we awoke with the sun....except there was no sun, just lots of clouds and a steady, heavy rain. the sheep arrived at 10:15 this morning, during the heaviest of downpours and we've been captivated ever since.

we stand inside and outside the fence, watching them frolic, graze and sit down in their abundant shade. my dad's been having fun all day coming up with clever sheep-related bible verses. he's cracking himself up. :)

daisy and violet joined us today as the first two livestock on our little hobby farm. although they aren't technically even related, we've named them after daisy and voilet hilton, conjoined twins who toured the "Freak show" circuit about 100 years ago.

when kenny and i started dating, he was doing the music for Side Show. we both fell in love with the music and have always wanted to name our daughters daisy and violet one day. three sons later, we've decided to use the names for the beginning of our wooly flock instead.

daisy is the white border leicester and violet is the dark brown romney.


when we all left them alone around 5:30 for dinner, they both stood at the gate and bleated. they missed us. rowan thought that was so sweet.



they love the pasture. the farmer who dropped them up (and raised their parents) said it was good pasture, and we could get away with a few more. we'll see....

the boys want so badly to feed them from their hands, but they're still learning to trust us. here's sawyer trying hard to be patient...


he also gave my mom some of his spun wool last week and she gifted him with his own pair of wooly (scratchy!) socks. these are all natural, not dyed wool socks. they're incredibly scratchy, if you ask me. :) i'm probably the only one in the world who loves sheep, loves knitting and spinning, but doesn't wear wool, or eat lamb.

we are enjoying a very busy week this week what with two birthdays and a wedding, parties, rehearsals and perhaps a new car!

but our patch of life...our living garden, our chickens and bees, our time to sit and enjoy the homestead we're building has been a bit neglected as we run from place to place, party to rehearsal, meeting to credit score check. and we've been running at this speed since summer started.

we have had a few moments to sit and reflect...this morning kenny and i drank our coffee on the deck while we watched a coyote "play" with a very sneaky and fast cat down by our row of pine trees. while we watched this, we remembered one of the big reasons we moved up here, to work the land and raise animals not usually "raised" within city limits, was to slow down. way down.  but we haven't figured out how to.

i have a feeling that by adding more "simplicity" to our family homestead, we'll be able to slow down more. sure, we'll have more work, but it won't be work that makes us sit in rush hour traffic. we won't have to pile in the car and eat even more gas (that just keeps going up in price). it will force us to be home more (something i will WELCOME!), force us to travel "into town" much less, and force us to be home to use up all that extra milk (making butter one morning, yogurt the next, cheese another time). it will allow us time to sit and watch our animals graze, teach our children that our milk comes from cows, not the refrigerator aisle at the grocery store. it will allow us to be more hospitable to friends and family (something close to my heart!)

maybe this makes me sound pretentious. if it does, then i'm willing to sound pretentious.  i am a full believer that God put animals on this earth as gifts for humans to take care of. they aren't to be protected from death, they are to be raised and used for food, for clothes, and for companionship. they are not to be abused; we are to be thankful (to God) for the gifts they are to us. they are not our equals, they are our gifts. and i don't know one person who would take advantage of or abuse a precious gift. i want to be able to teach our boys how to be stewards of the gifts God gives us. all the different types of gifts we're given, not just our talents or spiritual gifts...but the physical things we have been given.

i'm ready to work more ground, dig our heels in deeper, stay close to home for a while as we raise our family. i'm ready to slow down. way, way down.

we've been outdoors more often than in. the majority of the garden is in (with the exception of the tomato and pepper plants that were eaten by a vole last weekend). we've had a long stretch of hot weather and no rain, so we've been watering the newly planted garden and flower seedlings every night as the sun sets. it's one of my favorite times of day - warm and heavy light from the western sky sun.  color is returning to the yard and so is my desire to redo the front of the house. we've already torn out 6 yew bushes (or evergreens) at the front of the house, and we dream of a big country front porch someday...but that someday is long off, and for now, i will make the front as lovely and welcoming as i possibly can. this year, we'll be planting some flowers on a newly dug flower bed that lines the front bushes:


here's a closer look. at the front left corner is a patch of day lilies and towards the porch is a big bushy plant of lavender. there is a smaller lavender plant on the other side of the porch and then pure dirt in which to plant more prettiness. one reason i don't like these yew bushes is that they house hornets nests each summer. and we like to use the front door quite a bit. we don't like being greeted by several hornets, however.


before moving here, i knew only about hostas and impatiens. i had no clue that there were amazing plants with gorgeous flowers that grew back EVERY spring and summer! yes, i was oblivious to perennials. and i was unaware at how many gorgeous ones there were. it's not a good idea to have a novice flower gardener buy a house with large perennial gardens. because to me, this plant looks like a giant man-eating weed.





when we do yard work, they hang out with us. normally they play on their bikes, or with sidewalk chalk, or run down behind the house to the jungle gym, so they're pretty tired and hungry by lunch on the days we work outside. today, rowan really did stay outside with kenny the entire time and helped him a great deal with the digging and pulling out grass and carrying soil to the new bed. it was fun for me to watch. at the end of their work, kenny let rowan "drive" (steer) the tractor around the yard. i think he was inspired by the 12-year-old boy driving the vintage john deere at the memorial day parade this morning. ahhhh... country-living. soon enough, prom day will be here and rowan will be driving his date to prom in our newly painted vintage john deere tractor.

