In the heat of summer, when just moving around sets the sweat dripping down your back, we are thinking about winter. From the first leaf of green peeking up through the mud and snow, to the last red and gold leaves that cover the ground with a luminous carpet, there is another colour that is always on our minds. White. Everything we work on, every project, everything we build is centred around the coming season. From the seeds we plant…
Today I have actually reached the point of feeling that I can actually use the word ‘spring’ officially without a) crying at the same time b) using some kind of prefix like “what the $&@#$ is up with….” and c) expecting there to be some kind of weather related retribution that will bring at least 10 cms of snow in the next 24 hours. It’s been that kind of spring. A few times in the last couple of months I…
According the the larger world, the world that includes mythical things such as the economy, I am unemployed. I do not bring in an income, I do not pay taxes on that income, I do not exist. That’s cool with me frankly, as I can’t remember the last time I gave a rodent’s rear end about what the wider world thought of me. It was definitely pre 2008. Definitely. However, that is not really the issue in hand, the issue…
My friend and I were chatting the other day about how our two boys will be turning 7 in the next few months. Her eldest and my youngest, the fastest of friends, are slowly moving out of that first phase of childhood and into the next. The boys have been friends since they were both 3 and it occurred to me that they would not be able to remember a time when they didn’t know each other. Since there first…
While I may not have chestnuts roasting on an open fire, I do have pine needles stewing in a pan of water which is still pretty darn festive if you ask me. I’m always a bit slow to the party when it comes to yuletide cheer, I find December pretty exhausting truth be told; coupling darkness, busyness, pressure and running around does not make for a content Emmalina. Around this time though, as Solstice Eve dawns damp and remarkably unsnowed…
There is no doubt, now, that the balance of the year has indeed tipped. While the customary snow of this northern clime has yet to show itself, the nights are dark and the mornings frosty. Frosty is wildly preferable to snowy and, strangely, preferable to the milder weather we’ve experienced this November. With mildness comes rain and with rain…mud. I can’t say I’m sorry to have moved past ankle deep slop, in favour of firm and crunchy frost underfoot. Without…
I don’t quite know how it is that so many months have passed since I last took the time to sit and write here, but they have. Actually, when I come to think about it I know exactly how it is that so much time has slipped by. Between farm work and taking animals to slaughter, selling our products, running farm workshops, keeping up with the garden, harvesting what we’ve raised and grown as well as having a first grader…
Today. Today was a big day. A momentous day. A day of riotous joy. And also laundry. But mostly riotous joy. Today…I saw grass. The temperatures rose to a might +6c today, which felt like a balmy beach in the Bahamas compared to the -39 we were experiencing just a couple of weeks ago. The snow, which had begun to take on that flopped over look it gets as it begins to melt, is in full retreat. We can see…
Sometimes there is so much to say it is paralysing. The last couple of weeks have been like that, so full and intense that I don’t really know where to begin in recording it. But it would seem strange to not write about something that has been quite transformative, in my mind at least. I’ll have a stab and see how I do. First of all, thank you to everyone who wrote such nice things about my last post, it…
We have been asking ourselves for the last few weeks, When, when will it come? By that, of course, we mean the snow. It defines so much for us, defines what the activity will be on the farm, what we’ll need to focus on, what we’ll need to do. We’ve rushed and chopped and stacked and cleaned out. The barn has been shovelled to the earth and repacked with fresh hay, the wood is being split and stacked, the furnace…