23 years...and our new "pets!"

These "scrapbook entries" are going to be a little out of order, as I'm feeling most inclined to start from the freshest news and work my way backwards. The girls are playing at Ivy's this afternoon, Jason is working in town and Tala started SPI classes today. So it's one of those rare quiet afternoons at home alone for me (as my parents upstairs aren't nearly as loud as the rest of us!!), and I'm itching to catch up on recent happenings. It seems worth giving a full posting to just yesterday! 

Jason and I marked 23 years of marriage yesterday! Neither of us even wrote a card for the other. No special plans. No gifts. And, at the end of the day, I noted that I think it was one of our best yet! The day was made special just by having lots of time together, some with others and some alone. We splurged and finished the Netflix show Sex Education we've been very into (ok, I've been obsessed with) by watching several episodes during the day. It was nice to give ourselves permission to click "next episode" a few times! We also got to spend time outside, so I'll share a few of the pictures I took throughout the day.

As I think about the day, a good number of highlights come to mind. Here's just a few: 

• walking hand in hand with Jason through the gardens and taking in the lushness
• shedding tears (several times), while marveling on what growth and healing looks and feels like
• eating severals meals as a family, including one made for us by Tala (always a treat!)
• eating a bite of a strawberry
• laying in the grass and being tackled by some of our children
• watching nightfall around us and seeing the bats come out
• looking at the beautiful lines on Jason's face and thinking about all the life we have shared!

It was most definitely the people in my day that made it as special as it was. And it never hurts when I go into something with few to no expectations! My body has been feeling so off that I am never sure what a day will hold. So I felt like I savored many of the precious moments of yesterday even more, all the while holding within me a lot of uncertainty and discomfort.

One of the fun moments of the evening was introducing my parents to the new residents of the seed sanctuary! Jason was hoping to put a toad (or two) into the seed cage to help with bug control of those critters that either come up from the ground or that might be small enough to get in through the wire. Well this week we acquired not one but two toads. We hope they like their new home and can find enough to eat. We'll keep checking on them... We hope the safety we can offer them from predators in the seed cage will be an ok trade for less freedom to roam everywhere - I guess we can't really ask them their opinion so we'll try to make the life there as good as possible. Here they are, if you can find them!

Meet Prince:

Meet Dolly:

So so many things growing and changing...

...that sometimes it's hard to keep up!!! And it's a little harder for me to keep up when I can't seem to get a headache free day anymore. It appears I've settled into a state of chronic migraines (or that's what the MRI seems to indicate)... Not debilitating (except the one day that it more or less flattened me for the afternoon/evening, but that's rare), but just persistent and wears me down! But enough said on that - maybe I'm just noting it here as an explanation/excuse for this post likely being even more scattered than normal. Or it might just be all over the place because I just plopped a whole bunch of pictures into this post which have come in in no sensible order and I only have a half hour before our small group joins us on the lawn for an evening gathering... (I didn't end up getting it done and am back at it now after dark). Either way, here are some updates from our household! Brace yourself for a bit of a loop-de-loop journey here, there and everywhere!

I believe we can finally say that the colds have left our household! Yes, I definitely forgot how long it takes for a minor virus to make its rounds and how disruptive it can be. Thankfully other than filling the wipe bucket with nose wipes at an impressive rate and messing up Terah's (and thus my) sleep for a few nights and the sore throats, it truly wasn't anything to write home about. So maybe it was a good "easing back into viruses" for us, as they are bound to return here and there!

I'm kind of obsessed with violets this year! I really can't think of any downside to them! They are edible. They are beautiful. They are an excellent ground cover. I'm into them!! They are nicely filling in the cracks around the rocks in Nora's garden. So lovely!! 

We've had some really impressive skies lately - the clouds have created some rather magical moments. The light on the mountain and the green creeping up its slopes has been breathtaking.

We have some famous chickens - or at least a lot more people know about our chickens than did a week ago. Someone from the local DNR came out and spent about an hour talking with Jason about the breeding work he has been doing and wrote up an article about the four breeds we've got going here at Tangly Woods (see https://tanglywoods.com/chickens/ for beautiful descriptions of the breeds recently updated by Jason). I think we all thought it would be a little side article hidden somewhere in the deep recesses of the paper. It was surprising to receive a text from a friend early one morning with a picture of the front page article they enjoyed reading with their morning coffee. Since then the article has been picked up and posted in lots of other papers, including The Washington Post. We have yet to see what comes of it - thus far one person has called about buying a few chickens, another person reached out saying he'd like to talk with Jason about chickens sometime, and we have had two phone calls from companies wanting a lot of our money to mat and frame and make the article look pretty for our wall. It would look something like the photo below IF we wanted to burn several hundred dollars on such a thing. We don't! We would be very interested in making connections with anyone that has interest in collaborating with Jason and/or connecting us with funding possibilities for this work.

I've been trying to soak up the beauty of spring and to stop occasionally to soak up the beautiful people I get to share life with! This was one such moment!!

This was a little while ago now, but I was not impressed. Let's hope this was the LAST snow of the year! Thankfully, it didn't linger...

