Leaves and family time, including a WEDDING!

Thanks to the chance of icy roads today, we vacated PA a day early in favor of greater ease in our return trip home. It was not that we were eager to leave - Terah in fact wanted to stay at least 80 days - but a buffer day between a trip a way and the start of a work week is always a good idea! It's a rainy cool day so it has nicely limited our options, which we often need help with. It didn't keep me from enjoying a walk with a friend this morning and another coming up shortly.

Prior to our travels to be with family these last 3 days, we got in some really good family leaf raking time - complete with leaf pile fun for the whole family AND some good fun for the piglets too. I put two videos at the end of this post: Kali needed an outlet for her creativity (now that the play is over) and so was coming up with a new technique for raking. Even Terah agreed that it is not nearly as efficient. But it was good for some laughs! And under some of the leaf piles was quite the accumulation of acorns so we raked up sheet-fulls for the pigs. They LOVED rooting through the pile to find the tasty morsels. But the piglets added a new twist to the whole thing. They loved both the acorns AND the leaf pile so would both play and eat. Very very cute! In this picture, it appears that the mama pig is almost smiling her thanks for the snack.

It's December now and we normally like to wrap up our leaf raking by this time, but we aren't where we want to be just yet. It's a pretty large pile but we are still hoping to get some more loads to add to it before we call it good for the year. So far we have never had too many... At the same time, we are eager to get to some of the fall/winter routine tasks, as well as see if we can't make any progress on the longer term projects that normally have to wait for the off season to get our attention. As I work on this, Jason is starting some sketching for the subterranean greenhouse we hope to put on the front of the house this winter. We successfully transported all the glass panes from his parents' home back to Tangly Woods so that is one step in the right direction!

Our girls got to enjoy an extra day on PA this time around as they took a road trip on Wednesday with their aunt Emily and cousin Ivy. It was an uneventful and fun trip for all - it is obvious that Terah is a much better traveler when her parents are not with her! Jason and I stayed back to come up the following day - both to enjoy some time just the two of us and to get things ready to be gone for a few days. It ended up being a rather chaotic partial day with one person coming to buy some laying hens and borrow a coop, a friend coming to work on some of the hog butchering set up and then another friend coming to buy our boar.

So we only have female pigs for now - we still don't know if our large red pig is pregnant but we decided that if they hadn't been able to figure it out by now it was probably not going to happen. And we were happy to simplify things a bit for the winter (not to mention that the boar was not always being very kind to the female at feeding times). 

By Thursday morning, we were good and ready for some relaxation after the excitement leading up to the trip. It was a really good time with family. For me this year there was a growing discomfort with the notion of the holiday "Thanksgiving" and what that means for many people in this country. I was grateful that at our main feast as a family we were able to take some time to acknowledge the history of oppression of indigenous persons (that is still going on) and to name and share a little about the indigenous group that lived in Jason's home area first. That felt like a small but important first step! I was grateful for good conversation about so many meaningful and important things. In addition, there was lots of music, food, laughter, game playing (Boggle!), walks, AND a wedding! 

As we were getting ready for the annual "Sing for your Supper" event at Jason's aunt's home, I asked Jason if he thought I should take our camera. We both decided that others would take care of that and we shouldn't bother. I, in general, do a horrible time of remembering to take photos at Benner gatherings - or being inspired enough to go up and root through our things to find the camera! So we got to the event only to be surprised that Jason's brother and fiance were getting married right then and there. Only a very few were in on the surprise, and the rest of us took a few minutes for it to sink in what was happening. And then we were elated!! It will be hard to top that in future years - what a party and lovely time of celebration!!

Well, time to head out on a walk! Here's the piglets enjoying leaves and acorns:


And Kali "raking":