Happy New Year!

Well, all, this is part of my New Year's resolution: Write more. So hopefully you'll see some more posts on this page!

Current news from the granary house: The kids have just come in from playing outside for a few minutes while Dave shoveled a path to the woodshed (again). A drift forms between the house and the woodshed whenever the wind blows, and boy has it been blowing the last few days -- wind chills down to 40 below. We also received about 10 inches of snow in the two storms, Thursday and Friday. It was difficult to see the other house at times on Thursday.

Thankfully, that's not the case today. The sun was shining nicely when we woke up this morning, so we could clearly see just how much snow there was to deal with: Over two feet of snow in front of the front door; five-foot drifts in front of the barn (where our RAV4 is) and the shop (where Mom's car is); another big, long drift between us and the chicken coop; the aforementioned drift on the way to the woodshed; and every door on the buildings just named iced down. Oh, and the roof of the studio needed to be shoveled.

And I must admit I used the "we" part very figuratively, as Dave did all this work while I stayed toasty warm, hanging out with the kids and helping Mom with a couple projects. Thankfully the tractor cooperated!

Here's the view of the drift outside the south windows. Notice the brown chunks of ice on top of the drift: That's the brown stuff that freezes into icicles coming off the chimney, which every once in a while breaks off and rolls down the roof. I didn't know that happened until I saw it!

... I've heard a fair amount of grumbling during this last storm. It is a pain. But then, it's the variety of life! We are really living out here. This blizzard will make a fine story later, we will be aware that we can go through such events and survive, and we will be that much more appreciative of spring when it comes. (Though I could say that with more authority if I had had to shovel today. Thanks, Dave!)


... At least we have winter-loving kids. Sofi, Erik and all the cousins had fun outside on the afternoon of Christmas Eve. They can really get up some speed in snowpants on a slightly icy slide!


Even Briella came out for some fresh air!


... The winter fun continued when we went to St. Paul. Sofi became an expert sledder, learning steering tips from her uncle Michael.

There they go!


Erik was a little more tentative, but he eventually had fun on the sledding hill, too.

Happy New Year, all! May it be filled with more blessings than you could think to wish for.

... And a postscript to the relatives: The photo books have been completed, and should be on their way to you shortly!

I heard there was a clamor on the Internet for these photos ...

Yes, everyone's been waiting to see what the chicken tractor looks like!


Dave made it completely from scrap lumber and parts, with the exception of the wheels ($6), the chicken wire, and the hook-and-eye closures I made him get after I scratched myself on the wire closures we had before. He had to learn to weld to get it done, too -- the base 6x8 frame is welded rusty metal bars with wheels attached. Then he arched hog panels over the top of that to create the shape. He built the front end from plywood, and then I helped him stretch chicken wire over the whole works, and put an apron of chicken wire on the inside along the bottom to discourage Fantastic Mr. Fox and whoever else thinks chickens are tasty. (We did have an attempted break-in the other night -- something had put a paw on the chicken wire and managed to rip a few staples. That's as far as it got, though.) A quick door, and a tarp over the top, and it was ready for mobile chicken containment!

It adds that lovely hippies-live-here touch to the farmyard, I have to say! I am just happy we finally got our little chicken chain gang out to work.

The chickens have been in it for about three weeks now, weeding, tilling and fertilizing the garden at the rate of one 6x8 foot rectangle a day. We move it once a day (well, to be honest, Dave moves it once a day -- it's awfully heavy, and I can't get it to move over the ... let's just say overgrown parts of the garden), and in that time, the chickens make a noticeable difference in the amount of weeds in that spot. Go, chickens! Get that garden spic and span!

Dave kept saying they aren't really earning their chicken feed until they start laying, too. I told him he'd better stop wishing for them to lay before he had their nest boxes built! (There are some icky parts about raising chickens -- one of them being that if you aren't vigilant about egg gathering, some chickens start eating eggs, and once they get in the habit, it's tough to get them to stop. Ew. A rollaway nest box is the best way to ensure the chickens don't get started down the wrong path, but Dave didn't feel like building anything that complicated at this point -- a plain old box with a slanted, hinged lid helps, too, in that the egg is out of sight, out of mind.)

Anyway, Dave, Sofi and Erik went to check the chickens last night after supper, and what did they find?

One smallish brown egg!

Yes, our little chicks have become full productive members of society. Almost makes you teary when you think about it.

OK, not really. And actually, it's only one chicken, since we didn't find any more eggs out there today. But I'm sure the rest will step up to the plate (one with a side of bacon on it, preferably) and start laying soon!

