Clo loves CLO

How many other 2-year olds get the fermented cod liver oil out of the fridge and dose themselves with it?  Apparently Clothilde is my most hardcore WAPF baby.  

I'm trying to remember what we even did this weekend - it's slowly coming back to me.  My sore arm and shoulder are reminding me that I threw on the last of the fertilizer on the rye pastures.  On to the pel-lime!  We also rested a lot this weekend.  Ethan and I have some icky head cold again.  It's been unpleasantly cold lately.  Our poorly insulated block house copes with cold about as well as it copes with heat - which is terribly.  So we sat around, coughing and searching for handkerchiefs.

Our freezer is groaning under the weight of all the beef we got back from the butcher last week.  There was some emergency headcheese-making.  We could not believe how much meat we got back.  Boxes and boxes.  A whole big box of steak.  Actually, I think it was two.  Lots of good food.  The butcher even said it looked like some really nice beef when they were cutting it.  It is.  And it's so nice to have beef again after all these years of raising poultry and rabbits and pigs.  It's so nourishing and strengthening.

Inspired by all the steak we now have, we have started reading a book called Steak.  It's a wonderful book.  I've already read it.  It was last year's Christmas present for Ethan, from me.  He hasn't read it yet, but I think it warrants reading now.  I'm reading it out loud for him, so he can't just set it aside and forget about it again.

We also had an unsuccessful trip to the nursery to look for a citrus tree to be our Christmas tree.  I've always liked unconventional Christmas trees, especially fruity kinds.  That way the tree is like another present - and there's just a giant pile of presents in the living room, instead of a pile of presents, wrapped in dead trees, under a dead tree.  And if you get a good one with fruit, it's already pre-decorated.  We used to always get hollies, but I think we have enough holly trees by now.  Once we got a pear tree that didn't really fit our low ceilings, and all the leaves fell off in three days and it looked like a bare stick with lights wrapped around it.  That's why we were going for a citrus this time, but the nursery was all out.  We thought about it, and decided we can't really afford a citrus tree at the moment, anyway, so we'll find some crazy thing to bring home and decorate at the farm.  Mirin's been scoping out weedy little red cedars in the neighbor's planted pines, but we are trying to discourage him.