Barley And His Wives

This year turned out to be "The Year of the Rooster".  It had nothing to do with the Chinese zodiac, mind you.  It was because everyone unloaded roosters on us.

One day a neighbor showed up, shortly after the incident that led to the goats being jailed indefinitely behind permanent fencing (the neighbor to the North had caught them on wildlife camera destroying his corn field).  We took a deep breath when we saw the pick-up truck pull up, and wondered what priceless food crop they had eaten now.

But instead he wanted to give us ten roosters.  His elderly mother had ordered a bunch of straight run chickens to start a laying flock, and half of them grew into a rowdy bunch of roosters.  They weren't sure what to do with them, and hoped we could take them off their hands.

We didn't have the time or funds to raise meat chickens this year, so a bunch of free roosters destined for the pot was an attractive prospect.  Arrangements were quickly made, and we found ourselves with ten roosters all of a sudden.

A week or two before they crowed their last crows and fought their last petty battles, one of Rose's friends made the unpleasant discovery that a little pet chick that was supposed to grow up to be a backyard laying hen was actually a loud, obnoxious rooster.

Barley was just barely out of the awkward adolescent pin-feather stage when we got him.  He was still peeping, but nonetheless was able to screech out a surprisingly powerful peep-crow with his little beak gaping open.  It would have meant death to put him in with the other chickens, so he was kept in a separate coop in the orchard until he grew up.

Once the other roosters were out of the way, he was moved to a moveable coop, which he had all to himself.  He would get so excited to see us arrive every day.  His crow gradually got less squeaky and more polished and professional. He added some extra doodle-doos in there at the end, too.

Just after I planted my starts in the winter garden, we started having trouble keeping the hens in their moveable coop.  The cows were in the next paddock on hay, and Sappho (nicknamed Sapphole), kept jumping out, bumping the lids off, and then going to check out the neighbor's cornfield that the goats had already ravaged.  The hens were all over the place scratching up bugs and roosting in stupid places.  Miraculously, none of them went missing - at least none that we noticed, since they all look exactly alike.  Meanwhile, they ate my entire winter garden and scratched up all the beds.

It took a week or so to finally round them all up, and they started ranging quite far.  One of them made it all the way through the garden to where Barley was housed.  Confused by seeing the other coop, she bobbed cautiously over to check it out.

As soon as he set eyes on her, Barley go SOOOO excited.  He flapped and crowed and did little dances and raked out his wings.  After his long, monastic celibacy, here was a gorgeous female (well, sort of - she was in the middle of a molt, but I don't think he was so particular) coming right for him!  It was his dream coming true.

Ethan caught the stupid hen and popped her in the coop as a sort of revenge for eating all our vegetables.  Barley went insane with joy.  He was so excited he couldn't stop dancing around in a little circle.  The hen was bewildered and not super thrilled about being the object of his attentions, but it was too late - she was stuck with him.

A few days later, another hen ranged over that way, and in she went.  Barley could hardly contain himself again.  This was beyond his wildest dreams.

In just a few days, his breast became noticeably more puffed and his strut got more swagger.  His toes barely touch the ground now since acquiring not just one, but two wives.

Cassava Stuffing - An All Local/Homegrown Recipe

There is nothing to inspire thankfulness and gratitude more than sitting down to a meal that is all home grown.  When all the sweat and worry is yours, when you have watched the seasons turn as small seeds became large plants, as chicks became pin feather-studded adolescents, and finally a flock of magnificent birds with copper-trimmed feathers, you know the fruits of labor and the incredible workings of nature that support our lives.

The Thanksgiving stuffing tradition in my family was always from store bought wheat bread.  My grandmother always used chestnuts from her tree in the back yard, but the rest was bought at the store.  Since we have been growing our own food, it always seemed strange every Thanksgiving to be roasting a home grown bird, with all home grown and local side dishes, and then to use stuffing made from ingredients grown who-knows-where and made in a factory.

Last year was an abundant year for the cassava, and I was inspired to create this grain-free, Paleo-legal stuffing recipe to reflect our locality here in North Florida.  All the ingredients can be grown locally and are in season.

Cassava Stuffing

2 quarts of water

3 cups of cassava (also called manioc, or yuca) , peeled and chopped into bite-sized pieces

2 cups peeled chestnuts or pecans, chopped

1 large onion, or a few smaller ones, chopped

 1 cup dried wild plums, pits removed (raisins or dried unsweetened cherries or cranberries can be substituted - or even pieces of roselle)

1 cup butter, ghee, or lard

1 clove of garlic, grated (or 1 teaspoon garlic powder)

1 teaspoon dried thyme

Salt and pepper to taste

1 Tablespoon Chopped fresh parsley, or  2 teaspoons dried  

1.  In a medium to large pot, bring the water to a boil and add the cassava pieces.  Cook until they are tender, about 20-30 minutes.  Drain and set aside in a large bowl.

2.  Melt the butter in a frying pan and gently sautée the chopped onion, dried wild plums/raisins or cherries, and chestnut or pecan pieces.

3.  Meanwhile, season the boiled cassava with the garlic, dried thyme, parsley, salt and pepper.  When the onions are soft, pour the butter/onion/nut mixture over the cassava and mix well.

4.  Use like regular stuffing - stuff into a roasting  bird or you can also bake it separately in a pan for about 20 minutes at 350F.

Note:  The chestnuts are easy to peel if you cut them in half with a sturdy knife and boil them for about 5 minutes.  Drain, and immediately slip them out of their peels.  There is more information on preparing cassava here.


Wishing you a wonderful holiday!!!  Thank you for reading here!

Painting and Whitewashing

One thing that we had been meaning to do for way too long was to paint the inside and outside of the barn.  It was sheathed mostly with recycled plywood we salvaged from the brewery that supplies us with small loads of malted barley mash for the pigs.  Bare wood in Florida does not last very long, and we've been anxious to do something to preserve it better.

The problem was the paint.  I really didn't want to use toxic paint, not only because I don't want to be exposed to the volatile organic compounds (VOC's) that are so deadly, but also because I didn't want anything toxic to be brought to where all of our food comes from.