and at the end of the day, this is what we look like. please tell me that others' kids look just as "rode hard and put away wet" as ours do right before bedtime (or in the case of the warmer months, right before showers and then bed)? they're dirty, wet, sweaty, ripe, but most importantly, worn out and tired.

ahhh...spring and summer. longer days, more energy, beauty, room to run, and happy boys (and a very happy mama!)

do you know what your state bird is? if it's a cardinal or a robin, you are one of the fortunate to actually see your state bird on a daily basis.

last saturday morning, i was on my way to the gym at dawn. the sky was beginning to lighten, but you couldn't see the road unless, of course, you had your headlights on. as i was nearing the end of a hill, something appeared in my headlights, LOOKED UP AT ME, and then...well, it was history.

if you've ever run over something, you know that sinking feeling you get just after that maybe it was someone's pet. the only thing that made me think it wasn't a dog or a cat was that i was sure i saw feathers. it was too small to be a chicken (at least one of our chickens, although i was close enough to home that i half-wondered if it was one of ours...), and too big to be a mourning dove, but i kept wondering if it was a kitten.

on the way home, i approached the "crash scene" slowly looking at the carnage. lots of brown and white feathers (whew! not a cat!), but still bigger than a typical bird. then it dawned on me: i killed the state bird. the ruffed grouse is the pennsylvania state bird, and although i've never actually seen one, it's totally possible that we've got our fair share of them out here in these parts.

why can't our state bird be something like the eastern bluebird or american robin? at least they get out of the way when a car approaches!

after a very easy sunday evening meal (rotisserie chicken from giant eagle with mashed potatoes and fresh tomatoes and pickles, both from the garden!), we headed outside before the threat of a thunderstorm. kenny and i were able to throw the aerobie around for about half an hour while the kids ran circles around us and their jungle gym.

half an hour of frisbee is quite enough for me, especially after an afternoon of bike-riding, so we decided to sit and watch the boys run circles around us. within seconds of sitting, kenny spotted something that looked like a bee's nest hanging from one of the fruit trees just passed his hives. it turned out it wasn't a nest, but a ball of bees, or a bee swarm. and unfortunately, they were our honeybees. a swarm can happen at any time to any hive, and there are theories on why it happens, and you can try to keep your hive from becoming a hive that swarms, but sometimes they just happen and you can't stop it. fortunately, we were able to spot it before they flew off somewhere else to create another colony. kenny has a few empty bee boxes stored in our barn...we are learning that this is essential for any bee-keeper since emergencies such as bear-attacks and bee swarms can happen at any time, and you need to "save" the bees somehow. so he ran to get one immediately, stopping off at the house to get the cameras, a ladder, and his bee suit (just his veil and gloves).

i kept the boys at a safe-enough distance (apparently the bees don't want to fly too far away from their precious queen, so they were safe about 30 feet from the tree) while i filmed and snapped some pictures.

we have no idea if the hive will survive, but at least they're safe inside a bee box, inside our electric fence, with plenty of room to roam and waggle-dance and keep their queen happy. if this survives, then we've just added to our bee colonies, and hopefully this will produce more honey in a year or two (so far, we're not sure if we'll be getting any honey this year since we may need to keep what they've produced in the hive for their winter survival).

here's a video of our evening adventure, complete with me hollering "be careful!" every 3.4 seconds, and the boys playing and singing in the background. and kenny getting stung only 3 or 4 times!

i missed week one because i couldn't pull together a meal with strawberries and asparagus - the only two things in season right now! week two will be published at farm to philly. stay tuned for more delicious meal ideas!

so i did more searching and purchasing this week. i splurged and went with local meat sold at a local family farm. i'm also leaning on their strawberries this week as we'll probably be picking and freezing some from another local u-pick farm later in the week for our fall and winter months.

i'm turning this meal into a lunch as this is so up the boys' alley for lunchtime goodness.

we've had several days in the 90s. i'm LOVING it.

the first really hot day was thursday, and i basked in the warmth. by the second day (friday), i finally let kenny put the air conditioning on (i think it was the kids yelling over the monitor when i put them down for bed on thursday saying, "mommy, i'm sweaty!" a thousand times that did it for me).

we broke out a new wading pool (a frog!), kenny bought a new slip and slide, and by last night, the slip and slide fed into the wading pool. it's rowan and sawyer's new favorite thing to do.

our garden is popping up all over the place. all the beans popped, so far we have an 85% percent corn sproutings, and the other plants haven't burned up in all the heat. when the plants get a little bigger, i'll get a pictrure posted. now it just looks like black mounds and hay (similar to last year's garden, minus the chickens and the groundhog troubles, plus a big fence that kenny and my brothers put up last week).

and today, kenny purchased this book. are we crazy yet? :)

despite it being a frigid 50 this past week, we've had little outside work to do as nothing is blooming or growing. not even the weeds. fortunately so, as we've had our hands tied up with the wildlife.

this is what a perfectly good, never-before-used bee frame looks like. this is what you put into a hive box when you start a bee colony:

we're thisclose to getting the plans for our summer garden in. we've extended it by several feet this year and we're still planning which plants and seeds go where.

it's also that time of year to sign up for a very cool summer challenge - one local summer. so all you foodies and gardeners out there...go sign yourselves up and start planning! i'm already thinking of the local farm stands i'll visit and the recipes we'll be making with our own garden produce.

we recently cheated and bought strawberries at the grocery store...but the boys were in dire need of something other than apples and pears - our winter fruits of choice. i'm eager to get to the local berry farm and pick all the berries we can eat. we got a little sick of strawberries last year with the amount that we picked that i still haven't used the ones that we froze! there is just something so perfect about a warm, sweet freshly picked strawberry that one frozen 10 months ago can't match.

at 7:19 a.m. this morning the phone rang. it was the post office in our small little town (since the general store closed down last summer, the post office and the methodist church are the only thing in town next to several houses).

