Honk

Happy Birthday Mom!

Today is my wonderful mama's birthday. She was lucky enough to be born on a very special day, the winter solstice. Happy birthday, mom! I wish you a beautiful day full of winter's showiest magic. When you wake, the world will be decorated just for you with Mother Nature's gorgeous jewels, growing ever brighter as the sun shines into every little icy work of art. You'll be heralded by flocks of her feathered friends, cheerful and darling little sparrows and great, wise ravens. Your day will close with a very slow wave across the heavens from the league of creatures residing in the imaginations of people from time immemorial, celebrating the day each year when the sun begins to return to us, one day at a time.

I love you.

Shhh...it's a secret

It's amazing how many hiding places we have found in this tiny little house. There are several absolutely darling handmade gifts secreted away on dark cupboard shelves or behind pieces of furniture. Aliana, if you are reading this, don't look in the big white pitcher in the dish cupboard!

It has truly made my holidays bright to watch Isidore nearly burst with excitement until Elizabeth falls asleep for her nap. As soon as her eyes close he jumps into action, cutting and sewing and decorating. Aliana and Elizabeth are just as delighted by crafting things for their loved ones. It is heartwarming.

I can hardly wait until the presents are unwrapped, so I can show you the fabulous things my children have come up with!

Look, Francine, I sewed!

My dear Patrick has always wanted a green santa hat. I actually began sewing one last December, but that was back in the days when December didn't mean holiday cheer for our family. Instead Thanksgiving heralded the beginning of a month of working 16 hour days. Joy. Yeah. Pure joy. So the half-finished hat actually moved with us into the yurt.





This year, we have time to have a festive tree, make a gingerbread yurt, come up with darling homemade gifts for one another, and .... make a green hat for the man of green hats.

Magic Mist

Elizabeth tells me that mist is magic. I have to agree with her. Everything appears different under the cover of mist. The world seems to shrink to include only those things within one's sight. Perhaps part of the magic is that the fog narrows one's view, and even thoughts. On foggy mornings I can't gaze off into the distance and remember riding my horse up and away and off over those hills. Instead my thoughts turn to chores to be done within the shroud of fog. I should trim the goats hooves this week. I really need to stock up on cracked corn for the chickens. There is fencing to be done. I think we'll have pea soup tonight. After I 've finished the chores I should bring in some more wood for tonight's fire.

I had a similar experience last week making a very long drive through the fog. I usually find myself thinking ahead to the end of my journey, anticipating climbing out of the truck and unbuckling the kids. Making my way through the mist was different. I was forced to concentrate on the few feet I could see ahead of me. Peering into the fog took up all my attention, and the time flew by. We almost seemed to be home before we set out.

I think Elizabeth is on to something.

The Order of Things

I wrote a few posts back about creating order inside our new home, adjusting to a smaller space and less belongings. After the work of decluttering and tidying is done it feels so wonderful to stretch out and enjoy our home.

A few days ago we butchered a goat. We have created a little farm life here, an extension of what we began at our old home. On a farm there is a never-ending cycle of fecundity and sparsity. In the spring the garden wakes up and begins to grow after the winter pause. The animals bear young; dozen of eggs from the chickens, one or two kids from each female goat. The summer heat and long days full of sun help the garden to produce an astonishing amount of food in just a few months. The tiny chicks and frisky kids also grow with amazing speed. A chicken eats its way to butchering size in just twelve weeks. By the time autumn blows in, the garden has filled the root cellar, freezer and pantry with pounds and bushels and quarts. Also in the autumn the chicken coop feels much too crowded. Roosters loudly compete for attention and require substantially larger amounts of corn and scraps than they did as chicks. Some of the goat kids were male, or simply number too many to feed economically. As the light and warmth wane and the chores of the garden are fewer, butchering time comes.

Just as our home feels roomier and calmer after removing the excess, the chicken coop is quieter and much, much more peaceful after the majority of the young roosters and older hens have been, with enormous gratitude, dispatched to the freezer and pantry. It is much the same with the goats. As the male goats become mature they become aggressive and hard to manage safely. To allow peace to return to the goat pasture, leaving the does to chew their cud and fatten up until they give birth in the spring, we butcher the extra animals after they have done their job of ensuring that another generation will be born. The winter months stretch ahead of all of us, animals and humans, a quiet, less active time. The garden is scrubbed clean by the cold wind and frost while the animals enjoy the warmth of their shelters. In the snug house we plan next year's garden and cook from our stores.

