Grand journal: Spring Break!

Our eldest and her hubby wanted to take advantage of warm weather for camping and hiking, which meant a looooong car ride. So we got their girls for the week.

The Play Doh lasted an hour and a half; then got spread around periodically. We devoted our usual breakfast table to Play Doh.

Day1: Petra was the early bird, coming to tuck in with us while we read the news and drank coffee.

L helped grind grain for rolls and then we got free entertainment for a day with cousins.

Day 2 gave us a walk to the river. We saw fuzzy cows and L was startled by the sound of Great Blues nesting. She ventured out on a downed tree over the water. That girl can climb. Petra contented herself with throwing rocks in the river. Hot chocolate on our return.

Day 3 brought new ducklings and snow.

A walk around the land and hot tea in fancy cups served for entertainment. The girls were very careful with Bubba’s teacups. Bubba was Michael’s grandmother.

Day 4 gave us a walk along the river. We saw where beavers gnawed trees, bears walked just before us, scarlet cups and skunk cabbage bloomed. Then we found ice cream.

Day 5 had us running errands to the feed mill to pick up duckling food, look for potato sets at the local grocery (not in yet, so mini donuts had to do); visit the graveyard where Michael’s grandparents rest, and then to The Upper (one of the two local bars) for burgers and root beer. Wearing a new dress made Petra’s day.

Day 6 we had a chocolate chip cookie fueled dance-in-the-snow rave.

Day 7 we went to Lion’s Park. The slides were sub-par for big-city kids, but the rocks and parking lot bumpers were pretty cool to climb on. The girls wanted pizza for dinner, so we went to the Wolf Creek bar.

Day 8 we had cousins again! Then mom and dad arrived in the afternoon. The girls waited for them at the end of the driveway…until they got cold.

Every day included cuddling ducklings, looking for new hatchlings, helping Boopa with chickens and ducks, seeing odd things like tree stump fountains in the woods, taking a bath (so you know when bedtime is), and getting a bedtime story. We are delighted to have had this Grand time. Now excuse us while we collapse in a heap!

Livestock journal: overachievers

An average large chicken egg weighs about two and a half ounces.

This duck egg weighs more than twice that. Duck eggs usually come in around 3.5 ounces. We have one hen who gives us ginormous eggs. Wish we knew who it is!

This is Boyo. She joined our family in 2015, with our first flock of chickens. She died yesterday, just shy of her 10th hatch-day; the last of her cohort. Light Brahmas have those feathered feet. She was a big hen who gave us eggs for about 4 years. Most layers reach peak at around 2 years. She and Mrs. Beasley were fast friends. Mrs. Beasley died last year. We had Boyo in with the ducks for the past two years, as the young hens would have pecked her to death. I will miss feeding her worms while digging in the garden. Now she is feeding the worms in the garden.

Equinox journal: more sun!

Here in Big Woods country , you have to look closely to find signs of Spring.

Moss sends up its “blossoms,” releasing spores into the wind.

The grass and weeds show tiny bits of green.

Trees begin to thicken with swelling leaf buds.

Our pumpkins and squash have kept well, encased in their fine veneer of natural wax. You can see the wax as a white blush where the pumpkin is cut.

Our future ducklings grow, nestled in the incubator.

The ditches are free of snow and poison ivy. Michael loves me so much, he will come and pick trash with me!

The St. Croix flows freely. I’m waiting for the first turtles to emerge from the mud. Not yet. Not yet. More sun.

Season journal: sounds of the midlands

March is the month of mud and music. We began with an eight inch snowfall on March 5, Ash Wednesday. Huge winds beat a tarantella all night, creating hard stops before our doors.

A good time to bubble up the last of our fish in chowder and whip up lattes.

Michael has been painting the future stairwell. It’s the middle orange area. I am thrilled that the tonal change I planned years ago visually plays.

The melt started on March 12th. Zeke was walking me past this swamp when I heard a series of sharp cracks. I found water gurgling through the culvert, where the ice dam had broken. The level had sunk enough so the film of ice on top was dropping, creating the creaking and rimshots that caught my ear. I had never witnessed this before!

I also heard these icicles crash all at once in a grand crescendo of breaking glass. Yikes!

Frogs leave these holes in our yard and begin to sing. The Sandhills, cardinals, and robins join the chorus. *3/18: I heard the first blackbirds trill and grouse thrum.

March, a time for singing the joy of life, celebrating young and old: a first for Imogen, a hundredth for Roger, our dear friend. L’Chaim!

Livestock journal: lag time

Our girls were giving us three eggs a day from the middle of November to the middle of January. Then some amazing duck (a Pekin, from the egg color and shape), continued to lay an egg daily while our other 19 hens took a break. We rationed them, eating oatmeal for breakfast, no omelets, no pumpkin pie, so we could have sufficient for cakes to celebrate birthdays and anniversaries. This week the girls finally soaked up enough sun to give us four!

