Today is our last market until next year! Harvesting yesterday was easy; just some turnips, sunchokes, kale, bagged mixed greens, mizuna, spinach, cabbage... the usual cold weather harvest. The market today is great, complete with a visit from Santa, a huge gingerbread house, beautiful gifts at the different vendor's booths, a choir, and beautiful wreaths made by Brian's mom. Very festive and fun!

We had a great Thanksgiving in Ashland with my family. We got to see my brothers new home, and spend time with my parents. We went on a nice hike and the kids got to play in the snow. My mom sells her own soaps (made with our goat milk!) and body care products at the farmer's market down there, so she had lots of local foods for our Thanksgiving feast. Yum!

A good friend took great care of our critters, even milking my goats! I feel really fortunate I have someone I can count on to help us when we are out of town. Thanks Danielle!

Our home schooling is going really well. I feel like our seven year old has made a major shift in his ability to do "school" for longer stretches. Before, he could only sit there for about 15 minutes at a time, and then need like 45 minutes to run around and play. I know this is normal, especially for boys, but it was taking all day just to get a few things done, and my days are already pretty busy. In the last few months though he is really able to focus more: so he is reading for blocks at a time, then we do science and history (which he loves), then some language arts, then math (which he also enjoys and has a real aptitude for), with some art projects, read aloud time, and special topics thrown in here and there. Then he is done for the day, and can play with his little brother. During his school time our 4 year old often sits with us, doing his own "reading and writing"and then runs around the house reciting the definition of a noun. He has also been known to ask random people questions like "Do you know who Genghis Khan is?" He is learning a lot just be being around his siblings. During this time our 5th grader does her independent work, and then after lunch while the boys play I work one-on-one with her on the harder subjects. Of course at least once a week we attend various clubs or playgroups with other home schoolers, so we keep busy.

We're just about finished with getting the kids' Christmas presents. We try to keep things pretty simple. I think too many things can be overwhelming, hard to keep clean, and the kids end up not playing with them anyway, so we try to keep gift giving under control. It is hard because we obviously want our children to have fun, nice things. We give our kids mainly books, home school items and art supplies. This sounds boring, but our kids devour books, the home school items are fun things like tangram sets or really interesting history or science projects, and my kids constantly are creating art. For their stocking we will get some more "fun" items: a few toys like Legos, some hair stuff for our 10 year old, useful things like socks and gloves, and even some traditional holiday oranges. It should be lots of fun, and we also get to see both Brian's family and my side as well. Brian and I don't exchange gifts; if one of us needs something, we get it.

This week has been really cold. I'm having to haul water for the animals every morning and need to get out the hats and gloves. I love that now that the ground is frozen there is no mud, but the pigs have trouble running across the hard, frozen ground in their tilled up areas. The kids get so excited about the ice coating everything, and our four year old goes on and on about the beautiful "frosting" outside. He can't catch on that the correct word is "frost"! Our ten year old is in the Willamette Ballet Academy's Nutcracker, and I help out with costumes; so I have been sewing lots of lace and sequins in the evenings.

We are now shifting into planning for next year, ordering seeds, and getting our planting calendar figured out. Now that we have a better idea on what our customers want, we are excited to start a new year of seed starting and planting!

Survivalists?

Brian was talking to someone the other day who was asking about our gardens in November, asking what we were growing right now. He assumed with the cold weather there wasn't much; but Brian told him about all our cold hardy veggies like kale, mache, cabbage, leeks, collards, plus lettuce and spinach in cold frames and under cover, as well as our home raised milk, eggs and meat from our animals. Plus we have cans and cans of home preserved jams, sauces, broths and pickles, buckets and boxes of potatoes and apples. We got some jokes about preparing for the apocalypse, which Brian of course plays up. We often joke with each other about being survivalists with our self-sufficiency goals, buckets of stored food, and love of food preservation. And I do have a fascination with end-of-the-world novels. But really we aren't preparing for Mad Max scenarios, nuclear winter or zombie attacks.

Many years ago Brian and I looked at the problems we humans were causing and the issues we would be facing in our children's lifetimes; global warming, peak oil, environmental degradation, the industrial food system... and we thought long and hard about what our reaction would be. We had already done the activism thing, with disappointing results. So what could we possibly do (besides offing ourselves) to some way minimize our personal impact on the planet, while still living within the confines of the system.

We decided the best we could do was to work towards self-reliance. Anything we could grow, raise or create ourselves was one less thing creating waste, warming the planet and using fossil fuels. When we couldn't or didn't have the time or energy to make it ourselves, we decided to try and find the least damaging source of the item. We buy food in bulk because it has less packaging and uses less fuel in transport (and it's cheaper). I like to buy many things second hand to minimize waste and not wasting resources creating something new when used works just as well (and it's cheaper). Now we are by no means perfect; we shop at stores, drive a car, watch movies, etc. But we do try.

