The Graduates...

My girls have officially graduated from Preschool!!! Not only was there a ceremony, replete with "mortarboards" and marching down the chapel aisle, but we also got to have a picnic afterwards,in the school playground. In the fall, we will start Kindergarten! Whoot!
This means ALL the urchins will be at school full time....and if one more person says "what will you do with your time?" I'm gonna haul off and smack'em. I'm thinking rest. And then work the 60 acre farm I own. And work on the 200 year old farmhouse I live in. And get a part-time job to make some money and get health insurance...and continue to raise the three little ones so that this will be the first of MANY graduations (yes, I do expect PhDs from all of them. Got a problem with that?). So, yeah, I'm pretty sure I'll keep busy....

Dinosaur?

The children went to collect eggs....and came back with three normal eggs and one GIGANTOR. We have a theory that, whilst we were sleeping, a dinosaur came by, and, needing a place to lay her eggs, peered into our coop and found it to be Just The Place. We have Very Friendly Hens. So, they offered up one of their nesting boxes to use, and promised to take good care of the egg until morning.
Quinn has suggested we run some "experiments" on Gigantor.
Very inquisitive....not sure if this will lead to a career in paleontology, ornithology or mad science...stay tuned....

Farewell to Peonies...

The last of the peonies...until next year, then....

Morning dew on the asparagus ferns....soooooo pretty.
The urchins tell me the fairies use these for Christmas trees....

The Strawberry Fairy

In February, Caden and I planted a bunch of sorry looking rootlets in one of the raised beds in our vegetable garden. The rootlets had arrived via mail, bunched with a rubber band and tossed into a box, and they looked Very Unpromising. You see, I was lured, nay, seduced, by pictures of luscious red strawberries on the Gurney's website ( what can I say? I'm easily seduced when there's nothing but dead trees out my window and snow on the ground....) So, I ordered strawberry plants...online....and when they arrived I was MORE than skeptical...

The catalog patiently explains that a real crop of strawberries can take two to three years ( a fact I guess I had overlooked in my enthusiasm to have strawberries! In my garden! And they looked so pretty!!!).
But miracle of miracles, those scrawny little roots grew leaves, and flowers...and we actually got our first little wee crop of strawberries yesterday morning - just 4 months after planting them - and the best part? They taste AMAZING!

My strawberry-picking crew is now VERY motivated to collect more!

The Library

The library wasn't exactly a "library" in the beginning....when I first laid eyes on my house, this room was Uncle Larry's Indoor Shed, replete with the "artifactual" history of farm equipment from the 1900s to about 1965. The rats and squirrels had added their own unique collection to the display as well, and because there was no glass in the window, the room had a certain patina of bird poo which, while fragrant, added very little to the overall charm of the room. Motor oil (and other liquids of dubious origin) were deeply absorbed into the hardwood floors here, and I was assured by the floor-refinishing guys that there was "no way" they could save it. Thankfully, they were wrong....

The Kitchen

The kitchen....wasn't actually the kitchen when we first got to the farm...I think this was - once upon a time - the "dining room".


(The actual kitchen was in the brick addition to the right of the main body of the house...termed a "summer kitchen", it was in an advanced state of disrepair and had to be torn down early on in the renovation process.)

So, here's the kitchen now:



The only thing that "made the cut" was the floorboards...and, yes, the kitchen is cluttered full of crap in this picture, but this really is what it looks like everyday...and besides, I'm not exactly doing a "Better Homes and Gardens" spread here...

One of these things....

So, a few more "before and after" shots sounded kind of amusing....here's Uncle Larry's front room BEFORE we renovated the house....Uncle Larry had a sort of "collector's chic/pack rat" decorative flair, don't you think?





And here is the same room, after we tarted it up a bit, added glass to the windows, added heating/plumbing/electricity and got rid of the snakes/rats/squirrels/insects....the three urchins deeply engrossed in their Leapster games were an added bonus that I thought gave the room a certain "je ne sais quoi"...

Anniversary

Hullo World!
Today marks a notable event in the history of the farm...we have officially been living here now for one, whole, year. Three hundred and sixty-five days - more or less - have elapsed since Josie, the kids and I walked through the front door and set fire to the stove (it was an exciting first day at the farmhouse, I assure you).

Time does funny things these days for me....sometimes it goes by so achingly slowly,it's as if The Great Someone has put everything on Pause and I can't quite seem to find the LIFE remote....and then, suddenly, as only Time can do, I look behind me and there are a million days gone, like a string of traffic with their lights on at night, blinking in the rearview mirror....and I think - whoa, wait a minute, what just happened? How did I get HERE so quickly?
So, here I am.

