Another Trip Round the Sun...

There's something so invigorating about a new year.  A fresh start - so full of promise.  365 days, 52 weeks, 12 months, 4 seasons.  How will it be spent? How do we wish for it to be spent?  Because it will be spent whether we plan it or not.

I've got big plans for this year.  Exciting plans.  One of my dreams has always been to have a market garden - I love to grow good food and I love seeing other people excited about eating fresh food.  When I was a child one of the things I very much loved to do was to set up a little stand on the road by our house and sell flowers or rhubarb - it was great fun to me.  This past summer I was offered the opportunity to use the land where I've been gardening (for myself, for and with the landowner and for the foodbank) the last few years to start a market garden.  Well...it didn't take much arm twisting to convince me.  Ahem.

So there has been planning and dreaming (not to mention organizing our family life for this big change) in the works since summertime and this past week I've started getting down to the details.  The Seed Catalogs!  Oh my.  For a person who, when faced with going to a regular grocery store, desperately wishes that there were only two kinds of toothpaste to choose from these seeds catalogs can get just a little bit overwhelming.  So many choices. 

It has been an interesting week narrowing down the choices and figuring out just exactly what and how much I will grow.  How many bean seeds of each kind does one actually need to get?!?  How many tomatoes would be reasonable (this coming from a person who usually grows around 100 plants just for herself)? How much salad mix of each kind to buy to keep one whole garden section continuously succession planted in baby greens from spring to late autumn?!? 

It has been quite a learning experience working on sorting these things out.  It is important to me to have heirloom varieties of each crop as well because I've found that, over the years I've been growing, old varieties often have the best flavour...and if you're going to grow food, why not have it Grown for the Flavour.  Mmmm, I like that, I think that would make a very appropriate slogan.  Happily I am almost done now, just the corn to get sorted.  And even more happily we enjoyed some delicious baby greens from the greenhouse - these will (we think) be one of our most popular crops for our customers.  I think it may be a very exciting year. ;-)

Gingerbread House Simplified

Throughout my childhood we had a fun tradition of making a gingerbread village - complete with church with stain glass windows, lights, skating pond, people and several houses.  It was all set up on a large board that covered the entire top of our piano. And, to my candy-loving young self it was Divine!  I loved it.

And so most years I have tried to make sure my boys have had the chance to have their own gingerbread houses.  We've never had a whole village but we have at least had one handmade house and sometimes a couple of them.  This year, while discussing ways to simplify the holidays (with the purpose of freeing up more time to spend doing the things we really value - time with friends, family and nature), we had talked about gingerbread houses and the boys had decided that they liked the plain old candy (a rare treat around here) as much as they did the gingerbread house making and so we had concluded that we wouldn't do gingerbread houses this year. 

Then one evening I was sharing this information with a friend as we talked about how different the holiday season felt compared to when our kids were younger.  After she left I went and talked to E a bit more about it and he decided that it was, after all, important to him to make a house.  So we decided we would simply buy an already cut and baked gingerbread house (instead of spending a few days making the dough, rolling it and cutting out house patterns and then baking)  thus meeting our want for this traditional treat as well as our need for simplifying. 

The next afternoon I quickly put the bought house together with melted sugar and then the boys spent an hour filled with laughter, royal icing, sticky fingers and taste-testing while they decorated their house.  Gingerbread Houses Simplified...leaving more time for a walk in the winter woods with friends - lovely.

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Handmade Lavender Soap

I enjoyed the first attempt at soap-making so much that the boys and I made a second batch the very next day.

Lavender is one of my favourite scents so we used some lavender flowers with some lavender essential oils in this batch.  This time we made an all olive oil soap (the first batch was olive and coconut oil).

The longest part really is waiting for the lye to cool.  We waited...and waited...and put it outside to hasten cooling and waited some more.

Then it was ready to mix.  We used a stick blender and it quickly came to "trace".  We added the essential oil and mixed a bit more.

We poured some into our mold (a cardboard box lined with a plastic bag), added some lavender flowers then poured the rest of the soap mixture on.  The next day it was ready to cut.