10,000 honeybees were waiting for us and i don't think they wanted to wait until our normal 3:30 pm delivery time to get them out of their office. kenny and rowan hopped in the car and went to pick them up.

it certainly is that time of year again...the time to dig in the dirt and enjoy the mess. warm temperatures and sunny skies have been dominating the cloudy weather lately. i can't wait for this book to come out next month. i plan on finding some fun stuff to do outside all summer long!

kenny's been wanting to plant trees for a while now, so we spent yesterday evening planting three new fruit trees in our yard. our orchard trees are old and produce maybe a pear once a year or so. there are three diseased trees, so we're cutting those down and we replaced them with three healthy, brand new cherry trees (2) and a peach tree.

we've been planning out our vegetable garden. if you remember from last year, we had many a critter problem (including our very own beloved chickens!), so the first order of business is to dig a trench and put up a fence. a small one, but a fence nonetheless.  no broccoli or pole bean will go in the ground until that fence is up. we're getting a little nutty this year: we're going to do a few rows of corn and maybe some potatoes, sweet potatoes and soybeans! i'm hoping to really can a bunch of tomatoes and beans and pickles this year.

go celebrate this fine earth we've been given to cultivate! get your hands in the dirt and get dirty and muddy today! happy earth day!

last week, when serina and i were sitting in crawling traffic inside the liberty tubes (who knew that there was a wikipedia source for the liberty tubes?!), we chatted about the struggle of Everywoman in america today: the desire to raise goats and sheep.

fortunately, we are of one mind on this issue (well, she more than i, but i'm getting there), so we were able to talk up our dreams and encourage each other that it was within reach. and that's where my problem begins.

i don't know if it was the culture in which i was raised, or the culture in which i started to make my own adult decisions, but at one point along those lines, i realized that i love to consume. new things. bright, shiny things that make my life so much easier, faster, and stress-free. and then recently, since meeting kenny at least, i became aware that that isn't necessarily a good thing. especially when you are a professing follower of Christ.

so then kenny and i began daydreaming one day over our sunday morning fairly-traded coffee at the bagel warehouse about moving out to the country and raising not only a family, but animals. that can help us live more simply. fast foward 6 years, and here we are: acreage, 3 boys, chickens, honeybees, enough grass to pasture several more animals, and a barn (that needs a bit of a fixin') to house more animals. we are in the position to live an incredibly simple life, eating our own (chicken) eggs, drinking our own (cow or goat) milk, shearing our own sheep, and working good and hard to make this life possible. we have enough land to garden organically, put up jars and cans of fruit and vegetables, we even have a small orchard of fruit trees (that do need some pruning, but could probably produce fruit again some day). we have a huge laundry line out back and i only air-dry a fraction of our laundry in the spring and summer.

so why do i still feel the need (or desire?) to go to Target, Sams, Barnes and Noble, and Giant Eagle (local grocery chain) to provide almost everything that we can grow/provide ourselves? we have this simple life in reach, and yet i push it away and still want to buy, buy, buy!

and not only that, i want to look good doing it. not me, per say, because i've already landed the man of my dreams...but my home. i want a pristine home, bursting with spring flowers, summer bounty, autumn foliage, and serene scenes of winter. our current chickens are free-range and they've torn up the base around most of our trees, and they dig up all the flower beds, not to mention they leave their droppings everywhere, including the front porch.

we've been spending the majority of our days on the outside of the house lately. it feels great to not need a coat, and to roam the yard again without heavy boots and deep snow keeping us from walking easily.

maybe it's because this yard has so much more foliage and life beneath the ground than our old yard did...but this year again, i'm surprised (by joy, of course) at the new buds forming on the otherwise dead-looking tree branches, and the bright green shoots sticking up out of the earth after a long hibernation. even though we're expecting it, it's always surprising that life returns after such a long, cold, dead winter.

i spent the day in the city on saturday. my friend serina and i (and her 5-month-old son, asher!) headed out bright and early to the salvation army fabric fair. we didn't realize just how nuts the fair actually is until we tried to maneuver our way through the crowds. i tried two or three times to browse through the patterns/book table, but the ladies wouldn't budge. these women meant business. we did score on some great new fabirc (cheap!) but made our way through as carefully as we could without getting hurt. :)

that afternoon, i met kenny and the boys (and my mom) at our old church for the shape note workshop i was so excited about. it was a lot of fun to sing in a group again (i rarely get this opportunity anymore since i'm not the singer in the family), and it was interesting learning a bit more about it. but kenny and i made the same observation about the actual singing: at this point, we'd much rather listen to it sung (by those who sing it a lot!) than to sing it ourselves. there was a huge need to pay attention to the line of music that you'd sing, and i honestly can't remember actually hearing the music being sung because i was too intent on getting the notes right. so i keep listening to the pieces from the Awake My Soul web site to get my fix.

