Two Gardens

Peek-a-boo!
I do hope this becomes more of a habit.
I thought I might write a little about the gardens--my winter garden, and my dreams for the summer garden--

Thanks to our friend Danny, we found a wonderful source of horse manure.  It's a horse-boarding place, there's tons and tons of it, and they are so happy for us to haul it away.  We also found some huge pieces of cardboard, so garden construction is underway.

Here it is-- the whole side of the garden--15 beds and all, not counting the corn and pumpkins.

This past week I was worrying I may have been over ambitious this year.  But we only have five more beds to build--two more loads of manure to haul away.

Last summer's garden was a smallish garden.  It only took up a quarter of the space, and I built three permaculture beds around the corn patch.  Everything did so well, but I ran out of room.  It changed my gardening philosophy in that I only planted a few plants of each thing and nurtured them along.  It was so shockingly productive that way.  Before I had been planting dozens of plants in hopes I'd get a handful of something out of them, but it was too big and there were too many to really care for them all.

This year I am only planting a few plants of each thing, but I really want to give everything the space it needs.  So that's why the garden is so big this year.

We had such a busy late summer/fall last year, that the winter garden was not really well done.  I actually ended up buying starts this year instead of trying my own starts.  I finally did get some nice kale to grow.

We have potatoes starting to peek out, and some of the carrots did sprout at last.

The onion patch is doing well this year.  I did two different kinds of beds with them, and it turns out the most back-breaking one to build did the very best.  Oh well.

I'm even getting a tiny bit of cabbage.  We also have a revolutionary hoop-house for cold protection.  I'll admit, this is the first year the winter garden didn't just freeze and get eaten by rabbits.  It's been kind of shocking, really.

Now that so many things have gone to seed, there's not too much growing there now, except the borage.  She is certainly queen of the garden at the moment, and I enjoy her beauty every day.  I even made an herb cream cheese spread from the leaves.

Younger Buckthorne is doing quite well.  He was jumping about playfully yesterday.  Firefly is due today, and May tomorrow, so there just might be a new baby goat at some point today.

Spring and a new start perhaps

It's been so long now since I have written here.
It has been on my mind so often to write about such-and-such, but I never seem to be able to find the time these days!  But I have carved out a little today, so here are a few random pictures--

Last year we had a good year.  Nothing has changed extremely.  The garden was so lovely and productive last year with all the rain.  We got a buck for the goats, and the babies are being born now!  The first one was born on Thursday.  I thought it would be Firefly, because she was supposed to be first, but it was Cricket's baby.  It was a little boy--the first boy goat born on our farm.

There was a calf born in February.  We've called him Sampson.

The rye we seeded on some of the pastures and in the garden turned out quite nice.  It has made such a difference for everyone to have some good green stuff during the winter.

Clothilde has grown up quite a lot now. 

This spring our table is decorated with spring flowers and an Ostara tree.  We had lots of fun blowing the eggs and painting them on the Equinox.

This was from warmer days--Clothilde helps to feed the animals!  She loves all of them, and isn't afraid.

This was the buck.  We were reading Washington Irving, as per family tradition in the fall, and called him "Young Buckthorne."  He was, after all, a young man of great expectations.

He was a good buck, got all the girls bred, was friendly and gentle, and towards the end of his stay was not even terribly stinky.  The drawback was that he was very funny looking.  His mama was a La Mancha and his father was a Kinder (Nubian and African Pygmy).  My friend Denise lent him to us for free.  His dad had gotten in with the does and so he was sort of an accident, but we weren't picky at all this year.  She said his mama made the most milk of all the goats, but he did have wattles and weird little Shrek ears.

Spring is in full bloom out at the farm.  It is so beautiful out there these days.

I hope that I will be able to write more this year.  But look what happened last time I shut the office door, leaving Ethan with the children, and tried to order the Freedom Ranger chicks for this year without a certain someone chewing on the electrical cords or ravaging the sewing table, or other certain someones asking innumerable questions:

In case you don't recognize this, it is a $1,000 fine for "Cruelty and Neglect" of my children they tell me!  I thought that was pretty steep for 15 minutes alone.

