Christmas Vacation

I'm taking a break. No Face Book or blogging until after the holidays. Too much family stuff to take care of. Too much farm stuff to tend to. I'll be back after the holidays with a new look.

Every Day is a "Snow Day"

Every day is a snow day! Or something like that. The blizzard didn't change much for us except make some interesting things to do outside. One of the things we regretted about living in the city was that everytime we built a snowman it would get destroyed by kids going to school, same thing with Halloween pumpkins, or really anything we set on the porch or in the front yard. It was sad and frustrating.

So- the farmhouse got a snowman right in the FRONT YARD. Boo ya! Meet Star Sky the "...'bomidable snowman." I love my girls.

This was Blueberry's first playing in the snow experience. It didn't last long because she is hyper sensitive about her hands and the mittens got wet and cold pretty fast.  But it was still fun.

 Lil'Bug wanted to help with dishes because warm water is nice. It is however the COLDEST spot in the whole house. Note the snow boots and hooded wooly sweater. Sweet. We got 5 sink fulls done.

So the blizzard is done and gone and the next one will roll through soon enough. It got me thinking though that for us, just as we live an endless summer, every day is a snow day. We are free to make the day what we want, cuddle by the fire, play games, and take care. For schoolers and for people who work 9-5's it is not like that, as they are at the mercy of a schedule and an institution. It is week's like this that I really relish our freedoms from clocks, from schedules, and from the stress that the mainstream framework brings. I also worry about how we will learn to navigate it when we need to, sometimes....and then we have vet appointments and art classes and violin classes and deadlines to meet and I am reminded that we are not free of these things after all! I suppose it just does not feel like it did when I had to go to school or work a 9-5. It is a different kind of life altogether because we choose to participate in it.

And that's just it, we CHOOSE how we live each day. So that's it, that's my deep rambling thought for the day. I must run now, as we are figuring out how to make Angel Food Cake to go with the bags of strawberries from our summer garden just unburied from the freezer move. Yum.

Rough at the Edges

This morning I felt rough at the egdes and a little sore. This last week has been a doozy. The snowpocolypse was not even the issue, though it shut down the big city to the north of us, our small town was still open and we only got 4-6 inches with not much drift. It was nice being stuck inside with my family.....

And then the pipes froze, the condenser hose on the upstairs furnace froze and leaked water into the kitchen, the fuse blew on the boiler, and the tankless hot water heater froze up. Of course these issues are pretty critical and more critical overnight. But I get girl duty overnight so Dearest was left to man the freezing things.....which led to some pretty awful grumpiness due to the cold and sleep deprivation. Everything is ok now that the wind isn't blowing -40, but we've been working on more weatherization none the less.

But wait there's more. The house animals needed to go to the vet. So I loaded them all up and took them. Of course I was acutely aware that Star Kitty and Hobbit had that awful allergic reaction to the vax last year so I told the new vet all about it. They gave Star Kitty benedryl and called it good, vax'd no problem. Until after hours when she started convulsing and foaming at the mouth. Dearest was in town for game night and I was on my own with a dying cat. I called the vet and she answered! She suggested a dose of children's benedryl, if I had any on hand. Did I? We don't really have much of that kind of thing on hand....for the kids at least. But I actually have some for me to use, children's at that. So I dosed the angry dying cat, and and hour later she was pupils dialated but calm. We made it through the night and now she's just grumpy and tired. Me too.

Oh and on the way back from the vet, my check engine light came on. I just got my car back from being fixed from deer damage!!!!!! Oh and a dog chewed through one of the seatbelts when I was trying to get them all inside one at a time. And then the traction control gave out. Nooooooooo.


I also burned my hands twice, once on the fireplace and once on a cast iron skillet (I thought my sweater sleeve was a good oven mitt but it seems that the sweater did not agree....) so now both hands are blistered or raw and yet I still have to do dished. I need to remember to pick up rubber dish gloves. Ouch.

I am out of hot chocolate. I went through a case.


The woodburning cookstove stove is a step closer to being installed, the lift is reserved, the lining is ordered. One step closer is good!

I am exhausted, but in a good way. Christmas is going to be here this year, a first for our family. I have a lot of cleaning to do and menu planning but it is exciting! The first Christmas at the farmhouse, whoo hoo!

Early Mornings

I don't get up early because of the farm, I get up early because of the baby. Even when I was pregnant with her, she would wiggle early in the AM. As a baby, she slept and slept, except for at 5 AM- and if that was her only alert awake time I was not going to insist that she go back to sleep! But now, she still gets up early and now she can also wiggle out of bed and take off running.

Somethings have not changed though. Every morning the sunrise is absolutely incredible. This morning it was not colourful, but a gradation of pitch black to dark grey to a light bluish silver over the brilliant white hay fields. Every morning, every single morning I get the gift of baby laughter set to remarkable vistas. I get to begin each day at the farm reminded that I am in the presence of blessings, in the company of God.

A friend just emailed me her dream, one that she imagined (though she's never been to our farmhouse), that our living room was set up with the sofa facing the big windows instead of the center of the room. That's not far from the truth actually, though we have it offset right now to make room for the tree, but I love facing the bay windows with the southern view. My dining room has the same view through another picture window. It is funny though that our view is not of our farm, but of the neighbor's hay. It is a reminder that we are not all alone out here in the wild.

Which brings me to another thought set that I had this morning. We are not isolated here, as much as we were in the city. I get questions all the time about homeschooling isolating us- perhaps it does veer us away from the mainstream (not a bad thing), but then I get people asking if farming isolates us too. Geesh, we must be hermits! The opposite is true though. Through farming and homeschooling we sought out and found community, found others with similar interests, found lifelong friends. Out here in the country we decided to go to church, to find community, to better able to teach our daughters our faith. In the city if we were sick, our neighbors probably never knew- out here someone from the church (actually several people) took the time to drive out here and make sure we were ok. Then we got a lovely card in the mail wishing us better. It was that simple act that really made me feel woven into the hem of this community.

As an aside, it takes me the same amount of distance to go to the local grocery store here as it did in the big city, almost exactly, and yet it takes about 5 minutes less to drive there. Ha! Plus it takes less time to actually shop and the clerks know my girls. If I had any concerns about price and selection, I do not now. They order the few items I requested, like Greek yogurt, coconut oil, and method hand soap (grapefruit scented). I don't buy much at the grocer anymore though I will soon need to buy some vegetables again.

It is quiet here at night. A quiet that I remember distantly from my childhood, summers spent on my Aunt's farm. Sometimes we hear coyotes, which can be scary. We also can here gunshots during hunting season, but that is not so different than where we lived in the city! I do not miss the thumping of car bass turned to loud rattling my windows, I do not miss ghetto doorbells, and I do not miss living surrounded by the noise of other people living. We can hear our neighbors here, but it is not the same thing. It is really lovely, the quiet. For years I had a buzzing tone in my ear, constant. It is gone here but for a few moments now and then. Where we lived in the city the sex offender map showed 20 within 2 blocks of our home and hundreds within 3 miles. Here there are 3 in the whole county and two are teenage love issues. That 1 left is still 15 miles away. Not to say that it really changes how I parent or trust strangers, it is just an observation of a contrast between our city life and our new farm life.

In the year that we have been here I have gone through many changes too. The peacefulness of this place has really crept into my heart. I am a better person for it. Not a perfect person, but a better one than a year ago. I am working on a year in review post for later, but this morning in particular I feel the movement in time, for a full year has passed. I usually do not feel like time has passed, forever stuck feeling the same as I did at age 6, but this morning it is different.

Sorry for the rambling! Good morning to all!