and have to come to Illinois to live next to some Hairy Coo. I'm told their names are Queenie and Roxie.

Other new residents include goslings and a queen bee. Interesting fact: a flock of geese that isn't in flight is called a gaggle but when they are in flight, a flock is called a skein.

Farmer had to order a queen for a bee hive that didn't do well over the winter. He ended up ordering a queen three times because each time it came, she was dead. We are now well acquainted with our post office.

Four months old!

How do I deal with this hair? And this rascal?

Dandelion and Little Leaf three and a half months ago

Dandelion and Little Leaf this week

Dandelion's first Easter Egg Hunt

Chicks!

Hairy Coo

Happy Easter!

Spring! Hallelujah!

2011-04-12T19:12:00.001-07:00

Since the weather has been so perfect lately, we've taken every chance to go on walks. We've even managed to take walks as a family in the evening. There seems to me to be no better time of year than Spring. The season comes upon me like a loud, full-mouth exhale after the long cold and sometimes bitter breath of winter lingered in my lungs.

The new buds began in the maple tree outside our bedroom window and I could see them one morning when I woke up. Every day since a big rain, I notice a new bloom, a new shade of green, a new sprout from the earth. The wheat in the fields is so utterly green that at times, it looks like a color only found in a box of art supplies. The hostas planted by the last tenant of our home survived another winter and I eagerly await the blooming of my irises which have spent a year rooting in this mysteriously invisible way so that they've transformed from solitary bulbs that tipped over easily into strong unbudging stems of courage, unflinching even when faced with the threat of toddler feet tramping upon them.

I suppose if I continue gardening for years to come, this new life will cease to be quite as mysterious to me. Or perhaps it will become more miraculous as I come to understand all the more what a gift it is that God allows us to be companions with Him in this making of new things.

With Cousin SC

With Nana

And with Gigi

The kiddos with Papa and Nana

A trip to the St Louis zoo with Nana, Papa, Uncle, Auntie and Cousin CP

It was 35 degrees out...we were determined to go to the zoo!

The Magic House in St Louis...hair-raising!

More Magic House...water play with CP

Magic House...Giant bubbles with Daddy

Whole Foods

2011-03-18T12:02:00.000-07:00

“I enjoy shopping at Whole Foods nearly as much as I enjoy browsing a good bookstore…Shopping at Whole Foods is a literary experience…It’s the evocative prose as much as anything else that makes this food really special, elevating an egg or chicken breast or bag of arugula from the realm of the ordinary protein and carbohydrate into a much headier experience, one with complex aesthetic, emotional and even political dimensions.”

--Michael Pollan, The Omnivore’s Dilemma

A few months ago when my new brother-in-law came to visit our farm for the first time, he mentioned shopping at my favorite grocery store.

I said with a sigh, “Oh, I love Whole Foods.”

He looked at me with a sort of polite eye roll and replied, “You live at Whole Foods!”

I thought about that conversation as I read this chapter of Pollan’s book. The author’s words in the above quote so resonated with me and I realized that even though I do live in the very kind place that is pictured on the labels of countless products at Whole Foods, I still feel give an audible sigh when I finally get into the big city and visit this grocery store. I am able to open our chest freezer or our kitchen cupboard and see fresh, mostly organic, local food lining our shelves and yet I can’t wait to figuratively run my fingers over the boxed and often processed food that line the shelves at Whole Foods. Talk about creating a narrative!

All of this is made much more disturbing, silly or both by the continued reading of Pollan’s chapter about this genre of food story that the author calls “Supermarket Pastoral.” Many of us city-folk have a deep longing for green pastures on which cows graze and chickens run free and pesticides and chemicals are a thing of the past. Whole Foods knows this. And so they create a narrative of their food. They almost tell us that their food comes from these same places we imagine. Almost. Because the words they use or don’t use are very telling. Just because a TV dinner is organic, doesn’t mean it isn’t processed and highly unhealthy. Unless it says otherwise, and believe me, they would tell you otherwise, an organic gallon of milk is still produced by cows living indoors in cramped rows where they are milked three times a day and fed grain instead of grass. But hey, at least it’s organic grain.

See how the pastoral narrative is only that, a narrative. A fictional one at that.

This might not be news to anyone reading this blog but it is good for me to be reminded.

That’s not to say that Whole Foods is an evil empire. I’m sure they mean well and, as Pollan notes, an organically grown head of lettuce, even if it is done in large quantities and wastes fossil fuels to flight it across the country or world, still is better for the soil and possibly our bodies than one that is grown conventionally.

But there are certainly great costs that are more than financial in big-business organic (a phrase that was once a contradiction in terms).

I’m still in the middle of the book so I don’t yet know what Pollan’s solutions or conclusions will be but I expect it will have much to do with local and sustainably raised food. Seeking this kind of nourishment has positive effects beyond just our bellies.

And it makes me all the more committed to striving to live a sustainable life. I say “life” and not just “food life” because I believe that the way we eat is inextricably linked to our view of God and creation, our bodies and desires, and the way we spend our money and time. None of us can do it perfectly but living sustainably in an eschatological sense is something worth reaching for.

Daddy time

A cupcake cake for a party in Austin to meet Little Leaf

My beautiful sisters

My dear friend Jessica with Little Leaf in Austin

More Daddy time

Enjoying the Texas sun!!

She's got her Mama's sweet tooth

Little Leaf and his great-grandmother Mimi

He's three months old now!

Reflections on Winter

2011-02-06T11:00:00.001-08:00

If you're like me and you visit facebook periodically, you will most likely have read many many status updates that include a picture of a snowman, a snowy sidewalk in front of a house, a kid in a snowsuit or a snow-covered driveway that proves the poster of the picture cannot get out of his/her house and is therefore stuck inside looking at facebook.

Many of my friends and family are from Texas. Yes, long and widespread is our 2010/2011 winter. Perhaps many of us in years to come will remember the winter of '11. I know I will. But for many reasons other than just the snow (see An End to Waiting).

In winters past, my Texas family and I would often visit Colorado for a week and bask in the white glow. It was new and pleasurably cold and we felt like we were really experiencing winter (I have since learned that Coloradoans have a fondness for mocking a Texans' love for their state during the winter).

Oh how my love of snow has changed. I feel like this has been my first real foray into a Midwest winter. Right now, we have about a foot of snow on the ground and I haven't left Illinois since August. We've spent all of our holidays and the winter in our own home.

We had a serious "life-threatening" blizzard last week and just as it began, we lost power. That meant we had no light, heat or water. Thankfully, it came back on before bedtime but not before we had collected all the candles in the house and began to think of how to survive the night with two little ones.

Before I had babies, I might've seen this winter as a chance to tuck in, bake cookies, write a lot and go for walks in the snow. Now that I'm a mother of small children, this is considerably more difficult.

I must admit, this snowed-in season has led to some impatience, anxiety and dour moods around our house.

On Saturday night, we listened to A Prairie Home Companion. Garrison Keillor made joke after joke about his desire that winter would end soon. I suppose that if a lifelong Minnesotan feels that way, I'm in good company.

Here's to your winter, wherever you may be! I hope you are warm.

