I hired me a farmer!

It's the middle of January and there is both snow and ice on the roads. I'm not driving anywhere today. I just recently signed up for a CSA for our food for the growing season. A CSA is community supported agriculture. I hired me a farmer! I'm really happy about this. Eventually our own garden will be producing enough to feed us, at least that is my goal, but knowing we're going to get a lot of garden produce over the next growing season is a really happy thing for me. Randall, my husband, thinks this is really cool, too. Not only are we getting our vegetables and some fruit from them we are getting our eggs and meat from them. I feel so strongly about eating meat sparingly, but letting the animals I do eat have a happy life and a quick death. Buying meat from a farmer who lets his animals roam around in the grassy fields and the sunshine really means a lot to me.

my family

Here they are, all of them. These are my children. It was such a treat to have them all here at the same time. The house was noisy, to say the least. AND the food was flowing. Feeding this crowd three meals a day (and snacks) was quite a challenge, but it was fun. If anything we ate way too good. I love my family.

the tree is gone

Just giving evidence that we cut down the huge tree in our backyard. The stump is under the snow, the pile of mulch is the mountain of twigs we shredded up, the wood stacked against the back fence is a whole lot of firewood for future years.

inkle loom weaving

For years my mother told me she had an inkle loom made by someone long ago in our family. As the only person in the family likely to ever use it she's been meaning to give it to me and it just arrived this weekend. I looked on the internet and figured out how it worked and this is how my first weaving attempt looks. I was pretty happy with it for a first go. I'm using my handspun wool/silk blend. I actually finished an entire belt in one go (it was a long afternoon).

large tree down

Wow, I skipped blogging the entire month of November! Things continue to roll along here at the homestead. We had that huge tree in the back taken down, and stacked all the wood and shredded up the twigs. Because of the threat of the Emerald Ash Borer the local municipality no longer hands out wood mulch for free. And the tree people we used didn't own their own shredder. So we rented one. I'd have to say, don't bother. It cost money to rent the chipper/shredder, it took ALL DAY to shred up a tree's worth of twigs and the mulch isn't that good. It's "sticky." Lots of big sticks. On the plus side the mulch pile takes up far less room than the twig pile did, but it just wasn't worth the amount of time/effort/expense we put into obtaining that small pile of low quality mulch. What we do have, as result of taking down the tree, it a whole lot more sunshine in the back yard and a very large stack of fire wood. I had a gardening friend come over and we decided where the different plantings are going to go.

halloween cake

I love this cake! It tastes as good as it looks. It is made of orange flavored buttercream and dark chocolate ganache. YUMMMY! Inside are lots of black (ie chocolate) and orange layers of cake/filling.

lack of a job

I'm getting a lot of spinning/knitting/sewing done. I need to post some pictures. Not much gardening this time of year, but I'm looking forward to next year. I thoroughly enjoy doing this and that, but sometimes I feel guilty that I don't have a job-job. I have spent so many years being a mom and having complete independence to set my own schedule that I am really chaffing at the idea of a job where I am told what to do all the time. Of course the extra money would be nice, but I'm not at all sure I'm ready to trade my independence for cash. Obviously this independence comes at the price of my husband's independence. I'm a bit befuddled on the whole subject. At this point in time I'm going to keep moving forward on the simple living and if a job pops up that seems to fit in, fine, if not, then I'll keep moving forward with what I'm doing. If I had things totally my way I'd be living in a LOT smaller house with a LOT fewer amenities. This is the trade off with having a family to keep happy. Their opinions matter, too.