Respite

Hello friends,
I've decided to take a break from FB and blogging for a while until things around here get settled and sorted. Family comes first before writing and I need to invest a little more into family right now. I appreciate you all and will catch up soon-ish. :)
Hannah

The Five Little Peppers

I'm over at Raising Homemakers today, writing about a favorite childhood book of mine and homemaking in rough economic times. Come join in!

Just a bit

of what we've been enjoying:

Exploring here:

Ancient Egypt exploration.

Every once in a while we'll take a library morning, more than just our usual browse and pick up. I'll announce it in the morning and prepare a list of research assignments for the older children and computer places for them to explore that I've screened ahead of time. We also liked these math games here.

Reading this: (photo via amazon.com)

A fabulous, fabulous story which also happens to encompass early New York history. I read this aloud to the kiddos, editing a few portions I deemed too violent/gory, mostly pertaining to the treatment of captives by the Mohawk natives. We finished this afternoon and we all give this a hearty recommendation.

Coloring:

These lovely virtue alphabet coloring pages. The littles love them!

Cutting:

These historic paper dolls.

Painting these:


And chalking these beauties: a bit of which can be seen in the recent harvest photos.

Cider

After dinner, we wade the grasses, the milkweed, the thistles. Small hands grab at low hanging branches, greedy for the knarled fruit, dropped into backpacks by brothers and sisters, before moving upward and onward to the next ancient tree.

Later we stand huddled in the dimness of the fading day. The grinder churns out spray of apple and when the steel pan is stacked high it is hand scooped into cotton and slid under the press. Turns at the red crank are envied. Two kids to turn the crank, two to drop apples into the grinder with papa. Liquid gold, tart and chill with the evening air, pours forth. Five pairs of small hands dart in with cups and mugs, covert sips snuck in between carrying and pouring and funneling and entertaining baby in her stroller.

Bottles and jars and jugs from the pantry, saved through the summer are filled. When all sticky fingers are washed, and cozy pajamas put on, six pretty gallons line the counter. On some, caps are loosened and left to harden on the pantry shelf for apple cider vinegar.

It is dark and we are tired when Sean recalls the forcast for rain. Potatoes line the tables outside under sheets, drying for storage and need to be put in bins and brought in before the rain. We grab for them in the dark and roll them into our hands, into the bins, and heave and ho, stack the heavy bins into the pantry, uncovered during the night, covered during the day. The ones pierced by the pitchfork or not quite so perfect for storing are kept aside, to eat soon. In the dark as our hands chase rolling potoatoes, I laugh at the thought of the life we live. Crazy seed to pulled from earth to filling bellies at the table all winter sort of life. Backs aching, arms strong.

Finally, yes finally, work done, he whom I love pours me a cobalt glass of cider and we settle in with some BBC for the evening, house quiet, kiddos asleep, Bear the dog at her sentry post at the front door.

A Heavy Harvest

This morning autumn is in the air. While the kids load up the bucket of the tractor with greens for the pig, Addie Girl gnaws on a thick carrot in her highchair and I quickly slice jalapenos into round rings and drop them into waiting hot pint jars.

(onions: white, red, and yellow)

(honey dripping off the comb and into a pot)

Last night we cooked two pots of beets, peeled and canned those then shredded and chopped carrots to freeze for winter carrot cakes and warm muffins. Sean made up a huge beautiful glass jar of cultured carrots. Again now, Annaliese is shredding carrots for freezing and I am happy to see the end of carrots! {smile}

(dining room, looking into pantry)

(Annaliese and the papa hauling potatoes)

Three bushels of apples wait to be processed into sauce and pie filling and sweet wrinkled dried rings but they have to wait until the tomatoes that line the stair steps up the boys bedroom in bowls and baskets are dealt with.



(canned tomato puree and applesauce from this morning)

Aiden has set to work scrubbing the outsides of some nice orange pie pumpkins a neighbor gave us. The oven is set to roast them before hot packing them into the jars to line the new shelves in the pantry.

(roasting pumpkin)

In between rain we dig potatoes, white gnarled fingerlings that are buttery to taste, deep elegant blues, heavy rough russets and red potatoes so bright you could mistake them for hot pink. The ears of popcorn are ready too and I'll spend time tying them up after the kids pick them. Running in and out of the stalks is our little natives favorite thing to do.

(Purple and red potatoes fresh from the earth)

(a pantry shelf, dried popcorn hanging)
Autumn is a lot of work and I feel the heaviness of it all. Homeschooling takes on a more practical lean these days. In between Saxon math we discuss science and bugs and organic biology in the garden and somehow, I think, this is perfectly right for here and now.