Really, extra is not the right word for the animals we butcher and vegetables we eat during these dark, cold days. Unlike the material excess we gathered for years and then removed from our home, those creatures weren't brought into the world without thought. On the contrary, we put great consideration into just how much food our family requires for each turn of seasons. Each spring we plant what we hope is the just enough seeds and plan to raise just enough meat. We try to raise just enough, not too much, not too little.

I do believe the world could use a lot more just enough right now.

Thanks for Sun

Thanks for Food

Thanks for Shelter

Thanks for Rain

Family Hands, Four Forty-seven pm Wednesday, November Nineteenth, Two Thousand Eight

For the next seven days I'll be posting photographs only. I'm feeling quiet.

Well

We have been sick, each of us taking our turn, some of us two or three at a time. Please pardon the abandoned blog this last week. I'll be back tomorrow to begin a photo series about which I'm quite excited.

Homes within the home

We have a joke about yurt living - "We don't just throw things in the corner!"

Except moving a house, albeit a small one, into a yurt makes for a great big mess. For way too long now, we have had piles, heaps, mountains, stacks, and (Patrick's favorite) inverted pyramids of STUFF all over the place. We needed to find homes within our home for all the things we hauled up here with us. On Sunday we did just that. Books lined up on the right shelves, art supplies alighted at an accessible height, dishes created a lovely rainbow in the cupboard, cardboard boxes collapsed and trooped off to be recycled.

Isidore was delighted to become reacquainted with a wide expanse of floor. He has decided to take on the chore of cleaning it each evening so that he can continue to enjoy after-dinner sock skating.

Sunday, with syrup

Extra fun from school

Our homeschool program just moved into a marvelous new facility and expanded its library. This week we borrowed a nifty electronics kit. It has been a nice way for Patrick to get in on the learning fun. It has all the pieces that come in a regular electronics kit, but they all just snap together, making it manageable for Isidore's little hands. Naturally they bypassed the simple stuff at the beginning of the project book and went right for the laser gun, followed by the the space battle.

I hear the school also has telescopes, so we might plan a few heavenly lessons next month.

Chilly Pop

Our morning temperatures are swinging lower and lower now. Using a woodstove to warm up the house means really being in touch with how much energy we use to stay warm. Each log must be purchased, stacked, carried in and then placed in the flames, never to be seen again. The woodpile is lovely and large as autumn descends, but then it we watch as already it begins to shrink.

Over at an environmental blog I like to read, http://www.crunchychicken.blogspot.com/ , she has a challenge going called Freeze yer Buns. The idea is that we conserve energy by staying a little cooler in the winter than we might have before. For households with a thermostat, this means setting it a little lower. For us, it means not starting a fire if we're only a little chilly, or letting it go out during the day while we are active and moving around or going outside. Not only does this make eco-friendly sense, it saves us money. So, here we go, the Works Family is joining the challenge. Brrr.

Cozy

The kids and I blew in the door from an exciting but very chilly day at our home school program's new site oh so glad to find Patrick had lit a fire in our wood stove. He had water simmering in the kettle and plenty of wood for the rest of the evening. I spent a few perfect minutes rocking by the fire with my book, my tea and my slippers, listening to the rain on the roof.

Thank you, my dear.

Welcome November

Rain followed on the heels of the windy day we saw a few days ago. Elizabeth and Isidore couldn't be stopped from dashing right out into it. Aliana went to find her slippers and hat. I put on soup for dinner.

We all enjoyed the sound of the rain on the yurt roof. It's a special sound. We are very cozy and well-insulated, but there isn't a lot of thickness separating the interior of our home from the weather outside, certainly not as much as in a tradional wooden house. As a result, each raindrop makes its arrival known. When it really pours down we are all forced to pause in our conversations and listen to Mother Nature's voice for a time.

Halloween

Autumn blows in

Funny, isn't it, how the trees shed their clothing just as we start to bundle up?

Yesterday saw a brief but intense windstorm that whipped many of the remaining golden poplar leaves off the branches above us and sent them soaring far across the pasture.

Fall is an awfully good name.

I love the dentist!

That's what the boy who sobbed and squeezed mommy's hand with a amazing strength exclaimed to his sister when he was finished with his check-up.

It is so darn hard to make my little ones do things they don't want to. I'm reminded by the sequence of events at the dentist's office, though, that I'm supposed to push my baby birds to test those wings now and then.

