Aunt Eleanor's spring Tangly Woods visit

As my Great Aunt Eleanor left today, she said, "I'll be back!" YAY!! I think she added that she would be back whether invited or not, which would fit her spunky fun self! I, of course, reassured her that she is already invited! After a long break in visits from September 2019 until August 2022, we are attempting to make up for lost time. Her other 3 stints with us were all late summer/fall (Aug/Sept/Oct), so it was a treat for us to welcome her to the beauty of springtime at Tangly Woods! There wasn't much to keep her hands busy at this time of year, so she kept her mind busy by reading, reading and reading instead.

Recently on one of the many podcasts that I enjoy as I go about my other daily tasks, they were talking about birthdays and asking people how old they are. They offered a suggested reframe of the question that I really liked. How does it change the feel of the question if rather than asking someone, "How old are you?," we ask them, "How long have you lived?" Aunt Eleanor has lived for 97 years and she doesn't miss much!

Our full week together was cut short by us trying to discern when it was safe for her to join us at Tangly Woods, with lingering cold symptoms still showing up here and there. We finally bailed on a "normal visit" as the snot and coughing didn't seem to want to disappear rapidly, and we experimented with a different kind of visit (us masking during any time together inside and doing as much as we could together outside). I could not feel more grateful for the weather than allowed us to enjoy all our meals together outside, either on my parents' deck under the shade canopy or around the fire ring. Sometimes when it is "just us," I bail on the tiny bit of extra effort to move our meals outside. But I'm always glad when we do it, so the week provided us with good opportunities to feast our eyes on redbuds and mountain views while filling our bellies!

Our night around the fire was meaningful for a few reasons. First, for me it started with a very satisfying ritual of ripping up one of the worst children's books I've ever read and turning it into our kindling! It came by way of a library that was getting rid of several boxes of books, but it was not one that was gonna keep circulating any longer. It was good to watch it burn!

Additionally, the day marked what would have been my Great Uncle Joe's 99th birthday (Eleanor's husband), as well as my Grandpa Bucher's 104th birthday. So we enjoyed dinner around the fire ring and Aunt Eleanor shared some of her memories. One of my favorite images is imagining Joe and Eleanor riding home together from Elkins, WV sharing a butter pecan ice cream cone! 

She joined us for a horse riding lesson yesterday at our neighbors (she chose to watch not ride!). 

I felt a bit more distracted on this visit than sometimes - both with the increase in activity of our household (soccer and ushering were happening this week) and just doing our best to provide a safe (as germ free as possible) space for her to enjoy visiting in. It's on busy weeks like this that I'm most drawn to a gift I see in her (probably more of a skill that maybe wasn't as richly honed when she was the busy mom of 8?!). Her powers of observation always amazes me - this time it was in scouting out a little tiny red bud tree that Jason dug for her to take along. I wonder if there are ways I can practice (small doable steps) taking notice more at all the things around me - does it require slowing down (probably, yes). What about listening to podcasts? Are they too much of a distraction? Hopefully it's not an all or nothing thing, but I do think of it as a practice or skill, and one I could benefit from spending more moments engaging in. I feel like every time I'm with my Aunt Eleanor, I notice more things because she inspires me to pay attention and soak in the life and beauty all around me. It's such a gift!

Well, we enjoyed our burgers over the fire the other night so much that we are doing it all over again tonight with Jonathan, Christen and Luca. So I'll close this for now with a few more of my favorite moments from our time together! 

There was one day all five of us were gonna be away for a few hours. I had Aunt Eleanor promise me she wouldn't try climbing any trees or anything and she reassured me that she'd be just fine. When I went up to check on her and say goodbye, she was snoozing in the sunshine on the deck. 

While Kali and Alida were in Staunton ushering, Terah hung out and learned some new fun folding techniques from Eleanor. We'll see how long it takes my parents to find all the additions to their house when they arrive home from Florida tomorrow!

We always park a walking stick at each door to accompany her on her meanders around the farm. I love hearing about or seeing what she finds on her walk abouts!

Another favorite spot!

I found some black walnuts in the freezer so I could make a favorite snack - homemade caramel corn!

Her visits to Tangly Woods usually include some kind of first. I think this time it was playing with the marble racer. :) Oh, and eating stinging nettle rolls and biscuits (I was trying to give her a new more positive association with stinging nettles than her former one of being swatted with them by her brother). 

Kali stepped in for a little tech support at one point!

Alida with some puzzling help!

How could this not be a favorite?! Glad we had freshly hatched chicks to welcome her.

