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…
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…
Toadstools And Fairy Rings 