Patrick's Blog

Patrick and I now have dueling kitten photographs. You'll have to look at his blog to see the superior shot.


www.patrickworksphotography.blogspot.com

Poem of the week

Books to the ceiling,
Books to the sky,
My piles of books are a mile high.
How I love them,
How I need them.
I'll have a long beard by the time I read them.

By Arnold Lobel

Before Dawn

Our family wakes up early these days. At least for a week or two, Patrick is working a shift that begins at 4:15 AM. He and I have always watched each other suspiciously from opposite sides of the divide between cheerful morning people and night owls. Can you guess who's who?

For me this radical change has been a slightly uncomfortable pleasure. Getting up out of the warm bed is tough, but my reward is the quiet, still space of time ahead of me. I relish an hour of Internet addiction time, tidy up the house, get something of some sort rising or fermenting or stewing. Around the time the light begins to fill in the details of my view out the window I bundle up and head out with my milking bowl.

The world outside is really pretty raucous in the early morning. The hungry cows spot me as I step out the door. They don't moo so much as bellow. The roosters have been crowing for quite a while now, and when I open the coop they flap past my face in their hurry to get out to take care of chicken-business. The goats chime in next, saying good morning in three distinct voices. The geese and ducks splash and quarrel. As I milk, in the distance I hear cars taking children to the bus stop and dogs barking at those cars.

As I step in the door bearing milk and eggs Isidore is up and wants to know if we can get out the school books and get to work. He adores the math and reading books we began using a few weeks ago. Last week he began to really read, to sound out unfamiliar words. Though he enjoyed schoolwork already, this breakthrough energized him. After we do the brief lessons from the books he asks me to write down words for him to read. This game is still novel for both of us. After he tires of reading to me, I take my turn reading aloud. We dive into the workings of the human body, cowboy stories, and lots and lots of Halloween tales. Elizabeth joins us under the blanket on the couch, usually adding a poetry book to the pile. She has been rhyming words since she could speak, and loves to listen to poetry read aloud. I do wonder where that will take her. If Aliana is home we make room for her and let ourselves sink deep into the world of The Hobbit for awhile, our latest daily pleasure.

I am so glad they weren't in one of the cars bound for the bus stop this morning.

Introducing Phoebe

On All Hallows Eve we will have two black felines stalking the house. Aliana has chosen a black cat costume this year, and we have been enjoying the antics of an inky little kitten for the last few weeks. Dear Charlie, the friendly old guy who was living with Patrick when I met him, had to be buried on the hill this summer. That left the Works family very sad and catless.

Naturally Phoebe immediately became Elizabeth's favorite stuffed animal, and though she is often frustrated by this particular toy's self-will, most of the time Phoebe remains patiently curled up in Ellie's arms for quite some time.

The Trees on the Hill

It gives me a feeling of peace greater than I can describe to listen to my children tell me about the trees on the hill and share a glimpse of the sacred games they play there among the birds and leaves, rocks and moss.

In exchange I reveal a dusty page from my childhood, when those branches were a tiny bit smaller, those rocks a fraction younger.

Rhythm

We begin to feel a rhythm in our days and weeks. Living in an itsy-bitsy house forces us all to spend a great deal of time outdoors, and as a result we all seem to feel the change of seasons here in a way that we never did before. As a mother and homemaker I have always longed to mark the passage of time with something more than Thanksgiving turkey, Christmas cards and chocolate Easter bunnies. It seems like the things that show up on store shelves at the appropriate time of year represent little pieces of the rituals and traditions that guided our forebears through their lives. As I have been unpacking boxes and creating a home out of the things we brought with us I have been giving thought to making a dynamic space that echoes the tones and shades of the world outside our door. I want our den to be comfortable and to follow along with Mother Nature's decorating scheme.

We have been...

Baking rye bread, unpacking boxes, eating Grandma's banana cake and rescuing dinosaurs from tar pits.

Swerving

That screeching of tires and slamming of brakes you heard was the Works Family. We got a little off course, but we're back on track now. In lots of ways.

Stuck in Lodi

This blog is coming to you today from beautiful Lodi, California. Patrick is working on a national (!) advertising campaign for the KOA. We are staying in one of the darling little cabins they offer while he shoots all day. The kids will be modeling for some of his shots around the pool and playground later in the day, but for now they are enjoying a very large television and real cheerios. I am going to ignore the internet for the rest of the day and read the entire newspaper.

