Fall musings...

November is here!  Among other things that means it is National Novel Writing Month (http://ywp.nanowrimo.org/) - Kali and I both find ourselves in front of a computer right now, me to do some much needed writing and Kali to get going on her story.  She'll need to write a hundred words a day to meet her goal.  I'm eager to read it!  While we both write, Alida is getting a nap, which hopefully won't be interrupted prematurely by her cough.  While I do love fall (it is probably my favorite time of year) I don't like what seems like the resurgence of viruses floating around.  The girls both have colds, the kind that are just annoying not debilitating.  But enough so that we have gone forward with cancelling this evening's much anticipated fall party with two other families.  Bobbing for apples just didn't seem like the activity for today...  To ease the disappointment in the younger generation of our household (namely the 10 year old), we will go forward with making homemade donuts and I feel hopeful there will be some Tangly Woods members that will happily oblige filling in for some rounds of donut eating off strings!

So now I find myself sitting in our front room looking out at the colorful scene in front of me.  The light on the mountain today is striking (we must be at the peak of the oranges).  On Tuesday on my way in to the house from a nappy walk I felt almost a physical pull towards the hammock. It was the eve of Nora's birthday, right about the time they would have been starting the induction.  But my mind was just swirling with the many, many things I felt I "had" to get done yet that day.  Alida's nap times feel like this precious spot in the day where I sprint to do the things I can't do when she is awake.  I ended up spending most of that nap doing computer work that had to be done and that I felt annoyed about.  Hardly rejuvenating or reflective time, which was what I was craving.  I also felt frustrated with myself for not taking the opportunity as it presented itself to slow up for a bit and create a space in which my emotions could feel safe to emerge.  I never spent much time in our hammock before I went on bedrest with Nora and haven't spent much time there since. I remember watching the mountain change as fall approached and Kali making me "cakes" to eat out of pine needles, leaves, rocks, etc...  I wanted to allow myself a moment to travel back in time and be with who I was then and who our family was, just for a moment. 

In many ways I feel like I've been trying to make up for turning down that opportunity ever since then.  It's been a hard week.  I can never predict what I might want or need on the anniversaries of Nora's birthday and death.  And them sometimes when I finally figure it out, it's a bit late.  As soon as I got to work on Wednesday, I knew that I should have found a way to take a vacation day. I wanted so very much to be at home with my family.  Instead it, along with yesterday, was one of those crazy "work as fast as you can all day long and still feel horribly behind" days. 

The week hasn't been all bad. I treasure the memories from Tuesday evening when we enjoyed some family "huggy lovey" time in bed together before calling it a night. We all snuggled up and looked at and read through the book that Mom made about Nora.  It seems that the start and end of our days are sometimes challenging right now and so I have felt particularly grateful for some smooth and special family bedtimes lately.  May it continue!

Some of the "bumps in the road" have definitely been more challenging due to my own lack of extra reserves.  I don't feel very emotionally resilient and have found myself struggling with a higher amount of anxiety and tension.  While there are multiple factors (at least 16 based on the list I created last week in my one stint of journaling - the first in 4 months or so), but I haven't felt that my reaction to those stressors has been what I would like it to be.  So I finally took the step, thanks to a good friend's nudging, to get started on another round of counseling.  I've always found it helpful but it was feeling daunting to try to fit in yet another thing.  I'm glad that I fit it in - it's such a unique hour in my week to sit uninterrupted with someone whose only job is to listen to me talk, ask questions and offer an outside perspective when it seems appropriate. There are a number of things that have been sticking with me since but one in particular. 

I've felt, more at this stage of my life than any other, that many of the things that I love most about my life are also the things that can make me feel like I'm going completely crazy.  It's like two sides of the same coin.  I often feel like I need figure out what to let go of, but approaching it that way feels so unsatisfactory to me.  I was grateful for a new way to think about the stress that I carry, much of which related to things that energize me a great deal.  She shared the analogy of holding a cup of water.  If you hold a cup of water for a minute you probably won't even notice it, several minutes and you still probably won't think too much of it, an hour and your arm might start to feel very tired or even start to fall asleep, and if you tried to do it for a full day your arm would probably start to twitch and hurt or you may not be able to do it at all.  She talked about stress being like that - noting that it is important for all of us to find time to set that "cup" down and shake out our arm, do something else for a while and then pick it back up.  Same with the things that create stress. 