It always warm my heart when I peek outside from our place and see Aunt Eleanor comfy in a rocking chair on the deck - often reading one of Mom's photo books or our blog book. I gotta keep blogging so there is fresh reading material for her visits! And even if we didn't get to do quite as much with each other this time, she got to read all about the activities that keep us hopping through the seasons. Maybe next time there will be beans to snip or tomatoes to chop. I also dream of a winter visit where we are all moving more slowly, with longer evenings by the wood stove! Spring, summer, fall or winter, we consider each of our times together a gift!

Oh, and then it's spring on the farm...

We'll top off this record-blog-posts-in-one-day with some spring home, garden and animal updates! Right now we are very much enjoying having my Great Aunt Eleanor with us while my parents are in Florida. She always inspires me to keep writing this blog, because she spends a lot of her visit reading through the printed books of it. And she also sees our place through eyes of deep admiration and gratitude and awe,  soaking in the beauty of this place in a way that makes me yearn to do the same! More on her visit in a later post!

Potatoes are IN (and lots of rocks OUT)!!! Jason once again did most of the heavy lift on this, but I did help for the first time loosening all the soil for the trenching. Then he did ALL the trenching (3 rows 96 ft long)! Terah was more or less down for the count on the potato planting day, so she only managed to pop a few taters in the ground. Kali, Alida and I got most of the biochar seam in and planted potatoes with Jason coming behind and covering them. Now we wait for them to sprout. With potatoes, I particularly miss having rituals, songs or cultural traditions for wishing plants well on their journey in our soils. The process of planting potatoes gets easier every year as our soils improve. That said, to date we keep netting healthier but less potatoes. We are aiming for healthier potatoes and more of them. We do love white potatoes very much. It may be that one more poor harvest will have us looking for a new seed supply of a different variety.

We've also done a lot of path mulching and some weeding (plenty more of both to do!). I love the contrasting browns and greens of the growing crops and the mulched paths. I've done a bunch of dandelion runs for the pigs and they love when I show up with a bucket of them to munch! The other day I found one chewing on the plant with just the yellow flower sticking out the side of his mouth! 

Once we had all the rest of the biochar from the pit distributed (on barley and also raspberry beds), I had the fun job of filling the pit back up with the duff from underneath the last brush pile we made char from. It's a very satisfying job and I did it all. by. myself! Then Jason came along and emptied the compost coop, shoveling load after load on top of the duff and filled it to the top. I think he also found that job satisfying, but I would not say it was as easy as mine! I then came behind him and stirred the remains of the coop and had a new experience to me. I felt a bit like an accomplice to murder as I stirred the litter There were SO SO many mouse nests/homes all throughout. As they went scurrying, the chickens were ready for a hearty snack. I was glad for my boots as mice of all sizes ran around me. It was a wild time! I wasn't too surprised that they had some feed left over the next morning (some of them were full of mice).

On the animal front, the piggies are doing great together. I felt such relief the day I found them napping outside together with the two male pigs sandwich hugging the new little gal. Since they were adjusted and getting along, we were able to move them into their smaller moveable pen and get them started in the nut grove. Getting them into that pen proved difficult as the one pig decided he did not trust the new pen even after the other two were happily situated. Jason and I tried everything we could think of. Corn didn't coax him. Chicken scraps didn't coax him. Slop didn't coax him. Bread didn't coax him. Dry chicken feed didn't coax him. A back scratch didn't make him feel safe enough to cross. We finally gave up and went on with our day leaving the door between open in hopes he would cross on his own. It was Alida who got him into the pen! 

There are more chicks hatched and many more coming! The house ones got moved out soon after April 1 since they had proved themselves extra spunky and were already starting to get up on the sides and peer over the edge at what was outside the confines of their plastic swimming pool home. Alida and Terah wanted to get up early to see the chicks wake and so they did that before Alida and I moved them out. The day we moved them out we had a VERY sad happening - they were sitting on the electric cord for their brooder and that wiggled their door open just enough to let a snake in (Jason is not sure how many it had eaten before he found it). I can't help but wonder if that is why those chickies have been so skittish ever since. :(  One a more joyful note, I'm loving watching the first brood of mama and her 18 chicks range. And now there's another mama with tiny new ones getting settled into the compost coop. Chickens chores are slowly getting longer and slightly more complicated! That's spring for ya!!

We are still swimming (not quite drowning) in eggs! And we have SO many glorious nettles and perennial onions. So what could be better than perennial onion eggs on a nettle greens roll. A very Tangly Woods taste of spring!

There will be many more things to harvest once we start putting out all the plants growing on the seed shelf. It is the promise of many delicious veggies to come. 

Well it's late and I'm out of steam! So I'll close with some of my favorite yard/mountain/sky scenes and a favorite family picnic selfie. Bye for now!