Stress

Spring Equinox was just a few days ago. It also snowed a few inches, so it still looks wintery outside. But the sun is bright and the days are long, and Sena and Aiyana are memorizing poems about Spring. Spring will come.

I hear that the maple syrup season hasn’t been good yet this year, with the prolonged cold. Things are growing in the greenhouse, but we’re definitely delayed relative to previous years, as is everyone else. In 2012 we were planting in the ground by late Feb, but this year everything is still covered in snow.

I’ve been doing a lot of learning on Hashimoto’s. I’m reading my third book on it now, called Root Cause by Izabella Wentz. It’s the best one yet. It’s written by a young woman, with a doctorate in pharmacy, who has Hashimoto herself. Her book is very well researched and documented, and very thorough. It gives a lot of hope, not only for Hashimoto’s, but for other autoimmune conditions as well that yes, autoimmune conditions can be halted or even healed through lifestyle and diet. I am so grateful to her for writing this book and sharing her journey and her research.

Based on everything I’ve read, or otherwise found out, and in consultation with our naturopath, I’ve been making changes to our diet. I am also giving Aiyana quite a few supplements, such as Vitamin D, the lack of which I read is pandemic, and highly associated with Hashimoto; cod liver oil for omega-3 Essential Fatty Acids; probiotics for gut flora; Brazil nuts for Selenium, which our soils here in the Northeast are deficient in, and the lack of which is a factor in Hashi. This is in addition to her thryroid medication prescribed by the endocrinologist. Aiyana’s being really good about taking it all without much complaint.

I’ve eliminated gluten completely from our diet; eliminated iodine (excess iodine is associated with triggering or perpetuating Hashi. in predisposed people). I’m trying to stay away from starches as much as possible, which means limiting all grains, potatoes, and sweets (which we didn’t eat much of to begin with).

We’re eating the veggies that we grow ourselves, nuts which we buy (I’ve been making nut based crackers and pie crusts, which are really good), legumes such as beans and lentils some of which we grow and some we buy, fruits which we grow ourselves, dairy and eggs which usually we produce ourselves, and Aiyana and I also eat meat if we butcher an animal.

I’ve been quite stressed lately with dealing with everything. I feel pulled in too many directions. Aiyana’s health has been my top concern, and I’ve been spending a lot of time reading and doing research. Food preparation with the new restrictions, has been taking more time than usual, and much more planning. The farm needs my attention too, plants need to be started, weeded, etc. The orchard needs attention – pruning must be done at this time of the year. The cows need daily attention.

With all this going on, my old breathing problems, which I’ve had on and off since I lived in Montreal, came back. I had been free of them for a couple of years, but they came back about three weeks ago. I’ve been to doctors and I am told that I don’t have asthma, and my heart and lungs are fine, everything is great. My personal feeling is that it’s all stress based and stress triggered, but the problem is that once it starts happening, I don’t feel that I have much control, and actually the more I focus on the problem, the worse it gets. Eventually, it resolves by itself, but while it’s here it can be very unpleasant and it limits me.

I’ve been spending extra time with the cows at the end of the day, as they always calm me down. I’ve also been listening to relaxing music as I do my work around the kitchen, and enjoying the sun and birdsong when I'm out working. I’ve been giving Sena and Aiyana more responsibility, such as weeding, which they took on surprisingly well. Ed’s trying to be supportive. He suggested that I take a vacation. Maybe...although I really don't want to go anywhere, I love being here on the farm. What I need is to figure out how to do my work and then let go instead of stressing about all there is left to do.

I see this breathing problem as a challenge and as a teacher, something that is here to teach me how live life better.

Peace

This morning when I went out to water and feed the cows, I noticed that the trees had a distinctive red tinge to them. I feel like it happened overnight, a sign that the buds are swelling and sap is running.

Yesterday, when Sena and Ed and I were with the cows, we think we felt Jasmine's baby. We're always unsure whether she's pregnant or not, even though the vet checked her in the fall and said she was. She does not look that big, and it's hard to tell, even though she's supposed to give birth in April. But feeling the calf was reassuring, and fun.

I've been working with Olive to halter train her. She got a little spunk to her, now that she's a teenager. She pushes her mom around, and I wanted to nip that kind of behavior in the bud, so she does not think she can be pushy with us. She has tried... But the halter training is really helping, letting her know that we're in charge and she has to obey and walk nicely alongside us when we bring her from one place to another.

