Today

Today was amazing.  One of those days, when all the pieces seem to fall magically into place.  They don't happen often, but when they do, I just have to pause frequently, take notice and smile inwardly, deep in my heart.

Beautiful sunrise....

Followed by a totally smooth and easy morning of animal chores and breakfast (not always so smooth or easy!).  Which then lead into a blissful morning trail ride through forest and meadow as the fog burned off making way for the sunshine. Yes!  Sunshine and a trail ride?! Again, I squeal, "Yes!!!"

The early afternoon involved an unfortunately short nap taken by a little guy who I believe was too excited about the sunshine to bother with sleep.  During this brief interlude, I stole a few minutes to read up on some other blogs.  I read a couple of posts of the ladies penning the "Get Real" series -  seven mama's getting real about the behind the scenes of juggling motherhood, households, homesteads, homeschooling and the like.  Today's topic was balancing work into the equation. I read their stories and reflected on my own juggling act. What followed shortly there after couldn't have been a more perfect manifestation of the mama/worker-bee balancing act in action.

When Jade woke from his nap, I scooped him up and quickly dressed him for an afternoon outside in unpredictable spring weather.  We snagged his older brother and hit the trails behind our property for a quick walk.  Cedar and I caught up on what he had been working on all morning, discussed his feelings about the tragedy in Boston yesterday, and just simply had some "connecting" time.  Upon our return to the house, Jade and I jumped in the van and zoomed to the barn to get Sequoia from her riding lesson and barn work day.  On our way home from the barn, Sequoia and I had some heart-to-heart check-in time while Jade did his own thing in his car seat.

Once home, Jade and I headed back outside and collected, yet again, more rocks, roots and sticks from the new pasture area while I awaited a conference call.

About thirty minutes later, my call came in. I snuggled Jade into the carrier on my back and I hit the woods for another walk.  I spent the next two hours hiking the trails while "attending" a meeting via cell phone with a perfectly content baby on my back.  It was a gloriously sunny and beautiful afternoon in the forest and a highly productive meeting to boot!

About 30 minutes before my meeting ended, Jade decided he had heard quite enough about spreadsheets and deadlines, and conked out.

And, not five short minutes after my meeting ended and I decided to head for home, the clouds rolled in, the sky turned a dark and steely grey and thunder began rumbling in the distance.

Just as I passed the gate that puts me back onto our little gravel road, the sky opened up and caught Jade and I in a crazy downpour of rain and hail.  Luckily for us, we were just a quick minute from the house!

The evening concluded with a quick and easy dinner of burritos and left-over soup, followed by (you guessed it) another family walk in the woods and evening chores.  Jade discovered the moon for the first time as we walked through the twilight pasture to feed the cows.  He spent the rest of the walk home with his arms outstretched above his head reaching for the moon and babbling with excitement.  Once home, he boogied down in the living room to papa's guitar playing while the big kids cleaned up the kitchen and dining room from dinner.

Then... off to bed for little man.  A bit of time spent chatting and catching up for papa and the big kids at the end of the day while mama and baby do their bedtime thing.  Now, all are off in their own corners of the house, doing their own quiet thing. 

Yes, today was a good day, indeed. 

The Pasture Project

Ok folks, the update that has been needing to happen for quite some time now...

You have been reading my elusive references to the pasture project.  This project and effort have been huge.  So much time, energy and work have gone into this dream that is so close to fruition.  Oh, it feels so good to be so close!

It all started a couple of years ago.  (I first made reference to it here.)  We were in need of the removal of a few hazard trees on our heavily forested landscape, and from there we decided that it was time to plow ahead on our dream of more garden space and pasture. Since then we have surveyed our property, cleared an acre, burned mountains of brush, chipped thousands and thousands of pounds of both hardwood and softwood branches, moved and stacked hundreds of felled tree trunks, bucked and split tens of cords of firewood, put up a robust perimeter fence, hung gates, dug a pond, and completed our first round of mineral and nutrient amendments and tilling.  Phew!  Oh, and, you know, had a baby smack in the middle of it all (plus homeschooling and jobs).

Little helper

laying out the string lines and fence posts

Posts in

 I suppose "cleared" is a relative term here.  An area which, a couple of years ago, was so thickly and densely overgrown that it was literally impenetrable and extremely unhealthy is now open and still thinly treed with strong and healthy Big Leaf Maples, Western Red Cedars, Douglas Firs, and Red Alders.  I'd say there are still at least 40 or 50 trees standing tall and strong within the fenceline.  I was not joking when I said it was overgrown and dense!  It's still crazy to me to look at the space as it is now.  There were parts of it that I had not even really seen or walked on before because I just couldn't get to them.  Now, it is open and accessible and going to be put to very good use.

