The goats have been keeping me busy – we slaughtered the three male bucklings from this spring, and suddenly we have lots of meat and lots of milk. Kefir, yogurt, cheese, too. It is such an abundance as we have not had in several seasons. It feels heady and happy – every meal is a…
New Milk Custard Pie With Mulberries
This post is not timely, unfortunately. A while ago the mulberries were finished fruiting, and the season for new babies is nearly over. But the truth is this post is a difficult one for me to write – because there was trouble this season, and people who don’t live with this kind of thing –…
2021 Spring Garden Tour
I know I have been very quiet here this spring. I didn’t mean to be. I would keep thinking of things I’d like to write down, but then I got so, so busy and picked up by the driving, whirling, greening spring – I couldn’t ever get around to sitting down and writing anything. So…
Radishes With Miso Tamari Sauce and Sesame Seeds
The peach trees are blooming profusely in the orchard still. I’ve watched each of the ten trees one by one be ornamented with delicate pink blossoms, and then the slow, graceful dance of lacy green leaves unfolding. So quickly the flowers fade and are gone, but for these three weeks or so I am enchanted…
Three – A Birth Story
Two of my eight mama goats this year were due to kid last week. I didn’t write down the exact day I turned the buck in with them (a healthy goat carries her kids exactly 150 days. It isn’t like cows who have a 20-day window), but it’s easy to see when they are ready,…
Tangy Radish Salad
I feel like I slept a long time under the winter darkness. Even in the bell-cold mornings under the blustery sky, and working beside the smoky hearth. While I walked I still slept in the quiet. Slowly – it happened as the days uncounted, stretched beyond the threshold. First things reached out to me through…
Mint and Pecan Chutney
I love the bare, crystalline mornings, edged with frost and sharp with ice, when the blue sky is so clear as a bell you want to dive in between the bare branches as the birds do and fly up and up. I got frostbite one morning on the bottoms of my feet from crunching barefoot…
Holiday Potsticker Dumplings
I love the long, long nights of this holy season. The restful darkness so bright with stars, and the low, grey days so gentle on the eyes. I’ve been hibernating – trying to sleep twelve full hours a day, wrapped in wool and long clothes, slowly letting go of all the unreachable things, the things…
Rice and Pigeon Peas
The hardest freeze in two or three years came through last week, wilting the whole garden. The weedy sweet potatoes, the remains of the roselle, and the tall pigeon peas were dark and limp when I woke up on that cold, cold morning. The whole orchard and all the pastures were white. The rest of…
Thanksgiving 2020
It’s been a crazy year, but we still have so much to be thankful for! Ethan got so much work this year, and we are very, very thankful he was an essential worker, since he doesn’t qualify for unemployment. We had very healthy calves and goat kids born this year. The chickens made more of…
Roselle Sweet And Sour Pork
The weather is so cool and sweet after the latest storm. I love those quiet moments that always seem to happen this time of year, when the afternoon sun sweeps glorious golden arms through the tops of the trees, and the bare branches of the sleeping trees look so lonely… Melancholy settles on me…
Thoughts On Homeschooling 1
I’ve been homeschooling children for more than a whole decade, and since I know that many families are turning to homeschooling these days, I thought I might share a little about what has worked for us. First of all, I LOVE home schooling! I think it’s tons of fun. Each state is different as far…
Toadstools And Fairy Rings 