Of Butter and Jars

Today is set aside for house cleaning, and most importantly, the gardens! I need to weed, I need to transplant, I need to prune. It looks to be a beautiful day already as the sun is rising and the birds are singing in a beautiful chorus outside.

Above is my butter paddle collection, surrounded by mason jars of varying sizes and shapes. Our new milk goat, Amelia, has graciously provided us with fresh creamy spring milk for making cheese. After the gardens are tidied today, I will be making some homemade feta.

I will post a picture of it, along with the full Sheepherder's Sourdough Bread Recipe. Happy April, tis the last day she will provide this year.

Wouldn't it be nice if children still went door to door and surprised people with May baskets on their doorknobs?

Ripe fruit. Pick Quickly But With Care

Ripe fruit. Though some be rotten, keep picking. Pick not only for yourself, but mostly for others. It is in picking the fruit for others that you will discover your greatest self. For, though you don't fear death any longer, will you be content that you gave/did/created/lived what you were supposed to with the life you were given? In this brief brief time, in this blink of an eye, do not wait!

What We Have Been Busy Doing....

Our new lambs, S'more and Charlotte...they were part of a set of quadruplet lambs!

Herbal Medicine

Herbal Medicine is a favorite topic and practice of mine. In fact, it is a way of life that I build my life around. I suppose it started when I began noticing the plethora of weeds here on the farm, that I had never noticed anywhere else before. There were lots of weeds, and many many that I had never seen before or knew the names of. As the years went on, I learned each one...through just living with them, pulling them, seeing them bloom, seeing them appear at special times of the year (year after year after year). After a while, I began noticing the seasons by the weeds and plants...and I looked for them and the signs they gave. It was then that I began learning that some of these 'weeds' were actually potent healers and health givers. I began reading, and studying, asking questions, talking to other herbal women. I now gather a lot of our family medicine from our farm and the wild, and I must say we are healthier than we have ever been! Today, I relied on my trusted herbal tincture of Motherwort. I was experiencing some pretty common heart palpitations for someone of my age, due to hormone fluctuations. I took the motherwort and within minutes my symptoms were resolved. Hooray for herbal medicine. I will write more as the season progresses and talk more about these wonderful healing greens.

Sugar & Spice, Country Pink

Sugar and spice and everything nice, that's what little girls are made of! I have always had a love/hate relationship with the color pink. It intrigues me and draws me in, like a frosted cupcake from a long ago kindergarten memory. It is soft and motherly and baby-like and feminine. It can be a brown-pink or a hot pink...each stands for something different. Brown-pink is old, comforting, 1950's, black and white televisions and fathers coming home from work in their steel vehicles. Hot pink is passionate and egotistical...gardens of the tropics.

So, being a primitive country lover who gathers herbs and lives to light wood fires in the cookstove, pink is something you won't see me shouting from the rooftops about very often. I have, however, noticed that pink is part of our daily lives...and I have compiled, on my studio walls (thank you) a pink palette for you...a pink sunset from our back porch over the orchard and a favorite pink teacup with a sliver of my homemade soap where I do my dishes three times a day. Enjoy!

Mama's Cherry Pie, Little One's Apple Pie

Old Farmhouse

So I am craving the quintessential Old Farmhouse look. What is that, you ask? Well, it is simple...red rusted coffee cans, threadbare warm cozy quilts, stacks of firewood in baskets and woodboxes, daffodils and tulips jammed in old blue canning jars on weatherbeaten window sills...pies in the oven, cats asleep by the fire, bluebirds singing in the orchard. Simple...nothing fancy...just plain home comfort.

Hot Cross Buns

Easter - New Beginnings

Good Morning. I have always had a difficult time with Easter decorating. It is, for an Autumn person, difficult to give in to the colors, shades and hues of early spring, beautiful as they may be. I tend to have a mish mash of sentimental Easter decorations mixed in with my earthy, soulful, things...it works...and then it is time to move on to the next season...but I am definitely an Autumn person. What season are you?