Non-toxic paint seems to be worth its' weight in gold, especially because the "local" corporate hardware stores don't supply it, and the shipping is very expensive.  The next option was to get "Zero-VOC" paint from Home Despot and hope it wasn't too toxic (none of the employees could give me any information on the toxicity of the paint other than provide advertisements that flaunted the Zero-VOC label).  All the major brands seem to offer a no-VOC version, so it wasn't a special kind or anything.

We got one gallon of the cheapest brand of the exterior paint, in white, because adding color adds VOC's like crazy.  It didn't need a primer, but required two coats.  One gallon, for more than $20, barely covered the trim, and we realized the real cost of painting it all.

So this was where we started looking into some DIY options.  Milk paint was tempting, but we don't have any milk right now, and we didn't like the idea of spending money on someone else's skim milk.  A Swedish oil paint recipe caught my eye, and we crunched the numbers and realized how much cheaper it would be - one coat, nearly all ingredients (except for pigment and zinc sulfate/ferrous sulfate) to be obtained locally and not shipped, the long life span of the paint even under harsh conditions.  The catch was that it had to be on a vertical surface of bare wood, and can't cover previously painted surfaces.  This was exactly what we needed to paint, so we got everything together and looked through all the pigments to find the least expensive one, which turned out to be brown ochre.

Making paint was amazing.  You start with a big, boiling pot of water and as you add the other ingredients, it becomes more and more like paint.  The brown ochre, rather than becoming more pale and mild as we had expected, took on the dark lustre of a chestnut.  It painted on beautifully.  The one recipe covered the entire outside of the barn, with a gallon or so left over.

The color was far too dark for the inside, however.   We decided to try whitewash for the inside, which was historically used in barns, kitchens and dairies.

Lime, salt, and water are all that are needed for whitewash.  It doesn't last as long as regular paint, and has to be redone every so often.  Still, one 50-lb bag of masonry lime cost us $11 and we used only a small fraction of it.  Unlike regular paint, which will mold and mildew unless it has very toxic things added to it, whitewash is naturally anti-microbial.  When you wash the brushes and paint-dishes off, it sweetens and mineralizes the soil instead of poisoning it.

It was a challenge to actually find the right kind of lime, the "local" corporate hardware stores having a clever trick devised where it is listed on their websites, but it is kept perpetually unavailable (perhaps it would compete with their deplorable paint choices?).  In the end we had to drive outside of town to a family-owned hardware store to find it.

It was easy to mix up, but there was some anxiety when it was finally brushed on.  It didn't cover very well.  It looked transparent and was barely white at all.  I thought perhaps successive coats were necessary, but once I turned my back and it started to cure it turned a uniform bright white.  It was like a pot boiling.  I couldn't detect the change if I watched it (yes, I was watching paint dry).

Whitewash, still curing.  It became much more white and uniform.

The character of the wood was preserved, however, as you can still see knots, or the distinctive swirls of the grain. The lime releases oxygen as it cures, and the barn felt so airy and light and clean.  It was such a different experience than the freshly-painted part that was the regular paint, which was also white, but could certainly not be called "fresh" or "airy".

Before The Frost

The first frost last night prompted us to glean what we could from the remainder of the summer garden - mostly roselle, small eggplants, and fiery-hot peppers.  A beautiful magenta amaranth plant that had volunteered in the winter garden was harvested for soup greens.  Ethan pulled up the entire hot pepper plants to finish harvesting after dark at home.  There were just too many little peppers.

The greenery on the pepper plants was just beautiful.  It was too bad the frost came before Thanksgiving, because it would have made such decorative garlands with the little peppers still on it like fairy lights.

The first radishes and greens were ready to pick from the winter garden this week.  We covered the entire winter garden last night before the sunlight had faded.  I've had so many seasons before when a light frost came and killed the entire garden - even things that are supposed to be winter-hardy, like Arugula and Siberian kale.

It is always a little sad to say goodbye to a garden - this was the final end of the summer garden.  All attention is now turned to the winter garden, and looking forward to spring, when it will be time to have all the summer plants starting again.  In a month, it will be time to start tomatoes already.  And the frosts will make the winter greens and radishes mild and sweet.

Wedding Lace

Last night I cast-on for my first-ever knitting commission:  lace for a friend's wedding.  This pattern is one of those lace patterns that doesn't have the easy row of knit or purl between lace rounds, but it is a nice challenge.  Lace can feel so tedious, even if it is not so many stitches long across the needles, but this pattern (Valenciennes) is complicated enough that it keeps it interesting.

I had the hardest time trying to figure out where I had bought lace yarn for the first lace knitting, and ended up getting some of knitpick's Curio yarn, and I'm glad I did.  The first lace yarn was almost like dental floss - I think it had been starched flat.  It looked fine when knitted up, but this yarn has a pretty shine to it, and a nice feel.

Roselle Mock Cranberry Sauce

Roselle is one of those garden plants that hardly anyone knows about.  I first saw it growing at Karen Sherwood's farm about ten years ago, and was impressed as much by its striking appearance as I was with the flavor of some homemade soda Karen had made with it.

It is common and well-known in the Caribbean, Southern Asia, Southern India, and North Africa.  Nutritious and medicinal, roselle is related to okra and cotton.  It needs a long season to grow and is one of those wonderful, multi-use plants.  The stalks have strong fibres that can be used to make rope, the leaves are also edible and can be cooked like spinach, and all sorts of different things are made with the fleshy red calyxes that form after the flower has bloomed, from tea to jam.

Here in the South, Roselle was often called "The Florida Cranberry" for the tart, cranberry-like flavor of the calyxes.  A very convincing "cranberry" sauce that is simple to make a can be made from it with all local and home-grown ingredients.  I hope this might inspire you to consider making your Thanksgiving a local-food feast!

  

 Roselle Mock Cranberry Sauce

First of all, the red calyxes must be peeled away from the green seed pods on the inside.  They are slightly prickly and uncomfortable to handle, so you might want to wear gloves if you have sensitive hands (not me - I garden too much).  If you are shucking  A LOT of roselle, a roselle corer is easy to make and makes the task go much faster.

The corer on the left in the photo was made by gluing a 3-inch piece of thin brass tubing to a piece of wood with a hole bored in the middle.

Now you are ready for the recipe:

2 cups shucked roselle calyxes, very freshly picked

1/2 cup water (you can also use fresh-squeezed orange juice instead for a more citrus-y holiday flavor, or add sliced kumquats, etc.)