Dave took that one egg as a sign and made two nest boxes last night after the kids went to sleep. I did not observe a chicken in one of the boxes yet today, but that doesn't mean much. They aren't very adventurous chickens -- it takes them a while to warm up to new things.

So there's the chicken tractor. The Internet clamor can settle down now!

Guess what we have!

It is sometimes clear to us how new we are to this whole chicken-raising business.

As we watched the chicks grow, we noticed that none of the chicks had any kind of a cock's comb when they were tiny, but that they all started to develop one as they grew. None of them had anything that resembled the traditional silhouette on the top of the weather vane -- but there was one that seemed to have more of a cock's comb than the others. And each day it had a little more, and a little more ... "I'm suspicious of that chicken," I told Dave one day.

And then, one morning, Dave came in and said, "Guess what I just heard!"

There could no longer be any doubt: We had a rooster. Or a morning alarm clock.

And boy, does he ever act like a rooster! A person understand better just what "cocky" means now. He's always the first to run forward to investigate things; when we were working outside near his house today, he started crowing regularly -- just to show us he was the rooster, it seemed like. And he really struts in there. Dave said it's like he's saying, "Yeah, I have eleven ladies!"

We are actually happy to have a rooster. Having one rooster in the bunch means there's no question about the pecking order, so there's no need to fight to establish it. And my aunt Lillian told me that the eggs have less cholesterol with a rooster in the flock.

Sofia has named him "Cock-a-Doodle-Doo." Dave says that's better than the name he was thinking of: "Soup of the Day."

Local Food Challenge: Days Two and Three: A new definition

Sigh. I’ve come to the conclusion that I need to redefine what I can expect of myself on this local food challenge: It is a work in progress.

The tagline the challenge had on some of the early posters was “How LOCAL can you go?” Well, for some meals, pretty local! For others? Not very.

Read more from that entry here. A recipe for a squash and apple casserole is included!

Local Food Challenge: Day One: And we begin!

All sorts of successful bloggers have discovered this wonderful fact of the Internet: Why post your writing in just one place when you can post it in two?

So, for the month of September, I'll be cross-posting here the articles I'm writing on the Frederick blog. This is all for the Three Rivers Local Food Challenge that Frederick Forward is sponsoring -- check out the website for the challenge to get all the details.

Here's a bit from the first blog entry:

7 a.m.: Push the snooze button.

7:20 a.m.: Jump out of bed, remembering I need to put gas in the car before I go to my sister’s to babysit. Shower, make coffee, pack bags, etc.

8:04 a.m.: Rush the kids out the door and into the car.

8:15 a.m.: Remember, as I’m driving and eating one of the whole-wheat bread and Nutella sandwiches I made for the kids and myself, that it’s the first day of the Local Food Challenge. Groan. Console myself that coffee and Nutella were on my exemptions list anyway.

8:45 a.m.: Get gas.

8:55 a.m.: Get to my sister’s house. Discuss what I’ll fix for the kids for lunch; wonder why in the world I didn’t bring any vegetables from our house! For a brief moment, believe the only local food in her house are a few sliced tomatoes. Eventually unearth corn and apple slices in the freezer — along with some local liver sausage. Realize that this “eating adventure” looks like it’s going to start with liver! But not for the kids. They get meatloaf and potatoes (not local).

Read the rest of the entry here.

Erik is 2 (finally!)

Technically, Erik has been 2 since July 28. But since we didn't really celebrate it -- we had planned the party for what eventually became the day of Dad's prayer service -- he's been kind of hanging in limbo for nearly a month now. We had decided to wait until Don and Mary came back to have the party, which is why it went so long. But it all worked out in the end! I think it was a very nice party, even if not everything worked out as planned.

When we had Erik pose with his cake, for example -- Erik made one effort to blow out his candles, but he was too far away, so we moved the cake closer. that was the wrong thing to do. Erik was scared of the flames; he had to hauled out of his chair and calm down and eat his cake until after everyone else already had theirs!

You'll notice the hat: He wore that thing nearly all day. Don gave it to him, and Erik immediately became attached to it!

I was fairly proud of getting his name to show up in jelly beans! (This photo was taken before the gummy frogs were added.)


The birthday Rice Krispie cake made it from Gram in Iowa in fine form! The gel frosting ran just a bit, but we could still make out "Erik 2 -- Happy Birthday" on it.

We had intended to have home-cranked ice cream, but the project failed -- we suspect that using canning and pickling salt is not an adequate substitute for rock salt. Oh, well -- we figured out that we could make a passable substitute by putting the mix in the freezer and stirring occasionally!

Lunch included applesauce from our own apple tree -- and a frog mysteriously appeared in it before the meal. Various suspects were accused of putting it there, but the culprit did not confess.