Dandelion with her own babies wrapped up

Watching basketball with Daddy

She begs to help me wash dishes...better get while the gettin's good!

Another chore she loves to do...

Post-blizzard

My snow-plowing husband

Stuck inside...

But still finding joy

My sweet ones

I think we will have another thumb-sucker

The long winter

2011-01-11T08:33:00.000-08:00

I often find myself making references on this blog to the Little House on the Prairie books. Particularly in winter time. Winter seemed to be a bit of a rough time of year for homesteading pioneers. Maybe it was the lack of food or lack of heat or lack of insulation. We lack none of these things here but it still feels like The Long Winter in a small way.

Our winter began in early December a few days after the first hard snow. We arrived at the hospital for a night of 'false' labor and spent it in a poorly insulated room with blankets lining the windows to keep the cold air out. It was zero degrees outside and I was sorely disappointed that we had no baby to show for our cold night. A week later while I was still heavily pregnant, we braved a blizzard to make it up the hill to church. I was being told that, if need be, we could make it to the hospital in the tractor. No way. I'd rather give birth at home.

Winter progressed, bringing us a new baby, Christmas, and the beginning of a New Year.

Last week, I looked out of our window and saw that much of the snow had melted and there were leaves on one of the trees. "Spring is here!" I thought momentarily, a lift in my heart after the dreariness of winter.

Then, I realized I'd mistaken dead leaves for new ones. And it was just the beginning of January. And we had months left stuck in the house with a new baby and a high-energy toddler.

Winter used to be my favorite season. That was in Texas when winter meant sunny days and a high of 40 degrees.

It is snowing again today.

This is going to be a long winter.

But at least I have these precious faces to keep me company!

We found a good home for our cat...

in Texas of all places with the friend of our neighbor.

Kitty leaves us this afternoon for

warmer weather and more attention than we can give him.

Bon Voyage Livingston!

The joy of this Christmas

2010-12-30T12:00:00.000-08:00

Well, our Little Leaf was two weeks old yesterday and today, we are alone, just the four of us.

My mom left a few days before Christmas and Farmer's parents came on Christmas Eve to help us out for a week.

We feel so thankful for the help and the fact that the community will be providing us with additional meals for another week.

Our Christmas was low-key but very special, as you might imagine. Besides our infant bundle, this was Dandelion's first time to be old enough to anticipate gifts and the celebrations of this holiday. Because this was our first Christmas together in our own home, Farmer and I tried to think through and create our own traditions. We tried talking to Dandelion both about Santa Claus and about Christ's birth but she was too young to really understand much besides the presents. She liked reading about baby Jesus but frankly, the strangely invisible red-suited man who ate her cookies and left her presents was a little creepy to her Christmas morning. She wouldn't go near Santa's gifts at first and spent about ten minutes in Papa's arms before approaching her new table and chairs.

Maybe Santa isn't necessary. Maybe he's a consumer's pagan distraction from the story that is more important to tell. Maybe she's too young yet or maybe the old fat man is good for her imagination. I feel all these things at once are true.

I think celebrations are important for all of us. When my father officiated part of our wedding, he talked about how the glory of a bride walking down the aisle is one of the closest metaphors we have to help us understand the glory that we will witness when Christ and his bride the Church are one....when the glory of God will be revealed.

I see Christmas in a similar way. A child is delighted, her imagination is stirred, she is made to expect good things. Although we don't want our children to be spoiled and always expect extravagance, I believe that those feelings of expectation, longing, surprise and joy are good things to cultivate in our children. Those feelings are part of the Advent season and at the end of them, we celebrate our Savior's birth. Maybe Dandelion won't remember celebrating our own new birth this special year but I will always remember it. And I hope to treasure these things in my heart as Mary did.

And one day, I hope Dandelion will begin to understand that the most important part of Christmas is not the presents she gets but the gift of life that we receive and that we are to share with each other.

Snowy walk with Papa...it didn't last long

Daddy and son...with the blanket Aunt E made!

Looking a little tired but very joyful

Tia's old Tickle-Me Elmo

Tea party with Elmo and Dora and new table and chairs

The four of us

Babies with Nana and Papa

At the library Preschool Hour...our first real outing

Little yawns

Dandelion loves holding Little Leaf

My favorite picture

And the two-year old emerges...

An end to waiting

2010-12-15T14:19:00.001-08:00

We welcomed into the world our son, our new Little Leaf.

He weighs 9lbs 1oz and is 22 inches long.

Farmer and my mother were amazing as my dual doulas. One of the midwives told my mom that she and Farmer could make lots of money doing this.

My first thought (after the relief of birth) was that he looked like Dandelion as a baby. He's big and healthy and beautiful and soft. He's eating and sleeping well and he was introduced this afternoon to his big sister. Dandelion was so sweet and gentle with him that it made me cry (I'm sure hormones had nothing to do with that). She was disappointed that she didn't get to take him home with her tonight. I hope this big sister love and excitement lasts the next few months of less attention, smelly diapers, and lots of crying.

He is laid across my lap right now and making squeaky noises as he stretches his enormous feet and hands.

Praise and thanks, indeed!

Her first glimpse of little brother

I couldn't have asked for a sweeter meeting

Sleepy Dad and son

Grandma/doula

My babes

Gloria!

2010-12-11T07:33:00.000-08:00

As we move into our third week of Advent, I find myself, at nearly 40 weeks pregnant, asking how I can learn from this waiting waiting waiting. Advent is a season of "expectant waiting and preparation (so says wikipedia)." With our already snowy and potentially treacherous weather arriving along with the coming Christmas, I find myself connecting to a song this year that I'd never really noticed before called 'Gabriel's Message.'

The angel Gabriel from heaven came
His wings as drifted snow
His eyes as flame
"All hail" said he "thou lowly maiden Mary,
Most highly favoured lady," Gloria!

"For known a blessed mother thou shalt be,
All generations laud and honor thee,
Thy Son shall be Emanuel,
By seers foretold
Most highly favoured lady," Gloria!

Then gentle Mary meekly bowed her head
"To me be as it pleaseth God," she said,
"My soul shall laud and magnify his holy name."
Most highly favoured lady Gloria!

Of her Emanuel, the Christ was born
In Bethlehem all on a Christmas morn
And everyone throughout the world forever saved
Most highly favoured lady Gloria!

Now, I know I'm not carrying Emanuel in my womb and I'm certainly not the "most highly favored lady" Mary, but I would like to think I understand a little better the blessing of carrying a beloved creature of God. I desire to sing "Gloria" to Him and "magnify his holy name" because of this gift.

I'm also beginning to understand waiting, expecting, hoping and preparing in a different way.

Last weekend, I spent the night at the hospital. I like to call it "prelabor" rather than "false labor" because there was nothing "false" about my contractions. And even though I don't hit my "due date" for a few days, I still felt the agony of impatience that this was not the real thing and I had to wait longer. I can't imagine having to wait more weeks if he's "late" and I certainly hope our son comes very soon. But I could use a little reminder about my lack of control in this process. And I could learn from that young maid named Mary whose humility lead her to say simply, "To me be as it pleaseth God."

Gloria! Come soon our little son!

