Two Christmas Books

The first Christmas book is one our daughter June gave me. It was 3 years ago, and I was just learning how to bake bread. As I have said before, work was very, very slow, and I needed something to do. Phoebe reminded me I like to bake bread, so I did. 

With help from a great website (http://www.thefreshloaf.com/) I started learning how to make artisan bread. In an inspired moment, my daughter got me a blank sketchbook to use for bread recipes.

And use it I have. Every time I bake I write in the book. I will transcribe recipes into it, note different approaches, and their results. 

I also add other recipes I want to be able to find easily. With information available on the web, in books I own or read, and things others tell me, having one place to store all the info has been really handy. 

I don't bake much in the summer, so when fall rolls around, I can read the last few entries to catch up to what I learned earlier in the year. This may sound fairly elemental, but I am terrible about retaining information. So having a place to put it, and find it, has really been a great thing.

The second book also involves June. When she was 3, and her brother 10, we bought a Christmas book. It is called The Christmas Secret, by David Delamare. He is an illustrator who lives in Portland, and we saw a signed copy of his book in a shop.

We have read the book every Christmas for the 20 years since then. We read it in two parts, starting on Christmas Eve Eve, then finishing the next night.

This year, as you may know, June is in Russia. She is staying there for Christmas, so we are having our first holiday without either our children home. (Her brother Jake has made it home every year until this one.)

But we were not going to let a little thing like a 12 hour time difference and half the globe stand in the way of our tradition. So yesterday morning, her Christmas Eve, we read the first half of the story to her over Skype. I would hold up the photos so she could see them. She knows them so well she would say "Lift it a little higher so I can see the mouse."

This morning we read her the second half. It was very sweet, and makes my Christmas feel a little more Christmasy.

Yesterday after we were done I found an email address for the author. I wrote him a quick note telling him how much the book meant to us and what we were doing this year.

To my surprise he got right back to me. He said he usually gets a note about that book every year. Mine was the first this season. They were very touched and grateful for the story. That, in turn, gave me another high point for my Christmas Eve.

If you have a holiday tradition in your family, tell us about it in the comments. We love hearing about other homestead lives.

I am very grateful for what this year has brought. I humbly hope next year will be as kind to us, and just what you want. Thank you all for sharing it with us.

From all of us at the homestead, Phoebe, myself, the kids and critters, please have a yummy, warm, loving and laughing holiday. 

Windfall

Life here on the homestead is pretty peaceful in general. One thing that is very apparent though is that it is rarely quiet, and there is always something happening around here that would definitely disqualify the Homestead for the "Tranquility" prize.
Perhaps the casual discovery of a headless rabbit in the path to the barn. Or the sudden onslaught of migrating hawks taking down our chicks.  Or maybe that the teenage neighbor has a new dirt bike.
Whatever it is from day to day, it will just be something you learn to take in stride. It's always changing around here. It's usually not worth worrying about it.
This attitude is something I came by naturally from growing up in this place. Buck on the other hand did not. He still worries, for instance, about silly little things like the screaming wind storms we get here in the fall and spring.
After moving back to the Homestead, sleeping in a travel trailer under the trees, it all came back to me in one single sleepless night of 60 mile an hour winds and things flying by the windows like the tornado scene in Wizard of Oz.
After thinking to myself "Oh yeah, the wind really blows here." I settled down for the winter.
It will be fine. No trees have killed anyone yet.
Buck on the other hand had a tougher time sleeping through the "Howlers", as my dad calls them. Buck had the unfortunate burden of a sensible and fact based reality and in this world of gravity and chaos it was only a matter of time before we would be crushed by a tree.

Both of our attitudes are valid. Neither of us really knows what will come next, so we have a right to our own way of looking at it.

