At Least He Changed His Mind. . .Eventually.

"I hait my mommy. I hait my family."

4:30 p.m.

"I love my family."

5:15 p.m.














It's been quite an afternoon. I wonder how Matty will handle these things when he's old like me?

Never mind. This stuff only happens when he's at work.

Breakfast of Champions and Other Monday Fables

This past Saturday, we entered our annual "season of the older woman," during which my husband can (and does) make a million jokes about the fact that I am older than him by six whole weeks. There are occasional references to gray hair and wrinkles. There are entire speeches that begin with declarations like, "I'm so glad I'm not 37 yet. . ." and "Well, when I get old like you, I'll be sure to. . ."

I really think I handle this season each year with a fair bit of grace and dignity. I try to remain above it. I am unflappable in the face of this ridiculous topic of discussion. I even, sometimes, laugh at his lame older woman jokes, just to make him feel good about himself and to remind him that I love him in spite of his goofy jackassery. And for those of you who are wondering how I manage all this graceful dignity, let me introduce you to my breakfast.

This is what's left of my 37th birthday cake. Every year, on my birthday, Matty stocks us up with bittersweet chocolate and dutch-processed cocoa and makes me a German chocolate cake from scratch. 

From scratch.

It's divine. It's all things bright and beautiful on a fork. It's just. . .so. . .delicious. It's mind altering, this cake.

Beyond making it impossible for me to stay annoyed with my husband and his silly little "older woman" game, this cake makes all impossible things seem simple and real. This is the kind of magical cake that makes the following fairy tales that I like to tell myself come true:

1. Cake for breakfast is really not that bad for you as long as it was made from scratch by someone you love.

2. Getting older is a wonderful process of gaining wisdom, and strength, and otherwise becoming a better version of the person that you are and these things make the vaguely horrifying changes in hair color and skin elasticity and body fat distribution meaningless and easy to ignore.

In all seriousness, it is the kind of magical cake that makes the following actual true things about my life very clear.

1. I am well-loved by a family with a goofy sense of humor and an excellent German chocolate cake recipe,  and these things make the vaguely horrifying changes in hair color and skin elasticity and body fat distribution meaningless and easy to ignore.

2. The fact that cake for breakfast really is bad for you is meaningless and easy to ignore as long as it was made from scratch by someone you love.

Forever and ever. Amen.

Happy Valentine's Day!

For all my garden/small farm ladies out there. . .

I found a new blog that we might love (maybe you already do), though I haven't read much yet. . .

And just in time for the day of love!

This might be the funniest thing I've seen in a while.

And she has more!

Like. . ."Hey girl, We should start composting with worms. But only if you're into it."

Check her out, ladies! And Happy Valentine's Day!

Giggle, giggle, giggle. . .SNORT!

That was embarrassing.

Enjoy!  http://www.kissmyaster.co/2012/01/hey-girl-garden-series.html

Confidence

I forget my camera a lot. I have another mother to thank for these pictures of my girl on the basketball court.

My girl is not a natural athlete. She's strong and she's fast, but she has always been a little too tentative, a little too unsure of herself, when it comes to playing team sports.

This is a picture of her free throw. It's not very pretty. And it didn't go in. But it did hit the rim, which is pretty good, considering that for all of last season, she couldn't even hit the net with the ball. Now she makes a very respectable 40% of her shots. And honestly, when you look at her hands, she's listening to the coaching she's getting about how to shoot.


Basketball has been a challenge for her, and not only because she's the shortest girl in the fourth grade. She's had some tremendous coaching, and she plays with some really nice, supportive girls, and so she has gained the kind of confidence it takes to, for example. . .

I see your ball.

Notice that someone has stopped dribbling.

That the ball is dead.

That she can grab that ball. . .

and then. . .

even better. . .

I take your ball!

She can take that ball away!


I'm bragging a little. I know I do that sometimes. But it's just so amazing to watch her discover this new, successfully aggressive part of herself. It's helping her become more confident. I'm sure it will complement rather than replace her naturally sweet, goofy self, and I'm relieved to know that she'll have this confidence to use as a tool now that she's starting to have to face things like bullies and crushes and mean friends and all those hard things about growing up.

Also, honestly and much more selfishly, it's just so much more fun to watch her play now that she runs the right direction on the court.

The View From the Sky

This picture of our farm was a gift from our very lovely neighbors. We have lots of lovely neighbors, but this particular family is one we love particularly much. (Hello, Teresa, if you happen to tune in for this post). It was one of their sons who showed up to help the day the pigs got out. One of the days, anyway. And one of their daughters brought all of her bridesmaids over to our very weedy and grasshopper eaten flower patch last summer so that they could all make their own bouquets for her wedding. And their youngest son is my kids' favorite playmate in the world and was around for frosting day  because he's around a lot, at least he is around here when my kids aren't around his house a lot.

Their oldest son is in the Air Force, and when he was home at Christmas, they rented a plane, and while they did that, they also took pictures of the farm.

I like to think that having this wonderful family next door is our reward for our years of (mostly) patiently dealing with college renter neighbors in Fort Collins. That the many kindnesses they've showed us is God's way of thanking us for not over reacting to the time that college kid peed in our front yard garden while loudly talking on his phone at 2 a.m., or the time the kids next door smoked pot in front of my toddlers, or that time that one girl that lived across the street burnt some midnight hours screaming about how much she loved being drunk and woke up the babies. I hope that the world really does work this way, anyway, but whether it does or not, I hope we're just as good neighbors to them as they are to us.