I suppose now would be the time to reflect upon all the good things that have happened here over the past year - there have been many, many blessings...many wonderful friends who have helped and nurtured and loved us, many fine moments sharing food and laughter and dammit all, joy. I think, perhaps, that joy is made all the richer because, let's face it, there have been some dark moments this year, too. It's hard to write about what it feels like to be left walking down life's path on your own, with three children as your cohort (and yes, I DO mean as a "group of warriors" - look it up for yourself, if you must)...but we are THAT, and more....

So, that said, thank you to all of you who have helped us to be more, to be here, to be able to take this path, live on this farm, and face all our battles with wit and courage...and thanks to those of you who are rolling your eyes at the gross sentimentality of this whole damn thing. You're the ones who keep me grounded!

Peony

I love peonies. They smell divine - seriously, if heaven exists, it probably smells like peonies - and they are beautiful to behold. Their blooms don't last too far into the season, and they are often difficult to grow - but once they get established, they are the prettiest things spring has to offer. Serendipitously, two peony bushes were amongst some of the very very few things to survive from the era of Uncle Larry, and the era of The Monstrous Renovation. (A handful of irises, two scrawny Rose of Sharon sticks and the daffodils I wrote about earlier were the only other survivors...).






I almost hate to cut them, but seeing this on my windowsill every morning just makes the world seem a better place. Maybe the world just needs more peonies on it's windowsills....

This is my tractor.
For those of you who care about these things (and therefore are likely to be Somebody I Don't Know - Hi ! I know nothing about tractors, but thanks for dropping by!)it is a Kioti KL 401. One actually pronounces it "coyote" - see, they were being all cute and kinda gangsta-rap-like by spelling the word incorrectly, but utilizing phonetics. Isn't that nifty?
In keeping with the whole ignore-rules-of-correct grammar, the Owner's Manual is an absolute delight of incomprehensible directions, obfuscation, discombobulation and drunken syntax.
This makes learning how to operate (a piece of machinery that will happily chew you up for breakfast in one of a dozen unpleasant ways, and is Therefore Worthy Of Respect) just a tad challenging.

So, in the interest of educational awareness, I am going to make up my own bloody manual. I shall call it "My Own Bloody Manual". Catchy, no?




A pivotal thing to learn is how to operate the wee attachment on the back of the tractor. People in these parts call it a "Brush Hog". As in "I'm brush-hoggin' the field by the woods today" or "what that field needs is a good brush-hoggin'". I call it a Really Frigging Loud Mower, or alternatively, "the-thing-in-the-back".

Given that I spent a better part of yesterday figuring out how to raise and lower the thing-in-the-back, I thought I should share with you the THREE. SEPARATE. GADGETS. That must be toyed with simply to get the damn mower to go up and down.
Clearly, men design tractors. It's time to put a woman on the task, because this is ridiculous.
Behold:

This is one of Quinn's chickens.
They are called "Golden Polish".
And I love them.
I think I had that Exact Same Hairdo in the mid-eighties. I, however, added flair with my Flashdance shirts with the shoulder exposed. Maybe I'll make some for the Polish chicks....

Mother's Day - A Review....

Let's just say that being a single Mom on Mother's Day AND being immersed in a culture that trumpets flowers/breakfast-in-bed/Hallmark cards/Mommy-gets-a-day-off,etc. etc. is just one more myth that I'd like to strap a kilo of dynamite to, and blast into the stratosphere.
Let's be frank, shall we? Orchestrating your own Mother's Day celebration with three cranky urchins who - as individuals - each have their own INDIVIDUAL IDEAS about how the day should proceed equals one f*&^%k of a lot of work for Muma. Period.

Trying to convince them to do Nothing For Me (because really, that would be EASIER on me) resulted in tears. Trying to convince them that we could all go and I'd buy a nice plant from the local nursery, resulted in tears. Trying to explain that making me dinner by themselves might result in an emergency room visit and/or fire and rescue call, resulted in tears. Additional tears were shed for reasons I have now forgotten....

Soooooo, we made necklaces. Baked and decorated cookies. Went to the nursery and got a pomegranate tree to plant in honor of the day (because the Son thought it was a pretty good idea after all). And I made three meals and two snacks, cleaned up three meals,and two snacks, vacuumed up (twice) all the spilled sprinkles from cookie decorating, assisted in the beading process for four necklaces, cleaned spilled beads out from between the floorboard cracks in the breakfast room,pried beads from the salivating mouth of the pug (twice), fed/watered/cleaned chickens and dogs, and finally, bathed, dressed and tucked into bed three Very Tired Urchins...so really, it was a regular kind of Sunday.....

Don't get me wrong. My urchins are wonderful. But Mother's Day is for them, not for me...which, I guess, just makes me a Mother....sigh...

So, when the water is doing THIS to your driveway, that's bad, right?

Or is it worse that you actually think, "hmmm, dude, a few more inches of rain and I could TOTALLY clear that in my canoe...hey, kids? where are your life-jackets?".....

Once again, I'm afraid the Mommy-of-the Year Award is slipping from my grasp....