in the warmth of the afternoon sun on sunday, we labored in the garden. now i know that this is (an example of) the type of work that God requires us to abstain from on the 7th day of the week...but seriously, is it work when it's so enjoyable? when it's all you've been wanting to do for the past three months of frozen temperatures? because it felt great to see the ground again, and to see the garden getting ready to be a bed of growth again. the boys helped us with their garden tools while adam napped. we breathed in the earth, the sun, the tractor diesel fumes....  if there is one thing i'd like to do away with, it's the tractor diesel. i wish there were such a thing as an affordable, green tractor that would make all the rest of our organic gardening and earth-keeping worth it. perhaps one day, the barn will be fixed up enough to house a few goats and sheep. because they're the perfect earth-friendly tractors around.

AND...we lost another chicken today. it was one of the black and white ones (silver laced wyandottes) - the ones i call george washington (they look just like him!). we believe she was hit by a car as she was lying, wings sprawled, in our rock/shrub garden. we're not sure it was a natural landing that put her there, or if someone put here there after doing the damage. she's had a proper burial and yes, we told the boys. and this after we were just telling someone how we've never lost a chicken to traffic, even though they freely walk in the street on a daily basis (cars normally slow down, honk, or stop). this puts our daily egg count down to about 10-11. thank goodness for friends who readily take eggs off our hands.

this image makes me happy:

and serina asked about my cleaning schedule. fortunately for me, this schedule is extremely flexible and it still works when i don't get around to doing ti all, every day. because in reality, every day is full of surprises. like yesterday, i had three loads of laundry planned, but our pipe froze (it did last year in single digit temps, so i should have known!), so the first load resulted in a floor full of water. so here it is...

Liz's Very Flexible Cleaning Schedule

Monday:
Launder sheets from all beds (guest room bed if overnight guests from the weekend)
Launder towels
Reorganize/straighten back porch, office and kitchen

Tuesday:
Launder boys' clothes
Clean upstairs bathroom (tub, floor, toilet, sink)
Reorganize/straighten upstairs

Wednesday:
Launder Liz and Kenny's clothes
Launder kitchen towels
Clean downstairs laundry room/bathroom

Thursday:
Vacuum downstairs
Dust upstairs

Friday:
Vacuum upstairs
Dust downstairs

Saturday:
NOTHING!

Sunday:
NOTHING!

On Sunday evenings, I look at our week and adjust the cleaning schedule as need, around the errands I need to run. For instance, this is how this week looks:

Monday:
Grocery shopping
Launder boys' sheets and guest room sheets (we had an overnight guest this weekend)
Launder all towels
Clean laundry room
(but Monday's schedule changed because of a frozen pipe in the laundry room. It thawed by early-afternoon, so I was only able to do the towels, so we readjust today's schedule to fit into the next few days).

Tuesday:
Launder Liz and Kenny's clothes (and boys' sheets)
Dust downstairs
Vacuum upstairs

Wednesday:
Library day! Return books-on-tape (the boys have been listening to the Frances books - or in their words, "Frahnces" because the narrator is British)
Launder guest room sheets
Dust upstairs
Vacuum downstairs

Thursday:
Catch up on cleaning (if I didn't get to any, this is the day I fill in)
Launder Liz and Kenny's sheets

Friday:
More catch-up!

This morning, I found Adam reorganizing my small pantry for me:

Now all the asian ingredients are in with the baking ingredients. i don't have the heart to re-reorganize. he WILL notice. :)

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

april from SALT for the spirit tagged me for a little meme. it was fun to stretch my mind around this one...thanks, april!

Love/ Hate Meme
I love to eat: meat (i'm a true carnivore...see above); death by chocolate (i'm a true addict).
I hate to eat: wet eggs. scramble the heck out of them for me, please!
I love to go: on vacation with my man. and the boys.
I hate to go: shopping between thanksgiving and christmas.
I love it when: all five of us are piled on the bed, reading, watching tv, chatting....
I hate it when: "The Office" is a rerun YET AGAIN.
I love to see: the older boys playing with adam, teaching him their games - they're great little teachers!
I hate to see: the weekly forecast in january and february; a snow storm in late-march;
I love to hear: adam's waking up words: "uh, oh mamamama! uh, oh dadadada!" (that's "hello!" not a true "uh oh!"); owls chatting at night;
I hate to hear: "mommy, i just don't feel so good"

i tag...stephanie for this one! and anyone else who wants to post it in their own blogs. let me know if you post it!

today was a gorgeous day. the forcast called for rain and snow, but there was no precipitation at all and loads of sunshine.

but do you remember me whining about how we haven't gotten any of our leaves picked up yet? we did a bit of the front, and a bit of the back so far, but going outside and walking around (especially if you're only 18 months old) is very difficult in long grass and heavy leaves. so it makes days like this hard to enjoy outside.

fortunately, we were able to spend an hour picking up the leaves around the boys' jungle gym, and we hope to finish the rest of the yard on saturday. because saturday night we are expected to get a snowstorm. and last year, once it snowed, the snow was on the ground for weeks and weeks. and weeks and weeks.

