January is for Organizing Again!

January is for organizing and apparently also for recommitting to blogging. It made me laugh to see that I was busy organizing last year too. My boys renegotiated bedrooms this past fall, which means my soap room moved into a corner of the larger basement space. Until last week seed trays, heating lamps, and bulk oil containers were arranged higgeldy-piggeldy on shelves, floor, freezer top, and seedling table.

Now the whole basement is sorted and the soap is probably the most organized I have had it in years! The seedling trays are stacked with seedling trays, all three heat lamps are lined up together and I discovered two extra soap batches worth of Organic Palm Oil pushed to the dark back corner of one shelf.

I am working at a Montessori school this winter (www.rockprairiemontessori.com) and continuing to work several hours a week teaching Stateline Farm Beginnings. As much as I am finding joy in both work places as well as much needed supplementary income, I am finding it very challenging to fit in soapmaking. Creating the raw batches (that is the initial part of the soapmaking the process that involves mixing the lye, milk and oils) requires a solid block of time where I am not interrupted. Not that simple lately!

This month I am teaching two farming friends how to make soap in exchange for some extra help with soapmaking. Putting them on my calendar has been a great way to kick start January. The milling portion of soapmaking is much more conducive to multi-tasking and actually makes bill paying or agenda writing more pleasant.

I committed to my farmer's market again for next summer. www.tosafarmersmarket.com. It was such a great market last year and as much as I considered slowing down this year to adjust for my off farm work and Jen's new baby girl, I couldn't let it go.

My goats are thriving even in this cold cold weather. Their coats are all fluffy and they look a bit rounder than usual. It is not completely clear that they are all pregnant but noone has shown signs of heat in months.

My other organizational feat for January was to gather all of my goat registration data and to get caught up on all of their paperwork. Although, I am still waiting to get final documentation from one breeder, I am close to all caught up.

Now onward to taxes!

I am just home from facilitating the Stateline Farm Beginnings (www.learngrowconnect.org) course I lead during the winter months. I was reinspired by the master farmers and local food buyers who spoke on our panel today. They spoke about choosing to live their values and reminded me of what I find compelling about the local foods movement. The impact each of us can have on our small piece of land, our energy choices, who we give our food dollars, and how we manage the water resources available to us. After having had a breakfast that included local berries, a potluck lunch that included local meats and a multitude of unique grains and winter storage vegetables, I am tonight about to eat pizza from the national take and bake chain that is near our son's dance studio. And although I feel more aligned with my mission and even righteous about my food choices earlier today, I am also quite pleased to be enjoying the meal Dave chose for us tonight, not to mention the thrill it is for the younger boys.

I am learning (perhaps slowly) to accept myself and my choices today, to feel good about the choices that best suit my belief system and to accept rather than berate myself when I am less than perfect.

It's All About Your Perspective

I find that farming is often about perspective. I was sad to take down my Christmas tree this year. Many of my ornaments were gifts from a relative who was too ill to exchange gifts this year and I was aware of my sorrow when I put the ornaments away. Dragging the tree outside and sweeping up the very dry needles was Dave's work, not much relished either. Eating the Christmas tree, however, was considered delightful work by the goats. They haven't actually started to eat our tree (it is in the lineup) but I have given them three others since New Year's. When I was tree hunting, one man seemed at first abashed and then thrilled to stuff the tree he had been dragging to the curb into the back of my van.

Jackson and I disagree about the tone of another winter farm experience. Once every couple of weeks, I find a drowned mouse in the goat's water bucket. I always feel sad for the mouse and concerned about how long my goats have been without clean water. Jackson however loves m-icicles. Jackson is an English Shepherd, a breed of dog that developed on small farmsteads in the United States back when small meant 10 acres. They were expected to guard the farm, herd animals of many varieties, and to hunt down farm pests like raccoons, rats and possums. Thus Jackson's interest in mice.