Because now it is time for things to grow and bloom and fruit... I don't know why I love peas so much. Every time I walk by I can't help but say, "Hi peas!"

Today Jason and I spent a few hours weeding Kali's garden and the fire ring. We took probably 8 or more 5-gallon buckets of weeds to the pigs (they mostly napped on it). The lilacs in her garden are amazing right now!

I admit that I was impressed with the bouquet I was able to collect from our yard the other week. This went to my dear friend and former colleague who is making it through her first spring season in my former job - I know that it takes a lot of endurance and encouragement!!

I love the red clovers and how the poppies are just starting to dot the landscape with their happy bursts of orange!

We are eating lots of fresh spinach but it is unlikely we'll freeze much, if any, this year. We'll be processing a lot of sweet potato greens for the freezer to take the spinach's place!

We are also eating LOTS of carrots. But we did not grow them. In short, somehow a ton and a half or more of carrots ended up in someone's garage by mistake! And they were looking for homes for over 60 bags of carrots. We ended up with three 50lb bags - we were able to share 100lbs and are making our way through the other 50 - we have been eating carrots at most meals. Kali and I dried one round of them.

The first batch of chicks is now free ranging. We had to keep them in for a few days to hopefully encourage the fox Jason chased off an adult hen to look elsewhere for nourishment. They were so excited when we let them run this evening while we were out in the lawn with friends. 

And now last but not least - the growth in some little humans! A week ago tonight, I headed to RMH for my next birth. I made it in time to be supportive, but not with a ton of time to spare. This sweet little one was born in the wee hours of the morning and I returned home as the darkness was fading and light was starting to return to the world. I actually really love attending births during the night BUT if this is going to become my main thing I'm gonna have to get better at sleeping during the day!

This past week Christen and I took our first walk together with Luca since he joined us on the outside. The first of hopefully MANY!!!!!!!!

And, while on the subject of Luca, there is really no one we like to talk about more around here. The conversations includes how adorable he is. And how much he has grown. And how cute his coos are. And asking when we can see Luca again. And inquiring about how soon is Luca coming over when we have a planned get together. And the girls asking why am I going to take care of Luca without them (not to mention me trying to find times to go over without them so I get to hold him without multiple arms coming in for a turn). And on and on. This baby is well loved by the members of Tangly Woods! He came for a couple visits recently and then I enjoyed a long stint of snuggling and playing yesterday. It filled my tank but it's amazing how quickly I'm ready for another filler upper. I love seeing our girls lavish tender care and love upon this new little friend and neighbor. AND it is wonderful that we love his parents so deeply too!!!!

Well, there are some rowdy rounds of Dutch Blitz happening in the front room. And I promised to break out the ice cream. So I'll end here my own blitz round of updates... Until next time!

"Our dash" is back!!

All other news pales in comparison around here! So we'll dedicate an entire post to the freshest and most exciting of updates! On Sunday evening KALI drove Jason, Terah and Alida over the mountain to the Charlottesville Airport to pick up TALA! And then she escorted them all home. I lingered on the off chance the mama I'm next accompanying in birth went into labor - I didn't want to be over an hour away! As it turned out, I could have gone along (still waiting on that little one to decide it's time to join the rest of us out here!). But we couldn't all fit in our car and pick up an additional person anyway.

The long and eagerly anticipated moment arrived! 

The excitement was building all day as the girls made a welcome sign and asked multiple times (especially Terah) how long until it was time to go pick her up. We are trying to catch up on hugs from the last 8+ months and put some in the "hug bank account" for the months ahead. I am not sure how many time zones Tala has traversed in that last while but it's been a lot (including going both directions on time!!) - I'm not sure if her body has quite caught up to the Eastern Time Zone here. But she's with it enough to get back into Rook and Dutch Blitz - I don't think they were home an hour before the Rook cards came out...

One little chick decided to hatch earlier than all the rest to welcome her home too! It hatched right as the girls and Jason were off to the airport. Many others followed that one so at least she had the company of the chicks hatching/peeping in the background on her first night back at Tangly Woods!!

We haven't even started scratching the surface on catching up just yet. The focus so far has been trying to catch up on rest and sleep and hugs and fit some games in the cracks here and there. So glad we have over a month together, so don't have to cram the catching up in here at the start!

As Jason and I were outside weeding this morning, I was noting two things - first that I sometimes have to remind myself that Tala is back in her room upstairs and at other times find myself feeling surprised how quickly it just went back to feeling normal to hear her voice and laughter in the background. It felt like both a long and a short 8 months. 

Some non-seed-cage updates...

I'm gonna put off house cleaning just a bit longer to see if my delay means the kids will wrap up what they are doing and help me! Kali is working on making more of her popcorn for seed testing (we still have a lot of seed to test before planting time!!) and the younger two are loading up a new wardrobe acquired this week (more room inspired some cleaning and organizing of their club materials!). 

