Ordinary Time

Today was a not spectacular day. This morning, before I had made it out to the horses, I noticed R. shuffling up the stairs, with one foot stepping up and the second foot joining the first before moving on. Alternating feet, one on a step, had been something we worked on from Day 1, and is also something R. mastered over eight years ago. Sometimes I do have to remind her, bug then she changes to alternating feet and life moves on.  Life didn't move on this morning. It stopped dead in its tracks and screamed as though something was trying to kill it. R. did make it up the stairs with me moving her feet one step at a time, but by the end neither of us was at our best. R. was so not her best I was suddenly very afraid we were heading into psychosis territory. So for the next two hours I sat with her on the stairs regulating myself so she had a chance of regulating herself. G. fed and turned out the horses, H. completely cleaned the kitchen. And I stuffed flashbacks to three years ago ...

When the vet called this morning I really hoped it was to make arrangements for us to bring Everett home. Sadly, it was not. He passed away a couple of hours after surgery yesterday. Due to the increase in blood in his urine, they suspected that there was a small ruptured in his bladder that the ultrasound didn't pick up. There was no way to fix it. I do know he had plenty of meds so he was not in pain.  We are all sorry to lose the little guy. It's the worst part of caring for animals.  There are a couple of things that are a tiny silver lining. The first is that I was able to quiz the vet pretty thoroughly and now have a better grasp on sheep management so that we can hopefully avoid this in the future. The second is that I am now on this vet's list when they make their twice a year journey up to our neck of the woods. I'll be able to have a vet come and give the sheep a once over as well as their yearly inoculations. This had started to weigh on my mind a bit. Vets w...

I could also have titled this post, "Getting to add another vet to my life" or "You don't know what you don't know" or "I just want a month without a $500+ vet bill' or... well, you get the idea.  I'll start off by saying it wasn't one of the horses this time. Instead, our next contestant on "Who can rack up the most vet bills?" was... Everett the sheep. I'll add his picture so you remember which one he is. G. noticed yesterday that Everett wasn't looking quite right. We kept an eye on him, but about 10:30 pm he was looking a little less right. We knew bloat could be a problem, so I got to practice my skills at syringing liquid down an animal's throat at about 11:00 pm. This morning he looked about the same, so we did another round and kept an eye on him.  (You see where this is going don't you?)  By mid-afternoon he was looking decidedly worse, but by about 3:45, he had moved from just not feeling well to me cold c...

This afternoon, after I had finished (finally) getting my recipe binders reorganized, I decided to take advantage of the beautiful weather and go outside and read. I truly had nothing pressing that needed to be done and I was two hundred pages away from finishing a book I was enjoying. I don't often decide to let myself have multiple hours of uninterrupted reading time, so the combination of free time, perfect weather, and absorbing story was pretty wonderful.  And the book, which I did finish? It was The Book that Wouldn't Burn by Mark Lawrence. So I did finish it, but I discovered that it is actually a trilogy. This is both good and bad news. Good in that I can look forward to two more good books. (And yes, I have already put the next one on hold.) But bad in that I had so many questions that I was hoping would be answered, but now will probably need to get through all three books before I have them.  Do read it, though. It is quite an adventure. 

This time of year, at least in the Midwest, it's hard not to feel a bit of awe every time you go outside. Things are green again, animals are waking up or returning, and it seems nearly every tree is in bloom.  Cherry blossoms Apple blossoms More apple blossoms  Peach blossoms At least I hope you are getting outside and enjoying it all because it's good for you to do so. It's good to be outside in nature. Brain science has lots and lots of studies to show what you probably already understood... That being in nature can reduce cortisol and lead to feelings of well-being.  But here is another bit of brain trivia for you. Nature inspired awe can also change how you perceive time.  I came across a study while I was doing my action research project research which looked at how people perceived time after being outside and viewing something that was awe inspiring. The results were that feelings of awe made time feel broader, as if the person felt there was more of it. And ...

Really, this is going to be more kitchen-related items than anything else because that is what I've spent the most time on. (It's also probably going to be rather dull.) Really the week was non-eventful with little to chat about. And with the state of the nation, I'm just as happy nesting in the kitchen.  Y. made bread today which we desperately needed. When she used up the wheat berries we had in the storage buckets, this meant I needed to refill them with more wheat.  I'm happy I have a new outlet to buy wheat berries.  Y. has definitely perfected bread baking.  Of course, it doesn't take long for the masses to cut into fresh bread.  The shelf where I keep cookbooks has been bothering me for some time.  It needs a good cleaning, and I had let recipes I wanted to keep pile up. Plus, I realized that there was a large stack of cooking magazines that were very nice, but I never looked at. I decided that it made more sense to pull out the recipes I wanted and ...