Recently Jackson was given a lesson in the evolutionary value of the possum's ability to play dead. I was sitting here at my desk and heard Jackson barking with high excitement. When I looked out the window I saw that he was barking and circling what appeared to be a lump of dirty snow or maybe part of something fuzzy the dogs had found and chewed up. After squinting and becoming less certain of the nature of the fuzzy object, I put on my coat and boots and walked out into the backyard. Although it was the middle of the day the dogs had found a possum. By the time I heard Jackson barking the possum was playing dead. This was baffling to Jackson. I have seen him chase and kill small prey before, but he did not know what to think of a live possum that didn't move. He would circle and bark and then lunge in to poke at it. The possum stayed completely limp, but the motion caused by a poke with Jackson's paw would frighten the dog and he'd back away swiftly. Apparently an animal that does not fit in either the living or the dead category is not to be messed with. When I first heard Jackson, Mocha was sitting nearby watching Jackson circle the possum. She eventually lost interest and came inside with me. Jackson didn't even notice that Mocha was INSIDE with TRACEY. After over an hour of circling, Jackson was distracted by one of the boys coming home, when I returned to my window to check on the status of the possum, it had disappeared.

Playing dead is a very valuable skill. I can't seem to find a use for it in my own life, but I am thinking about it. I am fairly certain that if I play dead on a really cold winter morning, Dave will not be fooled into doing my farm chores for me. Maybe the boys would be fooled but they would be more concerned with who was going to feed them than who was going to feed the animals.

January is for Organizing

For the past two years I have been planning to turn one of our basement rooms into a soap room. I make handcrafted milk-based soap in my kitchen and have wanted to create a more organized space for storing my ingredients, drying soaps, packaging materials etc. This past weekend, I finally did it! I have been sorting boxes of toys scooped up during some hasty house cleaning, moving boxes of Alex and Ian's childhood mementos into another storage space, and stacking photos for Dave to digitize. This time the toy sorting feels much different than ever before. Zachary is nine and really done with the beautiful wooden toys that we have collected for the boys over the years. I donated many sweet toys but created my first grandmother box and stored some of our favorites for future grandbabies.

I ended up having plenty of space in the soap room and will use half of it for starting seedlings this spring. The seed catalogs have been arriving and have reached critical mass in my seed catalog bin. I have promised myself hours of reading when I return from my upcoming trip to see family in Houston.

I am even feeling hopeful that I will have time in February for the Barn cleaning and organizing that I penciled in for next month.

A night away

Christmas day was filled with family, fun, and delicious food. We celebrated with Dave's parents, his sisters and their families. Dave's Mom and Dad called at 12:45 to say they were just leaving and would be arriving a couple of hours late. Their late arrival created a long downtime since it was too early to cook. My Christmas present from Dave was a popcorn popper, so we made a bunch of popcorn, ate some of Dave's amazing Christmas fudge, and enjoyed one another. It ended up being my favorite part of the day.

Christmas dinner was wonderful! Dave deep fried two small heritage turkeys, a Naragansett and a Red Bourbon; they tasted fabulous. Amy and I used quite a few of the vegetables from my Stella Gardens winter CSA box. We had gingered beets, caraway cabbage with apple and onions, carrots with mustard and butter (Nathaniel's favorite), creamed spinach, mashed potatoes, salad, and freshly baked bread. For dessert we had more fudge and Betty's Christmas cookies.

On Christmas Eve our neighbors came over to meet the dogs and learn my chore routine, since their daughter was doing chores for me one morning and evening on the 26th and 27th. Their help meant we could spend the night in Northbrook for Zachary's final performance and Ken's (Dave's Dad) surprise birthday party.

Jackson was pushy enough with our visitors that we decided to keep the dogs in their outdoor kennel. Although the kennel has an insulated dog house (rated to -40 Dave likes to remind me), I still don't like to leave them out in the winter. We discussed with K. that we would hook up the dog's heated water bucket, and that I would leave extra water with all the other animals so that they would not have to carry water.

