Some of my Blog Inspiration

Another picture from the farm: this is in the wooded portion that has roads so muddy/rocky they are nigh impassable for much of the year. I had a hard time walking and still looking at the scenery without tripping on large rocks in the road, however.

Have you all seen these wonderful blogs? I read lots of them, but I'll confine my passing on of blogs to the scope of my own... Here are three that you may find interesting:

Yarnstorm This blog is really pretty and it deals with all things domestic, which is, of course, my own passion.

The Purl Bee An offshoot of Purl Soho, this is my all time favorite project blog... stitching of all different sorts is explored here with beautiful photos and fresh sensibility.

Confessions of a Counterfeit Farmgirl While this is almost the antithesis of my own blog, it's in a practically identical setting and the author is funny, pretty, and charming, not to mention a really nice lady. She just published her first book... it'll make you laugh, I guarantee.

Finally, a web site with lots of sustainable agriculture information: Journey to Forever

Holiday Preparations

We love holidays, celebrations, and feasts at our house. Since Thanksgiving is only a few weeks away, we've been getting our menu together and inviting people to eat with us. We usually invite people who are away from family to feast and give thanks with us, since this holiday is all about family for so many. My dear sister is visiting, too, which I'm really, really excited about. She's wonderful and we've been calling each other consulting about what to make, and what do to while she's here. I plan to put her to work a lot... sorry, sis.

We plan on roast turkey... (shocker), and cornbread and sausage stuffing (shocker again). We always have pumpkin pie and apple pie, and this year my sis has requested blueberry cherry pie. So lots of pie. Rosemary roasted veggies, per hubby's request, and my husband always makes a fruit jelly or chutney, this year it's a cranberry pear chutney. We got a lot of recipes this year from the Better Homes and Gardens Holiday Recipes magazine. We usually have both mashed potatos and cheesy hash brown casserole and I make giblet gravy. And we usually ask guests to bring their favorite recipe to share. We eat early, a late lunch, then play games and sing, play/watch football (Cowboys, of course) and nosh all evening. I think this year, if it's not too cold, a hike is in order. Just talking about it makes me all excited!

Our First Egg!

Soooooo, guess what! We got our first egg. My 11 yo son was feeding and watering the chickens and letting them out for their day of foraging when he noticed one chicken didn't come out. He usually counts them as they come out of the coop, and since one didn't appear, he looked into the coop and saw one of our hens in the nesting boxes! He brought our four year old out after breakfast and they found one little brown egg in the nesting box! I know you all are just as excited as we are.


We've been working on some apple butter here. I love apple butter. I know not everyone appreciates the taste and the color is objectionable to some people, but to me, there's no beating good apple butter on some freshly baked bread. We don't have apple trees, but we went to a pumpkin patch on Sunday and bought a peck and a half of apples to make apple butter and an apple pie. No pictures of Apple Butter yet, but I have a picture of my pickles to share! They were my first attempt at pickles and they turned out pretty well. I mostly use pickles in recipes like potato salad and tuna salad, though occasionally I'll put one on a burger or something. The pickling spices made the pickles more complex than I'm accustomed to for eating out of hand, but they are really good in recipes.



Yum! On all accounts.

Mama's Day Out

Coming to you live from Panera Bread in Warrenton... I needed a vacation, bad... so my husband, wonderful, beautiful, generous man that he is offered to give me a whole day to do whatever I wanted now that the youngest is old enough to leave alone for a while. So, this morning, I took a walk on the farm, which I'm always wanting to do, but never actually doing. I took a few pictures, which I thought you'd perhaps enjoy.

Pretty, huh?!

Seize the Day

It's been over a month since my last post, and I know, if one wants to be famous is Blogworld, one has to post more often than that... but who wants to be famous? Then you become conspicuous, and you have no more private space to deal with heavy life lessons. And boy, life can get heavy. Mine does, every so often, due to conflict, misunderstandings, illness, worries, and disappointment. You pick up these burdens that dominate your life, your thoughts. Trouble seems to eclipse all the sunshine that life brings. On the other hand, I am struck by the transience, the ephemeral nature of joy, of beauty. That's why I wish I was better about having my camera always at the ready. Of course, its short duration is what makes joy and beauty so wonderful, so exquisite. Did you ever ponder the connection between temporary and temporal? I used to think temporal had a similar meaning to corporeal, or that its meaning was physical in nature, but it means that which is already passing away, that which is limited by time. Our temporal existence brings much bittersweet joy. A baby suckling at the breast soon passes away, the hazy days of summer always give way to the cool, crisp last hurrah of autumn, and we, all too soon, realize our bodies are just slowly breaking down day by day after those few years of prime adulthood, and we always wish we had spent more time just enjoying people we love before they left this world for the next.
Of course, as a mother of six, I see this every day. My youngest baby is just about to turn one. He's starting to learn to communicate with words and signs. He claps and signs that he's all done with his meal, he dances to a song when Mama sings, he practices standing alone without support. I feel proud of him, I cheer him on in his accomplishments, and I feel a sense of loss. These days pass soo quickly. I know, we women are sentimental, but truth be told, it's the very brevity of babyhood that makes it so precious. It's a really special feeling, to be another person's whole world, to be the primary source of sustenance, comfort, warmth, and joy, to be so very valuable to someone else is pretty amazing. And no matter how tired I am of nursing my 1 year old while he tries to do gymnastics on my lap while holding on to the “spigot” with his newly cut teeth, I know I'll feel sad when he's finally weaned.
That saying, “Seize the Day!”, is so applicable to making the most of brief moments. Whether it means getting the zucchini in the freezer before it gets tough, or stopping the daily routine long enough to pick the flowers while they're still blooming, or remembering that first time the baby grabs your finger in his little fist, to record the smells, and textures, and details of important, ephemeral moments. I realize more all the time that this day won't ever come again. I'll never again see this sunrise (especially if I never get up early enough to see it!) and my children will only grow older and harder to connect with tomorrow and the next day, and if I don't grab onto this moment and make the most of it, the opportunity to DO something with it will be gone. It's all already passing away.
Of course, tomorrow holds new possibility. There are always new projects to pursue, new people to meet and exchange ideas with, and there's always the wonderful prospect of learning something new tomorrow with my children. Tomorrow I get to start over, to make a fresh start. Tomorrow I have another opportunity to get up to see the sunrise and get the laundry done before lunch so that I can do crafts with my kids in the afternoon. Tomorrow I'll straighten the house and make a point to really appreciate the order I have wrought in the few minutes it manages to persist in the face of kid chaos. Tomorrow I'll have a whole slew of new moments to savor. Tomorrow I'll try to go pick those flowers and hang them to dry, and grab a canteloupe from my neighbor's garden (they offered, I don't mean to STEAL it!) and savor the sweet flavor of summer just a little longer. Tomorrow, I'll teach my kids how to stop and pay attention so that they can make a moment last a long, long time. It's all those moments that add up to “life abundant.