Pumpkin Time!

The Summer garden has reached the point where things have mostly been harvested and plants are getting the crispy-and-brown-around-the-edges look.  The black cherry trees have begun to show yellow spotted leaves and the pastures are rank with bahia grass gone to seed.

Even in the very hot, humid weather these days I have felt a cool, dry breeze blow by that reminds me that the light is waning and Autumn will be here.

It was time to harvest the pumpkins last week.  We got a Potimarron (little orange one), a Burgess Buttercup (dark green, second from left in top row), a small Strawberry Crown, but mostly we got pumpkins from a volunteer pumpkin vine.  They are some sort of blue pumpkin, and they are very sweet-flavored.  I am wondering if it is a Triamble-Australian Butter Pumpkin cross, or perhaps a Strawberry Crown-Burgess cross?  I planted so many different kinds last year, we will never know.  

The next day, Mirin and Rose came out.  I had saved the largest pumpkins for them to pick, and they ran excitedly through the rows of fading sweet corn to pull them out.

Clothilde also thought the pumpkins were amusing.  She loves to climb. 

I love Cinderella pumpkins (or were these Rouge Vif D'etamps?), and my only Amish Pie pumpkin we got this year.  The vine is still setting more fruit, but I'm afraid the stem borer moths will likely get them before we do.

I can't wait until cooler weather makes baking pies a joy!  We always read Carl Sandburg's The Huckabuck Family:  And How They Raised Popcorn in Nebraska and Quit and Came Back before we open a pumpkin for pie.

A few other things we pulled out:
The last of the sweet corn, cow peas, long beans; a huge, hidden cucumber, eggplant, a massive marrow we had missed, some okra, a few yellow squash, some ailing tomatoes and Tulsi, or Holy Basil for tea.  We are finding it very refreshing during these very hot late summer days.

The cassava and sweet potatoes are still going, along with the okra and cow peas, but we are turning more and more to our lacto-fermented pickles for our vegetables these days.

I am looking at meal planning again.  During peak gardening season, the meals plan themselves!  This week I have been trying to be very creative with different forms of squash, corn and beans.  I feel like this year I have really started to understand how to cook from a garden rather than the store.  It is such a different thing to do.

The winter garden starts will be planted next week (I am attempting to plant by the moon, to see if it does anything special like they say).  I am still busy building beds and obtaining moldy hay, cardboard and horse manure.  Soon it will be time to dig up the sweet potatoes and cassava, pick Roselle and put the Summer garden to bed.

A wistful wave hello and a garden update

It has really been a long time since I've written here--so long that I'm not even sure what my last post was about!
Sooooooo much has been happening, I'm afraid I won't ever be able to catch up.  Things have been going so well, but not necessarily documented and written about.  I have kept up my hand-written journal, but I have found it so hard to be on the computer this year.  The reason:  Clothilde.

She is so sweet, and so cute and so wonderful, but in short she is also a total maniac.  I mean, look at her--she is all ready to ride off down the street on her tricycle.  She never stops moving and getting into things.  Our house, long accustomed to older children, has been desperately child-proofed.  One long week of rainy days, I moved 50 lb feed bags into stacks in all the doorways.  It makes getting around the house a real pain, and isn't very sightly.  It doesn't even stop her.  It only took about a week before she could climb up and over them, but it slows her down enough for me to catch up.  At 10 months old, she is already able to hop on two feet, climb things (yes, climb) and take steps by herself.  She will be walking--nay, running, far too soon for her old and slightly decrepit-feeling mama.

So that is my excuse.  Back to my post!
This year the garden has been fabulous.  Not the winter garden, that is pictured above.  I pulled it all out and re-planted it with potatoes.  The summer garden is the wonder garden.  It was going to be my super-simple, super-tiny garden.  Oh well!
The Permaculture beds I learned about from Susanna at Salamander Springs farm have been wonderful this year.  I worked on them all winter long, and so planting in the spring was a breeze, even with "Clonan the Destroyer," which has been Clothilde's popular nickname around here lately.