I thought I would be able to leave extra water by the animal housing because for some reason I misread the weather report and thought the 30 to 40 degree weather would last through Sunday. Sunday morning I awoke to 16 degree temperatures. Extra water would turn into huge ice cubes.

We planned to leave at 7:00am so I started my animal chores at 6:00am. The heat lamp and water heater were not working in the chicken house so their waterer was frozen shut. I spent twenty minutes trying to fix the electrical problem on my own and then decided to ask Dave for help after I finished with the goats.

Dave was able to quickly fix the electrical problem in the chicken coop since the solution involved plugging the system back into the main outlet. I tried not to feel too foolish. I had been carefully checking each of the cords to be certain they were well seated in the outlet, I merely failed to notice that they were no longer plugged into the power source. Clearly electricity is not my strong point.

While I was doing my chores, Dave had been trying to find the heated dog bowl. We both remembered seeing it on the back porch near the grill earlier in the week. Unfortunately, six inches of snow had fallen and then frozen hard. We both took turns shoveling sections of snow off the porch until feeling overwhelmed with the apparent futility of our quest, we gave up. I placed a bucket of water on a cat bed heating pad inside a dog crate against the inner wall of the dog kennel. When I returned home I discovered that my ingenious solution had not worked. K. had added one of her heated water buckets to the kennel and my bucket of water was resting on the heating pad frozen solid. K. had lowered a heated bucket from her farm into the kennel with the dogs. My heartsank when I saw the extra work my missing dog bowl had caused.

We had a wonderful time in Chicago and were so grateful to our neighbors for how well they cared for our animals despite my errors in judgement. Apologies, apologies, apologies.

As for the dog bowl, it is still buried in snow, hopefully it will reappear in the Spring!

Oh my goodness, Momma pride is so big! Watching Zachary shine on the stage in the ballet this week feels like a big wallop of emotion every time. I am proud and teary and thrilled all at once. I feel so blessed by this little boy who is dancing his heart out with joy and excitement. Zachary is the one in the center of the photo.

I am back home for the day and am cleaning the house this morning, which apparently includes checking email, making unnecessary phone calls, and writing my blog.

This morning's work involved more coop care than I planned. The chicken waterer was suspiciously dry this morning. I glared at the ducks but they did not seem bothered by my attitude. I think it was warm enough yesterday that the ducks splashed and bathed in the water soaking their necks, I am sure, but also unfortunately saturating the shavings in the coop. I filled a rubber tote with the wet shavings, added a new layer of fresh ones, rebalanced the watering table and moved the heat lamp a little higher in the pen. The shavings are getting deeper, plus earlier this week a hen was basking under the lamp long enough that the coop smelled mildly of burnt feathers. Not a pleasant scent.

Both dogs accompanied me on my chores this morning and were thrilled to have me home again. They are both curled up inside even happier to have the run of the house while I am home.

When we lived in Houston, I took my boys camping, went to the zoo, grew herbs and planted flowers in the garden all with an eye toward exposing them to nature. Now, we are immersed in it.





The boys continue to love camping but we tend to do much less of it, since we can sit outside around the fire every summer night here at home. Zachary looks forward to spring and some time midwinter asks when we get to play in dirt again. Zachary helps me fill wheel barrows with compost every fall and spring.

What is really different these last two years are all the hours we are spending driving Zachary into Chicago. Zachary loves to dance and has been taking dance lessons since he was five. Last fall, Tina Lendman (his dance instructor and the owner of our local dance school, The Dance Factory) suggested that Zachary attend the audition for the Joffrey Ballet's Nutcracker in Chicago. We almost didn't go but she reminded me of the audition and since I had a flight to catch out of Chicago that day, we decided to make it a family trip. We thought we were practicing auditioning, but the Joffrey invited Zachary to be in the ballet. Another little girl from Wisconsin was invited and we decided to accept the offer and carpool together. Both Zachary and Paige were dolls last year and they loved the experience so much, that we returned to audition again this fall.

Zachary is a party guest in The Nutcracker this year and performed for the first time last Friday. It is so thrilling to watch our sweet boy on stage. In order to be part of this experience we do end up spending quite a few days away from the farm.