It's rainy and misty today, and it really feels like spring is on its way.
One more week till spring equinox! Very exciting!

Peace

Spring

I spent today seeding onion soil blocks and organizing the greenhouse. It was 55F and sunny outside, with a warm breeze. It must've been 90F in the greenhouse. The fields are still covered in snow, but it is melting fast, and there are puddles everywhere. Bare spots are appearing and even though it's soggy, it fells so good to see the ground again. While working in the greenhouse I could hear different birds singing and calling - a morning dove in particular has been very vocal over the past week or so. There are other signs of spring too. The cows are shedding their coats in great clumps of hair that come out in when I run my hands over them. The spinach in the greenhouses is growing visibly from week to week. We'll be harvesting some tomorrow and selling to the food co-ops in Willimantic and in New London.

Things are going well with Aiyana. She's been taking her thyroid medication for a couple of weeks now, and is doing fine with it. We've all been off gluten for the past couple of weeks as well, and we don't miss it. I've been cooking a lot more corn, which we grew last year, and it's delicious. I've also been more mindful of blood sugar balance and cooking with that in mind.

We met with our naturopathic doctor for two hours last Sunday and he was very helpful. We're going to be doing more blood work and other tests to figure out if there are any food sensitivities or other things that could be flaring up Aiyana's immune system. I feel like we've got a better understanding now of what's going on and what we're going to do about it than we did a week ago.
We're going to continue to read and find out info on Hashimoto's (got two books in the mail today), but in the meantime I am relieved that Aiyana is doing so well with it, and seems to have no symptoms.

Sena and Aiyana did their yearly farming presentations again over the past three weeks. They presented to a total of about five hundred kids, from 2nd to 4th grade. They love doing it, and it's good to see how comfortable they both are speaking in front of large audiences. At the end of the presentations they take questions. That's always interesting. One question that seemed to cause a lot of confusion was whether the chicken you buy at the supermarket has a head. Sena and Aiyana had shown pictures of their (live) chickens and talked about how they care for them, but for some reason the kid who asked this question just could not reconcile the fact that those chickens are the same as the chicken his parents buy at the store, and that that chicken did have a head at some point.
Another major source of confusion was the cows and their milk. How do they give milk? Why do they have to have a baby to give milk? How does the baby come out? To this question, Sena said "the same way you came out of your mother" and left it there. It's sad, I think, for these little kids that they are growing up so disconnected from real things.

I've been reading the Tao Te Ching again, and found it helpful over the past few weeks when I felt unsettled. Sena and Aiyana have been copying excerpts from it in their calligraphy notebooks. They love doing that.

Peace

Hashimoto's Hypothyroiditis

Last week we found out that Aiyana has Hashimoto's Hypothyroiditis. This is an autoimmune disease in which the body's immune system attacks the thyroid gland and causes it to malfunction. The thyroid gland controls the body's metabolism, and to have it impaired is a very big deal.
The endocrinologist told us to put Ayiana on hormone pills right away (to replace the hormones that her thyroid is not producing) and we did.

Everyone wants to know how we found this out, what symptoms she had. She had no symptoms that we or her pediatrician could see. Except for one suddle thing. Ed and I being data nerds, have been collecting data on Sena and Aiyana's growth since they were born. We've been charting their height and weight information on the normal growth curves released by CDC. Basically these curves are a graph of height versus age. Sena and Aiyana have always been line on line with each other, and trending at around the 25% on the CDC charts. Over the past year, we noticed a slight deviation for Aiyana. She deviated from Sena's curve and also from the CDC curve, and basically flat lined for growth for about 8 months. Then she grew again, but was still down compared to Sena and the CDC curves. I mentioned this to her pediatrician, and he didn't think it was a big deal, but sent me for a blood test and to the endocrinologist just in case. The endocrinologist did not think much of it either at first, but when the blood test results came back, her thyroid hormone levels were abnormal, some of them by a lot, and that's when they prescribed hormone replacement.

