Ordinary Time

It's been well over a year since we started assigning the teenaged children a day to cook dinner each week. I have to say, I'm a huge fan of this whole plan. I've noticed a few things about it, so I thought I'd give an update.  The first is that practice really does build skills. While everyone had pretty decent cooking skills when we started, I would say that their abilities and comfort level have significantly increased. Their timing of getting everything to the table at the same time has also improved.  Second, they are all experiencing the thing I struggle with every week when I sit down to plan menus: the question of what to eat. This is probably the most challenging part of the whole process. Knowing how to overcome the feeling of forgetting everything you've ever made is also a skill. They are all pretty good at pushing through while using the tools at their disposal... I keep previous menus to remind us of what we've made in the past, a wide variety of c...

A photographer friend ( April Duda Photographer ) came by last month to take pictures of the farm. I got the photos today and I couldn't be happier. They're beautiful. Here are some of my favorites. (And if you're on FB, there's more here than I shared there.)

That would be a new decade for me which began today. It was a lovely and relaxing day. I got to see all my children and children-in-law except for D. who was out of town. I talked to my mom. I had many messages. And I received plants and flowers and books and games as gifts.  One of those gifts I want to share with you in case you haven't heard of it. It's the game Hues and Cues. It's a game all about color and trying to get the other players to guess the color as accurately as possible. It's fun and very visually appealing. Here's the game board. The game is actually more challenging than you would expect. It is also fascinating to compare how others perceive color and describe it. I imagine that this is going to be a game that is played a lot. 

I spent the best part of today demonstrating spinning with a spinning wheel at Fine Line for the Fox Valley Arts Ramble. I love demonstrating fiber related things, and since we were inside in the air conditioning it was doubly nice. I am peopled out at the moment, though.  Surprisingly, not one person (usually a man), watched me spin and then announced, "I bet I could automate that." This meant that I didn't have to tamp down my inner snark and observe that since he was wearing industrial made textiles, he might be a little late to the party. Instead, the general reaction was bafflement. A few people were able to make the connection between what I was doing and the labor textiles used to require, but many didn't seem to quite understand.  But here's my own personal realization for the day. (I'll also add that when I announced this after I got home, it made L. laugh. A lot.) In general, I don't think the general public is as interested in sheep, the differe...

It's been a while since I've done one of these. Chicken Curry had her last dose of medicine tonight, but her back is still healing so the wounds need to still be flushed a couple times a day.  The ducklings have grown so much that they are now out of their brooder (which means I have a new stock tank for the horses) and are free to roam their living quarters which is formally known as Duck Jail . (And if you read the post I linked to, you will learn how we got the smallest chicken coop where Chicken Curry is now residing. I had no idea when we picked it up how useful it would be.) A few weeks ago, a child was making cookies and the KitchenAid stand mixer stopped working. It was very sad. We've had this mixer for 32 years and it has been in pretty constant use. (I also have a Bosch mixer, so cookie making could still happen, don't worry.) I wasn't willing to give up on it, so today J., with the help of YouTube, got it taken apart and figured out what was wrong. The p...

What is summer for if you can't spend the afternoon reading? Today was a day with nothing on the calendar. Since summer tends to be my busy season in terms of EAL, this was a kind of gift. Then when you combine that with the fact that I found a new series, binge read the second book last night, and had the third sitting on my shelf, what, I ask you, was I supposed to do? I, of course, did the sensible thing and binge read the third book this afternoon. The trouble is that I am on the waiting list at the library, so cannot immediately start the fourth. That is actually probably a good thing.  And what is the series? The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion by Beth Brower. There are eight volumes in the series; I may have to buy them all. Ultimately, they are just fun. They are set in Victorian London, but the setting is merely window dressing for quirky characters, a quirky neighborhood, and lots of tongue in cheek storytelling. I love an author who doesn't take herself too serio...