Where as most women have a favorite pair of heels (which of course I do too), I would have to say that my muck boots are one of my most favorite items I own.

Of course I don’t just have plain old black muck boots.  Mine are black with cute little colored hearts all over-and a buckle at the top (accessories are important even where muck boots are concerned).

It may sound silly, but when I slip my bare feet into their cool, slick insides, I feel a sense of calm and comfort.  I know that for at least the next few minutes, I will be outside in the fresh air doing what I love the most; tending to my little homestead.

My mind shifts directions and settles.  With my muck boots on, the bills that need to be paid float away, the multitude of responsibilities of adult life subside temporarily.  I walk with peace and purpose.

The peace that washes over me with my muck boots on is much different than the emotions I feel when I slip my knee-high compression socked feet (no varicose veins for this girl) into my Dansko clogs.  With my Danskos on, I am focused and serious.  I am all business-mixed with exhaustion and prayers that the next 12 hours won’t be totally brutal.

Although muck boots are a bit of a spiritual experience in themselves, they are also super practical.  They protect my legs from the itchy, wet grass.  They are also great for walking through the ridiculous mud that accumulates in our pig pen.  When Houidini is feeling less than pleased at his isloation from his woman, it protects my calves from his grumpy nips.  When I dash out to the pig pen in the wee hours of the night to check on Lady-Bug for the millionth time, hoping she is having those darn piglets, they are easy to slip on.

This redhead is full of muck boot love.  If you don’t have a pair of muck boots, I highly recommend you purchase a pair and stomp around in the mud for awhile-it just might change your life.

  

Don't miss any Homestead Redhead adventures, check out the full blog at www.homesteadredhead.com and be sure to like our Facebook Page. 

Dearest Grit Friends,

I feel as though I am writing to a loved one from whom I have been absent from for many months. I have much to tell you about! I have been keeping up with things relatively well on my personal blog but have seriously neglected you. Therefore, I will give you a run down of our last few months here in Oshkosh, pulling excerpts where I think we need them. I’m sorry for the delay; once again, life happened and it seems that winter is full of fun even without an active garden!

In mid-November, we traveled to Minneapolis for a Farmer’s Union weekend and I wrote about it here:

I find myself at an ergonomically pleasing hotel room desk, sipping sub-par complimentary coffee and listening to a Japanese radio station via iTunes. In the background, Andy is finishing his shower and the window to my left show the city skyline, still dark but busy with cars zipping by.

I have a moment of serene peace before we head out for today's activities and I am trying to soak it all in. Our children are safe with our dear friends in Omro and should probably be awake and begging for oatmeal about now.

We arrived in the Twin Cities yesterday afternoon in a nice rental car and full of good conversation. Our purpose in being five hours from home is a leadership training event put on by Farmer's Union Enterprises (FUE). An offshoot of National Farmer's Union, FUE is the brainchild of Farmer's Union Industries, a for-profit investment arm of the non-profit National Farmer's Union. Farmer's Union Industries helps fund numerous outreach events and workshops to enable rural communities and farms to work together to build up resources and rely on one another to sustain and survive. One of the problems they faced several years ago was how to motivate young farmers and rural couples to become leaders in their communities and become involved in making a difference for all parties.

With the help of a strategic planning company whose founder was also a member of the Farmer's Union, they came up with FUE. The premise is simple: One couple from the five leading Farmer's Union states would be trained for a year at various gatherings and events throughout the nation and then asked to take up the mantel on their own and use that knowledge to make a difference on the local level. This is the sixth year of the leadership training and Andy and I are the sixth Wisconsin couple to take the reins in learning about ourselves, our family, community, and country. One of the first Wisconsin couples to go through training became the president of the Wisconsin Farmer's Union in his first year following his time with FUE. This is not usual but shows the sort of people that are attracted to this venture. The Farmer's Union Industries spends a substantial amount of money on each couple each year. Andy and I are here completely free of charge. We are completely thankful for the generosity of the organizations behind our retreat here and don't take the time lightly.

Last summer I mentioned this organization, as it was the reason we drove to North and South Dakota. This weekend is the second installment of training. It purposely coincides with the Minnesota Farmer's Union Annual Conference, held in this same Ramada Hotel. Today, we will have a day-long meeting with just the other four couples and a keynote speaker, along with our guide, Mr. Danielson, who has been leading the FUE couples since the inception (and which he helped envision via his company).

Andy has finished grooming and looks very handsome for our group breakfast. The skyline is a faded salmon-grey and I-94 is steadily picking up. Andy and I are excited for the day ahead in which we'll examine a personality profile we filled out online last week. It will help us understand others' personalities and the best way to approach them in conversation and as leaders.

We thank our friends the Gerhkings who lovingly took our three littles ones into their fold for two days. Tonight, Elly, Ethan and Liam will move "homes" to Grandma Judy's and Grandpa Dave's house to stay until we come for them Sunday afternoon. We are very blessed to have the sort of family support network that enables us to leave for this many days completely free of worry for our precious babes.

Friday was a good long day of learning about each other's personality styles through a questionnaire we all filled out called DiSC. You may be familiar with the program. You basically answer a bunch of questions about how you'd react in various situations at home and at work and then they are compared against the general population to see what sort of personality you lean towards.

Andy is quite familiar with this sort of personality profile as he has been on a years-long search to discover how he "ticks" and how to go about daily life with that knowledge.

Each letter stands for a personality type.

D = Dominant (Direct, results oriented, Firm, strong-willed, Forceful)

i = Influence (Outgoing, enthusiastic, optimistic, high spirited, lively)

S = Steadiness (Even-tempered, accommodating, patient, humble, tactful)

C = Conscientious (analytical, reserved, precise, private, systematic)

Nearly all the time, people test with two of the traits being part of their personality. For example, Andy tested as an iD. He was marked by Influence and Dominant characteristics. I was categorized as a CS, which is a person who craves routine, reliability and security. Learning these things about ourselves wasn't necessarily a surprise, but learning how to relate to each other was an answer to a specific prayer I had not one week ago. I want to support Andy more in his decisions and ideas, but given my personality, changes are scary and stressful. So I was able to learn how to relate to him on a level he understands and in turn, he became more sensitive to my needs as both a woman and a person who needs to feel safe.

We spent the whole day as a group talking about the different styles and how they generally relate to one another; how they view different personality types and how to mitigate conflicts by just stepping into each other's mindsets. I was able to pin point a couple of my immediate family members right away and began thinking of ways in which I can increase effective communication with them. After we exhausted our brains on acronyms and tendencies, we had a short break and then we gathered as a group to go out for the night. On deck? Dinner theatre!

I have never been to a dinner theatre, so as the 15 passenger van hauled us west of the Cities to Chanhassen, I just watched the sun set and listened to the small talk going on amongst the couples.

We arrived after dark to an unassuming building amongst strip malls and stores. We exited the van and entered a whole different era. The building was decked in dark wood and fireplaces and large stone walls. There were Christmas trees fully decorated and boughs of evergreens adorning every doorway and tree-trunk post. It was warm, magical and totally inviting. 
Andy and I were immediately impressed. We headed to the lounge to wait for our turn to go to the theatre. Low ceilings, leather chairs on casters and intimate conversations gave the impression of an exclusive supper club. Soon we were asked to get in line for our dinner seats. As we handed the tickets to the hostess, we were escorted to the center of the great room and just took in all the wonder.

Before us were tables and chairs able to seat as many as 600, tucked in here and there and covering at least four different levels. To our left was a large stage, protruding into the audience with a great sweeping curve. We settled in with two other couples and waited for our meal, still taking in the atmosphere. After we ordered and got our food, the bustle of the waitstaff and hustle of the multitude of people around us gave plenty of visual stimulation while we digested. Soon, the lights dimmed and the the MC announced our show for the night (which we already knew): "Bye Bye Birdie."

We settled in for a fantastic show of dancing, singing and orchestral performance right before our eyes. It was just amazing. I've been to plays before, but everything about this was just special. We were so grateful for the experience and acknowledged that it was something we could rarely have afforded in our own lives. What a special night out!

The musical ended about 10:30pm and we hopped in our van to ride back home, about 40 minutes. I was asleep on Andy long before that.

Saturday morning we began the Minnesota Farmer's Union Annual Convention. We spent the day in and out of policy sessions and listening to annual reports from various leaders and guest speakers. It was very informative and I could see how the stuff would be even more important when/if we attend our own Wisconsin State Convention in January. It largely depends on the goodwill of our babysitters and the temperament of our new baby!

That evening, there was a fundraising dinner, which seem to be attended by just about every farmer there! The entire convention hall was filled and they had to open another room to fit the last 40 people in! The food was all locally produced and very tasty. The speaker was Minnesota State Senator Al Franken and he gave a nice speech about the farmer's he'd met in the last year and what farming means in Washington.

   

Next morning, we got up about 7am and rushed down to breakfast thinking that we were missing something. Turns out, we were well ahead of everyone else in our group and got to have a leisurely 1.5 hour breakfast while we waited for the conference to begin again. Andy and I were able to talk with Harley and his wife more about life goals and direction and it was incredibly encouraging for Andy to figure out a direction for our family and him. (me too!).

We listened to a few more updates in the conference and then decided to pack up about 9:30am. We had babies to see and a mother with a birthday, so we were excused a few hours early for the drive home. Before 2:30pm, we were in Omro and reunited with the little ones. It was nice to spend the day at my parents' house before finally ending the trip at home, later that night. Everyone was well and only a few items were missing from the kids' clothing bags. All in all, a good trip!

 

In mid-December, I gave an update on the comings and goings surrounding the holidays:

I am grounded today by my pregnant body and decided to put in something educational for the kids on TV and kick my feet up and write. It's been a long time since I wrote because we once again rearranged our schedule to allow Andy more time to work during the day. In return, I spend more time with the kids exclusively and running errands or visiting friends with kids. As well, I have been working several hours at my mother's house sewing a winter peacoat for Elly for Christmas. The task is beyond my limited sewing skills and uses faux sherpa material which has been more difficult to cut and sew than normal cotton fabrics. However, with my mom's guidance here and there and a bit of reading and re-reading the directions, we are making progress. In the end, it will definitely look homemade, but it will be a wonderful expression of love every time Elly wears the jacket some place special. [it actually turned out beautiful!]

My downtime today is due to being in the final month of pregnancy and the general aches and pains that go with a larger than life body at the end of its stretchiness. However, today I have some unusual stabbing pains in my lower pelvic region that I don't recall experiencing before. Thankfully, I have a prenatal appointment this very afternoon, which will allow me to ask the midwife if she knows what's happening.

Our Thanksgiving this year was highly unusual. We planned to meet up with my parents and brother's family in Omro, but the morning of the big day, we got a call that my Dad was really sick with a cold and that the celebration was to be moved to the family farm (where my brother lives). However, they weren't feeling the best either and no one was sure the day should even happen. Given that each of the three families were to make part of the total feast, we postponed our Thanksgiving until Friday.

On Friday morning, no one was better. In fact, they were worse. So we decided to meet briefly at my parents to exchange the food we had all made so that each family could have an individual Thanksgiving at home. We divided up all the dishes into thirds and went our separate ways. Andy's family had also been unavailable with Maddie receiving more cancer treatment in the hospital and the grandparents working all weekend.

We never did have a big family gathering. My father was diagnosed with bronchitis and just this week has been able to get out and about and start catching up with chores and such! We have been relatively healthy and thankful for it! Thanksgiving weekend we decorated the house for Christmas and it was quite fun. As in years past, we let the kids decorate it with minimal interventions from the parents. This was Liam's first year decorating as last Christmas we did not have a tree (living in a friend's house). Before I even had the chance to show him what to do, he had hung no less than three ornaments all by himself! I guess watching Elly and Ethan, or just intuition led him to do it on his own.

    

In early December,  we went to the annual Experimental Aircraft Association’s Christmas in the Air event, which was a lot of fun for our family, for free! I wrote a bit about it here:

Last evening we were grabbed the kids and headed over to the EAA Airventure Museum here in Oshkosh. They were entertaining their annual Christmas in the Air event, which happens to be free for the community. Christmas lights and trees, cookies, beverages and a myriad of performances happening all over the huge complex were the main draw for folks. We went last year and saw all the sights and watched the performances and then waited in line to meet Santa who'd flew in on a helicopter. This year we saw him land just outside the main building to a large crowd, dancers and music. But by the time he entered the building, our boys had worn out their sugar cookies and napless afternoon and were downright belligerent. There would be no Santa lap this year. Even though the night ended on a rather rough note, we did have a good time and hope to bring them back soon when there are no crowds and we can really see the museum for what it's worth. Ethan so loves airplanes and after last night, it appears Liam might as well.

As we draw upon the final two weeks before the Day of Christmas, our days will be filled with schooling, baking, creating, wrapping, visiting, hosting, and sewing (the last one me, not so much anyone else). Then we (ideally) have two weeks before Baby arrives. No name yet. No worries. It will come when it's right. For now, the little guy keeps me on my toes already! Or, in the case of today, on my rear.

   

At the end of December, I gave my annual year end wrap up:

I suppose I better get this blog in while the gettin' is good! As I write this a mere two days before the turn of 2013, I am in the early stages of labor with our fourth baby.

Over the last two days, several definite "baby coming" signs have been showing themselves and while my official due date is the 5th of January, we all know that babies come when they are good and ready. Liam was eleven days early and Ethan was five days "late." Only Elly came exactly on the day they said she would which, if you know Elly at all, makes perfect sense!

Early this morning I was awakened by heavier than normal Braxton Hicks every half hour or so. Because they were waking me up, I knew them to be more like early labor. Throughout the course of the day the contractions chilled out but never completely went away. As this evening begins, I anticipate the contractions to ramp up again through the night. We have childcare lined up with my mom (who spent the afternoon with us in hopes of baby, but went home just before supper), and our friend Malissa lined up to accompany us in the delivery room as a support to Andy and myself.

My bags are packed, the car seat is resurrected from the basement and the bassinet is all set up. For Christmas, Andy's mother Julia made baby a quilt, which will travel with us to the hospital. My mom bought us a new outfit, which will be his going home clothes. We are pretty much set. Just waiting for the child to make his appearance.

We are still undecided on a name. Andy is very fond of one iteration that I just can't seem to get behind. While I am not sure what is holding me from giving the green light, part of me just wants to be decided and go with it. And then there's always the possibility that the ultrasound was wrong and we've got a little girl about to make her debut! :-)

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This year we had a lot of changes. The last two years I've been amazed at how much we've gone through and this year was a little milder but no less eventful. At the start of 2012, we were living in a friend of a friend's house in the basement, with most of our belongings waiting patiently for us in a storage unit across town. Liam was about to turn one and Ethan about to be three. I revisited an interest in writing and sewing and began to get restless for a place of our own. Still employed by Gourmet Grassfed, Andy and the family enjoyed many days as a family unit working from home. As Spring began to trickle in, we finalized a search for a house to rent in Omro or Oshkosh. By the end of March, we had found a place with character and a large yard. We moved in in early April and relished a place of our own, even if it wasn't a country estate with land for chickens and cows.

We settled in and Andy tried several iterations of working from home before I took a job with Oshkosh Corporation as a temp employee in May. For about six weeks, he played SAHD while I worked long hours typesetting. I thoroughly enjoyed my time back in the workplace and the only thing holding me back was the morning sickness I began feeling about two weeks into the job. Yes, we were pregnant again and while it was not planned or even hoped for, we quickly accepted the new being inside me and prepared ourselves mentally for the major change in the coming winter.

After that job ended in late June, we got to go on a trip to the wild west of the Dakotas and take the kids on a good ol' fashioned family vacation. Upon returning home, we settled into life with a city garden and a super hot dry summer. There were farmer's markets to be at and playdates to be had. We explored our new town on bike and on foot and stroller and even stopped to eat ice cream while the cars went by once in a while. Summer seemed to fly by into Autumn which quickly revealed itself to be one big canning festival. We reorganized Gourmet Grassfed and placed all sales and marketing into Andy's hands while Ben took on all other responsibilities. New flavors were developed and labels needed to be designed, along with a website overhaul that is much anticipated to break in the coming month. I started Elly on her kindergarten year of homeschooling with some work in numbers, writing, reading and any sort of nature interest that caught her attention. The boys were just along for the ride and have been picking up all sorts of stuff because of it. In September I got to go to Pennsylvania for free to the Mother Earth News Fair. Because of the people I was riding with, had the incredible privilege to eat across the table from Joel Salatin of Polyface Farm. He shared an intimate story from his childhood with the group of about 20 that touched everyone deeply. It was so neat to listen to a person so well known and remember that he’s just human, too.

Late fall gave us respite and a low key Thanksgiving, building into the Christmas season. Now we are into early winter and we definitely had a white Christmas this year. Just yesterday it must have snowed another 10" on top of the pre-Christmas snowfall of a foot or more! If this is any indication of the winter we'll have, I'm really sorta thankful we don't have animals to care for this winter. Digging out a public sidewalk and your driveway is nothing compared to deep snow and animals to feed. Waterers to unfreeze. Feed to uncover and replenish. Bedding to change out daily. (do me a favor and thank your closest farmer today!)

And so with the close of the 2012 year, we look forward to what 2013 has to offer. A family of six, living in interim in the city, praying and hoping for a place in the country, doing their best to pay off their debts so that they may begin building their future once and for all.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

As I close, I know the next time I write will be to share the story of Baby's entrance into this world and there will be photos of him to share with you all. As it is right now, I bid you farewell 2012. You haven't been too shabby to the Sells and for that we are grateful. A little less tumult in our lives is always appreciated (at least by me, a personality who craves stability and order!).

   

The next morning, our baby boy made his entrance into the world and kept me from writing for about a month. I recapped his birth and the rest of January here:

Finlay Dael Sell was born on December 31st, 2012 weighing in at 8lbs 1oz and 20" long. We were all surprised at his weight, given that no one thought I was even close to being due from my belly size. We were not surprised at his gender this time, quite unlike our boy Liam from two years ago. :-)

   

Andy and I headed to the hospital (no home birth this time; financially unviable) at around 2:30am on that Monday and our friend Malissa met us there to be a support to both Andy and I. After the initial round of heartbeat monitoring and questionnaires, I was able to labor in peace. We dimmed the lights and added music from the Prayer Room in Kansas City and Andy had brought candles to add softness to the room. Around 4am, I was in hard labor and asked to have a bath drawn. I have never labored in the luxury of the hottubs most delivery wards offer these days as I have back labor and that keeps me moving almost to the end. This time, though, we decided to try it, even though I was convinced I would have to hop out as soon as I was in.

Well, I was so very wrong...and so very thankful of that! As soon as my first foot hit that hot water, I was instantly relaxed and soothed into a meditative state of labor in which even the most strenuous of transition contractions left me with just a few moans of pain. Man, I wish I would have given this a try with the other labors! It wasn't long before I knew without being checked that I had to push. Since the hospital we were at does not allow water births, I knew I had to exit the water even though all I wanted to do was float blissfully into motherhood. Malissa and Andy helped me out and I headed to the bed. The room flooded with nurses, equipment and the midwife. I knew I had to push, but since I had not been checked to see if I was indeed fully dilated, I pushed only hesitantly at first. When the midwife was ready and waiting, I really began pushing and only then did my water break. Within 15 minutes, little Finlay made his debut and I had him cuddled in my arms, so tiny and warm and beautiful. It was 5am. Malissa left about a half hour later to go to work. She pulled an all nighter like us and didn't even bat an eye. We were so thankful to have her there as moral support and even some comic relief for Andy during the long parts of my labor.

   

Family and friends came to visit us that day and as the rest of the world rang in 2013, we cuddled down in a hospital room with a brand new human in our charge. Welcome to the planet, Finn!

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The month of January has passed quickly only because I am usually not sure what day I'm actually in. On the 11th, our quirky personality Liam turned two years old. We held a party for him on the 12th with family and friends. He very adorably accepted his gifts and cake amidst the bustle of the get together. Liam is talking now and "sharp as a tack" according to his Grandpa Steve. He continually makes us laugh with his expressive face and ability to repeat phrases at just the right moment. He is amazingly compassionate for a two year old boy and seeks to make things right when he's been naughty. Often, a frustrated outburst that resulted in him hitting or biting will cause him to immediately recant with a diminutive hug and kiss. He melts anger in us in a way that the others never could. We began potty training him last week, but for some reason he has refused to accept it. We'll wait another month and try again. He definitely gets what's going on, but fails to see the independence in it.

   

Eleven days later, we celebrated my 32nd birthday, on the 22nd. I was blessed with several nice gifts from my family and a small get together with my in-laws at the end of the week. My mom even handmade me a table runner and some cloth napkins with some fabric that I had found at a rummage sale. It's funny because she totally stole it from me one time in late fall and I looked for it several times during the Christmas season because I had an idea that I wanted to sew a gift for someone with that fabric. As I apparently had "lost" it, I gave up on the gift idea. Turns out I never had time to sew it anyway so when Mom presented my birthday gift, I laughed out loud. It all worked out for the best!

  

Just after that, Andy and I spent the weekend in Eau Claire attending the Wisconsin Farmer's Union annual conference. I was asked to take photos in exchange for our admission fees, which helped us afford to be there at all. We took young Finn and had the kids stay with family for two days. It was a long Saturday in which I had a bit of a fever and my camera battery nearly died, but Andy got to attend most of the sessions and take part in the important policy discussion.

   

I got a few neat shots of the day and the break out sessions throughout the hotel. The evening dinner had a local author as keynote speaker and several awards were handed out to the farmer's union youth (they put a lot of effort into young people education). The keynote was Michael Perry, author of Coop and Truck: A Love Story, amongst others. He is a great humorist and I was already a fan of his writing. I brought my copy of Coop for him to sign, but it didn't work out. Mr. Perry did however admire Finlay when Andy had him out in the hallway just before he and his band played for the late night crowd.

   

Everything was to pick up again on Sunday, but due to an impending ice storm, the convention was wrapped up by mid morning and Andy and I headed back to his folks' house several hours early. Our boys had been with the Sells and we would pick them up there. Elly stayed with both her cousins in Omro and my parents for the weekend, so that no one family would be too overwhelmed by kiddoes.

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As we entered February, there were a few things that I wanted to talk about but had to wait until things got fleshed out a little more. Jonathan Foreman, lead writer and singer for the band Switchfoot has a line in one of his songs that rings with me this past month: "Life begins at the intersections." We have many choices ahead of us as a family.

2013, unlike 2012, is already shaping up to be a season of opportunity and fruition. Whereas Andy and I have been in a period of waiting, learning and proving ourselves for a couple of long years, now it seems that we may have come through that time and are seeing doors open. Doors that once were closed and doors that were only just recently unattainable. I know that's a lot of vague jargon to many of you, but I feel compelled to keep it that way until we know more. In the meantime, we huddle down in this cold Wisconsin winter, sip our hot coffee and pray for God's continued guidance in our lives.

  

Since I wrote that last post, our very own Ethan turned 4 years old in the middle of February. How could it be that when we started blogging for Grit, I was just barely pregnant with this little being and now he is nearing school age? We love the little scamp as he daily brings us the most challenges and laughs of our four children. Finlay remains to be seen, of course! 

  

And so, now that you are caught up on our lives thus far, I will be able to tell you about those “intersections” in a following blog. However, Andy and I leave again on another FUE adventure in just a day: We are flying with Finn to Massachusetts for the National Farmers Union Convention to be held in Springfield. We spend four days away from our other babies who will be in the loving homes of two different friends of ours. It will be interesting to see how they fare without us but I think they’ll be ok as long as they are together. Meanwhile, Andy, Finn and I will take in the continued learning that awaits us in MA. Hopefully I’ll be able to write about that experience as it happens, but no promises! Take care and I’ll chat at ya soon.

   

 

As I headed to the mailbox this morning, the crisp air of January met me afresh. The snow covering the once-green grass barely crunched below my feet, and I found myself walking on top of it rather than sinking in

My mind wandered back some thirty years. Arlington cemetery. Bloomington, Indiana. Grandma and me.

I took her to put flowers on my grandfather’s grave. Solemnly we exited the car and moved toward the grave on a brisk winter morning. She and I walked atop a frosted-over snow, slowly making our way to the grave. Bare, iced branches of the few trees standing amidst the many marble markers glistened in the midmorning sunlight.

We quietly ambled on. Then Grandma, attempting a smile, looked at me said, “I’ve never walked on top of snow before.”

I gripped her elbow as we approached the grave that had for the several months held the body of my grandpa, her husband of more than sixty years.

Sacredly placing the flowers gently into the urn beside the marble monument, she stepped away, reading the dates carved in the cold stone. Her name etched beside his with only a birth date and a hyphen loomed over both of us, an omen of days to come.

“I guess I’ll be there beside him someday,” she said. Tears trickled down both our cheeks as we stood in silence, staring at the stone that foretold life’s brevity.

Regaining composure, I said, “Well, we won’t think about that now, Grandma.” Empty, useless words to an 81-year-old who had heard death’s knock amongst friends and family one too many times.  

She might have stood there all day had it not been winter. My hand grasping her elbow, I urged her back to the car. “Come on, Grandma, it’s cold,” I said. “Let’s go home.”

Coldness comes and goes over time. Seasons change and life as we’ve known it no longer exists. We can never go back. People enter our lives for a season and then we must walk alone, seeking to understand life’s rhythm.

After lifting the little red flag on the mailbox, I turned back toward the house. The blacktop drive was bare and clean, providing a much safer path…but I preferred to move on top of the snow, step by step, pretending that Grandma was walking beside me once again as my hand gently urged her home.

Friends of GRIT,
I’m an English teacher, and NPR (National Public Radio) recently held its annual “3-Minute Story” contest, and I had in mind an idea for a story based on an experience I shared with my mother-in-law a few months back… having a hen put to sleep.  I wrote the dark little story about death and choices and family togetherness and prepared to submit it when I noticed the theme was supposed to be about an American president, living or dead.  “Hmm,” I thought.   “Is there a way to work that in to my chicken story?”  Yes, in fact.  My mother-in-law, Kathryn, suggested that the hen be described as a rooster, and that the rooster might be named Abraham Lincoln, and I took it from there.  With just a few changes, I sent the story on.  I haven’t heard from NPR.  However, I know that the deeply sympathetic, intelligent, insightful, and sensitive hen-loving crowd at GRIT will appreciate my story, so here it is.

Depth of Field

Mrs. G and her daughter-in-law entered the veterinarian’s office somberly, the younger Mrs. G carrying a rooster swaddled in a white towel.  The startled looks of other customers shifted to amusement and finally to curiosity. The Mrs. Gs were not in the mood for entertaining this curiosity, and when asked directly about their patient, the daughter-in-law answered simply that the rooster, known as President Lincoln because he was so tall and godlike, was “very sick with a disorder that did not allow him to eat normally.”  She could not bring herself to say that he was, apparently, blind.  She had ascertained that much from observing the rooster’s odd wandering and pecking about for food with little success while his companion hens and another rooster feasted on not only normal feed but delicacies such as cantaloupe and tomatoes.    After speaking with Dr. Beverly, (the vet), the elder Mrs. G recalled a fight between the two roosters a week or so ago.  That was probably the cause, explained Dr. Beverly; roosters will sometimes peck at the eyes of a foe in a barnyard civil war, resulting in blindness.  Ever against cooking up one of her own chickens, Mama G asked if there might be another alternative.  She was advised that the rooster might be separated from the other chickens, kept in a more confined space with readily available food; a lonely life, yes, but one likely to keep him from starving.  The only other choice would be to euthanize him. 

The Mrs. Gs headed home with their cock-of-the-run, drew him into a segregated area with a high fence and plenty of food, and in just a few weeks’ time, he had regained his full masculine figure and began to crow as he had before his wounding. 

Then came a cloudy April evening when, with the two women rocking on the porch and all the chickens clucking and crowing in the happiness of a normal country day, and the rooster strutting around his enclosure and growing fat… something flew out of the darkening sky like a small monsoon, like an illusion, like cruel opportunity, and came down upon the rooster’s back in the blink of an eye.  The hawk tore back the way it had come, claws held fast to President Lincoln, up and up, out of sight, delivering its cry of victory before the astonished kinfolk offstage had the chance to look for grace.

One of my favorite writers, David Sedaris, was once asked if his stories were true.  He replied, cleverly, that they were “mostly true.”  I’ll only go so far as “partly true.”  If you want to know the whole truth and nothing but the truth, I’ll tell you in my next post, where you will find many happy hens and the ghost of dear ole’ Abe around the feeder.

One of our golden hens, we call her Goldie. 

On Sunday, Andy was able to realize a goal of his for the last decade; roast a whole animal in a pit in the ground. Ever since I met him in college, he has wanted to do a pig in the ground, wrapped in leaves, Hawaiian style. However, the very act is incredibly intimidating. It's not like people do this every day and you can flip to page 53 in your Betty Crocker cookbook. Also daunting is if the process goes wrong in any number of ways, you've potentially ruined an entire animal, not just a single cut of meat.