It's been a very difficult week. I am upset about this for obvious reasons, but on top of it, I am very frustrated by dealing with the endocrinologist.
Hasimoto's is an autoimmune disease that attacks the thyroid. I understand that we need to replace the thyroid hormones with medication, and I'm ok with that, but my question as to how are we going to address the autoimmune issue is ignored completely by the doctor. It's the classic conventional medicine approach of treating the symptoms not the cause. When I asked the doctor if we should change anything about our diet, lifestyle, or do anything else to address the immune problem, she said just eat a balanced diet, without any further guidance. Also, I asked her how will we know if this autoimmune condition causes problems in other areas of her body, and she said if we see other problems we'll address them, which to me is insane. Why not address it now, before more damage is done? Overall, I just get the impression that she thinks I'm a pain in the ass for asking these questions which she does not know how to answer, instead of just giving Aiyana her pill and going home.

So I've been doing my own research on Hasimoto's, reading and talking to different people who are either experiencing it themselves or know about it. I am also talking to my Naturopathic doctor, who seems much more supportive and knowledgeable about addressing the immune issue. He agreed that Aiyana should take the thyroid hormone right now, and he also prescribed Vitamin D. and a gluten free diet.

My reading and research so far supports the Naturopath's recommendations. Gluten seems to be a strong autoimmune trigger in people with Hashimoto's, so we got off gluten right away. It was one of the few things in our diet that I did not feel great about, so I don't feel too bad about giving it up. Aiyana's missing it a little, but overall she's being really good about it. We also have her taking vitamin D and cod liver oil, and next week I am meeting with the Naturopath again to see how else we can support her.

The endocrine doctor told me flat out that Aiyana would have to be on hormone replacement the rest of her life. But my reading indicates that if you figure out what's flaring out the immune system, and get that under control, you can live with Hashimoto's without needing to take any medication. So for now, we are giving her the hormones prescribed by the doctor, but by no means am I going to accept that this is going to be a life long thing, before I've done everything in my power to address the immune system imbalance and take care of it.
From what I've learned so far, it seems like the immune system can be triggered by diet or lifestyle factors, such as environmental toxins (molds, heavy metals), and other stressors. There can be a genetic component to it as well, which may or may not be at play with Aiyana, but even that manifests supposedly when the immune system is triggered by something else.

What's really hard about this is that there is so much information out there, and I feel that we are basically on our own trying to sift through it all. There are so many doctors, and alternative practitioners, so many books, websites and so on, each with their own slant on this issue, and I am sure some of it is legitimate info, and some is not. I am not an expert in Hasimoto's but it feels like I will have to become one if I want to help Aiyana. I wish I could go to the endocrinologist and trust what they tell me, but so far it seems that they are just not willing to look at the whole picture, and without that how can you treat accurately? I plan to go see another endocrinologist, maybe I'll have better luck.

Aiyana is doing well, as I said, she has practically no symptoms. Her thyroid is a little enlarged, but if you didn't know to look for it, you would not notice it. Her energy level and everyhting else are totally normal. She's not bothered by having to take the thyroid pill, or the supplements we have her on. She was also very cooperative when having blood drawn.

I've read Dr.Kharrazian's book on Hashimoto's disease, and ordered two more by different authors.
This has taken all my attention since we found out about it, but I've been able to plant some onions in between things. Thank goodness for plants and animals, for trees and snow outside. I'd go crazy living only in the world of people.

Peace

What's going on

Yesterday and today I've been working in the greenhouse. I planted carrots, beets, lettuces and other salad greens, and watered all the crops. It feels good to be seeing bare ground, and to be getting my hands dirty again. Also, seeing greens growing at this time of the year, like spinach, is downright therapeutic.

I've stopped milking Opal. Olive is still nursing, so Opal will keep producing milk until Olive is weaned. But at this point, it's just not enough milk to make it worthwhile my going out there every morning. It's only been two days, and I do miss our morning routine, but I have to say that I am grateful for the time it frees up. I have more time for homeschooling, greenhouse work, and other things. I still go to see the cows and bring them treats in the afternoon. Ed said that the first day after I stopped, they were all waiting at the gate for me in the morning, and looked confused when I did not come as usual.

Olive is 10-months-old now. She's getting big and strong. I am working to halter train her. She needs to be trained before we start putting the cows on pasture again, otherwise we'll have trouble when we try to move them from one pasture to another.

Jasmine is due to give birth in April, and Opal in June, so we will have to buy milk between now and April.

Our CSA filled up really quickly this year. Most people who signed up are members that have been with us for a few years. But we did open up a few shares to new members, and they sold out in less than a day. I feel grateful that our farm has built such a good reputation and that people are eager to join our CSA.

