Halloween and Family Mythology

We have a great Halloween scene around here.  We have good friends who live on a cul-de-saq with about 6 houses, which nicely limits the amount of candy we take home.  We have a great group of friends who do a great job of making fun costumes and getting together no matter what the weather.  In fact, we've decided to change the name of the Halloween gathering to "What Will Mother Nature throw at us this year Party."  Last year a foot of snow.  This year a hurricane.  Good times.  The kids had a terrific time though as always. 

In the midst of the party as Makili is gathering his haul, he starts talking about the Switch Witch.  Oh yeah!  The Switch Witch.  Remember her?  She'll switch you a toy or book or art supplies for that big bowl of candy?  Makili didn't forget about her, but we did!  So we had to do some scrambling.  When I was growing up, we had Fifi, the imaginary maid who picked up when we weren't around, and Yahooty, who banged on the pipes or did naughty things.  In our house, we have the Switch Witch and the Toy Troll, both of whom Makili is on top of.  Driving home late last night, he woke himself enough in the car to ask me to make sure I put his lego lighthouse from the Switch Witch on the table so that the Toy Troll wouldn't take it for being left out.  Oh boy.

But I did love that he wrote his own note for the switch with.  It said: "SWCH WICH KANDE ON TABIL"  with a picture of a big green bowl. 

From Across the Pond

 My best bud from college, Camille came this weekend with her sweet babe, Hugo, and her hubby Pascal.  They are such a cool international couple with roots all over the place and a lifestyle that exhausts me to just think about.  But oh that sweet baby.  We all enjoyed the Hugo show.  I have more pics on the actual camera, but you know how that goes.  We ate, hiked, and shepharded cows.  Good times.

Boys

 I haven't been shy about hiding the fact that I was hoping for a girl when I got pregnant with Remick.  At each of my ultrasounds, I asked hopefully, "are you sure it is a boy?"  But now that I have brothers, I think there pretty much isn't anything as cool in the whole world.  I love watching these boys grow with each other and our friends and the way they love to be outside together, in even crappy weather.  I bet I'd like sisters too, but brothers are pretty great.

Weekending

 We had a bunch of friends over for a bonfire on Friday, which was a lot of fun until someone hit Remick in the face with a wooden baseball bat.  He has a pretty good shiner, which is extra fun for me when I'm out around town with him.  My house was a little bit clean for about 10 minutes, but that 10 minutes has come and gone. 

We found this little guy out in the garden - not moving too fast, because it was COLD!  We got our first frost on Friday night which meant a whole lot of last minute gathering - all the rest of the tomatoes and tomatillos.  I had to dig the remaining sweet potatoes, and cut as many flowers as possible.  I had seen it coming and attended to the basil earlier in the week.

 The hay bales were benches at the party, thanks to our good friends the dairy farmers:)  Now the hay bales are a fort.

 We've been picking acorns too after our class last week on how to make acorns into bread.  A fun family experiment.

 Makili is obsessed with having a knife.  I can't decide if it is a good or bad thing that the one he has been using is super-dull.  We're going to have to have some sort of household consensus on the knife thing, cause neither of us is really sure about it. 

 And then there was exploring and silliness and a small window of family time not spent cooking or working on the house.  Ahhh.

Fairy House Tour

 I got sort of tricked into going to the Fairy House Tour in Portsmouth this year.  I don't really ever want to be near that many people, like ever.  But at least at an event like this there are hordes of cute little girls (and some not so little) wearing fairy wings/costumes.  It was interesting to walk through Strawberry Banke (for the first time ever!!) and see these little houses tucked into every garden.  Some of them were pretty elaborate and quite cool.

And then of course, Makili's favorite part was the "build your own" station.  They provided really terrific natural materials and set you loose.  He loved that part.  I liked it too, but would have much preferred to have been in the woods collecting my own away from the crowds.

The Earth is our Home

 Once a month, my boys and I will spend the day in the woods with a bunch of hippies (said in the nicest possible way) making shelters, gather apples, singing songs, tracking animals, cooking acorns, finding springs.  Our first class was last week and my kids LOVED it.  One of the older boys (dressed from head to toes in deer skin - literally his shoes were handmade from leather - made fire with a bow, which was totally cool and amazing.  We cooked foraged apples and water from the spring we "found" into some hearty apple sauce.  The kids built shelters, cut the apples (big knives for little boys! but so well instructed it wasn't a problem.) and pretty much frolicked in the woods for four hours.  It was grand.  Next week, we're making bread from acorns!