One of Erik's presents was a T-ball stand, and balls to go with it. We already had a bat. It was a hit! He played with that for a long time.


He even occasionally let Amara have a swing! (We'll work on sharing happily later.)


The playhouse was, of course, a hit with the kids again.


It's another version of a little house on the prairie! You can really see that in these photos, I think.

I like the grain bin at center stage in this one.

The girls have decided the playhouse should be called the "Fun House." Because, as Sofi explained to me, it's a house, and it's also fun. That works! We had planned to paint in the playhouse today -- I'd gotten samples of some fun colors so the kids could paint on the inside walls -- but it was so hot we decided not to start that project.

All of these photos, by the way, are by Mary! Thanks, Nama!

Playhouse picture album

Well, we got bored after building this house and decided we needed to build another one.

This is the playhouse in its current state! Actually, Dave got the trim around the windows done today, but I didn't have the camera out -- but this is pretty close to its current state.

The playhouse, which was intended to be finished for Erik's birthday but didn't quite make it (though we haven't actually celebrated Erik's birthday yet -- we're waiting for Nama and Grandpa to come back for the party), sits on a platform five feet off the ground. The platform is 6 x 8; the playhouse takes up 5 x 6 of that, and the rest is taken up by a covered porch. There's a ramp to go in on the north side of the porch (grownups find this a little tricky; the kids scramble up and down likes it's nothing) and a slide going down the east side.

I think it's a hit! The cousins have been over many times as this was being built -- they've had all sorts of scenarios going on over there. Playing house, of course, but once there was a slave camp, once there was a ship -- and they do a lot of cooking with dirt, water and weeds. We've had to do a bath every night since the playhouse was up, but I guess that's OK!

Here it is in process:

Don and Mary were here for the initial stages -- plotting out where it would go.

Actually, figuring out where it would go was a really time-consuming part of the process. We thought about putting it over by where the swingset is, south of the old farmhouse -- but then I couldn't send the kids out to play and still watch them from the window. Right in front of our big windows was too much in the way of cars; to the east of the house is the driveway to the tractor shed; to the north there is not a clear view except from bedroom windows, and the mosquitoes are worse back there closer to the slough; and to the west of the house is taken up by berry bushes. I mentioned that the best spot for it was really east of the sauna -- right where that hideous eyesore of a junk pile was. I wasn't sure Dave would take me seriously, since I had mentioned wanting that junk pile moved before and he might have thought this was just a ploy for that -- but then he thought for a moment and agreed with me! So now the junk pile is half gone (there's still some clearing to do to the south) and there's a playhouse in its place.

It was really hard to keep the kids from climbing the ladder while the house was in progress! That was a motivating factor to get it done quickly.

This photo was taken from our dining room windows -- see what a good view I have of the playhouse from there?

It actually came together in about a month's time.

Here they are, playing happily!

Though we still have painting to do -- Sofi REALLY wanted to paint today, but there was just a little too much of a chance of rain. And it's a good thing we didn't paint! We only had about 10 minutes of rain, but it was a downpour. Our paint would have washed half off.

The playhouse will be -- guess what colors? Red and white, of course! Like any good little Finnish house. I also bought a variety of little sample jars -- the five kids (Briella's a little too young) can work on painting the inside however they like.

Here is a smorgasbord of other photos of life in the last few weeks:

The garden is going gangbusters -- even if we lost the war with the weeds when we left on vacation, and then had a time of mourning when all sorts of things seemed less important. Mari actually picked all those green beans in the middle of the day during some nearly intolerable heat and humidity.

Mari and the girls came out for three days when Doug was on a trip -- one day happened to be Amara's birthday (Aug. 8) so we had an impromptu party for her. The actual party is this weekend.

The two littlest cousins seemed to enjoy this story by Mummu!

Sometimes they play together quite well. Other times they fight over toys -- but that's part of the whole learning process, I guess.


We also had the girls do some modeling -- Mom had made some hats that have been languishing for months without being posted to her Etsy store, and Betty also had some brooches that needed modeling. The girls seemed happy to oblige! Even Erik wore a hat for the occasion.

This summer is living up to the hot summers of my childhood memories. The wading pool has been out quite often. This was a splashing contest with the cousins.

Having Dave climb up on rooftops has been a theme around here lately. He helped install a new antenna on Mom's roof -- her TV service was discontinued, so she went back to plain-old TV. Sometimes it works well and she gets four channels; sometimes she only gets one, or none at all. We haven't figured out the pattern yet.

Summer is rushing by! Sofia starts preschool Sept. 9 -- that's just three weeks away!