Our New Neighbors

We've been enjoying so many things about being in our "new" home these last couple of months, but one of our favorite things has been the wildlife. Many mornings when I get up, this is the first thing I see out the bathroom window. It may be difficult to see, but there are two deer standing in the small clearing in front of the barn. They are part of a herd of deer that comes through the area behind our house almost every morning. As a matter of fact, the very first morning after we moved in about 12 deer came sprinting and leaping through the field beside our house and passed *right* behind our house! It was beautiful! We also catch sight of lots of other critters like rabbits, groundhogs, foxes, hawks, owls and lots of water birds out this window as well. We even had a pair of pea fowl out there once! Wildlife viewing out the bathroom window is such a regular event at our house that we've started keeping binoculars on the windowsill. I can't help thinking about how odd keeping binoculars on our bathroom windowsill would be if we were living in town! LOL






This is the daily view from our downstairs kitchen and bathroom. It is so relaxing to stand at the sink doing dishes while watching "our" birds. We have a large collection of bird feeders and with the different environments immediately surrounding our house (woods, lake, field, meadow) we get a wide variety of birds. The day I took this, I must have taken at least a dozen shots in a row and each picture has a different type of bird in it - there were three types of woodpeckers, three types of sparrows, flickers, chickadees, nuthatches, titmice, wrens, doves, and more. We see at least 2 dozen types of birds on a daily basis, but cardinals are just so cheerful during this dreary part of the year that I knew they needed to be our "models". It's not unusual for someone to go into the kitchen for something and yell "everybody come here...quick!" We all know that that's the call that signals a new arrival to our backyard and we all come running to see who our new visitor is. We just love our new neighbors! (Too bad some of them are going to become a nuisance when the gardens get going.)

UWWG & Coming "Home"

Look at those beautiful, happy kiddos! I love those smiles SO MUCH!! I took this at the Unschoolers Winter Waterpark Gathering in Sandusky this past week, and this is the look that was on their faces the majority of the time we were there. We all enjoyed ourselves immensely, but it seems that I, in particular, was deeply moved by the experience.

What a mixture of emotions I'm feeling at the moment! I feel the need to talk about them and examine them to figure out what they mean, but I'm not even sure where to begin...with the feelings I associate with the UWWG seems most approprieat since it's fresh in my mind, although these feelings go back farther than that. Anyway...the UWWG...it was the first big unschoolers gathering that we've had the money to go to and I'll say right now that it was worth every penny! It's one thing to be on lists and forums with other unschoolers, but it's a totally different experience to be in a gathering of hundreds of them. TOTALLY different.

I have spent the last few years feeling very isolated much of the time, even with the awesome bunch of more traditional homeschoolers that surrounds me. My ideas about so many things, the way I try to respond to my children, the laid back lifestyle that we strive for...so much about us is just so foreign to most of the people I'm around most of the time. I feel like I'm speaking a different language more often than not and that I never REALLY get my point across. Words seem so inadequate most of the time. That separation between myself and the homeschoolers I've been around for years feels like it has just gotten bigger and bigger over the last few years. I think a lot of that has to do with the ages of our children and that the pendulum will swing back the other way to a certain extent as the kids get older, but for the last few years I've just felt so *separate*. I know a lot of that is my own perception however, and that there isn't really that big of a gap, I've just been *feeling* like there has been. I've also become very aware of the tension that develops within me when I'm around people who parent and/or homeschool more traditionally. It's almost unbearable at times and I have to physically separate myself from other people for a while to regain my balance. It's been difficult because I truly love these people and want them in my life, but I haven't been able to be around them *too much* for quite a while. I couldn't handle it. The tension would just overwhelm me and I would start to behave in ways that I didn't want to behave. Being an "empath" really sucks at times like that, when you're vulnerable and picking up on whatever stray energy happens to be floating by. Ick.

But at the Kalahari I didn't feel that way. The one night that we got to hang out in the lounge and just *BE* was perhaps my favorite time of the whole trip. While I obviously loved spending the time I did with my kids and husband in the waterpark and in our room, it was *THAT* time - the lounge time - that I will forever associate with this....awakening that I'm feeling. I keep trying to figure out what that awakening feeling is, exactly, and what it means, but I think that may take some time and lots of thought. The things that have been getting to me at other homeschool gatherings didn't get to me there, perhaps because I didn't see or hear go on there. That sense of tension, of people being at odds with one another, that is so prevalent in most places was almost totally absent there as well. I felt peaceful and at home in my own skin. It was sort of the same feeling that I've had at times in deep meditation, but my eyes were wide open. That feeling of being "at home" in my own skin seems to be at the heart of it all in some way.

