After what seemed a very long time indeed, where fall stretched out into late November and then December, the winter finally arrived. In the very last few days of the year, ice rain slipped slowly from the sky and left a glassy coating on everything around us. With the temperatures finally dropping enough to freeze the ankle deep mud, we welcomed the colder weather and even dreamed of a cleansing coating of snow. An afternoon dog walk gave us the…
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…
We are used to the idea of endings here on the farm, as much as we can be anyway. We coo over cute chicks, but we know that they’ll be off to slaughter in a few months. When we welcome piglets onto the farm, it’s in the knowledge that most of them will be off to new homes once they are weaned, and the ones that stay will eventually go for meat. It’s the cycle of life here and we…
This is the time of year where it feels almost impossible to keep up with it all. The garden is bountiful (but so are the weeds), we have more animals on the farm than ever before, we have more garden to maintain, pastures to create, grass to mow, trees to fertilize….the list is long. It’s a good kind of long, the kind that I’m grateful for and dreamt of for a long time. Sometimes I have to remind myself of…
This is an odd time of year. It’s odd every single year, yet every. single. year I am surprised by it. I can feel the spring moving beneath my feet, feel her stirring and shifting the heavens and the earth, yet we are ice bound, cold and wintery for yet another month. As I begin to look at the calendar I feel the panic, I start to feel for certain that there is no way, no way there is enough…
Dear Mr Pratchett, I have been thinking of writing to you for some time now, writing to tell you how much your books mean to me and my family; but it seems like the hourglass ran out on us. I’m not sure what the communications are like where you are (is there broadband in the silver desert?) but I will write this anyway, and hope it makes its way to you somehow. I remember distinctly the first time I read…
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…