Stinking Cute.

 We were so lucky to be present at our good friend Becky's wedding.  Since I first met Becky when she was 14 (and visiting her big sister, my pal Evan, at college) it seems like I've seen her grow up.  When Raph and I lived in Maine close to 10 years ago (!!) Becky was in college at UNH and we'd hang out with her sometimes.  She's a farmer, and so our paths crossed again when I started working at the farmers' market and she started working for one of "my" farms.  It seems meant to be that she will be in our life in some way forever.  Which is just fine by me:)  She is so stinking cute.  And that Phil she snagged.  Well, as my friend Mary told me shortly after they started dating, "he's a beautiful human being."  So that's a good start!  And they jumped right in to a dairy farm of several hundred acres.  They're pretty amazing, and I'm so glad we're near each other.

The added bonus of seeing Becky get married is that I get to see my old friend Evan, and her two boys, Sam and Pete.  They are Makili and Remick's best friends.  As soon as they move here any way!  And we got to see Jesse and the rest of the clan, and Stephane.  Like a reunion!

Friday Entertainment

MY favorite field trip

 I can never get enough of the Common Ground Fair.  I've gone on about it before.  It is seriously just so much fun.  So much to see and do.  So much good.  This year, we went with my parents and "camped" with them the night before.  I got to sit by a cozy campfire and eat outside even thought it was chilly.  We met up with my aunt and cousins which was extra fun because that meant I could explore a little more than I've been able to in the last few years, since I've seen more of the childrens' area than any other.  Raph seriously disappeared for the whole day, excited to take classes on wild foraging, buying an old tractor (I think he took that tractor a bit late, but whatever), mushroom foraging, and some other things.  I met him for the mushroom talk which was cool because I realized how much I have learned since I tried to go with Makili two years ago:)

We brought our own boxes for the hill this year, which is always a hit.   This is the first year however that we've participated in the veggie parade which is seriously the best fun you can have for free.  My mom was the cutest eggplant ever!

If you live anywhere near us you should really plan your next September around making it to the fair.

A lot of work to live here.

 We recently attended a beautiful wedding on a farm.  So lovely.  And good friends were here too talking about moving here!  So exciting!  But our friend Ben did pause at one moment and say, "it seems like a lot of work to live here."  And I guess I can appreciate how he feels that way.  When I lamented to my mom this week how tired I am of food preservation, she said, "well that is a choice, you know."  But you know, for me it doesn't feel like a choice.  If I spent my energy on things other than raising my children, growing and preserving the food that nourishes us, building our house around us, splitting (Raph) and stacking and moving the wood to keep the house warm, it seems to me I would be spending my energy in the wrong places, since I don't believe there is more important work. 

And so here I am with jars of saurkraut fermenting on the counter, jars already cooked in cold storage, tomatillos waiting their turn, sauce on the stove, the freezer absolutely FULL of frozen berries, sun-dried tomatoes, greens and zucchini, jars of rose hip, peach, blueberry, concord grape, strawberry-rhubarb jams, zucchini and beet relishes, pickles and chutneys lining the pantry shelves, sweet potatoes curing in the greenhouse with more to be harvested in the gardens, grapes literally rotting as they wait to be turned into something yummy (once-in-a-lifetime year for grapes apparently!)  And yes I am sort of tired.  But I am also exhilirated by it all.  Because in a way, we are part of a revolution here. 

I read an article recently by a new face in our life, Chris Knapp of Koviashuvik Local Living School (more about that later), in which he said, "As I listen to the presidential hopefuls make optimistic promises for social health, job security, and economic prosperity, I think 'This is beyond the scope of your work.  Only people can create healthy communities, stable jobs and dependable food sources.  This is our work, to be accomplished in countless daily interactions with each other and the land.'"  And I get shivers from thoughts like that.  And I get renewed energy for that pot of sauce to be canned, the ground hog that needs to be addressed, the final beautiful blooms to harvest, and well I'm going to learn about harvesting acorns this season!  Bread from acorns!  Cool, huh!