When the weather threatened to freeze off our tomato plants last Saturday night, we took advantage of a slow day at home and went to the back yard around noon to grab the last of the red 'maters from the garden. Unlike the previous sweat-filled harvesting sessions, we were bundled up in warm jackets and hats at first before the sun broke and the heat of our efforts caused us to shed a layer.

Andy came out and helped, too, as my ability to bend and pick has greatly diminished as the months wear on. Ethan again showed laser beam dedication to the cause, easily picking his own weight in tomatoes before asking to go ride bike. Elly was a bit harder to keep focused and I finally had to give her a tangible goal of filling two grocery bags before she was excused to hop on her two-wheeler.

   

Before we were even half way through the rows (if you can even figure out where the rows are in the photo above), two neighborhood boys came zipping through the alley on their Razr scooters. I'd seen them before. In fact, a few weeks ago, I'd been out weeding while our kids played and they came by, asking if I had any jobs for them to do. I was amused as I had heard about this; people paying local kids to rake the leaves or mow the lawn for them. While our lawn really needed it, we didn't have petty cash budgeted for jobs we could do ourselves. I weighed the value of the work they could do verses our saving money, and in the end I was just too far outside my comfort zone to give them anything to do. As it was, they were happy to play with our kids in the yard while I worked, which benefited all. I have seen them around here and there since that day and each time the boys were very friendly and waved hello or asked what we were up to.

There are a lot of kids around our neighborhood, ranging in age from baby to teenagers. Most of them are pretty indifferent to our family and won't even acknowledge when our overly outgoing kids yell "Hello!" to them. There's a pack of them that hang out at the end of the alley on school nights, all sitting on bikes and chatting idly as the evening creeps in. We call them the Biker Gang and deem them about as harmless as the Apple Dumpling Gang. I'm not sure if these two boys are a part of that group, but of all the kids we've seen zoom past our backyard this summer, they have been the most polite.

I was pondering all of this when the boys stopped on the road and asked what we were up to. Smiling, I said, "What does it look like we're doing?"

"Harvesting tomatoes," said the brown haired boy.

"That's right!" said I.

"Can we help you!?" he asked with such fervor that I wasn't sure what to make of it.

I hesitated. "Well, we don't really have any money to pay you for your time–"

Brown Haired Boy responded before the words were out of my mouth. "That's ok! Just give us a bag and we'll help 'til you're done!"

"Wow, ok! And if your families like tomatoes, you can pick some to take home."

Brown Haired Boy dropped his scooter on the grass and his friend, Blonde Haired Boy did the same. Andy handed them some bags and they began grabbing beautiful ripe tomatoes and filling each respective bag until they had quite the haul. We asked them where they lived. Blonde Haired Boy lives on the very end of the alley, in the house closest to where Biker Gang congregates. Turns out, it's his family that has a small bike repair business in their garage and every time we walk past, someone is working on a bicycle with countless pieces of two-wheelers scattered about the garage floor. (that might explain Biker Gang a bit). Brown Haired Boy lives on the next parallel street to ours and is best friends with Blonde Haired Boy.

Finally I asked them their names. Brown Haired Boy turned out to be Austin. Blonde Haired Boy goes by Carter. Austin and Carter took their cache of tomatoes to Austin's house (down the block) to give to his mother. Andy and I kept picking, thinking that was the end of it.

We were very wrong, in a very blessed sort of way. Within minutes, we saw the boys walking back to our yard with a couple plastic bags bulging with produce. Behind them a woman just a bit older than us came with another bag. It was Carter's mother.

I was closest to the road as they approached and paused my picking to acknowledge her. She asked, "Do you like cabbage and carrots? We just harvested these from our garden and thought you might be able to use them, seeing as the boys told me you only grew tomatoes this year."

"A veggie exchange! How wonderful!" I exclaimed.

In fact, the bags were filled with squash, onions, beets, carrots and cabbage. What an incredible trade! They must have brought over three times as much as we gave them. Andy and I thanked her profusely while Austin and Carter began harvesting again. It was the first time we had met her and she and I talked about the gardening year and Carter's friendship with Austin. Soon she headed back home and the six of us continued to work in the garden.

Sooner than I thought, we had found every last ripe tomato. Because of the frost coming, we also picked any tomato that showed the least bit of ripening, including some that were by all accounts green, but yet had a shade of pink or orange on one side.

"Well, guys, I think we're done for today," Andy announced as we hauled our bags to the back of the house.

"Oh, do you have anything else we could do?" asked Austin. He is the more outgoing of the two.

"Actually, if you don't mind, it would help a lot if the tomatoes were sorted by ripeness, so we can process them before some go bad," I stated.

"OH YES! Please let us help sort the tomatoes!" both boys exclaimed. How could we resist that? Andy and the boys put all the harvest in one area of the lawn and began sorting by green, sort of ripe and super ripe. Below, you can see the group sorting together.

   

When the task was finished, they happily helped us haul the boxes and bags of produce up the stairs into our newly cleaned out back pantry. We're not really sure what the room is supposed to be. It shoots off our kitchen with a single door and is about four feet deep by fourteen feet long. There is a makeshift door to the backyard without a handle on the outside. The whole thing looks like someone put an afterthought into it and just tacked it to the back of the house. It looks a lot like an enclosed porch with very few windows. A few weeks ago, Andy cleaned it out from top to bottom and made it into a very useful storage space for our food, cleaning supplies and other odds and ends. This is where we'll be cold storing a lot of our winter produce as it keeps a solid temp of 40˚– 50˚. Below, just some of the produce Carter's family shared with us, neatly stored in existing boxes and containers left here by our landlord.

   

When the harvest was in, I asked everyone if they'd like to be in a photo for a blog I was sure to post. :) Of course the kids were super excited, so here are our harvesters from left to right: Carter, Austin, Andy, Elly, Ethan. Not pictured, me. Liam had been napping the whole time. Behind is the alleyway we speak of so often.

   

As Andy and I prepared a hasty lunch of three left-over soups, we invited the boys to stay and eat. While we worked in the kitchen, they played with our little ones. When it was time to eat, they helped set the table and politely tried each soup, even though they had never heard of two of the three we were serving.

During the meal we were able to get to know Carter and Austin a little better. They are both ten and go to school together at the elementary school just a few block from our homes. When they saw Andy spicing up his soup with some chipotle powder in his soup, they wanted to try it as well. Soon this escalated into a no-holds-barred heat-tolerance-man-show in which each young man at the table tried to up the ante with more and more hot sauces from our fridge. By the end, Austin was pretty red and sweaty, but Carter held his own, going spice for spice with Andy and keeping his cool (we even broke out Might Mustard and had them try it straight up)!

When lunch was over, they helped clean up the table and then offered to clean up all the toys they'd used when playing with our kids. Before I knew it, they had the broom out and my washcloth and were urging me not to leave the kitchen until they were ready for me to see their work. "Almost there! Don't look yet!" I kept hearing from the other rooms.

It really warmed my heart. And the whole experience from harvest to meal time with these two ten year olds got me thinking about the children in our cities. As I washed the dishes and listened to the hustle in the living room, I wondered how many of our children are craving the sort of attention these boys were. They were literally begging to be put to work by us and when they finished one job, they happily moved on to the next. I bet they would have cleaned our bathroom had we asked.

When I was growing up in the country, I had designated chores from early on. Pretty much as soon as I could wield a broom and feed calves, I was officially employed by my parents. I began getting a weekly allowance of a few dollars per week and I was able to save up for toys or art supplies that I really wanted. It gave me a sense of value as well as responsibility in my own home. I went to a country grade school in which most of my friends had farms of their own and had the same home life as I did. It wasn't until middle school when they blended the city kids with the country kids in one big city school (big for a small town I guess) that I began to see how the "other half" lived outside of the classroom. Many walked home, dumped their backpacks in their rooms and ran off to someone else's house to play video games or play basketball or just loiter in the streets in groups until the dinner bells rang. These kids had nothing to do!

As middle school gave way to high school, the separation between country kids and city kids was far less apparent as many of us got involved in after school sports and spent more time at the school going to games and participating in clubs. As I reflect, however, those of us with chores waiting for us at home were far less likely to be the ones getting in trouble. It wasn't a generality, of course, because those farm kids are very ingenious with the way they spent their midnight hours on a weekend. It wouldn't be a small town without someone having been toilet papered over the weekend and a party in the woods being busted. Still, the sense of purpose and a general ability to face down temptation was higher in those of us with something real to do after school.

As more and more Americans have moved away from the farm or countryside and grow up in pretty little suburbs with everything at their fingers, there is a sense of un-direction in the youth. We've seen it with the Biker Gang down the street. This mindset of "I've got four hours to kill between the last bell ringing and dinner. What do you want to do today?" is perplexing those kids. They WANT something to do. They crave responsibility. How many college students can't handle the freedom when Mom and Dad are no longer there to come home to? How many thirty year olds are back living in their parents' home?

I grabbed a soup pot and began scrubbing as the clamor in the other rooms continued.

An overall sense of un-direction. What a disappointing and depressing way to feel. Austin and Carter, at age ten, showed the initiative and drive that I'm sure most of those kids have to begin with. Humans are designed to feel needed and useful, especially the children. I think it's only from years of being trained otherwise that folks grow into the cog role that most adults fulfill. Work for the weekend and indulge in as much pleasure as possible between 5pm Friday and 8am Monday. 

It seemed to me that part of the reason Carter and Austin were the only polite kids on the block and so willing to help is a combination of desire to be needed and responsibility at home. I don't see them very much on the weekdays like I see most the other kids. I see them out and about on Saturdays, presumably their day off. The fact that they wanted to help us, then hang out with us, then eat with us and clean belied their own unique sense of family.

We seemed right to them. We felt safe. A garden was a familiar start for them to step into our world. We felt just as drawn to them, as if we could offer something for these boys that they might be missing.

"Ok, you can come look!" Austin yelped from the dining room. I was torn from my thoughts and the soup pot in my hands. I grabbed the kitchen towel and crossed the kitchen to the dining room door. "Wow!" I exclaimed, not even a bit exaggerating. They had washed the table, picked up the toys, swept the floor, put all the shoes in order, tidied up the end tables and folded the blankets in the living room. The place looked amazing and I'm not sure I could have done it better myself. Andy gave out boisterous high fives and I offered Mom-hugs to each child.

We sent them off with a bag of home-canned tomato products for their mothers and a handful of chocolate chips for themselves, and the promise that they were welcome to stop by anytime.

I really hope they take us up on that offer because it is genuine. Both of the boys were especially interested in what Andy had to say and followed his every move, whether he noticed or not. I felt very deeply that they needed us in some tangible way and who were we to brush that aside? I wish I had gotten their phone numbers so that I might call them over this week as we process tomatoes and make sausage. I know they would jump at the chance to learn a skill, to be useful. And their enthusiasm would be a wonderful influence on our small ones who are just learning the trades of self-sufficiency at home.

Yes, I'll be looking for those boys next Saturday, zipping by on their Razr scooters. We have so much we can share with them and I'm not really talking about the food.

This is how community starts in your own backyard garden.

PS: The freeze we were expecting never came. There will be another harvest before the week is out!

As I mentioned last week, I was inspired to keep writing in this blog, but I never fleshed out what I might be writing about. A short list of items includes homesteading, harvesting, unschooling and urban foraging.  

One of the sessions I attended at the Mother Earth News Fair talked about all the food she had within reach of her backyard, or on the roads she travels to and from work. Living in Maine, she had an abundant supply of wild blackberries, blueberries and raspberries. But she also found that the plants in her own garden, so often ripped out as weeds, were very edible and sometimes more nutritious than the very veggies she was trying to protect. 

In our home, we have already known from our time at Foxwood Farm that pigweed, purslane and lamb's quarter were very delicious and hardy weeds. The kids make a regular snack out of the purslane we keep in our backyard garden this year, pulling it between bike rides and the tree swing. They love the idea of foraging for food, even in this small way. Sometimes they'll bring me a stalk or leaf and ask if its food? After careful identification, I give them the thumbs up or down. Since I am so inexperienced in what herbs and plants can be consumed, most of the time it's been a thumbs down. 

Well, no more. I endeavor to learn every plant we can eat on our 1/2 acre lot we rent here in Oshkosh. 

An easy one to start with is our city garden. 

I suppose this can't be considered foraging as we intentionally dug up the ground and planted it with peppers and tomatoes. However, seeing as the spirit of foraging (especially in the city) is to be more self sufficient, the garden is our number one supplier of free* food. 

* We paid $30 at the beginning of the season for all the started plants and $15 for some makeshift fencing.  

In June, when I was holed away in an office for 12 hours per day, Andy took on more than most Stay At Home Dads (SAHD) do. He kept the kids wrangled and dug up a garden from sod that hadn't moved in well over a century. At first he did it by hand, spending three hours moving sod from a 6 x 3 foot patch of lawn. 

  

Then my father graciously offered the industrial sized rototiller we had used when we gardened at the farm. There is a setting on the tiller specifically made to uproot grasses and this made the work much more expedient, though still exhausting. 

  

We decided to make four rows, three feet across and about forty feet long, with three foot stretches of grass in between the rows. 

  

This was a good start for the garden. Good for this year. Next year we will likely expand it just as many rows. As it is, the plants we bought completely filled in the rows and we had no room for anything but tomatoes and peppers. We have some large stuffing peppers, but mostly hot banana peppers, which we think was a labeling error on the part of the gardener we bought from, as we never had a need for that many hot peppers. The tomatoes are two varieties; the classic red heirloom Brandywine and a new (for us) long-storing red tomato called Mountain Mist. You can easily tell the two apart both in appearance and flavor. It's nice to have a small variety; we usually have about 15 different tomatoes, but in the end, they all get boiled and canned and look about the same, even the colorful ones. 

Very late in June, shortly after my temp job ended, we planted the tomatoes and peppers in the fresh farm compost my father had driven over in the pickup truck. Since it came from several composting sites on Foxwood Farm, there was a rich variety of nutrients and compost age. A lovely black earth, Andy took the same tiller and worked it in with the hard, poor soil the sod had been hiding. At last, he used a hiller function on the tiller and gave us "raised beds." Not the fancy ones held in by gleaming white pine boards but certainly enough to keep the plants from drowning in case of a flood. (Little did we know in June that this would be a record breaking year of drought for not only Wisconsin, but over half of the United States. Drowning...not really a concern this year.) 

  
In the process of planting, we discovered lots of bones in the compost. Some were small. Some were large. Now before you get the willys, remember that this came from when Andy and I were still on the farm. Do you remember us talking about those sheep we purchased from a Craigslist ad? We had been told they were wormed before we got them, but shortly after their transition to Foxwood Farm, we lost three ewes in as many days. On a farm, all flesh is grass and they went into the newly formed compost pile to aid in fertilizing our fields in the coming years.  

We really didn't think about that very much after we left the farm. We had a nice little reminder of our time as shepherds and thanked the sheep for their contribution (however untimely) to our new garden here in Oshkosh. At the time of their death, could we have ever known how that compost would be used? It served as a simple reminder of how God works things out in much more perfect and complicated ways than we ever could.   

After the tomatoes were planted, we headed out west and came home to find an amazing growth spurt in both the tomatoes, but also the weeds. In fact, before we even put our luggage back in the house, Andy and the kids and I spent two hours weeding compulsively, before dusk and hunger pains shooed us indoors.   

 
Above, before mowing the walkways. Below, after. Isn't it beautiful? This of course, before the great tomato take over in about a month! 

   

After that, we kept the garden watered during July and August to preserve the parched plants. Our lawn was brown, but our garden was gorgeous. As the farm market vendors began to showcase their Early Girls and Cherry Tomatoes, we were beginning to get restless for our own brood to hatch. Plenty of green globes danced about the ever-expanding vines but nothing even hinted at ripeness. We bought our tomatoes from a vendor friend instead and dreamed of the first sun-warmed red fruit that would sit triumphantly on our kitchen counter, proclaiming to anyone who cared, "I'm as local as they get!" 

We didn't have to wait long. Early September came and we were getting a steady sprinkle of red maters  hanging out on our counter, waiting for bruschetta or BLTs or a simple slice and rock salt. Then...we didn't look for a few days. We got a heat wave followed by a steady rain for three days.   When the thunder clouds cleared, our own homegrown downpour had only just begun. As Ethan excitedly proclaimed, "It's tomato season everybody!" 

  

And we set to work. Since we didn't get the tomato plants staked in time, they literally took over the garden and even finding our grassy walkways was a tall order. All the super ripe fruits begin at the bottom, so much of the work is gently and firmly lifting a plant to find it's hidden treasures below. It's exhausting work for a normal person, but with my belly expanding daily and heat tolerance near zero, harvesting became quite the chore.   

Thankfully, I had two excellent helpers in Elly and Ethan...and Liam was just amusing to have around as he eagerly picked all the tiny green "balls" he could find. I found out that while Elly has an eye for the very ripe ones, Ethan was fearless, burying his small 3 year old body deep in the monstrous tomato plants for the red globes underneath. 

  

Over the course of the month, Ethan has been my best and most eager helper in the garden. As a middle child, it's sometimes hard for him to have a niche in the family. I want him to know that his help has been irreplaceable and of great value to his Mommy and Daddy.   

 
Once the harvest is in, the time comes for processing. This is where Andy takes over and shines as his personality must find the most efficient and effective ways to can food. Putting eager kids to work never hurts and much of canning is very kid friendly.  

 
One Sunday about two weeks ago, I had some pressing freelance work that needed to be completed by Monday morning. The tomatoes were just as dire. So beginning right after church, Andy began the long day of processing what we guessed to be 120 lbs of tomatoes.  

  

  

It was a long day indeed. Hours after the kids were in bed, he was still boiling water and slicing stems and peeling skins. Hours after I was in bed, he was cleaning the kitchen and making sure the last jars sealed. In all, he worked for 14 hours. We are now blessed with 50 quarts of stewed tomatoes and sauce. When I asked Andy if that would supply us for the winter, he laughed and said, "Maybe til Christmas!"   

It's a good thing that when I began harvesting tomatoes again this morning, we got 90 lbs in boxes and I still have 2/3 of the garden to pick.     

  

Our neighbors in our small block think we're nuts. Some even have gardens, but only enough to supply them for the fresh season. An older lady saw us weeding in July and asked if were had planted a truck garden. For those of you who may not know, truck gardeners were the equivalent of the farm market vendors of today; people who planted huge gardens with the intent to truck the produce into the nearby towns and cities to sell. No, we assured her, this was not our intent. We explained that we just liked to make our own food and her eyes brightened immediately. She told us a story of her own mother, canning away in the kitchen and how she had to help put the food by. We promised to share our harvest with her when the time came and she seemed delighted. "Can't beat homegrown tomatoes and how I do love to slice them and eat them fresh!"     

We love how a garden brings people in a small community together. The rag tag family down the alley comes by often and offers to pull weeds from time to time. The divorced hairdresser across the street checks up on the progress regularly as she has a green thumb for landscaping. The blended family two houses down has a little girl about Elly's age and after a few get-togethers, we gave the mother several tomatoes and hot peppers. Just yesterday her daughter came over with a homemade cake for us.  Just three days ago, we got a note in our mailbox from a handicapped woman who walks through our alleyway regularly. She asked for some of the green tomatoes for fried green tomatoes. She offered to pay for them, but we'll just give her a bag to enjoy. We'll certainly have enough! 

As the canning season winds to a close in the next two weeks (our first hard frost often lands in the first week of October), we will turn to other means of foraging and winter prep. As I'm actively learning, there's a lot of food out there if only we are willing to work for it.   

  

This brings me to the country garden.     

A few days ago, we headed about fifteen miles due west to the farm (formerly known as Foxwood Farm). My brother and his family live there now, keeping up the house and front yard quite beautifully. My father continues to raise crops and beef cows on the rest of the acreage while the fate of the family farm seems more securely in generational hands than when we first exited two years ago.     

One of the projects they are diligently working on is repainting the house and garage, no small task as they are doing it without help of a contractor. My parents and brother and sister-in-law have been working for the last month, prepping and priming and painting the wooden siding and sills. When Andy and I pulled in the driveway late in the afternoon, the house fairly glowed with fresh white paint. Ever the classic midwest farmhouse, she is doing well under new management. Having spent about 75% of my life in that home, I am pleased with the care being given.     

Our purpose, however, was not to supervise any home improvements that might be brewing. Today we came for pumpkins and potatoes.   

A joint project between my parents and my brother's family, a large field garden was planted with rows of sweet corn, pumpkins and potatoes. What used to be sheep and cattle pasture is now commercial corn. The temporary fences long taken down, the lane between fields offered ample access for a small strip of garden. Here is where the sweet corn and pumpkins grew. Across the lane, a small triangle of land with very sandy black soil holds the two long rows of potatoes.   

Last week the farm experienced an early frost, killing the family garden and causing the field garden to die down as well. My family harvested the pumpkins and brought them to the front lawn in hopes of selling a few to passersby. Mom and Dad have been involved in a year long fundraiser to build a well in sun-parched Uganda and decided that half the proceeds from pumpkin sales will go towards that cause. We thought it would be nice to see the operation and get a few orange cucurbits ourselves. 

  

I had hoped to help with the harvest, but they had to grab them last week when I was in PA, so we got to benefit from the season's labor by just walking amongst the beauties and choosing what we'd take home. Since we had no hand in helping grow the pumpkins and yet were invited to take some home free of charge, we chose sparingly.   

  

I was a bit surprised when the kids gravitated towards the smallest pumpkins in the group, but pleased that they could carry their prizes to the car all by themselves. It also gave them a sense of accomplishment, I'm sure. Even wee Liam managed to grunt a pumpkin over to Daddy before thumping it at his feet! 

And of course, the obligatory kids in the pumpkin patch photos ensued. :-) 

  

Elly with her new hat from Grampa Steve. 

   

Ethan, with his exuberance flowing through even a static photo. 

  

Liam, more than displeased to have been deposited in between these cold, slippery lumps of orange, attempting a fast get-away.   

After we chose our pumpkins, we drove down the dusty lane and began our subterranean search for potatoes. Again, beneficiaries of my family's hard work, we were thankful for the homegrown goodies that lay in wait of our digging fork. 

At five and three, Ethan and Elly have been two full years removed from the last potato harvest we undertook. I knew they wouldn't remember that potatoes grow underground. I asked Elly as we stepped out of the car where she thought the taters were. She looked around and guessed at the remains of the pumpkin patch across the pathway.   

Nope, we told her. You've got to look under the ground. She thought we were crazy and when I explained that a potato was part of the root of the potato plant, it didn't really help her dismay. The best way was to just show her. Andy and I had good fun playing up the digging experience. What could have been a sweat-inducing, mundane task became a veritable hunt for treasure as our children squealed in delight at the sight of each colorful tater emerging from the black earth. 

  

Here, Elly grabs handfuls of a red variety in which the name presently escapes me.   

  

Ethan and Elly work together to find the "baby ones" and add them to our grocery bag.   

  

Finding a particularly large potato caused ripples of excitement. 

  

Below, Ethan shows off his "Swimming Cow" potato which he dug himself. As I found in the tomatoes, Ethan was again our best helper, sticking with Andy as he dug for the duration of the hunt. Elly lost interest and began exploring the fields with Liam, which was fine. However, our Little Man here never lost focus. 

  

Before we knew it, we were joined by three of our nieces, who walked the 1/8th mile from the white farmhouse to join in the potato dig. They had come from digging potatoes with their own parents not one hour earlier, but enthusiastically helped us up and down the rows by finding the biggest and most unusual looking taters to add to our bag. In no time at all, we filled the bag much past our initial intent and had to call the search party to a close. With 6 pairs of helping hands, the abundance of food will last us a solid few months. 

  

Again, I am thankful for the generosity of our family in sharing the feast without any help from us during the season. We were able to share a 30 pound box of tomatoes which mutually helped us out. 

We intended to eat potato soup that evening for supper but by the time we were back in Oshkosh it was already 6pm and the kids were clawing at the windows for food. Poor planning, Mom and Dad! We stopped for pizza at Papa Murphy's instead. I know I know! We're not perfect by any means and we do love a good pizza... 

We had warm potato cheese soup for lunch the next day instead. :-)   

One thing I love about British food is that it’s not scary. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy a good walk on the culinary wild side (fufu and fish heads in Ghana, roasted grubs in Thailand, bull testicles in Spain, and sheep brain right here in the Lone Star State) but sometimes, there is such a thing as a pleasant non-surprise. Brits have mastered the meat and potato combo, along with gems like fish and chips, mushy peas, all things pickled, puddings (or “desserts” as we Yanks say) and other yummy treats (short bread? yes, please).

As our time in England drew to a close, Hubs and I took a couple of day trips into Wales. If you’ve never been, Wales is a beautiful country with lots of sheep and unusual linguistic choices. Exhibit A:

 

Right. So. On our jaunt to Hay-on-Wye, “the town of books,” we were delighted by a pop-up farmers’ market but I was absolutely blown away by a food entirely novel to me: flap jacks. Now, as a card carrying American, I grew up with flap jacks as pancakes. Pretty run of the mill stuff. But let me tell you about flap jacks on the other side of the pond: they are so much more delicious, because they are even more full of fat, sugar, and carbs. They’re a little oat bar and if you’re lucky, you can find them topped with chocolate fudge. Wanna fly off to flap jack heaven? Here’s how:

   

Flap Jacks 

Ingredients: 

  * 6 tbsp. syrup

* 2 sticks butter

* 12 oz. oats

Directions:  

• Preheat oven to 350
• Butter a 9″x 13″ pan and line the base with baking parchment.
• Place the syrup and butter into a large saucepan and heat gently until the butter has melted into the syrup and stir well.
• Put the oats into a baking bowl, add a pinch of salt then pour over the butter and syrup mixture and stir to coat the oats.
• Pour the mixture into the prepared pan and spread evenly.
• Bake in the preheated oven for 25 minutes or until golden brown. Remove from the oven while the flapjack is still slightly soft, they will harden once cool.
• Cut the flapjack into bars and let cool completely before serving.

After stuffing myself full of flap jacks, our second day in Wales was spent getting slightly lost on Sugar Loaf Mountain. Check out the kind of creepy Medieval looking forest we found:

 

But I digress…on our way back from Hay, we made a pit stop in Hereford (England side of the border) at the Oak Church butchery, farm shop, and garden centre (“r” before “e” because that’s how they do it). At the sight of fresh vegetables, every cut of meat you could imagine –and probably didn’t know existed–  and a cheese case that made me weak in the knees, I knew we were in just the right place.Though I stuck with a grilled portobello mushroom, Hubs bought a few gorgeous steaks and I gotta say, it was nice to see the animals right there in the field enjoying the open air and  cloudy, damp sky.

 

It was one of our last nights in the UK and we wanted to make a special, slow dinner for Mum and her beau. We decided to start with local cheeses (Herefordshire goat cheese and a firmer cheese called Little Hereford), crackers and a scrumptious assortment of olives stuffed with garlic, and pickled onions stuffed with blue cheese.

Dinner was steak/portobello, with roasted vegetables, and garlic mashed potatoes. We finished up European style with a green salad and, finally, a homemade rhubarb crumble.

Our meal, starting with wine and nibbles, started around 5 o’clock in the afternoon and eased into the latest hours of the night. There was no rush, no better place to be. For  several creeping hours we ignored our phones and instead enjoyed sharing the kitchen, simple food, real face-to-face conversation, and maybe a few too many bottles of wine.

If this is the best of British eating, I’ll take it.

Pickles. Dill, spicy, sweet, you name it. Just typing the word makes my mouth pucker a bit. I’m not afraid to say I have long loved pickles. When I was little, I would drink the brine. Straight. And as a grown-up, I love that same brine mixed with a bit of vodka and a pickle spear (simply called a pickle martini or Rabbi). At around age six or seven, some neighborhood friends and I decided it was high time we left home to eke out a living in the woods. Surviving without adults would be difficult and the others determined toilet paper, flashlights, water, and peanut butter sandwiches were a must. What did I bring to our packing meeting? Pickles. I was that kid that contributed absolutely nothing but pickles. Because what else was there?

Needless to say, I was beyond thrilled to be introduced to pickled onions on my first visit to England last summer. According to the National Onion Association, onions actually have a fascinating history. Not only are they one of the earliest cultivated crops, perhaps even a staple in prehistoric diets, the circle-in-circle design of an onion symbolized eternity to the ancient Egyptians and thus became an object of worship and esteemed funeral offering. The Romans, one of the first to travel with their food in containers, carried onions on their journeys to England and Germany. Today, pickled onions are a traditional addition to English fare, my personal favorite being an appearance on a ploughman’s (hunk of crusty bread, butter, pickled onions, Branston pickle, bit of salad, tomato, and super sharp cheddar or Stilton…a simple lunch that can’t be beat!)