(apples for sauce, popcorn waiting to be peeled, tied and hung

and one sweet little girl-child in the midst)

(canned beets, pickled beets, rainbow carrots and regular 'ol orange ones too)

Busy is the theme of the season, in between slide phone calls to and about my grandparents in NC, both of whom will soon be leaving this old shabby world behind for a far more glorious place. Autumn is so very beautiful in upstate NY but I am sure where they will be makes this all pale; and while I can and stack and skip count with the kiddos, they are never far from my mind. Changing of seasons at hand.

A happy lapful

Cape Cod Canal

Windy and bright and beautiful.

Weekly GF Menu

Monday am - eggs, potatoes, ham
lunch - apple slices w/ peanut butter, yogurt, watermelon
dinner - tomato salad, quesadillas, baked beans

Tuesday am - cereal w bananas
lunch - dilly beans, homemade hot dogs
dinner - homemade tomato soup

Wednesday am - apple sauce, cinnamon scones
lunch- pineapple carrot salad
dinner- meatball and veggie soup

Thursday am - carrot pineapple muffins
lunch- apple and carrot slices w/ nutella, homemade granola bars
dinner -Penne a la Betsy with quinoa pasta

Friday am - fritatta w/ swiss chard, feta and sausage
lunch - gf box mac and cheese, carrot slices
dinner -carrot pineapple salad, gf white sauce pizza

Saturday am - blueberry corn pancakes
lunch- grilled cheese, carrot slices w dip, apples
dinner- Spanish rice and grilled sausages

Sunday am- Oeufs en Cocotte with Lox
dinner - venison roast with root veggies and rosemary

Ten Years

Ten years ago I was watching Good Morning America, snuggled with almost one year old Annaliese on my lap nursing, my belly just beginning to round out with Andrew. Sean was already at work. Suddenly the news reporters seemed frantic, scared. Onscreen appeared the first tower that was hit and while they were still reporting on "a plane that accidentally crashed" a second plane was seen crashing into the second tower. There was no doubt then that it wasn't accidental. I called Sean and watched all morning as people jumped, crowds of firemen and first responders tried to empty the buildings, and then as they fell and the city was shrouded in thick gray smoke and dust.

We talk to our kids about it now and as I explain to them what happened and the horror of it, the many lives lost, the men and women sick today because of the fumes and dust and gasses their question is always, "but why?". And so we try to explain hatred, which is a horrible thing to let a child know about and I find myself desperate to include grace in the story, convince my children that not all people hate and everyone, whether they took innocent lives or tried to live as peaceably as possible with mankind, need the grace and mercy of a Savior.

Recently a sweet little girl saw a photo of our children and nonchalantly said, "oh, I know them, those are the kids who hate me..." and though we have acted only in love towards her, the bitterness from the mama has taught her little girl that she is hated. Hatred and bitterness are such horrific things but to see them soaking into children is much the worse. I gently share a glimpse of this story because often times it is so easy to think that a pretty blog must equal a pretty perfect life - but in truth each of us travels roads not to our liking that are rough on our feet and on our hearts.

My children are playing happily in the yard, the air is crisp with hint of autumn, and I'm heading back upstairs to organize the sewing area. I think the point I'd like to make most in this little remembrance and story is that forgiveness needs to be the answer and really is the only path to peace. There is a time for justice in court but there needs to be a time for forgiveness in our hearts as well.
I hope you are all having a lovely Sunday,
Blessings,
Hannah

Is it a season? I ask myself this as water pours off the roof and runs in wavy currents down the drive. I hear the "squilch-squelch" of the sump pump emptying the well room in our basement below my feet as I stand at the stove in the kitchen. It seems between summer and autumn we've been given a season simply called Pouring and here she is. Later, Sean and I trudge in mud deep enough to slip over the top of my rain boots as we slide our mischievous pig's house off its side and onto a pallet and out of the mud. My legs are leaden when I try to step and I try to talk sweet to the snorting, barking, skipping massive pig and convince her I'm not edible.

Was it only five days ago we soaked in the Atlantic sun and burrowed our toes in warm sand?

The little place we rent on this little island we're fond of is about 900 square feet. Maybe. I think I am being generous. Sean and I marveled at how well a family our size fits there and how well we can live in such a small space. I did point out that there were no closets but I suppose if we pared down our wardrobes to five outfits each, we'd be alright. The apartment size combo washer and dryer was working harder than it ever had before, I'm certain.
.

