What is there to say? How to summarize a year like this? Work, travel, family, fun, castles, cooking, friends, love, madness, cows, farm, hot, cold, rain, rain, rain….snow, ice, sunrises, laughing, fields, moments, milk, hugs and kisses. Too much to say and more. As I try to wrap my brain around the fact that a year has passed (insanity), that I turned 40 this year (yay!), that my hair has been about 6 different colours, that we now own 3…
Ok, if I’m honest (and let’s face it I always am) this is the bit I really enjoy about Christmas. The formal celebrations are over, the rush, the work, the pressure is all done and now we can just be. We can enjoy time together and days with no major agenda. We can work on our own projects and take time to build lego sets for hobbits and underwater creatures and spaceships. Or not. Or we can just watch a…
The storm that has been kicking North America’s botty for the last few days has finally abated, the snow and ice rain receding and leaving behind cobalt blue cold. From Friday to Sunday we battled against snow and ice, trudging through calf deep drifts with buckets of feed and water, feeling the ice pellets slip down the back of our jackets or listening to the tiny hiss of snow landing on snow. On Friday my friends forged through terrible driving…
I’m beginning to wonder if there is such a thing as Christmas Fatigue? It seems to have happened to me for the last few years, I begin December feeling festive, ready to celebrate the Christmas season but, by the time we are within a week of the actual Christmas I feel terribly weary of it all. I really don’t want to seem like a Scrooge, I love Christmas time, the food, the down time, sharing gifts with my family. I…
This is our third winter on the farm and, I have to say, is different to the others in many ways. This year we have more animals to look after through the winter, much more responsibility and things that have to be done. Gone are the days of a quick chicken chore run and back to the fire, these days there is milking, pig chores, a large flock of chickens, a wood furnace to be stoked…and that’s before we start…
Since our cow Wander started to produce milk in October, in fact since we decided to buy a milk cow back in the spring, my mind has been consumed with the possibilities of a home dairy. For the last 2 months our fridge has been stuffed with milk as I learn how to use this magical liquid, adding products to my repertoire, and fridge, as we go along. Since the first weeks of milking I’ve been making butter, which then…
I am over at Playful Learning today writing about how to make a Quiet Time Lantern for the dark and wintery nights. The first part of the making the lantern is to do a wet-on-wet watercolour painting, this is a lovely and easy art form and great for sharing with a mixed age range. I’ve been doing this kind of art with the boys since they were really little, it allows them to play with colour and yet produce something…
I’ve recently spent a lot of time thinking about maths. A lot. Not so much the maths itself but about how I teach maths and how my children learn maths. I’m currently undertaking an e-course through Stamford University Online called How To Learn Math, which has opened my eyes to so many possibilities and helped me to address many of the poor lessons I absorbed as a maths learner myself. I’ll try to come back to this topic a bit…