fall fair and Holocene



 Here are the photos I mentioned. We had a good time at the fair- carnival rides (including bumper cars which Ari has been talking about wanting to try since last year!) animals, music, giant vegetables (forgot to photograph those!) and wonderful friends to share it all with- What could be better?

I guess if the fall fair has passed I should start admitting to myself that autumn might be upon us. All the locals are claiming we are going to have a hot warm autumn this year. That sounds good to me.

I wanted also to share this most beautiful video. I've been listening to Bon Iver a lot the last while, something about his music has been just right for me lately. But I just discovered this video and I love everything about it. The landscape, the footage, the child, the woolly clothes, the incredible song. I want to watch it over and over. Enjoy dear friends. Goodnight.

BON IVER "Holocene" from nabil elderkin on Vimeo.

today, the rain.

(unrelated photos from a walk on our property when the sun was briefly out.) 

I have a bunch of pictures to share from the fair we attended this weekend, but I am not in the mood today- maybe I'll post them tomorrow. I have been feeling pretty melancholic the last few days. Like many Canadians, the news of Jack Layton's passing hit me with unexpected emotion and sadness. The sense of loss feels surprisingly personal, considering I never met him myself. Yet his death made me realize that I had a great deal of hope resting in him- in his authenticity and honest striving to make real and profound change. I am inspired by the outpouring of love and emotion, and I'm trying like many, to turn the hope I had resting in him, towards the changes we all need to make together. That would be a legacy he would have been overjoyed with.

Totally unrelated, but also occupying a good deal of my thoughts is my dear oldest boy. He has been struggling a fair bit lately, and after an (amazing!) phone consultation with Beth Sutton (Enki founder) we decided to get some tests done, including allergy testing. The dear sweet boy is apparently sensitive to darn near everything we eat, and I am reeling a bit. We take food pretty seriously in our house. We cook from scratch and source things locally whenever we can. We grow a garden and raise chickens and get to know the farmers whose food we purchase. We make much of our own bread and baking from local wheat, make our own yogurt and cheese and kefir from pastured goat or cow milk and raise our own chickens for eggs. And now, my dear boy cannot eat most of that food. I am feeling so sad and confused about this.

Why is his sweet little body developing panic responses to the foods that should be nourishing him? And how can I ensure we are all well nourished on a diet that excludes many of the most nourishing foods available to us? I don't want to rely on ready made foods shipped from far away when we can get much healthier local alternative and make things ourselves. Yet, on the other side, I  look forward to seeing how he feels without being exposed to these foods that have been troubling him. I am just beginning to research it all, but I do have some hope that there might be therapies or diets out there that could help him heal and get strong and to outgrow these allergies altogether. For now I just need to give it a bit of time to figure out, and to read and figure out the next step. For now we are all cutting out these foods and replacing them with whatever we can purchase from our local health foods store. My body is  not enjoying the change to an essentially vegan diet (with a bit of meat thrown in!) I am reminded of how I felt as a vegan- not great!

Today Perry took the boys to a new and exciting pool in a neighbouring town and I turned up my most melancholic music and spent the day cleaning and organizing and moving things around. It felt like the right thing to be doing on a cold and rainy sunday when my head was full of thoughts to think. One thing I do know, putting my physical space in order is a surefire way to lift my spirits.
good night friends.

friday photo (on saturday!)

Parade!

back again

Hello! Our Internet has been down now for nearly two weeks, but we are finally connected again. These pictures are from a camping trip a little while ago, and this is as close as I'm going to get to trying to catch up here with all we've been up to!

Not having the internet all this time has actually turned out to be quite an unexpected gift. After the first day or so I hardly missed it, and I got so much more done. And then I realized that without it I was doing a lot more for myself when I needed down time, rather than using the computer to escape when I was feeling overwhelmed. It really was perfect timing too, as I have been working on homeschool planning and planning out our rhythm/routine for the year, and realizing I need to structure my own computer-free time. I am thinking of 2 or 3 days a week where I don't turn it on at all.

I also have been struggling with how to keep this blog up the way I want to, while balancing computer time and the frustrations of our slow rural internet connection. I am thinking of more frequent, less photo heavy posts that I can put together quickly (photos take sooo long to upload!) and maybe posting certain "themed" posts during the week, like a homeschooling post (on the same day I have to do my homeschool reporting anyway!) and maybe a craft themed one, or a  day-in-the-life type. I don't have it all figured out yet, but I am looking forward to being here a little more often, but not spending as much time struggling with photos and uploading issues.

As the summer draws to a close, and the weather is returning to the cold wet weather that seems to be the norm for this year, I am starting to feel that familiar desire to take stock of everything, to preserve food for winter, to make sure we have all the warm clothes we will need, and to organize, sort, clean, and ready our little home for the long hours we will be spending inside its walls. Knitting, canning, harvesting, sewing. It is good. And though the weather has been challenging this summer, we have spent our days exactly as we had hoped- without a lot of busy-ness or external obligations, just time spent together as a family, enjoying each others company. We are blessed indeed.

strawberry fields forever

We went strawberry picking this week. The strawberries are late, even for here, but they are huge and sweet and abundant. We had a lovely day at our friends U-pick, the boys were keen to help and then had a picnic in the shade with the turkeys while we adults picked on. We brought home nearly 50 lbs and have been busily processing them. We froze lots and made 20 jars of strawberry preserves and then stuck the rest in the food drier. The dried ones turned out so yummy that we are heading back for more this week so we can make a whole bunch of those for the winter.

While I was washing and hulling the berries, Dorian worked in his kitchen, making me snacks and tea and strawberry pie.

There is something so satisfying about putting local foods down for winter. Even as we celebrate the summer sunshine, we are getting ready for the cold months when a dried strawberry or a bowl of strawberry yogurt is going to taste like a little piece of heaven.

We are heading off for another camping adventure for the next few days. I'll pop in when we get back. See you then!

yellow and gold

Last week as the rain just kept on falling and the temperatures just stayed so very low, we were trying so hard to make our own sunshine.



::eating yellow::



::sewing with yellow::

::knitting with yellow::

::cooking with yellow::

And then, wonder of wonders the sun came out! And it was warm- really warm! Oh the joy of that warmth on the skin and sun in the eyes. We rejoiced and spend every moment we could out there in it.

::in the dappled sunlight of a friend's forest garden::

::in our own garden::



::visiting a favorite farm::



Thanks goodness for the sun and for it finally feeling like summer. Today it rained again, but the forcast is for more sun. We have not yet taken our new sprinkler out of its box because we have not needed to water our garden yet this year. That might be a record. But I am ready to include that chore again and to shed the wool sweaters and greet the August sunshine. Hurrah!

friday photo: mushrooms

We attended a bioblitz where the flora and fauna of an area was documented by many people over the course of a single day. Over 500 species were found. With all the rain we've had, the mushrooms were adundant. It poured rain all day long and the herd of kids played happily with sticks and moss and clay and dried cowparsnip stalks. It was hard to get the boys to come home after 8 hours playing in the rain with their friends!