So I'm thinking about that a lot.  How do I take just a few moments here and there (like the break in the hammock) to truly set aside the busyness of the day, the relationships that I ponder and analyze and hope for changes in, my sense of inadequacy being a mom, etc... and be present to the moment, the world around me, the beauty within me...  I was grateful she didn't suggest any new routine that would take an hour or so daily.  She seemed to "get it" pretty quickly that I don't sit still very often, nor do I wish to.  But I feel ready to find and create little spaces in my day to be more in tune with what is happening inside of me and to also be open to observing what is happening around me.  On the nappy walk today my mind was churning as it often is.  All of a sudden I looked up and in the pasture right next to me was a whole herd of baby cows.  They were cute, but it wasn't their cuteness that struck me, it was the fact that I almost completely missed them.  How many things do I miss completely because I'm not paying attention (because I'm so absorbed in my racing thoughts or, in the case of a nappy walk, worrying that Alida won't fall asleep and then the rest of the day will be more challenging...).  I find that slowing my mind or altering my thoughts patterns is one of the biggest challenges in my life.  But I have a strong motivation to keep working at it!  I don't want to miss all the beauty around me.

If you have stayed with me on this post, congratulations!   I recognize this is a bit more of a "journal entry" than a blog post, but I think of this blog as mostly for us and if anyone out there wishes for a glimpse of the life we are creating here in our little part of the world, I'd like it to at least be a semi-accurate one. 

This past month was our month for lot of hosting and the upcoming month is one with more travel. We enjoyed visits with friends from PA and Canada and enjoyed a whole week with Jason's brother around, who was helping Emily and Jonas on their home renovation project (which we are happy to see moving along for their sakes, but are not ready to have them move out!).

Things on the home front keep plugging along with new and different projects as the seasons shift:  all the cover crops are in, the strawberries are weeded, thinned and mulched, the first big freeze came and so the main garden produce still growing is the carrots, beets, lettuce, spinach, dill and tea, Jason is working on various digging projects and chipping up brush piles created by the clearing the goats are motivating us to do (and helping with), and we got our next humanure composting outdoor station set up.  We also enjoyed some leaf raking together, both here and at a neighbor's who was happy to have us rake their leaves (and take them)!  It's fun to see us finally accumulating lots of mulch materials and extra organic matter.  I can't quite imagine how much food this little plot of land is going to produce if we continue to improve our soil at the current rate. Pretty exciting to think about, and a tad bit daunting!

There are some big things coming up.  Kali's last soccer game is tomorrow (she's very sad to see the season end, while I'm happy for a break and easing up of the weekly schedule).  We have a weekend of fun with family members on both sides of our family planned, and then the blood drive for Nora on Monday. Jason and I are both very much hoping that we are symptom free and can donate.  Kali heads to WV for the week with my folks and then we'll join her for a weekend with my parents and some friends.  Going to WV is definitely one of the "set the stress down" activities that I look forward to!

The one event of the upcoming week that has brought on some additional anticipatory grief is that, after much thought and deliberating, we will be reducing our goat flock from 3 to 2.  This is not even an easy thing for me to write about - but again I'm not interested in painting a picture of our lives without the angst and challenge that comes with trying to be intimately involved with our food.  Eating meat continues to be one of those things that I feel fits with the way I envision our lives here a and sometimes it is very hard for me!  I also continue to feel a compulsion within myself to be involved in butchering and processing meat, if I'm going to eat it.  It causes discomfort, but I want to allow myself the freedom to feel that discomfort and not shy away from it.  I know that I can be a vegetarian without too much trouble (I did it for years).  Many of my favorite meals are meatless and while we eat more meat now that I ever have in my life, it is still not a daily occurrence by any means.  But I know that I'd still be part of killing things if I only ate vegetables (my potato mulching experience where I unearthed a little mouse nest was clear proof of that).  So I feel more inclined to try to include animals into our farm (and diet) in respectful ways and to be grateful for the source of nourishment they provide.  But I haven't sorted out all my feelings about it, and there is no doubt in my mind that the challenge will be taken to a new level this week. Kali is feeling very sad but clearly adjusting slowly to the idea (or readjusting since this was always the plan from the beginning).  We don't fault her for any feelings she has about it - and are grateful when she is able to identify the source of her sadness (it has provided opportunities to process emotions a bit which I'm very glad about).  We've made the plan for butchering to be while she is in WV, as she feels that will be easier and we agree. 

