Goals for this year?

This is my personal goal list from 2011, though it includes some farm stuff too.

1)Expand the apiary
2)Learn to play fiddle
3)Grow tomatoes
4)Bring strawberries to market
5)Harvest wild fruit and can it (I did get some this year but the major bounty of the farm has yet been untouched. We have gooseberries, black raspberries, morels, wild plum, rose hips, nettle, juniper, mulberries, elderberries, blackberries, crab apple, boysenberries, and who knows what else.)
6) plant 15 more trees, find cherries that I like
7) create a wall poster with the tree varieties we have planted for reference
8) mail the envelope back to NY (I've been saying this for 12 years now and really, it is too late, but the principle of the thing is bugging me.)
9) write the last chapter
10)sell the DM house
11) say thank you more often with both words and actions
12) take the kids (and grandpa) to ride the train in Boone
13) bake pie more often
14) read more books.



I did all of these except # 7. Well, and number 2 is still being worked on. :/ 

Why goals like this, lists like this, are important? The reflection back is hopeful. I got these things accomplished, though not all in 2011. In fact, many of them were checked off the list in 2013 and 2014.  Progress is still progress, in inches or in miles. I had to travel cross country on a bus and suffer severe sleep deprivation have dinner with the ghost of a drag queen in Savannah, Georgia, and track pigs on a wilderness island to get number 8 done.

Sometimes it takes a bunch of Jennifers to get me on the bus to begin with. Ha!

Completing these goals led me to new ones, new adventures, new connections, deeper connections with friends and family, all good things. It helps when you look back, to know what you were looking at, like an aerial landscape, you can see the watershed, the rivers, a clearer view of the options ahead. There are always variables, storms that happen, rerouting, delays, but adventure is still to be had. You can hide in a corner and wish for death or you can make a ridiculous video and make friends.

I have been thinking about what my new goals are. How my New Years goals are going, am I remembering not to Sabotage myself? No, but I have folks holding me accountable for that and it is often.

1) Finish my self designed/paced poetry course. I have about 7 unites left, stalled at writing a ghazal, not yet to Haiku.
2) Travel to Prague, hug my friend Adrienne, who needs a hug. Take a ton of pictures of buildings a sheep.
3) Finish the short story about Alice.
4) Finish the short story about the cat lady.
5) Write more poems. Revise twice as many.
6) Send all of them out and stop fretting about them being done enough.
7) Take Isaac to ride the trains in Boone, now that he is old enough to love trains and pay attention to it.
8) Submit more work to Literary Mama. Start writing essays.
9) Work on cookbook.
10) Take a photography class of some sort. I never have, y'all. Not one.
11) Send out all the thank you letters. Even ones that are long over due. My gratitude has not expired.
12) Be more patient.
13) Visit my aunt.
14) Get a self portrait done. One that is good for bio blurb. One that is sexy and cool.
15) Paint things. All the things. Except not the perfectly finished, pristine antique wooden things, that is a crime against history and humanity. Painting cheap crappy things is ok though. ;)
16) Host a dinner party and use the good dishes.
17) Recover the dining room chairs. 
18) Master baking cookies and making caramels.
19) Clean out my closet.
20) Feel pretty more often.

What are your goals? How do you stay on track?

Peach Crisp with Coconut (GF)

Filling: Peaches- three pints. Strain juice off and save for bonus recipe.

No extra sugar. No extra lemon juice. The peaches are canned in both and are plenty sweet on their own. Even if you are slicing and using fresh peaches, as long as they are in season Missouri peaches, you should be good to go with just good peaches.

Topping:
6 Tb of flour. I used all purpose GF flour.
1/2 cup of raw sugar
pinch of salt
pinch of nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
pinch of tumeric (optional)
5 Tb of butter
1/4 cup shredded coconut (or ground up nuts, but I was out)

Mix all the dry ingredients in, then cut the butter in with a pastry cutter or food processor.

Once it is the texture of cornmeal, add in 1/4 cup shredded coconut.

Dump and spread peaches into an 8x8 pan. Dump and spread topping over them.

Oven at 350 degrees F for about an hour. Check on it and take it out when the top is browned.

Serve with whip cream, ice cream, or sour cream. Really, any of those will work. I've even used plain Greek yogurt.

Ta Da.

Tour of a post pig pasture

Chad was asked to show what a pasture looks like when the pigs are done with it - this is a video of a pasture the day our pigs left it, and a discussion of how we rotate our animals and why.

You can follow us at https://www.facebook.com/stampsfamilyfarm

If you are interested in pigs specifically, I run a facebook group about that -
https://www.facebook.com/groups/pasturedpigs/

If you are interested in more general homesteading and permaculture topics, I have a group for that as well - https://www.facebook.com/groups/midwesthomestead/

Couple notes.