The back pasture area - notice there is no shortage of trees!

One of three drive gates, plus the fence is stretched!

The space is pretty much exactly an acre and will be split up into two main pasture areas (which will be further split into smaller rotational grazing paddocks) and a new large garden.  We dug a good sized duck pond in the garden zone for our newest adorable farm friends, the ducklings, who we hope will keep the slug population down to a minimum.

Burning brush and stumps for days and weeks.

A dream come true!

It's definitely challenging to be at the size and scale of gardening/homesteading/farming (whatever you want to call it) that does not really require owning equipment like a tractor and all of its helpful implements, but is also exhausting to get done by hand.  That seems to be exactly the spot where we currently reside.  We've been both renting and hiring equipment, and doing A LOT by hand.  Holy moly, have we been doing so much by hand.  Things like spreading 1500 pounds of amendments over an acre by hand with a five-gallon bucket and a yogurt container (!), removing millions of sticks, branches, roots and rocks with our muscles and wheelbarrows, and pulling out roots and stumps.  Luckily for us, the weather has granted us a small miracle in the last few weeks and given us enough dry days to get the final push finished that needed to happen before tilling could take place.

Too bad Jade's little toy tractor can't quite get the job done!

Believe it or not, our area historically has droughts every summer.  We get non-stop rain and drizzle for 9-10 months out of the year, but from about the first week of July through the early part of October we get little to no rain at all.  That being said, it is rather imperative to get the pasture seed down by early May in order for the grasses and herbs to have time to get established before the drought hits.  Our goal was to get it sown mid-March, but that was impossible with the weather and the sheer volume of work that needed to get done first.

Mountain of logs

And bucked logs waiting to be split...

So, at this point, we have one more round of spreading amendments and shallow tilling to go.  I'm not a huge fan of tilling, but we need to get the amendments worked down into the soil so they can work their magic.  We are just doing a very shallow till with the tiller set at a "float" mode that allows it to just sort of float along the surface of the soil and bounce over tree roots.  Our amending had to be spread out over the course of two applications because some of the minerals will bind to each other and become unavailable to the plants if applied at the same time.  Our hope is that we have another dry spell sometime around the end of next week that allows us to spread and till.  Then, finally, a couple of weeks later... down goes the pasture seed!  Woohoo!!!

While I could continue to ramble on and on and on about this project, with all the details and excitement, my eyes are crossing as I try to type this and I desperately need to go to bed.  I hope to add a lot more info as things continue to progress.  If you have any questions or particular areas of interest, please hit me up in the comments!

Nettle Harvest

It's that time of year again!  As anyone who has been following this blog knows, nettle season is one of my favorite times of the year.  I love nettles.  They are just so incredibly delicious and nutritious.  And there is such a brief window of time in which they are at their peak for harvest and fresh eating.  Oh, how I really, really love nettles....

 

And, so it was that earlier this week our family set out into the woods with our rubber gloves, pruning shears and harvest baskets.  Thankfully, I am not alone in my nettle passion.  If I were, it would probably be a challenge to get my loves on board for risking a good sting or two in the pursuit of this delectable wild bounty.  

Steve was quite skilled and was the only one of us who managed to harvest without getting a single sting.  Cedar, Sequoia and I all fell prey to the painful defenses of this amazing plant.

For those of you who may not know about stinging nettles or have not encountered them, the stalks and leaves are lined with tiny little hairs, that when touched and broken act like a little hypodermic needle and inject a mixture of compounds that sting and irritate the skin.  However, once steamed or dried, the nettles no longer sting and can be eaten and enjoyed.

I find nettles to be the most amazing plant.  They are absolutely delicious (as I repeatedly gush), plus they are also useful in other ways.  They are a dynamic accumulator, which means that they use their roots to dig deep in the soil and gather minerals, macro and micronutrients and then transfer those nutrients to their leaves.  Nettles are particularly good at harvesting nitrogen, calcium, sulfur, magnesium, iron and sodium.  That is much of why they are so nutritious to us humans, but also why they are so good for the soil.  Nettles can be added to your compost for enhancement with those deeply mined goodies.  Plus, the stalks an be used as a fiber plant!  Nettles contain a bast fiber much like flax and hemp, so can be rendered and woven.  I had the wonderful opportunity several years ago to learn to soften and spin nettle fiber into cord.  It was awesome.  Aren't these plants incredible?! I'm seriously in love with this particular flora friend.

Our harvest day concluded with homemade pizzas topped with loads of nettles and shallots.  It was delicious to say the least!  Quite the springtime feast in honor of one of my favorite plants.  There is a plan in place to make a large batch of nettle raviolis to put in the freezer to keep the nettle enjoyment going all year.  (We just need to find the time to make them!  It's quite the process...) And loads are going into the dehydrator to have a large stash on hand for tea as well.  My favorite nettle tea blend can be found here.  But, I also drink just plain nettle tea pretty much every day.  It's so good.

