frozen, thawed, frozen, thawed, frozen...

just found this old post unposted seemingly unfinished ... now deemed ready somehow....

It's a dance this time of year. The ground freezes white every night and by mid-morning it's green again - steaming and glistening from the melted dew.

Magic.

Soon it will freeze and just f-r-e-e-z-e. It will all be still and hard and we'll wait patiently for snow to come and cover our outdoor projects for the winter so we can truly rest, light our hearth fire and creep deep within ourselves.

Now is a nice time to tidy up those outdoor spaces, tie up loose ends, but the hard work is behind us. The canning, the weeding, the plowing, it's gone by. We have time now to savor the color and the beauty before it goes under along with earth's energy.

what's new on the farm?

abig garden busting it on out.


pretty purple eggplant


perennial garden and sunflower :)



purple cabbage and a purple sweatshirt


some tall sunflowers, tay-matoes, marigolds, and a girl.





It's amazing how much that chicken lets us love on her. I mean, Greg and I had a small idea of what chickens would be like as pets and this "little one" of ours has totally rewritten the book for us. Or is it the chicken girl combination that is so magical... hard to say. I can remember the first time I came into the bathroom and there Luna was with this baby chick in her palm - completely asleep (the chicken not the girl). It's just been like this ever since.

We've been putting things "away" this summer. Pickles, frozen chard and broccoli. We hope to store a lot of carrots, beets, cabbage, onions, mmmm... more? It's been a fun and abundant year here and we are extremely grateful.

thank you for stopping by to peek at our world,
Emily

broccoli

purple cabbage



Hi all,

We have been playing with miracles since April. You put something in earth, you water it, you give it warmth and perhaps love and a little green miracle grows before your eyes. Tend it long enough and you can get something truly magic.

I don't have time right now to deeply sink into what has been going on here on our growing farm, but I am grateful to be able to visit with some pictures and spend just this minute sharing some of this with you.

We have been working somewhat non-stop since Memorial Day digging, moving dirt, planting, watering, weeding, mulching feeding, etc. It has been a wonderful routine and we are very happy - please forgive our lack of calls and know we've been busy til dark most days and then trying to wrangle our little one into a bath or bed or both!

This has been amazing. I feel my own roots growing into the ground here in this patch of paradise. Anyone who knows me know these plants and chicks are my babies as much as the half-naked fairy who hides in the field and climbs the apple tree in front of my house. Well, it's probably not quite the same, but for most things it is.

in gratitude,
Emily


"the big garden" -- home to cabbage, carrots, cukes, onions, beets, peas, salad greens, broccoli, rainbow chard, baby collard greens, and eggplant.


the front of the house - side view sunflowers, cosmos and tomatoes...
the entry side of the house - kale, morning glories, and of course, tomatoes
our girls in their little home. I realized they had a good view the other day and tried to capture it!

baby hops coming up in the field.

chickens in my bathroom

If you're looking for ways to make your home feel better - to really develop gratitude for it as a whole, it could be that you need to add something less than ideal and then take it away to get a feeling of what I like to call "contrast" which makes you then that much more grateful for what you do have. My contrast started small. Last post showed you - so cute and sweet and teeny tiny. 5 weeks later, and there were adolescent chickens in my bathroom.

What you must learn from experience is that when chicks start to grow in their feathers, each new feather that grows in releases dust. They have to be fully feathered in order to go outside - multiply that by 6 chickens and however many feathers, and you do end up with a surprising amount of dust. Now combine this with just general chicken food and poop dust and there is a lot of dust (and smell) and noise... It was starting to get a little AAAHHHH and I started to avoid my shower altogether. It just didn't have the same feeling as those pre-chicken days. I didn't really want to linger with the water - there wasn't any deep breathing or sighs of relaxed joy, it was wash and get out - fast. Those of you who have raised farm animals from infant indoors will know what I am saying - those who haven't can just guess.

It was time for babies to go outside, but that wasn't super easy for this chicken mama. I mean, I swear some of those girls really think that I actually am their chicken mama - I laid the egg. It's very funny to see them run over and asked to be pet and held. But it was time, so we put them outside - in the coop that was a death trap for our last flock. Right after we put them out, the temps dropped to the 40s at night followed by two nights of turrential rain which essentially meant we put the light out in the coop and covered it with blankets to keep them warm - then took the blankets off in the rain - they were JUST fine but I still woke up in the middle of the night to go see if they were ok until I could see that they were. Oh, another post about trusting without knowing is probably here too, but let's not try to add in here.

Those chickens showed so much resilience and foul love for their new outdoor home filled with bugs and grass and sand. I finally relaxed into it all - we fixed their pen so it didn't look like something "jimmy" put up. I became ready to view the beauty of the transition and to soak in something other than chaos of it. We have them right outside our kitchen window so if it's open, we can hear them cheeping peacefully ... amazing grace how sweet the sound.

So to bring me back to the point of all this - the Ahhhhaaa moment of last night - my moment of contrast recognized. So, we have this small place and all but last night with my bathroom back the way it's supposed to be all quiet and dark and fragranced with only soaps and oils, I found myself suddenly aware that I was showering without chickens! There had been chickens living in my bathroom and now they were out!!! It was only a space in time that they lived there - really just 5 weeks - it was just uncomfortable and not harmful at all. In the end, like everything, all moments in time - it passed on to the next. Just like Dida said, "this too shall pass". It's not like I hadn't *realized* that they were gone before last night, I didn't really expect them to be there at all, I just suddenly became aware that I was blissfully happy to be showering in a bathroom at night with-OUT chickens.

So what was there left to do but fill my bathroom with gratitude for it's chicken-free self. You know, the universe LOVES gratitude, so these things cannot be taken lightly. Nighttime showers & baths in dimly lit almost darkness are important for my sanity -- the quiet, the pleasing shower smells, the calm, the candlelight, the in breath and out -- it was all there to be seriously grateful for.