This year, we're planning to buy in some products that we don't produce ourselves and offer them to our CSA members in addition to their shares. We're talking with small, local producers such as ourselves and we're looking at goat cheeses, breads, eggs, and possibly pastured beef. Buying in from others is a new thing for us. The key, for me, is to buy only what I like to call "high integrity" products. I feel that people have come to trust us, knowing that we produce food to a high standard, so everything we buy in and offer in addition to what we produce ourselves, has to be of similar quality.

For my birthday this year, I got two quince trees. I am very excited. My grandmother "mamaia" used to love quince marmelade, and she shared it with my sister and I when we were small. I've never had it since I was a child in Romania, and had totally forgotten about it, but this fall, a friend sent me some quince she got from someone (they're not easy to come by in this area), and I made marmelade, and it came out amazing. It brought back all these memories. The smell of the quince alone is reason enough to get a tree. It is intoxicating, and it lingers on for days and weeks, filling the house with a wonderful sweet aroma. Quince looks like a homely fruit on the tree, but when you cook it, it turns a lovely pink-peach color, and it tastes amazing. One interesting thing I found about quince is that it has been around for thousands of years, and it is even argued that it was the forbidden fruit in the Adam and Eve story. In any case, once you've smelled it and tasted it, you'll know why it's been around for so long.

That's some of what's been going on.
Peace

Focused attention

This is a busy time of the year, but in a different way than spring, summer, and fall.
Much of the busyness at this time is in planning for the farm for the coming seasons. There are seed orders to be placed, soil tests to be interpreted, fertility plans to be made, pasture and cow plans to be made, CSA memberships to be renewed, and so on.

I try not to let myself get lost or overwhelmed by these many different directions. I try to take care of things one at a time, do a good job on each one, all the while knowing that there's just too much to fit into any one day, so some things I'll have to do later than I'd like, or simply let go.

Homeschooling is going strong, and that is one thing I do not want to compromise. I realize how much Sena and Aiyana are capable of, how receptive they are right now, and how much I can contribute to their wellbeing. This will not be so forever. In l0 years or less, they'll be grown up and my impact will be much reduced. So I want to give them all I can right now, when they're willing to learn and have such capacity for it.

There are so many paths in life that are misleading, empty, without meaning, that fool us into thinking they'll bring fulfillment when they don't. I've learned some things about telling these false paths from the ones that are genuine. I want to teach Sena and Aiyana and guide them with this knowledge. I want to give them the tools that will allow them not only to chose wisely in life, but also to do things well.

One particular skill I hope to give to both of them is focused attention. I think that this is fundamental to doing anything well. Our culture is, if anything, teaching the opposite of focused attention. There are so many distractions aimed at us, and they do work. They promise and deliver cheap rewards. In my experience, the rewards of focused attention are great, but they do not come easy. But I'm still learning.

Peace

NY Karate Competition

Sena and Aiyana went to a Karate Competition in New York this morning. Sena competed in BoStaff and Forms and won first place in both. Aiyana competed in forms and won first place. They came home all happy. Here they are with their trophies.

I stayed home with the cats, cows and chickens and shoveled everyone out of the snow. A cold, windy, snowy winter day. But all is well.
Peace

Email exchange with a buyer

We harvested spinach this week, and sold to two buyers. We also sold some garlic and squashes from storage. I must admit that as we worked, the money we sold for did not seem worth our efforts of keeping the greenhouses clear of snow, and being out in this cold taking care of the spinach that's somehow surviving inside. But then we got this email from one buyer and it made things better.


"I must congratulate you on growing the best spinach i have ever had. This feeling is shared among many of my co-workers and some customers who have sampled it. How'd ya do it? How's it so sweet? Did the sugar condense or something in the cold?

The garlic is tasty and pretty as well.

Let me know when the farm has more produce for sale."

 

And this was my reply:

"It's nice to hear about the spinach. Yes, it does get a lot sweeter with the cold, as the plant evacuates water so it won't freeeze, and thus the sugars get more concentrated in the leaves.
We'll let you know when we have more for sale. Your comments make it worthwile to go out there picking in the cold..."

Peace

Sena's letter to President Obama

Here it is.
We didn't push her to write it. Things were simmering inside her, and then one night we watched a BBC documentary (Earth Biography) and the next day she wrote her letter.