"I came that they may have life and have it abundantly." John 10:10

So, we finally got our chickens. When I say finally, I mean that the long hoped for event has occurred after waiting, dreaming, fantasizing, pouring over the Murray McMurray catalog, etc. They are, to put it mildly, wonderful. Well, mostly. The day that they arrived, our neighbors rescued them from the Post Office for us. I don't know exactly what misunderstanding took place, but when we were sold the chickens, we were convinced that they would be delivered to our door. We were mistaken. They were shipped to our Post Office, where they languished, thirsty and cold, until our dear neighbor boy of eight years was at the Post Office with his father. He heard them peeping and asked about them, and, learning that they were ours, and being privy to our misconception that they would appear at our door magically, they brought them home to us! Oh, shortest of knights in shining armor, how I thank thee! I don't think they realize just how grateful I am about that! I have, in the misty, glowing, dreamland that is my imagination, heard them clucking for years, as I collect eggs in a basket wearing a colorful apron and sun bonnet while humming contentedly under blue skies. I'm nothing if not idealistic. I've checked out books on fanciful hen houses. I've subscribed to Backyard Poultry. I remember aching to live on a farm six years ago, when we lived in North Dakota and consciously putting that dream away in the Hope Chest of my heart so that I could command myself to be content with life as it was. I wasn't very successful, by the way.
Now, I have a flock of chicks who peep away in our backyard oh, so sweetly. They live, right now, in a chicken tractor that was given to us by some good friends who hobby farm with goats and chickens and gardening. We plan on leaving some chickens in there... the ones we plan to put in the freezer. The laying flock is getting their very own blue house later. We love to watch the chicks! They are endlessly entertaining. For example, as the sun goes down, they all pile into one corner of the tractor, trying to get the place on the “preferred” roost. They play king of the mountain until the sun goes down, then they all spread out and go to sleep. While they're playing their “game”, though, there's tons of squawking, jumping to the top of the pile, stepping on the heads of each other, and jockeying for position. It looks like corporate America! I picked some whitefly larvae off my cauliflower plants the other day and fed the chicks the little caterpillars right out of my hand. Well, technically, only one chick, who would grab two or three on the run, gobble them up, and be back for more before any of the other chicks knew what was going on! We love to just sit and watch them. Really. We pull our chairs up, open the lid and watch for hours (I knit, too)! Who needs a television?! I told my husband it looked like only the Cornish Rocks were growing and he said that they were growing, but I couldn't tell because I stare at them for hours every day! He's only slightly exaggerating. If I could, I'd just meander back and forth between the chickens and the garden all day long... and knit!
Speaking of Cornish Rocks... they are just the ugliest, nastiest, most disgustingest chicks. They're like freaks of nature... except they're not really natural, in my opinion. They've been bred and bred to grow big fast on as little grain as possible, which is great for a factory farm, I guess. They don't forage, they don't scratch, they don't do anything natural, except eat grain, poop, and breathe. They're kind of naked and pink and ugly and blech. With grain prices getting higher, and hence chicken feed getting more expensive, I think I may just buy dual purpose breeds for meat from now on instead of meat birds. They may take longer to get big, but they'll feed themselves on bugs and grass instead of only eating grain. The Cornish Rocks make me feel kind of queasy when I look at them, actually. One already died... and I'd not be sad if the rest accidentally got eaten by a raccoon or something. Course, maybe that'll make it easier (emotionally) to cut them up and make into chicken noodle soup or something.
Hmmmm.
Anyway, I ended up buying five Americauna pullets, five Buff Orphington pullets, five Cornish X Rocks, and ten straight run Barred Rocks. I'm not sure, but there are four or five birds that were not ordered by us that might be Buffs, too. We ordered 25 and got 30 birds. What kind are the extras? Are they pullets or cockerels? What's the difference between a pullet and a hen, anyway? Do any breeds of chickens lay speckled eggs, or do I have to get guineas for those? Questions for the ages.....

Technical Difficulties

I no longer have broadband! I, essentially, have super-slow, force me to be offline dial up. I can still upload essays, but not pictures. I have stuff to write about, but I wanted to put pics with my entries and I can't!!! Wahhhhh Hahhhhh! Here is my solution, and I know you'll all understand: I'll go ahead and post my essays, and then post the pics that go with them when I have access to broadband. So, you'll get pictures, but perhaps later.