Posted in Family Life
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This week our farm work included gathering potatoes. I had remembered to tuck the buckets in the car (for the sand pile by the barn), and M had her own bucket to fill with the potatoes she found in the turned earth. I had many thoughts as we rummaged in the top 8 inches of soil for the red fingerlings I'm going to roast tomorrow... I thought of Laura Ingalls' dislike of the dry, cold earth on her fingers (sorry, I can't remember which book). I thought of how much work goes into harvesting potatoes, and how little I pay for them int he store. I thought about the richness of the soil in which I was digging, and how it shows in the taste of the food I eat from the farm. Later that afternoon, M took the salad spinner bowl from the kitchen and was playing in the living room... I watched for a minutes and realized she was playing "gathering potatoes." The duplo blocks were the potatoes, which she dug out of the bin to collect in the salad spinner. When full, the bowl was emptied into the big bucket that holds the gears. Unfortunately, when I was cooking and contemplating the game, she emptied all the toy buckets into the playpen (it was the truck): gears, duplos, tinker toys, baby block, and dominoes. So tomorrow we'll be "harvesting" the "vegetables" in the playpen to return them to their homes. Maybe while the real potatoes roast with a little olive oil and rosemary...
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Posted in Family Life
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I turned on the camera the other day, in hopes of snapping an in-media-res photo of one of my children doing something spontaneous, but the memory card was full. "That's odd," I thought, remembering having emptied it on the weekend. So scrolled through the photos...
There was also one of me snoozing on the couch with my mouth open (you can imagine why I didn't post that one), which explained when all these delightful photos were taken... |
Posted in Resources
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Hey, crafty friends! Go check out Sarah's entry today at Handmade Homeschool: She's sharing her roadmap to making Christmas gifts by hand. Lots of creative ideas, and how to manage a lot at once. Happy crafting! http://handmadehomeschool.wordpress.com/2008/10/07/handmade-holidays/ |
Posted in Family Life
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We've been members of various CSA farms for seven summers now (not consecutively). This is the first summer I have worked as a member. At the beginning of the summer, I thought, Sure, this is great... no big deal. After a month and a half, I thought, Wow, this is a lot of work for the discount. At the end of July, I thought, This has been a good experience, but I don't think I'll do it again next summer. And now, with two weeks left, I'm thinking that I really need these people-- the other working members. They sharpen me. It has been a wonderful experience. Though we are all very different, the members with whom I work are all what I'd call "radicals." I don't mean that in a jump-in-and-join-the-commune kind of way. I mean that they make the effort to live in accordance with what they believe. Last week, after the truck was packed to distribute the shares, we members sat around and split garlic heads into cloves for planting. We sat in a little circle and talked about music in contemporary culture and education. One of the members is a composer (who actually supports his family by composing classical music); another is a bass player, though they can't live off her music. We had a dentist, a retired teacher, a homemaker with grown children, a graduate student, and myself. These are all people who live "unusual" lives. I like to tell people that our family is trying hard not to get back on the gerbil wheel of life. All these other farm members-- though our politics and faiths diverge-- help me to see the value in living an unusual life. They have looked at the issues and formed opinions (about local food, the Wall Street bailout, or listening to Aerosmith) and they live in accordance with their beliefs. I think that's pretty unusual. And I am encouraged by their example to live in accordance with my beliefs. When I was younger, I often fell pray to the sophism that-- although I knew what the right way (or at least, the better way) was-- it was too much trouble (or too radical) to live that way. Now I am learning that, be it difficult or not, I need to live like I believe... no matter what the Joneses think about it. |
Posted in Book Reviews
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I've mentioned before that my son likes to read fantasy. He's a very good reader, but he's only eight. The benefit to his young age is that he misses a lot of the content (or context) of what he reads, so something that I might find questionable as I read passes right over his head. The con is that it's very difficult to find appropriate reading material for his age. I like fantasy literature to a point... unlike J, I'm not into the monsters or fantastic planets. I enjoy a powerful, well-written story that is not bound to space and time. But I have to preview (or at least keep up with) what he's reading, so we can discuss it together. My husband read this series by Susan Cooper several years ago without our son's particular needs in mind. So when we picked it up again on CD for a recent road trip, I felt compelled to read it myself. I found myself sneaking into J's room at night to take the books away from his bed so I could read ahead while he was sleeping. Susan Cooper writes beautifully. We've read a few other things recently that interested J more, but these books are so well written. I wanted to keep reading just to see England and Wales from her perspective. The characters-- of very different ages and backgrounds-- were vividly portrayed, and even the ones who appeared on the side were believable. I wish I could write like she does. The "theology"-- though I don't think you could call it that-- was not Christian. J, at a young eight, missed all of the brief mention of religion. The protagonists are "Old Ones," creatures of the Light who live forever and whose only purpose in the world is to fight The Dark. I liked the good v. evil motif, and the idea that we have to choose one or the other (this is also why I like the Harry Potter books), but at one point she says that the Light v. Dark battle has been going on outside of Time, and before even God. So be warned that these are not Christian books. My husband heard an interview with the author about the recent movie. Apparently the movie is significantly different from the books. I don't think I'll rush out to see it. These books fit in the category of those books I see so vividly in my mind, I don't want to share them with a big screen-- I don't want anyone else's vision of this imaginary world to change how I see it right now. |