Can't wait to be able to pick her up again!

Cat and dog embracing in the Christmas spirit

Decorating cookies with Anna

(my mom has been with us a few weeks and has helped us so much in preparing for the baby)

Eating the icing with Anna

Snow day, sledding with Daddy

She's enjoying this more than it seems

See? That was fun...let's do it again!

Sweet Daddy and daughter

Doe a deer

2010-11-20T08:05:00.000-08:00

We are trying not to count the days until our son is born. If I start counting then I'm afraid I'll be disappointed by waiting. So, give or take a few weeks, we have about three to go.

My husband has become quite the sportsman. I never thought (and I imagine he didn't either) that I would have a husband who hunted for his own meat. But this past weekend, he took advantage of the deer hunting on the land here, his father's old shotgun, and his hunting permit (along with a few essentials like bright-colored vests and hats and camouflaged clothes that attach to a small stand hanging high in a tree).

At the end of the first day, he shot his first doe, field dressed it and with the help of our neighbor and some other hunters, he took it from the woods to hang in the barn overnight. (I have a few pictures of the deer but I was concerned that some of my readers my find the images a little bit much).

I have to admit that I don't like the general culture of hunting with gadgets and weapons, cheats and NRA, and bumper stickers that say 'nice rack' with deer heads superimposed on women's bodies...ick. There are a few hunters in the area that get into that. But that is not what our meat supply is about. We think it is important, if possible, to know where the meat we eat comes from, how it lives, how it dies and how it is processed. Admittedly, we have a lot of resources around here that make that possible and not everyone has that. But this is important to us because we believe that God expects us to be good stewards of his creation and all of his creatures. I believe that a brutally treated chicken is as bad for our hearts as a land ravaged by unhealthy growing practices. Ultimately, how we treat each other as human beings is most important but all of creation is the Lord's.

Another source of our meat, particularly for Thanksgiving, will be the geese that weeded the strawberries all season. Yes, geese are good weeders.

A few weeks ago, members of the farm team butchered about a dozen geese in one morning. It was savagely beautiful but humanely done. A few of them are still alive and being fattened up for our holiday treat. Soon, we will truly be able to say, "your goose is cooked."

The butchering team

Pumpkins and celebrations

2010-11-02T06:59:00.000-07:00

The growing season is finally over with CSAs and farmers markets finished and a few weeks of frost covering the plants that have finally reached their limit of fruitfulness. Our October was beautiful and busy with family visitors, a birthday, an anniversary and a wedding.

Dandelion turned two this month and in honor of that great milestone (and to lend a hand in organizing the baby's room), my mom and younger sister came for the week. We visited a pumpkin patch and celebrated Dandelion's birthday with Dora the Explorer overload. Dandelion's reaction to the whole thing made me question the necessity of big birthdays for little ones. It was just family but she was a little overwhelmed by the gifts that she wasn't supposed to play with yet and the balloons that were bigger than she was.

Farmer and I also had our third anniversary and though we didn't have time to celebrate as much as other years, sometimes just a little remembrance, a mixed cd and a poem are as special as a night out.

Farmer's sister was married in Tennessee and we took the drive over the weekend. Dandelion had a great time with her cousin CP and we enjoyed CP's parents and all the rest of the family that arrived. Lindsey was a beautiful bride and it was wonderful to celebrate with her.

We returned from the wedding to find our refrigerator stocked with our own CSA share: the last of the lettuce, bok choi, green and yellow peppers, and an extra treat for me...tomatillos and cilantro to make green salsa. Our neighbors H and T even cut and froze peppers for me when I wasn't able to do it. If we had our own farm, it might be easier in some ways but we sure would miss out on these relationships. It is humbling to be served by friends in such a way.

The requisite pumpkin patch pictures with cousin SC

Beautiful sister and adorable nephew

Mom and the grandkids

Dandelion and new Dora doll

At wedding rehearsal with cousin CP and the flower girl

Dandelion and CP getting dressed

Nana and Papa with Dandelion and CP before the wedding

Dandelion with her beautiful Tia

Gorgeous bride!

Dancing with Daddy

We're winding down...a little tired after dancing

Chicken murders...SOLVED...?

2010-10-15T11:40:00.000-07:00

One morning last week, I was looking out of our kitchen window and saw our neighbor butchering something. I couldn't see what he was butchering but when I saw E around the corner watching him, I sighed. I felt sure that it must've been one of our chickens that had died in the night.

E saw me and came to the door. She put her hands out wide.

"It was this big."

Did we lose another chicken?

No, we caught the murderous culprit in a trap next to the chicken fence.

It was a huge racoon! Big enough to knock a hole in the door and wily enough to slip through a small opening.

Did we solve the mystery? Perhaps...

Was our neighbor butchering the racoon to eat?...Yes, indeed.

And the chicken saga continues...

2010-10-13T13:48:00.000-07:00

E and I seem to have a problem keeping chickens alive, especially when we've just bought more of them.

Last week, we drove to the same farm where we bought chickens a little over a year ago when, oddly enough, Erin was heavily pregnant and I was the one catching chickens. There are so many things that will be excused with the magic words, "I'm pregnant." And so, my chicken catching was left to someone else (although I did put them in the cages).

Because of various requests from neighbors and friends and the cheap deal we were getting if we bought ALL of them, we left that farm with a truckbed full of fifty chickens. If any of you reading this blog needs reminding, our foray into chicken buying a year ago left us with a large number of casualties. We learned our lesson this time and instead of putting them in bags, they were in crates, crammed but alive.

All was well until a few nights later when the door to our coop broke from its hinges. Whatever creature it is that continues to stalk and kill our chickens possibly saw this as a sign of a weakening door and therefore bashed a hole in the middle of it to get in and kill several chickens.

Because I was gone to my college ten year reunion when all of this happened, E and her husband moved all of the chickens to the back winter coop. A few nights later, the same or another creature broke through the wire of the door and killed another few. After E fixed THAT door, the creature found a tiny hole in the wall and killed two more...the ones I found this morning being pecked by their fellow (or not so fellow) hens.

So, we've lost six in all from our intended flock but thankfully we had some extra.

This afternoon we spent an hour and a half moving the chickens back to the summer coop where the door is fixed and there are no holes to speak of. Let's hope they make it through another night....otherwise, fresh farm eggs might not seem worth the trouble anymore...maybe we'll just have a bunch of chicken soup instead.

Mittens on a string

2010-10-05T07:08:00.000-07:00

I love mittens on a string. They have brought me unexpected joy. Growing up in a place where it rarely snowed, I didn't know they still existed outside the world of Laura Ingalls Wilder. But I found these little blue treasures at a garage sale in Princeton last weekend and they fit Dandelion perfectly. And when she pulls them off on our walk, they are not lost on the dirt road or in a pile of frosty leaves. They will always make it home together or not at all. That's something I can live with.

These are the brilliant and unrewarded inventions that make life a little easier.

We've had some frosty mornings this week. Because this first frost was earlier than normal and vegetables are needed to fill a few more weeks of CSA boxes, there was a race to cover all the vegetables in the valley garden with a white gauzy material. The farm crew was out on a Saturday afternoon picking massive amounts of winter squash that are now being housed in our basement.