1/2-1 cup honey, depending on how sweet of a sauce you like

1.  Put roselle and water together in a sauce pan.  Bring to a boil over a low flame with the lid on.  Cook until the roselle is soft.

2.  With a blender or food processor, blend up the sauce.  Add honey to taste.  If the sauce is too thin, you can cook it down over low heat.  It will gel in the fridge if it is cooked down enough.

Notes:  Salt and pepper are interesting additions to this sauce, and give it a more savoury, almost ketchup-like flavor.  It goes well either way with all kinds of meats.

Autum Colors

One of the Marina di Choggia pumpkins we pulled out of the garden in August

Thai Red Roselle

Down here we don't get the stunning fall leaf display the way it happens up North.  There are beautiful leaves to find, but the landscape is never lit up with brilliant reds, yellows, and oranges.  Instead I am enjoying the beautiful fall colors coming out of the garden right now.

Sweet, starchy, and pungent are the flavors and foods of late summer and fall in Chinese medicine, so perfectly aligned with what is ready to harvest in those seasons - cassava, corn, millet, spicy peppers, pumpkins, sweet potatoes, and super-sweet persimmons.

We finally got around to roasting one of the big blue Marina di Choggia pumpkins.  I've wanted to grow them for years, but they never made the short list of pumpkins until now.  They are so ornamental, I've had them sitting around on side tables as decorations instead of eating them.  This one was getting a little grey around the edges and finally made it into the oven.  I can finally confirm the seed catalogue's glowing praise.  It roasted up well and was very tasty.  It wasn't as sweet as the Seminole pumpkins, but it made a great savory fried pumpkin dish as leftovers. 

We got the last few bags of non-astringent persimmons from the Jonesville Persimmon Orchard last week.  They are almost too sweet, and taste like caramel candy.  I mentioned that I wished people gave out persimmons for Halloween, and Mirin piped up that he has compared persimmons to candy and come to the conclusion that the persimmons are actually sweeter.  We had been eating them in quantity (who needs candy?), but they are being strictly rationed out between us now that the season is over.

I chatted with Ken, who owns the Jonesville Persimmon Orchard, while we were picking over the last bins of persimmons and trying to supervise Clothilde as she played with Possum, the fruit guard dog (he barks at the birds).  I was trying to commiserate on the season being over, but Ken said he finds it to be such a relief not to be picking any more!  I laughed because I can totally relate.  It's so easy to drift in and pick some up, not even thinking about all the work that goes into tending the trees and harvesting.

He showed us some interesting persimmon trees that are crosses of the native wild persimmons and and Asian variety.  It resembled what you would imagine a cross between an astringent and non-astringent persimmon would be like.  The fruit was a deep, glowing orange, but round rather than elongated like the astringent varieties.  There were other interesting fruit trees, too.  Cold-tolerant bananas and mangoes, blueberries and blackberries.  He is always trying new varieties and has carefully selected ones that thrive here in North Florida.

The roselle is finally in full production, ready for turkey season.  I am determined to attempt an all home-grown Thanksgiving this year, with cassava stuffing and roselle "cranberry" sauce (stay tuned for more on that coming up!).

Ethan is struggling with the sheer abundance of the hot pepper harvest this year.  There's only so much hot pepper sauce one person can eat in a year (no one else in the family regularly douses their food with it), so he is almost at the stage where he will be begging people to take it away.

The weather is growing cooler, and the winter garden gets taller every day.  Soon the frost will bite back the bright colors and radishes and greens will fill our table.

Work Getting Done

No paying work, but meanwhile there is plenty to accomplish.  It's a wonderful feeling to come home and cross off all the things that have been done from the to-do list.  We were actually on TV a couple of weeks ago, talking for a few seconds about work!

We had mostly talked about our pig classes, blogging, the French recipes, seed saving, the Dudley corn etc, for the interview, so were sort of disappointed that the few words we said about working hard were picked out to be showcased on television to point out to the ignorant masses how insane we are.  I guess it has to be watchable, and there's nothing watchable in presenting people with an opposing lifestyle that is fun and rewarding.

(It is puzzling to me how Americans always do lip service to working hard as a patriotic value, but then sneer at something walking themselves to the corner store or growing your own vegetables because there's some physical work involved.)

And consider how many newscasters (for example) get to eat amazing grassfed steak every night?  There's definitely a work-to-benefit ratio.  Putting on layers of make-up and reading words that don't even reflect reality off a screen on camera sounds like the most awful job to me.  I just couldn't do it, even if I looked fine in photographs and got a decent salary in compensation.  I would much rather be throwing some hay/manure on my garden, or snuggling my face into Matilda's silky flank while I hand-milk us some grass-fed raw cream, butter, yogurt, kefir, and cheese.

Of course it all comes down to personal preference.  Work is not hard work if it is done with love and joy.  What is that lovely line from Kalil Gibran?  "Work is love made visible."

After a long work day yesterday, Ethan and I ended up stuck playing a terrible board game with the girls that evening.  They had begged to play, and even set up the board, but shortly into the game they found they would rather wrestle really close to the game board where dozens of sharp, tiny plastic pieces were precariously set up.

Despite her former enthusiasm, Clothilde was bored, and when she is bored she is BAD (and this is why we intend to homeschool her!).  She spent most of the game throwing herself at the little plastic pine trees where the clues were hidden, throwing the dice like she was pitching a baseball, and trying to do somersaults over the board.  It was more like being her gymnastics coach rather than playing a board game.

Ethan and I agreed afterwards that the board game advertisements in magazines inaccurately represent the reality of family game night.  A realistic photo would depict the parents nearly drooling on the table with fatigue and boredom, and the kids would all be slightly blurry.

Yarn Along: Lace

The cat insisted she be in the photo - I swear I didn't set it up around her.  It was all I could do to keep her from sitting on the lace.

I mentioned in a previous post that I had tried in vain to find lace knitting patterns on Ravelry.  I found a few, but I had expected there to be lots.  I finally broke down and went on Amazon, and discovered many books about lace knitting, including this wonderful book by Barbara Abbey (with an introductory note by Elizabeth Zimmerman!).  So I have been happily knitting lace ever since.