there are days when i wish a leaf blower was all we needed. but then, the boys wouldn't have all this room to roam....

back in june of this year, kenny and i were all set to order a few (four, tops) turkey chicks and have them sent to us to raise for the 10-12 short weeks that they have before taking them to a local slaughterer for a fresh turkey thanksgiving dinner. free-range, mostly naturally-fed turkeys for a grand total of $6-8. plus shipping and handling.

when we went to make the order, the nice people at the hatchery told us that we had to order a minimun of 15 for shipment.

so, we decided against it as we had no room to house 15 turkeys. and we were trying to live a normal life of a family with three kids, 15 chickens newly released into their outdoor coop, and a huge garden with huge groundhog problems. we didn't need 15 more little headaches. (oh, that made it sound like the three kids are headaches. if i have to be honest, sometimes they are. but that's my fault, not theirs!)

so today, kenny called a local turkey farm. we ordered a fresh 18-20 pound local turkey for our family thanksgiving meal this year. we had a hard enough time finding a local turkey farm, let alone finding an organically raised, free-range one. the one we found keeps their turkeys in open-aired coops and are fed natural food and do not use growth hormones on their fowl. that's enough for me. especially since the USDA definition for free range does not mean pasture-ranged.

we are set to pick up our fresh bird the week of thanksgiving.

(for those of you non-pittsburghers out there, "n'at" is the only proper way to end a sentence here in western pennsylvania.)

sunday morning, we woke up to one of our garbage bags strewn across the front lawn. kenny noticed rather large teeth holes in some pieces of garbage. we weren't sure, but we considered that it was was one very large raccoon.

until today. we came across this:

our life with chickens seems to stay so similar from day to day until something exciting happens - like a blue-green egg! and then i'm reminded just how fortunate we are to be living with these fowl.  i discovered today, that it is our beloved araucana, bettis (named for her thick neck, like the beloved, retired steeler, jerome bettis), that is producing the blue-green egg. both my mom and i discovered her in the nest box today, around the time the egg appeared. here she is in all her thick-neck glory:

when beginning our research into raising chickens, kenny and i fell in love with all the characteristics of the Buff Orpington. So far, our Buffs won't let us near them, and we are not sure if they're laying yet - two opposites of what we were expecting of them (very friendly, and good layers). But they sure are beautiful!

now, when i refer to our chickens as beautiful, i know that some of you are rolling your eyes or laughing thinking, "beautiful? i think NOT!" i know i'm in the minority. and this is a picture that doesn't flatter our Golden Buffs...and i agree, these chickens aren't necessarily beautiful. but they're our current fabulous egg-layers, and we're thankful for our eggs!

here's another beauty. am i the only one who is reminded of george washington upon looking at these silver laced wyandottes?

every evening, our boys love running around with the chickens. a few of them usually hang out with us when we're outside at the jungle gym in the evenings. rowan usually ends up picking a few of them up, while sawyer tries to, but freaks out at the last minute. adam is also very fond of them - as they are of him. they walk right up to him and peck his hand, his fingers, his feet.... he laughs and "yells" at them.

the first month we moved into our new digs here in the country, i took a composting class hosted by an environmental group in allegheny county where we were given a brand new composter (which is serving us well...we've been composting green and brown materials now for 16 months and it's only 1/3 of the way full). the class took place at the rachel carson homestead which was the original home of who is known as the pioneer of the environmental movement, rachel carson.

i found out that she wrote a book called silent spring in the 1960s which is known as an attack on the newly developed insecticides and other chemicals for use in farming and suburban gardens.

then i had a baby and forgot all about her. until just last week when i came across an episode on our local PBS station of "On Q" that focused a bit on rachel and her local homestead. i found that she wrote more than just one book, so i requested a bunch of her books at the library last week and brought them home just yesterday. Silent Spring is one of the books i requested and can't wait to read, but one that i'm totally stuck on and in love with and now want to buy for all my friends who are parents of young ones is the sense of wonder. it's a remake of an old pamphlet that she wrote just before her death. the copy that i have includes stunning nature photos by nick kelsh among the words of her original pamphlet.

one of my favorite quotes:

i think i like that one so much because she has described who i am NOT...but who i want to become for the sake of my kids. when the fireflies were out in june and july, rowan and sawyer couldn't wait to chase them. that usually meant it was close to dark, which was closer to 8:30 or 9:00 - well past their bedtime. initially i was concerened about them being overtired, but then i realized that you're only their age once. and their minds are beginning to retain memories (i have memories from when i was three, so i know at least rowan will remember these times).

my favorite memories of our mini-vacation to lake erie this summer was playing on the beach at sunset. normally, i'd do my best to keep adam out of the water since he was in clothes and not a bathing suit, but it was at least 45 minutes until sunset and he wasn't happy unless he was at least ankle-deep in the water. so he splashed around, got completely drenched, and loved every minute of it.

i am becoming less tightly wound as a parent watching my kids take it all in for the first, second, and third times; seeing the wide sky over a big lake, or hearing a rain storm fall so hard it's hard to talk over its din.