From this picture, you can see the way that the windbreak trees surround and protect the house. . .so well it's almost completely hidden from view down there. And you can see the pole shed and the little old garage and the corral, and the year-round ditch (which we are told is the end of Owl Creek) and then, just east of that, the pond we dug the first year we were out here. If you look closely, you can see a few of our hoophouses and chicken tractors lying fallow around the farm.

Most of the land you see in this picture is not ours. We own the little rectangle that our house and corral sit on, but not the land directly behind that. Our growing field is an adjacent piece, a separate narrow little rectangle of land that is bordered on the west by the old Owl Creek. You can't see the eastern boundary of the field here, but I think it's only about 30 or 40 yards wide. I could be off on that. I'm a bad judge. Matt will read this and confirm or deny my estimate of the land width. Anyway, it's narrow but it's also long, running from the county road you see in this picture a half mile north to the next county road.

I'm so happy that they gave us this picture. I love the dusting of snow. I love the perspective of the aerial shot.

Mostly, though, for all of the stress and work and craziness these past years on the farm have been, I love that this is my place in the world.

Update: Matty says I am way off. It's 100 yards wide, our growing field. It's essentially a football field that strings along for a half a mile. 

How Do You Have Fun With Your Grandparents?

This was the first grade writing prompt my boy was given in school the other day. It came home in a giant pile of papers, and we almost missed it. Which would have been very sad, because we would have missed his answer. Which was. . .

"I play wii with my grandpa. I beat him everytime because he is a handicap."

We laughed. It's okay to laugh. It's a funny sentence.

My boy is very competitive.

He is also a bit too young to understand the important connotational difference between someone having a handicap and someone being a handicap.

Remember when you were too young to worry about being politically correct? When you were able to say something that is true about someone you loved without worrying about the fact that you might say it wrong and sound like a jerk without meaning to?

Wasn't that nice?

My boy meant no disrespect. He knows that his beloved pop is handicapped the same way he knows that Pop is a boy and that Pop loves football and that Pop will always share his BBQ chips and that Pop is terrible at wii.

In my boy's eyes, Pop's handicap is nothing to be sad about, nothing to worry about, and nothing to pretend doesn't exist. It is nothing more than a way for a young boy to gain a slight advantage in a wii tennis match.

Pretty amazing, no?

Homework

My boy hates most homework. . . really he would rather do just about anything else. My girl, on the other hand, was overjoyed to discover that from last November through April, she has the opportunity to complete one optional book report each month. These reports include writing a summary and doing some sort of creative project to go along with the book. . .she has, so far, created a movie poster for Black Beauty, a diorama of a book called Waggit Again, and her clay model of Waggit's Tale is due this coming Thursday.

When I'm not farming or mothering, I teach future teachers what to do with linguistically diverse kids in their future classrooms. I don't write about this much, and I won't write much about it now, except to say that one of my favorite things about my teaching gig is that I can get on my soapbox about a few things.

Like, for example, homework.  I know homework is actually quite popular among most teachers. I personally don't see the point for young kids, at all, but since I realize I am somehow in the minority here, I get to give these future teachers tips on how, if they must assign homework, to at least assign it well.

I get to tell them that making it fun and relevant will mean it's more likely to get done, and that they should give kids multiple nights to do it, so if basketball practice and 4H happen to fall on the same night, homework is not adding stress to that night, and that it's best if the teacher has a consistent system, like always sending homework home on Monday that is always due back on Friday, so that parents don't have to rely on any notoriously unreliable 6 year old reporters to tell them if homework exists that day, and even better, that the whole school should agree on the same consistent system so that if one has both a first and a fourth grader, for example, everyone is on the same sort of homework schedule and please, a million times please, don't ever take recess away from a grade schooler just because she didn't do her homework that day.

It seems so simple, this homework utopia I have created in my head. I actually know of real life schools that are already living in this utopia with me. However, sadly, my kids' school is not yet one of them.

Which means that my fourth grader, who is consistently now spending more than an hour each night on homework, frequently gets upset that she doesn't have enough time to finish before the other things we do in the evening, like go outside and play or go to sports practice or, you know, eat dinner, have to happen. This problem is made worse by the fact that the regular homework is invariably something stupid, like alphabetizing all 20 spelling words and then copying them 3 times. . .when there are only 2 words she doesn't already know how to spell. In these instances, I am likely to say that I think she's spent enough time on her homework and that I will just write a note and tell her teacher it was too much, but that thought understandably mortifies my girl and things get tense and unpleasant at home and so, once again, I say. . .

I don't really see the point.

But that's just me.

My daughter wants all that and more!

If she must have homework, though, I think these optional book projects are by far the best kind. They allow for creativity, promote pleasure reading, etc. I can see a clear academic enrichment benefit from the book reports that just isn't very evident in the standard nightly worksheets. I wish she could do book reports in lieu of spelling worksheets. Alas. The most educational homework is the only optional kind.

So I am 100% behind the book project. But I worried about her choice of a clay model for this most recent project. It just seemed really overly ambitious to have to create a project out of clay, and I was worried that this would take up  a ridiculous amount of very precious time and energy.