I am new to lace knitting, so I picked a simple pattern (Fern Leaf Insertion) to try out.  It's been fun!  I am enjoying seeing the pattern emerge row after row.  However, it isn't Sociable Knitting, like some projects can be.  I really have to focus on what I'm doing or it gets into a horrible mess and lace stitches are nearly impossible to pick up once frogged.  I made the mistake of taking it out during a birthday party once, so one panel turned out slightly different.  I managed to rescue it without having to rip it out, but it was headache-inducing.

One thing that is a little brain-twisting about Barbara Abbey's lace patterns is that she uses a different notation than I'm used to - 0 for YO, / for right-leaning decrease, 1 for K1, etc.  I tried using her notation for the first rounds, and then switched to translating it into the terms I'm used to.


Clothilde has been sitting on my lap as I typed this, and she wanted to say:

baseqwrt

Tired Puppies

We picked up two Great Pyrenees puppies on Saturday.  They are still little roly-poly bundles of fluff, but I could tell that they had grown since we had visited them just two weeks ago.  Everyone was so excited.  Puppies to play with!  We have never had a puppy before, having gotten our previous dog Belle as an adult dog.

We also had a wedding to go to that day, so we didn't get to play with them much when we got them to our house in town.  We made them comfortable in a dog kennel with hay in the bottom, and made sure they had plenty of food and water.

We left the wedding early and let them out to romp and play a little before putting them up for the night.  They are very calm as puppies go.  They mostly sniffed at things and poked around.  They discovered our cat Teasel, who was NOT happy to meet them, and seems to think we have been cheating on her.  There was a bit of yelping as Teasel made everything very clear about her availability as a play-thing, and after that she just sat off to the side and stared aggressively at them.

After an hour or so we tucked the puppies back into the kennel and got them comfortable again, and went to bed.

Around midnight, we were woken by loud whining and yelping.  I ran out to make sure the puppies were okay.  I let them out, and they peed and romped around a little.  They seemed to be lonely.  They have just been weaned from their mother, and I think they are missing her.  I stayed out with them for awhile, listening to a loud game party a few streets down that shrieked with laughter, horrible music, and the stupid things that drunk people shout loudly to each other in the middle of the night.  A surprising number of cars drove by.  After awhile I was tired and the mosquitoes were biting, so I put them back and went to bed again.

It's always hard for me to get back to sleep again after being woken, but I managed to until I was woken out of the middle of an anxious dream by whining and yelping again.  Ethan and I both got up and went to check on the puppies.  We let them out again, and they peed and sniffed around.  We tried putting them back in the kennel after that, but they immediately started whining again.  This time it was the time of night when everything is very, very quiet - except for our puppies.

They clearly didn't want to be in the kennel, and seemed to have boundless energy, so we put them in the back yard and secured the gate, thinking they would be happy to explore.  That lasted about ten minutes back in bed before they were yelping and carrying on again.  At this point, it was somewhere around 5 am, and so Ethan decided to just get up with them.  He sat outside with them and watched the sun rise.  By the time I got up around 8, feeling more sleep-deprived than I remember being with newborn babies, the puppies were exhausted and flopped out on the driveway.  Mirin was up, and tried to play with them, but they moved away from him and went back to sleep.

We took them out to the farm after breakfast, where they napped most of the day.  Just before leaving we tucked them in with the baby goats and drove away, happy with the thought of what a good night's sleep we were going to have without them!

Planning For Abudance

 

Last week I finally got the first part of my winter garden built and planted.  The surviving starts were settled carefully in, and radishes, turnips, and lettuce were seeded.

This year, above all other years, I am planning for abundance.  We need it.  This lean season has felt leaner than any season before - the cows and goats dried off at the same time, chickens moulting, us without an income.

These days are anxious, full days, and the little green glimmers of the brassica seeds unruffling their tiny heart-shaped leaves gives me hope.  Rows of greens, rows of radishes and roots.  I hope that these things will see us through to better times.

The pigs have been a big help in the garden this season.  The summer garden gets so jungly, with impossibly high woody weeds, like small trees.  You have to fight your way through just to walk across, and clearing it is an impossible task.  In previous years, we rented a bushhog (yes, that's what it takes).  But why rent a bushhog, when we have bush hogs?

The rabbits have already been less of a problem because of the open ground.  A few evenings ago, I was milking the two remaining lactating goats at dusk when a huge, old owl flew down and perched on a pine tree that looks over the East side of the garden.

The pigs are also revealing all the cracked 5-gallon buckets I had used to transport compost to the summer garden.  Gosh, I had no idea I used so many.  I recall many times reaching for another bucket from our stack of retired "compost quality" buckets when the one I had been using had seemed to vanish - probably swallowed by the choking gourd vines or something.  Well, now I know where they ended up.

The bare ground will not be exposed for long.  The pigs will soon be moved elsewhere, and clouds of rye, oat and radish seeds will be sown on top to eventually make way for the summer garden of next year, which I am already looking towards with a scheming and thrifty eye.

Rose's Ninth (And A Nausicaa Dress)

Today is Rose's ninth birthday.  She has the last birthday of the year in our family, and it is always so hard for her be last.  I think that's why she always insists on a little extra celebration - like two birthday cakes, instead of one (they are the same kind of cake, at least, so I just double the recipe and use different fruit in the filling - actually much easier than Mirin's ice cream cookie dough cake.)

She set a precedent this year by making a little treasure hunt with clues for Clothilde's birthday, which Clo loved.  Ethan made a treasure hunt for Mirin's birthday so he wouldn't be disappointed (it was at the farm and David the buck ate one of the clues.  We know it was him because the half that was left had buck-shaped teeth marks in it).  So Ethan made a treasure hunt for Rose, too.

She was worried that she wouldn't get any presents this year, since Ethan lost his job.  Luckily, I spend all year collecting ideas for birthday presents, and buy them ahead and hide them away.  I always go with "Something to wear, something to read, something she wants, something she needs."

Usually there are a couple of extra things that land in the "something she wants" category, but it keeps it simple and narrows it down to presents that will be surely loved and used.  I can't tell you how nice it is to have a birthday without the distraction of having too many presents!  (There really is such a thing). 

A few years ago, Rose saw the film Nausicaa, and was captivated by the strong character of the princess of the Valley of the Wind.  This led to her having an argument with some other little girls about what a princess really was!  (The other girls said a princess has to have a fancy dress and a crown, but Rose said that a princess wasn't just dressed-up, it was someone who was a leader of their people.)