reading this book comes at a time in my life as a parent when i am realizing how amazing the outside world is to a young child. all summer i've watched adam transfixed on ocean waves, staring up at our hemlock tree blowing back and forth on a windy day, watching rain fall from the sky. this summer, the older two boys have become more independent in their outside play and adam is learning how to navigate the yard, the pine trees, and the outside toys by playing with them. summer is the perfect time to soak it all in, and winter the perfect time to reflect on the outside from the inside warmth of a fireplace. spring and fall are perfect for both.

in the meantime, i'm excited to watch adam see and feel snow for the first time. i can't wait to see what next summer brings to us. i promise to let them all stay up a bit later, get a bit wetter and messier and enjoy every minute of it.

back in july, i wrote about our day at the beekeepers association annual picnic. while we were there, we met a couple who we discovered were our neighbors (meaning: they live 4.5 miles from us). Buzz and Aleda keep several hives in their back yard - their house is near a busier intersection, so this proves that if you have a little bit of land, keeping bees isn't all that difficult. they gave us their card (they sell their award-winning "BuzzAleda Honey") and told us to come over anytime we wanted to "hang out with the bees."

tuesday was the perfect day. it wasn't humid, nor raining. kenny gave them a call and of course, Buzz was excited to have an excuse to open up the hives up and show a new beekeeper the ins and outs of the honeybee hive. Buzz and Aleda are grandparents, so the boys were entertained by lots of running around and jungle-gym climbing, and sand-digging (and two popsicles EACH!) while kenny met a few thousand bees.

i was able to grab a few photos of kenny suited-up with bees in-hand, but you'll have to excuse the window screen in the picture. i was holding adam and taking the shots (while the boys played about 3/4 of an acre behind the hives), and we weren't suited up. and although kenny said they were the most docile bees he's ever "met," we weren't chancing it to take a photo without a screen in between!

before you open a hive, you "smoke" the bees with a smoker. the idea behind a smoker is to make the bees easy to manage. when they sense smoke entering the hive, they engorge themselves on honey thinking that they need to stock up on honey, leave the hive and survive until the "fire" is gone. a bee engorged on honey is a very relaxed, docile bee, so it's easier to manage the open hive with friendly bees. kenny holding one of the frames:

if you look closely, in the center of the cluster of bees you'll see a yellowish dot on the back of the queen. Beekeepers sometimes put the dots on the queen so they can identify them quickly. there is one queen per hive of up to 50,000 bees! the queen lays all the eggs in the hive which produce either a drone (male) or a worker bee (female). the honeybee lives for up to 3 or 4 weeks while the queen lives for however long the workers deem necessary.


the setting sun on a hive of bees and their honey combs.

i never would have thought beekeeping was fascinating until kenny mentioned he wanted to keep bees one day. even then i wasn't interested. i kept referring to it as "his hobby." but now i am just as excited to receive and keep a hive ourselves.

you can't get a hive until spring, and if you order it through a catalog, you have to order in the dead of winter (january). you can also get a swarm from another beekeepers, but you still have to order a queen to keep the hive a-hummin'.

there is so much to know and learn about (and benefit from!) the honeybee. if you need or want proof of the One True Creator, study the intricacies of the intelligent honeybee. Intricacy and intelligence are God's specialty.

dirt and clay, all dug away.

last night, after all the digging and excavating and grading and loud trucks left, we walked over to "nana and pop-pop's house." rowan and sawyer decided to help dig...with their own hands (this is the basement):

our garden continues to be munched on by a particular small, grey rodent of sorts...some things are surviving, but i'm afraid that our pole beans will not produce beans this year. the lima bean plants look really good, however, as do the green pepper, celery, and one lone cucumber plant. and our tomatoes? they're going crazy. i'm afriad all the green globes that are forming will turn red on the same day and i'm going to have to can and make salsa within a 24-hour time slot. yikes! at least the boys will eat the cherry tomatoes off the plants.

i've been following (but not participating in, sadly) a great project/blog called One Local Summer. the jist of the project is to make one meal a week of all local ingredients. if you haven't already done so, go to your farmer's markets and get some locally grown fruit and vegetables. you may even be able to find baked goods made from locally grown flours/grains. the other night, we had steamed green beans from the garden of kenny's colleague. they were so sweet and delicious, i'm sure they would have been great raw. i'm afraid it's what we're missing in our own garden, thanks to mr. groundhog (did you notice, in that list of groundhog characteristics that a groundhog is "is a herbivore, or vegetarian, eating a wide variety of wild plants, clover and alfalfa, and garden vegetables if available.)

tonight's dinner is the closest i've come yet:
grilled chicken with homamde BBQ sauce (made with local honey)
corn on the cob (grown in slippery rock)
green beans (grown in slippery rock)

the only thing not "local" is the chicken. hopefully by next year, we'll be eating locally-grown, preferably pasture-raised, chicken and beef. and pork. and the occasional lamb. and turkey.