Then we came home. I feel like I came home to massive disorder and clutter - 4,000 square feet of sprawling old farmhouse is a stark difference to the minute cottage we occupy every Labor Day weekend. I immediately bagged up two more garbage bags of stuff and added them to the donate pile because I do not want my time to be owned by stuff.

While the rain beats down we sort summer clothes into keep and donate piles and a few very worn items find their way into the trash. Simplify. Get rid of. Purge. The words pulse in my head over and over. The rain hits in heavy drops "ping!" ping!" on a metal bucket under the downspout off the pantry. I hear the town trucks out on the road digging out the ditch as quickly as it fills with runoff from the field next door.

I ask myself if I am becoming neurotic. Perhaps instead of a show about hoarders, they should make one about people who compulsively get rid of things. I eye a pair of loved Mary Jane wedges briefly before slipping them into a quickly filling bag. I've had them for eleven years.

Counting the pillows in our living room, I stop at eleven. Eleven? Who could possible recline on eleven pillows? Or need eleven pillows? I spend more time than I care to mention asking kiddos to put the pillows back on the sofa, back on the chair, please don't use those pillows as skates, please don't cover your baby brother with the pillows, please take down your pillow blockade, please put the pillow in the wash because it has a footprint on it... and so on. Toss, toss. Into the bag.

Tomorrow I will work on filling my sixty-seventh donation bag. And smile while I do.

Stars in his wake

From my phone

Often times, my iphone is the nearest to grab when I need to take a quick photo. Here are some recent ones - food and babies are hot topics round here:

Art by the Sea

"I'm just holding her so she doesn't fall off..." 3 yr old Chase on why he stood for at least five minutes with his arm around his sister Ella (5) on our recent weekend at the beach. I was cooking breakfast and they were supervising on the kitchen stool.

Veggies from the garden for the green curry dish we ate (and liked much) one night.

She hates Baths.

I can't understand it. We've tried warm baths, cool baths to try to trick her into thinking it is a wading pool, baths in the sink, baths in a baby tub, baths in the enamel bath... nothing but misery. Oh-so-sad misery, clawing and clammering her way out.

All we've found is she hates baths worse with bubbles.

Much worse.

Put her in a lake, stream, or ocean and she's happy as a clam. I think perhaps she needs a moving water feature installed. Tough luck kiddo.

Beets for Breakfast

Dinner: Homemade Dutch sausage, Italian style swiss chard greens (with cheese and hot pepper and salami), and beets with balsamic and fennel. It was good.

My friend Sarah gave me a vintage pallet. I love it as our new coffee table and the kids can't destroy it. I think there is some wisdom to decorating with an industrial spin, as is now popular!

Kissing the other baby in the mirror.

How about you. Do you take many photos with your phone?

She laughs...

I love this photo from the weekend.

It is blurry.

One of our precious and precocious children took it but I love it

because I laugh.

I never used to much.

I didn't understand that in order to know joy, you had to understand sorrow and I braced and steeled myself against that.

Then we had a baby with funky kidneys and then we lost a baby and other life *stuff* with people I love much and then Sean's been not well for a few years and now... now I can laugh.

I wipe tears easily as they flow - but how I can laugh!

A precious girlfriend told me I glow.

I praise God for that.

Tears rolled down my cheeks tonight as Sean and I looked through the family photos we took on the beach with a timer and tripod over the weekend and six vibrant personalities shine through in them - oh, how I laughed!

And I praise God for the wonder of *feeling* things so easily, sorrow and joy, and knowing they are gifts, crazy as that might all seem.

Proverbs 31:25 she is clothed in strength and dignity, and she laughs at the days to come...

Always a tea drinker and never a coffee appreciator until a few years ago, now I savor my morning cup of dark, nutty richness. This is how we make it here in our home, in a French press. Isn't this aqua one amazing. It's color makes me smile each morning. Our favorite coffee is from Jim's Organic , called Sweet Love, and my favorite decaf is Sam's Club organic, which uses the Swiss process instead of chemicals to decaf the sweet little beaners.

How 'bout you? Do you take a cup o' Joe or lift your pinky and sip tea. Or - like me - do you savor the best of both worlds?

A birthday

And a much anticipated gift, which came first with a safety lesson. :) He and his older brother target practiced out back all morning before I finally felt the need to pull them in for some lunch and a lesson in finding perimeter. Studies done and bellies nourished, they headed back outside. Rodents in our area better take notice.