She has been reading the Nausicaa comic books by Hayao Miyazaki, and asked for a Nausicaa dress for her birthday.  I haven't sewn anything since Clothilde was born, for obvious reasons (just the idea of having the iron out around her gives me heart palpitations).  I thought maybe this would be like a Disney Cinderella costume that is easy to find and fairly inexpensive.  But no....a Google search revealed that Nausicaa costumes are over $100!!  And they usually only come in sizes for adult women who are into dressing like Manga characters.

Rose insisted I also look up "home made Nausicaa Costume" online, and we found a couple of blogs of crafty mamas who had put together Nausicaa costumes.  One was just different wardrobe items put together, the other was actually sewn from various patterns, one of which was no longer available.

I was going to say sorry, we'll just have to put one together from what we already have, but Rose was SO disappointed.  So I said if she watched Clothilde while I was sewing, I would try.  Besides, we are studying measurement for homeschool, so it was a perfect real-life learning opportunity.

Although my grandmother was an incredible seamstress (to help support her family in wartime France, she left school after 8th grade and worked for a dress-maker), I never learned from her - one of the biggest regrets of my life.  I have had to teach myself sewing.  I am terrible at following sewing patterns, because I learned sewing by copying clothes I already had and drafting my own patterns.  I have a distrust of other people's hem margins.  Every time I've tried sewing from a pattern, it always comes out funny.

This task was daunting.  The costume has a collar, complicated appliqué, belt loops, and a helmet.  I have never done any of those things!  I warned Rose that this could turn out to be a big disappointment, but she (said she) didn't care.

We carefully picked out the right shade of blue fabric, made sketches based on the comic book drawings, and started measuring her and drafting the pattern.

I honestly don't know how I managed to pull it off (no one in my family realizes how incredibly hard of a task this was....they have not hand-drafted and sewn a pattern for a specific person from a comic book drawing before).  The collar was a challenge, the appliqué gave me a headache, and the helmet was only saved from being too small by a few scraps of cloth I had saved out.  But Rose is just delighted with it, and after all, it did turn out to be recognizably a Nausicaa dress.

I'm afraid this might set the standard for birthday presents a little higher than I'd like it to be, but I am glad to have been able to make something she loves so much.  And it was nice to do some sewing again - it gave me hope that my sewing machine and I could collaborate more in the future.

Piglets and Puppies

Last week we brought all the piglets to their new home at Full Circle Farm.  They were able to duck under the electric fence, and had been becoming more and more of a nuisance.   It was cute having them drift around like a group of little spotty sausages, but they would get into mischief - they knocked over potted plants, got into the garden, and rooted everything up around the sink.  Ethan had to cut one of them out of the electric netting one day, I had to dramatically scare them away from the milking area on a regular basis, as they could easily slip through the gate.  BAD piglets!

They got harder and harder to shoo away because Clothilde has been gradually taming them.  They used to squeak and run away like the Big Bad Wolf was after them if anyone without a bucket got close, but since she started "scaring" them back inside the fence, they quickly learned that it was no big deal and became bold and fearless.

They were fairly easy to catch by putting a dish of food down inside a dog kennel, but then had to be caught and lifted into another cage in the back of the truck.  I worked the cage door, and Ethan did the really hard part of grabbing them and being deafened by their horrible squealing.  They really don't like it when their feet leave the ground.  Our friend PJ was also helping, and recorded it as a ring tone for when her family calls.

I was worried about the squealing upsetting their mama, Star, but she was busy making more piglets right then with the boar, Tresspassers William.  She was DONE with this particular batch, and had been trying to wean them.  She wouldn't lay down for them any more, but they would still stand up and nurse while she was eating and distracted.

After dropping off the piglets, who seemed none the worse after their long journey (perhaps a little dizzy), we looked at some Great Pyrenees puppies.  We are going to be bringing one home in a couple of weeks as a new livestock guardian dog.  And oh my!  I did not expect them to be so incredibly roly-poly cute!  We have never had a puppy before, having gotten our previous dog, Belle, as an adult.  So much fun to look forward to, but I think the challenge will be to still have a livestock guardian dog, and not a pet.

School and Homeschool

Mirin has so far survived two weeks of his new charter school, and has even gotten to experience a hurricane day.


This charter school has some great things about it:  project based, creative, drama class on Fridays with an old acquaintance of mine, Capoiera instead of PE.  There is a lot of good energy behind this school, and his former homeschooling friend we met at a co-op meeting is also attending.

Mirin was initially very worried about being in school.  His spelling is not good, and he is a slow reader.  He knew we wanted him to have higher standards than he was being held to in homeschool, and more discipline and focus.

He has so far said he really enjoys school.  He has already made friends.  He is delighted that there is actually less discipline and less rigorous academic requirements than in my homeschool.  A lot is done on computers, with games, so he is enjoying this distraction that would not be tolerated at home.  There are copious amounts of junk food he has also been enjoying immensely.

And in homeschool, Rose is now flourishing.  It was always very difficult to try to get Mirin to focus on his studying because he was always provoking the little sisters into fits of rage or tears while I was busy with one or the other.  He would spend all day being a nuisance, would accomplish absolutely nothing except a lot of whining and complaining, I would be completely drained of energy and fed up with him, and the sisters would be fractious and close to hysteria from being pestered so much.  It has been so nice to spend time with my girls.

I also LOVE not being responsible about his education (or actually the lack of) any more.  This was a big issue for me.  We have lots of concerned family in town.  The harder I tried, the less he seemed to care.  I spent hours pouring over books about different education techniques.  I scoured the internet for fun ideas.  I invented stories and games just for him.  Everything was geared to appeal to him as much as possible, to cater to what he wanted, what he liked, and as a result he hated it all and scorned it.

And when he refused to learn, it wasn't his problem - it was my problem.  Everyone came to me - I wasn't trying hard enough, I wasn't qualified.  I wasn't doing enough.  It was my failure, not his.  This was very unhealthy for both of us.  I feel freed from this, and I was glad to hear my dad lecturing him about trying harder in school.

(Another thing I have realized is that my homeschool is actually quite good.  The Math he is learning in school is stuff we were reviewing this year from two years ago.  He claims that what I considered minimal effort for 6th grade level was actually much more rigorous than is expected at public school for writing and thinking.  Maybe instead of Standardized Testing, the schools need concerned relatives breathing down their necks to improve standards.  It gave me such a sense of inadequacy, but it made our homeschool standards sharp.)