Farmy, wintery pictures

Got some more snow this week. Ed and I also had a stomach bug - mine lasted two days, his three.  Fortunately I was not sick, and Ed was not too sick, when the worst of the snow hit, and we were able to clear the greenhouses before the snow got too high.

Aiyana, going to collect eggs from her chickens

 The farm, covered in snow

 Opal in her stall

 Jasmine in the snow

Peace

Got some snow today...

Ed got up at 4am this morning to snow-blow around the greenhouses. He went out again at 9 am and then again in the afternoon. I shoveled some of the snow built up on the side walls. We can't let it accumulate or else the greenhouses may collapse.

Milking did not go well this morning. The movable barn where I normally milk was full of snow, so I decided to milk in the barn where the cows normally sleep. Opal did not like that and she was thrashing around a lot, so I had to abandon milking less than half way through. I was not pleased since just getting to the barns this morning was quite a feat.

Here are some pictures of Ed running his BCS tractor with the snow-blower attachment along the greenhouse:

 The BCS barely made it through all the snow...

Gives you an idea o what the farm looks like

And this is what Ed looked like when he was done. He was joking that we should have a pre-blizzard and a post-blizzard price for the spinach that grows in the greenhouse. It certainly takes a lot of extra work to keep it going in the winter.

Despite the extra work, it does look beautiful out there.
Peace

A day on the farm in winter

Last August I wrote a post called "What my typical week looks like at this time of the year".

I thought it would be interesting to do a similar thing for a day on the farm in the winter. If you care to read it, you can find that description in our latest farm newsletter.

Peace

Baking and other things

Sunday is my day off from milking. Sena and Aiyana milk Opal, while Ed watches them and does chores at the barn. I stay at the house, have my coffee by the fire, and then make pancakes for everyone to eat when they come in from milking.

Sena milks while Aiyana holds a bucket to hand her when she needs it. Olive is watching in the background.

Sena's been doing some baking at Christmas time. These are "cornulete", a treat mamaia used to make for my sister and I in Romania. Sena made the dough from scratch, all nice and buttery, and the filling was elderberry jam, made from elderberries growing by the river. Quite a treat.

Aiyana with the Christmas tree. This year, we had a proper tree, as opposed to a bunch of branches tied together, which is what we usually do. This tree was from our new property in Willington, and it had to go, because Ed was clearing some land for cow pasture. He saved it until Christmas, and then he and the girls cut it down and brought it home.

Sena's birthday party was small and sweet. Here she is sitting between two of her very good friends, after blowing the candles on her cake. Aiyana made the candles out of beeswax at my sister's house, and my sister made her amazing icecream cake, with homemade vanilla icecream and cookies and chocolate, as requested by Sena.

Sena and I made this traditional Romanian Christmas cake, called "cozonac". It was my first time, and hers as well, and although we had some setbacks with the yeast (it was old and did not rise), all in all, the cake came out pretty darn good. It had a filling made with pecans, cocoa, maple syrup and a little lemon rind. Can't go wrong with that. While baking, it filled our whole house with a sweet aroma that I remember from when I was a child.

Peace

Back home

Back to my cows, to milking and frozen fingers

Back to daily farm chores

Back to layers of wool clothing and heavy work boots

Back to home-schooling

Back to fresh air

Back to the smell of wood fire in the air

Back to real food that I grew myself and put away for the winter

Back to the land that feeds us

Back to the life we’ve made, the life I want to live.

In Montreal

Relaxing at my parents' house. Sena knitted the shawl I am wearing in the picture and gave it to me for Christmas.

We found a skating rink we really like in Old Montreal. We went there yesterday and today, and spent morning and afternoon skating. I forgot how much fun skating can be. It had been 25 years since the last time I skated.
Sena and Aiyana holding hands on the ice.

Peace, and Happy New Year!

Happy 11th Birthday Sena!!!

Today our beautiful Sena is turning 11! She requested a day off from homeschooling, so we're doing that. We had presents in the morning, and she and Aiyana spent some time watching gymnastics Olympics videos, and now they're doing a complicated but beautiful puzzle that Sena got for her birthday. Later we'll be baking traditional Romanian Christmas bread, "cozonac". It's a great day for all of us.