In march, the garden started out looking like this.  I had seeded rye and fertilized it with the fertilizer from Midwestern Bio-ag.  It turned amazingly green and lush.  We need to get our winter pastures seeded down like that!
I think this also helped control weeds.  Someone recently told me that the rye has allelopathic roots and secretes phytochemicals that keep other seeds from germinating.  The roots on it were incredible.  I just smushed it all under cardboard, compost and hay when it was around time to plant.

Here it is, all mulched and seeded!

Most of the garden started off like this, in pots, but I did direct-seed beans and corn, of course.  I do have a rabbit problem out there, and when I direct seed things, often they will get nipped off.  Giving them a start until they have a few true leaves seems to make them not as tasty.

Here was the side view with the tomatoes, peppers and eggplants.

This was the first year the potatoes did something other than die.  We actually got some really nice ones out of this plot.  It was such a nice surprise.

This is about what the garden looks like now!  Jungly, but different from all my other gardens in that there isn't a weed to be seen!  I did have an army of army worms come through and try to eat everything, but I hand picked them into soapy water and eventually they gave up.

Here is a side view with the tomatoes.  The tomatoes are huge.  They are as tall as I am this year.  I unfortunately don't have a picture of the Dudley farm corn I had planted.  It is about 10 feet tall.
For a month and a half we have been consistently eating out of the garden.  We got so many sweet peppers, it was hard to keep up with them.  We just got our first taste of sweet corn, the cow peas are ready to pick and it looks like the summer squash is getting a second wind.  Soon there will be pumpkins to pull out (some are already very large, lurking in the corn patch).  The long beans have really been producing, and I have come to really appreciate the Malabar spinach.  The other day Rose was helping me in the garden.  We were harvesting long beans and she turned to me and said, "Mama, your garden is just like a grocery store!"

It is so wonderful to have the opportunity to have a big garden.  There is a completely different way of meal-planning and cooking when you are cooking from a garden.  I love the seeming dance or parade of vegetables that weave in and out in abundance, and I feel so connected to this little spot.

Peeking In

I'm just peeking in here.  I feel bad I haven't posted in so long, but my hands have been full--specifically full of Clothilde.  She really can't stand it when I'm on the computer.  In fact, she screams her face off if it looks like I might be working on the computer.  I've tried setting her up with new toys, but they become unbearably boring the instant she hears the keyboard clicking.  In fact, the only reason I'm touching a computer right now is because she's deeply asleep--and even then sometimes she can sense it.  At least my email is down to only two not-spam messages a week, so it's do-able.  I keep wanting to head over to Bliss Beyond Naptime to watch Kathy's inspiring videos on simplifying and carving out mama-time, but it's just not possible--it's definitely a Catch 22.

But we are doing well--if perhaps kind of chaotically--these days.  We've necessarily had to scale back our plans and projects for this year.  I've started going out to the farm again and I've been busy putting in the tomatoes, eggplant, peppers and ground cherries.  I've also started melons, watermelons, cucumbers, gourds, squash and pumpkins.  Next I'll be putting in the corn, beans, cow peas, okra, sweet potatoes and lima beans.  This year I've got a snap bean that my great-uncle sent me that he has kept going for years.  He got it originally from my great-grandfather who was from Italy, so I am very excited to grow this bean.

We have a new batch of the Freedom Ranger meat chickens going.  I love these birds.  They are always so healthy and vigorous (and eventually, tasty).  Raising them is so easy--unlike the poor Cornish X Rocks that only seem to want to eat themselves to death.  I'm looking forward to having chicken again.  All we've got in the freezer are stew hens, and even after being boiled all day for broth they are tough.  There's hardly any meat on them anyway.

The cows and goats are all doing well (as far as I know).  We had to dry off Geranium for the same reasons we did last time.  She just doesn't make much milk and she's very antsy.  She is very disappointed.  I wish we could have gotten a film of her coming down to be milked, because she looked like a rodeo bull.  She is so wide, but she would still toss her head around and kick up her hind feet and buck all the way down to the milking paddock because she was so excited about it.  Chestnut, who was originally called "Chestnut-case" has really settled down and makes a lot of milk.  She has become very sweet, in stark contrast to Matilda, who has never gotten over Mairie getting milked, too.  She looks like such a psychotic animal because she kind of hunches over a bit and pokes her horns out at the other cows.  Her posture is very dictatorial and dogmatically in charge.  I wonder if there's a homeopathic we could give her to help her relax.