"How is this different from the diorama? Do you have to use clay?" I asked, over and over again. Because the clay model really is just a diorama, but instead of just using paint and the dogs from your existing doll house set to make your scene, you have to create the dogs and all other scene props from clay, which seems like a lot more work, doesn't it? She stood her ground, and I bought the clay under protest.


As so often happens when she is given the chance to be creative, my sweet, smart, sensible girl came up with a totally manageable approach to this clay model project without any help from me, sat down to do it, and had the entire thing done in 30 minutes. See that, over there?  It was not a big deal at all. Her brother even made some roadblocks for his hot wheels cars.

Sigh. There is so much more I have to learn from these kids. It was suddenly so clear to me that had I decided to make a diorama out of clay, I would have added so many unnecessary details and components that I would never have been able to complete the project. I totally would have bitten off more than I could chew, and then halfway through, I would have regretted it and been stuck doing it anyway because there would have been no going back.

Since my girl can handle herself, and since I am pretty sure my sweet, smart, sensible boy's way of not biting off more than he can chew will be to never ever complete any sort of optional project, I am the only one that will have to start applying this new self-awareness in my every day life.

I am ashamed to admit that I am less practical and self-aware than my children. But it's clearly true. 

As for the rest of the stupid busywork kind of homework, all I can hope is that my future teachers are actually listening to me. I suspect they are mostly texting. But I do hope.

Again, From the Girly Girl

Favorite Chore

   My favorite chore is feeding the chickens for these reasons. The first reason is peace and quiet with the birds chirping and all the fresh air. I feel like I'm in a different world. Also, the second reason I like this chore is the smell of my barn. It has the sweet aroma of fresh straw. And the last and final reason I like it is watching the chickens attack the food. It's very funny to watch the starved chickens attacking the food that you have put in their feeders. My favorite chore is definitely feeding the chickens.

THE END.

Love this kid. Love this farm. Forever and ever. Amen.

Because He Told Me I Could Tell You

Here is one of my favorite 2012 stories yet. It requires a little background information.

Sometimes here on the farm, when we're all settled down and tucked in and drifting off to dreamland, something will wake us with a flinch and a start and we'll remember something that we didn't do before bed.

We didn't close the chicken pen.

We didn't turn off the irrigation pump.

We forgot to adjust some knob or doohickey that desperately needed adjusting.

Those are mostly summer problems, of course. But in winter, sometimes we forget to plug our cell phones in to charge.  That's what happened a few nights ago to poor Matty, who realized about 10 minutes after we were all snuggled up for the night that he had forgotten to plug in his cell phone.

And his cell phone was out in the subaru.

Also, he sleeps in the buff. And when I noticed that his cell phone retrieval plan did not include putting on any sort of clothing, I pointed out that he did, in fact, own a robe and that it was, in fact, only 10 degrees outside.

He just smiled at me and said, "Well sure, but then you couldn't tell all your friends that I went out, naked, into the middle of a cold winter's night to get my phone."

And now I have and you know why I love this guy so much. Never a dull moment!

Winds of Winter (With a Working Video This Time)

You know The Grapes of Wrath? The Great Dust Bowl? I'm just not sure I had a sense of the reality of that until December 31st, when the wind blew in the New Year AND our neighbors' topsoil. I hadn't seen winds like this out here since the day a couple of years ago that I chased the hoophouse around the field until it finally collapsed. Matt was smart enough to open the front door and get this video footage. It's like hurricane footage from the coasts, high plains style.



On this morning, when the wind was the worst, we had a lot of trouble getting our woodstove lit. First, the wind came down the chimney as we were lighting it and blew it out completely, sending so much smoke into the house that it smelled for two days like we were living in a yurt. And all day, even once it was lit, the wind would shriek down in and blow smoke out through the cracks in our glass door.



It did shred the tarp on the hoophouse and scatter a bunch of shingles off of our garage and into the corral. It sent my mom's grill, at her house in Fort Collins, careening down the ramp on her new deck and into the railing at the bottom, busting both the grill and some of the railing wood.



It was a crazy day.



Because I'm a bit superstitious now, I'm just happy that it happened on December 31 and not January 1. That way, I can honestly tell myself that it has more to say about the mess 2011 was than the year 2012 can be.



That's my story and I'm sticking to it.



But I am beginning to wonder if Mother Nature doesn't enjoy freaking people out just a little too much.

Van Vs. Van: A Poem

We recently purchased a Honda Odyssey minivan, used, from my very generous parents. I've had it for 10 days, and I am in love.
It has inspired me to write this poem, which I hope you enjoy.


Dear Scooby van, you lovely jalopy
my ride these past two years
I love you despite
your inexplicably drained batteries
your inability to go faster than 45
your propensity to vapor lock that has left me stranded
on ever so many roads on the hottest summer days
your junkyard jumpseat, only moderately safe for the children
the "love" and "land" on your doors
I have paid my dues with you
and enjoyed the silence of your missing radio
driving you as I have to
teach university classes
drop kids off at school
check out books from the library
(oh and also) deliver vegetables and flowers

You have been only slighty embarrassing to drive for non-farm purposes.
And not at all reliable, for any purpose at all.
And now, I will ever so gladly dump you for
my new love.
Her name might be Ethel.
She is a new-to-me luxurious minivan with

seat warmers
built in DVD player
6 CD changer
leather upholstery
copious cupholders
seating for 8
low mileage

Please, Scooby, don't take it personally.
It's just that in vans, I have come to prefer reliability
and comfort
over personality.
But just in vans.

