sena, aiyana and i had a great time today. sena recorded some of it in these pics she took with her own camera (except for the ones of her, which i took; i also cropped a couple of hers):

they wanted to go to the cafe on sherbrooke where i first met larissa; after talking about it for a while, they were not disappointsd. we had croissants (chocolate for aiyana as you see) and coffee and a nice view of busy city streets

 i showed them some of the engineering buildings where i studied. this statue was nearby,

 for lunch we went to an indian restaurant and had more food than we could eat.

 sena loved the soup and naan

 she liked some of the decorations too

 and this is driving back home...

vermont is really beautiful. yesterday sena, aiayan and i had a great day driving from CT to Montreal. it was sunny and cold and the roads were not busy. i like VT because there are no billboards, and mostly because of the mountains. i am impressed and moved to be in the vicinity of mountains that are over 400 million years old, and which, even though they may not be impressive in size anymore, they're nevertheless impressive in age and what they've been through. i read that the Appalachians were once as high as the Rockies or Alps, and were formed at the time when Pangea, the supercontinent, was coming together. that is humbling, and i do feel awed and grateful to be in their presence.

through this long bout i've had with whooping cough over the past month, my mind kept returning over and over to the topic of midlife. i'm not sure what midlife is, but some of my friends are referring jokingly to their "midlife crisis". yesterday, on my drive up one thing became clear to me: that this age where i am right now has at least one great thing going for it - i am old enough to have some decent life experience, and young enough that if i want to make any changes and live my life differently i have time to do it (well, you never know about that of course, but i'm assuming...). so the question that has been coming back to me over the past weeks, is if and how do i want my life to be different? i'm having a hard time coming up with answers, because i am pretty content already. but some vague feelings do come up: i think i'd like to be more present with the children, less distracted. also, i know that i want to deepen my experience with and contact with the natural world. like the mountains i drove through yesterday. i've driven through them plenty of times before, and usually noticed them only superficially. either i have the radio on, or something else to distract me from the full experience. yesterday was different, but i know that i still have a ways to go before i experience them openly and fully. and it's like that with almost everything.

so about midlife, actually, when i think about the topic, i have a surge of hope and excitement, of unbounded possibility, and that feels really good. i feel more ready now to recognize what's important than i was earlier in my life, and thus i feel more able to take my life in a meaningful direction.all that being said, i have yet to articulate to myself any changes that i want to make, but i feel that if any, they will be more of a suddle, internal nature than external, and i expect that to take a long time.

Happy Birthday to my Mom!

Today is my mom's birthday, and I hope it's a good day for her, and that it brings her comfort and joy.
I hope to be able to come to Montreal later in the week and spend some time with my parents. It seems that our cough has finally gotten better, so if the weather cooperates, we'll be going. Sena and Aiyana are very excited about going to Montreal again and the three of us hanging out together in the city. They want to go to bookstores and cafes. They are great companions.

fertility plan

i've been working on our farm's fertility plan for 2013. always fun to do that. lots of data to look at and figure out what action to take. we have now about 4-5 years worth of soil test data, so we can start looking at patterns across time and location. it's very interesting. overall, things are looking very good. a few minerals which are notoriously low in this area of the country still need amending (such as Boron, Sulfur, and some trace elements). major nutrients (Calcium, Phosphorus, Potassium) are mostly good levels or getting there, and our humus levels are great (7.5% and greater). overall i think that we have good microbial action in our soils, and we need only a few inputs (compost, rock powders, fish, seaweed) in order to keep up the fertility. i think the cover crops we've been incorporating over the past year have helped us a lot.

CSA info for 2013

finally today we published our farm's 2013 CSA information and sign-up form (see our farm website if interested). ed and i have been working on it for a while, making sure to get all the details are covered. lots of behind-the-scenes suff, and i feel relieved to finally have it done.

other thank that, i've been sick with whooping cough. sena and aiyana also had it. between the three of us, we've been sick since december 21. lots of coughing, painful and disruptive of sleep and normal activities. we've quarantined ourselves to our house so as not to get others sick. sena and aiyana are almost all better now, not contagious anymore, and i am coming along. being sick is not fun, but it certainly does make one appreciate good health all over again. fortunately throughout this i've been able to go out on walks and hikes, which is the only thing that would make me stop coughing. nights have been the hardest for me, with back-to-back coughing fits, especially when laying down.
i've been re-reading "into the wild", which i found in a box in the attick. a great book, if you haven't read it.

peace

a walk at sunset: Mansfield Hollow

as much as i've tried hard to learn from books and schools, not much that i hold of any significance, has been learned that way; instead, what matters most to me and what i live by, has slowly and sometimes painfully, been revealed through time, personal experience and contact with real teachers.

 

peace

hearing from an old friend

i checked the mailbox today at the beginning of my daily walk, and in it was a beautiful postcard from my "old" friend Larissa. it came as a complete surprise, since i lost all touch with her years ago, and it brought me to tears right there by the side of the road. i was so happy to hear from her, and it's funny because just recently i was thinking of her and our times together in montreal.

Larissa, if you read this blog, i just want to say thank you for thinking of me and for making my day.
i often tell Sena and Aiyana stories about when we were friends in Montreal, about how we met working at the cafe on Sherbrooke, and about our fun times in Boston and so on. they love the stories and i love telling and reliving them.

later in my walk, i put my hand in my pocket and fished out a rabbit tail i forgot in there a few weeks ago when i tanned a skin. this made me think of how much has changed since my "city slicker" days (Ed's expression; i think it's funny) when we were friends; but on a deeper level, of course, nothing much has changed. certain people, like you, will always be present in my life, regardless of external circumstances.

so thank you again, and truly, i wish you the best.

Hapy New Year!

started the new year with a much needed visit to the ocean;

and some fun in the snow

the bees are snug in the snow-covered beehives

these are sena's very delicious raspberry muffins (with our own raspberries from last summer)

 our fields are now covered in snow, resting after a season's work

peace