We'll be keeping the twins (the smaller of the 3 goats) for the foreseeable future and my guess is that they will graduate to "pet" status.  We still need to all talk about it to make sure that is the shared expectation.  I think we'll learn some things from this stint of goat raising.  For one, it is harder not to get attached to mammals and in this case I feel a strong drive to meet their needs immediately (since these particular mammals have a baby-like cry - it's no wonder they call them "kids").  All of us probably need to think about how we approach our "farm animals."  What level of involvement works for each of us individually in instances where we know the final plan is that we will eat them? My learning curve on this one is quite steep and I haven't settled out at a comfortable place.  I'm not positive that I ever will, but I do feel good about the journey we are on together as a family.  The tears are okay and the conversations feel like important ones to have together.  I think we are learning more about each other and ourselves in the process.

...I now have a little gal on my lap, in the process of fully waking up from her nap.  Let me close with a few pictures of fun new things.  The captions will explain them:

Harvesting and drying saffron.

Saffron flowers

Opening up the mason bee tubes, what we will find?

Cocoons!  Here we are washing them - made of silk so water proof.

Using an old toothbrush to get the bee poop, mites, etc... off.

Here they are drying. The small ones are male the large female. They are now safely tucked in the crisper drawer of the fridge until spring.  I bought 10 and now have 70-80 cocoons.

We'll end with a picture from my hike to the lake with a good friend last weekend (and Alida sacked out in the jogger).  The hike followed an amazing picnic lunch that we all enjoyed together provided by the same friend - I was cashing in a half birthday coupon and I can honestly say without doubt that it was the best half birthday present I've ever received!

Fall is here!

Today was a tried and true rainy, cool, fall day!  We closed the high window in the front room and I even felt half tempted to get the wood stove going. All the sweet potatoes and peanuts have been dug and Jason is getting in cover crops at every available opportunity and many are already sprouting thanks to the recent rains.  I'm enjoying helping to "tuck in" the gardens for winter, chopping up the dead vines and allowing them to compost in place.  There are still some peppers hanging on, hull peas, spinach, and lettuce in abundance! 

Kitchen garden with a few sugar snaps and plenty of hot peppers to go around!

Main garden with a bed full of lettuce and carrots near the top.

Cutting down the cornstalks which will hopefully be chipped up for cover material for the composting toilet (if they ever can dry out!)

Digging sweet potatoes - not quite like last year but two large baskets of delicious looking food!

And a little mess of peanuts to enjoy (or probably mostly for next year's seed so we can expand our planting!)

So since the gardening has slowed down, why not tackle some of the big things that have been looming...like buy a car!  Yes, we finally went for it - we are now the owners (though it is not yet on the Tangly Woods homestead) of a Toyota Matrix.  Since I have never seen it, it's not quite feeling like a reality yet.  Jason and the girls drove all the way to Manassas yesterday to take a look at what looked like a pretty ideal vehicle for us (at least on the screen).  What a taxing day for all of us - actually the girls seemed to fair much better than their parents.  Hopefully our decision to "go for it" wasn't too swayed by our sheer exhaustion in the process.  It checked out well and should meet our vehicle needs for the foreseeable future, we just both just wish we didn't need a car at all!

It feels a little crazy to me that our car only cost about double what we recently spent on my one dental implant.  But I better not write too much about that experience as I'm working to come to peace with the whole thing.  It's "over" (it was nearly a year-long process) but I'm not happy with it and really wish I had never gone this route.  So I guess if we are to live and learn, I'll have this experience to refer back to when my other baby tooth with no adult tooth underneath decides its time in my mouth has come to an end.  I'm rooting (no pun intended) for it to hang in there a few more decades.