New Year, New Narrative

A few weeks ago, when it came time to frost and be-sprinkle our annual Christmas sugar cookies, I had a bunch of extra kids in the house. They were neighbors of ours, and it was cold outside, and decorating cookies seemed the best use of an hour or so. Our house is small. When it contains 5 kids, it's smart to find something that keeps them seated (more or less).

They were very enthusiastic, particularly with the frosting. I found myself saying, over and over again, "Don't put the frosting on too thick. Try to spread it a bit thinner."

This had absolutely no effect, so I tried again.

"You shouldn't really just pile it on there like a mountain. Think low to the cookie, like the grass in the pasture."

I made a few more attempts to get them to change tactics, but nothing really worked. The lovely imagery and accompanying practical message was lost on these kids. The frosting was disappearing fast, and we had a ton of cookies left.

So I gave it up. Why bother? Some things, after all, are better in giant doses, and brightly colored cream cheese frosting at Christmastime is one of those things. Maybe it's overwhelmingly sweet, but who cares? Just eat fewer cookies, right? I changed my tune completely and started saying things like, "That's a great lump on your snowman's head! Are Rudolph's knees a little swollen? Delicious!"

This is my lesson for the new year. Embrace the abundance. Even if it's a little overwhelming. Even if it you're pretty sure it isn't good for you. Even if you'd rather not be eating a cookie at all, regardless of the frosting ratio. Just be happy the cookie is there, in that moment, and try to enjoy what parts of it you can.

You hear that 2012? That's how it's going down. I will be my normal, positive, good-natured, only moderately anxious and spazzy self, thank you very much. Go ahead. Pile it on. I'm going to love it all.

2011 got me down. Way down. For a few months there, it very possibly had me headed into a serious depression. I have had depression (like, the treatable with medication variety) before. It's familiar to me. And it didn't make it easier, exactly, to deal with the grasshoppers and the stress and the strange growing pains of the children and the only barely paying the bills and everything else that happened last year.

Luckily, I know what to do. I've been exercising regularly. I've been drinking green juice and smoothies every day. I've been trying to catch up on some sleep and find quiet time to think. My siblings were here for the holidays and it was so wonderful to see them. I've tried to just say no to dark and gloomy thoughts, and move back toward the light.

And it's all working. The dark fog in my brain has lifted. The problems we're having no longer seem insurmountable. They're just problems to solve, like they've always been, like there always will be.

We have a solid plan that we both feel it is possible to pull off without killing ourselves. We're dialing things back quite a bit on the farm. . .looking for fewer CSA members and limiting ourselves to one farmers market. We're attempting to sell some of our land to help offset last year's losses (know anyone that wants a very reasonably priced 5 acre parcel adjacent to a lovely little CSA farm just west of Gill, Colorado? Send them our way!). We're proud of everything we've built out here, and now it's time to figure out how we run the farm, rather than having the farm run us into the ground. I'm going to blog more, since that will help me see the path, and maybe write other things too.

And when things get crazy and I feel strung out. . .when there's just too much frosting on this cookie? I'm going to just smile big and let it run its course and remember to enjoy the ride.

It's almost time to plant new seeds, and planting new seeds is an expression of so much hope and love and faith that it's sort of impossible not to believe that this year really is going to be a good year. Expect to see a lot more happy here on the farm in 2012. A smaller, richer, sweeter little operation that our family really can manage. More flowers, since I missed them like crazy in 2011. More greens, since I miss them like crazy right now. More patience, more perseverance, more faith.

That is the new story. I promise to be better about writing it all down.

Christmas Eve

Whenever I take these unscheduled breaks from blogging, I always miss it a lot. Last night, my brother (who is visiting for Christmas and our Dad's birthday, which is today) and my husband let me know that they missed my blogging too. Matty actually said something like, "Yeah, how am I supposed to know what the hell we're doing if you don't write about it every day." Which was flattering and inspiring and more than a little funny. So, this one's for you, baby.

To be clear, we're having the holidays. They are super fun this year. It's all going well.

The weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas were full of basketball practices and cookie baking and gift making and school Christmas parties, which this year brought up some fairly heavy and not entirely welcome questions of faith, the constitution, community norms, and public schools. But that is a story for another day.

It's been a number of years now that we've tried to make as many homemade gifts as possible, which adds quite a bit of chaos to an already full schedule. We started doing it to save money, of course, but it's really become a way for us to keep our loved ones close in our thoughts during the season, and to try to give things that mean something a little deeper than "I saw this at Target and thought you'd like it."

We get (and try to give) plenty of meaningful storebought gifts every year too. But gifts like this painting that the kids made for Matty tend to endure a bit longer in our hearts, you know?

These were the girl's idea for her cousins. They're based on a rather popular actual toy brand, which we used for inspiration, but were really very simple to make at home. We didn't get as many of them made as we would have liked, but she did make one for her brother, and we were able to give one to each of my sister's little ones. I really like the way these turned out, and might make more just because it's fun and it doesn't take all that long.

