Celebrations, gatherings, gardens and more...

I really need help with blog post titles! I'm scraping the bottom of the barrel here to not just have a list of descriptors of a few of things I'll include here. My creativity is also not that high as I'm TIRED! I'm once again sitting with the heating pad on my back as I've been working it hard this weekend - thankfully it is not hurting, just tired. So I'm trying to be extra nice to it. 

Jason and Kali took part in a weekend coppice agroforestry class hosted by Silver Run Forest Farm and I provided the lunches. It's been awhile since I cooked that much food! There were about 40 in attendance for Saturday and Sunday lunch. I'm so glad there are leftovers as I think it will be a few days before I feel like chopping, kneading, shaping or cooking anything. That said, it was fun and I felt like I got back into the groove partway through. I was going to have to cart all the food both days but the weather today (snow/cold!) made us to decide to offer our home and woodstove for the participants to come out of the weather and dine in. We were already the only people masking, so we just masked while we hosted and then aired out the house following. Since Jason has his big chicken breeding workshop this coming weekend, we are doing all we can to all stay healthy to not mess up those plans!

I'm thinking a lot these days about the concept of "invisible labor" and how so many of the things that now fill my days often fit into those categories - the things that go into making a home that often go unnoticed. And, at least between me and Jason, we are trying to make more of those things visible. I've been thinking how much neither Jason or I find a lot of meaning in money as a way of showing value for something, and yet it is the main option at our fingertips under capitalism - the worth of something is given a $ number and then if you want that thing you pay for it and the exchange happens. If you take money out of it, then we have to find other ways of expressing value. It was meaningful for me to contribute my cooking skills to this gathering and mostly was a lot of fun. I'm still mulling over how, without a money exchange, we make those kinds of contributions feel like they really are an important part of the work. 

So it's Sunday evening and Kali and Jason have gotten lots of human interaction and input and exposure to very cold weather the last few days and I've had an overload of cooking and baking. So I think pretty soon we'll be gathering for some Dickinson to close out this weekend. But first let me back up and share a few other snippets.

We finally got to celebrate my mom's 78th birthday with her. It was a very fun evening! While we tried to take credit for the fireworks over the mountain, we were all very surprised when Alida spotted them. So the resort put on a little birthday fireworks show for us to top off the evening! And then on Friday we got to celebrate her 20th! We couldn't be more grateful for the 20 years we have had together, that we weren't sure we would have when she had her stem cell transplant two decades ago. After my parents went to bed on the eve of her transplant birthday, we decorated their in-law quarters' door. Mom showed off her 20 year old agility by going in and out by scooting across the floor for a few hours before she busted through!

Last weekend we got in on the very last day of ice skating at Generations Park in Bridgewater. The girls had been eager to go and we finally got around to getting tickets only to bump back going due to my back tweak and really warm weather. Even after some cooler nights, we were still skating through puddles. Emily and Ivy met us there for the fun. While we love our family time at home, it was really enjoyable to have an evening out together, topped off by a stop at Smiley's Ice Cream on the way home (it just happens that the most convenient route home goes right past it!!). 

It's funny how certain activities make you feel like you are a different age than you are. Something about ice skating on a rink, especially while holding Jason's hand, takes me back to middle school rollerskating nights. I'm glad I don't have to be nervous anymore about whether I'll have someone to skate with for the couple's skates!

The family outing was great and probably more of a highlight for our kids than our family work day this week. But for me there is almost nothing I enjoy more than a day where we are at home the whole day working together in the gardens. This week we got to enjoy the year's first of (hopefully) many such days. We weeded and mulched the garlic and that went so well that we got all the barley mulched with leaves as well. Not every minute of the entire day went perfectly, but overall attitudes were pleasant, weather was gorgeous, we played some word games in the patch, we worked together well and got more done that we had even set out to accomplish. And the ducks even joined the work day - they are starting to lay a few eggs now, but for a while it has felt like they haven't exactly been "earning their keep." Seeing them go after bugs (hopefully LOTS of slugs) under the leaves was thrilling!

The weather is waffling considerably these days - from warm springlike days, to bone chilling damp cold wintery days. Today I picked daffodils from Nora's garden and shook the snow off of them. Here's a few pictures from outside today:

I noticed the violets recently and so it's time to start adding them to our salads!

The forsythia is nearly in full bloom and Luca and I were enjoying it together the other day. Terah said recently that Tuesday and Thursday are her favorite days of the week - we have our meal with Jonathan, Christen and Luca on Tuesday and we watch Luca on Thursday (see the common denominator)?! I keep thinking he can't possibly get cuter or more fun...and then he goes and does it!

We are excited to see what he thinks of the baby chicks. The first ones hatched on Friday and we held a few today before Jason slips them under the mama hen tonight. The next ones to hatch will be around Alida's birthday and we'll keep those inside for a few weeks to enjoy a batch of them in the house for holding and playing with. By June we are usually pretty ho hum about new chicks hatching but that first batch of the new year never gets old! They are SO cute! The one I was holding today was quite spunky and ready to be up and at it. It was pecking my wedding ring and anything it could see on my sweatshirt. 

And, finally, Alida has taken to weaving! She may, in fact, still be upstairs doing it now as I finish this post. I think Grandma may have lost her spot on the bench!

There's been some bike shed wall progress this week. Yippee!!

I'll leave you by sharing an activity we did at the start of our family meeting the other night - in order to make the lesson of "hot cocoa breaths" very real, feel free to make hot chocolate and toss some little marshmallows in (that's what we did!). We are hoping as a family to practice every now and then some stress/anxiety reduction strategies so they become familiar enough to each of us to pull out when we most need them. Hot cocoa breaths are when you breath in slowly through your nose (imagining, or for real, smelling the delicious wafts of chocolate) and then you blow slowly out of your mouth imagining cooling your hot chocolate without blowing any of the marshmallows out of your mug. Repeat and hopefully feel some calm return!