What entertains me about these disparate attitudes is how they played out in the face of an event that happened last winter. An event which we have dubbed "The Trailer Stabbing".  We have not mentioned this event because we had to slowly tell our family in the least alarming way we could, so they would not immediately demand we move back to the city. We had to calm everyone with time before we could blab this story to everyone else. But now a year has gone by and it has turned into a favorite funny story to tell at parties.
This story begins with a real Howler one fall evening. We have done the chores, fed ourselves and the dogs and we are ensconced in the fluffy warm world of bed, I am drifting to sleep, Buck is, I am guessing, reciting a circular mantra which goes something like this "Please, Please be over soon. Please, Please don't fall on us."
I on the other hand am in my small world of safety, protected by childhood imaginings of trees that care about me and would therefor, never fall on me.
The fact that we are sleeping in a travel trailer under a mangy tree full of Widow Makers, protected by the trailer world equivalent of basswood sticks and tissue paper does, I admit, disquiet me. I am reciting my own mantra as the trailer jolts and rocks "Please, Please be over soon. Please, Please don't fall on the newly rebuilt barn."
Our ability to remain awake is over powered by exhaustion. We drift off to sleep. We awake to a "GATHUNK" that cannot be good. While Buck lays stock still, no doubt taking an inventory of critical body parts, I jump up to see what we will need to fix tomorrow.
No sign of anything. But the sound was just too close to believe there was no damage, so I put on my boots and coat, pull out the xenon flashlight and brace myself for the wind.
It only took a minute to see what the gathunk was. A 15 foot, 5 inch diameter limb was sticking straight out of the trailer roof.
This is where I have the moment I suspect I am still asleep and dreaming. I go back inside the trailer and look all around, no sign of the limb.
Buck gets up now and asks what it was. But I am speechless. How do you say "There is a huge dead limb buried to the hilt in our roof, but there is no sign of it in here" to a guy whose worst fear is being speared by a tree limb on just such a night as this?
Instead I say "I can't tell and there is nothing we can do about it until morning anyway." and we go back to our bed and our perspective mantras. Oddly, my mantra changes a little.
The next day it turns out we were both right. The tree speared our trailer but it didn't spear us.
But from my way of thinking, the tree sent a message. Move the trailer. And Buck was listening. So we did.
Here is a little film of what we found that morning.

Leaf Job

I grew up in the city. I did chores in the yard and garden, but never chose to spend much time out there. Mowing and some forced weeding was about extent of my childhood farm work.

So when we moved to our first country place, with 1.3 acres, I had a lot to learn. Fortunately, Phoebe had a lot to teach.

Not only did she grow up on the homestead, she is a an avid gardener. So when it comes to plants and animals, she has a lot of experience and interest. I have learned a lot over the years, but still feel like a city boy playing at country. At least I enjoy it.

Here is one of Phoebe's ideas, that I was happy to execute:

We have a big Broadleaf Maple at the other house.

 

It dumps a ton of leaves in the fall.

Years ago Phoebe started using the leaves to mulch her garden over the winter.

The leaves get raked up and used to help make the garden better for the spring. It has perfect balance; a waste product becoming a asset with no additional effort needed.

"It's Orange Season" or "Rolls Around My Waist"

We are not growing oranges on the Homestead, but we do have relatives who have neighbors who grow oranges!

Because of their great generosity we scored three shopping bags of homegrown oranges and I did not want to waste a single drop of them so I decided to make Marmalade with them.

I have never really been around marmalade eaters in my life and so I didn't really know what to expect. I do know some people love it and some people hate it. I had never eaten homemade marmalade before, but I suspected it would be worlds better than the store bought stuff.
I looked around on the internets*  and settled on Ina Garten's recipe.

So I commenced to slice and dice a triple batch of Marm without ever having tasted it. Pretty brave, huh?

It was super easy to make. Just dice up a bunch of oranges add sugar and cook.

The recipe also called for a couple lemons and it just so happened there were some lemons in the bags too.

The final word for me is not that I love Marmalade on my toast. Instead I have discovered that if you make a cinnamon roll dough (just a yeasted sweet roll dough), spread Marmalade in place of the sugar/cinnamon and then top the resulting orange rolls with a vanilla cream cheese frosting...

You will think you have died and gone to heaven.
This is the last one and I barely got a photo of it before it was ravenously consumed (by me).

*we like talking wrong for entertainment around here.