It was a day of animal incidents, though I am very pleased to report my horses took no part in the festivities. For once.  In the morning, while I was cleaning the barn, this picture was shared to our family group chat. That would be a baby squirrel that R. had discovered had fallen from it's best and was very interested in it. (We just won't drill on the fact that the nest from which it fell was IN OUR ROOF.) H., noticing what was going on alerted L., who saw the mother squirrel come down and carry her baby back up to the nest IN OUR ROOF. This baby squirrel story ended much more happily than last year when children discovered a baby squirrel that the mother never retrieved. I like a happy ending. I would like the happy ending if the nest were located somewhere appropriate, such as in a tree.  Alright, moving on. At lunch time, L. and I had come back from an errand and were getting out of the car when L. says, "I think Everett is out." There is a pause and L. adds, ...

Photos courtesy of K. 

You all know that I really don't like to spend a lot of money on food, so it's probably not terribly surprising that I find the idea of foraged food intriguing. I actually have a pretty good sense of what wild food we have growing on our property, but what to do with that wild food isn't quite so clear, such as stinging nettle. This seemed like a perfect excuse to get some books. (Though isn't everything the perfect excuse to get books?) I was spurred on to acquiring these books because the tons of stinging nettle we have growing by the creek was coming up and I wanted to do something with it other than make tea or in a pasta sauce. Here's the first of several books I've found.  It's a beautiful book with interesting looking recipes, though probably a bit heavy on the mushrooms for some of my children's (and my) taste. It was Y.'s night to cook and she was game to try the nettle recipe.  It tasted pretty darn good and we will make it again. But I don...

The spring has been so unusually busy that I haven't had quite the same amount of time to work on things as I usually do. Everything seems to have fallen by the wayside. And example is that the fleece from Fred, Clark, and Everett is still in a bag in the barn waiting for me to skirt it. (To be fair, the weather might also have a small part in that as well.)  But I did finish one thing this past week. Here's the yarn that I have been working on spinning for a longer than it usually takes me.  The color isn't showing up terribly well. It's actually kind of a purple- leaning red if you can imagine that. It is very unusual and I like it. It's not one hundred percent done because I still need to wash it to set the twist. This is also a lot of yarn. It's a bit over 4 oz. of 3-ply spun at about 12 wpi, making it a light worsted weight out of 60/40 merino/silk. Because I am a very slow knitter, there is no way a can use all the yarn I spin. This is going to be set asid...

With Easter being tomorrow, I needed to try my experiment using natural dyes to color some eggs. Here are what they looked like when I started. (They are hard-boiled.) (Those are weird shadows on the white eggs from the cabinet above.) I wasn't sure what to expect or it it was going to be worth the effort. A couple of days ago I tried using beets to color some eggs and this was the decidedly lackluster result.  Not very exciting, huh? Today I decided to try yellow onion skins, purple onion skins, and tumeric. (2 cups yellow or purple onions skins or 1/4 c tumeric in 2 cups of water, boil for 10-15 minutes, drain out dye matter, set aside to cool. Add 1 tbsp white vinegar to dye.) Out of the three the purple onion skin dye looked the most interesting.  Here are some eggs soaking in the dye.  Yellow onion skins  Top: tumeric, bottom: purple onion skins And the final product: L - R along bottom: yellow onion skins, purple onion skins, tumeric -- those are just blue eggs...

Today was the first day where it was warm enough to be pleasant, I had an empty calendar, and it wasn't going to plunge back into the 40's the next day. This made it the perfect occasion to start cleaning out flower beds and doing other spring tasks. It was good to just be outside and working. The current state of the news can become overwhelming.  The vegetable seeds that were planted last month are doing well. We have sugar snap peas, baby bok choy, leeks (they're the grass like plants with a couple stray bok choy plants mixed in), and arugula. I'm just now realizing we haven't started any radishes. I guess we'll start those tomorrow. Chuck the tractor was brought out of his winter hibernation. (I bet you didn't know that small tractors hibernate, did you?) All sorts of plants are budding out,  and I found the fritillary! It has doubled in size this year, which makes me happy. And I got the flower bed along the drive nearly cleaned up from winter. And as a...