The pigs will not be on this spot again for a year. I'll probably have cows or sheep over this area once between now and then.

I call the milkweed 'butteryfly bush'. I misspoke, but hopefully the reason is evident. I've had butterflies and pollinators on my mind lately.

I mention Peter Allen - you can follow his farm at http://www.mastodonvalleyfarm.com/

I'm doing 2 week rotations this year. I'll reassess next spring - a week might be better, but it's at least partially dictated by my own time.

At this time I had not reseeded the pasture - that was completed about a day after they left. Ideally it would have been done a few days before they left so they could stomp the seed into the ground. I'll be doing that with the next paddock so I can show the difference later.

Invisible, Thoughts on 22q and Being Public With Our Son's Diagnosis

Someone recently asked me if Isaac actually has a disability, and the answer is yes and no and yes and maybe and I don't really know.

This question would have frustrated me even a year ago. Now, I have complicated feelings about this and I am not exactly sure how to explain or respond.

Isaac is doing so well that people from afar cannot immediately spot his struggles. This increases his chances of "passing" or assimilating into a world that others medical differences, both physical and neurological. He's three years old though, so things may change or be more obvious as time moves on.

Early on I had wondered about his diagnosis. He does not fit the typical 22q symptom profile. His case, thank the Lord, is really physically mild, non life threatening. He doesn't have a heart defect, has never needed surgery. This fact alone makes the doctors take a second look at his charts. He doesn't get sick often. We have avoided many interventions that often people choose out of fear when there are multiple options, and so have avoided complications from those more medical interventions. Mostly we are darn lucky at that outcome. We tow the line with it though, ever vigilant.

Being a special needs family is the hardest thing that has ever blessed our family. Every single time something difficult, hurtful, heartbreaking, or scary has happened to us.....something more beautiful and precious and perfect has been born from it. That's how I feel once I got my sea legs about Isaac's diagnosis, once we were out of the abyss of "failure to thrive" and he'll be deaf/never walk/ect stormy seas.

I know that because he keeps proving doctors wrong that this is the basis for questioning his diagnosis or the seriousness of 22q syndrome. I did. I most certainly did. Genetic defect is a dangerous label and one I do not want for him. If I could go back and never run the test, just deal with symptoms, I would. There has never been a time in history where having that label has a good outcome for the person wearing it. Maybe this era will be different, but as a history professor I kind of doubt it. I fearfully doubt it. This is something that keeps me up at night.

Really. More so than last year wondering if he would ever walk. Which he did, right before his third birthday. Wondering if he was really deaf, he passed his first hearing exam at 18 months. Wondering if he would never learn to read and enjoy books like I do, wondering if he'll ever be about to tell me about his dreams with words in the middle of the night, wondering if he understands what the world is really like.

I am grateful for his diagnosis too. Because of it, we are blessed with the most amazing friends. The 22q community online helps connect people. Through Isaac's struggles I met several local people who have kids with medical differences too, including another 22q family, and I now count them as some of my closest friends. They know. They know how much they mean to me because I remember to tell them often. That is something else I learned from them.

I have someone really special, magical, life changing playing outside in my back yard. He's singing to the chickens and sliding and swinging and tormenting his sisters with mudballs (which they LOVE) and when you see him from afar he looks and acts and seems just like a normal three year old. I am totally ok that folks think that. It's his cover identity. If that allows folks to get closer and get to know him and us, maybe that many less people will be afraid of "genetic defect". Maybe that many less "defective" babies will be aborted (yup, I went there). Maybe my fears that history will repeat itself will not come to fruition in his or his children's lifetime.

Maybe.

He is lucky that he doesn't have an obvious, physical medical need that reveals his story like a badge to onlookers. It is much harder for children who do, that's for sure. Much much harder. There are so many more children who have silent diagnosis. Maybe that kid melting down at the mall isn't a victim of bad parenting, maybe they struggle with sensory issues. Maybe the kids crying at the birthday party accidentally ate gluten filled cake and his tummy is cramping. So many families hide their issues for fear that talking, sharing, makes them a target of gossip. That's the last thing anyone needs and when you are in the depths of just trying to survive another day, one less thing to worry about is one less thing. That's one of the many reasons some families become reclusive and silent.

Not everyone gets the gift of our story. Gossip is like Diet Coke. It's fun in the moment, but on a cellular level it is killing you. Getting to know us is like peach pie made from scratch when the Missouri peaches are perfectly ripe. That pie is precious.  This life is precious.