Unfortunately, I’ve not been so brilliant with our own onion crop. We planted yellow and white onions as our first garden crops but tragically, failed to thin the rows. The result? Onions with beautiful tops but coming out of the ground very, very small. So right before leaving for last month’s visit to England, I pulled up our tiny onions after realizing they would be perfect for pickling. I let them set for two weeks while I was away and upon my return, already missing family and friends in my second home, I opened the jar and tried my first batch of pickled onions. I’m happy to report they taste just like in England. Crunchy, salty, refreshing.

Other than their irresistible taste, pickled onions are great because they can be done in the refrigerator (no need for a boiling water bath) and not give you botulism. My father-in-law pickles onions and his steps are simple: 1) peel the onions, 2) sprinkle with salt and let sit for 24 hours 3) rinse and place in jar with brine.

…But for my first attempt I didn’t yet have that not-so-secret English recipe, so I used the refrigerator pickle recipe from The Hip Girls’ Guide to Homemaking: 

Pickled Onions 

Ingredients: 

• 1 cup vinegar (I used white, but the Brits I polled recommended malt)
• 1 cup water
• 1 tbsp. salt
• Spices (I added 2 chopped garlic cloves and some peppercorns, but you can add whatever your pickle-loving heart desires!)

1. Wash and cut up your vegetables and pack them into a clean jar. *You don’t need to buy Ball jars, you can just save and reuse salsa jars, pasta sauce jars, etc. You can also opt to blanch your veggies, though I prefer the crunch of raw.

2. Add spices.

3. Combine in a medium saucepan and bring to a boil the vinegar, water, and salt. *Add sugar for sweet pickles.

4. Pour the boiled brine over the vegetables in the jar.

5. Seal your jar and let them sit in fridge for at least one week (the longer you wait, the better they’ll taste) and voila! Pickled onions!

Anyone else pickling vegetables this summer? What’s your favorite method? 

When I was a young child Christmas at the Family Farm was a special treat.  I was the only grandchild my grandparents saw on a regular basis so I reigned supreme.  Gramdpa scanned his acreage every year for just the right tree to cut for decorating.  The house smelled of pine, cinnamon, Luzianne coffee, and vegetable soup.  I loved all the decorations Grandma pulled out of the old trunk - the cellophane wreath with a red light bulb, handmade ornaments, and especially the bubble lights.  I watched those lights for hours.  It seemed miraculous that the heat could make them bubble and glow.

We strung popcorn and cranberries, listened to Christmas carols on the radio, and trekked through the snow to tend to the animals.  Ben and Blue, Grandpa's mules, paid no mind to the snow.  While the chickens only burrowed into the straw and tried to peck my hands when I "picked" the eggs out from under them.

Christmas dinner lasted practically all day beginning at Grandma's and ending at Mama Sewell's.  They had adjoining farms but in weather like this, we took the car instead of the path.  The best gift was playing with my cousins.  I counted the days until school was out again and I came for my summer visit.

Happy memories at the Family Farm.  I can only hope my seven grandsons have experiences like this to create happy memories in the future.

It's Just a Matter of Time 

You only have a few more days to see the height of patience as the Decorah, Iowa, eagles sit on their three eggs.  The folks at the Raptor Research Project expect the first eaglet to hatch between March 23 and 25.  That’s this week!   If you haven’t been to their webcam, here’s where to find them http://www.ustream.tv/decoraheagles  

I normally write about food, but the youngest granddaughter and I have become enamored with the eagles so this blog is tangentially about food.  Our family caught up with the Decorah eagles last year after the eaglets had hatched and stayed with them until the eaglets fledged and flew the coop, so to speak.   

We started watching this February as the adult eagles’ refurbed their nest.  It is 80 feet up a cottonwood tree.  As we watched one eagle would carefully place a stick in the nest and fly away.  Then the 2^nd bird would fly in and just as carefully move the stick somewhere else.  Since my husband and I have had the same decorating issues with our furniture, I know it’s wrong, but it’s hard not to treat these raptors as humans.

What the 9-year-old granddaughter likes to do is show up, settle in with a salty snack in hand, and check on the progress.  But she is not as patient as an eagle. Since all the eagles have been doing recently is sitting still on their eggs she doesn’t even finish the popcorn before it’s time for her to move on.

Eagle Food 

This year the project has a new camera and the picture is clearer which means once the adults start feeding the eaglets we will really be able to see those fish torn apart.  Perhaps we’ll even be able to identify the small furry rodents that periodically appear in the nest and seem to be a favorite food of raptors.

We’re expecting to enjoy the next couple of months while the eaglets keep us entertained as they grow. 

The Photo is the 2011 Eaglets

As I reread this post, I see that I’m not as far away from “food” as I originally thought.  After all, it seems whenever we have a special family time, food is involved in one way or another.

Dear Grit Family,

We have been so caught up in day to day life that I have not been taking the time to properly update you on the interesting things in our life. Truth be told, much of what we have been doing might not even be interesting to you, so it's been hard for me to justify sending along a blog post. However, I felt that something must be told about our lives and so I've taken a compilation of a few blog posts from my personal writings and put them together here for you, as sort of a rundown of our last two months.

(Early February) Learning to Breathe; Learning to Sew

Since we last spoke, I have dug deeper into creating things and developed an new found love of sewing! As I was hand sewing another felt toy, it occurred to me to look up patterns online of other toys I could make and well, let's just say Pandora knew I was coming. After about an hour of collecting free patterns of felt toys I could make, I realized that I could sew more, and faster, if I used a sewing machine and other materials. I began an Amazon search for books on making toys and that led me to look into popular books on learning the art of sewing from the ground up.

When I was younger, I learned to sew pillows with my mom. She was always mending my father's work jeans and my play clothes, as well as make the occasional window curtain or throw pillow for the house. I didn't really have an interest beyond pillow making and eventually, quit sewing along side her. It became obvious to me that I needed to revisit sewing with Mom and picked up the phone to ask her if she'd like to teach me how to sew...again.

She was delighted to work with me and we began informal lessons at her house, using her machine. With my birthday a week or so away, I asked to get a couple sewing books I'd found online and sure enough, they arrived at my door just after I turned 31. So there it was. A rabbit trail that led me to a destination I never even considered a mere two weeks ago. I now had a deep desire to become a sewist.

It had evolved past the toy making stage into a real desire to make things, useable things, for the family. I have been working through my new book, Stitch by Stitch, which takes you through step by step lessons and each project is not only practical, but builds upon the previous skills. It's incredibly thought out and the author's conversational tone makes me absolutely love it. Plus, it comes with a CD of patterns you can print.

Needless to say, I am excited. I'll take pictures of my projects as I complete them so you can follow my progress. Right now I am completing my fourth and fifth "mini-project" which teaches necessary skills before launching into a full blown sewing assignment.

As well, our family has been learning to Breathe. It's a reference to an early 2000's Switchfoot song, but in our instance, it applies to learning the art of patience before the Lord. We greatly desire another parcel of land to make a farming go of it (though not so large scale as at Foxwood), but financially, it would be very miraculous to make that happen. So we are continuing to work hard at building up Gourmet Grassfed, building up our family and reading as much as we can about homeschooling, sustainable home building and living off the land. Meanwhile, we are actively looking for a place to truly call home. A place in the country, some pasture, a home with a few bedrooms. Nothing fancy. Just some place we can garden, maybe keep a few chickens and return to some self sustainability. We eagerly anticipate a home for us. In the meantime, we're learning to just breathe.

(Mid March) Near Death; Near Life

Something about nearly dying seems to change a person and those around them. A couple weeks ago, Andy's father, Steve (whom I've written about many times on this blog) collapsed at work with a heart attack and had it not been for his quick thinking boss, the proximity to a hospital and a host of other little miraculous things, I'd be posting about a funeral instead. In my family's little world, we got the call while participating in a home school group at a local church. We rearranged plans and whipped the kids into the car and headed to Madison to see the patriarch Sell. At the time, no one was sure what happened when he blacked out, but after several tests and an invasive procedure, they determined he indeed had a heart attack and that he would need a quadruple bypass surgery within days. Thankfully we had a bunch of prayer warriors behind us and the knowledge of modern medicine in our corner. Today, a mere two weeks since the surgery, he is home and resting and even beginning physical therapy a few times per week.

This comes after our niece Maddy was diagnosed with Ewing's Sarcoma, a rare bone cancer in it's fourth stage. At one point during Steve's stay in Madison, Maddy was mere blocks away at the University hospital receiving her next dose of chemotherapy. Steve and Maddie both had laptops in their respective rooms and Skyped each other, laughing if nothing else, at the oddness of the situation.

On top of everything, most people weren't aware that Andy had just had light surgery to remove a "pre-cancerous" growth on his upper back. After Maddie was diagnosed in December, we decided to have a few odd moles and bumps on Andy's back looked at. Most of the biopsies returned negative, but they removed about five moles anyway. One, however, had warning signs of cancer and they wanted to get it out while the gettin' was good. In light of everything else going on, it seemed like the only thing to do.

And so, Andy is in the clear. But seeing his ten year old niece suffer every other week with chemo and his 60 year old father reduced to merely walking about the house every two hours motivated him to make some daily life changes. One can only change themselves after all and while we eat relatively healthily, our lifestyle is pretty sedentary. For the last three weeks, Andy has been working out nearly every morning in our family room to some Maximized Living DVDs. The concept is built on short bursts of serious workout. The whole thing never lasts more than 12 minutes each day, but it's pretty amazing how much body fat is burned and how much strength is built. I encourage him to "get down there and do it" when he needs it, but most mornings he flips that DVD on with no words from me. Elly and Ethan sometimes "workout" with him and that's when I realized that his motivation is being passed on to the next generation.

This is where change happens. In the home, by example and with intentionality.

Hopefully for you, it doesn't take a near tragedy to snap you into shape. Steve is already eating more greens as they have him on the Mediterranean diet. I'm not sure what that means exactly, but when we visited a week ago, we saw more organic items and green leafy veggies in the fridge than we ever had before. I remember making a salad for my in-laws when we first began farming. Everything in that salad had been grown in our own garden. At the time, I had no idea that Steve just didn't eat salads. He politely took a small amount on his plate and found himself amazed that he scooped up seconds. I guess home grown can make a difference. I'm hoping to help him set up a container garden for his deck this summer. That way, the deer and rodents won't get at them and he can easily walk out and pick a tomato or pepper as needed. We are excited for the coming months of recovery on everyone's part.

Maddie still fights on with an amazing hopefulness about her. We have been strapped for disposable income the last couple months and visiting her has been hard to coordinate. We can Skype with her from time to time at least and are thankful for that modern convenience.

In more recent news, Andy and I have been looking for a home of our own. In fact, we've had a couple of months of trying to figure out just what the heck we want and after looking at a few farmettes in the area and whether or not to rent some place or buy some place, we hit upon it. We are going to save up and build some place. Not just any place, but a completely sustainable home that uses the best technology to heat, light and cool nearly completely off the grid. Where, you might ask? Below, a panorama I pieced together in Photoshop looking at the countryside from a hill...

Let me tell you. There is a patch of land that contributed to Foxwood Farm back in the day, but we never really counted it as part of the acreage because 8 miles and the Fox River sat in between the two parcels of land. My parents bought this piece of land a few years before they purchased Foxwood (though it wasn't called that then) in 1978. They lived in the home on the property and Dad cash cropped the roughly 30 acres. When they had opportunity to buy the home farm, he kept the land and sold off the house, plus one acre. For the last 30+ years, it has been cropped for corn, soybeans, wheat and alfalfa (hay). The parcel is on a hill that overlooks the small town of Omro and even the Fox River. It's wonderfully situated with a south facing slope with a rim of woods on the southeastern side. We proposed to my parents that we'd like to eventually purchase an acre and build a home up there. Then, as we were able, we would buy the rest of the farm land. They were immediately receptive and expressed desire to see it go into family hands.

Dovetailing into this conversation is the fact that for the last 5-6 years, Andy has been passively "building" our dream home in his head. It began as a log cabin, then a yurt, then a hybrid of a few other designs, but after seeing the gorgeous slope northwest of Omro, he was able to put all his learning and knowledge together to plan out a bermed home that will serve as our place of refuge for the foreseeable future. Once the home is built, we'll add a couple small outbuildings to house our animals and continue to build our homestead each year as finances allow. Below, you are looking west and the crest of the small hill is "The Other Farm." The trees to the south are the border for the land and the road marks the northern end of the property. It's not much to look at in March, but just wait until June!

Until then, however, we have been given permission to rent a single acre to start a garden and an orchard. We figure it will take an orchard a few years to get established and it would be nice to have it close to functioning when we move in. So, where do we live until then?

We are pretty sure we've found a nice interim place to live in Oshkosh, but since that is not a done deal yet, I will not mention it just yet. Our friends at Grit Magazine have been watching us collect books that deal with sustainable home building, water systems for those not hooked up to a sewer, solar heating books, alternative energy sources for the home and a myriad of other great home design books. They had to know something was up!

So as the 70˚ winds blow across our brown, March landscape, all we can think about is planting and digging in the earth and beginning anew. The thought of having our own stuff back from storage (as pared down as it is) is also very exciting to us. To have chickens again is probably the most thrilling for me. But I digress...there is a lot of planning and dreaming that must happen before any of this comes to pass.

Andy has been named President of Gourmet Grassfed which is really cool until you remember that he is one of two people actually running the company. :-) But this allows him to focus like a laser beam on efficiency and production while Ben takes CEO role and dreams big for the company, and the community. This delineation of roles will be good for them, and has already proven interesting as they learn how to live within their boundaries. I can't wait to see what they come up with next.

(Mid March) Sewing Update 

It's been too long since I updated you on my sewing endeavors. Well, there hasn't been much to report. The last time I dragged the ol' machine out was nearly a month ago. I took these photos of my creations. The paw print here is a study in embroidering with a standard wide stitch. Since I don't have a fancy embroidering sewing machine, this was quite a lesson in spacing and turning fabric and making sure the cloth didn't pull too much. Luckily, we found a plain shirt of Elly's that was a thicker cotton and didn't stretch nearly as much as most shirts would have. She is excited for warmer weather in which she can wear her "new" shirt. She picked out the material from my mom's scraps and since it was a fuzzy leopard print, I thought making a paw would be fun. The lesson asked you to make a heart so that you got a nice combination of straight edges and curved for your first time embroidering. After working on the main pad of the paw, I was wishing I had stuck with the heart. In the end, it's not perfect, but it will hold and from a distance, the paw print looks just fine.
 

My next project was more fun. I was to pick out a cotton print and make a set of four formal napkins. We already use and love cloth napkins in our home, made especially for us courtesy of Sarah.  I was excited to try my own. In this lesson, I learned how to miter edges and work with an iron. I also used an over-stitch to keep the edges of the cut fabric from pulling out. Below is the result. I ended up giving these to Steve for his birthday last week (yes he celebrated in his hospital room!) to use as handkerchiefs. My grandpa on my father's side used handkerchiefs and I was very fond of him. So the fact that my father-in-law uses them is not off-putting to me at all. In fact, it is very endearing.

Dear Grit Family,

Our lives have been an interesting mix of super busy, yet busy with things that might not interest you. However, I felt that an update was needed nonetheless. I am going to put together a few posts from the last month or so to help fill in the gaps on our family's journey. We are always moving, as I'm sure you are too, so there's always something to write about.

~˚~~~~~~~~˚~

(Late February) 

Since we last spoke, I have dug deeper into creating things and developed an new found love of sewing! As I was hand sewing another felt toy, it occurred to me to look up patterns online of other toys I could make and well, let's just say Pandora knew I was coming. After about an hour of collecting free patterns of felt toys I could make, I realized that I could sew more, and faster, if I used a sewing machine and other materials. I began an Amazon search for books on making toys and that led me to look into popular books on learning the art of sewing from the ground up.

When I was younger, I learned to sew pillows with my mom. She was always mending my father's work jeans and my play clothes, as well as make the occasional window curtain or throw pillow for the house. I didn't really have an interest beyond pillow making and eventually, quit sewing along side her. It became obvious to me that I needed to revisit sewing with Mom and picked up the phone to ask her if she'd like to teach me how to sew...again.

She was delighted to work with me and we began informal lessons at her house, using her machine. With my birthday a week or so away, I asked to get a couple sewing books I'd found online and sure enough, they arrived at my door just after I turned 31. So there it was. A rabbit trail that led me to a destination I never even considered a mere two weeks ago. I now had a deep desire to become a sewist.

It had evolved past the toy making stage into a real desire to make things, useable things, for the family. I have been working through my new book, Stitch by Stitch, which takes you through step by step lessons and each project is not only practical, but builds upon the previous skills. It's incredibly thought out and the author's conversational tone makes me absolutely love it. Plus, it comes with a CD of patterns you can print.

Needless to say, I am excited. I'll take pictures of my projects as I complete them so you can follow my progress. Right now I am completing my fourth and fifth "mini-project" which teaches necessary skills before launching into a full blown sewing assignment.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

As well, our family has been learning to Breathe. It's a reference to an early 2000's Switchfoot song, but in our instance, it applies to learning the art of patience before the Lord. We greatly desire another parcel of land to make a farming go of it (though not so large scale as at Foxwood), but financially, it would be very miraculous to make that happen. So we are continuing to work hard at building up Gourmet Grassfed, building up our family and reading as much as we can about homeschooling, sustainable home building and living off the land. Meanwhile, we are actively looking for a place to truly call home. A place in the country, some pasture, a home with a few bedrooms. Nothing fancy. Just some place we can garden, maybe keep a few chickens and return to some self sustainability. We eagerly anticipate a home for us. In the meantime, we're learning to just breathe.

~˚~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~˚~

(Mid-March) 

Something about nearly dying seems to change a person and those around them. A couple weeks ago, Andy's father, Steve (whom I've written about many times on this blog) collapsed at work with a heart attack and had it not been for his quick thinking boss, the proximity to a hospital and a host of other little miraculous things, I'd be posting about a funeral instead. In my family's little world, we got the call while participating in a home school group at a local church. We rearranged plans and whipped the kids into the car and headed to Madison to see the patriarch Sell. At the time, no one was sure what happened when he blacked out, but after several tests and an invasive procedure, they determined he indeed had a heart attack and that he would need a quadruple bypass surgery within days. Thankfully we had a bunch of prayer warriors behind us and the knowledge of modern medicine in our corner. Today, a mere two weeks since the surgery, he is home and resting and even beginning physical therapy a few times per week.

This comes after our niece Maddy was diagnosed with Ewing's Sarcoma, a rare bone cancer in it's fourth stage. At one point during Steve's stay in Madison, Maddy was mere blocks away at the University hospital receiving her next dose of chemotherapy. Steve and Maddie both had laptops in their respective rooms and Skyped each other, laughing if nothing else, at the oddness of the situation.

On top of everything, most people weren't aware that Andy had just had light surgery to remove a "pre-cancerous" growth on his upper back. After Maddie was diagnosed in December, we decided to have a few odd moles and bumps on Andy's back looked at. Most of the biopsies returned negative, but they removed about five moles anyway. One, however, had warning signs of cancer and they wanted to get it out while the gettin' was good. In light of everything else going on, it seemed like the only thing to do.

And so, Andy is in the clear. But seeing his ten year old niece suffer every other week with chemo and his 60 year old father reduced to merely walking about the house every two hours motivated him to make some daily life changes. One can only change themselves after all and while we eat relatively healthily, our lifestyle is pretty sedentary. For the last three weeks, Andy has been working out nearly every morning in our family room to some Maximized Living DVDs. The concept is built on short bursts of serious workout. The whole thing never lasts more than 12 minutes each day, but it's pretty amazing how much body fat is burned and how much strength is built. I encourage him to "get down there and do it" when he needs it, but most mornings he flips that DVD on with no words from me. Elly and Ethan sometimes "workout" with him and that's when I realized that his motivation is being passed on to the next generation.

This is where change happens. In the home, by example and with intentionality.

Hopefully for you, it doesn't take a near tragedy to snap you into shape. Steve is already eating more greens as they have him on the Mediterranean diet. I'm not sure what that means exactly, but when we visited a week ago, we saw more organic items and green leafy veggies in the fridge than we ever had before. I remember making a salad for my in-laws when we first began farming. Everything in that salad had been grown in our own garden. At the time, I had no idea that Steve just didn't eat salads. He politely took a small amount on his plate and found himself amazed that he scooped up seconds. I guess home grown can make a difference. I'm hoping to help him set up a container garden for his deck this summer. That way, the deer and rodents won't get at them and he can easily walk out and pick a tomato or pepper as needed. We are excited for the coming months of recovery on everyone's part.

Maddie still fights on with an amazing hopefulness about her. We have been strapped for disposable income the last couple months and visiting her has been hard to coordinate. We can Skype with her from time to time at least and are thankful for that modern convenience.
 

~˚~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~˚~

In more recent news, Andy and I have been looking for a home of our own. In fact, we've had a couple of months of trying to figure out just what the heck we want and after looking at a few farmettes in the area and whether or not to rent some place or buy some place, we hit upon it. We are going to save up and build some place. Not just any place, but a completely sustainable home that uses the best technology to heat, light and cool nearly completely off the grid. Where, you might ask?

Let me tell you. There is a patch of land that contributed to Foxwood Farm back in the day, but we never really counted it as part of the acreage because 8 miles and the Fox River sat in between the two parcels of land. My parents bought this piece of land a few years before they purchased Foxwood (though it wasn't called that then) in 1978. They lived in the home on the property and Dad cash cropped the roughly 30 acres. When they had opportunity to buy the home farm, he kept the land and sold off the house, plus one acre. For the last 30+ years, it has been cropped for corn, soybeans, wheat and alfalfa (hay). The parcel is on a hill that overlooks the small town of Omro and even the Fox River. It's wonderfully situated with a south facing slope with a rim of woods on the southeastern side. We proposed to my parents that we'd like to eventually purchase an acre and build a home up there. Then, as we were able, we would buy the rest of the farm land. They were immediately receptive and expressed desire to see it go into family hands.
 

A view of the 25 acres from the east, looking west.
Dovetailing into this conversation is the fact that for the last 5-6 years, Andy has been passively "building" our dream home in his head. It began as a log cabin, then a yurt, then a hybrid of a few other designs, but after seeing the gorgeous slope northwest of Omro, he was able to put all his learning and knowledge together to plan out a bermed home that will serve as our place of refuge for the foreseeable future. Once the home is built, we'll add a couple small outbuildings to house our animals and continue to build our homestead each year as finances allow.
 

On the hill looking towards the road, north.
Until then, however, we have been given permission to rent a single acre to start a garden and an orchard. We figure it will take an orchard a few years to get established and it would be nice to have it close to functioning when we move in. So, where do we live until then?

We are pretty sure we've found a nice interim place to live in Oshkosh, but since that is not a done deal yet, I will not mention it just yet. Our friends here at Grit Magazine have been watching us collect books that deal with sustainable home building, water systems for those not hooked up to a sewer, solar heating books, alternative energy sources for the home and a myriad of other great home design books. They had to know something was up!

So as the 70˚ winds blow across our brown, March landscape, all we can think about is planting and digging in the earth and beginning anew. The thought of having our own stuff back from storage (as pared down as it is) is also very exciting to us. To have chickens again is probably the most thrilling for me. But I digress...there is a lot of planning and dreaming that must happen before any of this comes to pass.

Andy has been named President of Gourmet Grassfed which is really cool until you remember that he is one of two people actually running the company. :-) But this allows him to focus like a laser beam on efficiency and production while Ben takes CEO role and dreams big for the company, and the community. This delineation of roles will be good for them, and has already proven interesting as they learn how to live within their boundaries. I can't wait to see what they come up with next.

~˚~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~˚~

 I have not sewed anything else since these and while I long to get back on the machine nearly daily, I have since returned my mother's sewing machine to her house, realizing that until I can have a permanent spot for sewing, it's just not going to happen. In order to sew these napkins I had to have Drew watch the kids in the basement nearly a whole afternoon and that's just not practical. I think we'll be able to set something up in our new place so that I can continue on my learning journey. That's all for now!

Hello readers! My name is Marie, and I enjoy talking about the rural lifestyle. My husband, Jim, and I have always been “homesteaders at heart,” though most of our life has been spent in urban and suburban settings. We bought our first acreage in 1981, moved several times for job changes, and then found our “finally farm” in 2007.
 

 

Though they live elsewhere, our children and grandchildren share this slice of heaven with us. They come and go as they can, participating in farm projects and working on their own cabins and future home sites. Jim and I feel blessed to have great relationships with all our family members: the four that we raised, the four that married them, and our baker’s dozen of beautiful grandchildren.

Together we spent three years developing our property before Jim and I moved here full time in 2010. Gradually it’s all coming together. We now have a small home, a large utility barn, a chicken coop, and a garden shed/greenhouse. Two Maremma sheepdogs and a small flock of laying hens live on the farm all year long.

We raise meat chickens in the summer and have plans to add beef cattle and pigs to the mix. The family has planted an orchard which promises future fruits and berries. We have a nice sized vegetable garden and preserve some of our bounty by canning, freezing, and dehydrating. It’s a wonderful feeling to sit down to a meal that originated right here on the farm.

 

A family of adventurers, we like to try new and old methods of farming, gardening, and homemaking. Our parents and grandparents set examples for us, and we desire to live close to the land and be good stewards of it as well. Now we’re seeing another generation follow suit as even our young grandchildren jump right in and help with animals and gardens.

Our projects reveal the engineer here, the administrator there, and creativity in many forms. The complementary interests and skills of all eight adults result in a myriad of ideas. We win some and lose some, with our share of projects that worked better in our heads than in real life. But we also see many successes and have a lot of fun.

 

Though the farm chores and other activities keep us busy, I always make time for writing. With other family members I review kitchen equipment at The Homesteader Kitchen and share practical how-to’s at The Homesteader School. We also offer encouragement and tips for the urban-to-rural transition at Rural Living Today.

And now I’ll be writing here at Grit about our journey along the rural roads of life. It’s truly an adventure, and I look forward to sharing it with you! 

I like this shot of Liam and Ethan rolling around together and reaching for the camera woman. Life isn't always this rosy for these two boys. Ethan is nearly three and hitting some cognition milestones in which he's realizing that life can be his fault, too. What I mean by that is he's figuring out that bad things can happen and it just might be because of his actions (a time out after pushing over Liam, a bruised knee after running around a corner too fast, time spent alone in his room after throwing a tantrum over something he already knows we won't give him). Needless to say, he's really pushing the boundaries we set in this family, as a way to understand this new-found realization. Liam is pushing physical limits by crawling everywhere, achieving stairway mastery (both up and down) and cruising like crazy. He has taken a few hesitant steps, numbering no more than five in a row, for the last month. He's been fooling all his immediate relatives into thinking "it'll be any day now!" when he keeps relying on the tried and true crawl.

Together, Liam and Ethan are definitely attracted to each others' boyness. They can be found plotting little boy schemes in hidden areas and the gentle beginnings of wrestling have already begun.
 

While Elly is invariably a sister, she's also a little mommy to her brothers and therefore has a different sort of relationship with them. She adores her baby brother and loves the fact that Ethan is now old enough to pretend and play-act with her and her elaborate imaginings. She cares for Liam by "helping" him more than she should and gets super concerned if he nears anything that might resemble trouble.
 

Liam just thinks all this playing and mothering and brother scuffling is par for the course. It's certainly been interesting as a mother to watch all these developments for each child. With our ability to be home as much as we are, Andy and I have been deeply pondering the best way to raise our children. We are unique to most families in that we both work from home nearly all the time. We are blessed by this and actively try not to take it for granted.

It was just last week, as I struggled with our home school routine for Elly, that I questioned how I would manage homeschooling her full time next year (for kindergarten). I've been struggling not only with finding a regular time slot in which the schooling takes place, but also the manner in which we school. I picked up a workbook to help Elly with her letters initially, as she was interested in learning the alphabet in writing. And at first, there was great enthusiasm. But it didn't take long for her to become frustrated with the nature of the workbook...and the way I must have been teaching her. I'm fond of saying that there's a reason I didn't go to college for a teaching degree. I just don't have the patience, let alone the talent for lesson plans, that would go into a formal classroom.

I began to question our choice to keep Elly home. While there is no requirement for 4K or even kindergarten in our state, soon I would need to be sure what we wanted for her...public school or home. I admittedly had been feeling a lot of pressure from the circles we run in, to keep her home and out of "the system." And when I talked it over with Andy last week, saying I just couldn't keep this up with Elly and that we needed to send her to "regular" school for Kindergarten...something inside me said, "You've got to keep looking."