We also dried off May.  She was just being too ornery.  Ethan's back couldn't handle carrying her into the milking paddock every day, since she absolutely refused to go in for him (she was always fine for me, but the goats really just don't like Ethan.  He doesn't know how to tame them), so we have no more goat's milk until next year.

Just keeping up with the milk we are getting now has been like a part-time job.  I have to churn butter and skim cream every other day, but it is nice to have our raw cultured butter and all the milk and cream we want.  I can't really complain, because churning butter mostly involves pressing a button on my standing mixer, so it's not like I'm actually doing anything.

This year we have already gotten all the fertilizer spread--thanks to our wonderful neighbor Bernard.  He has a tractor and a spreader, so we just paid him to do it.  Yay!  Last year it was such a huge job to spread all that--and even seeding the rye this fall was huge because I was doing it all by hand.  It is really a lot of work to sow or fertilize even just 8 acres.  There's still lime to put on, and we are hoping to order more fertilizer to have the whole grazing area done.  We would have so much more good forage.  The animals would love it and it would save us so much in hay.

Anyway, so much still to do always, one thing at a time.

First Piglets

Here's Bee, the magical escaping pig (she literally ripped apart a hog panel--have you seen how sturdy those things are?) and her five sweet little piglets.  They look a bit like little dalmatians, because they turned out so spotty.  Our other Glouchesershire Old Spots are not at all as spotted.

We were worried about the piglets, as we've had a cold snap just after they were born, but they've been fine.  Bee is a wonderful mama, and they curl up with her and nurse.  There is one male, which we were hoping for--we named him Trespassers William.  For those of you who don't read children's books, it's an A. A Milne reference (for those of you who don't read, he's the guy that actually wrote Winnie the Pooh back when it was a book and not a Disney cartoon).

This isn't Trespassers William, it's one of the girls.  He's got a black eye patch over one eye.
They are the cutest thing out there right now, since the calves and baby goats have grown up, and Belle got sprayed by a skunk.  Little Clothilde and I have spent such a long time watching them play and play fight and run about and fight over where they get to nurse.

Spring

The last post was not a happy one--truly that week was just awful.  Not only did we lose Mairie, but a Glouchestershire Old Spot sow we had just bought busted out over a hog panel and through another fence and escaped.  She was due to have piglets in just a couple weeks.  We were hoping to have a boar from her.  She isn't related to our other gilts, Star and Black-ear, and we've been trying and trying to figure out how we are going to breed them.  They are so huge, moving them somewhere to another boar isn't really an option.

Anyway, the sow--named Bee at the other farm--was expensive, and I felt awful about losing her and her piglets and Mairie.

But the post I had been working on that very day that Mairie took ill (from eating horse chestnut--or also called red buckeye) was actually a positive one.  I had been looking at my winter garden (pictured above) and realizing it was the best winter garden I've ever had.  It was so small, simple and manageable.  That's my mantra this year.  I have also realized I need to way lower my expectations of the garden so it's more fun.  I get so upset when things get eaten/frozen/trampled/dug up by dog, it's silly.

Back then, there were all kinds of new spring things popping up.  Some of them have frozen again, since we've had a cold snap.  Here are cleavers--also called Poke's Little Sister.  We used some cleavers tincture just a few months ago to help get rid of a cough and cold yuckiness that just wouldn't go away.

Here were vibernum flowers, like little stars, among the red oak leaves in the yard.

The plums were blooming.  Now they have all leafed out.

Late frosts happen.  Bad things happen.  Things die and escape. But good things happen, too.  Babies are born, flowers bloom, seeds sprout. 

 And guess what?  We found the sow again.  We caught her easily and two weeks ago she had five piglets (one is a boy!) and they are busy growing and rooting.

And another good thing--we found an alternative feed company to the horrific Countryside Organics.  And they have the agri-dynamics products we've always wanted to try, and they're nice.  And helpful.

