Monday, October 23 - As mentioned the last time I wrote, Jason was in DC all day for a grain conference. It's always hard to tell, but he felt like he made some good connections and there was no doubt that he ate scrumptious pizza. We'll be trying dill pickles ON our pizza next time we make it (we've only enjoyed them cold to the side historically).He missed the historic night on the soccer fields with the "lighting of the lights" for the first time. After many speeches and expressions of gratitude to all who made the project possible, Terah got to play her final game under the bright lights, while Kali coached and the rest of us shivered on the sidelines! Emily, Jonas and Ivy joined to watch the final games, as did our very own little red riding hood. 😉
Tuesday, October 24 - Bear got to practice being a wake up buddy for the younger girls this morning. It's really hard to not wake up happy when this cutie pie lands in your bed! I got to enjoy some good snuggles too during the day and even made some progress on the novel I had gotten out of the library.
While some of us were soaking in good baby snuggles, Jason got all the cornstalks from the patches and worked on getting the husks off the black walnuts we had collected (much scratchier, messier and less cuddly!).
Wednesday, October 25 - The girls enjoyed a long and full day in DC with Emily and Ivy!
This was the only photo I took that entire day!
Thursday, October 26 - Jason worked hard prepping for garlic planting, while the gals hung with Luca and puttered inside. It was super exciting to welcome my dear college friend, Rachel, to Tangly Woods for a 2-week stay and I didn't even take a photo of our first meal together. I did, however, document the apple dumplings Mom made for our dessert that evening!
Friday, October 27 - I don't seem to tire of sky pictures do I?! What a lovely greeting at the start of the day! I scurried off to town for a morning with Bear, made even sweeter with a long walk that Bear and I went on with another one of my doula babies and her mama, now also a dear friend! Then after blitzing through the Friday errands, I landed home to get in on the garlic planting. A note for the farm journal: we soaked the cloves this year in a neem oil solution with the HOPES that it might cut down on our overwhelming population of garlic mites. The beautiful bulbs of garlic harvested this summer are breaking down so quickly due to those little buggers!!
Saturday, October 28 - This was a full farm day for me and Jason - outside together but working on different projects. There are no photos of me cleaning out a number of chicken coops, stirring existing bedding in others and then giving all fresh bedding. It's such unpleasant AND highly satisfying work! I put the chicken litter on next year's cooking tomato beds. Once I got all the straw out of the carbonaceous materials shed, Jason could then work on putting a rock wall on the second side and leveling it up with soil (he did the first half last year and now has the second half done!). Oh, we also harvested the extent of our carrots for the year, Jason got the seed onions planted, and then we topped off the day with an evening with Jonathan, Christen and Luca. While the dark each evening comes so fast now and sometimes we are scrambling to finish up what we thought we could do while the light lasted, I am really enjoying the longer evenings!
Sunday, October 29 - Jason, Kali and I were all successful donating blood together. Yay! So we had our own little mini blood drive for Nora... Maybe by next June we'll feel ready to try a group drive again - I missed it this anniversary of her birth more than I have in recent years!
I had my work/play cut out for me in the afternoon. We had stuffed cabbage and broccoli in our upstairs fridge and in the process must have somehow flipped the fridge to its freezer function. So 3 massive heads of cabbage had frozen, along with milk and beets and broccoli. So I made a HUGE vat of cabbage barley soup, while getting a double batch of potato donuts rolling. It all worked out really well in that Rachel and I soaked up every bit of my chopping/cooking/baking time with conversations that always felt too short but delightfully deep and real! And then Jonathan, Christen and Luca came over for donuts and lingered for the evening and helping us make a dent in the soup. Rachel and Luca got to experience eating donuts off strings for the first time. Luca didn't really understand the no hands part, but gave it a good faith effort before determining that he knew a much more reasonable way to eat a donut! I think I'm quoting Rachel correctly as saying, "I think I might hate this." But she was laughing while she said it! 
Monday, October 30 - I knew Nora's birthday was going to be a busy day. And by the end of the day I felt pretty emotional about how full of a day it had been. It would have been her 16th birthday. I felt SO grateful that Jason and I got up early (still dark when we left home) and started the day with a hike to Hensley's Pond just the two of us. I needed that for sure! Once we got back home, I neglected to take any pictures of apple sauce making or beet canning. However, I did remember to take a picture of the Dutch Blitz cards coming out for the first time...but NOT the last!
Tuesday, October 31 - I have a lot of help on "Bear care days" at Tangly Woods. I was not expecting to get to help Jason much with disassembling the drying racks and moving all the squashes to the root cellar (after which we could returned the use of the garage space to my parents). But, Alida's got quite the touch with little ones. I was in the kitchen while she held him, and a few minutes later I came out to behold this precious site! So I had two hands free to help with the big summer to fall transition in various spaces. The root cellar is probably at its peak right now with all the squashes and potatoes and the remaining garlic and onions tucked in there. Jason and I also had time one evening to do some pretty massive clearing out of old stuff and shuffling things around to make the space much easier to navigate. It's never easy for me to give up baby-holding time, but it's a bit easier when I get to watch my daughters loving on little people!
Jason also established a playground for our chickens that day. Just kidding! He chipped all the cornstalks and then had to cart up crates to surround the bedding for drying so the chickens didn't redistribute it hither and yon. They found it immediately and loved the spot!
In the evening while Rachel, Jason and I went next door for dinner, the girls went trick-or-treating in Staunton with Emily, Jonas and Ivy. They got back in time to join us for just a bit and for Luca to try on Kali's cat ears!