I then recalled a book I had picked up from the local library on a subject I had referenced to me by my friend (and fellow homeschooling mother) Rita. It was sitting on the shelf for the last four weeks untouched due to the holidays and suddenly I knew I had to read it. The book was all about the concept of Unschooling.

Unschooling is a term that is very new to me, but as I read through the questions and answers in this particular book, it became abundantly clear to me this was a direction we could take Elly's (and the other children's) home education.

Are you familiar with Unschooling? The idea stems from a general disdain for one-size-fits-all, lowest-common-denominator Western education system most people entrust their children with. I was already half way there just in the simple fact that we wanted to home school in the first place. In reading this book, I learned that there is a whole other niche facet of home schoolers who Unschool their kids and they do it successfully. A definition of Unschooling, while pretty broad, might better be named Interest-Led Schooling or Child-Led Education.

On Wikipedia, a definition goes like this: “While there is significant variation in what is meant by “unschooling”, generally speaking, unschoolers believe that the use of standard curricula and conventional grading methods, as well as other features of traditional schooling, are counterproductive to the goal of maximizing the education of each child. Instead, unschoolers typically allow children to learn through their natural life experiences, including game play, household responsibilities, and social interaction.”

The book I was reading was pretty extreme, to the point of living an unschooled life all the way down to letting your child decide if they want to go to the doctor when they've got a broken limb. This author never punished her kids, all discipline was learned through interaction with the parents and talking out issues. I'm no expert in parenting, and I have no idea of the set up in this person's true home (not the one she portrayed to build her case for unschooling), but I do know that talking to a toddler does little to quell the storm of boundary pushing. We aren't spank-happy here, but we know that our babies are much happier when we are consistent with rules and limits.

So while I was excited at the thought of allowing Elly to choose her education, I was unsure it could coincide with our Christian faith. Andy was very wary of this new path I was learning about and encouraged me to dig deeper than this book. I asked myself...and then Google...can Christianity and Unschooling coexist?

My answer came in the form of a website. Called Christian Unschooling, I don't think I could have found a more blunt and specific answer! It is a resource page for unschoolers and those who are thinking of unschooling. It is a collection of blog submissions from unschooling mothers and fathers who have "been there, done that" in an arena of homeschooling that is a minority within a minority. It was heartening and interesting and exciting all at once. One specific post caught my attention right away, "Following the Rabbi." In it, a mother talked about how she justified her unschooling in the midst of evangelical 'persecution' (for lack of a better word). She talked about a book she came across that described the world in which Jesus lived and the way children were educated in ancient Israel. You'll have to read it for yourself (the link is above). I came to the conclusion that this route would definitely work within our family.

For instance, one of my struggles with Elly is letter memorization. She gets some letters and others just float right out of her head the moment we reach the next letter. She deeply desires to "write" things such as people's names, birthday messages and even short stories. She can write her own name very well and while she has this interest, learning the letters conventionally has taken the spark out of her passion. I was not helping the matter. It was hard for me to understand her way of learning as it seemed she enjoyed completing the pages of the workbook (which was colorful and varied from page to page), but her lack of retaining the letter knowledge was troubling me. This is the girl who will randomly pull a memory from nearly three years ago and tell us in great detail what we all were doing. When she was 18 months old.

So how is it that the letter M is so mysteriously out of her cognition? Why can't she keep C and D from getting mixed up? How is it that the small letters are like a foreign language to her while the capitols are nearly always retained?

Without going into too much detail, we've had many a home school session end with both of us frustrated with the other and sometimes in tears.

I knew that homeschooling wouldn't be a breeze, but the last thing I ever wanted was to keep my daughter from her innate love of learning. This is why I knew we had to stop on the path we were on. Why did I choose to take her out of public education if I was going to be teaching her the exact same way the public education dictates?

For us, it didn't make sense.

For us, unschooling did. When I showed Andy this Christian site, he and I spent hours reading the blog posts and evaluating the validity of the opinions generated by the experienced unschooling click. Much of it we agreed with. There were a few times that Andy stopped short; this is the way he would have thrived had it been an option in his childhood. Learning in bursts of interest, following desires to learn more, self-directing further education in a certain subject: all of these things he does on a daily basis! Andy has long struggled with not obtaining a degree in the education system of college. But he has never stopped learning. Our local librarian can tell you he's studied soap making, underground housing, distilling essential oils, recycled building materials, Quantum Physics and organic animal husbandry for the small-scale farm. He's studied piano, computer programming and calligraphy; taught himself how to can and preserve food, and continually stretches his culinary talents with long-studied French recipes or crazy new ideas from The Underground Food Collective.

Everything I've mentioned here was done outside of a classroom. Some of it will be immediately applicable. Other aspects of his interests may come into play later. Still others may only be an interest.

But that is the essence of Unschooling, of Interest-Led Learning. It is learning that births from each individual's natural passions. A quote from Christian Unschooling sums it up pretty well:

"As Christians, we are called to:

“Train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not depart from it.” Proverbs 22:6

Because of this we look to God to show us the way to train our child, and allow them the freedom in Christ to find the way that He has laid out for them.  In other words, we train them about Him and His ways, help them develop Godly character and trust God to show us and them what they will need in order to do His will in this life.  In order to do this we look to what He is doing in their lives and the interest and passions He has given them, and gently guide them and follow their lead in the directions, knowing that HIS plan for them is better than anything we could come up with.  You could say that Christian unschooling is God led instead of child led, as we watch and help the children grow towards His best for them, using what He has placed in them as a guide.  It is definitely trusting Him to show us the right way, whether it includes book work or not, whether it seems “traditional” or not.

The best part of being a Christian unschooler is not being bound by other’s opinions of what home education should be but being free in Christ to grow together with our children into what God has called for us as individuals and as families. We can adjust to where He has us, keep our eyes on Him, and go where He leads."

And so...with much prayer and meditation, we will continue to research this possible path for our family. Indeed, it has already taken hold in some of our daily life routines.

Just about the same time I checked out the Unschooling book from the library, I also came across a slew of resource books on playing with your 2-5 year olds. Why, I thought, I have 2-5 year olds in my house! What can I learn about that I don't know from life experience? (see, the desire borne out of experience, fueled by a passion to learn more) So I checked out a bunch of books on how to play games and make up songs and do crafts with your pre-school kids. In that mess of books was one in particular that stood out to me. Called "Creative Play for your Toddler: Steiner Waldorf expertise and toy projects for 2 – 4s," this book gives detailed instructions for hand making various kinds of toys for you children. These toys are not just random things made from a piece of cardboard and string. They are thought-provoking and imaginative toys that cause the child to use his creativity to play and pretend. The Waldorf education is largely based on this sort of early childhood experience, mimicking adult interactions within a safe home environment and allowing the budding emotions of the child to safely play out with simple cloth or wooden toys.
 

 
 

 We had my brother's family over for a small gathering. Liam enjoyed the attention...
 

In conclusion, this winter is providing us ample opportunity to grow deeper and inward and focus more directly on our family at our feet. It has been one of the most rewarding things that I've worked on in a long time and I am extremely grateful for the time I've been allowed to seek my direction in this. Thank you Lord, for our children! Thank you for all you are teaching me in my continuing education.
 

Something we've been learning over and over again this year is that nothing is certain and few things are permanent. A year ago at this time, we were gearing up for a new baby in a place we were sure we'd be living for another decade or so. Our home was decorated with lights and homemade ornaments and banners of Christmas cheer. The whole house had a faint scent of cookies, cinnamon and savory dishes. Christmas music had been in our home since the end of October and throughout our minds and hearts was a great anticipation of the holiday season.

And as you well know, we acted and God acted and we reacted and so forth. Which brought us here.

This year, we had several factors keeping us from our traditional seasonal celebration of Thanksgiving and Christmas. Living in a borrowed home, with very few of our accouterments and the relative inability to decorate the way we are familiar, left us a little out of sorts by the time Thanksgiving rolled around. Another factor is that while we are free to entertain guests here, we don't feel comfortable doing it on a grand scale (like a formal holiday meal) out of respect of our home-owner roommate. Andy and I LOVE to entertain and have frequent guests, so this aspect of our holiday luster was also a bit dimmed. And finally, a factor that we could not have controlled no matter where in Wisconsin we lived: this was the first year in about a decade (according to my flawed memory) that we've had a BROWN Christmas. No snow to speak of the whole month of December.

It's hard to get "into the season" when the things that you normally surround yourself with are missing. But as we pondered our surroundings and watched as the nation geared up for that annual whirlwind of tinsel, spending and Fa La La La La, it was much easier for us to take the proverbial step back and really evaluate exactly what it was we missed so much.

In early December, we made the trek to Oshkosh's EAA Airventure Museum for their free Christmas celebration. The annual event was the first for our attendance and we couldn't have been happier. The kids love airplanes, especially Ethan, so the festively decorated grounds were truly magical for the older two. The photos here were taken with Andy's new work phone ... the iPhone. (So much for getting rid of "smart phones!") Below, Ethan and Elly stand at the top of the staircase leading down into the heart of the museum, in which full sized, once-flown airplanes are parked, suspended or jetting across the walls. There were lights and hundreds of people and competing Christmas choirs and cookies to completely overwhelm all five senses.

They couldn't believe they were actually able to sit in a real cock pit. We couldn't either, since this particular one had seen action in WWII.

As the evening wore on, we waited in line just like the rest of the good American families for a chance to have our kids sit on Santa's lap (who, by the way, showed up in a helicopter). We hadn't done this before, really. We randomly ran into a Santa at Piggly Wiggly during Elly's second year and we had her photo taken with him. She freaked out. It wasn't a cute photo. While waiting in line, it became more and more obvious to me that I was the only one in the family that was truly interested enough to wait a full 1.5 hours amongst other families. But we stayed to the end, despite all three kids having meltdowns at some point (though not simultaneously, thankfully). And then, after all the hype, when it was Elly and Ethan's turn to hop on Santa Pop, Elly absolutely froze and refused to move an inch forward. Ethan ran into his arms and I placed Liam up there, too. Elly just stared him down and wouldn't even talk about her fear (very unlike her).

The boys were pretty cute. The photo below shows Ethan just after being posed the question: "What do you want for Christmas?"
 

I think he said thoughtfully, "Ummm....a airplane..."
Liam just tolerated the visit, which lasted less than a minute.

Afterwards, Elly lamented her shock and awe of Santa with tears and regret. I assured her that we could write him a letter in which she expressed her Christmas wishes. That seemed to help.

By the end of the night, we were worn out and most of the festivities were drawing to a close anyway. While the night itself had been super special for our family, it got Andy and I questioning just how far we'd take this Santa bit when we're really trying to teach our kids what the meaning of Christmas is in our faith. It's a fine line, in my opinion and going out of our way to perpetuate the fantasy seemed to undermine the true meaning of the holiday. I know that Andy is personally against teaching them about Santa and while we sat and chatted with some friends over a Christmas dinner a few weeks later, it finally came out in the open. We had never actually talked about this subject before! It amazed us that something like this had never crossed our plates, but it made sense, too. Elly was finally at the age when things like this would make sense and her analytical mind asked a myriad of questions about the logistics of Santa and his world. In the answeringing was when we began to question how far we'd take this.

Elly loves Christmas. She loves decorating and carols and the colors and lights of Christmas. Santa seemed to be a natural fit in her aesthetic Yuletide world.
 

And this is where things got real for us.

Trees and decor and Santas aside, we realized that God was pushing us to find Truth in this commercialized madness our culture puts forth. We came to the realization that we had bought into the trappings of "Xmas" just as wholeheartedly as any person with any faith (or no faith) would have done. There was nothing in our home that would have differentiated our celebration from anyone else's. Even in previous years I've posted about our Christmas traditions and what we do every Thanksgiving and every Christmas in our small family unit.

Yet this year, here we sat, in a home that looked just like it did in the beginning of November and would look the same at the end of February: No wrapped gifts, no lights, not a single partridge in a pear tree.

Outside, the browning grass and dormant trees served up a constant reminder of personal ideals and how they might be shaken up this year: No snow.

Lest you think I'm playing the victim card, I must bring this full circle now. In the stripping of Andy's and my personal identifyers of "Christmas-as-we-know-it," God was able to effectively cast off our cultural Christmas and cause us to truly find what matters.

The birth of a tiny baby boy two millennium ago, with angelic fanfare and shepherd audience; a birth so moving and earth-shaking, people remember it world wide to this day. Our Savior has come. Emmanuel!

The week before Christmas, we got another reminder of what matters most. We learned that our 10 year old niece Maddie was suddenly diagnosed with stage 4 bone cancer. Andy's whole family was turned upside down in a single moment and will be forever changed.

As we gathered together for the Sell family Christmas, it was a somber day with pockets of tears and pockets of laughter. The atmosphere was covered in solemn understanding of the adults and blissful glee amongst the cousins. We even attempted to get a photo of all of them sitting together, as shown below. Left to right, Maddie, Sammie, Ethan, Liam, Wyatt, Elly.
 

After that day, I pretty much didn't care one bit about our non-decorated house, the snow-less yard and the fact that most of our gifts were opened in other people's homes. All that stuff was just stuff. Before we learned about Maddie's cancer, I had this blog growing in my mind. But it was all wrong, all wrong. I didn't realize it, but I was going to take this issue of not having our Danny Kay "White Christmas" from a victim viewpoint ... sort of like we got robbed of something. I had completely missed the point. And I'm not saying this thing with Maddie happened so that I might change a silly blog post, but God's timing with things is infinitely out of our sphere of understanding and recognition. At any rate, I think I finally Got It.

It's family that matters. It's faith that matters. And most of all, as I learned this Advent season, God really only cares about where your heart is at. Do you know where your heart lies?

As we prepare to end this revolution of the Earth for 2011 and begin anew in 2012, I'm quite certain that the Sells will be much more focused on finding what matters most amongst the distractions of this world. And working together with all our might to help a little girl overcome the odds.

We love you Madelyn. Our prayers are with you every single day.

When I last wrote, I was sitting comfortably in a Bergstrom dealership, sipping coffee and eating cookies while our ten year old van was getting brand new tires and brakes.

It's been over a month since I wrote and there's a reason. Just two hours after I drove away with hundreds of dollars worth of work, a full tank of gas and a few errands to run, I was rear-ended on the highway by a loaded gravel truck. It was an accident that couldn't be avoided.

Before you worry, I am ok. There are many blessings in the event, such as the fact that the truck that hit me completely demolished the rear end of the van, but left the brand new tires unscathed. I was able to drive off the highway and effectively use the van normally. The kids were not with me (a rarity these days). I had enough sense when I saw the truck about to hit me to accelerate forward, thereby reducing the impact to both the van and my body. The man that hit me was very shaken and apologetic and made sure his insurance assumed full responsibility for the accident. When we learned two weeks later that our van was deemed totaled by the other insurance company, we were greatly saddened. Almost to the day, we had purchased that van three years earlier; our first family vehicle when we were expecting Ethan and about to take a road trip to Colorado. (And visit GRIT!)

But there is a blessing in the van being totaled as well. Instead of a fixed up, high mileage vehicle, we got a check in the mail for an amount just $300 under what we paid for it in 2008 (and 65,000 fewer miles!). Starting at 1:30 pm, September 30th (the time I got hit) and culminating about a month later, God put our family on a lesson-journey into the world of our hearts concerning material possessions, family and where our true values lie.

When I said the accident was unavoidable, I did mean that no matter what, God was going to allow our van to be liquidated. We had just stuck $700 into it and suddenly it was taken away. Yet God did it in such a gentle way. I mean it! The brand new tires, with rims, were able to be salvaged and will likely sell by themselves for a few hundred dollars. Any other vehicle hitting the van would have taken out the rear axle in a crash like that. And then there's my own well-being. God allowed the van to be totaled in such a way that I am only experiencing minor whiplash effects, and my chiropractor care is being funded by the truck driver's insurance.

At the end of September, the perspective of Becky Sell was this: a good van, a nice back-up sedan we bought from our friends in July, a really nice TV, a giant storage unit full of great stuff waiting to fill a home and a great family. And...the treasure of my heart in all the wrong places.

When God allowed me to get slammed from behind, he also laid me open to do some work on my heart and priorities. Let me ask you something. If your home were burning to the ground and you only had ten minutes (I'm being generous) to get all that mattered out of the blaze, what would you grab for? It's a rhetorical question because anyone with a balanced mindset will immediately speak all the names of the people in their home, followed by pets and then, if there's time, the photo albums or computer or home videos. And after that, unless you live alone and have all your personal memories stuck in one easy-to-access box, there would not be time for more.

Or what if you became a refugee for some reason? Flood? Tornado? War? Are you going to lament the loss of the 42" plasma TV or genuine leather sofa-sleeper? Do I need to pound this point home any farther?

Maybe. I know God did for me. Now, rest assured, I am with the 98% of the people who answered "people" not "things" in case of a house fire. There's no question. But my lesson was of a deeper sort. A more everyday application, if you will.

The van was to awaken me to the futility of things. Things can be given and taken away in a moment. So why surround yourself with things? For a sense of accomplishment? Security? Status? Maybe a bit of all of those reasons. Now, to be sure, some "things" are necessary for running a household. I don't need to list what I think is necessary because everyone might have a different idea.

In this season of frugality (in most of our homes), being aware of excess spending and where the money is going is super important. Andy and I have been trying to be mindful of every financial decision we make, even to the point of not driving into town more than needed to save on gas. But it wasn't enough, at least not for our family.

One Saturday after the van got smashed, I went to a women's conference with my mother. She paid for the ticket because she wanted me to hear the keynote speaker. This was the sort of Christian women's conference where you might expect to see the stereotypical, well-dressed middle aged women and their older, even-better-dressed counterparts with bluish hair and giant broaches on their collar. Before I even arrived, I admit that I was skeptical. Blessings on my mom, but I didn't really want to go. I had taken a full Saturday about a month before to attend a free women's retreat, and I got a lot out of that day. I fully understand a person's need to fill themselves spiritually with these sorts of conferences from time to time, but I wanted to be aware of the sacrifice being made on the other end for me to take a whole day "off" and be by myself. And while this women's retreat was only a half day, it still caused a lot of shuffling around of the kids in order for me to go, as this was during Andy's time to sit at a farmer's market for Gourmet Grassfed.

Having preconceived notions of how it was going to be, I came into the mega-church where it was being held and saw instantly the fulfillment of my shallow expectations. Kind looking matriarchs of all shapes and colors milled about the breakfast buffet, daintily picking up mini muffins and fruit slices, placing them onto their tiny plates while secretly hoping no one else thought they took too much. (Side note: One thing I dislike about women and eating in public ... just admit that you are hungrier than you are and go back for seconds! Seriously, no one makes a reasonable breakfast out of one mini-bagel and a coffee. Get over yourself, who cares what people think of you and remember that every other woman in the room is wishing they could run back up and grab the normal sized slice of coffee streusel cake and scarf it down.)

I fully admit that I was also battling with feelings of being wasteful with time and resources. There is a syndrome within the modern church that is probably not addressed very often ... if at all. I call it Conference Addiction. It's when a woman or a man attends as many of the faith-building, Bible-teaching, Spirit-filled getaways as they can and then never do anything to apply what they've learned in their everyday life. I don't know what it is, but the few retreats I've attended have impacted me in deep ways. I always take something from that day and with work, bring it into my daily life. However, I have had conversations with people who have attended the same function who are unable to comment on how they'll make this work "on Monday morning" (when real life hits). These are the same folks who were at the last three retreats and raved about the food and the music.

It just burns me. How much money is spent on these people to attend these very beneficial functions when nothing is learned? How much better that money would be spent helping folks without homes or teens in abusive relationships? How did the church get to this point of self-serving "feel good" conference attendance while people in their own neighborhood go without heat or food this month? Of course this is a generalization and not everyone who goes to a church conference abuses the intent of the teaching within. Not everyone spends frivolously to earn points amongst their peers for annual retreat attendance. And I know for a fact that a lot of lives are changed for the better from going to even a single Bible study.

I just had to vent that and explain my hesitancy for going to another Saturday conference in one month, let alone one that charged what this one did for three hours of worship and learning. And yet, a small part of me was very drawn to the speaker and what she might bring these women and myself. An audience of nearly 400 women is not something I would relish taking on, so I already gave Ms. Speaker credit for that.

I can tell you that the first half of the day, I was praying hardily against the skeptical and "know-it-all" spirit that seemed to be blocking my intake of anything worthwhile. When we returned from a break, I was able to really listen to the speaker and take in exactly what she was saying. Her emphasis, at least in my ears, was the fact that God the Father only desires relationship with his children, and we are more concerned with what the people around us think of ourselves, our lives, our kids, our jobs, our homes, our cars. That's the incredibly abridged form of the message I heard, but it was enough to send me home with a crazy idea brewing in my head.

I greeted Andy that afternoon in a house that we call temporary home, surrounded by possessions not our own, in a neighborhood full of people who are not our neighbors. I asked him if he would be ok if we sold off most of our things in our storage unit. He looked at me with a half smile and said, "Baby, if that's what you think we need to do in order to be closer to God, I'm all in."

God had been cultivating Andy's heart that week as well. A few days prior to this women's conference, he got a phone call that there was a family emergency and he might lose a dear member of his family. For 24 hours, it was touch and go, and Andy began a sincere time of wrestling with the implications of a possible death. In the end, he found that God was so very with him in this time of fear and sorrow, that he no longer feared or wept. He was driving home from work the following day and the sun broke from the clouds of daylong rain to reveal a brilliant sunset on the horizon. A song came on that spoke to his hurting heart and as he came around the corner of our street, he saw his family playing with the wet leaves on the driveway. We had just gotten home from somewhere and instead of rushing the children inside, I let them rake up the yellow leaves from the road since it had suddenly stopped raining. I knew Andy was on his way home, so when he drove up I wasn't surprised. He stepped out of the car and just wept in my arms. It was a beautiful and tender and heart wrenching moment. Our children rode tricycles about our feet and the warmth of an October sunset permeated the landscape. Andy later told me that God was giving him a visual lesson in seeing our family jumping over leaf piles in the street: for so long we have yearned for a home of our own, a place where we can call home and though we are fully grateful for our ability to stay with this friend of ours, we had felt a burden of missing the things that define us. With Andy's family in jeopardy, his perspective was suddenly shifted. Upon turning the corner to the house we call temporary home, God spoke to his heart. Home is wherever this family is. If home is in a tiny apartment or a sweeping vista farm, it is not complete without the people who make it. Suddenly he was at complete and true peace with whatever the outcome in his family's emergency. If he lost that person to death, then it was not in vain. And if the person pulled through, there would be room for more and more love in that person's life brought about by the infinite and abundant love of our Father above.

The family emergency had a happy ending the next day.

Our family, however, was forever changed. Vans being smashed, people nearly dying, a conference speaking Truth amidst complacency. The message was beginning to come loud and clear. We are not the culmination of our things. They do not determine our worth. And even more extreme, the people in our lives are of such prime value to us, but they do not determine our worth or our security. Nothing is secure or of value except our relationship with God. It's the foundation of everything else. By having a clear understanding of the way he loves us, cares about us and disciplines us, only then can we turn our focus to the valuables in our physical life. Our family, our children, our friends, our neighbors. Did I mention the car we drive or the TV we watch? Not so much.

Two Saturdays after the van got smashed and I was meditating on this idea of selling off everything but the clothes on our back and utensils in the kitchen.  A two-fold reason for this is that we are paying a monthly fee to hold on to these items that are going totally unused. Obviously we won't be living in this borrowed home for the rest of our lives (it's on the market for sale, so it's only a matter of time), but no matter where we live, God made it pretty clear that it's not the things that make the home. I can live with eating Japanese style and making a bed on a mattress with no frame if it means losing the trappings of this world to focus better on Christ. The second aspect of my growing desire to dump the junk is that Andy and I are enslaved to a credit card debt that we haven't been able to shake since before Elly was born. Throughout our various life adventures, it's been hard for us to devote a large chunk of money to pay it down and with moves, babies, LIFE, the debt has just sat on us, draining us every month with interest charges. I'm not defending any actions that might have caused the debt to get to this size, I just know it started small and grew subtly over the years. Having the card was a form of security and we see now that it took the place of faith. What a price we're paying now. Literally.

And then I see all the nice things in our storage unit, piled to the ceiling doing nothing. A wise sale of most of those items would liquidate the value and allow it to be placed against this enslaving debt we owe. It sounds crazy to many people. I'm sure you think I've gone off the deep end, but that's ok. God spoke to me three more times before Andy and I decided to take action and give this idea a green light.

Three Saturdays after the van got smashed, I took the kids to the last farmer's market of the season in Oshkosh. We just cashed the check for our van and took some of the money to buy our Thanksgiving turkey from one of our farmer friends who raises pastured turkeys. Andy was at his Gourmet Grassfed booth and the kids and I set up shop there. The way the farmer's market is set up this year is that two long city blocks on Main Street are shut down with vendors on either side. Andy and Ben happened to have one of the very end spots on the south side of the market, meaning normal downtown traffic is dissuaded from plunging into their tent by a few orange saw horses and cones. It's a good spot as many people enter and exit the market from that side, but it's also very close to traffic and we have to keep a close eye on the kids when we visit.

At the end of the day, Andy and I were helping a neighboring vendor take down their tents while Liam sat in the stroller and Ethan and Elly played nearby. At one point, Ethan fell on the road and came crying to me about his scuffed hands. I was presently distracted because I saw a man across the street about to pack up his last bucket of beautiful apples and I wanted to grab them. I quickly assured Ethan that his hands would be ok, then grabbed the double stroller, Elly and Liam in tow and crossed the street. We chatted with the man briefly before purchasing the apples and walking the 20 feet back to Andy as he scurried about packing up. At this time, most the vendors on Main Street were already gone and the police officer directing traffic was very close to opening up the street for cars. The urgency was palpable and everyone left packing was doing so in direct-focused haste.

Suddenly I was stricken in my gut the way a mother just KNOWS something is wrong. Andy brushed by me. "Hey," I said. "Where's Ethan?"

Expecting Andy to point to someplace I couldn't see, my heart began to pound when he stopped short and looked at me wide-eyed. "He wasn't with you?"

"No!" I parked the stroller and instructed Elly to stand by Liam and guard the turkey and apples. I walked about our immediate space and found nothing. I called his name and heard no response. I watched Andy run halfway up the block weaving in and out of the few remaining vendors' cars and piles of goods. Ethan was no where to be seen.

It was at this point that something in me started to work in slow motion. I began having thoughts about life without Ethan and other extreme ideas of what happened to him. I noticed silly things going on about me, like the fact that the Hmong family selling pumpkins down the street still hadn't picked up their tarp and the police officer was doodling something in his notebook. One of the vendors had some similar aged children running around down the block and every time I heard them laugh, my stomach tightened. It was like torture hearing the sound of a carefree child when my own was missing and who knows what was happening to him right then.

Andy disappeared into a corner store and I walked over to the policeman to describe what my son had been wearing that day. He began taking notes feverishly and grabbed his walkie-talkie to call in the description. I vaguely wondered how I would be able to drive home that day with Ethan's carseat empty. Would Andy and I divorce over this because I'd heard somewhere that couples frequently divorce after the loss of a child. In a daze, I turned back to see Elly, fully aware that her brother was missing, staring down the street calling his name. I needed to be calm for her. I needed to be calm for the police officer. I needed to be calm for Andy. Andy, unbeknownst to me at the time, was in a dark, dark place. He told me later that he was preparing himself to do anything necessary to get Ethan back. He thought our boy had been kidnapped.

As the police officer clicked on his walkie-talkie, I saw a woman walking briskly toward Main Street from around the corner. Holding her hand was a very upset and confused Ethan. I gasped, "Oh there he is!" and ran the thirty feet to cover the distance between myself and my son. I thanked the woman profusely and grabbed Ethan to my chest, expressing to him how crazy it was for him to run away. He was trying to talk in his halting, two-year-old speech, so I quieted down. "Me not find you, Mommy! I fell down and me not find you!"

I looked up at the woman and asked her where she found him. She said he was a block and a half away, darting through a parking lot when she rushed over to him. "He nearly got ran over," she ended, with a stern tone in her voice that edged on chastisement. Andy came up just then, within earshot of the explanation and just grabbed Ethan to his body and held him close. The lady headed back down the street, calling back, "You need to keep a very close eye on that one!"

Now, really. Did I need to hear that? I'm thankful beyond words that she had the presence of mind to look for Ethan's parents at the nearly finished farmer's market. I'm blessed beyond reason that the person who found our innocent little boy had no ill intent for him. And of course, I'm beating myself up for losing him in the first place. Ethan was not satisfied with my hurried response to his painful fall. When I ran across the street for those apples, I assumed he'd stay put by Andy. He assumed I went back to the car with Elly and Liam. Wanting only his momma to salve his hurting hands, he wandered down the very sidewalk our family had traversed only hours before. Somehow he had a homing sense where the car was parked because he was found within 20 feet of our vehicle.