On to more brighter topics - our kiddos!  I'm not sure either of them fully recognize how good they have it, but Alida definitely can't possibly know what a grand big sister she has.  Kali is so sweet with her and has been taking more and more interest in caring for Alida.  She's been taking Alida on nappy walks on days when Jason is home with them - and Kali is the only one out of the three of us that has never failed to get Alida down for a nap.  Well, the other night they cuddled up in Kali's bed.  Here they are:



Minutes later I heard Kali stop reading.  I peaked into the room and Kali was quietly closing the book.  Here's what I saw:



Alida has her own little nurturing bug these days too.  Today she wanted to bring Big Bear downstairs to play with.  Before long she was pretending to put a diaper on him.  Then she needed to take him potty.   When I walked into the bathroom, I couldn't help but chuckle.  This is the scene I came upon.

Now speaking of kiddos, their bath water is probably cool by now, so I had better go help them finish up...

Celebrating life!

Alida sacked out while nursing, so a nappy walk was unnecessary (even if I was looking forward to it).  Instead, I'm trying to complete a few tasks that require screen time (tasks that I put off partly because I'm tired of being in front of a computer after my days at work and because they are nearly impossible to do with Alida's little fingers anywhere nearby).  I just taught Kali how to balance a checkbook since she is now the proud owner of her very own checking account (which she hopes to use to deposit duck egg money and purchase duck feed, if she can find anyone that wishes to purchase duck eggs from her).   Now she is off to harvest the last of her popcorn, since cutting down the corn stalks to dry is on the list for today.  You may wonder why we are drying corn stalks - after chopping them up in the chipper they should make great cover material for the composting toilets.  Yes, we are still pretty excited about that system!

Before diving into my computer "tasks" I did a quick peruse on facebook and got well educated on the shut down of our federal government.  Thinking about that and some of the people near and dear to me who are undergoing very difficult times, it's hard to write a post that focuses on the joy and celebration that has been part of recent days for us.  It seems that life is almost always a complex mixture of joys and sorrows, celebrating and grieving, life and death.  As we were sitting around the fire on my birthday evening, Jason and I were asked to share some of the highlights of our year.  My mind went blank initially and even upon further reflection very few major things came to mind - the kinds of things one might expect to share as highlights.  Instead what flooded my mind were all the simple joys that are part of our everyday life here on Fruit Farm Lane.  I could list hundreds but here are just a sampling since I last posted:

Canning many quarts of applesauce on our porch!

Digging sweet potatoes with both girls and making rolls with the vines.

Grinding our home grown corn and using that cornmeal in pizza dough

The dough was also enhanced with lots of pureed stinging nettles and our chicken eggs then topped with various kinds of pesto, homemade sauce chock full of Tangly Woods produce, kale and zucchini from friends and neighbors...

Watching the girls cuddled up reading together and hearing Kali try to teach Alida to read.

It's the simple pleasures that stem from the cycles and seasons of our life here that create a sense of being overwhelmed by the abundance all around me - the abundance of food, the abundance of cuteness, the abundance of friendships and meaningful interactions with those who live with and near us, the abundance of beauty... 

I love that each season brings different things that we anticipate and look forward to. And since each new season brings new things to enjoy, it's hard to feel very sad about the ending of the previous one - and sometimes it's downright easy to celebrate.  I ate our very last fresh tomato today with absolutely no feelings of regret as I chopped up the vines in an effort to get a start on the fall garden cleanup.  On may way to the garden I popped a ripe sweet persimmon into my mouth - one season ending, another just getting started! 

The cool mornings and evenings bring a sense of anticipation for the first fire in the woodstove, but it would be a little ridiculous to do one just yet!  We have taken advantage of some cool evenings to enjoy building fires in our outdoor fire ring.  Family and Tangly Woods' folks joined us on my birthday evening for pizza pockets over the fire.  I never get tired of that meal - and am always full before I wish to be.  The following evening, Jason and his birthday party attendees (about a dozen men!) enjoyed eating supper around the fire - which was sandwiched in between starting to dig our "pond" and several hours of serious ping pong playing!

 So September has come and gone and October is upon us.  The large batch of green tomato salsa cooling in the fridge will give me reason to be creative with making meals in the near future that are enhanced by salsa!  The canning shelves are full, the freezers are requiring increased creativity to fit more into and the root cellar is filling with squashes, potatoes, and onions.  I'm hoping that the lessening of food processing and preservation will not only open up more spaces for family walks or game playing or reading stories, but also tackling some of the piles of various things that have accumulated around the house during the intense season of planting, weeding, harvesting and putting up for the winter.  We'll see if our girls are as excited about house cleaning and organizing as they are gardening together.  I won't blame them if they aren't...

