sena, aiayana and giovanna, playing at our house last tuesday


practicing gymnastics this morning


i love this picture


this is aiyana, a while ago, at the downtown fest, at the Willimantic food co-op. she was listening to Jason the Bumblebee, her favorite artist (other than Rafi), and she was delighted.

sena

peace

update on homeschooling

homeschooling is going really well. the kids love it, they keep asking ed and i to work with them on workbooks and other things, and they're learning really well. sena can almost write her own sentences. and aiyana writes full sentences when you spell every word for her.

they love to draw and write a story about their drawing - i got them each a special book just for that and it's coming along beautifully. yesterday, sena's drawing was of our farm, and her sentence, which she wrote almost entirely by herself was "look at our beautiful farm".
we're doing math type of stuff too. both sena and aiyana love counting the cash in our cashbox when we get home from the market, and that makes for great practice. aiyana usually arranges the ones in piles of 10, while sena does the fives. then sena counts all the 10s, 20s, 5s and 1s. aiyana repeats after her. sena got really good at counting by 10 and by 20. she can also do all the quarters, and she's able to add the whole thing together at the end, with minimal help, and come up with the total for the day. then she writes it down in our record book.

every week we do stuff like this, whenever the opportunity arises. we also get together with clara and giovanna, on tuesdays and wednesdays, and the 4 girls homeschool together. the topic varies, depending on their interests and what works at the time. sometimes, they write stories, other times they make music, or take a walk in the woods and observe things, or make art, and of course there's always lots of play.
we're really lucky to live in a community where homeschooling is more the norm than not, and to have close friends that we can get together with on a regular basis.

last year i was reading tons of books, and any info i could find on homeschooling, and i found myself giving many reasons when someone asked me why we chose to homeschool. now things have changed. i have more experience, and i feel much more comfortable with our choice. the kids love it and are doing well, we love it, everyone is happy. if anyone asks me why i homeschool now, i will only give one reason: because the kids get to be outside. to me, that is most important - for their health and general well being, and for their education. i am convinced that being outside everyday, and being free to play, to observe, to just be, is crucial to health and happiness, and that's reason enough for me to homeschool at this time. the learning always comes by itself anyway, as long as you allow kids to explore and to follow their natural curiosity....

peace

us

halloween at the farmer's market (it was so windy, everyone and everything was blowing away...)

sena and aiyana dressed as beneficial insects: sena, a spider, and aiyana a honey bee.

aiyana usually has major bedhead in the morning

peace

i'm so in love with this land!

one gorgeous afternoon last week, ed took the girls to gymnastics, and i stayed home. johnnie was still working on our new house, but soon after ed left he took a break and came over and we had coffee outside. it was sunny and warm, and we sat on the picnic table, facing the trees that were so bright with autumn colors, as if they were on fire. the sun was setting, and at one point, we both noticed countless strands of spiderweb, stretched though the grass, glittering silver. it felt magical.

johnnie went back to his work, but i could not bring myself to go in the house. the sun was turning orange by now, and it lit everything in vivid flashes of color. i walked around our house and field, just being happy and incredulous at all this beauty. i took some pictures, and as usual, theyt're only a pale expression of the real thing. but i'd like to share them anyway:

peace

dreams

I've been having some rich dreams this past week, which left me with a really nice feeling.
One was just sweet and simple. I was riding my bike with Sena, Aiyana and Julia on the streets of Montreal. I was trying to get back to my old neighborhood in NDG, and as I rode with all three kids piled on my bike, I felt like each street, each corner, each doorway were so familiar to me. I just felt a lot of love for the neighborhood and the city in general, like I was coming home, not only to the city itself, but to a part of myself, and I was really glad to be able to share that with the kids.

In another dream, I was driving with a friend, and we just passed a car and were coming up to a beautiful view of mountains in the distance, with the sun setting behind them. Just then, there was a big dip in the road, and we were going too fast, so the car left the road and was up in the air. I realized that we were going to crash, and my friend said so too. I thought that we would die, and I undid my seatbelt, but then I thought that it's better to leave it on, in case the car starts rolling. As I fumbled around nervously, I suddenly realized that the car was not crashing at all. Instead, we were going up and up, so fast that I could feel it in my stomach. I did not feel nervous anymore, and as I looked down I could see the earth going away from us. Everything looked so beautiful: mountains, green fields, woods, and a meandering, blue river. I felt so deeply how much I loved everything, how beautiful and precious it all is, and I was so moved that I started to cry. I woke up crying, and that feeling of beauty stayed with me the whole day. It allowed me to be more sensitive to my surroundings, and to experience them in a new way.

