Lily turns 10!

Lily made me a mother ten years ago and this last decade has been a wonderful journey! This last year Lily bridged in Girl Scouts, took up playing the piano in formal lessons, created with clay, rode horses, explored caves, raised a bottle calf, a lamb, and a runt pig, and created so much joy in the world for herself and others.

Cheers to you sweet girl and may ten be just as filled with adventure and joy! You are creative and interesting and brave. I love spending time with you, I love the care and kindness you show to the smaller than you children in our lives. You give up your candy at parades to the littles who can't go fetch it, you tuck in your brother at night, and you are the most passionate girl I know. I hope that passion changes the world someday, but for right now you are the bright light in my day. You have big goals for yourself this year and my hope is to support those goals and help you make them happen. Love you Nixie.

Prague Castle: a few photos

Progress

November for me is about cleaning: instead of Spring cleaning, I do a fall purging.

An accounting for.

A turnover.

A clean slate.

Three days in and I have sorted and purged 1/2 the outgrown and damaged shoes. Filled two trash cans full of junk mail piled on my desk. Done eight loads of laundry.

I have sat down and organised what work is about to be submitted. Lined up Spring and possibly fall teaching assignments. Paid tuition for a retreat that I am very excited to attend again.

Meal planned. Chore charted. Scrubbed dishes and wiped down shelves.

Three days in and November is already looking fantastic and hopeful. 2015 is going to be an outrageously fantastic year, full of promise and new growth.

With that, I present to you....my first published essay: In the Bareness of Winter, page 136 in the fall issue of Fifth Wednesday Journal. Not available online, to read it you will have to get the print edition. Cool, eh? This essay was really hard for me to write, to share this event on our farm. I also had a fantastic group of friends proofread and cheer me on during the process. If November is for gratitude, let me tell you all, having friends like these? Friends that fill me up instead of tearing me down, friends that cheer me on when I am scared to do the next big thing, friends that stop me from quitting by driving me to the airport, bus station, poetry reading, picking me up from said places too..... friends that love me through the darkness of my insecurity and self doubt? I am extremely grateful. More than mere words can express.

Look! They even printed the accent mark!

200 Trees

As many of you know we are hard at work raising funds for an Indiegogo campaign.....

But what isn't obvious from this campaign page is an amazing donation we got this week from Versaland Farm in Iowa City. Grant called us, knowing we'd probably buy a lot of the stock from him anyway, and offered to donate 200 trees to the project. He also gave us some tree guards and sold us stakes at cost.We toured his farm and saw his adorable Kune Kune Ossabaw cross pigs. The hills were lined with trees from his tree mob planting project this summer. Amazing.

These pictures are from his farm. This is what our planting will look like very soon. Our project wasn't going i the ground until 2015, but these sweet trees have to go in right now. This is an amazing gift. We are very grateful and even though it doesn't look like it on our fundraising page, this puts us at 20% of our goal of 1000 trees in the ground. Thank you Grant!

If you have a donation that isn't dollars that you'd like to make, let us know. Much of Permaculture is about giving what you have and creating relationships. 

In honour of Grant's donation we are adding a donation category for 10$ (our previous lowest one was $25). 10$ will buy one tree, just the tree.  Many of us farmers and farm fans are on tight budgets. We are hoping that 10$ isn't too much. The option is at the bottom of the perk page.

That said, if you know a family that has a child in the hospital or a neighbor that is struggling, we encourage you to spend your charity with them. As parents of a special needs, medically fragile child, I know that the holidays are the hardest and medical bills pile up. If you find yourself with a choice, please do not hesitate to put your $$ to use close to home. Part of my hesitation for creating a funding effort for our tree planting was knowing that our close friends are raising money for medical needs. It took a lot for me to get to the point that I could make this campaign, thinking about their needs while we want to plant trees.

So those are my thoughts today. Get out there, do good in the world. That's a seed worth planting!