There are also some additional benefits to having our food storage, stacks of firewood and herd and flocks of animals. If we ever had a personal disaster; Brian loses his job or we get a ton of unanticipated medical bills (like our ER trip a few months ago created, despite good insurance), I know I will have plenty to feed my family. Usually once a winter our area loses power for a few days, and I have seen the scramble as people go to the store to buy drinking water, candles and canned food when a big storm is predicted. With our solar power and wood heat, we are relatively insulated from these things. So we aren't crazy survivalists, despite our stocked pantry, hand tools and books on how to do everything from tanning hides to smoking meat. We just believe in being prepared and the value of learning how to do things ourselves.

This last week had more intense wind storms, but despite keeping us up all night; there was very little damage. Brian dismantled our tangled irrigation systems to store for the winter, and I've been doing more lime plaster inside to house. We are preparing to go see my family in Southern Oregon for Thanksgiving, while a good friend is kind enough to take care of our animals. We are looking forward to Christmas break to have a big chunk of time to get work done on the house.

Hibernation

It seems like the longer we have lived on our land, the more in tune we are to the earth's rhythms. I'm not sure if it's eating seasonal food or being more aware of light because of our solar, but we are all feeling winter coming on. Right now it is getting dark before 5:00, so there is a rush to get any outdoor chores done while there is still light. The kids are going to bed really early, and we are often asleep before ten. It is cold enough that we light a fire in the evenings, and the house is still warm the next morning. We've been eating pots of soup, and drinking gallons of tea. I feel like we are well prepared for this winter: we have firewood stacked, food canned and stored, and we have lots of indoor projects lined up for the kids. We have had another crazy weather week, cold nights, marble-sized hail, and high winds. Today it was really warm and very windy. It even blew over one of our trees!

We had a great indoor market on Saturday. We sold out of most of our produce, and it was great to see return customers and to connect with new ones. Brian was especially happy to meet some of the people in Wellspring Heart program. It was great to see people trying new foods. I was a little worried about how all the seasonal produce would do. But people were happy with the turnips, kale and sunchokes!

That night we rented the DVD Food, Inc. We are already well-educated about the industrial food system, so there weren't many surprises, but I found the movie really well-done and informative. Plus it features both Michael Pollan and Joel Salatin (Brian's hero). The film breaks down different elements of the industrial food system, and ends with a basic conclusion. You are voting with your dollars, so if food (and your health and the environment and the treatment of workers and animals) is important to you: buy local, shop at farmer's markets, grow a garden. Now Brian tends towards extremes, so he ended the movie depressed about all the ways we still buy into the food system. That day he bought a six-pack and a jar of natural peanut butter (gasp!). Of course I countered with the fact that we just provided our community with fresh, seasonal organic produce, and we grow and raise a huge portion of our food, and no one can be a purist anyway.

He felt better Sunday, because we harvested some of our ducks that we don't want to over winter, and had delicious roasted duck with rosemary, garlic, turnips and cabbage, all from our farm. Now we are canning the rest in broth to make meals through out the winter. I am also making some pickled easter egg radishes and turnips. Yum!

Roots and greens!

For our November market, we've harvested lots of roots and greens; turnips, radishes, chard, kale, salad greens, cabbage and more. It was a very cold and wet Friday, which made for tough picking weather, but we got it done. It didn't help that our pig Wilder (aptly named by the kids because she is more wild than the other pig), snuck out of her pasture three times! Brian was at work so I rushed to get the homeschooling and household work done so I could be done harvesting before dark. It was very cold pulling up root veggies out of soggy beds and spraying them off outdoors. By the time I milked the goats, my hands were so cramped with cold I could barely get them to work. Also the goats weren't thrilled with my icy fingers! Thankfully Brian got home and took over the rest of the washing, bundling and bagging, so I could take a hot bath and put the boys to bed. Then we had a nice time listening to music and getting everything ready. We've also made some more soap, salve and new beeswax candles from our beehives.

As I was sorting through radishes and putting aside slug-nibbled ones, I was thinking lots about how we expect our produce to be "perfect", regardless of the cost to the environment and our health to make it so, and the amount of waste created by throwing out cosmetically imperfect food. It is so frustrating to spend all the time and energy growing something, only to harvest it and realize we can't sell it due to light insect damage. But we have had good luck will our customers accepting some imperfect produce because they know we grow organic. Fortunately we are small enough that it is easy for us to eat our market "rejects", and we can always feed things to our animals or the compost pile. But I shudder when I see all the picture perfect produce in the stores and think of how many chemicals it took to grow them that way, and how much food was thrown out that didn't meet aesthetic standards. I think we all need to learn what kind of imperfections are acceptable and won't harm the quality of the food.

