December Dumpster Dive Tradition

  Only two days shy of the anniversary of the last time the freezers at “Earth Origins” corporate natural food store crapped out, they did it again.  We had already had an insanely lucky day – the first part was taken up with a friend-of-a-friend who had demolished an old hay barn and had a…

Several Things

We’ve had a quiet past two weeks…I had a very small hand in Thanksgiving this year.  It was spent with lots of family, mostly Ethan’s family.  My brother got stuck talking to Ethan’s crazy uncle for a long time (“who was that guy?” he asked my parents later.  “Angie warned us about him,” my mom…

Key Lime Pie – A Real Food Recipe

A few weeks ago, my dad took Mirin, along with a fellow entomologist enthusiast, for one of their crazy bug-hunting trips to Cedar Key.  Along the way they discovered a key lime tree, covered in limes and entirely ignored/unappreciated/forgotten at the edge of a school yard.  The limes were falling all over the ground, and…

Goats is Bad

  Clothilde said the funniest thing to me the other day.  She said it right after she had handed me the tiny cob of stunted dent corn that she found in the garden, so she could bear-hug our great pyrenees farm dog, Belle.  Belle rolls in stinky stuff, loves frolicking in the rain, and usually…

Chestnut’s New Calf

We’ve been expecting Chestnut to have her baby any day for about a month at least.  She had the “heavily pregnant lady waddle” and every day looked about to have her baby within the next few hours, but somehow managed to look even more pregnant and ready to calve the next day. On Friday when…

Some Days

My neighbor came over yesterday to check on us after Rose spent about half an hour screaming at the top of her lungs and drumming her feet on the floor.  I reassured her that we were mostly okay – we had been trying to finish the writing part of home school for the day, and…

The Day Arrived….

For months now we had been planning a hoof-to-table pig processing class with our friend PJ.  This weekend we put the last of Star’s first piglets in the freezer.  They were huge, but we had been saving them for November, when we thought it would be cold.  It wasn’t.  It was downright hot (actually record…

Birthdays, All Around

    We’ve had so much going on…. and all my children had birthdays in the past two months. Clothilde, the “baby” is now 3!  She’s talking so much now.  She helps out with everything.  She says she wants to be called Cinderella.  I think someone read her the story, or maybe Rose brought it…

Nature Finds: Autumn Bugs

  A mama green lynx spider…. And on the other side you can see all her babies. Furious fire ants. A centipede…I see lots of milipedes of different sizes, but hardly ever a centipede. Mating wheel bugs.  You can see the wheel on their backs.  These are predatory insects, so I am very happy to…

Some Growing Things

It is a bumper year for the roselle.  Yes, this basket is entirely full of it.  I didn’t show the gallon milking pail, also full-to-the-top.  And we only managed to pick half the bushes.  The ones we didn’t get to were so laden, they were falling over.  Beats me what went right this year.  They…

Healing

I have been healing well.  I am feeling more and more like myself.  A few days ago, I found myself able to read again.  I don’t know why I couldn’t before.  I couldn’t focus my eyes right or something.  Now I am feeling bored and restless when everyone leaves to go to the farm, so…

Return from the Underworld

Last week I suddenly became very, very sick.  I have never been so sick before in my life.  For days it felt like I was wandering on my way to the Underworld – darkness, visions, pain, and somehow, strange and beautiful music ringing constantly in my ears. I finally went to the hospital and had…