Long awaited (?) updates from the farm

Tallulah died. The first cold, cold, snappy cold night of the season found her huddled under the heat lamp in the henhouse. We knew she needed a little extra coddling... what with her age, her molting near-nekkedness and the chillier weather... so we had plugged in the red warming light and brought her a personal feeder and waterer.

Maybe it made her last night more comfortable.

Maybe it was just her time.

But.

Just last autumn we were still raking leaves for the dog. He really loved to jump in the leaf piles with the kids. He especially loved to try to catch the leaves as they fell from the trees. It looked so very comical -- an 85-pound golden blur leaping and twisting to reach fluttery maple leaves.

We've had our share of loss this season.

The girls (and I) are campaigning already for a new dog, for a new batch of chicks, for a leaf blower (just kidding about that last one).

But if we look around, really looking, there's more to be thankful for than ever before.

It seems that simplify is, after all, an active verb. It takes a lot of thought and planning and frankly a lot of hard choices and a little loss to truly simplify one's life.

Running between chess and ballet class and band practice and horseback riding lessons, not to mention doctor appointments and, you know, delivering our fifth baby -- none of this was simple. None found us enacting that other cliche, either, of "living in the moment," which is a noble goal with a regrettably stupid catchphrase. Rather we stumbled from one event to the next. "Next" was the operative in my so-called stay-at-home, homeschooling, homesteading life.

I didn't know how to be still. I actually missed out on a lot of contemplative opportunities.

Did you know that kneading bread can be a chore to be rushed while the baby's asleep before homeschool co-op convenes? In those circumstances the yeast and flour and water combine to create a pressure-filled panic attack.

But with a little gumption and a clear decision a girl can say "no" to a few things, leaving room for the mundane to be even a bit beautiful.


"Be still and know that I am God." (Ps. 46:9) What I think this means to me, in this season, is that all my self-driven busyness is the opposite of stillness and, worse, puts me in the position of being god of my own circumstance. Which I gotta tell you I am so not qualified for.

In the midst of some gains and some losses and some difficult choices, in the direct aftermath of saying "no" several more times than is comfortable for a people-pleaser like myself, then did we feel some peace.

A little tranquility, at home in our little rural village.

And room for fun?

It's amazing how much more fun we have when we're dang I wish there was a better way to say this living in the moment.

When we're being still a lot more often.

Raking the leaves. Jumping in them. Reading some poetry and some fairy tales. Kneading some bread. Laughing more. Worrying less. Turning the light on for the chickens and remembering that God is in heaven.

Crispy day, pumpkin run, family fun

Brace yourself.

This pumpkin patch, corn maze, farm stand, family day recap may be long-winded.
(Heaven knows the day itself was windy enough.)

It also may contain more photos than a dial-up country girl's blog oughta.

But we had so much fun and I wanted to share a little bit of it with you.

Some apples were bigger than Madeleine's head.

How can that be?

They were organic and everything.
I think.

Salvador gave this pile of pumpkins "one thumb up."
He was the cutest little trooper in his front pack and striped cap all day long.
And he didn't even get to pick a pumpkin.

He is a pumpkin. Wouldn't you agree?

We tried for a money shot but 'twasn't to be.

I don't know why I try.
(Actually, yes, I do know why:

There's an inexplicable moment of hope with every staged shot.
And also?

The failures are really, really funny to me.

I just love the drama.

Lucky for me I have four girls.)

Maybe for Christmas I'll get one snap of everyone smiling.

Without fingers in anyone's nose. Or crossed eyes.

Or cross tempers.

Or open mouths to say 'let's go already, Mom'

I can call it, that photo, when it happens, my Christmas miracle.

Ah. The landscape. It only needs light to be cheerful.

We managed to dodge a couple of inches' worth of raindrops
on our pumpkin patch and corn maze adventure.

It felt as though the wagon would blow away.

But it didn't.

Laura had to point out the "doyt." She wanted a clean pumpkin.

Who raised this dirt-averse country child?

She actually cried over the mud on her boots.

Tears.

And then some more tears because we couldn't take home a goat.

Disconnect, anyone?

The pumpkin is dirty but the goat isn't?

Look! Up in the sky! It's another...

...goat!

Not that this is remotely pumpkin- or corn-related...

they just liked feeding the goats.

But we liked the hot cocoa and kettle corn and Grandma time the most.

Our friend Zoe (the tallest girl in that farmgirl photo above) joined us.
She's practically a member of our family.

Except, you know, her own family loves her a lot too.

This little girl is not only not related to us -- we don't even know her.

I just thought she was too cute panning for gold in her purple boots.

I love family days. Don't you?

Announcement! Announcement!

Well, my baby turned 2 last week. And a "once and for all" donated every last item of maternity clothing six months ago or so. Then I went and lost 23 pounds.

So you know exactly where this is heading?

Yep.

Another Suite baby. Due in June!

(Written as soon as the three months of nausea stopped, er, slowed to a more livable rate of puking. Oh yeah. It's like that.)

Times. They are changing.

So this morning I was stressed out about the big girls going on a field trip to hear the symphony play. I was experiencing this anxiety and stress because it was taking them a long, long, long time to get ready.
.

We have two bathrooms and four girls.
.

About six years ago it was really difficult to get my daughter Madeleine to dress herself. Or to wear clothes at all. In fact, one Kindergarten morning found me in a most memorable embarrassing moment when M opened the front door (big, big no-no for a 5-year-old in our house) to the pastor who lived across the road (nice man) wearing nothing but her Dora underpants (if you are in trouble for opening the door at all, how much trouble are you in for opening it while nearly nekked?).
.

None of that is the embarrassing part.
.

The embarrassing part is that I was chasing her down the stairs, wielding her day's outfit like a sword and shield, shrieking in my very best impersonation of a fishwife that she would get dressed right now, little miss, right now, and OH HOLY TOLEDO YOU DID NOT OPEN THAT DOOR Miss Madeleine you had better close-it-right-now!

So in our former house in a small town near here, we had the kind of staircase I am sure you have seen in movies. It was a turn-of-the-century grand dame house whose stairs landed graciously in the foyer like a prom date disembarking a limousine.

Me, I landed much less gracefully at the bottom of the stairs, still seeing red over Madeleine's refusal to get dressed for school, demanding that she shut the door. My assumption (and we all know how assumptions usually turn out) was that she had opened it just to irk me, or worse, to run outside to exercise her right to move to a nudist colony.

I was wrong. As you or any other less-freaked-out mommy would have probably already guessed, she had merely answered the doorbell.

All of this I figured out when my nice pastor neighbor leaned his head in to announce that he would close the door.

Imagine my horror. Just sit with it for a minute. Too painful? Then look at this beautiful field instead:

Humility is a virtue, right?

Anyway I was thinking back to that morning this morning when I was tempted to hurry the girls along in their braiding and primping and sweater selection and oh-my-word-now-we-have-earrings-to-change-to-match-the-sweater extravaganza.

I was just thinking about that.


By the way, we visited the pumpkin patch last week.

It was beautiful.

And the girls were too. (Not that Madeleine or Sarah would sit still long enough for a picture. At least I still have Laura and Grace as semi-willing subjects.)