Usually on Christmas Eve, we're up until the wee hours frantically trying to finish up gifts and wrap everything and eat the Santa cookies and all that, but this year, we were pretty much all set by the time it hit. And this gave us time to start what I hope will be a new tradition with the kids. . .ice skating on the pond Christmas Eve morning. It was fun. There was some cutthroat hockey happening. The fresh air and sunshine and general good cheer was really the perfect way to prepare for getting dressed up all fancy for dinner at mom and dad's house.

Which we then did, and actually remembered to have someone take a family picture. Later, during the lessons and carols at church, they projected the pictures the Sunday school kids had drawn of the various parts of the Christmas story on the back wall of the sanctuary, and our kids were thrilled to see their drawings of Gabriel and Mary, Jesus in the manger, and the Magi as the corresponding verses were read.

After church, we drove through town looking at the luminarias and listening to solemn carols. The town was snow drifted and lovely, and the stars on the drive home were bright and stark. We read stories by the light of our own advent wreath, let the kids choose Santa's cookies, and could not have had fuller or happier hearts. Which was the perfect way to prepare for Christmas morning. Which is another story. For another post.

Here's Something We Don't Talk About Much

Guts, I mean. There is one picture of real chicken guts below. It's both fascinating and gross. Consider yourself warned.

As planned, we retired our hens last Sunday. It was a bitterly cold and windy day, which made the process less pleasant (if that's possible) than it usually is. And as part of the day, our friend Katie came out to help the girl dissect one of the hens and talk about her various lady hen parts. We're hoping she can use this info for her 4H project this year, but if not, she can certainly use it as an exploration for her possible future career in veterinary medicine. Katie is a fellow farmer and former microbiologist at the poultry lab of the CSU vet school, so she very kindly agreed to come out with a very instructive poster and help us accurately identify all the innards.

I haven't known Katie a long time, but if that's not a real friend, I don't know what is.

Luckily, our chicken was healthy and happy, with organs free of spots and deformities. She was, however, quite egg bound, as though she hadn't laid an egg for weeks and weeks. Because she hadn't. We found all these eggs in the making just hanging out in there, and I thought it was pretty amazing that you could line them all up by size.

In the moment, it didn't occur to me that I should move all the other organs out of the picture to make it more interesting than gross to everyone else, too. My hands were really cold and it was hard to manage the camera and touch the chicken parts at the same time due to my reluctance to get chicken juice on the camera. Hindsight really is 20/20.

Katie did a really good job of forcing our girl to touch all the parts, something she was fairly resistant to at first. "No, really," Katie would say enthusiastically, "Squeeze this. It's a spleen! It's part of the immune system!" And the girl would put a tentative finger on it and smile hesitantly and go back to her note taking.

We did have the hobo fireplace going, which offered a bit of relief during beer breaks. Our friends over at Crabtree Brewery just put some beer in cans for the very first time, and they asked us to take some pictures of ourselves enjoying canned beer during various farm tasks. I'm not sure chicken butchering was exactly what they had in mind, but there's not a whole lot else going on right now. We got a little carried away at one point and propped a severed chicken head up on one of the cans. I won't post that one. But it was funny to everyone that was here on the farm that day.

The dissection project slowed everything down, but the process was simpler than in previous years because our friend Robert also came out with his brand new Whizbang chicken plucker. This was a revelation. It worked so well that I can't imagine ever using the drill plucker we built ourselves again. I mean, it took a 10 minute process down to 1 minute, tops. And he can use the motor on his homemade cider press too.

We haven't known Robert long, but if that's not a good friend, I don't know what is.

At the end of the day, we divided the chickens among everyone who came out and cleaned everything up. That night, the temperatures dropped below zero, and let me tell you how nice it was not to have to worry about waking up to frozen animals on the farm.

It was nice. Very nice.

And Then December Happens

It is beginning to look a lot like Christmas here in Colorado. We've had a few rounds of frigid winter weather, the house is all decorated and cozy, and every night there seems to be a new and exciting holiday themed special on T.V.

November is a calm and quiet month here on the farm. And then December happens, and things get much busier. This weekend, for example, we had the girl's first basketball game, went to see our neighbors perform in their church Christmas pageant, went to church ourselves, and had a chicken retirement party. In between all this was the cooking and cleaning and prep that comes along with having people out on the farm and the unsettling realization that I have to ship packages in one week.

This kind of busy is the kind of busy I love. It really is. It's a cozy, family-friendly, seeing friends sort of busy that feels completely season appropriate. I am determined to really feel all the things I know this season is about. . .you know, peace, and joy, and hope. I am all about those things this Christmas.

Every year since we've moved to the farm, I've wanted to make an advent wreath for the house. This year, I finally pulled it off. I bought a form with fake greens on it at Michaels, cut the fake greens off, and wired real greens and fake berries together to make this.

Matt was going to bring the greens home from the tree nursery, but he forgot, so he stopped at a Wal-mart parking lot on his way home from work and pruned their landscaping to get the raw materials. There's a lot to love about that part of the story, isn't there?

Back before we got all mixed up in this veggie production stuff, when we were just a flower farm, I used to think that making holiday centerpieces and wreaths and such would be a great way to bring in some off-season income. I would like to see the flower farm part of our business grow to be a larger percentage of total business, and this project was a way to explore some of those possibilities. There might be some potential here. I really do enjoy wreath making more than digging parsnips. But that's another story.

