Shout Out to my Girl Iris!

Iris Pearl is turning four today!  Happy Birthday Iris, my love!  So I thought I'd treat you to a story about her.  There are so many to choose from, but this one is fresh in my mind.

Last night we were eating dinner (homemade sourdough tortillas with pinto bean, beef, rice, cheese and tomatoes from the freezer, arugala and spinach salad from the garden with pomegranate and toasted nuts) when the topic of the pigs came up.  They are coming to the end of their time with us and we were discussing when we would butcher them.  Iris didn't hear what was said, and if you know Iris, you know she will not stop asking until she knows what was said. The conversation went something like this:

Iris: "What's going to happen?"
Me: "We were just talking about what is going to happen to the piggies.  You know we are going to butcher them and eat them, right?  Are you okay with that?"
Iris:  Long pause, and with all seriousness, "Not Pumpkin.  I don't want to butcher Pumpkin."
Large outburst of laughter around the table.  Pumpkin is Iris's cat.
Me:"No honey, not the kitties, the piggies!"
Iris: "OOHHHH, cause I was gonna say, I don't want to butcher all the cats.  But we could butcher Suki though."

And for those of you who know Suki...

If you are served stew the next time you are here for dinner, just don't ask what's in it.


                                                                                          Smiley Face by Iris

Tessa eating up the last autumn sun

The Birthday girl making muffins for "school"

always plenty to do round here

The Wind Turbines

It's Grace.

Friday we hiked to the top of the mountain to see the wind turbines up there. They are so huge! I'm glad we took the camera with us. They're not fenced of or anything so you can go touch them! When you get close to them is's kinda scary . We stood under one that was moving and it seemed like the blades would fall on us! It was really cold on Friday so Mom bundled Tess up super warm but it still wasn't enough. Soon Tess had my mittens on and Moms hat and Mom  was taking her down the mountain to the truck. Well I posted a few pics of the wind turbines.

Thanksgiving is Awsome

Hey y'all it's Grace again. We are going to have an awesome Thanksgiving(again).The entertainment is perfect, although I'm not going to spill the beans. Today we are going to get some chickens  from the neighbors and we just finished cleaning up the old chicken coop. We leave around lunchtime today to go to the Cabin.
Grace

The Last Market

We attended our final market for the year this past Sunday in Morgantown, WV.  The farmers market that meets on Saturdays on Spruce St. hosts a series of indoors winter markets throughout the winter months, every three weeks.  This is an excellent chance for both customers and vendors alike to do their business and maintain contacts.  For the end of December there was quite a variety of produce available!

At the Backbone table you could find
arugala
broccoli
kale
salad mix
mixed mustard greens
French breakfast radishes
hailstone radishes
carrots (rainbow style)
parsley
dill

Others things I spotted include brussel sprouts, beets, cabbages, bok choi, baby bok choi, head lettuce, basil, potatoes and tomatoes.  Then there were all kinds of "value added" products like breads and other baked goods, meats, greenhouse plants, jams and jellies, wreathes, woolen wear, cards, eggs and honey!  Whew!  The market was packed for quite a while, and I saw lots of folks with their Thanksgiving menus in hand, buying what they could locally.  It made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside knowing that there would be lots of Thanksgiving dinners where our produce would be served.  I do give thanks for our customers.  Without them, we would be just growing for ourselves, and working some kind of jobs we would rather not have.  Most likely.  That's always a strange road to go down though, and I don't think I'll get into hypothetical parallel lives right now.

Thanksgiving being just two days away leaves me obliged to give some thanks myself.  And I'm happy to do it.  I've been trying to live my life in a more grateful manner lately.  As the sign board on some church today put it "live with at attitude of gratitude"  Now that's a bit to hokey and holy for me, but it is a great sentiment.  Life is so unpredictable and can come crashing down on us at any minute.  So I give thanks for each and every day that the most awful things I have to worry about are escaping cows, three year old's tantrums, poopy diapers or car trouble.  Run of the mill discomforts, typical daily trials that can seem terribly troubling at the time, but really don't amount to anything.  I have a wonderful family, and I can't express how much they mean to me.  My children are the cornerstone of my life right now, and I give thanks that they are all healthy and happy (for the most part).  And I am thankful that they still let me into their lives, have not shunned me yet. I give thanks for a husband that loves and respects me, and for parents and in-laws who offer me endless support.  I give thanks for friends that brighten my days, and hold us up when we need it, and accept help in return.  Most days I remember to appreciate and marvel in the apparent beauty of our surroundings.  The farm and it's fields, trees, changing colors and textures.  The clean water, clean air and healthy soil, the animals wild and tame, the woods and the streams. I am thankful that my children have this. I give thanks that we live in a state of peace, no major conflict or oppression, we have our basic human rights met.  And I am thankful for my health.  A mundane thing to say, but really- what else is there?  What else is there but health, family, friends, food and peace?

So to all you out there that I know and love, aven those I don't see and seldom talk with, I hope you have a most enjoyable and peaceful holiday.  I wish for you that you get to be with those you love, and eat what you like till your heart's content.  And then maybe a nap.