Our favorite harvesting spot happens to also be along one of our favorite local trails.  So, in addition to the joy of the seasonal gathering, we get to revel in the beauty of a walk in woods along a gorgeous inlet of south Puget Sound.  And settle into the sounds, smells and wonder of being in the forest together with a simple agenda.

Even the smallest among us seemed to have a blast attempting to throw himself out of the carrier on my back!

 

I hope that wherever you are, you are enjoying your favorite springtime treats this weekend!   

Heart on fire

This past weekend, our beloved family dog passed away.  He shared his life, loyalty and love with us for almost fifteen years.  I'm still at a loss for words and trying to figure out how life works without him.  I wait for his barks when someone pulls into the driveway.  I look for him out on the porch.  I swear I keep seeing him out of the corner of my eye, watching over us and the farm.  My heart swells with love and gratitude and burns with grief and loss as my mind attempts to learn new patterns of the day.

Thank you, Baraka.  Thank you for teaching me about unconditional love, for always being there, for protecting and loving us, for your wise and watchful eyes, for your ceaseless playful energy, and above all else for being a part of our lives and a beautiful member of our family.  You will be forever and always in our hearts and part of the pack.

A Quiet Evening

About to settle into an evening of The Hobbit movie with my family.  They all saw it together when it was in the theater, but I did not.  The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings books have been popular and recurring stories in our household for several years now.  So the kids are very, very excited for me to see the movie... finally.  They are horrified that I did not see it on the big screen.  (However, movies in the theater are absolutely not my cup of tea.  Even if I could have gone to see it, it's highly unlikely I would have chosen to do so.)

This guy lost his nose and an arm during a big earthquake in 2001. He hangs out in the garden now and smiles at me and reminds me to smile even when things are crazy and enjoy the ride.

It will be a nice, quiet way to end the day after a crazy, hectic springtime frenzy kind of day. Let's just say it involved last-minute hay runs, sprinting back and forth through the pasture many times through sideways sheets of rain and snow, wrangling pesky turkeys, visits with out-of-town friends, and toddlers attempting to eat dinner with their feet on the table and their heads on their seats!  All with a very tired baby on my hip or back who was still feeling the effects of a late night with friends last night celebrating the arrival of spring. 

Now, said baby is tucked snugly in bed and I am flanked on either side by big kids anxiously awaiting family Hobbit night.  Ah yes, a quiet night does sound nice indeed.

Happy Spring!

Well, spring is most definitely in the air here in the Olympic rainforest.  It has been for several weeks now. I'm amazed to see folks still socked in with snow in other parts of the country.  (Not that we have regular snowfall here in my neck of the woods... as much as I wish we did!)  Here, we are dripping with springtime, quite literally!

Things are wet, wet, wet here on the homestead.  And the new-life energy is springing forth everywhere.  Bulbs are blooming, the almond tree is flowering, birdsong is always in the air, frogs are croaking in the pond in the evening calling for mates, the chickens are laying lots of eggs again, and my fingers are itching to get into the soil.  Yes, the tell-tale signs of spring are most definitely here.

 

 

Happy Spring!

Grateful

As I lay wide awake in the middle of the night last night unable to fall back to sleep, I made a list in my head of many, many simple things I am so grateful for in my life right now.  These are just a few....

:: The soft downy hair on the top of my sweet baby's head that I love to kiss until my lips tingle when I can't sleep at night.

:: Two big kids who make me so proud every day of the people they are and are becoming as they grow and mature before my eyes.

:: How lucky I am that my partner is willing to rub my achy feet at the end of a long day.

:: My chickens are finally back into the springtime laying routine and farm fresh omelets really are the best breakfast ever (and lunch, and dinner).

:: I'm so happy that the frogs are croaking in the pond again.

:: The pasture and new garden project is so close to completion... just a few more tasks that need to be done.  I can't wait to sow seed and watch it grow!

:: My first few skeins of balanced and beautiful two ply yarn- soon to be knit into something cozy for a little guy I know and love.

:: Our ever growing list of fruit trees, shrubs and ground covers from Burnt Ridge Nursery.

:: Learning to ride horses again after 25 years out of the saddle.

:: Occasional sunny days, and the crazy schizophrenic springtime weather of sunshine, sideways rain, hail, blustery winds and rainbows all in a matter of an hour.

:: Fourteen and a half wonderful years with the most wonderful, amazing and loyal dog I could have ever asked for.

May your day (and night) be filled with much gratitude and love....