Posted in Home Education
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I'm a big believer in Living Books. You, know, those are books that tell us what we want to know through a compelling, well-written story. Pagoo by Holling C. Hollings. Laura Ingalls Wilder's books. The Elswyth Thane Williamsburg series. Today, I was chatting with the exterminator who came to kill the carpenter ants I found. He's a former cattle rancher from the north-central plains, and he got talking about the horrible all-winter blizzard in the winter of 1995-96. He talked about his cattle drowning, because it was so cold the air couldn't hold any more moisture, and 50 of his cows drowned in their own breath. (It reminded me of the cows in The Long Winter suffocating in their frozen breath, but he explained that this was a step worse than that.) Hundreds of thousands of cattle were lost, and few people-- other than those directly affected-- knew about the tragedy. Tears came to his eyes as he told me about it. I said I hoped that someone told this story, in the same way that Wilder chronicled The Long Winter, and he said, "I love those books. I love that she tells all the history in a way that you remember it-- it's not a dry textbook, that you can't remember a word of when you're tested on it. But when you get to know those characters, the history that happened to them sticks with you." See, it's not just us crazy homeschoolers who love Living Books. We all do. |
Posted in Family Life
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Our monitor crashed last week, and though the computer was working, I couldn't see what it was doing. (Whenever that's the case in my house, it's only a matter of time until someone gets hurt...) I mentioned it in passing to my friend Lori, who said, "Oh, I've got an old one in my garage..." So we hooked it up, and now we're working again. Thank you, Lori! I'm very grateful for our community. There are so many ways we can support each other-- meals in crisis, afternoon play dates, loaner computer parts, loaned books, flat tires fixed. As St Francis of Assissi said, "Preach the gospel every day. If necessary, use words." |
Posted in Local Eating and Purchasing
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When I read Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, I was flabbergasted by her statement that she calculated the number of onions she planted, so she’d have enough for the year. I couldn’t imagine the effort and time she had put into the planning of her garden. Now, one quarter of the year into our journey to learn to eat locally, I’m wishing I’d been keeping meticulous records. I’m not sure where to start: with what I buy, or what I cook, or after the fact, with what we’ve eaten? My pantry is filling up with jars of tomatoes, peaches and jam; my freezer is filling with diced peppers and onions and spaghetti sauce. But I don’t have any sense if I’m even in the ballpark for what we’ll consume this winter. I’m ready to go buy locally milled flour and oats and lentils, but I have no sense of how much to buy. I know our farmer calculates every spring how much to plant to cover the shares in his CSA. He told me that this was the first year he knew what to plant, since this year they filled up all their shares (and have a waiting list!) so they don’t have to rely on the caprices of the Farmer’s Market crowd. And I guess for summer food, I can just rely on their shares, since I have bought no vegetables and very little fruit while the farm has been delivering. I guess I just need to put a list in my cupboard, and every time I finish another bag or box of something, mark it down… for a year. And then increase it every year, since my boys seem to be consuming more food by the minute. |
Posted in Family Life
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I love hiking in the autumn. My parents had brunch with us last weekend, and then we all went for a golden walk at our favorite state park. Here's O with Grandma:
I'm grateful for: the playhouse O & M built (without squabbling) under the big cottonwood tree...
and pearl barley simmering on the stove, ready to go into ham & vehetable soup. And I'm grateful for afternoons like this:
and the triumph of little boys like this:
and little crawlers like this:
and mornings when we have nothing urgent, and can do important things like this:
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Posted in Home Education
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I know, I posted a review of this book in the spring, when I had just read it and was overcome with its vision and beauty. I chose it for our book group this month, and we met to discuss it.
We had such a good discussion—about the father’s character, the history involved, God’s faithfulness, the literary brilliance… I am so grateful for my book club. It’s what Charlotte Mason referred to as Mother Culture, and she strongly recommended we as mothers and teachers partake in Mother Culture. Every time we get near to book club and I’m cramming to finish, I think, "I don’t have time for this." And after we meet, I realize that unless I’m feeding my own mind on a rich diet, I won’t be much of an inspiration to my children. |