We finished packing up that afternoon and went about our day as usual, visiting a park and keeping a close watch on the little ones as they played. It looked normal, but hovering over Andrew and I was this solemn sense of near loss. What is a child worth? How can he be replaced?
 

The day we lost, and regained Ethan

As Ethan took his turn on the teeter totter, my thoughts wandered to Abraham in the Bible. He waited nearly his whole life to have a promise from God fulfilled: a son. When he finally got this son, Isaac was the most precious to Abraham on earth. When the boy was still young, God asked Abraham to sacrifice the him on an alter (a common practice of the time, though never with people, only very fine animals). God gave him this boy and now he was asking for him back. We aren't given a view on the psychological impact this had on Abraham, or if he wrestled with the idea before going through with it. But if he was human, and he was, I know he struggled with placing God before his family. Here was this promised son. A gift from God standing before his father, innocently helping gather the sticks that would ignite the very fire of his death. What was going through Abraham's mind? Was he saying, "Your will be done," or "I don't understand your ways, but I trust you God?" In the end, God interceeded and gave Abraham a ram to sacrifice instead of his boy, telling Abraham that he now knew he was "all in" for God.

Is that what I was saying in those minutes-like-hours that Ethan was missing? I'd like to say I felt that odd peace about me as we searched the empty streets. But I don't know if I even thought about it. Later, Ethan safe within our home, I thought long and hard about it. Is my family more important than God? Just like our van, our material possessions, God can take away our family members in an instant as well. And once that is gone? What is left? Who is left?

Only the One who matters most of all.

That night, I had a very specific dream in which the farm (Foxwood Farm, still in my parents' possession) got destroyed by a supernatural storm. During the storm, the kids, Andy and my mom and dad cowered in the basement of the farmhouse. The dream was significant, though, because when we saw the storm coming, we headed for the shelter of the basement, but couldn't get down the steps because the entry was blocked by boxes and boxes of Andy's and my stuff! We couldn't enter the house or the basement because piled from floor to ceiling and several yards wide were boxes labeled "Dishes," "Clothes," "Books," "DVDs," etc. Eventually, as the tornado drew close, Andy and I literally tore through the boxes, whipping them this way and that, clearing a path to the safety of the basement and joined our kids with their grandma. As the storm ripped apart the buildings that had stood for 100 years, I remember distinctly thinking, "Whatever, at least we're safe!" At the end of the dream, we drove away from the destruction and aftermath, every single item on the farm utterly demolished, and me thanking God for the blessing of every member of my family completely unscathed. This is significant because I've had an unnatural amount of dreams involving the home farm since we left last August and all of them were lamenting the loss of it. For the first time, I didn't give a damn about that farm.

I told Andy the dream on the way to church the next morning and reiterated that I felt strongly about selling off our things. He again agreed that it would be wise. The message that morning was on the Prodigal Son and the brother that stayed loyal to the father. Our pastor talked about the father's reaction when the Prodigal returned home, how he ran to meet him (totally taboo in that culture for the patriarch to run anywhere, for anything), how the father sheltered him from a culturally deserved stoning by running to reach the son before anyone in the town did, how the father knew his son had returned because he had been diligently watching for him to come home. All these things spoke to a parents' heart, especially after the incident the day before. I scooped up Ethan from the nursery after church and just reveled in his chatter about all the toys he'd played with during service. How precious you are, Dear Ethan, that we would run to meet you after you ran away. How fleeting a time we have together before life takes us parting ways.

The following week, Andy and I met with our spiritual mentor just to catch up and we ran this idea of selling off our possessions to her. She received it with much thought and prayer, like she normally does, and found the idea to be totally inline with God's Word. In a spiritual sense, we were unshackling from the material things that distract us in this world. In a physical sense, we were liquidating what we had in order to be responsible adults and pay off our debts. There it was. All laid out before us.

Four Saturdays after the van got smashed and Andy and I declared that we would sell off most of what we own and begin living anew for life in its fullest.

And that's where you find me now. Within the next week, we're heading over to the storage unit to find a few items that we need for the winter, the title to the smashed van and then to sort through a 10x20' space filled with stuff. It's just stuff. Of course it holds value, but it's the sort of value that can be transferred. We'll decide what we want to keep, section off the items that have long family history, and then, with trembling liberation, get rid of it all!

On the Fifth Saturday after the van got smashed we'll hopefully have a clear idea of what it is we can part with and what we can keep. Because now, we know without doubt, what truly matters to us in this world.

I've been at a bit of a loss to tell you all what has happened to us since we completed our 21 day challenge. It's been hovering over me like an angry deer fly and I haven't been able to swat it away. Honestly, finding where to begin is much more complicated than simply stating that we completed the challenge and this is what we learned. But it's been exactly two weeks since June 28th (the twenty first day of the challenge) and it's time we fill you in on the whirlwind of events in our lives.

You see, the final day of our challenge was also the final day at St. Brigid's Meadows in La Crosse. We loaded a moving truck that day and moved back to the east side of Wisconsin, about to pursue the next step in our lives.

* * * * *

When we began that clean up of our personal lives, I didn't let on in my original post, but Andy and I knew something big was going to come out of it. We just didn't know exactly What. We just knew When. In the three weeks that followed our declaration to the Heavens and to you, we began in earnest to keep a tidy and structured household. That's really what it was all about: get our house in order and clean up our minds.

Andy is fond of saying that you can tell a lot about a person's state of mind by the way they keep their home. It's definitely the place that most people spend the most time (even if it is just sleeping) and the home becomes an extension of one's self. When I said last month that I had come to a point of being stressed out by everything, my mind was in disarray. I had no routine other than a pretty set bedtime for the kids. I had no schedule, other than the days that Andy delivered products (M-W-F). And my home was in a constant state of "almost clean." By that I mean, the main things were usually taken care of: dishes, laundry and meals. But everything else that comes with keeping house was fit in here, there, or not at all. Such was the state of my mind as well. No wonder I was stressed about everything! And in my stressing, the family suffered. The other saying we're fond of is true, too: "When Momma ain't happy, ain't nobody happy!"

It took snapping us out of that rut of chaos for me to realize that I was not happy. Think about it for a moment. Are you happy? By happy, I mean content with your place in life. Or thankful for the moment you in which you live. I had not thought about whether or not I was happy in years. Frankly, I had not thought about much of anything in-depth for quite some time. But when Andy and I had that argument the day my mother was over, I finally took the time and thought long and hard. No. I was not happy anymore.

That's pretty heavy stuff. Andy was kind as he pointed out my entire existence was one reaction after another. Reacting to the kids waking up before 6am. Reacting to the workload of dishes when there is no dishwasher but yourself. Reacting to the accounting, email and design work demanded of me by the farm. Reacting to the precious needs of my husband. When in exasperation Andy stated that we would take on this challenge, I lapped it up with eager intensity. I needed the change and for the first time since we had kids, I took on the task with a fiercely proactive heart. It was time.

A couple days into it, the kids became sick. That passed on to us adults and even over to the other farmers. I believe that in some circumstances, sickness is a sign that you are doing something right. Think about it: if you are attempting to correct something in your life, wouldn't the Enemy try to squelch it? Sickness doesn't work well with routine. But I was determined to make it to Day 21. I began to thrive under this challenge.

Not only did I create a routine for the daily chores and doings of a household with children, but I became empowered as a mother and wife. It felt good, really good, to take charge like that and live each day PROACTIVE. We began implementing cleaning arrangements that caused Andy and I to work side by side (something we had not done ever before) and marveled at the blessing of new conversation we enjoyed. I became almost militant about Ethan napping at 1pm after lunch time and before I knew it, he was going down without fighting me. In fact, after lunch on a normal day, he goes and finds his blankie and heads to bed by himself without me saying a word! Elly's attitude has improved substantially and we hear much less whining and complaining from her. She now knows what to expect and for her, that sort of security is priceless.

Most of all, Andy and I are on the same page (as much as a human couple could be) as far as parenting, routines and schedules. That is empowering for both of us as we head into, once again, uncharted territories.

About a week into our challenge, as we were noticing the positives coming from that within our household, we knew we needed to account for the situation in our jobs. As I alluded to earlier, things were not so rosy as Andy and I found our position at the farm shifting to meet its needs. Things were happening in the natural that surely had spiritual implications. People and events within the structure of the farm were aligning so that Andy's and my position was whittled down to personal cooking engagements, sales and graphic design. The question on everyone's mind was simple, but weighty: How does this third family cash flow at the farm?

This is good business and we'll be the first ones to tell you that everything and everyone at a farm needs to have a purpose or it's got to be re-purposed...or removed. During the middle of June, Andy and the others at the farm worked numbers, scenarios, business models, and projections to see where our place would be in 6 months' time. Some of the projections were exciting and hopeful, like Andy and I taking on an entrepreneurial cheffing endeavor separate, but associated with, the farm. Other options all seemed to point to the same dilemma months down the road.

Andy and the fam and I traveled back to the east side of Wisconsin, the Fox Valley, to clear our heads and get a little clarity on the grave issue before us. Obviously, this whole time we were deep in prayer and searching out the next step before us. Andy and I both knew it was coming, and soon. But it was not ours to take. We had to be shown first.

That's when Andy met with our good friend Ben.

Ben is a young man with a lot of drive and business sense. We first met him when we sold fresh milk at Foxwood Farm. He came to us, fresh out of college, hungry to know more about the underground food rebellion that we were a part of. A guy like that just wanted a cause to get behind and when he learned that he wasn't allowed to buy milk from a farmer in the Dairy State, you can bet that was enough fuel to light this firecracker of a man. He was one of our biggest supporters, coming with us to the Raw Milk Hearing after only knowing us for two months and attending the International Raw Milk Symposium in Madison. There, he took stole the microphone in front of a panel of distinguished big-wigs in the Slow Foods Movement and catalyzed the audience into acting on all this knowledge they had received at the conference. We called him The Foxwood Farm Hero. When we lost the farm and moved to St. Brigid's, Ben made the three hour drive to visit us at least once a month, but often more than that.

During the long dark days of winter, he and Andy dove into long discussions about what the local foods movement needed in order to launch it to the next level. Ben had a great desire to consult with farmers and consumers alike in order to help them better reach each other than the standard farm market or CSA. At the same time, he had been brought up with an extensive working knowledge of meat and meat preservation. Ben comes from a prestigious lineage of cured meat artisans (if that is even a term!). His grandfather began Hillshire Farms and built the company up to a reputable force in the industry. When Sara Lee wanted to buy the company, Ben's grandfather accepted on the condition that he would be allowed to make decisions about the quality of the sausage and meat. Soon, however, Sara Lee wanted to cut costs and put "fillers" into the meats. When Ben's grandfather protested, they eliminated his position.

Undaunted, the man began a new meat company in his middle age called Silver Creek Specialty Meats and has preserved that company within the family ever since. Ben's parents both work there today and Ben grew up knowing everything a kid could know about preserving meat. After learning of his heritage, it should come as no surprise that this year, at age 24, Ben began his own company called Gourmet Grassfed. He sells locally produced, locally raised grassfed beef meat snacks that are reminiscent of jerky, but so much better for you. I can tell you more about the products themselves another time.

Circling back, the reason this info is so relevant is because when Andy met with Ben in June, it was to tell him that something big was on our family horizon. The more they talked, the more it became clear that our paths were once again connecting. Ben had reached a ceiling in what he as one man could do to promote his incredible and niche product. He needed someone else to come on board to help with sales and marketing.

Someone who knew the product as well as he did, and someone that had been there from the ground up. In those winter nights over organic Vodka mixers and braised ox tail, Andy had helped Ben with his vision of Gourmet Grassfed. When I was overwhelmed with a nursing infant and bleary eyed from lack of sleep, I helped him design his label.

 

(So if you don't like it, lay off me, I was delirious, plus the label regulations are pretty specific)!

Suddenly, we had an answer. There it was. All laid out for us. With one week left in our 21 Day Challenge, we officially resigned from St. Brigid's Meadows. The leaving was not a surprise to anyone there, but it came with a distinct sadness that the position had not worked in the way any of us had first envisioned. Truly, Andy and I played a large part in that shifting of reality, but certainly there were others on the farm that played a role in our leaving as well.

Once again, we were saying good bye to families and patrons that had carved a special place in our hearts, but at least this time, they would experience no loss of the farm fresh food they had come to depend on.

The final week of the 21 Day Challenge was spent packing and cleaning and tying up loose ends. Liam helped as best he could.

 

As we are trying to pay off some debt, Andy and I don't have much in savings. Coming to a fledgling business like Gourmet Grassfed would inherently mean that we'd be living on savings for upwards of three months and no paycheck. By our best estimations, we only had money for two months total.

Then God placed our next step for us just in time (or just in His time, I should say). A friend of ours has been unable to sell his home and lives in this 5 bedroom beauty by himself. He offered to have our family stay with him as long as we need for a seriously reduced rent and no utilites. In addition, he has a thriving backyard organic garden all ready for harvesting and lives in a town that puts us central to the farm markets that Ben and Andy will be attending. Finally, our friend works from home, but keeps to himself a lot of the time and has basically given the kids and I free reign of the entire household. So all we had to do was pack up dressers and a few toiletries and we were set up. (all else is in storage). With this blessing of a home to come to, our savings would indeed last us three full months.

 

And the last Tuesday of June, we hauled our boxes and furniture and lives across the state once again, a short ten months after doing it from Foxwood Farm. Above, Cortnie and the family take a break on the way home. Cortnie came for the day to help keep the kids occupied while we shoved the moving truck full. Again, many thanks for the Gerkhing family in all the ways they've helped us through the years.

Now it is two weeks later and we are strongly into our routine here in Winneconne, WI. It's the same routine that we laid down at The Blue House three hours west of here and it still works. Little things within our Challenge now seem tailored to life with a roommate; things like doing dishes after every meal and cleaning up toys every night. Surely these are noble goals in and of themselves, but work especially nicely as a habit when being considerate of a generous friend. Andy has his own schedule now, too. He leaves for work with Ben at about 6:30am and works out with him before having a mutually made breakfast and sitting down in the office at Ben's apartment. He works until supper time, but it varies depending on the nature of the day's demands.

Today, for instance, they went to Silver Creek Specialty Meats at 6am and physically made the next batch of Gourmet Grassfed Meat Snacks, from a grassfed cow straight off the fields of the former Foxwood Farm. (did I mention that my father still has a beef herd living there?) Today, they marketed their first box of wholesale snacks, to be sold in an Oshkosh Piggly Wiggly. Every day is exciting and new and we are blessed to be a part of this next endeavor. The company is the immediate goal, but connecting consumers to locally grown products is still the larger vision.

It's pretty amazing what can happen when you clean up a mini-van and shop-vac your mind. Andy and I are just humbled to be serving a God as outside-of-the-box as ours is.

And, now that I've got this off my back, I can post more frequently about our happenings. Life is a journey, friends. If Andy and I have ever "made it," we'll have surely been fooled somewhere along the way.

Elly and I were telling stories outside on the deck this morning while we ate homemade donuts and lounged in the shade. One in particular seemed to have enough substance that I just had to type it out as she dictated. The following is called:

City: Viroqua[Mom's note: I have no idea how this pertains to the actual story, but this is what she insisted it be called]

Once there was a family of horses. There was a baby, a sister and a mom and dad horse. One day they were walking out in the woods. They found a path and they thought it was a horse at the end of the path, but it was a lion! They ran away as fast as they could back home, but the lion was too fast. The horses ran right into the door of their house and hid inside. The lion jumped on the roof of the house and broke it! The horse family jumped out the window and ran to the wood place and bought wood and screws and came back home. They fixed the roof with wood and screws because it was only made of blankets before and wasn’t strong enough. When the house was fixed, the horses asked the lion if he needed something to eat and drink and he just sat there thinking about it. Suddenly he ran back to his own house and ate and drank. Then a beautiful rainbow came out.

The End

Wednesday, April 27, brought a series of tornados which hit the Southeast, my state of Alabama was particularly hard hit.  Small towns of Phil Campbell and Hackleburg in Northwest Alabama essentially were wiped off of the map.  The death toll in Phil Campbell was 28 with a similar number in Hackleburg. Many home owners in Hackleburg lacked insurance to replace their homes if they survived. The number of people volunteering and the amount of help given locally has just been amazing. Please keep them and the other areas of that have made national news in your prayers.

My area of the Shoals suffered a lot of tree damage.  I was awakened that morning with a call from Weathercall, a weather warning service from a Huntsville station that tornados were spotted in my neighborhood. My next door got the same call, which was repeated three more times during the day. After listening to the weather radio going off constantly, I took out the subscription and have it set just for tornados in my immediate area.

After the first rounds of storms, I got back to getting ready for my Deshler high school XL reunion garden visit. The local John Deere dealer came to picked up my tractor and the driver asked if I liked flowers when he pulled in the driveway. I think when he first got on the tractor, he thought, This woman doesn’t have it in gear or has the parking brake on.  When he couldn’t get it to go forward or backwards, he said hummm.  Then he noticed I had a broken bracket attached to the hydrostatic drive pedals and hauled it off. Win one for this woman.

My next chore since it was raining again was housecleaning.  Between one of the storm bands, I decided to run to town and get a haircut. As I was backing out of the garage the warning siren up on Colbert Heights went off, and I pulled back into the garage. Man that system formed fast.  This system is the one which caused most of the causalities and destruction across the state. 

After another tornado warning call, I went back to my house cleaning and crawled up on a chair to replace a couple of light bulbs in the ceiling light in the kitchen. My knee went out, and I’m standing there in pain trying to figure out how to get down without falling.  I couldn’t put any weight on it and hobbled to the closet to get my crutches. By this time my knee was three times its normal size.  What’s going to happen next I wondered? Now my garden and my house won’t be ready.  The next day I called for an appointment at the orthopedic clinic and was told that it would be next week (after the reunion) before I could get in as all the doctors were out of town or at the hospitals helping tornado victims.  "That’s okay," I told her. "I’ll take the appointment for next week."

 

Mom came over and mopped the kitchen floor, helped clean, made cookies, cakes and lemonade, and mowed the front yard, fussing that she’ll be glad when my reunion is over.  Moms are delighted when they are needed, but like to make you think otherwise. 

My neighbor Lasonia made cookies and helped with some cleaning in the kitchen and replaced the light bulbs in the ceiling light. I worked on things I could do such as making more lemonade, and tea, furniture dusting, sink and toilet cleaning. My Auburn sign I had one of our patients husband made to get my visitors still hadn’t been mounted on the arbor at the end of the house, and I found a large hook and between Mom and myself, we got that hung temporarily. Leonard came Friday afternoon and worked on weeding the bed at the end of the house. Friday evening I got my tractor back and crawled up on it and started mowing the lower forty leaving my crutches where I could retrieve them when I parked back in the garage. I had about a half acre left when I noticed I was almost out of diesel.  I pulled up beside my can of diesel and called Mom and asked her to come over and hand it up to me.  I expected a lecture, but she just grinned and said, “Well you have your toy back don’t you?”

 

Saturday, the day of the reunion, some of the flower beds still hadn’t been weeded, the daylilies I said would be in bloom weren’t, but at least the yard was mowed.  The iris and peonies were in bloom later than usual. Over three inches of rain had washed away the walkway I was working on, but nothing could be done now. Gracie, my long time friend from work came and brought brownies and helped set up the tables and helped out during my class visit.  I was still on crutches and she was a blessing. In the end we had a great crowd, and they really didn’t care what things looked like. Some of our classmates we hadn’t seen since graduation. They just had a good time visiting with old friends.

 

I had decided that my knee wouldn’t be able to take the walking needed to get to the building that our dinner was located in and wouldn’t go to Tuscumbia for it.  Peggy one of my classmates and her husband George came to the rescue and picked me up and brought me home afterwards.  A great time was had by all, and some of us at our age can still get down and boogie.  Lasting friendships are what it’s all about. Oh and some of us still can get down and boogie.

 

It's been a long time since I wrote here because my night-times have been overtaken by a smallish loveable squishy baby man. He's approaching the three month mark and while he is sleeping better through the night, our days have been so fast paced that by the time I get him down (between 7-9 pm), I am creatively and physically spent. There goes my small window for any substantial writing.

I know it's been long, and I have a lot I want to catch up on. So this Friday, while Andy takes the kids on his weekly delivery trip to Viroqua, I have a few hours with just Little Liam and he really is a good enough baby that I can squeeze in a sentence or two on here. (Isn't Liam totally adorable?! I know, I'm in love and biased)

The dishes are a mile high and the laundry buzzer just went off, but I need a little writing therapy here.

One of the reasons the dishes are so piled up is that this week has been one big fat catering event for St. Brigid's Meadows.

I laugh as I think of it now. Tonight is Andy's last night for the gig, but it feels like we've been under cooking siege for the last three weeks. Down on Vince's farm, about two miles down County PI and from our Blue House, there is a full scale movie production set up. Vince and Dawn, through a series of knowing the right people and generously giving up their farm sanctuary for a week, have brought the farm into the limelight. Down the windy, tree-lined County Road PI, there lies a car that has "crashed" into one of the older trees and is the center-piece for this film production. They only film at night, as that is part of the precedent for the scene, which means the crew of 40+ sleeps from about 8am to 4pm. They awaken, return to the farm from Westby and La Crosse, and have breakfast.

That's where Andy and the rest of the farm come into play. He is in charge of catering two meals a night for these folks, in the Hundt farmhouse, from this last Tuesday through tonight (Friday). Breakfast is actually a full scale meal served around 7pm. The crew goes out and shoots for roughly 6 hours and then comes back for lunch. That's around 1:30am, in which Andy has gotten out of bed and set up again in the Hundt kitchen for round two. He's usually back in bed around 3:30am.

In the first part of the week, Vince was gone for an annual business trip. Kristin (who runs the dairy with husband Jason) is always in Madison getting her Masters from Monday through Wednesday. With both key people gone, Andy basically out of commission besides cooking and delivering all week and me with three small kids (housebound), the work of two full farms fell on Jason and Dawn's shoulders. Beef animals needed to be fed and one rounded up for a weekly date with the butcher on Wednesday. Dairy cattle to be milked twice a day, daily chores surrounding all that and care for the hogs and chickens to boot. On top of that, we are still collecting sap for maple syrup and there are trees tapped all over the woods surrounding Poplar Coulee Ridge (the Hundt farm).

It's been crazy in our home as well, with a tiny galley kitchen being used to feed 40 people twice a day for four nights, and no automatic dishwasher. I had the foresight, and God had the timing, to allow for a helper in our home. Since Sunday night, we've been enjoying the company and capable helping hands of our young friend Cortnie. You may recall, her family was integral in our Foxwood Farm days and she's on the old side of 13 now (14 in June!). It's her Spring break this week and her parents were generous enough to let us borrow her all week to help with the kiddoes. She's taken a special fondness to Liam and he to her. We joke that she's got lavender scented arms because she has an uncanny ability to get Liam to fall asleep under her stead.

Here she demonstrates her Liam-taming ability early in the week. We couldn't have managed a peaceful household this week without her help. It's been amazing and we'll be sad to say goodbye as we take her home tomorrow morning.

In family news, Liam is very much smiling and cooing now. He's taking on a more unique look, but still reminds us of Ethan at the same age.

The kids are highly involved in his care and deeply interested in everything Liam is doing. Here you see Ethan and Elly helping with bathtime.

Just in case you were wondering about Ethan's hair and could it possibly get any longer...we have an update. After realizing that even in the dead of winter our son was sweating on his head, we finally gave in and cut his hair. Andy took him in the bathroom, set up a movie on the iPad and hand cut (no buzz-cut here) all those blonde locks right off. The finished product is a happier little boy who somehow looks a year older! See for your self:

We're happy with the cut and will likely keep it short until cooler temps again.

We've been involved making maple syrup for the last two weeks straight (as I mentioned above). It's a process I am completely unfamiliar with, but have been delighted to learn about. Having no prior experience, I was unaware that there are old-fashioned methods to producing syrup and "new-fashioned" was as well. Not surprisingly, Vince is very proud of the fact that he successfully employs the more time-consuming and healthier OLD-FASHIONED method of collecting sap and turning it to syrup.

The process is straightforward. Tap the maples at just the right time in early March (when the trees begin to wake up and the sap begins to "run.") We use stainless steel metal buckets and taps, a stainless steel bulk tank to store the sap and a stainless steel boiling unit.


I say all this because plastic has been proven to leach unknown chemicals into food when they are in contact and most modern maple syrup operations use a host of plastic when making the syrup. Also, most maple syrup these days is made by dehydrating the sap (the process is not something I am familiar with). The sap here at St. Brigid's Meadows is brought up to temp by wood fire and evaporated nice and slowly. At the right time, it is poured off and finished in the house to be sure not to burn it.

Exact temps and times are essential to produce the right consistency. Andy, Vince, Jason and Kristin spent all last weekend boiling sap, taking turns in shifts and going all day and night.

It's a lot of work, but can be fun with the right friends and "warming" beverages at your side. :-)

It takes 40 gallons of maple sap to become 1 gallon of maple syrup. And the unit that we use, with wood and flame, can boil 20 gallons per hour. You can imagine that the cost of this syrup isn't going to compare with Mrs. Butterworth's HFCS laden bottle at Piggly Wiggly. As Vince is fond of saying, "This is the genuine article!" and we're pretty proud of it. It tastes pretty amazing, too, which is more important than any other factor combined.

After tonight's catering I think we're going to go into a family hibernation of sorts and just refuel. I need some cookies and since our kitchen has been under siege, I haven't been able to bake at will. :-)

Oops, gotta go; Liam is up, the roasts I'm braising for tonight's "breakfast" are beeping and my laundry needs to be switched over.

Back at it!

Good Day! I'm so happy to meet you! I'm new. 

 

As I sit in my cozy living room, thankful for thick carpet, soft blankets and energy star windows, I also have to chuckle at the events of the last couple weeks.

You see, not only am I being warmed by the aforementioned items, I'm also holding onto my own personal heater: a newborn baby.

This post has been long in coming because I have found myself in the unique place of being solidly outnumbered by small humans needing a lot of "mommy time." It helps that Andy is able to be home as much as he is, and that I can work from this very computer as needed.

But let me back up. Something I didn't talk a lot about in 2010 was my pregnancy with our third child. It came up from time to time, but overall, the lack of communication stemmed from our amazing life changes and attention being drawn elsewhere. Throughout it all, however, we were very aware of the life growing inside me and rather excited for an unplanned baby.

Truly, unplanned. In fact, we could argue that it was an immaculate conception. The place we were back in April was not conducive for baby-making and in fact, it was the farthest thought from our minds. We were dealing with farming stresses, raw milk bills and financial anxieties. Family was strained and the idea of bringing a child into that just didn't seem wise. On top of that, I was not yet 'regular' from having weaned Ethan just a few months earlier.

This is why we believe with all our hearts that God had a plan for this baby. Something more than normal. All signs in life and body pointed to abstinence of new life. In fact, it was already in May that we just knew life was going to change dramatically at Foxwood and we shut off any possibility of having more children...at least for now. What we didn't know in May was that I was already three or four weeks pregnant with our next child, the child we didn't think we could have. So God gave us a new life...in about the only two week possibility of the entire year!

Fast forward to the very beginning of this year, just days after my last post. Andy was catering a holiday party in our small town with a local business. He needed the helping hands of a couple servers. My mom was able to drive out to watch Ethan and Elly while Vince, Andy and I played dress up and made a great party for the local workers in Coon Valley. I was on my feet for about 5 straight hours (not the norm) and really felt it the next day. At my prenatal, it was determined that all signs pointed to an impending labor.

It was interesting, because I was only at 38 weeks and I went full term or over with the first two. Also, I had been measuring small since about 25 weeks. (A pregnant momma's tummy is measured in centimeters and usually coordinates with the number of weeks pregnant; 34 cm = 34 weeks along. It's pretty sweet!) But on that Friday, I measured just 35.5 cm, 2.5 cm short of my progress. For those reasons, I had been thinking I might actually give birth in February. But here it was, January 7th and all signs said "GO!"

We scrambled that weekend to get the house in order and make sure all the midwifery tools were in order. (Did we mention that we were having a home birth?)

No baby. Monday came and in the evening, I began feeling pretty regular contractions, but not enough to cause alarm. We went to bed around 10 pm, and I awoke several times over the next 2 hours to a rather strong contraction. Finally, just before midnight, I got up and walked around. It seemed that we needed to start timing them, though my contractions have never fallen into the convention of a pattern. We called Denise, our midwife a little after midnight, and we all confirmed that it was time for her to come over.