Having the wreath in the house has been a lovely way to keep our family focused on what the season is really all about. Each night, we light the candles and talk about hope and peace and faith and gratitude.

It really is a nice sort of busy, December is, and merry. I love it.

Retirement

This Sunday afternoon, we're planning to "retire" our hens. These girls have given us two years of unreliable, inconsistent service as egg layers and egg eaters, and will end their lives as soup broth for us and for the two other families that are coming out to help us butcher them.



Here they are as tiny chicks, back in January of 2010. You'll notice, of course, someone else who was much tinier back then.

Is it weird that I have baby pictures of my hens? It feels weird, but it's completely logical.

These girls have been an important part of our lives, but I can't say I'll be that sorry to see them go. They've taught us a lot about the logistics of managing a larger flock, which is to say they've taught us that what we really want is a small, personal, family sized flock. I don't want the hassle of selling eggs anymore, which was frankly never all that profitable for us. On the other hand, I love watching the antics of these girls as they roam around and scratch and pick at each other all day. . .and I really, really, can't go back to eggs from the store.

So, against Matt's moderate objections, the kids and I are planning for the new chicks this spring. My goal is to turn our smaller, future flock over to the kids, who are now old enough to manage the feed and water and such. It's been fun to talk to them about what types of birds they can get now that we don't have to worry about size and consistency so much. . .we're thinking a mixed breed flock with brown, white and green egg layers in it, just for fun.

This will be the first time in a long time that we won't have any farm animals to take care of, and I'm very much looking forward to a short break from the cares and worries that these animals present. Come spring, I'm sure I'll be ready to get back into it, but until then, I'm going to find a neighbor who has eggs for sale and enjoy my home grown soup.

Just Call Him Crash

The kid looks awful in this picture, doesn't he? We used the headband to keep the ice pack on his most recent minor head injury, which he got last night by cracking his head on the corner of his headboard while trying to get away from his sister, a.k.a. the ticklemonster.

He seemed fine, despite the look of this picture. But this morning, he was up at 5:30 a.m., drenched in sweat and asking for a shower. When Matt put him in the shower, he promptly made himself comfortable on the floor of the tub and fell asleep with the water going.

He ate three bowls of cereal, and fell asleep between each.

Of course, I sent him back to bed instead of out to the bus stop, where he slept for two more hours.

I checked him every 10 minutes to make sure he was still breathing, looked up a lot of panic inducing information on children's head injuries, and started planning to call the doctor if he wasn't totally back to normal when he woke up.

Thankfully, when he finally woke up, he had more color in his cheeks, was no longer excited to be in bed, and asked to go ride his bike at the skate park.

So, apparently, crisis averted. Now I just get a lovely day at home with a cuddly boy.

I can't tell you how relieved I am. This kid and my nerves don't mix all that well, but since a large part of my heart depends on his health and well-being, I'm ever so happy he's back on his feet.

Giving Thanks

Once again, my favorite holiday of the year has come and gone. I really, really love Thanksgiving. I do. Even all the preparations. . .the cleaning and raking leaves and hours spent in the kitchen. . . these give me a lot of time to reflect on our blessings.

The crazy season is over. The restful season has begun.

We still have our farm.

We still love each other.

We get to use our beautiful china set. It has mugs with matching saucers. They are very fancy and I love them.

Our children are healthy and strong and old enough to manage a wheelbarrow.




They are handy with kitchen tools and chicken-like in their willingness to eat the scraps.




A lot of this sort of silliness goes on in our house. It's a happy place to call home.




In keeping with tradition, we cooked for ten times as many guests as we had actual plates on the table. We had one entire pie for each adult and enough leftovers to fill the commercial freezer in the garage. Which helps explain this picture, one I believe should be titled "the aftermath". Food, and Thanksgiving food especially, is my favorite way to love the people I love.

The simple things really are the most essential.

Happy Thanksgiving, all. I'm grateful for your encouragement, your tremendous good humor, and your witty and generous comments.

Forever and ever.

Amen.

Kids Are Dumb

I know that I frequently post sweet pictures like this of my kids and write about how much I love them and how cool they are and generally gush over them like a loving mother should.

I would like to write a post like that today. It would do me good.

However, today, I was ever so happy to see the two jerks I am raising get on the school bus and leave me in peace for 8 hours.

Yes, I just called them names. They don't read the blog. And honestly, this morning, it's less than they probably deserve.

I spent the morning getting two lippy, rude, disrespectful monsters ready for school. It was a miserable task that somehow included arguments over whether it was fair that they had to do any type of basic chores, whether I would let them wear dirty clothes to school (which included, most happily, an accusation that I just don't do their laundry often enough), and when I was going to bake something they actually liked for breakfast.

And then I turned into Rodney Dangerfield and started shaking my fist and muttering about how I get no respect, no respect at all!

Beyond that, once I had them outside, they had a huge screaming fight with each other, which I tried to referee with no success at all. They just. wouldn't. stop. They both got on the bus crying. I'm sure it was mortifying for them. And it served them right.

