getingrid

getting chores done

It is said the family that prays together, stays together.  (Or is it just from the Disney Robin Hood movie I had memorized growing up?)  I think that it should be inserted it is the family that works and prays together that stays together. Teaching my children to work around the house has definitely been a labor of love.  But the reward, oh the reward, is sweet and binding.  I'm beginning to see that to work and accomplish together as a family is to commit, to serve and to come together in purpose.

blueberries in the summer

I was so happy to find two important ingredients for a happy life this summer: a new friend and local u-pick orchards.  I can't help but compare blueberry picking in Southern Illinois to blueberry picking in Oregon.  The blueberries in Oregon were amazing.  The bushes were smaller and more contained, and the berries themselves were large.  Oh, and they were so very, very delicious.

fall photos

My family is beginning to dread that one weekend every fall where I make everybody dress up in outfits decidedly not fit for a Saturday and pose for family photos.  They hate sitting and smiling and when they begin to grimace they know the lecture is coming, the one where I remind them that they're smiling for all of our friends and family who will be receiving a Christmas card from us and do they want everyone to see what a sour grapes they were being for our photo.  They always reluctantly answer no and continue grimacing.  Thank goodness the children have a fun dad who ends up cracking a joke and injecting the whole painful procedure with a little fun.  Once the sitting and smiling photo quota has been filled, I ask them to play and jump and run and that's when I begin to enjoy taking the photos too.

fairy garden party

It is becoming painfully apparent to me that I consistently fail at staging photos.  It's one more thing to add to my list of things to practice and improve on.

winter at hadleigh grange (and a letter from the coop)

Thank goodness I can refer to winter in the past tense!  And, here it is, the name for our farm!  After lengthy deliberations I'm happy with this name.  It's old and, in that tradition, its name is a definition.  It was important to name it for how it feels to be here, for the images it evokes in my mind.  Thank you for all the suggestions you commented with!  It helped to set my gears working on the right track.

(Incidentally, my daughter's egg business is ready for orders!)

gone fishing

 

Once upon a time, long ago, it used to be summer and the days were long and slow.  The grass was green and all the world rejoiced, fed and grew fat off the bounty of the land, including the fish.  I fiercely miss those days.

rabbit love

In preparation for our move to acreage, I decided to acquire French Angora Rabbits so that I can harvest their angora fiber (which does not harm the rabbit in any way) and spin it into angora yarn.  No, I don't know how to spin fiber into yarn but I figure YouTube is the teacher of all things great and small and weird.  If anyone has any advice, I'm all ears!

welcome, 2014

Nope.  No philosophical meanderings, no internalizations, no sincere musings, nothing.  Nothing but a big fat, "What in tarnation am I doing?"  So my goal for 2014 will be to figure that one out.  It's a good goal.

goodbye little garden

Summer is over and so is our (very) late summer square-foot garden.  We built and planted the garden when we got here, the weekend of July 4th.  That is way too late for a garden!  We're happen to have gotten as much from it as we have because we weren't expecting much!

lost days

I've been a little lost lately.  I'm sure you've noticed by now, but I've undertaken the effort of actually selling items on my etsy shop.  If you have time, check it out!  Free Radicals Apothecary.  I have been experimenting with recipes, tweaking, and cooking lots of soap!  It takes 4-8 weeks to cure so the rewards are definitely delayed.  What I made this last week won't be up on my shop for a month.