Potatoes, soccer, haircuts and more...

It's been another fun and somewhat monumental week and once again time for bed so this will be another quickie!  This past weekend we dug all our potatoes!  Very exciting and fun (other than feeling bummed to need to compost a good number of green ones since learning that any green on a potato means it is best not to eat any of it!).  Then Jason and I got an impromptu date night when Jonathan and Rachelle took the kiddos to the Carnival de Resistance and we took advantage of the time not only to enjoy a jog into Emily and Jonas' place to see the house progress but also to cut a foot off of Jason's hair, which I sent off to Wigs 4 Kids today. We also fit in being part of the Kali's fan club at her very first soccer game of the season and of course some food preparation experiments.  The most recent ones include drying ground cherries (yay for a found raisin alternative!), ground cherry salsa (made twice already) and autumn olive berry jam (somewhat time intensive but worth it!). I probably shouldn't even put this in writing but I feel pretty certain that I put the last tomato products in canning jars this morning.  The plants are about toast at this point, other than a few hardy sungold plants still putting out delicious morsels.  Here's some visuals of the above items and more:

Our very first home grown roasted peanuts (these were dug by accident and now is is very hard to wait to dig the rest!)

Ground cherry salsa - highly recommended!

Dried ground cherries and autumn olive berry jam.

My little helper - on our way to pull out green bean plants that were eaten by bean beetles before we got any beans!

Kali in action at her first soccer game.  She actually kicked it a good number of times with clear improvement from the start of the game to the finish.  I'm still a loud spectator!

Could she be much cuter?  Here she is in the potato patch "helping."

Kali, Jonathan and Buttercup all doing their jobs.

Role reversal!  Little sister brushing big brother's hair.

Silky smooth - blow dried for the first time :)

The big cut!

Emily fixing my chop job...

Ready to send! So Jason's hair is shorter than mine for the first time in years and will likely stay that way until it is his turn to chop a foot off mine - I've got a ways to go!

Quick update!

Let's see if I can do a blog post in the time it takes Alida to go potty and get her teeth brushed!

I needed to share visual proof of our "laundry lady" at work, and her apprentice.
 

A few other quick snippets:

 

I needed visual proof too that I've been chopping a lot of veggies! 

This is where I found Alida when I got home from work the other day - unsupervised because...

This is where I found Jason - looking at cars (not because he really enjoys that activity but because we are trying to be proactive!)

This is why she may need a little supervision!  Kali is the one that noticed and sounded the alarm!

Here's proof of our sabbath day activity - a hike to the lake with Jonathan and Rachelle! 

 

 

Fun times and beautiful colors to soak in. A good way to end a week and prepare for the next!

Well, teeth brushing is just beginning so I made it!  Not exactly the most thoughtful post but it is what time allows for tonight.  I should note, in case anyone else is thinking of trying it, that canning pureed amaranth is not something I'll repeat very soon.  It has to be pressure canned for 70 minutes and the longer it went the more the house smelled of amaranth.  That wasn't a bad smell but didn't seem all that positive. Let's just say that all the pints sealed but they now hold a generous cup of amaranth rather than a scant two cups.  Much of the liquid juiced out.  It is not the most beautiful canned good on the shelf. I'm much more proud of the many quarts of ratatouille that joined the expanding array of colors this weekend.  That and the peach jam which Kali and Alida helped to make from peaches off our tree! 

Kali is 10 & a moment worth documenting!

Despite having more time with my foot up, I haven't exactly had much leisure time.  Alida is pretty much over me not being able to carry her around (and I'm getting close).  But right now all is quiet in the house.  That is because Kali and Alida are out hanging laundry.  This is happening without any pleading, begging, or payment and 100% at Kali's initiative. 