Girl Scouts

Hey guys it's Grace talking about my Girl Scout Event that I did over the weekend called Behind the Lens. We went to Morgantown, WV for a photography class taught by ex-army photographers. They taught us about different types of photography and what qualities to look for in pictures. We got to go outside and take pictures using their professional  cameras with really good zoom. We went inside and they set up a studio with different backdrops.  We took pictures of each other and got group pictures taken in different outfits(that was probably my favorite part). After that I got dropped of at the winter market in Morgantown. Here are a few pics I took.

The Dryer and I

I have a love/hate relationship with my dryer.  I know I am not alone.  This relationship has been building over the years, starting back before my first baby was born.  There was no dryer in our house at the time, just a clothesline, and not much of one at that.  Knowing that I would be using cloth diapers, I thought getting a dryer was a great idea.  Our housemate and my husband were against the idea, claiming that lots of mothers before me had done plenty of laundry without a dryer!  In fact, both of their mothers had hardly ever used a dryer, Nick's mother (of twins) actually didn't even have one.  While I admired her, I didn't think I was woman enough to go without. I argued that just because she didn't have a dryer doesn't mean she liked it!

  Eventually I won out, but not until we moved to a new farm, and set up together from scratch.  We found a used dryer at a yard sale for $15!  It worked perfectly well for many years.

     I do not like to use my dryer.  But then again I love to use my dryer.  It is like a guilty pleasure.  When I am short on time and long on laundry, in they go.  When it is wet and rainy for days, in they go.  I pull the warm clothes from the dryer and hold them to my face like I did when I was little, and as I've watched my children do.  It feels so good, and it was so simple to achieve.  But it comes with a price, and that warmth I feel always has a flash of regret attached. The dryer is second in energy consumption of household appliances only to the refrigerator.  A typical clothes dryer will use 400 watts/hour.  The average family will use up 1750 kWh per year on a dryer.  At our rates of 7.47 cents per kWh, that's right around $130 annually.
     For us it is not so much the budget, as the carbon emissions, and sheer waste of it.  Of course we are fortunate enough to live where we can have a clothesline.  I have about 60' of line out side.  In the house I use the old fashioned stand up drying racks.  You may not know what I mean, as they are fairly obsolete.  They fold accordion style vertically, and have tiers of horizontal dowels to hang clothes on.  We place these over our heat vents, and can manage to fit a fair amount of laundry on these racks.  We have two large ones, and a small one that can fit a small load.  I also have a hanging rack that folds out from the wall behind our wood cookstove.  We bought this last year for about $25 from an Amish store in the area. All these devices help us utilize the hot air that is already being created in our home.  I realize that not everyone can have a clothesline.  In fact many planned communities and cities have regulations against hanging clothes or clotheslines.  I suppose these are the same type of homeowner associations that won't allow you to grow vegetables either!  The ridiculousness of this is beyond me.   Is laundry all that offensive?  I am curious about this, and perhaps this winter I will find out more, see if there may be a change on the horizon...

For now we are without a dryer.  The yard sale find crapped out on me about 4 or 5 months ago, in the thick of produce season.  I'll be the first to admit to many moments of frustration at the time it takes to go through the line drying process.  Now that things have slowed down for me, I kind of like the work.  It can be mildly meditative, and my small girls can play in the yard while I work.  As for the inside rack drying, it is just an ebb and flow that fits into my daily chores as long as I am spending the day at home.

It seems like a small step, going dryerless.  Could be we won't replace it.  Could be I'll look back, think I was crazy and take a trip to Sears.  Could just be though, that I am woman enough!


 

Guy Fawkes day

Hey guys it's Grace again posting about Guy Fawkes Day. On Saturday night we went to Maia and Orion's for Guy Fawkes Day which is an English holiday. It was super fun. Guy Fawkes was Catholic and wanted to keep it that way. He did not want the religion to change to Protestant. He planed to kill King James and the Parliament so one night he and some other guys crept out and rolled a lot of barrels of gunpowder under the building of Parliament. Some guards checked the cellar and arrested Guy. he was torchered him into giving his commrades away. His punishment was being hanged drawn and quartered.He commited suicide instead. King James told everyone in England  to have a bond fire every 5th of November in honor of Guy Fawkes. So we got to burn an effigy of Guy and have an all together fun night.

FOSSIL IN THE MAKING!

Today when we were cleaning out our old tadpole aquarium I saw something at the bottom of the tank, I looked  closer and saw this tadpole skeleton!(above)
Posted by LEON

Last Golden Days

We are trying to cram as much as we can into these last few nice weather days.  We have had cold mornings and super warm afternoons.  Yesterday the kids got each other soaking wet with the garden hose, and Iris found it appropriate to run around naked in the hottest part of the day.

Here is a brief list of things we should really do in the next 3 days, as "arctic" temps will be here by Monday, so they say.