Aesculus pavia.
Did you know this plant is highly toxic to cattle?
Yesterday something very tragic happened because we didn't know it was poisonous.

The cows were on one of the far-off lines with a bale of hay, when they busted out again (I swear they haven't for a long time, only we're weaning the babies!).  They got through the latest cow-proofing on the barn and ate all the barley--only about a bag's worth between them, so it didn't seem unusual that Mairie was not interested in eating her milking ration that day.  The next day--yesterday--I finally came out again to take some pictures of my winter garden and help Ethan milk four (yes four!!) cows, when we discovered that Mairie wouldn't stand up.  We thought at first it was bloat, but it wasn't.  I noticed her leg muscles were twitching and she was groaning a little.  Tetanus?  Low magnesium? Snake bite?
No, she could open her mouth, they've had their lick and kelp the whole time, and we couldn't find any sort of injury or bite on her.  Her eyes were not like they would be from a snake bite, either.  Even as she lay on the ground, groaning a bit, her coat looked sleek and coppery.  Her eyes and nose were clear.  She had been so healthy until this moment.
She finally stood up and walked very stiffly towards the water.  I offered her hay, which she didn't want.
She slumped over again and was groaning, and her leg muscles were twitching again.
We couldn't figure out what was wrong with her.  I called my friend Karen, where we got Mairie from, and asked her.  She had never heard of anything like it.  She called someone she knew to ask, and they said it sounded like Mairie had eaten a neurotoxic plant.

We gave her some probi, which is the only thing we could think to do.  At home, I looked up poison plants of Florida and found out about horse chestnut.  It usually is only a problem in the early springtime, because it is one of the first plants to leaf out.  It explained her groaning, leg twitches and lack of appetite and everything, particularly the strange way she was walking--not really limping or staggering, just like her legs were stiff.  And, I realized, there's a bunch of it on that line.  I had no idea it was so toxic.  For simple stomached animals like humans, it causes vomiting and severe gastric distress, but for ruminants, the toxins are converted in the rumen into a highly soluble neurotoxin.  Just a small amount can be fatal, and there is no antidote.  Mairie died this morning, and there was nothing we could do to save her.

It's amazing, with farming, how everything can seem so fine--and then suddenly something awful happens.
We are just thankful that our other cows didn't eat it, too.  We could have lost our whole herd in such a stupid way.

Dudley Farm Cane Boil

We spent last weekend at the annual Dudley Farm Cane grinding, and everyone had a great time.

It was a little sad to see how this park is changing under new management since Sally retired.  The old people who volunteered and worked a few years ago had really high standards for maintaining this park as an incredible historical resource, but I think the new people maybe just don't quite understand it or have the same good standards.

For example, their corn crop had failed.  It's never failed in all the years I've known about the park (seven years, I think).  They said it was too dry for the corn this past summer, and they didn't water it and it died.  Years ago I asked Sally if they irrigated the corn, and she said they always plant it at a later time so they get the summer rains.  I'll bet they planted it at the wrong time, because we got plenty of rain last summer.  This year they were selling ground corn from Georgia.  It worries me that the Dudley corn will be lost.

Another thing that was very different was that the boiler for the sugar cane juice had cracked, and rather than repair it they decided it was "too historical" to repair (??) and so they built a new cane boiling area up front, which outwardly resembles the old one but has a lot of ill thought out flaws, such as the boiler smokestack facing the wrong way, etc.  It's too bad!
But we still had an amazing time there.  I'm so glad this park is still around.  Morningside Nature Center used to be like Dudley, until someone who used to work for Disney World got his hands on it.  I'm afraid Dudley might be going the way of Morningside.

Ethan was there as a volunteer with the Barefoot  Boys.  They do ax-hewing demonstrations.

Baby Clo and I hung out and knitted in the background.

Countryside Organics: The Ongoing Customer Service Nightmare

I wish that this would damage their reputation a heck of a lot more than it will!!!!