I proceeded to walk circles around the house during the contractions while Andy got the bed ready and the mood lighting set up (candles, ambient white lights and low light lamps). He then did the dishes from the last couple days, out of pure embarrassment that the midwife crew might see a dirty kitchen. :-)

Denise, Tavniah (her midwife assistant) and Amanda (a student midwife) arrived just before 1 am and by then, I could talk between contractions, but not so much during anymore. We were certain this was the real deal. We worked through the next hour of heavy contractions and around 2-ish, I really got down to business. At one point, I think I literally felt the contractions opening my uterus up, a sensation I did not have with the first two. (Did I mention this was all natural? And back labor?) It was amazingly painful, yet reassuring to know without a doubt those contractions were not only doing their job, but doing it fast.

Soon I moved into our bed and felt a little like pushing. At the hospital births, the midwives had been diligent about checking my dialation and letting me know it was time to push. Denise had said that she didn't tend to do that, and indeed she had not once. So when I felt like I needed to push, I was really unsure of myself. I didn't want to waste energy pushing if I wasn't fully dialated, but I felt so much better if I did push. This was my signal. Pushing contractions feel different. And when you push with them, you are almost transported to a pain-free contraction. That in itself is motivation enough to expend the energy.

I gave a few 'test pushes' to see if anything would happen. It felt right. So I had the girls stack up some pillows and I sat up. It was time. I looked at the clock for the first time since about 1:30 am. It said 3 am, on the dot. Wow, pushing already? I was amazed; it took about 7 hours the last two times to reach this point. Here, just over 3. I began pushing and my body just took over. Andy and the midwives were very encouraging; though I was still unsure I was making any progress. Then Tavniah said, "Oh look at all that hair!"

Ok, progress! We worked together, and I pushed again. Suddenly there was a small baby head emerged into the world.

Now, not to get too graphic here, but I have to comment on this. With Elly, I didn't want to look. With Ethan, I was at the wrong angle and I couldn't really see his head. With baby number three, I could see everything. And I must tell you this: Seeing a miniature human head sticking out upside down between my legs is THE MOST bizarre thing I have ever witnessed in my entire life.

Ok, back to the story. I was tired and seeing baby was so exhilarating. I knew just one more good push and she* would be in my arms.

* Up to this point, I want you to understand that we were convinced (without scientific backing) that we were having a girl. We knew it, several people close to us knew it, and we had the perfect name.

And just like that, I was holding a brand new baby, all wet and beautiful and vigorous.

 

She was immediately covered in towels and close to my breast. I glanced at the clock and couldn't believe my eyes: 3:06am. 6 minutes of pushing?! It had felt like half an hour.

So a few minutes passed and it occurred to me that Denise had not announced the gender of our baby.

"What do we have? A girl?"

We peeked. Denise saw before me, I know it, but she allowed me to make the astonished announcement: "IT'S A BOY?"

I laugh as I think about it now. Not a statement, but a question. A boy? But how can that be? We don't even have a name picked out!! Andy came over and had to look for himself as he was in just as much shock as me. Sure thing, no mistaking the gender. Our little guy had fooled us all and we were excited for it.

 

The next hour went by in a blur. We worked on me, we worked on baby. Andy snuck into the kids' room and brought a bleary-eyed Elly into the room. She understood immediately that this was the new baby and took an immediate interest in all that was going on. When we told her she had a brother, not a sister and that we didn't have a name for him yet, she ran out of the room. She popped her head back in and said "Hold on, I'll find the name." A moment later, she returned with an imaginary handful of “name” and placed it gently on the bookshelf. "Here's the name, guys! I found it!" We got a good chuckle out of it.

 

We had Elly cut the cord though I'm sure she wasn't sure what was going on. The little man was then weighed and all his vitals were taken. He was deemed amazingly healthy and full term. No early baby here.

 

 

 

His weight at birth was 7lbs, 10oz. His first cry didn't occur until they were taking his pulse and heartbeat nearly a half hour after he was born, but we weren't worried; he was pink and vibrant and even trying to look around.

 

By 5am, the ladies had cleaned up everything and left, and Elly was back in bed. We settled into our clean bedroom with a new baby and settled down for the rest of our night's sleep. Yes, we had gone to bed, had a baby and returned to bed in the course of one night.

I love home-births! The last thing I recall as I drifted into sub-conscious thought was hearing the snowplows outside our home, clearing the roads for the morning commuters. It was amazingly peaceful as we lay soft and warm in our own bed, a new baby in arms and knowing that the snowy world outside was still running full force, without the need of us to be in it.

That is the story of our home birth. No complications, peaceful music, attentive midwives and a loving husband at my side the whole time. After two hospital births in which we were very satisfied with the service, I feel like I've been fooled into thinking that those were the best it could be. Sort of like being told as a child that pudding out of a box was the primo dessert and believing it for years. Then someone offers you homemade cooked pudding, with homegrown ingredients and you are vaulted into another realm of taste you never knew could be possible. Suddenly you look back at those years of Jello pudding and wonder ... how could I have been so fooled by you? You imposter! I'll never go back.

And so, if we have children in the future, we will never go back to a sterile hospital room (barring some medical emergency). For any of you considering it, or even for those whom a home birth makes you nervous, let me tell you: there is nothing more comforting than your own home when you are at the peak of vulnerability. Nothing is more intimate and beautiful than the birth of a child and to have that experience with trusted and loved ones ... I just don't know how you could want the boxed substitute.

My mother came that morning around 8am to help us out for the week.

 

Over the next couple days as I was quickly recovering, Andy and I came up with name possibilities. But we could not agree. Finally, in a passive conversation where we weren't trying so hard, we came up with it.

Liam Jakub Sell.

The explanation we gave our family is as follows (because our pursuit of this name caused us to learn a lot about names in general and we wanted to share our path):

Liam, in honor of his two great-great grandfathers (from both sides), both named William, both immigrants from Germany, with the root meaning "determined guardian."
Jakub, in the traditional Czech spelling (part of Andy's heritage), with the root meaning of "supplanter." One who takes the place of another. We thought this appropriate since for so long, we were convinced we were having a girl.  

And now, let me give you what you really want: photos!

Blessings to you all and thanks for tuning in. :-)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There aren’t any real cowboys among my close ancestors, but there are plenty of pioneers and they exhibited true grit of the kind that got it done. Those with the pioneer spirit on my dad’s side showed true grit when they left Germany and Finland with what they could carry – seeking something better. Those with the pioneer spirit on my mom’s side showed true grit when they left Scotland, Ireland and Germany with what they could carry – seeking something better. And those early English colonists among my ancestors showed true grit and a pioneer spirit by taking charge of their lives and telling the Crown to take a hike.

 

My ancestral milieu includes farmers, nurserymen, steamboat engineers, blacksmiths, railroad engineers, Civil War captains and generals, housekeepers, wood carvers and ministers with names like Will, Gugin, Bird, Coughlin, Logan, Kangas, Myers. They came to this country and exhibited the pluck and stick-to-it/can-do attitudes that define true grit. And yet, before thinking about it today, amidst all the hype surrounding the Coen brothers’ remake of the classic western movie True Grit, I missed the fact that you don’t have to be a cowboy to possess the virtues associated with grit and the pioneer spirit.

As a kid on the prairies in North Dakota, I was blissfully unaware of the true grit and determination that made my little life mostly bearable and even fun at times. I was also unfortunately unaware that my own ancestry offered plenty of heroes – expressing pride about one’s family definitely was not a common practice at that time and place. So I looked for my heroes elsewhere and found them among the gritty men portrayed in western novels and movies.

  

Characters like Rooster Cogburn, Josie Wales, Jacob McCandles, Ransom Stoddard and so many others were bigger than life to me, and that they somehow managed to find resolution, if not reconciliation, in a topsy-turvy and often quite violent world, was compelling. I rode with all of them across the vast prairies of my mind – chasing cows, living off the land, drinking out of springs, chasing bad guys and taking my lumps.  My heroes have always been cowboys ...

 

When novels turned into movies, John Wayne became a favorite western hero. He taught me to swagger with my double rig cap guns and taught me a few smart aleck lines. He made me into the lever-action rifle fan that I am today. Through his characters, Wayne showed me what the pioneer spirit and justice was about – in a naïve and grossly idealized kind of way. Sergio Leone’s Man With No Name (aka Joe, Manco, Blondie) offered an almost believable glimpse of surviving life’s harsh realities at the periphery – a place I sometimes inhabited.  

I now wish I might have known my grandparents and great grandparents – every one of them. I might not have learned to swagger or to shoot the bad guys with a two-handed quick draw, but I’d have understood much earlier that true grit and genuine pioneer spirit have nothing to do with silver screen cowboys.

 

When our guests arrived at the same time Thursday morning, we were a bit surprised. One couple, our friends and coworkers at St. Brigid's Meadows, live across the street. The other couple, my parents, live 3 hours east of us. When our guests came in the door bearing gifts of smiles and pies, we knew this would be a good day. Welcomes and introductions aside, we settled in for a homemade brunch consisting of farm raised foods and good cheer.

In the background, the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade added atmosphere and we all dug in. Soon, we fell into comfortable conversation and before long, the pretense of new faces was shed. It was a great start to the holiday, followed by a group effort clean-up in anticipation of the Big Meal later in the afternoon. The Blankenheims' left around mid-day to check on the animals, do a few chores and take a nap. We continued cooking and child entertainment with my folks, leisurely setting up the house for a Christmas tree and catching up. It was amazingly comfortable, and I found myself hoping the minutes wouldn't tick by the way they were. Mom alternately cleaned and played with the kiddoes. Dad helped Andy with a couple projects and played make-believe baseball player with Elly. I managed to get some accounting work squeezed in and Andy happily prepared the side-dishes and the turkey for our grand meal.

It was a long distance from where we were in our relationship just a short month ago. But to fully understand what happened in the last month, I must back up nearly two years. (Don't worry, it won't be a day-by-day account!)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

As Andy and I dove more and more fully into this farming take over at Foxwood Farm, we had to start thinking differently. When we first moved back to Wisconsin from Colorado Springs, we were still in the corporate rat race. I had quit full time graphic design to freelance from home, in anticipation of our first child in a few months. Andy took a sales position that had him away from home over 10 hours per day. Between long work hours and late pregnancy, we did not have many thoughts toward the farming endeavor and only had a few planning meetings with my parents on the direction of the farm. Our initial interest had been a tourist type farm with a few niche artisenal products and more of a hobby farm atmosphere. As we progressed into our pregnancy, we took a natural birthing class and learned a great deal about nutrition and diet for a pregnant mother. Logic told us that what was good for the pregnant mother was good for everyone, and we started to change the way we ate. We found a local source for eggs and switched to whole milk, some organic fruit and whole grains. For my birthday in 2007, I got a book from my oldest brother that became the catalyst for an entire life paradigm switch. The book, The Untold Story of Milk, completely opened our eyes to the benefits of fresh, unprocessed milk ... and the amazing government take-over of our food system in the last 100 years. We had the time to read most of it together and when Elly was born, continued reading it individually. We knew then that we had to get hold of this milk, but did not know how.

In August of 2007, we moved to the farm. Andy still worked the same job, and I had my freelance work, with a baby, and our lives were not yet involved in farming. Andy took care of the animals on weekends, but it wasn't until winter of that year that we knew we couldn't work a full time job and farm. There were not enough hours in the day. Our plans for a tourist destination had morphed into providing local, everyday folks with the type of food that would nourish them and not poison them. Suddenly we were in the mentality that this was no longer a hobby dream. This was the real deal. When Andy quit his job in February of 2008, we had taken the plunge. There was no going back then. We'd intentionally burned the boat and we were here to stay.

Looking back, that fierce "Pilgrim" mentality was both our greatest driving force and our deepest downfall. Our focus on what we needed to realize this dream became like a laser beam. Others outside that focus had trouble getting a word in edge-wise and most often that was my parents.

We were very conflicted with our plans. On one hand, Mom and Dad were very supportive of our future goals, yet on the other hand, we felt a lot of pressure to do things that Dad had always wanted to do on the farm. It was a battle from nearly the beginning. In June of 2008, about the time we first began this blog, Andy quit his part time FedEx job and devoted all his strength, time and thoughts to Foxwood Farm. There was much to do. A lot of the farm had been allowed to decline for several years because at the time, my father saw no one coming to take over. He was thinking of retirement and buying new machinery or fixing not-so-urgent problems was low on his list of priorities. Now, with a young, entrepreneurial man ready to take it all on, there were several years of clean up and catch up to do. The hours were long and hard. Andy learned so much that first year.

And he also learned about the dynamic of The American Farmer. My dad is The American Farmer. He is independent, often working weeks at a time alone, relying on neighbors for seasonal help and in turn helping them in season. He has gotten by for years on his own ingenuity, thriftiness, and self-reliance. Cold days, sweltering days, sick with the flu; no matter. There is a job to be done and The Farmer will not call in sick. (He can't!) That self-reliance is what has kept the people farming through this difficult century.

And that same self-reliance has the unfortunate effect of closing off new or unproven ideas. Bring in Andy; completely new to farming, having no credibility, and a learning style completely foreign to my father. Andy asks questions about everything. He just has to know why/how/when things work. "Why do you do that with this tool?" "I'm not familiar with this process ... wouldn't it go more efficiently if you eliminate that?" "Couldn't we try this method?"

In trying to ascertain the "WHY?" of farming, Andy became to my father a great hold up in the progress of things. He was not interested in teaching Andy. He just wanted to get the job done and on to the next bullet point in the never-ending list of To Do's. But for Andy, just doing something and moving on was not teaching him anything. If the same problem occurred, the cognition to recall how to fix it might not be there because he didn't fully understand the process from the first time around. It wasn't but a few months of this delicate question and answer dance that tensions arose between the two of them. When we took our turn at being shepherds in the summer of 2008, relations were already strained. As a family, we decided to look into group counseling, to help us understand the dynamics we were confronting on a daily basis.

From early fall 2008 to early spring 2009, we went faithfully as a group of four (Elly had a babysitter during that time) to work out our personalities. It was rough at first, but after coming to a safe place to vent our feelings, reveal hidden emotions and talk through misunderstandings, the four of us felt like we could "graduate" and meet weekly at home to continue planning for the ramp-up of Foxwood Farm. Suddenly we had a basic platform on which to talk through ideas successfully, and all of us were renewed with hope.

With a new baby in the mix, I was pretty much taken out of the farming equation, and it was again many hours with Andy and Dad working side by side. As our product line expanded from free-range eggs to grass fed beef, we looked forward to gaining a milking herd. The sheep continued to be a source of future promise for independent income, and we expanded our family garden to a quarter acre.

As our first cow Charlotte freshened a whole month early, we scrambled to set up the barn for milking. Our dream of having fresh, unprocessed milk was finally here and hopes were high. Dad taught Andy and I to hand milk her as we had NOTHING ready yet. But within the week, and then the following month, we got sufficiently set up with a milking system. We revamped the milk house, built an on-farm store and bartered for some essential freezers and electrical work. By the time our second cow, Tilly, came into the barn, it was just about June of 2009, and we had already pre-sold shares for her milk. We finally felt like we were underway.

And you know the rest of how it all went down, as we detailed the chickens, sheep and garden story right here in this blog. Our customer base was growing steadily and so was our milking herd. By the end of July, we had 7 cows and more milk than we could sell (at the time). So we decided to become part of a processor to pick up our excess milk. On Andy's birthday in August, our first milk pickup occurred. It was exciting and bittersweet. We never wanted to go outside our customers and sell commercially. But the pressure for bills and rent caused us to reconsider.

During this time, our families still met weekly, but the meetings were less and less productive. They became more centered on money and bills and becoming profitable. Mom and Dad were rightly concerned that they had put a lot of saved cash back into the farm, but were seeing little, if any, return on the investment. We were also rightly offended that they would demand as much return on investment so early in the game. After all, statistically it takes new businesses upwards of five years to become fully profitable. We were barely into our first year. The problem was two-fold. Our unwillingness to do things as they "always had been done" (Andy's questioning everything, either out of sheer thirsting for knowledge, or actually asking if there was a better way) and an out-of-the-box marketing strategy. What we wanted to do was not only foreign to the farming community in which we lived (crop farmers, government subsidies and selling everything off the farm wholesale), but it was foreign to how my parents had farmed as well. Though they knew it could work, and we all had studied several successful families doing direct-to-consumer farming, the actual nuts and bolts of working within that framework were still hard to adjust to.

As the months passed, it became more and more obvious that Andy and Dad could not even work together on projects. They divided the farm responsibilities between them and went about business as usual, barely talking and often, not seeing each other throughout the day. It was a mutual decision in order to keep the farm running without constant battles throughout the day. In the fall of 2009, we were asked to start paying rent on the house, cows and land. This was something we had been graciously pardoned by my folks from the time that Andy quit FedEx the previous summer. With our current bills and income, we were only able to pay on the house rent. All other rents silently added up ... on paper and in our heads. We sold the sheep, having too many projects for Andy to take care of effectively all at once. We continued selling the milk via word of mouth. At the end of 2009, we were actually poised to become profitable. If our milk sales continued the way they were, we could quit selling commercially. By autumn, our beef calves would be old enough to sell direct to consumer and with the added income, we'd be able to start paying all the rent for the farm. It was a hopeful time, and we couldn't wait to ease the tensions that were at a breaking point with Mom and Dad. In December, we "got off the truck" from our commercial milk hauler and welcomed the New Year with high hopes.

In January, we got the letter that would send our business into a tailspin we were never able to recover from. With our infinite tax dollars, the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection had surfed this very blog and found us "guilty" of selling fresh unprocessed milk directly to consumers. They threatened to shut us down if we didn't cease what we were doing.

In fear and desperation, we shut down our personal blog, erased our Facebook page, canceled our LocalHarvest page and had this very blog purged of anything related to raw milk. Every source of viral advertising that had been steadily leading consumers to our door was effectively silenced. Our patron base plateaued as we asked our current milk customers to keep their favorite product on the down low. All our hopes turned to the pending raw milk bill coming through our legislature in the coming months.

We asked for more time with my folks and they granted it. We and others rallied our friends and customers and overwhelmed the public session on the bill in March of 2010. 700 people from around the state came to show support for the bill that, although flawed, would keep farms like ours in business until a better bill could be passed. In April, the bill passed both the House and the Senate by just under a two-thirds majority. It seemed we had won and Andy and I began getting the farm ready for the new bill requirements and updates. We had a massive marketing campaign ready at the very minute we heard the green light from the governor's mansion. And so we, along with my parents, and the rest of the fresh milk farmers across the state (and the nation), waited on that signature.

It was sure to come. He had stated support early on and for months, reiterated that he would sign a reasonable fresh milk bill. A month passed. Still we waited. The controversy grew. And we began to feel the pressure. Even before we learned of the governor's veto, the dam had broken on Foxwood Farm. A few months back, my parents had written a letter explaining their needs and feelings in the farming effort. It was basically saying, if you can't make a go of it by June, we all have to be done. The strain, the relationships, and the financial burden was coming to a head.

It had been half a year and we had managed to take on almost all the livestock and building related bills. We had taken over all animal husbandry, and while there were still mistakes being made, we felt the crash course had really given us a surviving knowledge of how to farm on our own. But we still could not pay anything but the house rent. The DATCP letter, compounded with the lack of new customers, had left us far from our end of 2009 projections and once again, we were not showing Mom and Dad what we promised.

To make matters worse, when we thought the bill would pass, we changed the way we sold milk on farm. We no longer bottled for people; we asked them to buy our bottles and fill jars on their own. We also eliminated assigned days for people to pick up milk (a way to regulate a finite supply of milk). In doing these two necessary changes, we lost almost half of our regular patrons between April and July. Our income dropped to half of what it was and we were desperate.

Most of our former customers don't know this, but every time just one of them didn't come to get milk in a given week, or opted to buy milk from the store because filling up in the milk house wasn't convenient, we were one step closer to losing hold of the farm. This is not to blame any one family or person. It's just a simple fact of small businesses. It's the people that know the service is there and choose not to spend their dollars at said business that eventually see the "Closed" sign on the door.

Though we hadn't talked with my parents directly in months, we could sense on a spiritual level that our time at Foxwood Farm was at a close ... unless we did something. In a last effort, we all met with a mutual friend and had a mediated meeting about the future goals of each family. Andy worked for several days on a counter-proposal to my parents' initial demand: buy the whole farm, rent the whole farm, or we're all done. In his well reasoned proposal, we would rent only the number of cows we needed, only the number of acres we could manage and all the buildings. This brought the monthly rent to a manageable amount that also brought my parents a nice monthly income. In addition, it allowed us to focus heavily on ramping up our current products in order to begin saving to buy the farm.

Unfortunately, that wasn't at all in the goals of my parents. They had reached a point that they just wanted to be done with the farm, and us taking over only five to ten acres was not a viable solution. What would they do with the rest while they once again waited on us? It meant more crop farming for Dad, and at the time, he was much more interested in his personal pursuits that did not allow for a farming lifestyle. All of this was completely understandable and totally within their rights as landowners. They had a lot of money built up in the equity of the farm and at the end of their 60s, wanted to see some of the fruits of their labor.

June came and went. We barely talked to them anymore. One morning as Andy and I prepared to head to church, our friend Gale stopped in unexpectedly and told us that we needed to do something regarding the farm. He didn't know quite what, but he'd been feeling this for a long time and had finally felt he needed to sit us down and talk with us. "You've got to ask for help," he told us. "Maybe make your story known and see what happens." It began a ball rolling that we never ever dreamed of.

My parents took a short trip to visit my brother in Colorado and during that week, we wrote a letter to five or six people within our sphere of influence explaining our dire situation and asking if they had wisdom and advice for us. Each of them came back with amazing ideas and empathy, but one happened to know a farmer in La Crosse that was looking for a family to hire. The rest of that thread you all know very well.

By the time my parents returned from Colorado, we had already met with Vince once and had determined to follow this unexpected path as far as it would lead. We were unsure of how to do this, but needed to break the news to Mom and Dad that we were pursuing a plan that did not involve Foxwood Farm. We took them out to eat and told them the whole story. When they told us we had their blessing and that they felt this was a good plan, we knew that there was no turning back.

I think it was that very day Foxwood Farm actually died.

For we knew, if working at St. Brigid's Meadows didn't pan out, there was no net for us at Foxwood. We were either moving west, or done farming. Period.

In August of 2010, just a short 15 months since we had begun milking a single cow, we packed up the house and left the place we thought we'd call home for the next 40 years.

We left the farm, but we couldn't leave our feelings of failure, hurt, sense of unfairness, and a lingering ache that our dream had been robbed of us. Initially we shut off all contact about the farm. It was too painful to hear. And since my parents were intimately involved in the dissolution of the farm goods, we needed to squelch contact with them as well.

Andy and I were harboring intense feelings of betrayal and anger towards my folks. In order to deal with them, we didn't. We busied ourselves in our new jobs and dove head-first into our new roles at St. Brigid's. We set up boundaries for what we would or would not talk about on the phone. We had need to return to the east side of the state a couple times and purposely took roads that did not pass the farmstead. It was a complete shut down.

I knew it was a temporary fix, but it's all we could do in the immediate. The distance was a welcomed barrier and the only thing we were sad about was the fact that many of our patrons had to flounder to find another source for their milk. We could fool ourselves that we were dealing with the loss of Foxwood Farm, but my subconscious knew better. My Spirit wouldn't let me get away with it that easily.

A few months passed. I found myself encountering dreams about the farm and the farm house on a nightly basis. In fact, as I talked through these dreams with Andy, I realized I'd been having an awful dream relating to the farm nearly every single night since mid-September. They were not necessarily nightmares, but filled with an overall uncomfortability about the events unfolding. They ranged from real life knowledge to ridiculous, but all were themed around the farm house and the changes being made to it. They became so frequent, that I quite telling Andy the details and just said in the mornings, "Had another farm dream."

We finally sat down and talked about what to do about it. Obviously I needed to deal with this painful loss in a more constructive way, but was unsure of what to do. Initially, I wanted to write a letter to my parents letting them know exactly what I felt, as a way to get them to understand their role in everything. It was a very human and self-centered plan. And a normal one. As we prayed for guidance in this delicate issue, my brothers contacted me about getting in on an anniversary gift for Mom and Dad. Their anniversary is right after Thanksgiving.

This is important because they wanted to honor our parents with a substantial gift to celebrate 45 years of marriage. I found myself wanting not only to participate, but help dictate how we could make the gift more meaningful for the two of them. I mused on this feeling before church one morning. Why was I so eager to honor people who had dishonored my dreams and family so recently? It was a deep desire within me to do something very special for them. I pondered this as we drove to church. The sermon that day was all about honoring those in authority, regardless if we agree with them or not. I couldn't believe it. God was setting me up! (He's good at that.) I listened at the edge of my seat. I had no notebook to take notes, so unfortunately I can't recall most of the details, but the Bible verses the pastor found in both the Old and New Testaments confirmed and reaffirmed my desire to honor my parents.

Within the week, I wrote them that letter, but it had a completely different tone. I didn't mention everything I had wanted to unload on them. Instead, I came in the opposite spirit and told them that for the first time, I was beginning to see God showing me the role Andy and I played in the very demise of the farm. That we were just as, or maybe more, in the wrong from the very beginning of the farm endeavor. That we did not honor them and that we allowed the perceived offenses to keep us from seeing their part in the farm. It wasn't long, but I laid it all out for them.

And as deer hunting season opened the week before Thanksgiving, I went to visit them with the kids for the weekend. It was a nice visit, and we officially invited Mom and Dad to have Thanksgiving at our home in Coon Valley. They graciousy acknowledged the letter and as the two of them walked in our door, it was a truly an event to be thankful for.

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Thursday late afternoon, we sat down with the Blankenheim's, my parents and our little family said a substantial prayer of thanks. Just the fact of us sitting there was a testament to the humbling grace of God and what he can do with broken hearts. We aren't through it yet, and there is much more healing to be had, but we are positive this step was the first good step in a long time, for our relationship.

Then Dad gave a toast. It was short and could have easily been missed in the following conversation, but I heard it loud and clear.

"Here's to an interesting and painful year...and a beautiful ending to that year."

I have found myself with the rare opportunity to blog during the middle of the day. Andy is watching the kids so I can spend time at the office (farm office) and get some accounting/customer relations taken care of.

In the meantime, I am sitting in a warm, wood-paneled office with a window view of Dawn's fall garden and the fog slowly misting by. It's just above freezing today and a leather office chair, soft lighting and free time is making for a pleasant combination.

After posting about a week ago about our renewed interest in blogging, I have gotten an amazing response from folks I never even knew were reading about our family. It's been heartening, edifying and a direct confirmation that this is what I need to be doing. If you haven't noticed, I am already starting to blog with more intention and the more I write, the less I have to catch up on. You know, like when you haven't talked to a friend in a few months, you are often left with little to say because the small details in life are lost and the major ones don't take up that much space. So it is with you all, my friends from all over. I haven't written in so long, I don't know how to catch up with you all! But if I do this blogging intentionally, and give you daily/weekly updates and thoughts...well, the whole idea of writing isn't nearly as intimidating as it was.

So today, with my precious afternoon "off," I will catch you up on what's happened to us since we parted ways with Foxwood Farm.

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When we drove out of that gravel driveway for the last time, it was a moment I'll never forget. Next to our hand-built patio, we left a small crowd of friends/farm patrons who had helped us pack up the moving truck or just came over to say goodbye. I looked out the rear view mirror, even after Andy told me not to. I saw them all waving, melancholy yet strong, and I found myself welling up in tears. I was driving our mini-van, packed to the gills with breakable items, our friends Kat and Cortnie (who helped us immensely on our farm), and Elly. Andy was driving the moving truck with Ethan and our friend Ben. My parents followed, Dad in his pickup with outdoor items and Bret (Cortnie's older brother) and Mom drove separate with yet more items in her SUV.

I accelerated passed the the maple trees that mark our front yard. Two Norman Maples and one Sugar Maple, planted when my dad was a kid to give shade to the south side of the house in summer. I found myself thinking of my childhood under those trees.

They were the perfect climbing tree for a kid; low branches and thick sturdy wood. I had many "secret" spots in which to perch and watch the lazy summer days pass by. The shade was so effective that for years only patchy grass could grow underneath. In the fall, countless leaves would rain golden onto the earth, covering the lawn so completely that we would make several ten foot tall leaf piles to jump into.

My mom taught me how to make leave "houses" out of the golden carpet. You take the rake and uncover square areas of lawn, connect them with lawn "hallways" and make rooms with them. Below, 6 month old Elly sits in a leaf hallway dedicated to the Packers.

My brothers showed me how to play "camping" with various GI Joe action figures at the base of the tree. A Norman maple has a thick trunk that often has exposed roots making for amazing miniature worlds of canyons, caves and hills. In recent years, Andy hung our hammock in between the two trees, making for perfect summer snoozes and cute candids of the kids. And sometimes, they were just magnificent trees, pushing back against hard winds, sheltering us from southern storms and standing grandly with their foliage bright and glimmering in the setting sun.

