We stopped by our friend PJ’s house the other day while we were on her side of town looking at a chest freezer we found on Craigslist. She loaded us up with more grapefruits, showed us her chickens and her garden, and insisted we take all the pablano peppers that loaded the five or so…
Author: toadstoolsfairyrings
Too much
Christmas was fun…..(and there was too much chocolate) ….and busy. The results, naturally, are tiring, and lead to other things: All the new stuff we got from extended family gave me a panic attack this morning. There’s no place for it to go. My kids can’t handle what they have already. Puzzle pieces strewn…
A Christmas Eve Surprise
On Christmas eve we went out early to do the chores – not very early, after lunch-ish. There were a few surprises waiting for us – first of all, the pigs HAD gotten through the electric fence (I thought they were behaving themselves very nicely – too nicely), and were in the garden. Luckily we…
Shopping Trauma with Three-Year-Old
Clothilde jammed herself in the orange safety cone we keep for slowing down traffic when the kids are riding bikes in front of our house. I had two awful shopping adventures with Clothilde this past week. I must say first – she is the sweetest, most affectionate of any of my children. When she…
Calamondins and Crazed Dogs
Our neighbor gave us a bunch of calamondins – tiny, extremely sour, but very flavorful little citrus fruits (the one in the picture is actually a Satsuma orange – Clothilde had started peeling it. The calamondins are much smaller and at that point had worked their way into the sour gummies). Ethan baked a ham…
Digging in the garden
Climate change has been on my mind this strange autumn. Not that I can do much about it. But it’s the time of year when the antlered reindeer fly in the midnight sky – coming to us from the old myths of Cernnunos and Deer Woman – the old ones who lead the sacred…
Nutcracker
This week has been full of Nutcracker performances – it’s Rose’s second year, and she’s a soldier again. It’s a fun part, and she has really enjoyed it so far. Clothilde went to the school show this morning and loved it. She’s been waking up so early this week (before it is even light out). …
Pig Madness
Ethan spent most of Friday and Saturday chained to the pig roast, but otherwise the birthday/holiday celebration went quite well. Thursday was of course full of scalding, scraping, field-dressing, the crisis of making the ice-and-hay cooler (which worked very well actually), and a very late drive across town to get the extra-large roasting equipment…
Little Big Pig
A blown-up pig’s bladder – in other words, a “Colonial foot-ball” It works! Yesterday our friend PJ came out and very generously assisted in processing a pig to roast whole for the birthday this weekend. It was the only remaining boar among the spring piglets, and we also didn’t want him to start breeding his…
This Season
Right after Thanksgiving I managed to re-furbish chocolate advent calendars with healthier and less hyper-activity inducing sour gummies, but then got lost in trying to finish up home school for this year and getting my garden going. Yesterday I finally opened up our holiday stuff…it’s not much. A collection of unbreakable ornaments, a felt garland…
The Greediest Goat
We arrived at the farm the other day to see the goats wandering around at the end of the driveway. Someone had a bucket stuck on their head. This turned out to be May. It was quite a desperate drive to get to them, because they can easily reach my little garden starts that are…
Golden Abundance
It’s been a particularly abundant week this week – not only because there are finally things to eat out of the garden at last (hooray for turnips and radishes!), but also a friend of ours gavee us bagfuls of lemons and grapefruits from her trees. The girls pulled some daikons from the garden and helped…
Toadstools And Fairy Rings 