A few days ago I looked at our finances and discovered that Countryside Organics took the liberty of using our saved credit card information to charge us unexpectedly for the retro-actively charged bill they made a mistake with without our permission.  I'm pretty sure that was totally illegal.  I called the manager, Keith, who apparently is the evil mastermind behind this whole "rip you off and screw you over" situation they have created for us.  He tried to pretend I had given him permission.  NOPE.  At the end of our conversation I think he realized he was winning the Biggest Douche in the Universe contest, although I doubt he would ever admit it to himself.

Because they chose to take our money (without permission) on the same week as our utility, phone and car insurance bills, we are lucky to have a few savings, or we would also be paying late fees, bank fees and facing our car insurance being canceled.
This very upsetting situation is huge for us and our farm.  It has prompted us to completely re-evaluate what we are doing and feeding the past couple of days.  I've been having moments of thinking that this is just too much for us--we can't keep doing this and we should sell all the animals.  We are determined never to give them another cent.  The way they've taken liberties with our money has made me afraid for them to have our financial information.  We might have to give away the rabbits, and I am going to be finding a grain grinder so that we can grind our own chick starter.  Mostly what we have relied on them for is rabbit food, kelp, salt, mineral lick for cows and goats, chick starter and field peas.  Even if we have to pay more for these things, it will be worth it.  The only consolation is that I know I'm not the only customer they are horrible to.  It's only a matter of time before someone else starts a better company and blows apart their monopoly.

This Moment

Joining in with SouleMama today....

{this moment}-a Friday ritual.  A single photo-no words-capturing a moment from the week.  A simple, special, extraordinary moment.  A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.

@$%! Goats

I wasn't sure what to focus on, since these are not supposed to be a photo of either the goats or the fence--it's a photo of the concept of the goats inside of the fence, where they are supposed to be.

Since autumn set in and the grass became less edible, Ethan was working on a new fence line so the goats could be put in a wooded area where we've never had any animals yet.  It's loaded with grass, vines, low woody browse and acorns.  They had been in the paddock adjoining the milking paddock for several weeks.  It has a permanent fence around it and gets used whenever we need a solid barrier.  Since it is a small paddock that we are not really cultivating for nutrition and diversity and it is mostly called upon for it's useful fencing, all the good stuff has been eaten back and the trees have the "high tide" nibbled-look.  The goats had become tired of their hay long before Ethan finally, finally finished fencing the wooded area.  I thought they would be so happy to be out, but we still had quite a time getting them there, since I've been far too absent for them to still be well trained to follow me.
(I know that sounds strange, but you have to understand that goats, like camels and donkeys, are only semi-domesticated.  They become feral again if you don't constantly give them treats and back rubs.)

We finally got them in, and with a sigh of relief we left for the night.  When we returned the next day, everyone except Nougat was locked in the milking paddock (?!!!).  Nougat was so desperately freaked-out about being left behind, she could only bleat until she was hoarse.  The woody browse was untouched.  With much cursing, we put them out again.

About 20 minutes later, we saw June Bug leap over the fence like it wasn't there, and the rest of them (except Nougat) get out and lock themselves in the milking paddock again.  They can squeeze in through the gate, but they hadn't been able to figure out how to squeeze out, for some reason.
For about a week we kept humoring ourselves and putting them out every evening, only to find them locked in the milking paddock again.  They were determined not to be left in a delicious, untouched paddock.  They demanded the trodden-down dusty milking paddock, gosh dang it.

Who knows what goes on between those long ears?
Ethan rescued the goat netting from where we had abandoned it years ago (it is a huge pain to set up here with all the blackberries and cactus, but it really does mostly keep them in).  The gate to the milking paddock has been fortified to be goat-proof (ha!), and they are forced to be out with the delicious woody browse whether they want to be or not.

Yarn Along

Baby is sleeping, so I have hands free for knitting (and a photo) and I can join in with the Yarn Along again!

