Something very sudden, and very sad happened this week. Night Hawk, our little buck, became very, very ill suddenly and died. I believe he had Stargazing, or goat polio – not a contagious disease, but caused by a vitamin B1 deficiency. He was growing, in appearances in good health, although he seemed behind developmentally. He…
Signs and Portents
This is gruesome…but an interesting story. Ethan had dropped me and the girls off at the gate on the way in to the farm, because they like to walk along and look at Star’s piglets. They were lingering, loitering, moving very slowly, and I had a lot I wanted to get done, so I ran…
New Year’s Calamondin Cake
Welcome 2016!!! We had a wonderful New Year’s Eve dinner with my family. We had a big ham bone from a ham Ethan brined, so I made the traditional Southern New Year’s meal: Black-eye peas (with the ham bone), cornbread, and greens (turnip greens this time – I think they are supposed to…
Unfriending
We finally caught this raccoon who has been raiding the dog food – another unwelcome guest! I just had to unfriend someone after a decade-long friendship. It was hard. Our children liked to play together. She is going through a really hard time in her life, and I felt sorry for her. We have things…
Roots and Rabbits
Ethan uncovered this adorable little rabbit when he moved the chickens through a thick patch of Spanish needle in the garden. It tried to run away, but he caught it again easily, and it squeaked loudly. It had a litter mate that he unfortunately stepped on by accident, before he even realized there were rabbits…
Local Dad Finds One Cool Trick For Storing Tons of Back Fat
Ethan got out the meat grinder and tons of frozen back fat the other day in an effort to create more freezer space. It seems to work really well storing the fat like this. It doesn’t get moldy or go rancid the way rendered fat does. You just chip off what you need and throw…
Experiments with Fermented Cassava
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…
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…
Toadstools And Fairy Rings 