celebrating

We had a beautiful equinox celebration last week. It was at Anita and Brian's, and there weren't many of us there, which felt just perfect. Anita set a table out in the field, and the kids decorated it with fresh flowers. Brian made a huge bonfire and everyone brought food to share. I think everyone there brought food which they had grown, which was really cool. Alice had some amazing baked beans, which I'm going to have to grow next year. They were so tasty! I made gypsy soup and a radish salad on the side. Anita made a kick-ass pesto, and mashed potatoes with leeks and kale. I got to meet the owner of Beltane farm, whose goat cheese I've been eating for years. He brought some fresh chevre to the party.

It got dark soon after we started eating, and it just felt so nice to be sitting out there in the open, enjoying good food, great friends, and a beautiful roaring fire. I love fire!

This weekend I will be preparing for aiyana's birthday party, which we're having on monday. I let her decide who to invite, and it's definitely a weird mix of people, but that's a reflection of her craziness and loveliness, which I love to honor.

Other than that, things are good. my field looks beautiful. I love going out there every day and taking care of it. The season's definitely winding down, and one of our markets already ended last weekend. It was a great market, in Ashford, and I'd love to do it again next season. We were told that our farm was a great addition to it, and that it drew in quite a few people. I feel that we built a pretty solid base of customers there this seasons, who appreciated our vegetables, and came back regularly.

The Westerly market will also be ending soon. I don't think we'll be going back there next season though. We did as well as in Ashford financially speaking, but I feel that it has a lot less potential for the future. Most people who come there are on vacation, and by the time they get to appreciate our stuff, it's time for them to go home. So it's hard to build a solid base of regulars... This is also the only market where it seems that people want to get their food cheap, value price over quality or any other consideration. I had a woman last week telling me "there's no competition here" and when I asked her what she meant she said that my prices were the same as the guy next to me, and I told her that's because we both work as hard, and we're not going to undercut each other. That's not what we're about. but I'm not sure she got it. Many people are too caught up in the supermarket model to be able to understand how a small farm operates.

Storrs farmers market, our biggest one, will be going into November, which I'm happy about. we do really well there, and have lots of regular customers, and it's also the closest market to our house, literally half a mile away.

there are 2 winter markets i know of, that we could potentially be part of, but i think we'll hold off on that this year; we'll have enough going on with getting the house ready to move into, and getting our field prepped for next season to worry about winter markets. we're getting a greenhouse soon though, which is very exciting, since we'll be able to start seedlings for next season as early as december....

peace

rdishes, flowers, and the farmer's market

i inspected alice's garden at her yearly onion ring party (she grows excellent onions and gorgeous flowers)

i love these fluffy sunflowers. i think they're called "teddy bear"

the girls bringing the signs in at the end of the market

aiyana and sena helping me get radishes ready for the market

fall equinox

happy fall equinox!
i love this time of year. everything looks so beautiful, all the colors and shades. i love the weather, sunny and comfortable; and i love the mood - a little melancholy, but so full of beauty.
this is the time to give thanks for what we have harvested this year - and i feel like i have so much to be thankful for, besides the physical harvest of vegetables, which is so tangible.

i feel that this year, i've established a strong physical and spiritual connection with the land and the life it supports, including plants, animals, and the people it feeds. i'm grateful for this and for having so many people in my life who have been supportive of our life change.

i am also filled with happiness when i think of my kids. things are going so well with them. they are so beautiful, so full of life and love. they are just bubbling with joy and i am so happy to be able to make it possible for them to feel this way; to just live their lives simply and derive such great joy from it, as only kids can do.

sena has been telling ed and i how much she loves us lately. she tells me that she can't imagine having a better mom, and it makes me feel good (and a little self-conscious) to hear that.

a few days ago we were just talking and feeling very close, and she paused for a moment, looking at me very intently. then she said: "mom, the whole world is in your eyes". i'm always amazed when she comes up with stuff like this. i don't speak to anyone like that, so she doesn't hear it at home, we don't have TV, so it's not there; it's just her, being sweet and expressing what she feels.

peace

stuff

aiyana, ed and i had a great time this morning. we drove to woodstock to check out some windows we're thinking of buying for our new house. the quote we got for them was $10000, which made us reassess how badly we really want them. not so badly, so we're looking at other options right now, something that will still meet our basic requirements for heat resistance and solar heat gain coefficient, but hopefully be significantly cheaper.

sena is with her friend giovanna today, homeschooling at her house. it's been really nice to have a little bit of time for aiyana - she rarely gets one-on-one, with no interaction, no competition, and no input from her older sister. she's mostly really easy to be around, really fun to listen to, and when she's got ed and i all to herself she talks a lot more and expresses herself differently than when sena's there. but she does start missing her after a while, and vice versa, which is nice to see.