in case you were wondering

what a hoop tunnel looks like (i've been writing about them quite a bit lately), here are some pictures

there are salad greens, turnips and radishes under these two


and this is (delicious) arugula growing under another

the plastic cover adds about 20F, so some stuff grows well despite the cold fall weather.

and a quick update on the market: we're doing really well, sales have actually improved over the past few weeks, which was surprising given the rain, and cold, not to mention the wind... i am still very excited about the whole market experience, meeting people, hearing their comments, and just the feeling of being there and contributing something positive.

this week, the market will be moving indoors. we'll be at the mansfield library (on RT89), on Saturdays, 3 to 5pm. ed and i will continue doing the market as long as we have stuff to sell, probably through december. i'm not planting anything new right now (except garlic for next season), but we do have plenty of stuff still growing under the covers.

and speaking of garlic, i planted 400 cloves last week, and will do 150more tomorrow. that should be enough for next season, for our own consumption and my sister, for seed garlic, and maybe we'll even have enough to sell at the market.

peace

i like this picture

Sena and Aiyana with Grandma Joyce, at a party

peace

stronger

i'd really like to get stronger. not for looks (this time), but just so i can do my work without tiring so easily, or getting frustrated.

yesterday, i was preparing a bed for garlic planting. i had to put compost on, which involved shoveling the compost into a wheel barrow, out of the compost pile, and then pushing the wheel barrow over to the bed, only about 10ft away. doesn't sound too bad, but i found it pretty tiring. i'd like to be able to do stuff like this easily.

last night i went to my first yoga class in a long time (over 4 years now...). my friend jennifer is leading it,and she's amazing. the atmosphere was beautiful, very relaxing, yet powerful, and the class was long enough to actually feel that i got something out of it (one hour and a half). i think that yoga is one thing that can help me get stronger. so i'm hoping to keep going to this class once a week.

while i was at yoga, the kids stayed home with ed,and things went well. they read books, and carved their pumpkins. when i got home, all the lights were off, but i could see a faint glow inside. this is the image that greeted me as i walked in the door.

i was laughing, but i have to say that it did feel a bit spooky (which the kids were really glad to hear).

peace

gandhi

a few moths ago, sena and i read a book called Neela. it was about a girl growing up in India at the time of India's struggle for independence from the British. sena loved the book, and it was the first time she learned about Gandhi. since then, she occasionally brings him up, and wants to know more about him. she understands quite a bit about the issues between India and England, and she seems fascinated with Gandhi and his role.

yesterday she was asking about him again. she asked me if he's still alive, and i said no. she seemed fine with that. then she wanted to know how he died and other things. ed pulled out the encyclopedia, and he started reading about him. at the end of the passage he was reading, it said that Gandhi was assassinated by a brahmin. when sena heard that, she started wailing, ran to the kithen, and clung to me. we were all surprised by her reaction, especially since she was fine before, when we told her that he was dead. she said that she was really upset about how he had died, that if he had died naturally it would've been different. she was upset, she said, because he could've lived longer, if that man hadn't killed him.

i have to admit that i never cried over Gandhi's death before, but seeing sena's reaction yesterday, put things in such a new perspective, and i had to hold back my tears. we get so immune to killing... yet, it was very touching to see how upsetting this can be to someone whose heart is still open, like sena.

after she stopped crying, sena wanted to talk about why people kill each other. it was really hard to explain it to her, and i found myself saying over and over that it just doesn't make any sense. i tried to talk to her about some situations which may provoke people to act in extreme ways, but it was far from giving a rational explanation. she kept asking me why they don't just talk to each other, or if they can't agree, why they don't just do their own thing. it's so tricky to answer all these really good questions she was asking.

i feel that more that Gandhi's death, what she realized yesterday was a truth about people which i wish she didn't have to learn. i'll always remember the way she wailed, it was so piercing, and it broke my heart. i felt that in a way i let her down. i wish that we adults could live up to the simple and pure visions that children can have of us, and i am ashamed to admit that we are so far from it.

peace

sunny week

this week was so beautiful. after getting snow twice last week, finally, this week we had day after day of sun and warmth. i could not get enough of it. spent all day, everyday, outside. i got a lot done too. i covered almost all the crops, which doesn't sound like much, but it involves a lot of wire and plastic cutting to make hoop tunnels, as well as sandbag making (they are heavy!). the sandbags are used to weigh the hoop tunnels down, and keep them from blowing away in the wind.

we also had a beautiful women's circle. we had it outside, sitting around a big bonfire; as we spoke it, geese flew over our heads, honking in the clear blue sky; when darkness fell, the moon came up as a stunning, thin yellow crescent. we had excellent food at the end - tomasyn brought lebanese food, and my sister made a delicious plum crumble cake to celebrate shandra's birthday. she also brought home-made butter and bread, which the kids devoured. i made a vegetable stew with dumplings, and it came out really good.