But it goes much deeper than just the UWWG and being around other unschoolers. This feeling seems to be attached to our move into our house and to belly dancing and art and to the way I'm feeling about my body and the way I'm eating and to EVERYTHING. I honestly think I have hit some major turning point in my life - one of those ones that you don't see coming, it just sort of takes you by surprise. After spending so much of my life feeling at odds and out of synch in so many areas and feeling just plain STUCK, I suddenly find myself very much "in the flow" and "at home" in many of those same areas. For whatever reason, it all just seemed to come together while I was physically away from home in the middle of a bunch of strangers! I find that rather amusing! I feel at peace. I feel like I'm EXACTLY where I should be at EXACTLY the right time...a feeling I haven't felt this intensely in so many areas of my life in quite some time. As a matter of fact, I can't remember the last time I did feel this sense of "rightness" in so many areas at once. Maybe that's the word I'm looking for..."rightness". Yes...I think that's it. And "home". I feel at home, at peace...like everything is RIGHT, even with all of the "buts"...as in "but the house is a mess"...."but I don't have this or that or the other thing that I want". Even WITH all of that, everything feels RIGHT at this moment. All is right with my world.

We 've MOVED!!

It's been quite a while since we updated any of our blogs, but it's been for a very good reason. After six and a half years of work, we have FINALLY moved into our house! *whew* (wipes brow) There were times when I honestly did not think we would ever actually LIVE in this house. I worried that we'd run out of money before we could finish. Which we did - several times - but more money always came later. I also worried that our family wouldn't survive the stress. We did, though not totally unscathed. It's been a long a bumpy ride, but we made it.

We haven't finished all of the work yet and won't for some time, but we have at least "achieved occupancy" (said in the same tone of voice as NASA's "we have achieved lift off"). We've been mudding and taping, moving boxes, grouting tile, and on and on for the last few weeks. I've stayed up until 5 or 6 a.m. several time this week just trying to get this place in some sort of order...and we haven't even finished moving all of our stuff in yet. Our essentials are here, but the rest won't be here until tomorrow evening. As I type this I am sitting in an unfinished room that will soon be my office/studio surrounded by huge buckets of joint compound, bags of grout, piles of tools, and various pieces of furniture that haven't found a home yet. The beautiful new hickory laminate flooring we've been putting in is covered by newspaper, the carpet installation has been delayed because of the holidays, and my keyboard is sitting on a table that bumps my knees because the desk is still at the apartment until the truck comes tomorrow. But the kitchen is clean and functional, the cat has resumed her post on my lap, the birds are starting to visit the feeder outside the window, and the house is starting to feel like "home".

Makin' butter

For numerous reasons that I won't get into in this blog, our family was on the search for *REAL* milk for quite a while. We joined a food co-op in the hopes of having access to fresh, raw milk, but the co-op was just starting out and didn't have enough people at that time to make the minimum order from the farm. We're still in the co-op, but just couldn't get our milk through there, so our search continued. Then I ran across a family who owned a single jersey cow and was setting up a small cow share program. I was interested in two shares and she happened to have two shares left. We went up to her small family farm to visit "our" cow. I wanted to see what kind of conditions she lives in and how the milk was handled. Elsie is a well taken care of cow with access to plenty of clean pasture. While we were there we also got to meet their barn cats and their chickens (which they ordered from the same place we're planning on ordering our chickens in the spring, so I also took the opportunity to ask her about that). Everything looked great! So now we travel about an hour away from our home once a week to pick up our "Elsie milk", as Catherine calls it. (She calls everything else "other milk". lol)

Several people have asked about the milk and what we do with it besides drink it, so we thought we'd blog about it a bit. When our co-op order comes in this month it will include the vegetable rennet and kefir starter we ordered. We've made yogurt and soft cheeses in the past, so now we'll get to try our hand at kefir and other cheeses. We've made some of the yummiest ice cream we've ever tasted. We'd like to make some sour cream and cultured buttermilk too, but we only have a couple of gallons a week, so we have to stretch our experiments out a bit.