 

I was snapped out of my dreamy thoughts by Elly asking if we were going to "catch up the truck" in reference to the lumbering moving truck a thousand feet ahead of us. "Yeah, honey, we're going to follow Daddy and Ethan all the way to the Blue House."

The Blue House. That is our home here in Coon Valley. It's been referred to as the Blue House since we first met with Vince at the top of a beautiful ridge back in August. He was cutting hay for second crop and the late afternoon sun gleamed off the hood of his well-kept tractor. Andy and I had just driven 3 hours one way to find a man who might be the key to our future as farmers. It had not been but 36 hours before that we first learned about the opportunity to be market gardeners in La Crosse from a mutual friend. Of course, we didn't know the friend was mutual until that day. On a whim and several prayers, we headed west...toward our new destiny. We didn't even know where we were exactly going until about an hour in, when Vince called us back. "By the way, we're heading to your farm now. How do we get there?"

A deep guffaw from the other end was reassuring and we made arrangements to meet around 5pm. When we arrived, we could not find Vince at either farm and made some calls to his cellphone. After awhile, we got a return call to meet him in the field of The Short Ridge. We had no idea what that meant, but driving up and down the winding single lane road from one farm to the other revealed an opening to the east that happened to have a hay field and a farmer cutting it. This had to be The Short Ridge, and the man named Vince.

It was on that sweet scented hilltop that we all revealed our stories of life and consequence, farming and family, journeys and new beginnings. It was starting to feel like destiny.

"Have you seen The Blue House?" Vince asked amidst a myriad of tours and questions. "It's right across from the dairy farm."

And that's where we first glimpsed what was to be our new home, though at the time we were looking at each other as if this were some colossal joke, hoping against hope that it was true, but feeling that everything was just too good.

On our late night drive home that day, we could barely speak to each other. Everything we had ever wanted or dreamed of at Foxwood Farm was happening here at this farm 100 miles away. We stopped at a rest stop on I-90 and took a bathroom break. We read a historical marker that told about the ancient goelogy of the Driftless Region of the Upper Mississippi. And we just stood in awe of the place we were at.

It wasn't more than a week later that we hosted a visit from Vince and Kristin (the feminine half of the couple who run St. Brigid's dairy farm). And it wasn't but a few days after that, we learned that we had been hired.

So there it was. On the edge of despair and hopelessness, we cried out for help. And help came. It came in a form we could never have put together ourselves. A mere 8 days that changed the course of our lives forever. The position we came to fill was not just gardening anymore. Once Vince learned of our specific talents and interests, he found a niche for us here. Web, email, marketing, blogging, photography, graphic design, sales, cooking, promotions, event planning...all for a farm that does exactly what we always wanted.

Andy says it's easy to sell a product that you believe in. Well, we believe in this. Organic practices, grass-based dairy, pastured poultry and free-ranging hens. Hogs to clean up the waste and thrive off milk products, beef animals allowed to graze and maintain the beautiful coulees and ridges. Direct customer interaction, community relationships, open minds and open hearts. A full dedication to the land and the people around us. And a patron base that is loyal til the end.

Not even a month after we arrived, we were rushing around putting the finishing touches on our

first event at St. Brigid's Meadows: The Cider Festival.

Above, Andy prepares to smoke some veggies. This was about 8am. The festival started at 4pm with dinner at 6. Just so you know, we started the night before. We attempted to harvest three of our farm ducks for one of the dishes. It doesn't get much fresher than that! Unfortunately, all we know about butchering chickens has nothing to do with butchering and de-feathering ducks. I'll spare you the details on the actual killing of the ducks, but when the birds were brought back to our kitchen it was about 7pm. We began boiling water to pluck them. What we didn't know was that most people use paraffin wax to dunk the duck in and get most of the down off the body. We also didn't think about the fact that a duck is built to NOT get wet in water, so dunking them in scalding H2O rolled right off their back. So we were stuck hand pulling and picking fuzz after fuzz off the bodies. Before we knew it, it was pushing 9pm and we STILL had not cleaned a single duck. Andy began skinning one, which proved amazingly difficult as well. By the time we skinned the other two and pulled the meat off, it was 10:30pm and we were exhausted. Our friend Kat had come to visit and was helping us with this task. We all knew the next day would prove just as exhausting, and earlier than before, so we threw in the towels and went to bed.

Here, Andy and Elly skin a bunch of apples. These were intended for smoked apple sauce.

After cooking all morning at The Blue House, we moved shop to Vince and Dawn's home, where the festival was taking place. Above you see Andy directing his worker bees in the finishing of the various meal pieces.

In the very clean workshop, Vince and Jason had set up the dual apple presses and tables for the meal. Everything was ready to welcome the guests. I had been in charge of taking RSVPs and so sat at the entrance and welcomed all the patrons to the festival. It was a fun job because I gave everyone name tags and since I was the most visible person representing the farm, many people came back to me throughout the afternoon to ask questions about the farm or our products. Andy held down the food court with much help from Dawn, Kristin and various relatives. As the event went on, Andy set up shop behind the smokers and grill and commanded his own audience of interested onlookers who watched as he prepared meat and veggies.

Here you see Elly and Ethan enjoying some bread on the hay wagon. Ethan got into the rain barrel early on and had to borrow big Sister's jacket and boots. With a flowery top and pink puffy snow boots, it wasn't surprising for me to overhear another parent asking his child to nicely share a ball with the little girl. That little girl was, of course, our long eye-lashed Ethan.

Below, a shot of the people in line to grab the great spread of food. In the center, you can see a bunch of 8-10 year olds continuing to grind apples for cider all on their own! In the bottom right corner you can see Andy telling folks about the dishes as he helps serve.

Here a team of UW-La Crosse professors work hard to grind a few buckets full of apples.At the end of the night, we still had several flats of apples left, so farm employees and family relatives took turns making the last of the cider. Below, Vince (in maroon) and Andy (behind, in the checked shirt) had a dual to see who could grind and press a whole load the fastest. You can see Ethan "helping" Daddy by throwing some apples into the hopper. In the end, it was pretty much a tie, but a great way to make another gallon of cider in about 5 minutes.

We cleaned up and divided the leftover food amongst the late helpers and families and headed home to bed. I had a couple of cold and tired babes to get into bed and Kat had a long drive to MN right away, so we left earlier than the rest. All in all, everything got wrapped up by about 10pm, with most of the patrons gone by 7pm.

The event was a great opportunity for us to meet a lot of the people we would be serving. It also taught us a lot about the new community we are becoming a part of.

There are so many like-minded individuals in the Viroqua/La Crosse region. The difference we began to see was that neighbors supported neighbors in more than just lip service. We noticed how everyone seemed to know each other and how they fit into the area. Families live within driving distance of one another. Names go back generations, with streets, roads and even coulees named for folks whose ancestors still live and work in the same place. There is a sense of permanence here that we never got in the Fox Valley. The feel of community is vast and deep.

We took our time exploring the region between work and errands. Andy and Ethan at the top of Granddad Bluff, look over the city of La Crosse. The bluffs on the other side are Minnesota.

The kids and I look out over the Mississippi River on Hwy 35, the Great River Road.

And here you can see me at about 5-6 months into our third pregnancy.

We are due near the end of January, early February. To be honest, I don't really know if it will be even then. We don't have a clear conception date and we opted out of an ultrasound. According to the best date we had, I am still measuring small. We have another appointment just before Thanksgiving, so maybe I'll have "caught up" then. In the meantime, we are taking it one day at a time. I am now roughly into the 7th month and very much showing. Baby is active, kicking and generally doing a tap dance on my ribs every few hours. Just this week, I have begun experiencing Braxton Hicks contractions on a very regular basis. It's a little uncomfortable at times, but I know they are just necessary practice for the big day ... whenever that may be.

It's ok that we aren't on a due date deadline. You see, we are going to have a home birth this time around and are working with a well-known area midwife to achieve that goal. More on that in the future, I'm sure!

We've also taken the time to get to know our new farm animals here at St. Brigid's Meadows.

Above, our friendly Jersey cows check out the kids and our double stroller. We love the old girls. They are so gentle and curious. There's something peaceful about momma cows, and Jerseys are so much smaller than most dairy cattle. They are very approachable. As are the calves! Elly demonstrates below with some blown kisses to one of the heifers.

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As the days grew shorter and our lives fell into a routine, we had more time to think about those we left behind. We had basically cut off communication about the happenings on the farm. We just weren't emotionally ready to hear it. That brought in another set of dynamics which I will talk about in my next post.

For now this blog has taken me into the late evening in several writing sessions and I must now close. But I will bring you up to speed on our emotional and spiritual journey since leaving Foxwood in the next week.

Well, it's been a couple of crazy weeks here at Foxwood Farm. First of all, thank you for the outpouring of support and well-wishes. Knowing people far and wide are behind this transition helps a great deal when the days get long and the details get overwhelming.

In the days since we first talked about our amazing opportunity at St. Brigid's Meadows, we did not yet know what would become of the home farm. There were several ideas on the table between my parents and us. One option that we both hit upon seemed too good to be true. But then again, this month has been full of "too good to be true" moments.

There is a family in the Omro area that has been very supportive of their local farmer. They are the kind of family that every direct-market farmer longs to have in his list of customers. Starting nearly two years ago, we became acquainted with this family through a local homeschooling group. They came to buy pumpkins and gourds from us (our first crop!) before we had anything else to sell (not even eggs). The mother talked about her awareness of locally-produced, whole foods and expressed interest in our products if we ever sold eggs or milk.

Over the winter, we got to know them better at our local church. When we began milking Charlotte last May, this family came to our farm for a tour with their homeschooling group. About 10 families showed up that day and several became regular customers of ours. During that visit, the two oldest kids showed an interest in helping us with our gardens, and our two little ones. We arranged with the parents to have Bret and Cortnie come out nearly every weekday to help me plant, weed, water and harvest in the family garden. In exchange for the summer of help, they got half the money from what we sold in the store, half of the produce for the family to preserve and a solid foundation in gardening, chicken mainenance, and child care. At the end of the season, we were able to feed both our family and theirs for the entire winter.

This past winter, we all determined that the whole family could become involved in the farm, all ten of them. We planned an even larger garden, with the mother fully in charge of maintaining it. They filled in from time to time as our relief milkers. They took care of our chickens and chicks when we had to be away from home. They supported us financially throughout the months when we needed a little extra boost, all in exchange for wholesome food.

Every farmer should want a dedicated family like that building them up and supporting their endeavors. We couldn't have been more blessed by them.

* * * * *

And then, we were.

We are pleased to announce that as of September 1st, 2010, Gale and Rita Gehrking and family will be taking over the farm responsibilities here at Foxwood Farm. They grew up working on dairy farms in Minnesota, intimately know our operations here and are entirely devoted to a quality farm product.

Not only that, my parents had thought of them as the perfect family to take over here, completely independently of us. They have seen the work that the Gehrking family has put in month after month here on the farm, with the only compensation being food from the farm. There is a level of trust on both our parts that can only be earned from seeing people in action.

Gale and Rita had a big decision on their plate, just as suddenly as we did. We could not tary. We had to know if they would take on this endeavor or we had to move on to plan B. Fortunately for everyone, God had his hand in this transition as well. All the people most closely involved felt strongly that this was the right move for Foxwood Farm.

A few key points:

• The name will not change. Foxwood Farm is still the farm here. It will just be defined by a new family. The email address, website and blog will not change. Rita is taking over administrative duties and is eagerly looking forward to taking up the reigns on this very blog! Foxwood Farm will continue, with a whole new perspective.
• I will continue blogging about The Sells on the St. Brigid's Meadow's blog. Our family story will continue over on the western part of the state and if you come with us, you can learn about all the wonderful things happening with a whole different farm.
• There will be no lapse in product offerings. The Gehrkings are taking over all aspects of the business: free-range eggs, grassfed beef, dairying and gardens. In the future, they hope to expand to pastured poultry and a subscription-style garden.
• The entire month of August, Andy and I will be training Gale, Rita, Bret and Cortnie on all our chores. By the end of the month, they will be fully transitioned into the daily routine; so much so, that we won't actually be doing the chores anymore. (This works out well for us as we will be in the midst of moving!)

We have full confidence in the Gehrkings to put 100% into this farm. It's not just a job to them; it's a way of life they have longed to have for years. We can't wait for them to get started!

In Memory of Trees, Gayla Marty tells a compelling story about her family’s eastern Minnesota farm and the folks who inhabited it for several generations. Although I am compulsively drawn to retrospective memoirs such as Memory of Trees, the piece is especially powerful because the story is told from a daughter’s perspective and this particular daughter weaves a tale of land, roots, connectedness, belonging and loss. Memory of Trees is a reflective and at times mournful piece, but the story serves as a lovely elegy that also guides the reader to a palpable understanding of the joys associated with the life of the land.

Gayla Marty effectively chronicles the aging process of so many American farms. Hard work, dedication, conviction, faith and even more hard work, conviction and faith founded them. That first generation did everything for the farm, which was expected to remain in the family forever, it seemed. Subsequent generations continue to build and grow the farm until the combination of circumstance, new economic models, and generational immiscibility create cracks in the long standing foundation. And eventually, all too often, the land pays the price – sold to the highest bidder – to be repurposed, developed or otherwise disposed of. Sometimes the remaining family members are left with a wad of cash to temper the inevitable emotional baggage hidden in the pile of memories. Sometimes it’s considerably messier. Marty tells her version of the story with believable grit and sufficient edge that it easily avoids the path to sentimentalism.

Memory of Trees is beautifully written – so perfectly crafted that it was difficult to put down after reading the first paragraph. I found myself laughing, nodding, smiling one minute and feeling a burning sensation in my sinuses with a lump in my throat the next. Whether you have loved the land and lost, or dream of getting to know a piece of ground and all of its multigenerational history intimately, or even plan to lay your own foundation for subsequent generations, please read Memory of Trees: A Daughter’s Story of a Family Farm. 

I'll admit it, I like snow. I like snow on the ground at Christmas. I like to spend time out in that snow. It's like magic to me.

When I was a kid, up in North Dakota, snow meant that we could build great forts of the frozen stuff and toss icy missiles at one another; it also meant we could build snowmen or Jackalopes -- magical creatures complete with antlers shaped from branches we collected from the lilac thicket. Snow also meant that hikes on the Missouri River bluffs with my entire family, or down on the wooded bottoms with just my dad, would be especially fun because of all the animal tracks.

One particularly white Christmas season, the family nursery business was closed and my dad was off for several days in a row. One of those days he took me for a hike through the riverine forest along the Missouri River, south of Bismarck. By then, I could recognize deer tracks, rabbit tracks, and an assortment of smaller rodent tracks and snow tunnels. What I wasn't prepared for that day was to see the largest rabbit tracks I had ever experienced -- I was not yet 5 years old. I recall spying the tracks and being amazed at their size -- dad didn't seem too impressed. I concluded that rabbit tracks of that size could be made by a single creature: the Easter Bunny. In fact I was so secure with that conclusion that it took me more years than normal to accept that the Easter Bunny was a myth.

That same particularly white Christmas hike was memorable for a bunch of other reasons. I was impressed with the fact that at lunchtime my dad stopped, gathered a few handfuls of Burr Oak branches and created a fire with matches and tinder he pulled from the pocket of his bright red, cotton-shelled parka. But that trick was nothing compared with the thermos of hot chocolate and package of hotdogs and buns that appeared from another of the parka's pockets.

We sat on a log and roasted dogs, using only jackknife-sharpened sticks and the buns themselves as utensils. We didn't talk much during that snowy repast although I remember thinking my dad's red parka was magic because cool stuff just kept coming out of its pockets. Upon reflection, I think the magic was simply in the pure, unadulterated father-son moments we spent together.

Years later as a young adult and a not-so-young adult I spent several white Christmas seasons in Wisconsin on a pair of cross-country skis with a tent and other camping gear strapped to my back. My dad joined me on one of those excursions. We saw plenty of animal tracks that year. We chuckled about the Easter Bunny evidence I saw back in North Dakota and concluded that the tracks were created by a Jackrabbit; those tracks really weren't that big after all. In spite of brutal sub-zero temperatures on that trip, there was plenty of magic in gliding for miles silently through the wilderness.

A winter storm warning  is in effect for my part of Kansas this Christmas Eve day -- there are similar warnings over much of the region. I know that many folks are anxious about travelling. I'm lucky because I get to spend the next few days at my Osage County farm. I am hoping for a white Christmas and the magic the day will bring.

The recent shooting at Fort Hood last week has made this week’s observance of Veteran’s Day especially somber. It’s a vivid reminder of not only how fragile life is and how quickly it can be taken away, but how sometimes we can take our national security for granted. None of us ever expected something like this to happen at one of the most secure places in the nation. It’s easier to accept soldiers being killed in action on foreign soil, than it is for them to killed by one of their own on a U.S. Army base. It’s difficult to comprehend.

My dad was stationed at Camp Hood (as it was known then) in the early 1940s. So on this day, I not only pray for those who lost loved ones at Fort Hood, I also remember my dad, who was a veteran of World War II. I used to love looking at pictures of him in his uniform (and still do) and hear stories of his army days.

Dad was drafted in 1941 and went through basic training at Camp Robinson in Arkansas. He was hoping to put in his two years and get out, but the bombing at Pearl Harbor changed everything.

In 1942, while Dad was stationed at Camp San Luis Obispo in California, he and my mom were married at her uncle’s home in Riverside. The following year, Dad was transferred to Camp Hood. In 1944, he was sent to Europe. Dad was a mess sergeant (with the 635^th Tank Destroyers Battalion), so he was behind the front lines, but it was still a dangerous place to be. Dad lost one of his cooks to a landmine on Omaha Beach about two weeks after D-day.

Dad returned to the states after the allied victory in Europe in 1945. His battalion was scheduled to go to the Pacific, but before they could be shipped out, the atomic bombs were dropped on Japan, which ended the war.  After Dad was discharged from the army, he and Mom settled in Topeka, Kan. and eventually bought the house where my mom still lives.

As a child, I remember being fascinated by the German gun Dad had brought back from Europe and wondered about the fate of its previous owner. It wasn’t until after Dad died that my brother told me what happened to the bullets. Dad threw them overboard on his voyage back to the states. He knew he would have children someday and didn’t want a potentially dangerous weapon in the house.

Dad remained close to his army buddies up until the time his death in 2004. It was one of those experiences that galvanized a group of young men for a common goal. I’m proud of my dad and his service to our country. I’m also grateful to live in a country where men and women are willing to put their lives on the line for my freedom.

Next time you cross paths with a veteran or someone currently serving in the military, shake his or her hand and thank that person for their service.

If you’re interested in obtaining the military records of a loved one who has passed on, visit: 
http://archives.gov/veterans/military-service-records/get-service-records.html

 

Thursday, August 27, 2009, my family welcomed my brother Josh’s first child, Elliana Marie Regan, into the world (6 pounds, 9 ½ ounces, 21 inches long and looking every bit a Regan). What an experience it was to be able to be there at the hospital, right outside the delivery room, ear pressed against the door hearing that first wail out of that beautiful baby girl’s mouth.

The doctor emerged from the room moments later – probably a little surprised to find us so close – and said something along the lines of, “You guys have got a little cutie patootie, I’ll tell you that.” I couldn’t agree more. Although she initially seemed to look a little too much like my brother, I’m sure she’ll be alright.

I have to admit I was nervous. It sank in on Wednesday that the following day my brother and his wife would be going through childbirth, and any number of malignancies seemed a remote but very real possibility. And, not to be egocentric, but I would be an uncle for the first time. It was absolute relief when we entered the room and saw her little arms and legs flailing wildly as she tested and stretched her muscles, and to see Nikki with a wide, yet weary, smile on her face.

Ya done good, sis.

I can’t say that new life is more powerful or life-altering than death after a couple of hardships endured – losing a father in an unexpected woodcutting accident among them – but this felt like pure triumph worthy of giving thanks, and I do know that if there were ever a time when Dad was looking down smiling, that would have to be one of them. The birth of Elliana, or Ella, as she’s called, was indeed life-altering to more people than just Josh and Nikki. I know it was to me.

And our mom just beamed, which is usually life-altering in its own right.

On a side note, I did manage to sneak out Saturday during the middle of the day, while Josh and Nikki were entertaining guests in the hospital, and experience some beautiful Kansas countryside and catch a couple of small fish.

Ever since I can remember, I’ve been interested in everything Dutch. It may have something to do with the fact that both sets of my Dad’s grandparents came from Holland. I grew up identifying most with my Dutch heritage since my Dad’s parents were the only grandparents I knew. They lived in a small town in western Kansas that was settled by Dutch pioneers, including my great-grandparents. When I began doing family history, interest in my Dutch heritage intensified. I developed an affinity for windmills, wooden shoes and anything that looked Dutch. 

Several years ago I began visiting local antique stores just for something to do on my lunch hour. When I go to antique stores, I’m not usually looking for anything in particular. I just like to browse. Its fun to find items that might have belonged to my parents or grandparents, or something I remember from my childhood.

Recently, I was on my lunch hour and had some time kill after picking up a prescription. The pharmacy was in a shopping center, so I decided to visit a small shop at the opposite end of the shopping area. I never made it. I passed an antique store and doubled back to go in. I had no intension of buying anything, but I spotted a small pitcher and basin with a Dutch windmill on it. From that moment, I was on the hunt for Dutch items. I scoured the shelves and discovered a small ceramic “wooden” shoe, a tiny pair of ceramic “wooden” shoes and a ceramic windmill. All of the items were reasonably priced and two of the items were Delft (pottery made in the Netherlands), which made my discoveries even more thrilling.

I felt a rush of excitement as I walked up to the register. As the items were being totalled, I had to stop and wonder about the history of these items. Where did they come from? Who owned them? Why did they or someone in their family choose to give them up? If only these pieces could talk. One can only imagine what stories they could tell.

When I got back to work, I proudly showed off my treasures. I felt as if I’d purchased a piece of history and, in a sense, a connection to my past.

Photo by Brenda L. Kipp

I want to begin by heaving an enormous sigh and taking in a deep breath of rainy atmosphere.

It’s been a bumpy and amazing ride these last two months. I feel like I am just resurfacing for air after a dive to the deep end of the public pool: I can see the wavy light above me, but my lungs are burning for the oxygen promised on the other side.

Whew. It tastes good. Since I last wrote about what was happening here at the farm, we had just remodeled our old pump house into the small, but functional farm store. We have since added some little bits of home to make it comfy and welcoming and overall, our customers like it very much. Since then, we have been really slammed with work here and since we have so many new endeavors this year, everything that happens is like an emergency and must take center stage. To say the least, we have been stressed out.

However, I have uploaded a bunch of photos from the beginning of June until just a few days ago in order to help me keep the days straight. We’ve had so much going on that I need these visuals as much as you do! Here we go ...

Gardens

Below, you see our back field that held the pumpkins/chickens/sheep last year. We have since converted it into a fully functioning garden. Well, about half of it at least. Here, Bret and his mother Rita spent an entire day planting and tilling and planting and watering. We got our garden in super late this year, but I am thankful we have a garden at all. You see Rita and her husband Gale and family of eight kids have pledged time to come out and work the gardens throughout the season in order to have food for both our families. It works out great! Andy and I had high hopes for a pretty large garden this year, but when everything hit with the dairy, we just had no time to devote to it. Enter Rita and her two oldest kids, Bret and Cortnie. We have the two of them nearly five days a week now in the summer, sometimes all day and they help with weeding, watering and eventually, harvesting.

And of course, other chores as well. It’s a great blessing to have them here as they can often take over simple duties of feeding chickens, watering animals, picking eggs and my favorite: babysitting! :-)

Lawnmowers

Here you see our rams eating our front lawn. There’s a book called Food Not Lawns (have not read it, but I get the premise) that talks about getting rid of the lawn mower and turning your yard into a garden. Well, we’re a few years down the road from that. However, I had this hair-brained idea to have the sheep graze the lawn way back in February. This June, I got to see it come to fruition. One thing I did not count on was having to “let it go” for such a long time that when the rams were finally let onto it, the area didn’t look like a front yard at all. I was happy to have satisfied my interest in “green lawn mowing,” but I think we need to retool a little bit before we do this again. The front yard now has a bunch of SUPER green circles that stick out like polka dots on a housewife’s dress. Not exactly the sort of lawn you want new customers to see.

But it was fun while it lasted! And with the wonders of temp fencing, it’s like we never had sheep there at all!

Raising Chicks

We got brand new baby chicks in about June 12th. We had these high hopes of helping a heritage breed chicken increase its numbers and showing off our geniune “old fashioned” hens. But apparently, everyone else in this down economy was thinking: I’m gonna lose my job, I better raise chickens to be safe. So the Delaware chickens we had been so carefully researching over the winter did not get ordered in time to beat the rush. We would not have gotten our chicks until this week had we waited! Since half of them would be raised to replace our old, old laying hens, and it takes 5 months to get a pullet to lay a single egg, we needed something a little faster.

So we went to a local hatchery in Beaver Dam and ordered their generic Blacks. 100 straight run chicks for 87¢ each. That beat the Delaware price of $2.09 each, but they certainly lacked the street cred that a genuine, critically endangered animal would have carried! Right?

Boy were they cute!!! As soon as they came, I could care less about their pedigree. These chicks were awesome. Small enough to hold two in one hand and 100 fit easily into Elly’s kiddie pool. This was our makeshift incubator for the first week to ensure they would stay warm and cozy and not get lost. We only lost three from shipping and that was it!

Once you are past the first week, chicks are so easy! Above, the chicks at a week old. Now that they are nearly two months old, we’ve had them free-ranging for several weeks. They are naturals! The little cockerels have turned white and black spotted and the pullets remain pure black. This week or next we will separate them and begin an intensive pastured poultry operation. In the meantime, they enjoy their brooder house home behind our large field garden. (See our posts about getting that brooder house up to standard last fall!) We are going to order more females this winter and raise them to be layers for ourselves and another farmer next May. We might even invest in an incubator ourselves and just take our own eggs when we get the right varieties here on the farm. But I digress...

Shearing

Below is a bunch of our woolly ewes and their lambs. Can you even tell the difference?? They are only a month old here, mid-June, and already over half the size of their mommas. The one in the middle facing away from us was the subject of much curiosity. In the field, he looks like a fox hopping over the grass. We’ve never seen a sheep with this sort of coloration before. He has begun to lighten in color, but still has this tawny, shaggy hide that must be a combination of some serious recessive genes. As you can see, the ewes all have their wool yet and we had already hit the heat of summer. It was just another one of those things that didn’t get dealt with until it was an emergency. We went about three weeks straight with the sheep out every single day.

They were some of the most stressful days we had encountered and we strengthened the fences and gave them fresher grass and checked for shorts and it didn’t matter. They would lift the high-tensile wire with their fully wooled necks and run right through. So we called around and found a sheep shearer about an hour away who would be able to come within two weeks. It was the longest two weeks we’d ever waited! But with a lot of prayer and fence diligence, we made it through with only a few break-outs.

When Courtney arrived, he had this excellent equipment and 30 years of sheep knowledge under his belt. We set up a shearing area and he just dove right in. The follow shots give you a little idea of how smoothly it went. He was shearing the next sheep before the last one was back in the pen. It was amazing and he was a very genuine guy. We had him stay for a country lunch as a sort of tip for his time.

To keep the wools clean, we laid down an old wagon side. You can see this ewe’s lamb watching in the cattle chute. When she was done, we’d lead her to the pen behind the red gravity box and dump the lamb(s) in with her.

Courtney knew just where the pressure points were on the sheep in order to hold them relatively still. They folded and flopped into place just like little sheep rag dolls. We were in awe. Below, my mom Judy holds up a shorn coat. We placed the fully white wool into one bag and the black or mixed colored wool into a separate bag.

The holding pen for the freshly shorn ewes. Now it was even harder to tell the full grown sheep from the lambs! We will never make the mistake again of letting our flock out to pasture with 4 inches of wool around their little bodies. No fun for anyone involved!

The Little Peckers

Not to forget about our chickens, they have been rangin about our sheep and cattle fields since early April. We were moving them about once every two weeks, but found that some sort of varmint was getting the late hens at dusk. We finally set out some traps and moved the trailer about 30 feet and even set up some night vision motion senser cameras to see if we could find what was killing our hens.

All we saw were beautiful shots of the farm during the day and cryptic shots of Andy closing the chickens in at night. :-)

I laugh at the one above. I love Andy’s sense of humor! But we lost about 25 laying hens in two weeks and then the raids stopped. We haven’t had a problem since.