I think that soap making may very well become an addiction for me. This seems to be an issue for me...although I have overcome my edging addiction (only by selling that home, mind, so I'm not sure that counts but still...). When my soap-making-guru friend emailed me yesterday to let me know that soap has a shelf life and that I might not want to make more than a year's supply I felt quite robbed - I'd just been enjoying sniffing this latest batch and was contemplating my next batch. What to do?  How many pounds of soap could my family actually use in a year?!?

I may have a plan that will support this new addiction  love, I think I might just sell any excess at the farm stand next year (big plans in the works for this!)...that way I can keep making new batches to my heart's content this winter and not have to worry about overwhelming my family by urging them constantly to "use more soap!!".

Handmade Soap

I can't quite recall for how long I have been wanting to make soap.  I've made all kinds of other goodies from scratch but never soap.  At long last I decided I Must Make Soap and it could not wait a moment longer.  A dear friend came over so that we could make it together (surely this must be the best way to make soap - or anything, for that matter - for the first time). 

Now, this friend and I both seem to be instructionally-challenged, by that I mean that we both find it difficult to follow (or stick with) directions of any sort, we both have a tendency to want to try something different.  We started off following one recipe and then, as we looked at our carefully measured ingredients and considered the amount of soap we though it would make, decided we need more.  Happily, I had a recipe from another friend on file and we were able to slightly change our proportions and continue on.

I had some spices another dear friend had passed on to me after her sachet making (when she was clearing out in preparation for her big move) and I ground some up to add to our soap.  We both were wanting our soap to look something like these beautiful bars.  We added a few bottles of our favourite scents - orange, clove, cinnamon and tangerine.

It was incredibly simple to make, the longest part was waiting for the lye/water solution to cool to the appropriate temperature.  So quick and easy!

What amazed me most is that one can take such simple, few ingredients and end up with something so beautiful and useful.  It's magical to me.  And actually, it is, to me, very much like gardening - take very little and with a touch of magic (and perhaps a bit of luck) you have such goodness.  I love it.

In fact, I loved it so much that the very next day, after slicing up these bars and phoning my friend to rave about them, I started another batch with my boys.  And now I can hardly believe I waited all these years to try it.  Hmmm, it seems I've many years of soap-making to catch up on...I could make calendula, comfrey, chamomile...even nettle!

Solstice Camping

My oldest son W wanted us to go on a group camping trip with some of his homelearning friends.  I've had lots on the go lately and, since W is 15, I thought it would be a good idea to challenge him to get us all packed for this camping trip including our food preparation.  He got a lot done while I was at work and then when I got home we made some calzones together.  This had me remembering all our camping trips when the boys were very little and me trying to madly pack everything by myself - I much prefer this way! ;-)

We'd decided that none of us wanted to cook or do dishes while we were camping so we needed to prepare everything ahead of time.  We wanted to make things we could eat with hands only so we would each only need one bowl and spoon to take care of (for our morning yogurt and granola). 

We made our regular pizza calzones for one dinner.

And then we decided to try making a brocolli, mushroom, potato filling with a cheddar sauce for the next night's calzones (we like to buy something similar to these in our favourite health food store in the town of Paia on Maui - Mana Food's). 

We needed another batch of our latest favourite granola bars too.  I got a recipe from a friend's blog and converted it a bit to suit us (and then have proceeded to make it once a week since).  The original recipe is here if you'd like to try it.  My converted recipe is here.

Easy (and Delicious!) Granola Bars

4 cups old fashioned oats
1/2 cup walnuts
1/3 organic cane sugar
1/2 tsp salt

Put these 4 ingredients in a bowl and mix well.

In small pot put -

1/2 cup coconut oil (that I melt with the peanut butter and honey)
1/2 cup honey
1/2 cup natural peanut butter

and melt at med heat.  (Watch carefully so as not to burn - ask me how I know!)

Press into a 10X15 cookie sheet(do use this size pan because if you use too big of a cookie sheet then it gets spread too thin - we know lots about being spread too thin, don't we! and it ain't a good thing!)

Sprinkle 1/2 cup of chocolate chips on top.

     



Bake at 425 for 5 mins turn the pan then bake for another 5 mins.  Keep a close eye on them so they don't get too browned.  Honey browns quite quickly in baking.

Take out of oven and let cool (do let cool first, if you are impatient to eat them - like me- then they go all crumbly and you think that they didn't work well but they do...if patient!) Cut into bars.  Eat.  Make another batch. ;-)
So with all the food prep out of the way there was nothing to do but enjoy -

the lake...

the persistent Columbian Ground Squirrels (which I do not feed but they never did seem to get the message )...