Cheers!

Mr. Misterio Speaks

This evening I paused in my work to cuddle with Isidore for a few minutes. Lying in my lap, he told me, "I wish I could live life over and over again." I asked him why he wanted to do that, to which he replied, "So I could be a baby again and nurse, and then grow up again and be like I am now, over and over again."

Okay.

and zee 'air cut

I have failed at my Buy Nothing Challenge. I got my hairs cut. And blow dried. It felt great. I haven't had a haircut in years. Here it is. I like it.

Mr. Misterio

When Isidore was born my darling Auntie Deedee crocheted him a beautiful soft blue blanket. He has slept with it just about every night since then. As a newborn we swaddled him in it and called him the blue burrito. A couple of years ago he started calling it his woopee. For several months now it has been doing double duty as a super-hero cape. Daily he ties it around his neck and leaps off the couch to assault his sisters, as any brother ought to. His super-powers are awesome.



But, incredibly, they just got much, much stronger.



On Friday at the farmers market we were in line for churros. Yum. They have become our Friday evening market treat of choice lately. I felt a little tug on my hand. Super-boy had spotted some capes for sale at a nearby stall. Mean old mom pointed out that he had a perfectly wonderful cape already. Didn't he love his blue cape? I went back to my churro purchase.



By time I was taking my first bite of deep-fried goodness Isidore had been transformed into Mr. Misterio.



Patrick confessed that as a little boy he had always wanted a real cape. Not a pillow case or a homemade cape, but the real deal. So when Isidore of the crocheted-blanket-tied-around-his neck-cape tugged on his hand, there was no hesitation.










That night Patrick's old friend Eric came up for a visit. When Mr. Misterio put on Jimi Hendrix, Eric brought out his guitar. Mr. Misterio gleefully whipped out his own ax, recruited Aliana for piano, Patrick on the harmonica and Elizabeth on the ukulele. They had quite a session.







Apologies to Rory for the foot on the piano, I swear we don't do that all the time. And yes, that is a lampshade on Aliana's head.

Zo, zee znailz.....

We ate 'em! First we starved them for a couple of days, then we plunked the lot in boiling water for a minute. Once out of the bath they slipped easily out of their shells. We sauteed them with homegrown garlic and butter and then...












Aliana chowed down! Isidore and Elizabeth decided not to partake, but Aliana loved them. She is a big fan of clams and mussels, and we all agreed they taste just like clams. We will be collecting more next week to make a main dish meal with pasta.

Long Days, Crappy Food

Last month I signed up for Path to Freedom's 100-foot diet challenge. We have had a lot of fun dreaming up homegrown meals. We've scoured our cookbooks for egg recipes, stayed up late talking about ideas for dishes, remembering things our relatives made. We've all greatly enjoyed planning our meals.

The problem has been finding the time to make them. The past few weeks the shop has opened its jaws wide and eaten us. Sometimes owning one's own business kinda sucks. I love spending my days working with my partner. I really appreciate being able to bring the kids to work instead of dropping them off at daycare. But I don't like it when everything breaks and people get mad at me. There are days when the idea of punching out at five o'clock and going home sounds delicious.

I know there are people who work long hours and fit cooking from scratch into their busy schedules. I would like to be one of them. Some days I wake up early and use the pressure cooker to whip up some variation of rice and beans and vegetables. It makes everyone's day better to eat a real meal instead of something that came out of a box. It's the logistics of it that kill me, though. I have to get up early enough to have enough time to cook it, then I have to have clean tupperware to use for transport. At the shop we have to have clean dishes and silverware. Then after the food is eaten dishes have to be done at the shop and the tupperware have to make it back home for the next day's meal. It all theoretically works fine, but the reality is that usually one of the pieces of the chain end up missing. I didn't wash the tupperware, or get up early enough, or maybe when we get to the shop we don't have clean dishes at lunchtime. The result is way too much expensive, salty processed food for our meals at the shop.

So, we have lots of homegrown menus up our sleeves for the weeks to come.

I am sure that things at the shop will get easier, and we will find more time to cook wholesome meals again. When Patrick and I met and were courting, as he likes to say, we cooked together all the time. It was a wonderful way to get to know each other. We long for the kind of days that allow time to chat as one of us chops the garlic and the other stirs the sauce. Cooking with the kids is also such wonderful time together. I love to watch little hands holding giant spoons.

So... stay tuned for more 100-foot diet meals. Such plans we have in store!