Sena is really amazing. To say that I am proud of her does not even come close to expressing how I feel. There's so much more than that. She is my teacher and my inspiration.

Here, on page 11, is an article published last summer by Cetacean Society International about Sena. It shows some parts of Sena that come across in everything she does: her love of the natural world, and whales in particular, her inborn sense of justice and fairness, her generosity. I am grateful beyond words for having the privilege to be her mother.

Peace

Happy Winter Solstice!

Once again, the shortest day of the year is here, and we spend most of our day in darkness.  I welcome the peace and restfulness of this dark period.

With the last sale of 2014 behind us (last Saturday), and very few things growing or requiring immediate attention outside, this is the time of year when most of our activities revolve around the indoors and when, generally, we feel more relaxed . We allow ourselves more time to sit around the fire and read James Herriot as a family at night, we take our time homeschooling, cooking, and doing whatever needs to be done. We still work, but in a more unhurried way than during summer, spring or fall. So, it is a good time of year.

Sena, Aiyana and I will be going to Montreal to spend Christmas with my family. We are all looking forward to it. It's become a bit of a tradition, our yearly visit to the city, when we get to be with my parents, my sister, and her family. For me, it's a nice break from cooking and house work, although I usually end up missing all of that by the time I come back. But the break in the routine is certainly refreshing, and when I get back to our farm, it is usually with renewed vigor and appreciation. I do know that I will miss the cows when I'm away though. Ed will be taking over the milking for me, but I will miss hugging them and talking to them in the morning, the way they wait for me so eagerly at the gate when I come with their treats (cabbages, carrots, radishes - they have it pretty good here...), and their earthy smell.

Here is a link to our latest farm newsletter, written by Ed. It contains a funny description of an encounter I had with our mean rooster last week.

Peace and Happy Holidays!

What Aiyana's grateful for

Click here.

A glimpse into their world

At Thanksgiving, partly for fun, and partly for homeschooling, Sena and Aiyana wrote a short piece each on what they are thankful for.

Here is Sena's, and I will post Aiyana's as soon as I get a chance to scan it in.

Sena and Aiyana Karate Demo Team Video

This morning it was about 20F when I got out to milk Opal. My fingers were cold. I knit myself a pair of fingerless gloves to wear for farm chores, and they do work, but the tips of my fingers being uncovered still get very cold. This morning, by the time I was done milking some milk had frozen on the bottom of one of my milking buckets, and my fingers felt numb. Still, despite the cold, I do love this time of the year, with its short, restful days and unhurried pace. I'm not ready to call it quits on morning milking yet, one because we love Opal's milk, and two because I enjoy the morning ritual of being with the cows. It's a nice way to start the day.

Sena and Aiyana were chosen to be on the Demo Team for their karate school, along with 7 other children. They’ve been putting together a routine and practicing it for about a month now. The routine is not finished yet, but they presented what they had so far at a black belt ceremony on Friday night. Here’s a link to a video, taken by the parent of a girl on the team. Sena and Aiyana are the two girls demonstrating the bo staff (long stick).

Peace

Fearless

Sena and Aiyana slept over at their grandma's house after Thanksgiving, and while they were there, Ed and I watched Fearless, the 2006 Chinese movie starring Jet Li.

I loved it. We only watch movies two or three times a year, so when we do I want to pick something that won't leave me with the feeling that I just wasted a couple of hours. I was very happy that I followed my friends Matt and Shandra's recommendation with this one. I loved everything about it: the martial arts, the story, the teachings, and the gorgeous scenery. There's a quote in the trailer, by Lao Tzu, which reflects on the theme of the movie:

Mastering others is strength. Mastering oneself makes you fearless.

Beautiful movie, definitely not a waste of time.

Peace

I have been so happy reading my poetry book before falling asleep at night. Below is another poem I really like by Sara Teasdale. Another nice thing that happened is that Sena and Aiyana have taken quite an interest in poetry as well, even though we're done studying it as part of homeschooling for a while. They still read and recite poems just for fun, and for me that is a beautiful thing to see.
 

  Midsummer night

 

Midsummer night, without a moon, but the stars

      In a serene bright multitude were there,

Even the shyest ones, even the faint motes shining

      Low in the north, under the Little Bear.

 

When I have said “This tragic farce I play in

      Has neither dignity, delight nor end,”

The holy night draws all its stars around me,

      I am ashamed, I have betrayed my Friend.