(here he is trying to get into my pack to get my trail mix)

our friends, lots of time to read and....

Hammock Time!  Bliss!

Edited to add (since a few asked about the A Pace of Grace book)-



Yes, I think it is a fantastic read. I had this book out of the library in the wintertime and really loved it. I've recommended it to all my friends (and even a few moms I don't know well) and they've all really loved it too. It is filled with all kinds of thought-provoking ideas and potentially life-changing information. The first time I read it I read it through quickly and didn't have time to do the exercises in it but this time I am making time to do them. One of the first exercises is to consider the questions - "What stresses me?" and "What blesses me?". The book really gets you thinking about what is important in your life and how we can live our best life without spending on energy (and time) on less important things.


I highly recommend it and would love to hear if you enjoy it. It is actually one of those books that I would like to buy (I almost never buy new books) so that I could read it with a highlighter pen and go through highlighting all the especially meaningful bits. ;-)

Settling In

I love living in an area with such distinct seasons, and after the busy-ness of summertime and harvest I look forward to wintertime because that means...crafting time.  The last couple weeks I've been pulling out projects that I've been "meaning to get to" (do you have a stack of those too?).  Now I've got a needle felted sweater on the go in the living room; a felted sweater patchwork quilt being put together in the sewing room (not to mention bits of felted sweater all over the kitchen because I'm doing the cutting in there); balled up knitting projects in my purse, on my bedside table, in an apple crate by the couch, and in a picnic basket by the bookshelves (must not mention the other partly done knitting projects shoved in boxes - ahem).

And...I love it.  There is just something wonderful about this time of year for me when we can Slow Down and enjoy our hobbies.  Yesterday we dug the last of our carrots and beets from the garden in town (and I collected all the rest of my dry pole beans to save for seeds - I've been saving these seeds for at least 10 years now and I love the beans I get from them).  I've got three big buckets of carrots to store and that truly is IT for this year's garden.  Completely Done.

But, I couldn't resist picking some of our Calendula to make a batch of Calendula/Comfrey salve.

So, once the carrots are stored and the salve (link to details of making simple calendula salve or to see how E makes salve you can click here) is made then I will focus (I will!  I really will!) on one project at at time and work on getting them done.  First up I want to finish the patchwork quilt so we can use it to keep  us cozy on the couch on cold nights.  I also love hearing about projects others have on the go (and am in need of gift ideas) in case anyone has any links they want to share. ;-)

Well Worth Watching Wednesday

Well worth watching Wednesday...that has a nice ring to it, doesn't it?  We enjoyed The Story of Stuff of when it came out and the boys and I found this new short film well worth watching this morning.  I hope you'll watch it too, you can just by clicking the link below.

The Story of Bottled Water

A Month of....

Sunshine and sunsets

Beaches

Fresh eating

Waves

Journaling

(in a different sort of way...I'm calling it my cutty, cutty, paste, paste journal)

Thrifting (of course!)

(a 1971  Thermos - love it! and my own copy of Pride and Prejudice...my white-shirt lovin' heart be still)

Hiking (naturally! and more on these hikes later)

I can never help myself from taking too many photos of these gorgeous trees.  They're huge and beautiful and I love the way their bark peels off to reveal such gorgeous colours in their trunks.

All sorts of beauty

( I love finding heart-shaped rocks so I was tickled when I saw this - a heart-shaped hole in the lava)

Knitting

(details on finished projects later)

Critters of all sorts - birds, turtles, geckos, humpback whales...

(E spotted this gecko with no tail, they can drop their tail as an escape tactic when necessary)

(E's  photo of one of  his favourite birds there)

And I know it isn't a good photo but one day the whales were in very close to shore all day. We were eating dinner and looked out to see this whale in very close. S snapped a photo as she did a fin slap and then we ran across to the beach to watch her. Some others had been watching her for an hour and said that at first she had been on her own and now we could see there were two whales...they figured she had her baby within that hour. Wonderful.

Not to mention lots of planning and dreaming, snorkeling, reading and a whole lot of relaxing.

Hope you had a wonderful month - the first month of this new decade.