i have a little time to myself right now, and i'm planning to head to the cafe and look through home books, trying to get ideas on how to design our house. the house is now bare, only exterior walls and supporting beams, so everything is open, as far as interior design. it's very exciting, and a bit overwhelming too, trying to design the house you want to live in. but i got some nice books out of the library, and i will definitely enjoy looking through them over a cup of tea.

one more thing i wanted to share: my radishes and turnips came in, and they look and taste amazing. i am so proud of them. i raised them all by myself (ed did help plow the land, but i did all the rest myself), and i'm getting really good response with them at the market. i took some pics of the radishes, but i don't have them on me, so i will post them next time.

peace

mountain lion?

on monday morning, ed and my neighbor shandra both heard strange noises coming from outside. sounded like someone screaming, or some kind of exotic bird calling. ed went to check but didn't see anything. shandra also checked, just looking out of her front window, and she saw a fox, which seemed very scared and was making the screaming sounds. then she saw what the fox was afraid of: a mountain lion (also known as puma, cougar, or panther). she was able to have a good look at it, for a couple of minutes, and she tried to take pics, but when the flash went off, the mountain lion left. now if this was coming from anyone else, i'd have a hard time believing it, but shandra is very reliable, and she also knows animals very well, better than most people. she said that based on the shape of the ears, and the length of the tail, and the relative size compared to the fox, she's pretty sure it was a mountain lion. which is very exciting, and also a bit scary. i told the kids to stay close to the house. (they were very excited too, and spent half the day looking up the mountain lion in the mammal field guide...)

also, lately we've seen a lot less deer around our house. normally they're in the field by our new house every morning and evening, at least 5 or 6 of them. but recently we haven't seen any, which may be because ed and this other guy have been out there with bow and arrow trying to shoot them (because they eat our crops and spread lyme disease), but it may also be because the mountain lion got them.

i've also heard reports of bobcat sightings, and these seem to be much more common, but mountain lion is pretty unusual (although there have been a few). i guess with the deer population being out of control as it currently is, it's innevitable that some larger predators will eventually show up.

peace

some colorful pictures

this is painted mountain corn, which we grew. you can eat it or grind it for cornmeal, but most people i sold it to bought it as fall decoration. each cob as different, as you can see, and the colors are just gorgeous; each time i shucked a cob was so exciting - i never knew what i was going to get, i just knew it would be beautiful.

and here's my mostly-wild flower garden. i planted the cosmos and sunflower below, but just about everything else grew on its own.

peace

what a beautiful day!!!

having a great day today. the girls and i are at the cafe at uconn, having bagels, coffee and juice, and relaxing. the weather is gorgeous and i'm not feeling stressed at all. farming work seems to be relatively under control. i finished digging the last of the potatoes this morning; i still have to plant a few greens which will be ready before the first frost, but other than that things are definitely slowing down. august was a crazy month, very exciting and exhausting at the same time, with all the vegetables coming in at once. that seems to be over now. there is still lots of stuff to harvest, but not overwhelming. i feel like i've already learned so much this season, and am looking forward to applying it all to next season.

with the farm work being more reasonable now, i feel like i have more time to just relax and have fun with the kids. i've missed going out with them, but we're catching up.

our schedule, as far as the kids go, has taken some shape starting this past week. we've been getting together with 2 other homeschooling families, which are good friends of ours, on tuesdays and wednesdays, doing music, and lots of outdoors stuff. we plan to do more structured stuff as the weather gets colder and we spend more time indoors. sena was also invited to be part of a competitive gymnastics team, and she's really excited, so she'll be starting a trial month period, during which she'll be training twice a week. i'm not too much into the competitive thing myself, but she is, so ed and i decided to honor that and let her try.

so things are good, and i'm feeling just really grateful for today.

peace

Godmother, a poem by Phyllis B. Morden

There was an old lady
Who had three faces,
One for everyday,
And one for wearing places-
To meetings and parties,
Dull places like that-
A face that looked well
With a grown-up hat.

But she carried in her pocket
The face of an elf,
And she'd clap it on quick
When she felt like herself.
Sitting in the parlor
Of somebody's house,
She'd reach in her pocket
Sly as a mouse...
And there in the corner,
Sipping her tea,
Was a laughing elf-woman
Nobody could see!

coventry lake

sena begged me to take her and aiyana to coventry lake last sunday, and although i was tired after the market, i half-heartedly agreed. well, we had a great time, relaxing and fun, with perfect weather and pretty views of the lake. sena and aiyana were really sweet playing in the water and sand. i told sena that i was really grateful that she suggested going there. i forgot how nice it is to be by the water, and by the end of our little outing, i felt so relaxed...

so here they are jumping in the waves

and a little ducky friend

aiyana plaiyng in the sand

peace