On the other hand, he is very, very stressed out.  He comes home snarling and swearing.  He does nothing creative, he only craves the screen and idle distraction.  He has lost his mature homeschooler demeanor for an obnoxious manic blabbering and erratic jumping around that I have observed so often in kids just let out of school.  I was not expecting this change to happen so fast.  I think part of this is because the 6th grade class is notoriously badly behaved, and every day I hear stories of how a teacher just gave up on the class, there was a fight, someone was expelled, a teacher was in tears, he couldn't hear what the teacher was saying because the class was so disrupted.  So while he is not being bullied, like our last school experience, but I am also not happy that he is surrounded by such strong examples of disrespect and disorder.


So we are really not sure about this change.  I am very glad he is so happy and making friends, but it is not providing what we wanted:  more discipline or higher educational expectations.

(I want to clarify that the other grades at this school are reportedly not like the 6th grade at all.  This class is particularly rowdy for some reason, and is giving the staff a big challenge, so please don't form a bad opinion about this school just based on our experience of the 6th grade!  It is a great school, and there are great people working there with wonderful ideas.  I think they will sort it out, but they have only just gotten started as a school.)

Weathering

I am writing from the blustery aftermath of the dreaded Hurricane Matthews.  Obviously, I have power still, which is far better than the last hurricane that came through, although the media excitement wasn't as built up the last time.

Yesterday my mother called me in a panic, insisting that her students were claiming that Matthew was a massive hurricane that was due to hit right down the middle of the state and wipe us off the map.  I managed to calm her down, and reminded her that her students could hardly understand the rudiments of biology, much less a hyped-up media report. 

We did tie down the chicken coop lids this time, and we stocked up on hay and water for the animals.  Otherwise, I am fairly sceptical of the melodrama about storms hitting this area.  Don't misunderstand me - I know the damage was quite bad in other places.  Here in the middle of the state, we tend to be spared the worst.

Since I slept through the whole of "The Storm of The Century" at age eight, way back in the 1900's (ok, it was only in 1993, but I like the sound of "back in the 1900's"), I just don't get that excited about them.  Of course it sucked to have our electricity go out last hurricane, and when Mirin was a newborn in 2004 we had no power for a week - but that was less a testimony to the powerful winds than it was to how pathetic the transformer is on our line, and how incredibly incapable the utility company is when it comes to hurricane preparedness (why are electrical lines not buried in hurricane areas?  It seems so obvious).

The storm was supposed to hit us around 1:30, so we made plans to go out early to do the milking.  Of course we are late everywhere, so the timing turned out for us to arrive at the farm at 1:30, rather than be inside, safe and dry, at that point.

As we got in the car to head out, Ethan turned on the radio to check on the storm announcements.  The voice on the radio was saying how you should not, under absolutely no circumstances, be out driving on the road, and went on to emphasize that there had been a tornado watch in the next county, and anyone who went out driving today was just asking for it.  We shrugged and turned off the radio as we pulled out of the neighborhood.  Ethan did swerve around the road a little while driving, but it was only because he was trying to drink coffee at the same time, rather then because of high winds.  There was hardly any rain or wind, and most people seemed to have taken the radio announcer's advice, so there wasn't any traffic, and I actually felt fairly safe on the way, except for the aforementioned swerving.

At the farm, in the very teeth of the storm, the cows and goats were placid.  The cows were lounging under the oak trees, ruminating, and the goats were all excited about a pine branch that had fallen in their paddock. 

The chores went well - the baby goats were convincingly pathetic from under their shelter, so I gave them an extra scoop of feed.  The worst part was having my head rained on, because I have misplaced my amazing Chinese cooly hat I always wear, and I hate having my head rained on.  We are just getting over a nasty head cold, and my hair gets all musty.

Even during the most exciting blusters, I gauged the wind to be about a 5-6 on the Beaufort scale, which is only "gale" and at least six degrees south of "hurricane".  I am beginning on my second year of helping with weather journalling for homeschool, so I am fairly adept at it now.  I have been out doing the chores in worse storms that were merely summer thunderstorms, and at least it was cool, the rain was intermittent, and there was no lightening.  I don't mind hurricanes, but thunderstorms are terrifying.

Searching And Working

Last week some huge changes have hit our family.  The first one came last Tuesday, and it was that Mirin was accepted to a new charter middle/highschool.  He had been #2 on the list at the beginning of the year, but we didn't expect him to be accepted so soon.  He started Monday for the first time ever at a "real" school experience.

The second and biggest change came on Friday (exactly like the Fox in Chanticleer).  Ethan was laid off from his job.  Usually his pay is cut back during the winter, but this came as a complete surprise.  He has worked there for eight years, and has been heavily involved in designing the systems his company marketed.  It wasn't, as is to be expected of the corporate machine, personal.  They also laid off most of the other people in his department.  He was told to leave immediately, and had to return hours later after the rest of the lay-offs had been to the chopping block with HR to get all of his tools he had been letting the company use for years and say goodbye to the friends and co-workers.

We have spent the past four days trying to process what has happened, working as hard as possible on all the work that we have been behind on with the farm and around the house.  We have been enjoying being together, feeling grateful for each other.

Now we find ourselves facing survival in the face of the unknown.  A death of our old life.  With growing our own food and being very thrifty, we were fairly comfortable with our upper-poverty-class lifestyle, but in many ways we wanted this change, but it was the fear that held us back.  We have three children we are responsible for, and their experience of childhood is important to us.

We are trying not to get stuck in the shock part, not to be stuck in the anger, frustration and fear.  Instead, this is a freeing opportunity, a cleansing moment, a step onto a new threshold from which we can't turn back.


One thing seems clear - our old life is gone.  We will never have it back.  This is not the time to be looking over our shoulders and mourning what we have lost, but to be looking forward and drawing on our experiences and skills.  When old things are taken down, when old structures are shattered, when the routine is broken - what is left but to love each other, be grateful for what we do have, and to delight in the way that anything could happen. 

Showers of Blessings

We finally got some rain yesterday evening as we were doing the chores.  It was ominous and cloudy all day, but for some reason the rain gods seem to prefer to shower us with their blessings exactly when we are out doing the chores.  Every day for ages there have been huge thunderstorms crowding around, but alas not actually raining on us.

