Iowa City Children's Museum, September

We had to pick up 30 bushels of acorns in Iowa City today. Usually, that means that I pick another of the area's attractions (I try for free) and we do that before or after the pick up. This time, the kids begged and badgered and pleaded and negotiated to go to the Children's Museum.

We played in the flight simulator room for an hour at least. Holly pretended to fly to the Arctic Circle to look for penguins and polar bears. Isaac loved the music room best. Lily rocked the farmers' market. The theatre and the art studio were open and they spent time in both while Isaac insisted on driving the ambulance.


Break for lunch and acorn loading. Each kid gobbled a full bowl of broccoli cheddar soup and was ready for more flying fun.

They spent 11am -4pm there and wanted to close the place down at 8pm, but Mama was tired, so so tired. I got up at 5 am to get everything ready for this adventure. They slept in to 6 AND napped on the way to Iowa City.

We took the long way home.....the one with the prettiest of views.....and the kids sang that song, Cups, for 90 minutes straight before passing out and napping.

Holly observed that none of the small towns had ice cream shops and that was a tragedy for AMERICA.

Almost home I realized that I wasn't actually ready to end this wonderful day, so we stopped at the State Park by our farm and they ate PB&J's and rolled down the hill laughing and tumbling and explaining to Isaac all about faerie dwellings within sight.

We ended the day with an all the kids in the bath scrub down and pajama party, watched 4 episodes of H2O Mako Mermaids, and as I type this two of them are crashed asleep on the floor.

This was a good day, a good and beautiful day. These are the days that are so overflowing and spilling over with happy that they fill up the surrounding days with joy too. My kids are so much a blessing to me and to the folks they encountered today, I am so lucky to be their mama and to spend my days with them.

Komorebi

 Tuesday was foggy and magical when we headed out for our long day. Fog is terrible to try and photograph with a camera phone, but I gave it a go. The farm was wrapped up in it and Lily made up a poem about how this was a....

gurgling fog,
a dangerous fog, 
a mist that would gobble you up 
forever lost, 
holding your nightmares in place, 
slipping your dreams away fog. 

Good grief. Even I was terrified to leave the driveway.

Komorebi is a Japanese word for when sunlight dances between the branches and the leaves of trees. That is what my children played in for hours while I cleaned up apples. The three of them laughed and ate apples and told stories in this magical backyard of my friend Jenni B.

And that was our day, the moments of bliss between delivering payments and dropping off Goodwill donations (cleaned out closets, yeah!).

Ossabaw Island Pigs, a New Addition to Our Farm

Friday, Chad wrote this on our facebook page:

Danelle is on her way to pick up a breeding pair of Ossabaw Island Hogs - should have them in their pen learning what an electric fence is by this afternoon.

Generally speaking I don't put much stock in the differences associated with pig breeds...it's not the breed, it's how likely the breed was to have been bred at some point in it's family tree for confinement traits. Breeds like Berkshire, Large Black, or Mule Foot aren't necessarily better, they are just less likely than something like a yorkshire to have been bred for confinement. Even then you have to be sure to talk to the breeder to see how many generations they've been on pasture to be sure to get the right kind of traits for pasture. Even confinement hogs will remember how to be pigs again after a generation on grass or in the woods.

Ossabaws though...these are different. There are Ossabaws raised in confinement by scientists studying them due to their extremely efficient feed conversion, but they aren't bred with confinement traits in mind, and everyone raising them for meat has them in pasture or wooded areas. They remain for the most part, exactly as they are found in the wild.

They are descendants from the Spanish Iberian pigs that are run in the oak forest in spain to produce the most famous hams in the world. They were let go on Ossabaw Island south of Georgia* so they could naturalize and be a food source for the Spanish. Fast forward to today and they are much smaller pigs heavily adapted to foraging and living in harsh conditions on their own. They aren't 'improved' like almost all the other pig breeds - they retain as much piginess as is possible to have in farm raised pork. They have the darker richer flavor and marbling of the spanish Iberian, with the ability to efficiently convert extra feed into lard in large quantities.

We expect to begin offering meat from these pigs sometime next year - price still to be determined, but carcass size will be smaller...though, because they have superpowers, they produce about the same amount of bacon as one of our Berkshires would despite the small size.

They may be the perfect pig. : )

The drive was long and hot and I got lost twice, delaying our trip by nearly 3 hours and putting us smack into the intense and dangerous heat of the day that my 5 am departure was meant to avoid. I stopped and refilled icebags into the water pan twice. Poured cold water onto the pigs a few times too. It was not a good day for transport.

All said they settle in nicely. The kids learned a lot of 1920's and agricultural history (Bonnie and Clyde and why there are so many fruit orchards in Missouri). It was a hot, sticky, lovely road trip. 

*originally I had written Florida and that was a mistake. There is also new evidence that shows the pigs ancestry and I will share that soon!

Moments of Grace

Last week I was doing chores at dusk and caught this amazing sunset. The picture cannot even begin to express how amazing and breathtaking the beauty that washed the entire pasture in rose and gold light. All the animals turned West to watch it and I stood there in silence. This is when I feel close to God, part of a larger creation, and completely in awe of Earth.