"we set our hopes high so that we can grow wings and learn to fly."
 - i have no idea who coined that phrase

kenny should really be the one writing this post, but he gave up blogging for Lent a while back and just never got back into it (actually, it was around the time sawyer was born, 2004, when he gave up on blogging).

he's the mastermind behind our next big project, which kicked off officially today: beekeeping.  we spent the morning making sweet and sour meatballs to take with us to the Pennsylvania State Beekeepers Association's Summer Picnic/Potluck. we were expecting there to be perhaps 10-15 folks there sharing our meatballs, perhaps a few bags of chips, some warm soda, and maybe a cake in the shape of a honeybee complete with "honey" icing while the beekeepers chatted about their hives.

fortunately, it was nothing of the sort. we were one of 50 families (maybe more)...totalling a few hundred people with hot dogs and a TON more food to share. there were activities for the kids (the boys made "kite" honeybees and tree-branch name plates) while kenny listened to a few of the experts talk about the recent bee colony collapses. he also got to "schmooze" or "network" with several beekeepers in our area (one lives just down the street!).

these beekepers know how to throw a family party.

they do get a bit corny with their "Honey Queen" contest where they nominate some floozy woman as the "Honey Queen" for a year. as i was passing her wearing her tiara and sash, i asked her just what she did to received this title (yes, okay, i was taking notes so I COULD BE THE NEXT HONEY QUEEN)...and i made the mistake of referring to her as the "queen bee." she corrected me immediately and told me that she wrote an essay on the health benefits of honey and the judges interviewed her. she said she won based on the combination of her interviewing/speaking skills and the uniqueness of her essay. i was hoping it was a baking contest so i at least had a chance for next year. but speaking skills? writing an essay? PUL-EASE.

our neighbors donated their old beekeeping equipment to us complete with bee suits for kenny and i and a little-itty-bitty child's suit for the boys. rowan and sawyer tried theirs on this morning.

i'm now really excited about this: the benefits of local honey (i mean, a few yards away local!), honeybees for our garden and our neighbors' gardens, and learning the incredibly complex ways of the honeybee are just a few of the things i'm excited about. we order our bees sometime in january and we'll receive them late spring, 2008.

this is a great article in yesterday's pittsburgh post gazette.

since bringing our chickens home as baby chicks, we wondered how easy it would be to raise them from such a young age. it's so very easy, as i alluded to earlier. so kenny and i have had a few conversations lately about raising broiler chickens as chicks, and then processing them ourselves for our freezer at the ripe old age of around 9 weeks old.

we eat a lot of chicken, and it would be so much nicer to know just where are chicken was grown, fed, and killed in a "chickene" fashion ("chickene", pronounced "chick-EEn" is my word-equivilent to "humane." chickens aren't humans, so you can't use that word to describe a "nice" chicken killing). what better way than to raise and process them ourselves?

but then there's that small problem of actually killing the chicken. i've heard of a few local farm families that'll do it for you for a small price (cheaper than buying chickens in the grocery!). and you can watch and learn for future use.

fortunately, the chickens running around freely in our yard right now aren't broilers (unless one of them turns out to be a rooster!). so they're safe from the knife. they'll provide us with free-range eggs, and companionship. next year we'll make the decision whether or not to bring home a few dozen broiler chicks.

geez. my bon jovi-loving-10th-grade self wouldn't believe just what i've become in my adult years.

no more plants eaten again today. a quick post as it's been a long evening, already!

a picture of the coop that kenny designed and built. it sits behind our barn. that's the egg collecting door on the right. hopefully, we'll be able to figure out how to get free-range chickens to lay their eggs in their nest boxes, and not around the yard. our country neighbors just laugh and shake their heads at us. :)
 

one of our araucanas. this one is very fond of jumping up on people. it did it for the first time the other night to a friends who was visiting for the day with this family, and then again tonight on my mom. it's quite disconcerting. i'm thinking it's a compliment since we're suspecting this chicken to be the top of the pecking order.


a golden buff, walking merrily along.


tonight, we harvested our first leaves from some heirloom lettuce seeds given to us by my friend serina. the leaves are still small, but it's time to thin, and they're so deliciuos at this stage - packed full of flavor (and vitamins!).

our summer vegetable garden was growing by leaps and bounds. and then...just like THAT...90% of our beans disappeared. we noticed a few of the leaves chopped off on monday, and by tuesday morning, we had ten left of the forty-some plants that had grown to three inches tall.

yesterday, we noticed one of our beautiful broccoli plants was eaten to a stalk...and then i stumbled upon something else growing in our garden: a nest of five itty, bitty baby bunnies. they must be one or two days old now, and they sit nestled under our three strongest lima bean plants. *sigh*

what do i do with my need-to-save-the-baby-bunnies heart, and my newfound love of all things gardening and growing our own food? folks out here would tell us to drown the babes without thinking twice...they're mama could be the culprit of our missing beans plants! however, we've spotted three groundhogs on the premises over the past few days, and they're more likely to eat beans and broccoli than rabbits. apparently. and we couldn't care less for the groundhogs.

kenny sprinkled cayenne powder over most of the plants last night, and nothing disappeared overnight. so the bunnies are staying put for now. until we give in and decide we are growing food, not bunnies.

in other farming news...does anyone have any experience growing rhubarb? i picked some up at our local farm stand a few weeks ago and made rhubarb sauce, which i love. kenny never had it before. i guess it's a taste that one needs to acquire? i'd like to grow it...but don't want to wait years and years to harvest. does anyone know if i could get a splitting from a plant and would it transplant well for a harvest as early as next year?