What was so serious that it could have caused this sibling war? You see, the boy made these finger puppets at school. And the girl had them in her possession. She insisted, screaming nastily with red-faced angry tears, that he gave them to her to "keep them safe". The boy, screaming nastily with red-faced angry tears insists that "she stole them".

Heaven help me.

Trying desperately not to scream nastily with red-faced angry tears, I confiscated said puppets, told them they were being ridiculous, watched the bus drive away with my two very upset children, and came inside to recover from all the unpleasantness.

Not our best morning, this.

I think today after school will make a perfect time to ban T.V. and teach them how to do their own laundry. Like a loving mother should.

Update: Not 10 minutes after I posted this, the girl called from the principal's office to tell me that she had been chosen as the outstanding student of the day for all of her good deeds and sweetness. Who's the jerk now? Why, it's me, Rodney Dangerfield.

A Bag of Fat

We took the pigs to the processor yesterday morning, and it was a remarkably squeal-free experience. The trick, we've learned, is using the old horse trailer as the pig hut. Every night since the weather cooled off, the hogs have gone into the trailer, burrowed down into the warm straw, and dreamed their sweet piggy dreams. Loading the pigs this time around required only that sometime before bedtime Sunday night, one of us went out and closed the back of the trailer. It worked like a charm. Much less stressful than this. Or this.

The concern then was that the trailer isn't exactly road legal. The plates are expired, we have no title, and the turn signals didn't work. This made it just a little bit of a nail biter, but I drove behind him on the back roads for safety, and we got there and back just fine.

Five of the six pigs are spoken for, and the other will be our year's supply of pork. Four of our customers asked about lard, which our processor can't make for us. When I asked her about it, though, she did say that it wasn't too hard to render at home. "If you'd like, we can save you the fat," she offered.

So, along with our chops and roasts and bacon and hams, we'll be getting a bag of pork fat for making lard.

I know what you're thinking. You're wondering why in the world anyone would want to make lard, which has had a terrible reputation since the world went crazy about fat. In truth, lard from pastured pigs is full of vitamin D and good fats, like avocados, and is actually good for you.

So, I found this site, and will be boiling up my bag of fat for holiday pie crusts and such at the first opportunity.

It's all very exciting.

Temporary Results

This is what the kids' shared room has looked like for the past year and a half. Stuffed full of hot wheels cars and art supplies and books, any tiny disorganization would throw it into such chaos that they really could not clean it themselves, and then it overflowed into the hallway and the living room and other common living spaces of the house.

When we bought this house and the kids were tiny people and we put them together in the smallest bedroom we had, we knew we couldn't keep things that way forever. We had big plans, even then, for when the kids outgrew the shared room.

There is room, upstairs, for a master bedroom. There is the cool feature of the slanted old chimney, from some long ago torn out fireplace, to work with. We have always envisioned a big dormer window in the roof and, you know, our own bathroom up there. As you can see, that is no small project. It involves reinforcing floor beams and roof joists. And building a staircase. More than a can of paint, anyway.

We have other plans, too. I'd like to push out the back wall of the house and dig a bigger basement underneath, to add working space to the kitchen/dining room, turn our current bedroom into a library/den, and give us a less creepy place to hang out during the multiple tornado warnings we have here in the spring.

We have a lot of books. Most of them are still in boxes in the barn. It makes me so sad.

I'm perfectly happy that we can't afford to do all that stuff right now. It sounds exhausting. I am content in this moment to focus on smaller projects that make a big difference. Moving the kids was one such project.

This is our former office, now known as the girl's room. She and I are spending a lot of time looking at pictures of bedrooms and talking about paint shades and curtain fabric and though I would have liked to have painted it when we moved her, I'm happy to put that off as well.

The girl is over the moon about this room. Most of her quilts had been stored in closets since we moved out of our old house, so she didn't know she had all these wonderful cozy things to work with. Good thing she had some, too, because hers is the coldest room in the house.

She got the rocking chair that no longer fit in the living room and the bookshelf from the old bedroom. She got privacy, her own desk, and room to do her crafts. She needs a dresser that fits in her closet, and then we will be all set.

The boy stayed in the old room, and had a lot more trepidation about the process. He was worried it would be scary to sleep alone in there. He loves his sister and didn't want her to leave him. It's hard on him that she's growing up sooner than he is, and he doesn't like change very much at all. There were some tears.

However, he was happy to get the special grown up desk. He is under strict orders not to use markers or paint or stickers on that desk. We'll see how well he does. He turned the mail slot features into parking garages for his favorite hot wheels. He likes the space in the middle of the floor to set up train and car tracks that he doesn't have to take down every day. He was the first to close his door and tell us, delighted, that we were not allowed in.

He got the bookshelf I was using in the hallway and the CD player. I was pretty shocked to realize that their book collection filled an entire second bookshelf. No wonder their room was a mess all the time. Since I won't allow him to use the fancy desk for crafts and coloring, he kept the kids table for such projects.

Like Charlie Brown's friend Linus, our boy loves soft, fleecy blankets, and because of that, he has had most of his out of storage and in bed with him since birth. But I did dig up some extras to give him a cozy rocker to read in also.

He wants a midnight blue accent wall with a glow in the dark moon and stars on it. I told him that sounded fine to me.

I really thought that giving the kids their own rooms would make the house less comfortable. I thought the office stuff would crowd the living room too much and that I would wish the computer was still in a room away from the bustle and chaos of our only living area.