One of our favorite things to do is make our own butter, which we do once a week.There is absolutely nothing like fresh, raw butter! And it is so simple to make. Someone always asks, and no, we don't own a butter churn. Quite honestly we don't need one. We are only using the cream from about 1/2 to 1 gallon of milk, but that's just about the right amount for our family. As you can see from the picture above, Elsie's milk has quite a bit of cream. That's a half gallon jar and the cream has separated from the milk. You can see the line between the bluish milk on the bottom and the yellowish cream on the top running right through the top of the "B". If we were going to drink it we'd just shake the jar, but for butter, we skim off most of that cream and put it in a separate half gallon jar. I use a large jar to make butter even though it will be less than half full because the butter seems to come faster if there's lots of extra room for it to move in the jar. We let the cream sit at room temperature until it starts to sour (about 12 hours). I usually take it out of the refrigerator at dinner time and make butter the next morning. Once the milk has soured slightly, we sit down and shake the jar. That's it. Just sit there and shake the jar. After doing it a few times I figured out that shaking the jar in a certain way brings the butter faster, but it's difficult to describe exactly how I shake it. Within a few minutes the cream will start to feel a bit "heavy" and you'll see tiny bits of butterfat starting to collect in the milk. Keep shaking! Quite suddenly it will look like this:

At this point we drain the liquid. This liquid is "old fashioned" buttermilk. (Not the same as the cultured buttermilk you find in a grocery store.) We save the buttermilk to use in pancakes, baked goods and other recipes, then we put the butter into a small bowl. We rinse the butter in cold water several times as we work all the liquid out of the butter. When we're done it looks something like this:

At this point we have to go through the ritual of *tasting* the butter. I don't know why, but every single time we make butter we all have to stick a finger in and taste it...and proclaim it the best butter ever, of course. lol Then we salt it and put it into a small glass bowl that we use just for our homemade butter. That's all there is to it! I'm sure spelling it all out makes it sound more time consuming than it actually is. It probably took more time to type this all up than it takes to actually make the butter.

Pirate boy!

My pirate name is:

Iron James Kidd

A pirate's life isn't easy; it takes a tough person. That's okay with you, though, since you a tough person. Even though you're not always the traditional swaggering gallant, your steadiness and planning make you a fine, reliable pirate. Arr!

Get your own pirate name from piratequiz.com.
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Ready...Aim...

FIRE!!



How often do you get to shoot *your* mom and get away with it? LOL Cameron wanted to see if we could actually capture the foam dart coming out of the gun on film, so guess who gets to be the target? He shot me in the forhead a dozen times or more before Cameron decided that maybe we should switch places.




MY TURN!! (insert evil laughter here: mwahahaha!)

Unfortunately I only got about three shots in before Cameron actually managed to actually capture that dart coming out of the gun. But guess what. Mom (that would be me) accidentally deleted it from the camera. :-( Way to go mom. Things got ugly after that and it turned into an all out dart gun war...until we ran out of ammo. Who ever thought that shooting at your family could be such fun! And to think I used to dislike toy guns.

Fairy Crowns for Catherine

Catherine was having a bit of a rough spot yesterday. She was trying to dress up her animals and the darned clothes just wouldn't cooperate! It was quickly becoming meltdown time. I spent a few moments helping her get the stubborn fairy dresses on her cats, but I could see that a change of pace was still needed in order to help her transition, so I opened up the craft closet to see what we had to mess about with and she instantly perked up. From the uppermost shelf I pulled down a pile of wire decorations that we had left over from a kid's craft booth at a festival a couple of years ago and we spent quite a while making crowns for Catherine and all of her favorite stuffies. If Catherine could read this she'd be correcting me at the moment because they aren't just crowns, they're *fairy* crowns! They simply *must* be *fairy* crowns because EVERYTHING is fairy related at our house right now. lol

Thanks to an RPG called Faery's Tale that several of the kids in our homeschool group have been playing, my kids have been fairy crazy for the last couple of months. We've had fairy movie marathons where we watched any movie we could think of with a fairy or fairies in it. (Labyrinth, Fairies, Fern Gulley, The Last Unicorn...) We've read several books, both old and new, about fairies and while looking for new ones at the library we found a cute little series called The Fairy Chronicles. It's about a group of young (mortal) girls who find out they have fairy powers and can use them to create change in the world. My 10 year old was elated to find that one of the characters is even homeschooled! (Not unschooled, but we'll take it.) I pulled out my old copies of Brian Froud's fairy book and other books that had been in storage until now nad got to share some of my favorite fairy stuff from when I was a kid with my kids. We've also been reading lots of fairy lore and myths, looking up information on "real" fairies and other little people, searching online for places around the world where people claim to have seen fairies and other such creatures, and more...all because of an RPG. Just one more example of delight driven learning in action!