* THURSDAY MORNING UPDATE: the baby bunnies are gone as of this morning. it looks as though the mother took them to a safer place...or the neighbor's cat had a really nice breakfast. *

i don't know what it is about the evenings that kenny isn't here for the kids' bedtime...but they pretty much suck the big one.

today, however, was fabulous. kenny sent me out first thing in the morning to "do whatever i wanted" so i discovered new roads as i drove, listening to my favorite radio station. then i happened upon the best nursery i've ever been to. rows and rows of perennials, annuals, HUGE hanging baskets, herbs, and vegetable plants (heirloom!). if our garden hadn't already been planted, i'd have walked away with a lot more than i did. i only walked away with $19 worth of annuals - ivy, petunias, impatiens, and a GORGEOUS begonia plant that i just kept potted in our hallway. i want to look upon its glory every single morning as i stumble downstairs for my first cup of coffee.

we had a great rest of the day (except for the fact that we're in the thick of the really big, bad whining stage with the two older boys. perhaps this is subject for a different post altogether, but kenny and i are so over the whineys. when do kids grow out of it? and please, no smart remarks like, "liz, you're 34 and you're still whiney!" i already know that.) and then kenny headed off to bible study. at which point, momma is alone against three boys.

tonight, the two older boys decided that they were dying of thirst. just two minutes after they each had a cup of milk. they were so thirsty that rowan told me, "i'm so sad that you won't give me a drink." i told him that if he didn't whine about it for five minutes, i'd get him a cup of water before i turned out the lights. he succeeded, and he had his water. then he told me that the water made him even thirstier. when i said, "no more water, rowan" he told me that he was sick. and then sawyer said that his back hurt. and then adam decided it was his turn to cry. i gathered them altogether and brought them downstairs. i changed adam's diaper (he was...um...smelly), and told the boys to put on their rain boots. so we all traipsed outside to feed and water the chickens for the night.

at least the chickens have learned that bedtime means bedtime. we headed out to the coop with 15 chickens following us (waddling! they waddle like ducks!) to the squeals of joy from the boys. i put their food and water in the coop and half of them hopped up in. the rest followed us back to the house.

"take two" of boys' bedtime. the older two were alseep within minutes of me leaving the room for the second time but adam wasn't going to have any part of this sleeping thing. and he let me know by his wails. so i did what dr. ferber teaches parents NOT to do...i went and picked him up and brought him downstairs. we sat on the front stoop and chatted for a while with the chickens. then i sang him a few songs, and after 15 minutes, put him back in his crib. he protested all of 2 minutes and was asleep soon after.

at this point, it is about an hour and a half AFTER the boys' normal bedtime. i go outside to check the chickens and they're all huddled in the corner of their coop like good little girls. i lock them in for the night and head back to the house for a relaxing evening hour before my own bedtime.

five minutes pass, and sawyer starts to cry. i go to him, find him alseep and rolling about in bed. i tuck him under his sheet, give him a kiss, reassure him of our love for him (even when they sleep, i tell them i love them...can't hurt, right?) and come back downstairs. five minutes later, another sawyer episode. fifteen minutes later, another one, but this time, he's awake and telling me he needs a drink. i rub his back and he's asleep in minutes.

that was five minutes ago. i'm just waiting for yet another cry from the room. maybe we should skip the soft serve ice cream after dinner from now on?

as i predicted, the warm air and sunnier skies have kept me (and the entire family) outside instead of inside reading and writing. and i find myself having a hard time finding something to blog about. so...do i leave the blog alone for a while and let it grow cobwebs until the cooler air returns, or do i just write about what has been keeping us busy? because what has been keeping us busy is basically what i've been blogging about for...oh...the past five entries.

are you sick of hearing about the gardens and the chickens and my boys? if you are, you are invited to read the next highlighted blog in your bloglines account. because this entry will be no different than the past few. if you're still around, i'm flattered.

last friday afternoon, friends of ours from pittsburgh took time out of their busy lives to come to our home and help us figure out just what we have growing in our gardens. the perennial gardens just have us perplexed. our friends gave us amazing advice on how to treat and relish and enjoy our bushes, gardens, and trees, and identified many of the gorgeous flowers growing in our beds. we feel so much more confident in our ability to keep our grounds watered, fed, and beautiful in the years to come now that we know what we're housing in our soil.

several colors of foxglove, purple miniature iris, white iris, lupin, poppy, and jack-in-the-pulpits are our strongest plants, and are becoming my favorites. i'm waiting for the poppy to break open its bloom...but everything else is opening up. i honestly don't remember half of these flowers in the garden last year.

and our row of peonies? there are literally hundreds of bulbs bending their stems over to the ground, covered in ants. i read that you can cut them when their bloom is full, but not-yet-opened, so i cut and brought a few inside (after is hook out all the ants). they smell incredible. and they are slowly opening up now that they're in a vase.

I never have anything to contribute to the weekly "Works for me Wednesday" over at Rocks in my Dryer, although i do always get some pretty good tips there.  But this week, I have a great little tip to share with all of you. The best part is...it's environtmentally sound!

There are several organizations that you can sign up with to get rid of your junk mail. You've all heard of the "Do Not Call" list?  There is a "Do Not Send" list as well, and here is where you sign up for it. It's free!

Another great organization that does this AND plants a tree every month for every customer that signs up with them (it's $36/month), is Greendimes.

Get what you want in the mail, and save/plant a tree at the same time! Visit other Works for Me tips here (every Wednesday!)