Mittens!

The steers are eyeing Neva

This is the best self-taken shot I can get of the big belly

Covered vegetables in the valley garden

The burgeoning mechanic and daughter

Disgusting meat

2010-09-26T13:31:00.000-07:00

Last week was both the week of the workhorse sister and the week of disgusting meats.

My older sister graciously agreed to come and help me rearrange and paint my house. By the end of the week, she had painted the baby's room, the hallway, the stairway, the kitchen and Dandelion's new twin bed frame that we found at an antique mall for $30. I was exhausted by all the work she did! She is a trooper and a color maven!

As for disgusting meats, Farmer and I were attempting to make room in our chest freezer for the 1/4 of a steer that we'll be getting in a week or so. Our final cut of beef from last year was beef tongue. He found the recipe and thawed the meat and asked me to cook it for tongue tacos. When I unwrapped the meat, I found that it looked very much like a cow tongue, with vivid color and discernible taste buds and all.

Yes, it was disgusting. But I cooked it.

And hours later, my husband and two year old were very much enjoying the tongue tacos.

Our second disgusting meat is currently in our freezer and will be another in a growing list of meats I refuse to eat. Farmer was successful in his squirrel hunting venture and I returned from picking up my sister at the airport just as he was skinning the little rodent in one of the barns. Yes, he does plan to eat it and he also plans to give it to our daughter. He is hoping that she will be his kindred spirit in the food arena since that is an area in which I have failed him miserably.

Farmer's markets are nearly finished for the year and there are only a few weeks left of CSA shares. Our food season is winding down in falling leaves, vegetables and herbs gone to seed, saved seeds, applesauce and glorious cooler weather. Winter will likely be busy in a different way as we prepare for our son to arrive and as Farmer and the rest of the farm team work to organize for next season. We are uniquely placed to glimpse God as He continues to move in the world of seasons in our little bit of earth.

Harvest Festival and the zoo

2010-09-08T18:03:00.000-07:00

Every year, the community puts on a Harvest Festival. I know that Harvest seems like something that would take place in the fall but this is a tradition that for various reasons takes place on Labor Day. This year, my first at the Festival, we had a Pudding eating contest, a Visual Arts Talent Show, a White Elephant gift exchange, a potluck and a Talent Show. Farmer relishes eating contests for some reason and he was very close to winning (it was a controversial decision...haha). The thought and sound of slurping up Pudding was unappealing to me. So, I took pictures.

The rest of the evening was an enjoyable time of being together.

On Sunday, we took a family outing to the zoo. The last zoo I visited was in Washington DC and it took several hours to go through (in the hot sun). This zoo is very small...we were able to see all the animals in an hour and a half. This ended up to be a very good thing for both Dandelion and her mother who currently does not have the stamina for a big-city zoo experience. Dandelion seemed to enjoy herself and felt a particular affection for the zebras.

The weather has been so nice lately. I am rejoicing in the end of my struggles with mold for the year and that my pregnant body seems to absorb energy from the cool breezes. Dandelion and I have enjoyed blowing bubbles outside and going for walks.

I've recently had another article published in Flourish magazine. How funny that in only my second year as a full-time canner, I would write an article all about it...as if I were an expert. Here is the link if you'd like to read it: http://flourishonline.org/2010/08/toolshed-canning-the-summer-garden’s-gems/

At the Festival

Pudding eating contest

You can just make out a giraffe through the fence

I don't remember what these were called but I'd never seen them before

The emu

A Bushel and a peck

2010-08-25T19:49:00.000-07:00

This week was another Nana (Farmer's mother) week. She was a tremendous help and allowed me to sleep in a bit and do my chores sans Dandelion.

Every year, the community does a peach and pear order from Michigan and one helpful soul drives to the farm in MI to pick up the orders. We got our fruit last week. Farmer and I ordered two bushels of pears and one of peaches. Before I moved here, the only time I heard "bushel" was from a rhyme my mother used to say before bed: "A bushel and a peck and a hug around the neck." I've since learned that a peck is half a bushel and a bushel of peaches is 50lbs. The weight varies with the food, of course, but generally a bushel is a full banana box (if you don't know what a banana box is, I can't help you there). We were able to eat many delicious peaches and can 11 quarts for the rest of the year. Our pears will probably be ripe enough to can at the end of the week.

A few people have asked about our goats and chickens and I've realized that I hadn't given updates in a while on our animals.

Goats: we decided to give up our share of the goats for the sake of Farmer's sanity. He was getting up even earlier than usual (his usual is 5:30am) and having a frustrating time milking Leap. It was just too much for him with his work load, which has increased lately due to some unexpected challenges. Our friends and former goat partners tell us that Claire (who had two male kids in July) is a much better milker.

Chickens: We moved our chickens back to their coop on the farm several weeks ago. We bought nine pullets from the farm where we were keeping them temporarily. So far, all of the chickens have survived! Many of the new ones are not yet laying but we've at least been able to keep them alive in the newly fortified coop. We even have a squash plant growing on top of the hill from all the compost that we've dumped to feed our chickens. It's been interesting trying to move the fence each day to avoid the squash plant so the chickens don't eat it.

24 weeks and counting...this boy is big!

Just for fun...a picture of Nana and Dandelion from a year ago

Nana and Dandelion last week...my my...

Dandelion loves to help Mama with the cooking.

My little drama queen at the creek with Nana.

Mold and dirty babies

2010-08-12T08:59:00.000-07:00

When I was in college, I had a roommate AL (if you're reading this...this is for you...I love you!). AL is many things: a servant, a giver and a boisterous life-of-the-party type who attracts people of all kinds. But for this story, AL is also a joker who gives as much as she takes. So, one of the jokes among our group of friends was that when Ann had babies they would be running around naked or with their diapers hanging off. They would be dirty-faced and their clothes would be stained with food. Little ragamuffins, they would be.

Now, nearly ten years later, I've realized something. Those ragamuffin kids are not AL's but mine. Or at least one of them is. I find Dandelion's diaper is often falling off or I just take it off and when it's cool enough outside, I let her roam around without a diaper at all. Lately, I've taken to letting her run around outside naked while I shoot her with the water hose. Sometimes I don't put a bib on her during meal times so her clothes are often stained with all manner of farm things. And I can't seem to keep up with her runny nose.

Am I a dirty mom? Sometimes I feel like it.

To add to the dirtiness, our house seems to be overrun with mold. At first, I thought this was a reflection of my housekeeping skills but, come on, I clean every week. Then I realized that I wasn't the only one with this problem because we live in the country in a very humid place without AC or ceiling fans.

I've decided to declare war on our mold. So, I began by washing a wall each day. Yes, there is mold on our white walls. There is also mold on our salt shaker, our spice jars and even Dandelion's stroller. Gross? I think so. But please don't be afraid to visit...as I said, I'm declaring war...in a very Mennonite way, of course.

My little ragamuffin in her chicken-feeding outfit

Dragon beans from our garden (a lot like wax beans)...

unfortunately the purple color disappears when they are cooked.

My first quilt...made for my friend's baby.

Tomato troubleshooting

2010-08-12T07:43:00.000-07:00

Today tomatoes...and what I've learned this week.