-finish building wood shed
-wash and hang all laundry- broken dryer that we don't like to use anyway!
-take all trash and recyclables to dump, we always seem to have a pile of it!  still some lefrt from the growing season, when we become a household of 8-10 depending on the day
-put away all garden supplies, trays, tools, bins and baskets
-pick up detritus from yard and surrounding areas
-cut firewood
-harvest more carrots and beets to store

I know I am leaving many things out, like hike in the woods, play by the river, ride horses....
What am I doing in the house at my computer?!!??
Katharine

Pigs Love Greens

With the markets being done for the year, we have plenty of greens left to go around.  I have been picking a large laundry basket to give the pigs each day.  Man do they love them.  They carefully choose a single leaf, pass it back to their back teeth, chew thoroughly, and take another.  Pigs can actually eat quite delicately.  Pigs love greens, and we love pigs!

paper swirling

Hey y'all it's Grace  posting about a super cool art  project we did on Monday. Its called paper marbling and it's how they make that really cool swirly paper. First we had to get oil based paints and mix them with paint thinner and then we poured the paint in a pan with water we swirled it around and layed a piece of paper on top and.... voila a beautiful peice of paper.It was really easy but super messy! Dad just got home last night safe and sound. We are going to Sunny Side Wools today for Homeschool group! well that's all
Grace 

Solo Part 2

Grace squirting milk in to Iris's mouth

A fitful night of sleep as I worried about not having found the hole where the cows got out.  What would I wake to find? Cows in the feed hall eating all the feed?  In the upstairs of the barn mucking about in this winter's hay?  I lay in bed at 6ish thinking of what to do, how to fix the fence, get cows where they should be, appreciatin my husband.  The thought of our friend Joe, who used to live here but moved to the Eastern Shore came to me.  I thought "if Joe still lived here, I could call him., he'd help me."  And this is where life gets wierd.  At 8a.m., the phone rings, and it is Joe.  And he is here at Deep Creek Lake with friends.  He wants to come over and get firewood.  So fine with me I tell him, as long as you help me fix fence and put the cows in!

The rest of the day passed uneventfully, just Tess and I.  Quiet and peaceful, and a bit lonesome after being used to a house full!  We got the chores done without much trouble.  I went out to turn the lights off  in the barn around 10p.m., and let Libby and Puppy out for one last romp.  The romp ended up in a severe skunking! P! U!  Libby got a direct hit, and was very unhappy about not having access to the house.  A cold night, and no dogs for warmth.  The spraying must have happened close to my room, because it smelled as if the skunk sprayed my pillow.

When I layed my weary head down, Tessa woke, and I snuggled up to her and realized she was burning up.  Her fever was around 103, and we had a night deprived of sleep.  No high drama here, just the downfalls of motherhood, with a good blest of skunk to go with it.

When we got out of bed, the temp outside was 22, pretty cold for a feverish baby to do chores.  We bundled to the best of our abilities and Tessa was content to be warm and close on my back.  All was well, animals full and happy, sun shining, and I knew Grace and Leon and Iris would be home later that day.  It is good for me to do Max's chores, like that old tale of the man and woman who switch places for the day.  It is true that you come to appreciate what they do.  It is good to know I can do it, that we can maintain as a farm while the main man is away. Let's hear it for family power!

"Solo Weekend"

Max went to Seattle this weekend for 5 days.  That in itself is monumental.  He is enrolled in a Paul Stamets workshop on gourmet and medicinal mushroom cultivation.  Paul Stamets is a world renowned mycologist,  you can see what he is up to at http://www.fungiperfecti.com/.

Tess, Iris and I hauled Max to the Pittsburgh airport at 5a.m.  We were home by 1p.m., milked the cow, checked the fires, conferred w/ Grace and Leon on school, fixed lunch and got ready to take kids to Riitta's.  We met Riitta at work by 4.  The big kids went with her for the weekend.  This means that Tessa and I have the farm to ourselves.  Hmmm...

We get home close to 5.  What do I see, but 5 cows out in front of the barn. My cows.  I grab Tess, not dressed for winter and throw her on my back in the Ergo baby.  It starts snowing- hard.  The cows do not listen to me when I ask them kindly to return to their pasture.  I begin to get loud about it, and implore Libby, our "cow dog" to help me get them through the barn back to pasture. She tries, looks at me with a confused expression, and herds them the opposite way.  I panic slightly.  I end up letting all the cows out instead of getting the errant ones in.  I panic more than slightly.  Tess is a champ.  Libby is trying hard, but the bull is now pissed off at her and she is scared.  He is pissed off at me too, and I identify with Libby.  I decide Tess needs more clothes and come to the house, breathe deep, ask for help.  The phone rings an it is my neighbor and friend Kim.  She invites me to see a movie and I shriek that the cows are out, I'm all alone with a naked baby on my back in the snow.  She says she'll be right over.  So the good woman arrives and we work to get all the animals where they should be and do the barn chores.  She's so good she even brought a bottle of wine.

I think the animals know when I am alone.
Stay tuned for Solo Part 2

Am I completely insane, and will we follow through with this project?

Looking at a friend's blog finally persuaded me that yes, this is a worthy use of time for me and my family.  I've been toying with the idea of talking to the world about our life, and letting the older kids try their hand at it for a variety of reasons.  Now that i have actually picked out a template and am faced with the reality of it, I ask myself (as I often do) "Am I completely insane?"

Time will tell