ed and johnnie are making progress on the house. they work hard every day, and this week they put in two windows. ed called me one afternoon and he said to come over right away. so i did, and he wanted me to go in the livingroom(-to-be) and check out the view out the new windows. it was amazing. the red sun was setting over our new field, and we had a perfect view of it. we were both so happy about it.
i really am excited about being able to see the field out of the living room windows. next year, i'm planning to plant flowers to attract beneficial insects right in the field, and i think that that will make an even nicer view.

this week i planted some peonies by the new house, and i bought some spring bulbs - snow drops and narcissus, which i hope to get in the ground some time next week.
so that's what's been up with me....
peace

frost

we've already had frost 4 times this fall. this morning, ed said that the spinach was frozen stiff; i'm glad that i covered my lettuces and arugula yesterday. i spent all day doing it, making hoop tunnels out of metal rods and plastic, and looking for stones to hold them down; luckily, brian came over and helped me (a lot). he told me which crops need to be covered immediately and which can wait. and he helped me haul stones out of the woods. i needed a lot of them to hold down the plastic covers which kept being blown away by the wind.
i left the spinach, broccoli raab, kale, turnips and radishes uncovered, but i'll hopefuly get to them today. in any case they're supposed to be able to handle mild frosts.
today the sky is clear and blue, and it's cold, and so beautiful. i love this weather, i dress warm and i can be outside all day.

here are some pictures i'd like to share:

aiyana checking out a praying mantis. we were all very excited to discover it, knowing that it's great at eating crop pest.

i picked all my peppers and eggpants on sunday, before the frost hit. they're not frost tolerant at all.

the girls jumping on the trampoline

this is my rainbow chard. i grew it because it's so beautiful, and it turns out that it's also delicious. but i think it sells on looks alone.

chard leaf

and more chard

some of our chickens getting into their coop for the night

lettuces, before i covered them

spinach!

and more lettuces. people love our salad mix, which has these lettuces, and more, as well as some tatsoi and mizuna in it. i've had many people say it's the best salad they ever had. i love that.

peace

pictures from aiyana's party

aiyana loves horses, so when some friends asked if we wanted this one, i said yes, knowing that it would be a perfect birthday surprise for her. sena's riding it here, but aiyana had her fill riding it all day.

the trampoline was another hand-me-down birthday present that Grampa brought. the kids love it.

auntie Dianne showed up and provided some entertainment for everyone, tumbling around with the girls.

aiyana wanted strawberry cake, and i don't make cake; but fortunately grandma came through for us, and everyone enjoyed her beautiful strawberry angel cake, as you can tell here.

blowing out the candles (it was windy, but we shielded the candles as best as we could using plates, and it worked). i love sena's protective gesture, holding her hand on aiyana's back as she's blowing out the candles.

hanging out at the party. i'm so glad the weather was good and we were able to be outside. nothing like being out on a sunny fall day, with good food and great company! (speaking of good food, thank you to my sister and Joyce for their delicious contributions!)

peace

Aiyana's 4th bithday

we had aiyana's birthday party yesterday, and it was beautiful. the weather was gorgeous, just like the day she was born, 4 years ago. we had good friends and family over, and i spent 2 days cooking, which felt really good. i haven't had that much fun cooking lately, because i've been so busy working outside, but for this party, i took my time, and really enjoyed preparing everything. i love cooking when i know i will share it with people i feel close to. it's an act of love, and things came out great yesterday. aiyana had a lot of fun, and so did the rest of us.

today i'm running around doing errands, (mainly getting rid of stuff at the dump), while the kids are homeschooling at anita's house. it's another gorgeous fall day. i'm hoping to get some time to work in the field. i haven't been out there in a few days, with aiyana's birthday, and markets on the weekend. i want to weed and hoe, and also, i need to cover some crops, as the weather gets cooler. my salad mix is still going strong, but i need to cover it soon; i also have some beautiful spinach that is just about ready; still got turnips, radishes, broccoli raab, kale, chard, parsley, dill, arugula, and some peppers and eggpants which i need to pick really soon bc it's getting way too cold for them.

every once in a while, it hits me that we actually got our 5 acres, and we really own this beautiful piece of land, and it makes me extatic. it feels new all over again.
last week i was standing on the top of the hill, right in the middle of our new field, and i felt so strong and so happy and connected to everything around me. i was about to burst with happiness; it made me think of Don Juan, when he was talking about finding one's "power spot" (meaning a place where one feels an overwhelming sense of wellbeing) in "Jounrney to Ixtlan".

on to the dump now...
peace

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