A direct consequence of the stress the rest of the flock felt was a reduction in egg numbers. Couple that with a summer molt, old hens, hot weather, inconsistent watering/feeding and our huge flock was down to about 3 dozen eggs per day. 36 eggs from 180 hens! So we smartened up our feeding schedule, moved them to a short grass, thick clover field and move them nearly every single day to thwart the predators. We are now back up to seven to eight dozen eggs per day and boy do we need it! The egg demand has gone through the roof! For about three weeks at the end of June, we couldn’t keep a dozen in that store for longer than 12 hours. Above, can you find the ranging hens? This is one of our north fields that face the permanent pasture and the ancient oak trees. It’s a lovely sight to behold!

Mornings

Speaking of sights to behold, the shot below is sunrise over the sheep paddock about a week ago. The freshly shorn ewes have a new found respect for electric fencing and we rest easy at night again. Andy goes out about 5:30am and moves all the animal fencing before rounding up the milking herd. He lets the chickens out, moves the sheep, opens up new paddock for the beef/heifer herd and lets the milking herd into fresh grass. I have often asked him to take the camera to capture early morning life on the farm. On this day, he did!

Moo-calves

Below, some of our scamps nose up to Andy. We have eight young calves now, a direct result of nine cows milking in our barn. Our first cow Charlotte had still-born twins back in April, but the rest of the cows each had one healthy calf. Then our seventh cow, Isabelle, had twin bulls which we named Imis and Ignatio. The last cow to have her calf, just last week, had difficulties in labor and lost the calf to stress. But thankfully she is doing well. Below, from left to right: Tess out of Tilly, Imis out of Isabelle, Alex out of Anna and Barbie out of Bea. Not shown is Midnight out of Mabel, Leeloo out of Leche, Ignatio and Ghost out of Gretta. Ghost is pretty cool. I’ll have to get a shot of him sometime; he’s like a tan/grey Holstein looking little guy. Never seen a calf that color before.

Gardens Again

Back to the gardens, they are growing strong. This shot below shows what has grown in a month in the back garden. My dad Dave takes the disk and kills the weeds in the other area not being used. We are raising everything organically, so weed control is a daily task. Bret and Cortnie step up to the job as well as they can, but there’s only so much work a 12 and 14 year old want to do in a given day. They aren’t here to be slaves, so we don’t push them. I get out there when I can to assess the plants and pull a hand full of weeds or two. We have had serious run-ins with cucumber beetles on our cucumbers and flea beetles on our lettuces. Now we are dealing with cabbage loopers on our cauliflowers and cabbages. I have made some homemade tinctures of garlic and dish soap with limited success. However, the beetles and looper remain. I am going to look into Bt as an option. I need to learn more about this spray to see if it’s right for us. We have a sort of mini CSA going on with two friends of ours and one of the big selling points for them is the organic aspect of the garden. It can be bug eaten but not pesticide ridden. So we’ll see.

On the Dairy

On July 2nd, we got our dairy barn “whitewashed.” This is a process by which barn lime is mixed with water and sprayed over the entire interior of the barn, coating it a pristine white and also creating a natural anti-bacterial shield over all surfaces. In order to ship commercially, this needs to be done once per year. Here I took a before picture (FINALLY!) and below is the same alley after. It’s amazing, isn’t it?!

Our quest to ship our milk with Weyawega Star Dairy, a local cheese plant, is still in the future. We had to get our 100 year old well shocked with chlorine in order to clear out some common bacteria, and we are waiting on a follow-up water test. In the meantime, we feed the milk to the calves and collect cream and dump the skim to the chickens or on the gardens. We don’t like dumping milk at all, but at least the excess is being reused in a good way.

Feeling Patriotic

Independence Day came like a breath of fresh air for us. We got chores done early and headed into my hometown of Omro for the highly anticipated festivities. My mother Judy organizes the annual Lion’s Club art fair and this year she participated after a 6 year hiatus. Here is her booth with Andy and Ethan in the corner. My mother does a lot of oil painting, crafting, furniture reclaiming and sowing. She also paints birdhouse gourds and full scale murals. She’s quite the little artist in her spare time! There was also a large parade, in which our little church won Best Of the Parade for all the floats involved! There was a rubber duck race and bands playing and a pie and ice cream social at our Historic Society. (Andy and I are card carrying members, by the way!) At night, the fireworks came, but our little troop went into melt down about 15 minutes before the start, so I’ll have to wait until next year to see the big show.

Here, Elly is being hugged by our friends’ son Haiden. In true Elly form, she simply tolerates it. But the photo was cute, so I had to post it! We spent the afternoon at Haiden’s grandmother’s house for a cookout and games. It was a welcome break from the farm. For reasons completely unrelated, Independence Day is my favorite holiday of the whole year!

The next day, here is Elly and Ethan on the way back from collecting eggs. The walk is about a quarter mile and they enjoy the wagon ride. At the parade, Elly managed to fall THROUGH a park bench and bust open her chin. That is the mar you see on her little face. She came through like a champ, though.

Family Time!

A week after Independence Day, my family from Colorado Springs came to visit us for a few days. You may recall, we drove to Colorado over Thankgiving to see them and others before Ethan was born. (See: We Went on Vacation.) The next several photos detail our trips to parks and back yards and family time. It was another blessed respite from the intense work on the farm.

Elly hamming it up!

Daddy and Ethan enjoying a beer...well, just Daddy.

Dan and Krista took their girls Silvie (3), Josie (2) and Madaline (1) to the park. Me, Elly and Ethan tagged along and Grandma Judy came for support. It was a lot of fun ... Elly on the dinosaur. She looks so big there!

Ethan really liked the baby swing!

So did Elle-belle.

Then all too soon they had to go back home. Elly sure loves her cousins and can’t wait until they move closer to play more often.

Our Life

Back in the real world, Ethan has begun his journey down solid food lane. He took to it like a champ! He just turned five months last week; what a big boy! Normally foods can be started a lot earlier, but with everything going on, I just didn’t get to it. He’s not hurting for lack of solids; he just nurses all the time. So, it’s time to get him on to other things as well as me! Also, Elly has been successfully potty trained since June and Ethan is now exclusively in cloth diapers. It’s a small way we can contribute less to the landfills.

Gardens AGAIN

Back to the gardens, these next photos were taken just a few days ago, showing the progress from a couple weeks ago. Here is our front garden, mostly populated with peppers and tomatoes. (And Ellys!)

We let the sunflowers come up on their own and love the splashes of gold and yellow that they add to the sea of green.

Here is an example of companion planting. The basil in front aids bug protection to the tomato plant behind. For extra security, we stuck an onion in between because no bugs like the smell of onions!

Hollyhocks also volunteered their beauty this year and we have allowed a few to adorn the perimeter of the garden.

This is the back garden again, looking back at the house. Here are our cabbages, desperately needing help from those blasted loopers. Gotta look into that!

My favorite row of crops so far: our lettuces. Aren’t they so pretty? We enjoy the “cut and come again” aspect of greens and have been able to share organic, graden fresh greens with some folks who have never ventured outside the world of Iceburg! It’s been wonderful to see the response and interest generated. Yes, there is life outside the grocery store!

Old is New

Another side project has been getting an antique cream separator up and running. Hank, you will be interested to know that it is a DeLaval Model #18 hand crank stand separator. We got Gale in on the action because he is very knowledgeable and gifted in machinery technology. We got all the parts sorted and clean and realized we were missing one part, a very important bowl separator. I looked online, but am having major difficulty in locating anything resembling a parts shop for something this obsolete. Can any of you help??

Closing Thoughts

Finally, we are up to date. Now we can post non–novel-length blogs in order to keep you up to date on our comings and goings. A parting shot: taken in June, this is one of our eggs cooked just right, broken open on my homemade bread with some salt and pepper. Have you seen a yolk that dark before? We were shocked and had to capture it on film. I’ll never order an egg in a restaurant again! I am ruined!

Thank you all for your support and we’ll flesh out what’s been going on with the marketing side of things in a future post.

Blessings,

Becky

I took a long-awaited week off from work last week. I never seem to get everything done I want to do on the weekends (even if it’s a long holiday weekend). So, I took the time off to work on some projects I’d been putting off.

One of my major projects was to scan my dad’s slides (taken in the late 1960s and early 1970s) and save them to my computer. My goal was to scan at least four trays and I got six done. Most of the slides were of our vacation to Yellowstone and Grand Tetons National Parks. It was the first vacation our family took without my older brother. Although we missed having him along, it was one of the most memorable vacations our family ever had. As I looked at each picture, it immediately took me back to our trek out west.

The first leg of our journey led us through Western Kansas and the northeast corner of Colorado to Cheyenne, Wyo. We stayed with my cousin’s in-laws. After a tour of the capital city, we enjoyed rainbow trout for dinner. My sister and I slept in the family’s camper and we thought that was a real treat.

After we left Cheyenne, we headed north. We stopped at a tourist attraction called Hell’s Half Acre, 40 miles west of Casper. It’s not the kind of scenery you’d expect to see in the high plains of central Wyoming. Hell’s Half Acre is a horseshoe-shaped gorge with jagged spires and eerie rock formations.

Our next stop was Dubois. I fell in love with this authentic western town nestled in the valley between two mountain ranges. My parents, sister and I took an evening trail ride. I pretended to be a rancher’s daughter surveying our vast Rocky Mountain empire.

I hated to leave my little hamlet in the mountains, but the best was yet to come. We headed further west to Moran, a small community just outside of Grand Teton National Park. The motel where we stayed looked like a log cabin with a rustic décor. The view of the Tetons from the motel was spectacular, but the mosquitoes were so thick, it was impossible to sit outside and enjoy the view. 

Our time in the Tetons was one breathtaking sight after another. We toured the park, stopping at various turnouts to enjoy views of Jackson Lake, Wind River and alpine meadows. We also took a shuttle boat across Jenny Lake. The spray from the alpine lake hit my face – and it was cold!

 

One of my favorite places was the Chapel of the Transfiguration. The tiny log cabin structure, built in 1925, is owned and operated by the Episcopal Church. A picture window in the front of the chapel frames the Teton Range. I thought it would be a perfect place to get married (they do have weddings there).

Another day found us visiting the town of Jackson Hole. We had a picnic in the park that features an arch made of antlers. We also took the tram up Rendezvous Mountain, but it was so cold when we stepped out, we quickly looked at the spectacular view and immediately stepped back into the tram.

Our travels next took us to Yellowstone National Park. What amazing sights awaited us there!  We saw Old Faithful and other geysers, Mammoth Hot Springs, thermal pools, a mud volcano and sulphur caldron (it smelled like rotten eggs – Eww!). We also took in the grandeur of the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone complete with spectacular waterfalls. We had heard that there were a number of black bears in the park, so we were disappointed that we only saw one young bear.

After we left Yellowstone, we spent the night in West Yellowstone, Montana. I felt like I’d stepped back into the 1800s. We took a day trip up to the area where the largest earthquake in Montana history struck in 1959. A vistor’s center told the history of the quake and the area showed evidence of its destruction (a huge landslide and damaged houses) and the beauty it created (a peaceful lake).

We left Montana and drove down through Idaho to Utah. We spent the night in Ogden, then toured Temple Square in Salt Lake City. Aside from the inspiring temple, I was most impressed with the acoustics inside the large tabernacle (built without any nails). Our tour group stood in the back while our guide stood in the front with his back to us and whispered. We could hear every word he said!

The last leg of our trip took us thorough familiar territory in northern Colorado (a favorite vacation spot for our family) to visit some friends and then back home to Kansas.

As I finished scanning these slides, I felt as if I’d been on that wonderful vacation all over again. I’m glad my dad took so many pictures of that and other family vacations. It allows me to not only relive the good times we shared, but take a vacation without ever leaving the house!

How do you take a mental vacation? What is your most memorable vacation?

Photos taken by Kenneth and Velma Kipp

In my area, spring has disappeared, and summer’s heat and humidity have taken its place. Being a complete indoors type, I’m not particularly thrilled with the changes. However, there is one outdoors arena in which I’m pleased to report a bit of success. OK, only if you don’t count my lack of weeding skills (or more accurately, weeding motivation).

You may remember a blog post from last November – Garden Headaches – in which I detailed my wonderful sister’s efforts in clearing out my front garden and dividing/transplanting hosta and sedum. (Do I have that right, folks? What variety of sedum do I have?) The before shot is above.

Check out what the spring brought! All of the transplants are flourishing, and a couple of the sedums are now almost as large as the two we divided last fall. Amazing!

I added the rock around the downspout, because the rain kept washing away the mulch, which is the same reason I added the border. And while both have helped, mulch continues to wash away. I think it’s going under the border, which I only placed on top of the ground. It probably needs to be installed properly. One of these days.

I smile every time I drive up to my house. It’s looking pretty good, if I do say so myself. Now if I can just get it weeded!

In the backyard, I actually started my container gardening. Yes, I actually did it. In Neophyte Gardener, I wrote about my intention of starting a container garden. I am proud to report that I am now the owner of three containers holding a Brandywine tomato plant, a red pepper plant, basil and oregano. The tomato plant has buds on it, so I am eagerly awaiting fruit. My mouth’s already watering.

The basil and oregano have yet to be used, and I’m struggling with ways to cook with both herbs. Once the peppers and tomatoes start arriving, though, that probably will no longer be an issue. I love tomatoes with oregano and mozzarella cheese. Yum!

So there you have it, and I promise I’ll keep you updated on my gardening adventures. I feel like a gardener; am I?

 

My youngest daughter, Alaina, came to the farm to visit last weekend. She was between terms in her physical therapy doctoral program at George Washington University in Washington, DC. She wished to reconnect with her old man by going fishing, like we used to do when she was young. I was taken aback and touched when she requested an angling excursion. The memories of wetting lines with Alaina (and Erin) in Black Hills streams and lakes, and the prairie rivers and potholes in South Dakota are powerful indeed.

Since I hadn’t yet gone fishing here in Kansas, I was quite sure that the day would be a bust. I didn’t have time to scope out any likely spots – but a couple of fishing lakes and 110-Mile Creek are all within minutes of the farm. We stopped at the sporting-goods store for some fresh fishing supplies and licenses on the way home from the airport and headed to the local bait shop for some crawlers the next day (after a work clothing photo shoot and mowing the lawn). As luck would have it we ran into a buddy there and he told us to check out a spot on 110-Mile Creek that was just a few minutes from the farm.

We packed the old Binder with supplies and headed down the road. It was warm and relatively wind free – we both felt optimistic. Turning left off the main gravel road, we found ourselves with the truck’s front hubs locked, pushing through a muddy bottomland trail in 4-wheel-drive and low range. I am pleased to report that the 1964 International truck never gave a moment of doubt as it delivered us to the old bridge. I rigged poles and baited hooks just like I did 15 years ago. Alaina dropped her bobber-adorned line into the creek and within short order she had her first Largemouth Bass. I was thrilled, she was thrilled. In a moment of reverie I saw a much younger us sitting on the banks of French Creek or Legion Lake or the 81 Ponds – all in South Dakota. But this time we were catching bass and crappie and bluegill instead of trout, pike and perch.

By the time the night crawlers ran out, Alaina and I were ready to head home. It was the first time I can remember that she didn’t fall asleep on my shoulder on the drive. Of course, since we were only 3 minutes from the farm, there was little chance for that. When we were younger, we fished to stock the freezer. Last weekend, we released every fish we caught. I think we were both a little relieved that we could just visit and make homemade pizza for supper instead of cleaning a mess of pike. We talked about the big bass that got away long after our evening campfire had died to glowing embers. We marveled at how it would have tasted slow roasted over that bed of Osage Orange coals.

I saw a bald eagle flying over our farm a few days ago, and it made me think ...

We’ve been here on the farm for almost a year and a half now and the transition has been interesting to say the least. Toss a toddler and a new baby in the mix and life turns into a train on its own track. If you’ve been following our blog for a while, you know that there have been many ups and downs, successes and failures. We’ve spent a lot of time getting things cleaned up and tried to develop an operation that is both profitable and efficient, it has not been and continues to not be an easy venture.

I look back at these short 18 or so months and am in awe of the trek. The grand plans that we started with were blooming with ideals but not rooted in experience. This has proven to be a boon to us. We were not wed to the convention of old but rather allowed to take the best of what was available and discard the rest. This put us at odds with many of the paradigms that must be in place for most traditional farm to succeed. To say that bigger is not necessarily better and that the “economy of scale” builds a house of cards caused many people to look at us as a hobby farm or just some city kids playin’ farm.

Deep down though, they know we’re right. They’ve seen their farms ravaged and plundered by the government. The ideals and goals that they had when they were kids sitting on their daddy’s lap drivin’ the tractor have been replaced by an unprofitable dairy, crops that the government pays for, and the sad realization that their friends have sold out and they are the only ones left.

Most of us will never know the ecology of farm life 30 years ago. The story was very common here in the Midwest but its tale is echoed all across America. Farms thrived. I mean REALLY thrived, not just getting bigger to stay in business. You farmed, your brother farmed down the road, your cousin farmed in the next town over. You split the farm with your brother when your parents hung up their spurs just as they did when their parents passed on. If you had a question or were in a tough time people rallied around you. When you had an out-building that needed to be raised, the men-folk put in the work and the women crafted high summer meals and drinks when the day was done. Large gatherings of friends and family were the norm, not the exception. All that is left of that era are fields of corn and abandoned homesteads. The only “farmers” left are the ones who adapted to the “agribusiness.” They are wildly popular and have thousands of acres that they purchase as each little family farm dries up. Get big or get out.

* * * * *

Life is cyclical isn’t it? I love humanity, we have a such an amazing capacity to weather the storms of history. In just a few short years we have seen a generation grow up that has said to its shackles, “I’m done with you. I’m done with your models, your schemes, your perceived wealth, I’ll do it MY way!” And you do. You find yourself newly liberated, it’s refreshing but the weight of being an outcast soon begins to be realized. Your friends don’t seem to call as much, the refrigerator begins to look sparse, and one by one the amenities that you had surrounded yourself with either are jettisoned or confiscated. Is this what it means to be free? I didn’t know it would be this tough? I didn’t know it would feel this alone.

It is at this moment that you have truly realized your freedom. Life is not about “going it alone,” life is about surrounding yourselves with people who share your ideals, people who are personally and intimately vested in your family’s life. People who can answer the questions you have, people who will be there when you need. Freedom is not the answer, freedom is just an ingredient. Community is the key. Without community you simply have islands. Community is learned through compassion, through empathy, and most importantly, through the giving of time. Community is not available for most Americans. They are too busy watching primetime television, spending 2 hours a day on a commute, and being just too worn out to give a damn.

Congratulations friend, you are on the path to being unlocked. You are asking the questions that are vital in the liberation of your spirit. Keep asking, persevere, have integrity, you will see your dreams.

As I sit here, sipping my coffee with my newborn son passed out on my chest, my wife and daughter still sleeping, and the animals already in the fields enjoying a dew-drenched breakfast, I wonder when it happened: the moment I got the life I never knew I always wanted ...

“It’s a …”

I received this text message from my brother, Josh, earlier today while I was at work and he was either sitting in, or just leaving, a doctors’ office. A minute later, his next response came, “Girl.” My brother and his wife, Nikki, will welcome a little baby girl into their family in August, God willing, and I couldn’t be more excited.

Sometimes in life, we’re hit with one of those moments that make you take a step back and go, “This is going by fast.” Usually, it’s holidays and birthdays and dates that make us remember loved ones that have passed on. In this case, it’s a great feeling to be getting older.

And it felt even better to get the next message from Josh, saying, “It looked really healthy.”

There are many things that I’m looking forward to doing with my niece and her Daddy: watching football, grilling out, hunting and fishing … it turns out I don’t do a lot of the things little girls do, but you know what?! I’ll give anything a try to earn the affection of this particular little girl.

And she just might have a little tomboy in her. (Though knowing Nikki, I wouldn't count on her noodling for catfish.) After all, her dad came from a family of four boys and one girl – our mom – so I think Dad’s in about the same situation as me. We don’t know what, exactly, little girls are like.

I’ve never seen anything wrong with little girls being tomboys. My girlfriend’s siblings include her two sisters and no boys, so her dad raised her to hunt and fish. That turned out to be pretty cool for me because she understands and appreciates what I love to do.

It wouldn’t be a good thing, though, if she were better at my hobbies than me.

But I digress …

I know there’s the typical answer of playing with dolls, but for all the women out there, or for the fathers who have daughters, can I get some help? What do little girls do?

In the meantime, I’ll be thinking and praying about the health of that little, hope-she-doesn’t-look-like-her-dad, girl.

Erin, my eldest daughter and I are more likely to pay one another visits on the comment pages of this blog, than in person. It isn’t ideal, but yet another way that we keep some connection going. Imagine my excitement when Erin, who is between quarters in the Social Service Administration Master’s program at the University of Chicago, called to say she would like to come to the farm to wind down for a few days.

To say that I was excited would be an understatement, but suffice it to say that Erin jumped in her VW early yesterday morning and arrived at the farm around 5 PM. We had a wonderful visit and supper that consisted of smoked beef brisket and banana cake. I had been working on wiring the new shop all day so I fell asleep early; her arrival was an awesome ending to a productive day.

I know the dogs and other animals are tickled to have Erin around too. Valentine and Jack, our donkeys are especially pleased with the peppermints she feeds them. I look forward to another couple of nights of visiting and at least one lunch date too. And hopefully, we will get her car into the barn before the hail hits (if it hits) later this afternoon. I’d hate to send her home with a dimpled reminder of her most recent visit.

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday of the year. Sure, I am glad to live in this country, but the reason I so enjoy Thanksgiving has nothing to do with pilgrims or the Mayflower. It has everything to do with the fact that when I was a hungry little fellow, Thanksgiving was a time when there was so much good food to eat that everyone in the family seemed happy … I believe that they really were. It was one of those days when my dad would spend time with me cutting the giant grapes with pits in them (remember grapes with seeds?) in half to remove the seeds. Making the fruit salad was one of my responsibilities, and it was always made better because dad was there to help. Once we had enough of those giant green and purple grapes, we would cut apples and bananas and chop some walnuts. The grand finale was getting to play with the Sunbeam Mixmaster, to whip the whole cream. Later I graduated to pumpkin pies. I still make them today … sometimes with fresh pumpkin.

Fast forward a lot of years, and Thanksgiving is still my favorite of holidays. These days a collection of daughters, sons-in-law and/or boyfriends come home for a few days of food, fellowship and fun. There’s almost always a little bit of drama, but for the most part each of us takes on some meaningful dish and we wind up crowded in the kitchen, cooking way too much food for a feast that flies by too fast. If you could rationally analyze it, I bet you’d discover that our highpoint is the kitchen and the cooking. Actually, the highpoint is likely spending time with people you love.   

Then there will be the hikes around the farm, fooling around with the utility vehicles and even some chores. This year we hope to get five big spruce trees planted … along with the garlic. On Sunday, there will be the choked up trips to the airport … just enough emotion to let us know we are alive, and that there are some very special people in the world who care to care about us.

I don’t know what your tradition is, but I hope that you have plenty to be thankful for this year … and I hope you’ll spend a bit of thought giving thanks.

See you on Monday.

 

As far as I’m concerned, gardening is hard work!

My garden area is between the house and the sidewalk to the front door, and it’s always been a sore spot. When I first moved in, it looked like a jungle. I finally cleared it out, and then the grass took over.

There’s a beautiful Japanese maple that keeps getting better every year near the front window. A huge hosta huddled next to the house, and it just kept getting larger. Two sedems also managed to survive the jungle, and they too were huge, leggy and unmanageable. All three plants were constantly being hit by the lawn mower, as we tried to keep the grass under control.

So after more years than I care to count, I decided something needed to be done. My sister volunteered to help (I’m sure she regretted that offer at some point during our adventure), and we set a date.

That Saturday morning, I headed to the garden supply store and bought mulch. Soon the bags were stacked in the garage, and I was trimming back the sedems and the hosta.

When Mary arrived with her two youngsters and a set of garden tools, we got down to business. Within an hour, the three plants were dug out, setting on another section of lawn, and a large section of sod was gone.

There were, of course, problems from the get go. Neither of us thought about how wet it had been recently, so we had mounds of mud to contend with, and the soil was much more clay than dirt. Both factors made digging difficult. Mary took it as a personal challenge and declared she was going to kick that grass to the curb before she was finished.

And she did.

About four hours later, Mary was dividing the hosta into eight pieces, and the two sedems into three each. I tried to envision the plants in full summer green, and pointed to spots I thought would work. (The placement is marked on the photograph at the end of this post.) We dropped in the divided plants, pushed the muddy clay around the roots, with our hopes high that they would all survive.

Once the 14 transplants were in the ground, the mulching began. I tried to be dainty (hah!) about it, raking carefully. Mary soon convinced me the only way to garden and mulch was down on my knees, close to the ground, pushing those cedar chips around. My 10 bags of mulch didn’t last long, but we put it down around the plants. My Sunday task was to find more mulch, and finish around the maple. (I added another six bags of mulch!)

After a great deal of effort, we had eight bags of sod at the curb for the city to pick up Monday morning. A neighbor gave me recyclable bags so it all went to the city compost pile. The bags were so heavy, we placed each on an empty plastic mulch bag and dragged it to the curb, a task that took both of us to accomplish. Whew!

Then it was cleanup time. What a mess! It may take me a while to get that sidewalk clean, but it was definitely worth it.

My niece Maura wanted to help with it all, and she did – bringing us water and watching her little brother. My nephew Thomas was fascinated by the earthworms, and more than a few glasses of water had to be thrown out after the worms were given baths. It was fun to spend time with Mary, Maura and Thomas. I’m not physically able to do as much in the garden as others, so Mary did the lion’s share of the work, for which I am eternally grateful.

Do you have any suggestions for my hosta/sedem garden? Any tips for a non-gardener? How do I keep it user friendly?

On this long Saturday, I learned a few things. One, my sister Mary is amazing!

Two, I learned that I am definitely not a gardener. Mary and her husband Mike, our sister Tricia and her husband Mike (who has a degree in horticulture, and they have always had great outside gardens and lots of indoor plants) are the gardeners in the family. I’ll stick to my few house plants, thank you very much!

For the past month the pumpkin farms near and far are in full swing! Carnival rides, petting zoos, haunted houses, apple cider and homemade fudge … fall fun at its best! The many different varieties of pumpkins – miniature, white and striped, to name a few – are quite different from what I remember growing up. We would shop for our one pumpkin (maybe two) and the family would make an event of carving the design and roasting the seeds. In recent years, I have enjoyed painting designs on the pumpkins and have expanded my designs to include a few gourds. This year I approached the pumpkin farm differently.

This time around, I was looking for unique pumpkins to grow next year in the garden, and I found a few.

 

I also became quite fascinated with gourds and more so now that I actually have some drying.

The drying time differs with each individual gourd based on the size and thickness of the skin. I did end up with one swan gourd from my own garden and also purchased two others along with apple gourds, a huge bushel gourd and a handful of miniature ornamental gourds. I have several books on the subject of gourds and after the drying takes place, they have to be cleaned and made ready to work into pieces of art; in my case it will be a bowl or vase. As I patiently wait for them to dry, I am brushing up on my painting skills so I can apply some impressive techniques. The American Gourd Society has chapters in most states and membership along with a wealth of information about gourds and creating artwork and functional pieces. Another organization, Decorative Painters, is dedicated to painting skills and teaching techniques.

Luffa, also known as the sponge gourd, is not a true gourd. It is currently in the final stages of drying on the vines in the garden from earlier this year.

I had quite a successful crop last summer and made luffa soap for Christmas gifts and will do the same this year, since I am receiving requests for it already! Once the luffa skin dries, it can be peeled away to reveal the sponge within. The seeds are removed and the sponge is washed, dried and cut into pieces to work with.

 

As for squash in my gardens, zucchini has always been a regular member producing plenty to keep my mind searching for new and interesting recipes! Zucchini is a summer squash and another that did very well in the garden this past season was yellow scallop squash.

The summer squash has a thinner skin and can be eaten raw, whereas, winter squash has a much harder skin and should be baked or steamed in the microwave. Winter squash lasts longer than summer squash and can keep up to several months in a cool cellar to be eaten all winter long. Discovering new varieties of winter squash is presently occupying my time as I browse around for gourds and pumpkins. So far delicata squash is my favorite and I made sure to purchase enough to cook up and take to our Thanksgiving dinner so the whole family can experience a new and different dish!

 

Sweet mama buttercup was the chosen squash to try this weekend along with butternut.

We did pick up three more types, and those that I really enjoy I will be saving the seed and growing next year. Delicata is definitely a winner!

Pumpkins, gourds and squash need a large space of the garden to grow. Some varieties grow in a bush manner, but most develop vines, and the vines can reach many feet in length. A trellis or some type of support is recommended for those that don’t become too heavy as they grow. Regular watering and a watchful eye for pests is about all that is needed to grow a successful crop.