The last few days we have had high winds, driving rains, hail and even lightning! Our animals have been hiding in their shelters, waiting for breaks in the rain to come out and forage. Brian made a new cold-frame for our lettuce, and put row covers to protect our spinach and greens. We should have enough to eat fresh greens all winter. We are still eating plenty of fresh tomatoes that have been ripening on my counter. They should hold out until December, when I will start using my home-canned sauce.

I've been trying to get as much plastering done as possible, after chores and homeschooling, before making dinner, nighttime milking and clean up. Here is a picture of the lime plaster over earthen on our south wall.

We had a productive weekend this week. Saturday was dry and mild, so I mucked out our buck pen, put in fresh bedding, trimmed the boys' hooves, and cleaned off the buck. He is in rut right now so he is constantly peeing on his face and front legs. Supposedly this makes him more attractive to the does. But the urine irritates the skin on his legs really bad, so I try to spray him off every so often. It doesn't seem to improve the smell.

I also cleaned our milking/ hay and feed house and scrubbed the milking stand, and cleaned out the pig's house and put in fresh straw. Now I just need to finish cleaning the chicken house and get wood chips on the mucky paths.

I have been applying lime plaster on our exterior strawbale walls. Lime over layers of earthen plaster is a good idea for strawbales homes in our climate, as is provides excellent protection while still allowing the bales to "breathe". It is made from limestone which is heated and slaked into a powder form, then made into a putty, and when exposed to air it turns back into limestone, creating a hard plaster. I mix fine sand with lime putty, adding small amounts of chopped straw and wool to act as a binder. I moisten the earthen plaster and trowel on the lime paster. Lime is very caustic, due to it's high PH, so I need to wear gloves to prevent burns, and I should wear googles. This time of year is good for working with lime; it needs cooler, moister weather to keep the drying time slow to help the plaster set up hard. But when it gets too cold (below 45) I will need to move on to the interior walls. We have really large overhangs to protect our bales, but we do get some intense storms with driving rains, so it feels good to know that our bales will be well-protected.

Brian has been working hard on firewood. He has been cutting up downed trees on our property and we should have plenty to get us through the cold season. Of course he will probably keep stacking anyway, just to be prepared. Our house is well insulated with the bale walls, with lots of thermal mass in the floor, earthen plaster and interior cob wall, and we have a passive solar design, so thus far we haven't needed any additional heating. Also I think we tolerate cooler house temperatures than most people. It will be nice when we fire up the woodstove in earnest.

Brian has been clearing an area of rotten wood and stumps to get ready to plant berries, so he built an enormous bonfire. It was the biggest we have had on our property. By now, he is a fire building expert, and he made such a clean, hot fire it made virtually no smoke. The kids love fires, so they spent the day cautiously playing near it's warmth and gathering wood for it. While getting wood they found a salamander, which they found a safer home for.

On the housewifely end of things; I have been working hard on the kids' Halloween costumes, and trying to get some knitting in during the evenings. Brian has been plastering the ceiling, laying tile, and generally making a big mess of our living space. It is worth it though to see our house get closer to completion.

We made some new soap and are getting ready for the November and December markets. We hope to have many items that could work for holiday gifts; like our soap, salves, beeswax candles and more.

Apples!

We went apple picking at a friend's orchard a few days ago. The kids ran around eating apples like they were the sweetest things ever, while Brian and I filled boxes. It looked like it would be rainy but it turned out to be the perfect fall afternoon.

Now the boxes are sitting on my counter with the salvaged tomatoes needing to be dealt with. We have already used a bunch by getting out our cider press and making sweet cider for the kids (heated up and spiced is their favorite) and started brewing hard cider for us. I still have lots for apple sauce, apple butter, apple jelly and to store for eating this winter. Right now my favorite treat is apple slices with peanut butter.

The first year we started picking at this orchard we filled the whole back of our truck with apples. Despite giving lots to friends, and canning applesauce, butter and apple rings in syrup, we still ended up having to compost many that spoiled before we could get to them. It made great compost though! So this year we tried to pick enough to have a good amount for fresh eating and storage, but not so much as to be overwhelming.

Today I went to a local park with a canopy of huge oak trees, and collected acorns for our pigs. They also are enjoying the wormy walnuts from some friends. They have been doing an amazing job tilling up our fields and eating weeds.

This weekend we did a lot of planting; Brian planted 6 fruit trees we picked up over the summer (2 apples, peach, plum, plucot, and cherry) and planted 8 blueberries. I planted a gooseberry and currant I started from cuttings, and an echinacea plant I started from seed. I still have lots of gooseberries, currants and a fig to plant. Fall is my favorite time for planting. The trees and shrubs seem to like the cooler temps and moisture.