sena, aiyana and i were in the living room after lunch, when we saw a bobcat cross the field in front of our house. he was walking quite leisurely, and we got to have a pretty good look at him. we called ed and he ran to see him. it was pretty incredible.

bobcat's medicine is "knower of secrets".
peace

a little bit of winter

our field: hooptunnels and greenhouse (ed built the greenhouse this fall. it's much bigger than last year's - we have 6 full beds in there and we'll have room for plenty of seedlings when we start planting again).

a little bit of a blizzard last monday....

 the field still looked beautiful

 and the kids were cozy inside the house (they came out and started sledding soon enough...)

this is spinach growing in the greenhouse. some snow came in through tiny gaps on the bottom. we'll have to cover them with hay.
the greenhouse is my refuge in the winter. it smells so good in there and the temperature is just right.

peace

i felt overwhelmed by gratitude and wrote this:

thank you fo so much abundance this year!
thank you for our health
thank you for our crops
thank you for the bounty of food and sunshine
thank you for Nicu

thank you for all that we've learned this year
thank you for the feeling of wonder at your wonders
thank you for Peace
thank you for Contentment
thank you for Hope (and the rainbows)
thank you for the starry, moonlit nights

thank you for the simplicity of our lives, and yet - such abundance.

thank you for a little more Understanding
thank you for allowing me closer to You
loving you and being useful is what i want to do
thank you for guiding me, allowing me to Listen
stepping into the Mystery, out of the fog, ever so slowly...
Thank You!

Happy Winter Solstice!

tomorrow is winter solstice - the return of the light. a beautiful time of year.

last week i attended two soil fertility classes. ed missed one because of a scratched cornea (which he got while clearing some brush in the woods for our new fence ine), but fortunately he was able to make it to the other one. both classes were amazing, and i just feel like i can't get enough of this stuff. it's like that saying "when the student is ready, the teacher will appear", well, i'm there right now. i'm ready to hear this stuff, and ready to try implemet it in the field. these courses are all about how to get your soil in the best possible shape and health, in order to grow the best possible, healthiest crops, which will directly contribute to the health of the people eating them. what i find fascinating is how amazingly complex the soil is, how you need to understand so many different things in order to even come anywhere close to conceptualizing how the entire system works. i am learning about minerals, geology, biology, chemistry, physics, quantum physics, and trying to understand how the complex living organism we call soil works from all these different points of view.

other than that, we've been working on putting together our CSA document for next year. we have over 50 people who expressed interest in joining next year, in addition to our existing members from 2010. so we're trying to get this document out, with the detailed description of how the CSA will work, how much it will cost, and everything people need to know for next year. we'll probably have it ready in the two weeks after the holidays, and we'll put it out then for people to go over and sign up if they want to. i think we'll be doing 80 shares next year (as opposed to 45 in 2010). very exciting.

also very exciting was putting together the 2010 CSA survey results. we already sent the detailed results to our customers, but to sum it up, i'd say that we got very positive feedback, and very helpful too for planning next year's crops. basically, out of 38 people who returned the survey, 35 rated themselves "very satisfied" as far as overall satisfaction, while 3 rated themselves "satisfied", and nobody rated themselves "so-so", "unsatisfiued", or "very unsatisfied". thank you very much to everyone who gave us their feedback.

peace and HAPPY HOLIDAYS!!!

homeschooling

aiyana, working in her spelling book yesterday morning. she's doing really well, already reading some easy books all by herself. luckily, so far, both sena and aiyana love homeschooling, and want to work in their workbooks every day.

(and check out our woodstove in the background, with my coffee press on top of it. i'm loving it!! nothing like relaxing in front of a real fire every night before going to bed...)

peace

back from montreal

it feels good to be back home. really good. ed and i were so happy to be back in our field. we all had a headache after being in the car for the 6 hours drive from montreal, but it cleared up after we spent some time outside.

i feel like i'm becoming wild. i need to be outside every day in order to feel good. i need to be with the plants and trees. and i need silence, the kind of silence i've become accustomed when working in the field, punctuated here and there by the crow of the rooster, bird songs, and geese calling.

i've been sick, got a cold when we were away, so i haven't been able to do any work in the past two days. last night, i had to go out though. too much time cooped up in the house. i went out in the rain to look for earthworms. ed told me that he's been seeing lots of them in our field wehn he goes to put the chickens in for the night. i wanted to see them myself, and i did - they were everywhere, which is very exciting, because they are very good for the soil.

on monday night, ed and i attended a meeting which gave an overview of a course we're planning to take on growing nutrient-dense food. it was very exciting - i'm glad we went. we got into soil fertility, and soil biology, which i can talk about and read about endlessly. i find learning and working with the soil and all the life it supports (including us) fascinating. trying to understand the soil, with all its intricacies and beauty brings me closer to God than anything else i've ever done.
peace