Since Mirin’s pit has expanded so much lately, the old tarp roof did not fit anymore, and rainwater was eroding the sides away.  He rebuilt one side of it with wood from old pallets layered with brush and dirt piled on top.  This is where the fire pit is now, and it even has a…

All this year I’ve had one awful random physical ailment after the next that keeps me from sleeping.  It started out with a wheezy month-long chest cold my dad brought back from Cuba last December, and since then it’s just been a constant parade of things from whooping cough to pityriasis rosea to having my…

This week has been trudging along so slowly.  What, it’s only Thursday?! We are doing better this week, but still queasy.  The hardest thing about a stomach bug is that I can never think of what to cook and everyone starves on the awful things I do manage. Apart from that we’ve had an exciting…

Years ago I wanted to learn cables, so I picked up Cables Untangled and set to work on a few projects.  One of them, rather ambitious I think now, was a cabled vest for Mirin. It sat largely ignored for a couple of years, but last year he picked it up and decided he loved…

Grasshopper  Katydid   Green Lynx spider eating love bugs (I thought they looked toxic!) We have some redwood-like dog fennel in one of the pastures where I limed with a generous hand.  I’ve never seen the stalks grow so thick and tall anywhere.  Mirin brought one of the stalks home and it is as tall…

I went to a Steiner study class called Foundation Studies on Friday and Saturday, leaving Ethan with the children.  On Saturday the big kids went with their Baba to B. B. Brown Gardens for a butterfly lecture he was doing, so it turned out to just be Ethan and Clothilde. They were busy, very busy…

Whew, it’s been a rough week around here.  I stayed home from the farm on Wednesday to rest, and Mirin was so kind as to watch Clothilde while Ethan did the chores.  He told me he made her walk all over the farm so she would sleep well!  (She did, too!) The fall greens are…

One rainy evening the big kids thought it was “chilly” (it was about 75F.  We’re still acclimated to 85-90F), and so Mirin built a fire in the fireplace in his pit.  He had extended the roof and made a chimney and everything, so it was very cozy, although too small for us grown-ups to fit…

We got rained out again at the farm on Saturday.  I don’t think I’ve ever been caught in that much rain before. In the five seconds it took to run to the truck and find my hat, I was completely soaked to the skin.  Ethan resorted to making a rain shelter for Clothilde on his…

For months now I’ve been watching the hind-parts of the sows and cows and wondering if they looked pregnant or not, or hoping that Mama Bee really isn’t just that fat.  We’ve all been hoping to go out one day and see new babies. Well, an unexpected thing happened this week.  There were some new…

The fall starts are all safely in the ground and growing, and now it has been time to turn our attention to the winter garden.  The Asian greens I’d started were ready to go in the ground.  This week I planted the bekana, tatsoi, pak choy and Chinese cabbage.  I direct-seeded turnips, a dwarf snap…

This is a version of Chili Rellenos with a home-grown twist.  Home-grown because I used home made chevre cheese to stuff them instead of the oft-called for hard cheese, and they are not the usual kind of pepper.  These were big beautiful Napoleon sweet peppers from the garden.  (The cornmeal was “boughten” cornmeal this time,…