I returned from Texas to see red jewels peeking out between the plants and wire cages in our garden. The tomatoes were green when I left and now new heirlooms are readying daily. When we ordered our seeds, we decided to get a mixture of heirlooms and since we don't know exactly what kinds we're growing, we will save the seeds of the ones we like.

So far, we've determined that we have some Black Prince variety and a large Romano variety. They are thick and juicy and so much more flavorful than field tomatoes. We've also tasted a friend's Flame tomato which looks like a yellow and red flame of fire inside and out. Beautiful!

At the beginning of the week, I canned 16 quarts of tomato pieces from our field tomatoes (from the farm, not our personal garden). It wasn't until the next day that I learned that I'd processed them incorrectly. There are two ways of processing food (besides freezing) and one is using a water bath and the other is using a pressure canner. A water bath is a large pot that has a rack inside and you fill with water and boil your cans for a certain amount of time. A pressure canner is also a large pot but, as you might imagine, it uses pressure and heat to can foods that have lower acidity and therefore are more likely to spoil.

So, I had processed my cans in a water bath because that's what one of my recipes said to use. However, I didn't read all the fine print and my friend E informed me that field tomatoes have less acidity and therefore need to be processed in a pressure canner. I thought of the hours I'd spent in my hot kitchen cutting, cooking, skinning and processing tomatoes, with no AC and being five months pregnant and sweating like a pregnant woman would in this situation. I was a little disheartened all day.

But...after spending another morning with E, processing tomatoes the correct way in the common building kitchen, I decided to put my big girl panties on, absorb the disappointment and reprocess my earlier jars in a pressure canner. They will be very cooked afterwards but at least I don't have to dump all my hard work in the compost.

These days remind me that I'm so new at this whole farming business.

When everything is processed correctly, I will have over thirty quarts of canned tomato pieces and that's something that makes me feel good. When we're sitting together in a cold house this winter, waiting for baby # 2 to show up and we're too tired to shop or cook anything complicated, those cans of tomatoes will look really good!

Next tomato tasks: spaghetti sauce, tomato juice and salsa.

My first round of canned tomatoes before reprocessing

I processed two of these boxes.

From the vine

Our tomato cages

A pressure canner

Romano variety

Black Prince variety..they're ugly but delicious!

Pirate-y things

2010-08-11T11:25:00.000-07:00

I mentioned in my last post that I had been on a trip to Texas to see family and a few friends. It was a quick trip by my family's standards but we tried to make our time count. My sister threw her son, SC, a pirate themed birthday party and we had a rockin' good time. My sisters, my mom and I made all the cousins shirts for the party.

I didn't get to see all of my Texas friends but I was able to catch up with a few dear ones from college, one of whom is living in Rome with her Italian husband and new baby.

Farmer had to go back home before I did so he warned me before I returned that tomatoes were here. I will get to that later.

We'd never grown okra before so we didn't know how it would go but we've had a very good amount. I check it every day or so and I've been able to gather enough for at least one meal each time.

Tomorrow tomatoes....

The pirate cousins with Uncle C

I love this picture of Mom and Dandelion, the beautiful ragamuffins.

My sister made this skirt for Dandelion in 20 minutes!

My friend J's girls

At the Children's museum with J and the kids

H on hiatus from Rome

More friends!

Dandelion and SC watching the older cousins go swimming...

No words necessary...

Our beautiful okra

Flowers from our garden: Sunflowers and Zinnias

Kids and Kittens

2010-08-10T07:14:00.000-07:00

I’ve obviously fallen behind on my blog writing this month. I’ve certainly had a lot to say and share but I think I’ve been too tired or lazy or both to write it all down. Also, we’ve just returned from a fairly short visit to Texas, so that put a hitch in my blogging. I thought that over the next few days, I could share new and old happenings rather than all at once.

The most important and exciting happening is of the baby kind.

A few weeks ago we had our 20-week sonogram. When I was pregnant with Dandelion, we chose not to find out her sex before she was born which was exciting in its own way. But the night before our sonogram this time, Farmer and I decided we wanted to find out what kind of creature we were having (I think it was really more my desire than his but he seemed fine with it).

So, we watched the screen excitedly and just before the technician asked us if we wanted to find out, Farmer said he could tell immediately. That probably gives it away because there is only one sex that makes its gender very obviously known…

We are having a healthy baby boy! There is excitement all around although Dandelion and I will now be outnumbered in our house…

On another note, we have added a different kind of creature to our family.

A woman came by the house several weeks ago with three adorable kittens that needed rescue from certain death at an overcrowded animal shelter. I’m not normally this spontaneous but my neighbor Angela took the orange tabby and the only male, a black kitten, was calling out to me.

I knew our dog Jasper would love a companion and Dandelion could hardly stand her excitement at the new kitty. Matthew’s reaction was a little different. When he walked in and saw the kitten, he said incredulously, “What is that cat doing here?!” (I’m not sure he would approve of my using an exclamation point and a question mark at the end of his sentence but it conveys his tone of voice, I believe).

But he came around too. In fact, Farmer really likes the kitten, who is surprisingly social for a cat. We have named him Livingston.

PS family and friends who wish to visit and are allergic to cats, we will do our very best to accommodate you when you come.

Carrots and CSA shares

2010-07-14T08:35:00.000-07:00

This week, we're harvesting the carrots from our personal garden and I'm planning to make a little applesauce from the tree up the hill. We have cucumbers coming our of our ears (I'm actually refusing them) but I'm hoping to make a few jars of pickles, especially before our dill goes completely to seed.

As a matter of interest, here is what the CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) customers will receive in their box this week:

Blueberries: Keep dry and cover them in the refrigerator for up to 10 days. Wash just before eating.

Green Beans: Refrigerate in a loosely sealed plastic bag no more than a few days.

Zucchini: Refrigerate in a plastic bag for up to one week.

Green Pepper: Refrigerate in a plastic bag 3-6 days.

Cucumber: Refrigerate in a loosely sealed plastic bag up to one week.

Carrots: Refrigerate in produce drawer up to two weeks. Before eating, wash in cold water.

Sweet Corn: Refrigerate ears still in their husks for 1-2 days at most. Before cooking, remove husks and silks.

Cherry Tomatoes: Store on the counter, NOT in the refrigerator, for several days.

Yukon Gold Potatoes: Store in a well-ventilated place for up to one week, away from apples, onions, and sunlight.

To give you a proper farm update straight from the farmer's mouth, er, typing hand, I'm copying the message that Farmer sent to his CSA customers to inform them about the season's happenings and the items in their share:

"This week on the farm we are nearing the end of a very busy and productive blueberry season. At last count, we had harvested over 8,000 lbs of blueberries this season, and with another one to two weeks of picking left, we should top last year's total of 8,500 lbs. This is a pretty amazing number when you think about how small a blueberry is and the fact that all of these pounds of blueberries were picked by hand. In not so good news, it looks like we will have a very small crop of sweet corn this year. The corn got off to a slow start and what few ears were produced were mostly taken by racoons. The sweet corn you find in your share today is from Coneflower Farm. A note about the sweet corn. When taking off the husk of your corn, you may sometimes find a worm that will have damaged the ear tip of the corn. While this is not exactly pleasant, it is one of the realities of growing without the use of pesticides and because you often can't tell if there has been worm damage until you take off the husk, we can't always keep those ears of corn from being sent to you. If you do find an ear with a worm or damaged by a worm, simply cut off the damaged area and eat the rest of the ear, it is still fine to eat. Enjoy this week's share!"