Wednesday, November 1 - It was moving day for the piggies! They are now situated in their more posh and roomy winter quarters. With them out of the nut grove, Jason got in the FINAL cover crops of the year - rye in old pig paddocks in the nut grove! I am glad we get to move the pigs around for most of the year, but there is something kinda nice about the ease of feeding them in this larger area and seeing them more regularly since they are more right in the middle of things now. It was special to have Rachel present to join us for our November 1 family photo in Nora's garden!
Thursday, November 2 - I ended the first with a doula appointment and had another one today. I'll be entering a season of being "on call" again from a week or so from now until about February. I'm enjoying so much accompanying 3 families as they anticipate their family expanding by 1 little human in the next month or two!
This day included time with Luca, which means moments like this where my heart feels like it will burst from cuteness overload!
It also included preparations for the weekend away we would be departing for the next day (which means getting the house and farm ready to turn over to others for a few days - much less daunting than the two weeks in August, but still a case of "detail-overload"). In the evening, Alida invented taco ice cream cones which seemed like a great way to minimize taco explosions out whatever end you aren't eating from!
Friday, November 3 - Monday, November 6 - These few days really should have their very own blogpost but I've only got one in me this evening! Friday afternoon, we headed to Pocahontas State Park (VA) for the annual Showalter-Godshall-Myers-Benner weekend - a delightful few days with three generations of friends! I soaked in a few hours with Bear Friday morning before doing the farm errands as fast as I could and racing home to unload and join the hubbub of final preparations for leaving. The younger gals were happy to leave early with Grandma and Grandpa, allowing Jason and I to enjoy the trip with just Kali once we tied up all the loose ends! We were on to help with meals Friday evening and Saturday brunch and so I didn't feel like I fully unwound until sometime on Saturday!
I just perused HUNDREDS of photos of our 2+ days together and have no idea how to pick just a few. Here's a few and after uploading them I realized that I didn't pick any of us eating and that is NOT because we didn't eat! We enjoyed so many delicious beautiful meals and fun interesting (and in some cases VERY chewy) snacks. But I guess the games and hikes and smiling faces--not to mention naps!--stuck out to me more! Here's our crew and where we stayed!
Now that kids are older they still need to be refueled regularly, but otherwise they need very little supervision or assistance from us to have a grand time together. Thankfully they all still do like to spend time with us too, so we enjoyed a lot of game playing and puzzling together!
Jason got to have some sidebar conversations with Tim about our pavilion plans!
Chats or bird watching or reading from the porch looking down on the river were popular. I preferred cozying up on the lawn! I tried to read but that only lasted for a bit until sleep overtook me!
One night the 9 of us adults hid around the dark house and when the kids found us we all had treats for them. Jason won the prize for the best hiding place!
We could not have asked for more glorious weather - not too hot, not too cold, just right!!
Tuesday, November 7 - It wasn't easy to leave the time away with friends and away from the project list and daily responsibilities! And I planned a doozy for the day following with an afternoon of dentist appointments for cleaning for all of us, sealants for Alida and I had a small chipped tooth that just ended up needing to be smoothed. We all did just fine, but I was pining for the forest!! At least we had an evening with Jonathan, Christen and Luca to look forward to. And our appointments went quickly enough for there to be time before dark for Alida and Terah to get a wood splitting lesson!
Wednesday, November 8 - Jason's week was a mix of fence clearing work and grant writing work! Today marked the day Jason wrapped up the first ever grant for agricultural work at Tangly Woods. It has been submitted and now we wait!
I got to be with Bear for over 10 hours this day! He joined me and Rachel for a lovely walk, which he sacked out for all of! He entertained us with his babbling. And it worked out for us to then enjoy having his parents (who also happen to be our dear, dear friends and not just Bear's parents!) come and linger for dinner with us.
Thursday, November 9 - This was a day to soak in some last connection time with Rachel while having Luca over to play for a few hours and puttering in the kitchen prepping chex mix, caramel corn, cookies and dinner for our time with friends.. When Rachel planned her trip, two weeks sounded like it would give us plenty of time for all the catching up we could possibly dream of! We fit so much into pockets of time here and there - over meals, on walks, in the kitchen, etc... But it seems there is no end to the places our conversations could take us. It was so special to have this time together and to renourish the deep roots of our friendship, which has been a part of my life for over half of it now!Our plan had been to say goodbye Thursday and take off for WV for 3 nights with friends (3 nights for 3 seasons of Ted Lasso)! Sadly, Alena and Andrew needed to head to PA for the memorial service for a friend's child and so we shifted our time to Tangly Woods and shortened it. We kicked off the time Thursday evening with dinner, the first handful of episodes from Season 1, and Smiley's ice cream before we crashed.
Friday, November 10 - This day is pretty easy to sum up: brunch, Ted Lasso, snacks, Ted Lasso, ping pong, snacks, Ted Lasso, soccer, chicken visiting, snacks, Ted Lasso, supper, and Ransom Notes with laughter and good conversation sprinkled throughout. It went way too fast, but we have our next time together on the books.... It was a delightful day! I love Ted Lasso just as much the second time around!!
It was bittersweet to have the day start with our final time with Rachel. But mostly sweet in that now it feels like someone who was mostly my friend and Jason's to some extent now has a relationship with each of us and I think we are both committed to it not being over a decade until we see each other again this go around!!
Saturday, November 11 - And here were are at today! Since we weren't in WV, it provided a necessary opening for me to dedicate much of the day to helping Alida go through her clothes. I took no photos for relatively obvious reasons, but can report success (other than the headache I had by the end of it). It was fun and tedious and tiring and kind of mind blowing to absorb how fast some kiddos grow!! So now it's nearing 10 p.m and we've got a family meeting to finish so I need to sign off!
If you have gotten to the end of this post and you are not my mother, you deserve some kind of medal!
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