The rain was more welcome than you might think - it has been so dry.  The cows are at the end of their pasture rotation, and the grass in the beginning is dormant and there is no regrowth.  The plan has been to put them on hay at the top of the garden - expensive, of course, but not deplorable, as I need hay and manure to start building the winter garden.

The most I have started on the fall/winter garden are some pathetic-looking starts.  I started early this year, back in August, but the hurricane that came through was not good for them.  I replanted again a couple of weeks ago, and everything has popped up right away.  The funny thing is that the replanted starts are at about the same stage as the older ones.  I don't know how people actually get kale in the ground on September 1st, as all my starts seem to hate growing when it's so hot.  I am wondering if it is even worth starting things until September if the later-planted starts catch up so quickly to the early starts.

The pigs have been in the garden, and have cleared out a good portion of the back of it.  It's about time to give them another section.  Things are (finally!) moving along a little.

The Week of Birthdays

Every day is so full of things to do, I am always working on something.  There has been no time for involved cooking projects, French translations, knitting or writing.  I have also been too busy to enforce the chore lists for everyone, and most of the time end up doing it myself because it's easier.  It's funny how the busier I am, the lazier my children are.  This has been very bad for Mirin, especially, with his "lazy constitution", he is getting up later and later and spending so much time loafing around on the sofa or in bed reading stupid comic books (there are some great comic books out there - he is reading stupid ones - if you don't believe me, just flip through a My Little Pony comic book and you'll see what I mean).  The chore chart has been untouched for a week.  I am just realizing this and feeling the need to do something about it (= Mama Monday Chore Crackdown).

There is just so much going on these days.  So many big projects, so much catching-up to do....and we were just hit by THREE birthdays within a week - Clothilde's fourth birthday (I can't believe my baby is already FOUR!!),  Mirin's twelfth birthday (last year before the teens!), and my little brother's 26th birthday.


I have been fated from the age of seven in my family to carry out birthday celebrations for everyone.  For the children, this is a special dinner of their choice (Clo wanted hotdogs, Mirin picked baked fish) and a homemade cake of their choosing.  My children literally spend all year deciding what kind of birthday cake they want.

Clothilde wanted carrot cake, so I made the soaked-flour carrot cake from Nourishing Traditions.  Mirin wanted a chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream cake  - one of the more involved cakes I've ever made, as I also had to make ice cream.  It was really, really good though - being made only of chocolate chip cookie dough and homemade vanilla ice cream.

For my little brother's birthday, the children were going to make a cake, but were too lazy (see above) to even pick one out.  So I ended up making cream puffs - I really am fated to do it - instead.  Unfortunately Ethan was reading something aloud to me (very interesting that I wanted to hear) while I was measuring the recipe, and I measured twice as much butter as necessary for the 3x recipe.  I only realized the error when I added the flour, and it didn't thicken properly - and horrifically we were out of flour, so no correction could be made.  My mom scrambled around and found some Einkorn flour I added, bringing the recipe up to 6x the original 8 puffs.  It turned out OK, except that my oven could only hold four baking pans at once - the cream puffs were abnormally large in compensation, but they (mostly) turned out ok!

Looking forward to a more leisurely week this week - but we'll see.  What is it about this time of year that always seems like busy madness?

Out Of The Dark

It's interesting that whining seems to be almost a universal offspring behavior.  The little goats are successfully weaned - for the most part. We are still bottle-feeding a few of them - not because they need it, but because we were trying to tame them.  The bottle-fed babies are not just tame, but will actually attack you if they think you have milk.  If you walk by, they bleat with the same persistent, high-pitched, piteous and annoying sound that Clothilde makes when she wants something and feels ignored.

A terrifying thing happened to me and the girls last week with David.  We were walking up to bring the cows their salt and minerals.  The sun had set, and it was that in-between time of evening when it is so difficult to see.

The cows were on the last line, and Ethan was milking Matilda way down at the milking shed.  I had started pouring the salt and minerals into their dishes when Rose suddenly said, "Something is coming!"

We peered into the gloaming.  There was a faint rustling along the path, and suddenly David, huge and black in the failing light, loomed out at us.  Oh no! I said.  He can walk through all of the fences, and was heading straight for us.  He has attacked me and the girls before, but I had a stick handy and had managed to protect us.  Clothilde leaped into my arms, Rose huddled behind my back and I quickly scanned the ground, trying to see if there was a stick, a fence post, anything.  The ground looked grey and homogeneous; there was nothing. 

David walked through the electric fence, towards us, bleating a small, psychotic bleat.  We dropped the mineral scoops, and backed away carefully, hoping that would distract him.  There was a grove of small pine trees we went into, hoping that if he couldn't see us he would find something else to do.  I looked around desperately for a tree to set Clothilde in - and then help Rose up. I knew I could scare him away if they were safe - but with one child in my arms and the other clinging to me, I felt so vulnerable.

David left the scoops and started coming towards us, bleating small bleats, almost like he was hunting us.  I saw a huge pine tree through the small ones, and thought maybe there would be a low branch.  Clothilde started screaming for Ethan, which attracted David more, and seemed to excite him.  I shushed and shushed her, while directing Rose to hide behind the tree.  David followed, getting closer and closer.  I tripped and fell over one of the pine's roots, David loomed over us, his ears raised, ready to come cracking down on us, perhaps killing us.  I screamed at him and forced myself up again, and backwards.  The large pine tree had huge branches that had fallen all around - I hadn't been able to see them from a distance.  I ripped Clothilde off of my side, handing her to Rose, and picked up two large branches just in time to bar him from pushing into us.  No longer unarmed and vulnerable, the situation had turned.

Instead of attacking us, he rammed his horns into one of the small pines very close by and savaged it, ripping off shreds of bark and shaking the whole tree.  The girls were screaming again, I begged them to be quiet.  If only they would be quiet, and not antagonize him....I wasn't so sure how the weak pine branches would hold up if I actually had to fight with him.  I had once tried to fend him off with a sturdy-looking branch that snapped right away and left me weaponless and having to keep him away by kicking at him with my feet.