Dandelion had an itchy nose

She is showing off our carrot harvest.

Can you see how dirty she is?

Banana peppers

1/4 of our carrot harvest from our garden

Fireworks and churches

2010-07-05T11:56:00.000-07:00

Dandelion and Farmer

enjoying the air show

This is exactly how Dandelion looked

for a good portion of the fireworks show.

What can I say, I love fireworks. Last night we took Dandelion to the riverfront for her first show. We learned a little from our experience about how to do it better next time but all in all, it went well. We got there at 7:30pm for the 9:30pm show and despite the air show at 8:30pm, Dandelion was getting very tired and restless by the time the "Red, White and Boom" show began. A few booms into the show, she started to shake and cry from the noise so we decided to move farther back where we had a better view and it was less crowded and less noisy. It was a great show and by the end, Dandelion was saying "more."

We took a break from our regular Mennonite church routine that morning and decided to visit a church in a nearby town. The people were very kind and loving but this was no Mennonite service. I knew we were in trouble when we walked in and there were two flags behind the altar. The congregation proceeded to sing every well-known patriotic song in place of hymns and there was even the pledge of allegiance said at one point in the service.

I was a little disturbed by this. For one thing, pledging allegiance to a flag and a republic hardly seems Biblically sound to me. If we are Christians, shouldn't we pledge allegiance to our Heavenly Father and his kingdom only? And isn't it dangerous to confuse our patriotism with our faith by putting flags up next to the cross?

I understand that we all have varying views along the spectrum of patriotism/nationalism. I'm still not certain about my own stance on war and patriotism. One of the tenets of Mennonite faith is a stand against war and violence which I am beginning to think is a lot more Biblically sound than I used to believe. But I think there should be a balance in our worship and in our living out of these beliefs. Anti-nationalism can become an idol just as much as patriotism. In our hurry to preach against certain practices/behaviors/beliefs, is it easy to lose sight of the main point of church? That is, that we are gathered together to worship God. I'm not suggesting that sermons and church services should be devoid of a call to things higher but in my opinion, our worship should be steeped in Scripture and, ultimately, should be about praising the Father. Scripture is powerful enough to speak the truth on its own.

June's passing

2010-07-02T08:14:00.000-07:00

June seemed to hold onto us for longer this year. Strawberries were weak and a lot of work but we have left them behind. Blueberries have about two more weeks left but they have been much more productive this year. Last Saturday, we went to three farmers markets and sold out of blueberries an hour before market was over at two of them: Lombard and Peoria. U-pick has been very successful and Dandelion and I have enjoyed meeting Farmer at the picnic tables on Blueberry Hill on Thursday evenings while he runs U-pick.

Two of my sister's girls came to visit us and farm for a week. They were a lot of help with Dandelion, dishes and animal chores. And they seemed to enjoy the creek. I think one of their favorite moments was finding a baby bird who had fallen out of its nest with three of its siblings. Our baby bird was the only one still alive and we tried to help it by putting it in another bird's nest. Unfortunately, I don't think we were successful.

The girls also thoroughly enjoyed beating Farmer at the games Sorry and Go Fish. There was a lot of trash-talking going on.

My flowers have finally begun to bloom, particularly the Zinnias and Persian Love-in-a-Mists. Our vegetable garden is overflowing with basil (which I've made into Pesto to freeze), dill (which I've tried drying this year) and cilantro. Carrots are popping up and we're looking forward to lots of tomatoes in the next month or two.

Our poor chickens are still at a friend's farm while E and I try to find time to fortify their coop. There seem to be lots of little holes just begging for potential predators but we're doing our best.

We're happy for July to be here and enjoying watching my belly and our Dandelion grow. What wonders will join us from the universe of my womb very soon? We shall see.

The growing belly

Cousin time

At the creek with cousins

Zinnias and Persian Love-in-a-Mist

Dandelion wanted to smell every flower

Chicken massacre

2010-06-21T05:15:00.001-07:00

Last Wednesday morning when I shut our chickens into their coop, we had nineteen of them (seventeen hens and two roosters). We are now down to seven with only one rooster left. It has been a chicken tragedy, a massacre over the course of four days.

Two days after we lost the first six and then lost another two the next night, we moved the chickens to their old coop behind the horse barn. Er and I dragged our children along, having no choice but to set them down inside the mucky unused coop while we tried to fortify it from what we thought was weasels. Neva played with a rag, dragging it through the chicken's water and then E gave her a sack that she could stand up in. That kept her busy while her son sat in his upright backpack and banged on the trash can holding the chicken feed. This is how rural children are entertained, I guess.

We felt pretty confident about our nailed in wire and wood shoved into holes throughout the coop.

And it worked for one evening.

After their second evening in the old home, there was a big hole in the chicken wire of the coop door and we'd lost two more. This was no weasel, we began to think.

So, last night at nine o'clock, we decided to do the only thing we knew would save the rest of our fowl. We tied their feet together, put them in bags and took them to a friend's coop a few miles away.

By the way, that very evening, E found a dead rooster and we were missing another hen.

We'd lost twelve in one week.

For most of my life, I've found it a little silly to pray for people's animals. It was a big no-no at our church growing up to ask for prayers on behalf of dogs named Fluffy or pet bunnies that were sick.

But I found myself biting my tongue at church yesterday, thinking about our poor chickens and the unknown serial killer who has been stalking them for four days. I didn't do it, I just couldn't make myself.

But understand, this is how sad E and I have been about the whole thing: we actually thought about asking for pray requests for them during church.

Chicken casualties 2: Chanticleer and the weasel

2010-06-17T19:54:00.000-07:00

I just finished reading a book by Walter Wangerin called 'The Book of the Dun Cow' about a land of animals, led oddly enough by a rooster named Chanticleer who keeps their lives ordered with his daily liturgical crows, who thwart the efforts of an evil rooster and his Lord Wyrm, an ancient evil creature who is imprisoned under the earth and almost breaks free to set the earth in permanent darkness and stench.

Ever since I finished this book, my view of our chickens has taken on a sort of apocalyptic bent. Not that our roosters are nearly as noble as the great Chanticleer. Have you ever seen a rooster mate? I say 'rooster' and not 'rooster and hen' because if you've ever seen the deed being done, you will realize that it hardly seems the hen's choice. The rooster attaches himself violently to the hen with much squawking and wing flapping. If there ever was a reason for a heninist movement (hen feminist movement), I would say that their mating ritual would be it.

But I digress.

A recent chicken tragedy has further confused my chicken experience with Chanticleer's great rule of his own coop.

Last night, in the midst of early morning sleep, I heard a great squawking from the chicken coop. It was so great that I was sure we had lost a chicken, maybe one that I had left out of the coop accidentally when I shut them in.