Thanks to the chickens, I was.

bring on the babies

Greg doesn't know what to make of this chicken love. That two girls could want to pick up and snuggle and coo at a bunch of (poo covered) baby birds all the time seems a little ridiculous when viewed without that extra chromosome. Albeit, they are bigger now and not nearly as cute (ie: fuzzy), but to us they are still babies.

This movie was made when they were 2 days old and today is their 3 week birthday. Holy smokes how little chicks grow. Of course, baby chicks have meant sharing our bathroom, lots of noise and a bit of a smell, but it's all good. They are our babies and one especially, "little one", has worked her way into our hearts for sure. I have never seen a chicken who likes to be picked up as much as she does. Of course, I haven't seen many chickens.

Let me rewind a bit. This year we decided to get chickens again to replace the flock we lost last year. One was eaten by my family (Bock Bock the rooster - his obituary is an earlier post), one was eaten by a ? and one we gave to a farm after feeling like she was lonely (her name was "puffy cheeks" and she kept coming in our house - hint hint.)

But this little farm perseveres! This year we are all chicken ready with a coop that is *almost* all the way ready, 6 instead of 3, & a space for them to grow right from baby fluff to feathered hens all here on our sacred spiral farm. Last year chicken days at our local seed and feed was 3 weeks pre-move and we didn't even have a coop built so we had them at our friends' home while they were babies instead of our tiny apartment. I never got used to Luna handling them & none of us were really ready for them when they arrived (no coop built yet, lots of mud, neighbor's dog ... let me just say it was a bit of a chicken stress-zone). Nonetheless, we loved them and they us (I think) and in the end, I learned that I really *did* want chickens -- of course this was after they were all gone. Such are life's lessons for the learm-on-the-go kind of gal I tend to be.

The chickens brought all sorts of lessons for me - as most creatures or people do when I let them into my world. Acceptance of death was right in my face as I watched my little one find worms for pets, play with them for awhile singing and making them homes, only to then march them over to the chickens and offer them up as food. "I love you wormy I love you wormy - here you go chickens." And the life cycle is complete. Don't cry for me Argentina!

Luna is also teaching me how to raise chicks. Someone has to want to pick them up and coo to them and get them comfortable with our huge human selves. Children have an innate sense of how to interact with the natural world and if we are open we can learn from these sage souls. Nobody taught her how to hold these babies - Greg and I know absolutely nothing about raising birds, and yet here she is a little authority. Last year I was cautious and worried and uncomfortable with all the wanting to hold and feeling like these babies should be with their actual chicken mommas instead of here with this bright light and a bunch of people. I missed the magic that can come out of combining heaven and earth - combining people and nature in a divine balance. I was blind to the fact that my fear was keeping these babies from finding this girl who had so much abundant love for them they would never miss that chicken momma that they wouldn't have known anyway.

Right now seems a time for balance. We are desperately needing to return to a balance between man and nature and on this little farm we are at least trying to do our part. There is a beautiful book I read recently called Uno's Garden by Graeme Base about a man who starts a garden and then it all goes out of control attracting people and eventually they build this huge city until everyone realizes that it's not that fun to live with just buildings and they leave. I thought I wasn't going to like the book at this half way point, but then Uno and his offspring rebuild an eco town in perfect balance with the wildlife around it. It is possible and I am so grateful to stumble onto dreamers like Mr. Base who like me hold on to the eternally optimistic dream that even when things have gone so very very bad we can always learn and make them better. I think that the first order would be to start listening to and trusting in the children.

the thaw, the mist, the in breath

What a funny winter. It seemed to have just arrived and now there it is all gone and here we are starting tomato seeds and staring out the window at chickadees and robins and blackbirds and grackles.

I never knew that I would want to spend so much time staring out my window in quiet bliss - that's why I bought a knitting book today.

Yesterday Luna and I walked around the field. We actually have a waterfall coming down the east side of our property into the stream. It was rushing yesterday - just pouring off from all the water we've been having fall from the sky and eek out of the earth. We're getting rain rain rain.

Each day I took us off the hill, I sent my gratitude for the mobility.

The birds don't seem to mind the rain. Mourning doves and juncos. They are all out there hopping and walking and gathering seeds or bugs. The birds have stayed. We have been seeing the geese -they are back. A few minutes ago two flew right over our house, calling to each other as they went. This Winter we fed a little brown squirrel who lived in our rock wall - he would creep out and over to the feeder and try to pull it all the way open, climb inside and make Luna laugh.

These are the things that are important in my life. I want us to be in this space of open connection to the natural things. I want those natural things to feel safe and welcome here so we can live together - all of us - and my daughter can love them and feel their love and know there is peace to be found in stillness with the natural world.

I could hear the laughter through the trees!

I skied out to meet my family at the frozen pond. I stopped at the entrance to the woods like I do and paused to give thanks to the fairy folk and woodland life that let us come in and find some grace in their home. This time was different...what was that noise ...? turkeys? coyotes? ooooooh nooooooo... it's my little one with that amazing full belly giggle ringing through the trees like a bell.

When I got to the pond, I could see why! She was having a full on snowball fight with that her dad. There they were - she's chasing him around in the snow and he's in snowshoes trying to get away from her, occasionally throwing huge snowballs that just somehow miss or thud her gently on the back while she nails him over and over. Hilarious.









there he is :)

Man I am feeling like a lucky lady these days.

Plus we have a new member to our family. No it's not what you think - he's snowy and lives outside....

He doesn't have a name yet, but knowing my girl it will be "snowy" or "snowman" or something really special like that :)

blessings of oneness and joy,
em