 

Two pictures and a lovely poem

November afternoon: Sena, Aiyana, and their cousins Julia, Stella and Lucy reading books together

And a beautiful poem by one of my favorite poets:
 

Prayer

by Sara Teasdale (1884-1933)

Until I lose my soul and lie
Blind to the beauty of the earth,
Deaf though shouting wind goes by,
Dumb in a storm of mirth;

Until my heart is quenched at length
And I have left the land of men,
Oh, let me love with all my strength
Careless if I am loved again.

Morning milking routine

It snowed overnight and everything was very pretty under a light white blanket this morning.

Here is Opal waiting for to be milked under the peach tree.

 Sena, saying good morning to Jasmine.

Sena's asked if she could help me milk Opal, and I agreed. She's been coming out with me for about a week now. Here she is washing Opal's udder before milking.

 Aiyana's been coming out too, and spending time with the calf, Olive. Here she is brushing her.

Sena, milking while Opal is eating her treats. This morning we gave her brussel sprout tops, carrots and turnips. She loves her treats and waits for us eagerly every morning.

Aiyana getting a kiss from Olive.

Looks like she liked it.

Aiyana's good friend Yo is visiting this weekend. 

More kisses?

Peace

Apples harvested before frost

Happy Opal eating a cover crop of rye, vetch, clover and forage radish. Look at how lush that looks! The cows love it. I am very excited that now the covercrops we plant to sustain the soil over the winter not only do that and improve the soil for next season, but also provide a source of food for the cows at this time of the year when grass has pretty much stopped growing.

Aiyana with the dress my mother bought her in Spain. She wore it for Halloween. Sena wore a Pilgrim outfit (and won a prize for most original costume at gymnastics) but I don't have a picture unfortunately.

Peace

Yesterday was Sunday, our relaxing day, but it didn't turn out so. In the morning, we found out that the weather forecast changed from 29F to 23F for last night's low. That's quite a change and it put us in frenzy mode. Everything that's still out in the field, that could survive a light frost had to be re-evaluated whether it could take a hard frost (which 23F certainly is) or not. Sparing the details, our day ended up being running around between spinach, cabbages, beets, bok choi and many others, and covering everything with row covers and sand bags (many, many sand bags) against the frost. And then recovering, again and again, because the wind, which was blowing strong at 30+ mph kept ripping the covers right off as soon as we put them on. That's winter production. I always think "this is not worth it", but keep doing it anyway.....

At one point, after a couple of hours of sand bags and row covers, I lay down on the ground to rest, and it felt so blissful that I almost throughout that the whole ordeal of covering and fighting with the wind and running around like mad was worth it just for this relief. I must suggest that if you haven't laid down on the earth recently, you treat yourself to it. Pick a nice clean spot, with unsprayed grass if possible and just let your body be supported by the earth. To me, it feels like therapy, and if you have the luxury of a few minutes of peace and quiet just to do that, and pay attention to the sights and smells around you, I bet you'll feel restored. I did, and got right back up and into it again, with the covers and everything else.

We also had to pick forage radishes for the cows, because we thought they'd all get ruined by the cold, so I picked as many as I could and put them in the root cellar where they should store for months. Ed harvested all the apples that were left on the trees, which turned out to be about 5 bushels, so today I'm canning apple sauce.

After all that, it turned out the forecast was off, and the low was only about 32F, which made all that work unnecessary...But I guess better to be prepared this way, than to end up losing all the veggies and fruit that we could've saved. It had to be done anyway, hard frosts will be coming soon, no doubt about that.

We've been making fires every night now, which is one of my favorite things about the cold season. I've been bringing hot rocks from the stove in to warm the bed at night. I love that.

Opal and Jasmine and Olive are doing well. Milking is a little harder in some ways, with the cold mornings, but easier in others, such as lack of flies. I am much more bundled up when I go milk, which makes it harder to move around, and my hands are cold, which makes me reluctant to put them on Opal. Poor girl, she's all nice and warm, and then I shock her with freezing hands on her udder, but she's so good, she doesn't complain and warms me right up. Sometimes I hug her around her huge belly just to be near her, feel her heat and smell her amazing smell. Aiyana said this morning that I smell like cows, and I don't mind that one bit. I love that their earthy sweet smell is on me.

Peace