EM made the shocking discovery the next morning when she opened the locked chicken coop door.

Six of our chickens were headless.

Chanticleer's great coop enemy was the sneaky Ebenezer Rat who stole eggs from under the grieving hens.

Our great enemy is a weasel. They crawl through tiny holes in the coop.

They don't even eat the chicken. They rip off its and suck its blood and then they leave it.

They are nasty.

EM and I spent some of our evening attempting to plug the holes in our coop with wire. There were lots of holes and it was too big of a job for one evening and two tired women.

Let's just hope we did enough to save our 13 remaining chickens for another night.

A strawberry Sabbath

2010-06-13T18:34:00.000-07:00

A day of rest, oh what a glorious commandment from the Lord. I wish we all felt as required to keep it as the Israelites did. Despite Farmer having to go to a meeting at 7pm on this Lord's day, it was a good day of rest for our family and very needed. We were able to spend all of Saturday evening together (our first evening together all week) and we went swimming at a nearby pool on Sunday.

Wednesday was Farmer's (and therefore my own) longest day. He got up early to help prepare for a market in Chicago and he and a friend (who delivers the Chicago CSA shares) were supposed to leave around 10:30am. At about 10am, Farmer called me from the field to ask for help because the truck to take to Chicago had broken down. I didn't see him for another hour or so but when I did, he and friend were loaded and on their way to Chicago in an unfamiliar truck. It turned out that one of the local U-pick customers just let them borrow his truck to pull their trailer all the way to Chicago and back. That was unexpected and extremely kind.

They returned from Chicago 12 hours later with about 28 flats of strawberries. A flat holds about 6 quarts...that's a lot of unsold strawberries. In desperation, one of the members of the farm team had called some regular customers and found one willing to buy many of the strawberries. So Farmer and a few others were up for several more hours sorting through those strawberries to give the guy the best ones. It was a late night.

For some reason, strawberry sales have been down this year. We're not exactly sure why. They have come early as will the blueberries (there were a dozen or so pints at the Festival along with strawberries) so maybe that provides some explanation. Someone said at church this morning that though this fall in business is disappointing, it also provides leftover berries for families here who might otherwise have trouble picking all their berries for the year. We benefited from the unsold Festival berries with three flats of strawberries. From that we were able to freeze most of our berries for the year. We just need a few more quarts for another round of jam.

This Saturday morning and afternoon was our Strawberry Festival in town. I didn't personally do much work for it besides helping cut strawberries for the Festival's Strawberry Shortcake after common meal on Friday but I watched much work being done. Much picking was done early Saturday morning and then U-pick customers began to stream in. EM and I took our babies into town to troll the participants of the city-wide garage sale. Just as we pulled up to our first enticing looking garage, the downpour began. It was a heavy but short-lived rain that we adjusted to by dashing in and out of the car at each sale and leaving our babies behind (it's a small town, don't get upset). Toddler clothes were $.75 each and I got Dandelion some pieces for her winter wardrobe including two pair of boots. I think I spent $7 in all for the clothes and shoes. I love a good bargain.

Eventually the rain let up just in time for the Festival to begin.

Dandelion was 'helping' me cap strawberries and get them ready for freezing

Dandelion is an accessory girl

My first flowers...they were transplants

Our garden has benefited from lots of rain

One of my favorite garden items: basil!

An Sunday evening farm meeting for Farmer

Our first batch of strawberry jam for the year

An anniversary

2010-06-04T17:55:00.000-07:00

A little over a year ago, we boxed up our things and moved from Washington DC to this 'bit of earth' in rural Illinois. What a year it's been. We've been through berries, farmer's markets, vegetables, canning, jamming, cooking and cleaning. There's been a baby born in a teepee, goat kids born and a baby conceived. There have been pests, beetles, bugs, suffocated chickens, slaughtered chickens, butchered chickens, eggs and eggs, goat milk, raw milk, new seeds, saved seeds, shucking corn, shocking fences, applesauce and Fall. We've picked grapes, sauced pears, salsa-ed tomatoes and peppers, shelled peas and frozen green beans. We survived being stir-crazy in winter, stuck inside with a baby in the cold and snow and the resultant Spring mud that sucked in our boots and sunk us up to our shins. We've exalted both in the colors and coolness of Fall after a hot summer and the warmth of Spring after a long Winter. We've loved, fought with, hurt with, worshipped with, learned from and celebrated with our neighbors; we've both taught and studied the Bible; we've watched hearts break and relationships mend and end; we've seen fires in houses and on hills and heard trees crack in the midst of thunderstorms so close. We've celebrated birthdays, anniversaries and holidays. We've made new friends and missed our dear ones and rejoiced when they visited.

And you know what?
We're going to do it all over again.

Strawberry season is well upon us.
This is the month that might be the equivalent of hazing in college fraternities. For Matthew, this month means intense, long hours of picking and managing U-picks both in the morning and sometimes in the evenings, consistently checking messages for orders and calling back to confirm. It means preparing for farmer's markets early in the morning by picking and preparing the food and filling the truck, filling out order forms, organizing Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) Shares, finding places to sell the berries that someone forgot or changed their minds about or that wouldn't sell at farmer's markets.
It's a tough month but it brings in one fourth of the farm's income and if we can get through this month, things slow down...just a bit.

The first quart of strawberries for the season was luscious and we've been blessed with many a guest this month. Dandelion's Aunt E and Uncle C and cousin SC came. A few weeks later, Tia and Uncle J came. This weekend we have Nana and Papa. It's a wealth and Dandelion has especially loved every minute of it.

Don't worry, Uncle C, she's really not bored

Dandelion was continually trying to 'help' with SC

She also liked to love on SC...not sure he felt the same way

Cousins!

Dandelion was hamming it up for the camera

I use Dandelion's curls as a barometer for the humidity

Dandelion loves the creek!

A fun afternoon with Tia and soon-to-be Uncle J

Our garden is progressing...broccoli and brussel sprouts!

Love one another

2010-05-25T08:15:00.000-07:00

I've recently realized that I don't have a clue what it means to 'love one another.' Sure, I know how to love my family, my husband and child and my close friends, not perfectly of course, but it comes more easily. But loving someone who consistently makes me frustrated or angry or disappointed or confused...that's a little trickier. I feel like we all get mixed messages about what that 'love' is really supposed to look like. I think somewhere in Texas or maybe it was the Church of Christ or maybe it was just my own mismatched mental and emotional gatherings about the faces of love, I confused it with being nice to someone. And then somewhere along the line, I got more muddled when I took on postmodern sensibilities and knew it wasn't completely true but still acted as though loving someone meant ignoring their behavior because after all we're all adults and should be able to do what we want (as long as it didn't injure someone of course...that always seems to be the limit in postmodernity) without our brother or sister advising us otherwise. Simply being nice and ignoring bad behavior...that doesn't really sound like love, does it? Silly me.

So, I've been trying to wade through my confusion and misunderstandings lately to understand the true meaning of love.