In fact, the computer stuff takes up far less room than I thought, and if I want to use a computer away from the noise of the wii or the T.V., our new wifi router makes it possible for me to take my seldom used laptop into the kitchen or our bedroom and get some peace and quiet that way.

The living room is now less crowded, because the kids are no longer allowed to bring their stuff out here. Without the clutter of My Little Ponies and Thomas tracks, the room is much more comfortable. The kids, still enthralled with the newness of it all, have kept their rooms clean and beds made for three days straight now. This might be some kind of record.

These small changes have made everything easier here on the little farm. Thank goodness.

Project: Child Relocation

Over the past few weeks, we have slowly been cleaning things out and giving things away and reorganizing what is left to prepare for the big job of giving the kids their own rooms.

While the power was out, I reorganized all our bedroom closets and linen drawers.

Last weekend we moved our office into our living room. Mostly.

I thought that all that prep work would help us avoid the house looking like this when we did the final move.

I was so wrong about that.

I mean, I guess it could have been worse, but I'm not sure how.

We can't walk in the living room, but we also are having trouble negotiating the kitchen and the hallway.

The idea, originally, was to paint and decorate these rooms before we moved all the furniture into them. We've scrapped that idea for a number of reasons. It is most important that we get the kids out of each other's hair. We are hoping that will make them more pleasant to live with.

Matt is always thrilled to help out with home projects like this. Disassembling furniture is so obviously one of his favorite tasks.

We're coming down the home stretch. . .I'll post some pictures when we get the rooms all set up.

Wait a Stinkin' Minute. . .

I was a little panicked earlier today. About a lot of things, because that's who I am these days, but mostly about the fact that at the girl's last 4H meeting we were given two tubs of cookie dough that we are supposed to bake in time for tonight because tonight all the 4H moms are meeting at the leader's house to assemble plates of cookies for sale at the swap meet at the school on Saturday morning.

I forgot to bake the cookies yesterday. Despite all my efforts, I seem to be always doing things last minute. I don't actually like to live this way. Don't be like me.

So I was rushing home thinking I'd get started right away when it occurred to me.

Hey. . .

Wait one stinkin' minute. . .

Who is the 4Her in this family? Is she not capable of baking premixed cookie dough?

Of course she is. She was, in fact, thrilled to have such a project handed to her when she got home from school. She was over the moon and sang the entire time she baked and has now gotten all the cookies baked with a sweet enthusiasm I could not even have begun to muster.

Though the cookie assembly doesn't start until 7:00 which is almost her bedtime, and though I am not 100% sure the kids were invited to the assembly party, I am going to take her with me so she can help.

I don't like how mom-dependent 4H is; however, I realized today that I am an accomplice to that madness.

I am going to stop that now. For my own sake and for that of my sweet girl who loves to do things for herself.

I clearly have my fingers in too many pies.

I do not need anything to aid me to keep my supremacy (this is a super awkward grammatical construction, by the way).

If anything, I need help relinquishing control.

Volunteering

I have always heard that in volunteering, you get more than you give. Today I am going to tell you a story about how that is true.

I volunteer at the kids' school for a lot of reasons. Mostly, I like to spy on my rugrats. Also, I am not a PTA kind of mom and I feel that classroom volunteering is the least I can do to make up for not ever being a part of that organization. A little bit I do it because it is something moms are supposed to do.

I do in fact get a lot more out of it than I put into it.

First, getting to help kids learn is a tremendous privilege. I miss teaching kids. And it's really fun to be part of the chaos that is first grade writing class. I dig it.

Second, my kids appreciate it. It makes them feel loved and special. I hope they never grow out of that.

Third is what happened today when I went to the boy's class for the first time this year. I could live on what happened today when I went to the boy's class for about 10 years. It's all I need.

Today the boy's teacher asked him to introduce me to the class. He did. She asked him what I did. He said I taught at a school. And then she asked him if he could tell the class anything else about me that would help them get to know me.

"You know, does she have any hobbies? Is she the best at anything? Like cooking, or something?"

And the boy thought for a minute.

And then he batted his beautiful long eyelashes at me, smiled shyly, and said, "Loving me."

And I melted into a big pile of smiles and was no help to anyone at all for the rest of the day.

What a happy day.

A Season For Everything. . .

There is a season for young girls who have just finished a science unit on bats to decide to be one for Halloween. In this same season, she will insist on drawing the fingers on her bat wings according to her labeled diagram from said science project and swoop around the house declaring that she is "a furry flying mammal!"

There is a season for young boys who want to be professional cyclists to decide to ride for a favorite team on Halloween. In this same season, he will practice his triumphant gestures for when he grows up and "Levi Leipheimer is ready to retire and I can take his place as the winner on Team Radio Shack."

There is a season for mothers to work hard to resist giant bowls of candy like this one. That season is now. It is a tough job, this mothering gig.

In this same season, said mother will give up her home office and move her computer into the living room because her children are growing up too fast and really need their own rooms.

In this same season, said mother will have to clean out everyone's closet and filing cabinets and reorganize her entire tiny home, which is a nice reminder that having a tiny home is a wonderful thing, as there really aren't all that many closets and filing cabinets and such to reorganize.

Cleaning and home improvement season has arrived on the farm. It's my favorite time of year.