Dave and I take turns driving to Chicago. Since I am usually home during the week, I drove for the second consecutive weekend last week, just before the big snowfall. Saturday, Zachary rode with Paige and her family. I had a full day on the farm and was able to finish covering the beds in the second garden with goat bedding compost topped with a mix of mulched leaves and grass.

Saturday night, Dave asked me for a list of things I would do, if I had the chance to be home on the farm. When I came home late Sunday, Christmas lights were strung across the front of the house, our mini-hoop house full of kale and chard was covered, the chickens had a heat lamp, excess feeders left over from last months turkey exodus were collected, and the now empty chicken tractors were moved to their winter locations. All the chores on my list were done! A particularly amazing task when you consider that I almost always plan to do more than I can accomplish in one day. Perhaps, if I always make my list on days I don't expect to have anytime on the farm, the list will be more reasonable. Or perhaps the fact that I was making the list for someone else led me to make a more appropriate list. Plus, Dave is a very hard worker.

The Christmas lights were a surprise and are the first ones Dave has hung since we moved here four years ago. No one sees our home from the road, so it was a present just for us.

Tuesday, we had a winter storm warning. I finished covering the door on the chicken house, brought in the last two electric fences, and stocked up the grain and hay in the goat house and chicken coop. I then loaded Zachary, my knitting and warm winter clothing into my van and headed for Chicago. We were leaving a day early to beat the storm. Zachary had rehearsals and then performances Wed-Sat of last week and we were moving in with my sister-in-law Amy and her family for the duration.

Thursday, my parents flew in from Chicago to see the ballet. My van although a Honda Odyssey is really more of a farm vehicle than a family car. I did clean trash, toys, and extra jackets out of the car before we left but with the loss of one day, never vacuumed. My parents kindly did not comment on the layer of grain, hay particles or the light eau de barnyard that permeates the van. Fortunately, due to the snow, the exterior part of the van was no longer blatantly dirtier than the average car on the road.



The storm dumped about 12 inches of wet snow on our farm and Dave said his morning chores on Wednesday took much longer than he had planned because of the time involved in trudging. I think this is my grateful to Dave post, as once again those chores, I so blithely referred to as Dave's a sentence or so ago, are actually the chores he does for me anytime I am off farm. I feel very fortunate that whether my trip is for one of the children or just for me, Dave gracefully steps in to do the work of caring for the animals on the farm. It is particularly kind of him because he doesn't really enjoy the goats. When I am home and caring for the animals, no matter how much I may not feel like heading out the door to do my chores, the animals are inevitably a bright spot in my morning. Goats like routine so they are less likely to be as cooperative for him, refusing to come in, butting him for not being me etc.

I drove home Thursday night to see Nathaniel perform in his school band. Actually, since Nathaniel is a percussionist and stands at the back of the stage, I mostly imagined seeing Nathaniel as I listened for his contribution to the beat. Hearing him play the snare drum was really quite exciting.

Nathaniel and I loaded his backpack into the car and headed back to Chicago after the performance. I am learning a bit about commuting and can say that I am happy that I don't do it on a regular basis.

We attended Opening night on Friday with my parents and Aunt Debbie. This trip was her gift to my parents this Christmas, and was truly a gift to our whole family. We said good bye to our extended family and drove home late that night so we would be home for the animals on Saturday. We will return to Chicago several more times for the ballet and I am looking forward to the times I will be in the audience.

However, I am happy to have several quiet days at home this week. I have work to do for Farm Beginnings, knitting to do for Christmas, some batches of soap to make tomorrow, but this pace feels slow and easy compared to the pace of the past three seasons. I wish I had trimmed the raspberry canes, and composted the flower beds by the apple trees, but spring will come or a winter thaw and I will tackle those projects with renewed energy and enthusiasm. I have promised myself that my winter projects such as organizing the soap room, and cleaning the pole barn, will not appear on my to do list until January.