We had a planned family meeting last night that was really fun.  The agenda items included Kali's desire to get a checking account (which has been approved by the parents and Alida, whose only contribution to the conversation when asked what she thought of Kali getting a bank account was "good") and Kali's interest in talking about having more chores/responsibilities around the house.  She offered the suggestion that she be the one to do laundry - in its entirety.  Not a whole lot of discussion followed on that one!  She was even reasonable enough to tell us that we didn't have to wake her to get it started but that she wanted to do whatever parts she was awake for.  So she and Alida just headed out to hang the load Jason started while she was still slumbering.  The timing for this inspiration on her part could not have been better.  Laundry seems to me to be one of those household tasks I would have little hope of accomplishing right now, other than the folding part...

Just another note on the family meeting before focusing a bit more on Kali's birthday.  Our family meetings start with appreciations and then are followed with the agenda, announcements and advertisements.  The appreciations section can sometimes be the most challenging part because Kali finds it very difficult to verbally express gratitude, especially directed towards other human beings, which I find disheartening (at best).  Alida, on the other hand, was into it last night.  I was writing just as fast as I could to keep up with her response when asked if there were things she appreciated or was grateful for. I think I got this pretty close to verbatim:

"I'm thankful for the food that we eat and glad for the cherry tomatoes to get ripe and glad for popcorn to grow and then I'm glad for raspberries to get ripe and I'm happy for, I'm glad for, anything that we eat and anything that we don't eat."  And the amazing thing was that that clearly inspired Kali who added her own list of being "glad that the chicks and momma hen weren't too hard on Buttercup's chick when integrated into the flock and for rice, spaghetti, parmesan cheese, strawberries, peaches, ducks, climbing trees, water, purple, yellow, brown, grass and swingsets."

Kali also likes birthdays even though it didn't make it onto this list. This year she chose not to have a themed birthday party but to just have a sleepover with her closest friends.  So the week was filled with a Tangly Woods night at the Rockingham County fair, her birthday evening at home with just our family and then a sleepover complete with pizza pockets over an outdoor fire.  She seems to be adjusting pretty well to being ten - no magical disappearance of all unreasonableness but some glimmers of budding maturity and a continuation of her overall kind and helpful disposition (accentuated right now by her being a gopher for me quite often).

In honor of her 10th birthday, here are 10 of the things I love about Kali (and you might guess that in some cases the things I love the very most about our eldest can be the same things that make me fear losing my sanity, but for today I'm focusing on the love aspects of each):

• Her appreciation for and knowledge of the natural world and how she'll be playing outside and all of a sudden disappear into a climbing tree.
• Her fascination with animal breeding, especially her rouen ducks.
• Her love for learning and enjoyment of conversations about all sorts of theoretical math problems, black holes, and all sorts of hypothetical situations that seem to have little bearing on our life in the here and now.
• Her ability to completely lose herself in a book (to the point of being awake reading at 2 a.m. with no concept of the time).
• Her enjoyment in being a big sister, and her advocating for her understanding of Alida's best interests.
• Her beautiful long brown hair and confidence in her body and the way it works to allow her to take part in the things she loves to do.
• Her creativity and excitement about new experiences, discovering new places and new information about the world around her.
• The fact that she places very little importance on the acquisition of particular material goods that are deemed important by external sources.
• Her strong sense of the need for justice and her ability to stick up for herself and especially Alida when she feels that something is unjust.
• Her absolute delight in the simple things of life, like an evening at the county fair. Here she is upon arrival:

Picnic foods chosen by Kali: pesto sandwiches, corn chips, mint tea and of course black olives!

Kali could hardly contain her excitement long enough to eat and I cannot interpret Alida's facial expression.

I think this was the "tornado."

This was one of Alida's favorites, just about the right speed.

Visiting the calves at the fair from the farm where we get our milk.

Kali's birthday dinner: mint tea, roast duck and chicken, fresh tomatoes, green beans and the best mashed fresh potatoes I've ever tasted!

Her chosen birthday "cake" - no bake chocolate peanut butter cookies.

She wanted to decorate her own cake for the birthday party and clearly has watched her grandma closely!

Pizza pockets!

This was not staged - I just happened to see them piling up by age and was lucky enough to get there in time - if only the laughter could also be recorded but it's not hard to imagine.

She even got in on making her very own pizza pocket. :)

In addition to her love of the natural world, she loves some synthetic things too - yes, this is a very large marshmallow!