Going back a ways, the girls returned from a marvelous time in PA last Tuesday. Since then we have gotten to navigate the first virus going through our household since before the pandemic. I had nearly forgotten what a pain it was and how long it takes it to make its way through all of us. Thankfully it's been just a minor cold, but did make for a flurry of rescheduling and changing up our way of being with people for awhile. I was very glad for my foresight in going over to help with/hold Luca the day the kids came home. My arms are kinda aching for it again, but we'll wait until our sniffles and coughs have departed! 

The colds haven't really changed up the daily routines too much other than tiredness setting in maybe sooner than would normally be the case. That said, it is possible that it was partly what made our most recent family work day feel a bit more tedious and not quite as free flowing as some in the recent past. OR it could be that our last string of family work was a 3 day stretch and this was a 1 day blitz that probably had about as much work as could have fit into closer to 3 days. Sigh! We just kinda kept adding to the wish list. So hopefully we'll get another one on the calendar soon, but that work day did crash into nightfall and then spilled over into Easter in a way we hadn't wished for. So it goes sometimes...

Some of the big tasks of the day included the following:

Jason got into weeding and prepping the delicata patch in the side garden. He mostly ended up working on this solo except for a little help with rock pick up towards the end. I keep marveling how the rocks we are picking out of the gardens are getting smaller and smaller the more years we do it!

The girls and I started unloading the compost chicken coop and the duck coop. All the litter was being placed above the duff in one of the compost circles for distribution this fall. We filled it up, plus some to spare for the currant bed project (see below). Alida and Terah were really inspired to help early on and then tired of it. Kali joined a bit later and then stuck with it until the end. There was some urgency for this project since the mama hens with their 25-30 chicks each in the brooder pens were needing to get moved down to the floor. The chicks were getting more active and the mamas were eager for more space and something to scratch at!

I had fun watching them as I worked in the coop. SO cute! They weren't sure about us being in there for so long with them. 

At one point the one mama decided to brood her chicks out on the wire and I was getting a kick out of all the feet on the underside of the pen!

Before going back to reporting on the gardens, I also enjoyed taking occasional breaks to take grass/weeds to the chicks in the red coop. They are growing so fast. There's a great peep hole in the coop so I can throw in treats for them and then watch them from the outside, so they don't feel so skittish. Sometimes one will come up to the hole and look at me through it!

Somewhere in the mix of the morning/early afternoon, we got all the crates off the grain crops in the pig paddocks and the dry land garden. I had some good help AND a helper that was done helping and who instead wanted to sit in the crates and impede progress! 

It became clear that a break and some nourishment was in order so I believe that was the break where we enjoyed ice cream cones under the pine trees (why we have a whole lot of Turkey Hill ice cream that I purchased would have to be the subject of a whole different post!!). 

It seems every time we stop and gather somewhere, Sneaker (my favorite chicken) comes and finds us. She certainly did at our breaks that day. A bit later, after another stint of project progress, we enjoyed a picnic with the first red buds in our spinach salads!

With the coops cleaned out, we got the mamas and chicks situated on the floor of the coop in separate cages. The chicks were running around exploring in no time. The other big projects of the day were prepping the seed cage for planting (getting trellises set up and final weeding on the beds) and then working on shaping and prepping a new bed in the root patch for a fall planting of currants. After Jason helped with the bed shaping and getting a load of wood chips, he went off to the seed cage and the girls and I worked on the root patch bed. We did a bit of weeding and then put down feed sacks and covered them with wood chips. It was very satisfying, visibly obvious progress. And this was also the point at which the day was coming to a close but not the projects (Jason and I did a quick regroup and decided what point to get to and what would wait for another time). 

Jason and Kali went over to get another load of wood chips while I did the evening chores and Alida and Terah got a fire going (there is no way the evening fire would have happened if we didn't have children who could now independently take on tasks like that!). I will have to take it as a small sign of progress that we went ahead with our plan to hang out by the fire that evening even with the lingering projects waiting for us to wrap up the next day, and on a future family work day. It was a gorgeous evening with a full moon rising. The toasted cheese sandwiches and s'mores over the fire were about as enjoyable as could be with the weariness of our bodies by that point in the day!

I finished up the mulching the next morning and Jason got the seed cage planted. I think both Jason and I were pretty ready to sack out by that point but we had some excited kiddos and an Easter egg hunt and egg decorating in our future! So the afternoon had some egg hunting, some egg painting, some baby adoring (from a distance), some lollipop licking, and some hang out time in the gorgeous cool crisp spring air. 

And now I think my house cleaning help might be about ready to help, so I better shift my attention to washing spinach, bringing in laundry, cleaning and evening chores. Today is Jason's first day back working away from home after the big spring push here on the farm. I'm eager for the house to not be in the state it is in for his arrival home. 

I will just close by saying that one of the outgrowths of some of my journaling time last weekend (besides a good amount of tears) was a realization that I have struggled for some time now with truly treasuring this beautiful place where we live - often being more focused on and overwhelmed by the relentless lists of tasks that I can never seem to get to no matter how hard I try. There's no quick fix for this, but I'm trying to pay closer attention and trying to slow down and breath and savor the gifts that this little piece of earth so generously offers to me every day. Even if sometimes I feel so very undeserving of those gifts. There's lots more that could be said, but maybe at another time and probably in a non-scrapbook format...