I’ve been thinking since I last wrote about work – I almost considered taking that post down, because it came off as kind of whiny.  I like the farm work.  I like what I do every day, and I wish I had time and energy to do more.  It feels so grounding and healthy to…

  This weekend was exciting – Chestnut’s long-awaited calf was finally born! She had missed her first “due window” for when she was AI’d, so we figure that this calf is our bull Explorer’s.  Explorer is half Devon, half Jersey.  The calf has a Devon face, but certainly the Jersey lanky legs.  He is also…

When I was younger, I used to feel that holidays were contrived marketing opportunities, seeing all the obnoxious decorations that went up in stores and places of commerce.  But as I’ve gotten older and tried to be more in tune with nature and our food, I have started to appreciate more and more the old…

I wish I had more to say about the garden other than I need to get out there and plant  more.  I’ve only seen it in the dark for the past few days, and I’ve just been harvesting lately, which is by far the funnest part.  Turnips are coming out, as well as French breakfast…

I wish I could tell you what I’m working on at the moment, but it is a (shhh!!) Christmas surprise for someone.  I have knitted this pattern before, back when Clothilde was wonderfully immobile and still in that cute stage where they are extra chubby and can’t crawl anywhere.  Needless to say, I am finding…

 We discovered this lovely stranger crawling across the pasture the other day.  It had silvery twinkles all over it.  It was a Luna moth. When I was a child, my dad and I raised a bunch of Luna moths from eggs.  Of course my dad did most of it, but I helped him gather sweet…

  This weekend we said goodbye to Meathead, and hello to beef.  It was a huge amount of work – far more than we had anticipated and we are all sore and exhausted.  I have pictures from the harvest (slaughter?) day following, just a caution in case you are sensitive… Meathead was Geranium’s baby, born…

The Daikon radishes and Chinese cabbage were ready in the garden, indicating that it is high time for a batch of kimchi.  Luckily we also had some Trinidad spice peppers left over from before the first frost.  Here’s what I put together: 1 head of Chinese cabbage, shredded 3 Daikon radishes, trimmed, washed and grated…

Brrrr…..it’s cold out there.  Last night it was around 38 F and we were forking the last bit of a load of horse manure onto another garden bed.  My face was so cold it was hard to talk.  The hoops and plastic have seem to have worked for frost protection. Only the tender nasturtiums froze,…

It’s been interesting getting back to doing my chores every day.  I get a lot of exercise.  Not complaining, I like the exercise.  It is grounding, practical, soul-nourishing.  I remember feeling restless living in town when Mirin was small.  We walked a lot in the evenings, careful to avoid the sprayed lawns, the dog turds…

We just finished a four-week math block for home school.  I like taking several weeks for a subject this way.  This is the first year I’ve been very organized with home schooling, and it is really wonderful.  I wish I’d been more organized before.  By organized, I mean I go through and do all the…

I finally went to the farm on Saturday.  It didn’t seem like I had been gone for very long, but everything was different.  The greens in the garden looked huge.  There were tinges of rusty brown in the pine trees.  A frost had put an end to the rioting fall flowers, leaving them delicately dry…