I am reading Drowned Ammet by Dianna Wynne Jones.  It's the second book in the Dalemark series.  It's another one that we got at the library to read to the children, but we are reading it, too.  I read this series all out of order because they didn't have the right ones at the library when we went.  The Spellcoats is by far my favorite.  It's such an interesting way to tell a story--through a magical girl who is literally weaving the story into fabric.  I've been on a big Dianna Wynn Jones kick lately.  I love her writing style--in some ways it has just enough detail to give you a very specific picture, and in others it leaves a lot to imagine.  And I really like the way she writes from childrens' perspectives, and does a really good job of it.

Teasel and I were settling down with this, and I'm working on a Camilla sweater for our friend Kollean who lives next door.  I have also knitted Rose a camilla girl in a light blue and Clothilde has a baby camilla in apricot.  Kollean has seen me knitting for my children so much, and she asked me if I would knit something for her.  I hope she likes it and her parents can cope with not putting it in the washer, which would be tragic--for me and Kollean.  I've secretly asked them about it before just giving it to them, and they thought it would be no problem.  You have to be careful who you knit 100% wool for.  My mother is a disaster with wool--anything that goes to her house is automatically shrunk.

Penny, our pet chicken who is not really supposed to be in the front yard, but keeps getting out today, decided to join in with us through the window!

Halloween

I've been meaning to finish this post for weeks!  Now that it's Thanksgiving, it's finally done....

We had such a nice Halloween celebration this year.  Having a small baby, I really took the Simplicity Parenting to heart and tried to keep it all wonderfully simple.

Halloween is not my favorite holiday.  I do love the dressing up and the pumpkins, but I have never like the way we celebrate it with cheesy scary stuff.  I remember when I was a kid I was totally puzzled about why everyone always had fake spider webs everywhere.  My dad is an entomologist and I grew up with lots of insects.  My dad, like other nutty insect enthusiasts, is totally fearless about picking up creepy bugs with huge pincers and biting beaks, so fake cobwebs seemed so strange and not-scary, but because everyone put them up for haunted houses I thought maybe there was something scary about them after all.  

I really don't like all the "scary" images of death.  It feels disrespectful for life and death.  And all the candy is so awful.  I don't let my kids eat candy.  It's not about the sugar.  If it were just sugar it wouldn't be so bad, but they put all sorts of strange and horrific chemicals in candy--the real reason why Halloween should be scary!  And I hate the way home made things and healthy treats like fruit have been demonized, so everyone has to go out and buy candy--or small plastic toys.   

So, a few years ago, I decided to reclaim this holiday, and celebrate it in a way that is more meaningful to me.  Inspired by a local fair-trade store called Alternatives, which celebrates the holiday as Day of the Dead and offers sugar skulls to decorate and an offrenda, we began celebrating a modified version.

For us, it has become an opportunity to tell the stories of our Beloved Dead each year, to remember them and their lives, who they were and where they came from and how they lived.  Telling their stories, it always amazes me how much a part of our lives all of our Beloved Dead remain, and how much a part of us they are--from one grandmother's love of cooking and gardening, and my other's deep intuition, and my one grandfather's love of simple things and children, and the other's powerful stubbornness to stand up to his cruel stepfather.  I am so glad to have these stories to share with my children.  I always make it a point to ask my parents for their memories of the Beloved Dead.  Each time they remember something new, I feel that I learn something about myself, too.  They are in so many ways still here with us.

This year, we baked cornbread and pumpkin bars with a pumpkin from the garden (a new version of pumpkin pie I made up with no wheat) and carved pumpkins.  We got two amazing, huge pumpkins this year from the store.  They were hard as rocks.  It was all we could do to carve them, and the knife kept getting stuck like the sword in the stone.  I joked that they were probably genetically modified and crossed with red woods.  The stem on the one pumpkin was just incredible.  I can't bring myself to imagine what a monstrous vine it came off of.
The Jehovah's Witnesses came to pamphlet us with pictures of small, smiling children petting bears and lions and such while we were carving them.  I started telling them excitedly about our new way of celebrating Halloween, and they came away traumatized, I think.  Ethan told me later they don't even celebrate birthdays.

I also made toasted pumpkin seeds, but they burned.  We took a walk down to the grapefruit tree that grows in the median on the street over and got some grapefruit for our offrenda.  Later in the evening we ate the pumpkin bars and told the stories of the Beloved Dead.