Compassion? That sounds awfully nice, doesn't it? We should have compassion for those we have trouble loving, shouldn't we? I think so, but again, the acting out of compassion is also confusing. Compassion is from the Latin 'co-suffering.' The Merriam dictionary defines compassion as "sympathetic consciousness of others' distress together with a desire to alleviate it." How do we suffer with others especially when they are making us and people we love suffer as well? How do we live into another person's distress and hope to alleviate it? This is a lot easier to do for someone we find it easy to love.

It seems obvious to me that if you love your child, you will make sure she knows which behaviors are appropriate and which are not. If we also love other people are we not allowed to tell them that their behavior is inappropriate as well? Are we not allowed to make difficult and unpopular choices because they are making unhealthy decisions, not only for themselves, but for many people around them? Isn't that more loving than just being nice to them?

Maybe that is the whole point, that these things should be done out of a place of compassion. If I am judging my frustrating neighbor and slandering him, my choices for his life will not be wise or good because I am not loving him. If I truly invest myself in his suffering maybe I can make those difficult choices out of love and not anger. And I can be rest assured that they will be difficult choices. It is infinitely easier to ignore someone than to love him and right now, I'm better at the avoidance.

A short announcement

2010-05-17T08:19:00.001-07:00

We went to the midwife last week and heard the strong heartbeat of baby Peterson #2. As far as we know at this point he or she will join us in mid-December. Dandelion keeps pointing at me and saying, "Mama, baby." I hope she is as excited when she learns that a baby will be taking some attention away from her. We think she'll be a pretty sweet big sister.

Irresponsible planting

2010-05-02T13:23:00.000-07:00

I have become reckless with my flower planting. Keep in mind that the only flowers I've ever planted were a few in a pot last year. Now, I have at least seven different kinds of flowers planted and the list is growing. I guess I thought that if I was going to fail, I might as well fail big and figure out how to do better next year. Maybe I should buy a book. Any suggestions?

As I've mentioned before, I transplanted some Irises that EM gave me. She just offered me some Cosmos and Larkspur transplants as well so those will be added to my list and flower bed in due time. Here are the things I've planted from seed either in the bed or in containers: Dahlias, Delphiniums (already a complete disaster), Zinnias, Persian Love-in-a-Mist, Lavender, Impatiens (yes this is spelled correctly...I had to look at it twice), and Alyssum. The only thing that has so far sprouted is the Love-in-a-Mist. And I have to admit, I don't have a clue what many of these flowers will look like. Some of them just sounded nice.

I'm told that the strawberries are flowering now. I'm also told that they might be ready a little earlier than last year, maybe before June. Since I've yet to join the hard-working farm team and interns in the tasks of weeding and planting, I am sharing this information second-hand.

A few facts about strawberries that I've recently learned. They normally have about a three year shelf life, meaning they are planted the first year, they yield the best harvest the second year and the third year, they yield as well. This year the farm team planted 30,000 new strawberry plants...by hand. Well, a tobacco machine was also involved but I witnessed the guys sitting low behind the machine that went down the rows while they released the plants into the soil. These guys are amazing!

Here's to another year of strawberries. In his excitement, Farmer has requested that when the berries arrive, I make something with strawberries every day: pie, smoothies, crisps, maybe a burrito if we're desperate for new recipes. Again, suggestions are welcome!

Lavendar

Lettuce!

Our garden plot

Our sweetie

The goats were mowing our backyard. It drove Jasper to distraction. He wanted to play.

Simple life?

2010-04-30T07:19:00.000-07:00

I think I understand where people are coming from when they respond to our life on the farm with "oh, how I envy your simple life" or something like it. Maybe they are thinking that living in a rural area seems far away from the rapidly moving concerns and worries of city life. Or maybe they think that farm life is idyllic, close to nature and singing birds and frollicking animals and sweet-scented plants. I really can understand this. When we were thinking of moving to Plow Creek, I could anticipate the trickling streams and the calm rocking of wind through the trees. I could see my child running through the fields and picking blueberries at random. And I could see myself being glad that I didn't feel the pressure to consume because there aren't many place to shop around here. It seems to be a characteristic of human nature to idealize the ways other people are living that seem exotic or at least preferable to our situation. And in some ways, life on a farm does have all those elements. We are closer to the earth and the seasons in many ways and it is calming to hear the wind and stream instead of police and fire engine sirens.

But it is not simple and I hope it is not envied. Our lives are much busier and more complicated here than they were in DC. Farmer starts work at 7:30 in the morning and is often not home for dinner until 6:00. Much of his day is spent doing physical labor. When market season begins, he will be gone to Chicago until 10pm once a week and will probably go to a market elsewhere another day a week. We cook nearly every meal (or have leftovers) and we don't have a dishwasher which leaves mounds of dishes to do every day (the bane of my existence...oh what I would give for good take-out some days). When we start harvesting in a month or so, I will begin preserving food for the rest of the year. That means a hundred or more jars of canned vegetables and fruits and dozens of quarts of food, blanched and frozen. We have church and community meetings at least twice a week and common meals on Fridays and Sundays. We often have small group once a week as well and Saturday mornings are taken up with community work projects. There are complicated relationships and disappointments as much as there are celebrations and times to worship.

People everywhere lead busy lives. I know mothers who stay at home with three kids or who work are about as busy as any person can be. I know there are many who sit in traffic for hours a day trying to make it to work so they can provide for their families. We aren't sitting in traffic everyday and I'm glad of that. But when you get down to the reality of life on a farm, sometimes it is hard and tiring and disappointing just like many other ways of living. Mostly, it is a wonderful place to live but I guess what I want to make clear is that no life is simple. When we share our lives with people and when we live the best ways we are able, we aren't automatically freed from worry or concern. Our concerns are just a little different than they were before.

Thrilling

2010-04-13T12:00:00.001-07:00

Things that my husband did last week which might cause me to have a heart-attack:

1. Ran up the hill to help with the fire that broke out on Saturday.
2. Then, applied to be a volunteer firefighter
3. Said to me at lunch one day, 'This afternoon I'm going to attempt to catch a swarm of bees.' Yes, you read this correctly.
4. In an attempt to ease my fears about the firefighting thing, he looked up the most dangerous jobs online and found that #6 is farming. Firefighters weren't even on the list!
5. Then he says he's excited to be driving the tractor today.

On the farm:
In the past few weeks, Farmer and I have been hoping for sun and warmth, not only because we are ready to be done with winter weather but also because we have been waiting for the soil in our plot to be dry enough to plant. Finally it is dry and the trees are blooming and green. It is downright Spring-like!

We hoed and broke up big chunks of dirt and raked the soil smooth. We've already planted spinach, brussel sprouts, broccoli, carrots and arugula and I planted my Persian Love-in-a-Mist seeds. I really don't know what I'm doing with these flowers. I suppose this is the first of many 'learning years' for me with my garden.

Last week we milked our goat Leap for the first time. We had to separate her from her kids the night before so she would have enough milk for us in the morning. Farmer was able to get about 3/4 quart (3 cups) of goat's milk. Hopefully we'll get more as the weeks go by and as Leap's milk catches up to demand.

PS Thanks to all of you for your kind words about the fire. Please keep the community in your prayers. I will try to give updates when it is appropriate.

Milking

Goat's milk

Giving the goats their tetanus shots

Dandelion loves her bows