I held my breath while he ripped at the tree, obviously trying to show us what he was capable of - trying to make us afraid.  He was distracted, so we backed farther away around the tree, out of the clearing.  I had both branches in hand, Rose carried Clothilde - always best to consolidate your vulnerabilities.  We headed for the open, so we could clearly see him coming towards us, ready to fight.

Just then we heard a heavy tred.  Matilda was back!  I felt relief.  Matilda takes every chance to make sure David knows he is smaller, weaker, and therefore pathetic.  She is like the guard cow.  Ethan was there, too.  He had heard us screaming, but was busy with the milking.  He found a fence post in the grass (alas, we would have had to walk towards David to find it at the critical time), and ran David off onto the next line.  The girls and I ran down to the barn while Ethan walked behind us, keeping David back.

When we reached the barn, Ethan yelled, "He's coming your way!" and we rushed for the barn and shut the door.  Then Ethan said he was holding him off, so we ran into the car and shut the doors.  David ran past, back to his girls who were up by the milking paddock.

When Ethan opened the back of the car to put in the milk, he teased us by bleating (he has not been in the situation having two children cling to him while he fights off David, so it didn't seem very serious to him).

We couldn't figure out why David followed us all the way across the farm when his girls were at the other end.  He is up for sale with "make an offer"!

Back To Homeschool

We started homeschooling again last week.  It is nice to be back to fall structure rather than the loose, unplanned summer days.  I realized we actually do homeschool year-round, but with different styles.  Very structured schooling in Fall and Spring, unschooling in Summer.  It seems to work well that way.  Beginning of summer, the children and I alike are glad to shake off the daily rhythm and have some freedom.  September-wise, it feels sort of like putting things back together again.

This year Rose is in 3rd grade, Mirin is in 6th, and Clo is in a difficult age where she can't quite join in, but doesn't want to be left out.

I put off planning for most of the summer, and did it all in a few desperate weeks in beginning of August.  I was trying to figure out what we were doing.  Now that we are not Waldorf homeschooling, I felt a loss.  I thought last year I had it all figured out, but I found myself back to the drawing board.  I haven't had enough time to study, figure out, and implement anything else.  Running out of time, I went ahead and planned 3rd and 6th grade by taking the things I liked the most from the Waldorf plans, adding my own stuff, and finding some new interesting things that we never would have found if we had been still stuck in the Waldorf rut.

For 3rd grade I chose the things we had enjoyed when Mirin was a third-grader.  The Native Dwelling series by Bonnie Shemie are fantastic.  We loved studying the Native Americans, so I kept that as part of the curriculum.  We are also studying the great civilizations of Central and South America.  These blocks include Language Arts, culture, and history.

Science in 3rd grade was Weather - and we are keeping that.  It was fun and interesting to keep a weather journal, and included honing observational skills, measurement (inches, centimetres and temperature), cardinal directions, graphing, data analysis, and weather phenomenon.  It is a very rich subject.

I found a beautiful cursive practice book that includes beautiful artworks.  After the basic letters are taught, the lessons center on finding and describing things in famous classical paintings.

Looking around this same website, I discovered the Life of Fred books that intrigued me.  I bought a few to see how my children liked them.  I got the first book for Rose, thinking it would be a good review, and I got a more advanced one for Mirin.  We ended up working through the first one and are starting the second.  Some of the content is very easy, but it also has things that we have never done before.  I looked through the harder book and decided to just start them both at the beginning.  So far we are really enjoying it.  The story is entertaining, and includes much more than just math.  I particularly like the way the negative effects of sugary foods and television are worked into the story!  How great is that?

For 6th grade we are working on Geometry, Greek Myths, studying the planets, stars, and solar system.  I planned it very lightly, because Mirin balks at lots of planned, structured schooling.

And of course I had to include Clothilde in my plans.  Every week we are trying to do some cooking together, some art together, and some small lessons - like counting and listening to stories.  Every day we do a seasonal verse (one of my favorite things I learned from Waldorf - I have always loved poetry and awareness of the seasons).  We also have a break between different parts of the lesson and do yoga stretches from a wonderful book written for children, picture-book style.  Often Clothilde will get the book out and do the stretches herself - even at age 3 she can do this because of the very simple format.

While I was planning, I remembered drawing shapes with my mom when I was about Clothilde's age.  I recalled being so pleased learning to make stars and hearts especially.  Last week, while Mirin was plugging away at Math and Rose was working in the cursive book, I got out drawing paper and crayons and tried to draw shapes with Clothilde to keep her occupied.

To my surprise, it wasn't just the casual, "Oh, we'll just play around with shapes and colors" that I had expected.  No, Clothilde takes things seriously.  I started drawing a few circles, which she tried to copy, and was quickly screaming and sobbing because her circles were not exactly the same as mine.  Simultaneously, Mirin got frustrated with his Fractions review and was clamouring for my attention.  Rose got angry because during the excitement, the table was jostled and messed up her letters that she was painstakingly working on.  We ended up with everyone screaming and crying - not exactly what I'd had in mind!

After the older children were done with their lessons, I got out the crayons and paper again, and sat down with just Clothilde.  I thought my approach was wrong.  I didn't remember this sort of thing being such a crisis when I was drawing shapes as a child!

Instead we opened the crayon box, and I told Clothilde to pick three things.  She picked:  a girl, a dog, and a horse.  I drew them on the paper, and began making up a story about the three of them, drawing as I went.  Halfway through, she pulled the crayons away from me and began drawing confidently, making up the end of the story on her own.  I found it fascinating to watch her creative process with this, and how a different approach can completely change a child's reaction to an activity.  My structure of drawing a circle did not inspire her, as I had expected, instead she became focused on how her drawing was not the same as my adult drawing, and felt inadequate.

When the process was freed up to her creativity, she became inspired, the flow of the drawing and the story came bursting out.  After she was finished and went off to play, I quickly jotted down the story on the back of the picture. I am imagining making a little book with her drawings and stories.

It was an intense week back to schooling, and I am having trouble finding time to write here, or work on French recipes.  My garden is very weedy, and my fall seedlings got slammed by hurricane Hermine over the weekend (and we lost electricity for two days - no joke when you have chest freezers full of your year's supply of meat!).  Dinners are usually a scramble and end up being something I pull desperately out of the freezer at the last minute - usually steak (not complaining, I love steak).  But I will try to write at least once a week until things settle down.