Not to be out-done, the chickens joined in. They took turns giving us one egg a day (mostly) for the past month. We have 11 hens.

Yesterday we went from 4 to 8!!! Today we had 7. We hit the darkest days in December. It took a month for the birds to reach the bottom of their production curve. Now the sun has power and the birds notice.

Michael and I have known each other for 40 years this month. We’ve been married for 38 years this month. It makes February, which can be a dismal month, quite nice.

We have so much to celebrate.

Harvest journal meets season journal: sausage snow!

Snow failed to fall in January. February 8th brought us 7 inches. After plowing out the driveway, the white fluffy stuff means it is time to make sausages!

Why await snow to make sausages?

Fresh snow fits into our bowls and keeps the meat we harvested from getting warm in the process of grinding and mixing. Keeping the mixture cold ensures the fat stays solid, an important factor in sausage consistency. After putting meat, fat, garlic, salts, herbs and spices through the grinder twice, the mixture gets kneaded (with some ice water) until it “sticks.” The proteins need to lengthen and bind so the sausage doesn’t “break.” Fall apart. Be funky when cooked. It just needs to be worked until it feels right. Not melting the fat. Working it enough. It’s a delicate balance.

Day 1: We ground 10 pounds of venison kielbasa, 10 pounds of chicken kielbasa, 10 pounds of wild turkey kielbasa, and 15 pounds of duck kielbasa. 45 pounds of meat and fat filled a laundry basket! We work in 5 pound batches, consisting of 4 pounds of meat and one pound of fat. We are making kielbasa this year as it’s the type of sausage we use the most. Kielbasa on the grill, kielbasa in pasta sauce, kielbasa in stir fry, kielbasa in feijoada, kielbasa in red beans and rice, kielbasa in Senate Bean soup, kielbasa with sauerkraut and mash, kielbasa roasted with root vegetables. Mmmmmm.

Day 2: we stuffed the sausage meat into casings. I’ve shown our industrial sausage stuffer in prior posts. Messy hands and exhaustion kept me from repeating photos. We buy casings at our local market. We do live in Wisconsin! They come packed in salt, which we wash off. After being soaked and opened by running water through them, I thread one on the stuffer nozzle. Michael cranks while I twist the links, rolling the filled casing first toward me and then away, so the links don’t unravel. Figuring out when to add a twist is an art I still am learning.

This is what 45 pounds (more or less) of sausage looks like. We opened the window in the guest room to make an impromptu walk-in refrigerator. The sausages need to dry before going into the smoker.

Days 3 and 4 consisted of smoking the links and packaging them. We have a very primitive smoker that lacks a thermostat and thus we need to check the temperature often. We went to buy feed while smoking batch #1 and the links got a bit toasty and dry. Still taste great! Michael managed to keep a more even temperature on batch #2 and they are perfect!

Wild Turkey sausages at the top and venison-pork sausages on bottom. My house smells like an amazing deli.

A snow/cold water bath quenches the sausages once they come out of the smoker. Their internal temperature needs to come down quickly to avoid incubating botulism.

After quenching, back on the rack to dry before packaging. So far I’ve been pretty consistent in getting 4 links to weigh out at 3/4 lbs. I must finally be getting the hang of this! We noted that our links are thinner than in prior years. I’m not sure whether that is due to using a new brand of casings or because the meat sat chilling overnight and so did not squish out as easily.

Turkey kielbasa stir fry. Yum! A fine reward for days of pretty intense work.

We all needed a bit of a break before the fire.

Here’s to another successful sausage-making adventure. The currant wine finally has matured into a delightful quaff. Michael and I are both tired and achy. Michael figures that we just made $225 worth of sausage. As a financial endeavor, it doesn’t pay. We do this because we feel an obligation to use our old ducks and chickens, hearts and gizzards of all our birds, and the hearts of the deer we harvest. These meats are too tough to eat if not ground up. This year we were gifted a wild turkey. Same problem. Michael would like to try to make venison casings. We would need to read up on that process. Using as much of what we raise and harvest as we possibly can is important to us. The sausage is never bad, if sometimes it is less than perfect. And then, sometimes, it is the best thing you ever put in your mouth. Making. Not a bad way to live.

Season journal: six more weeks of winter

Dark and cold alternates with bright and cold. The groundhog predicts six more weeks of winter. Snowing and blowing again today.

We are down to one egg. Feeding 25 ducks and 10 chickens for 1 dozen eggs every 2 weeks makes for very expensive eggs. I gave up calculating the price of farm raised eggs a couple of winters ago. The birds had been producing more when we had a brief warm(ish) spell, but when it turns cold, the egg count drops.

Michael has been stretching our few eggs by making pumpkin scones for breakfast. No wonder I gained weight in January.

The river has been frozen over for a while. When we had a few days with temperatures a bit above freezing, I found open water and birds galore. Eagles make a fascinating high warbling sound when they gather to drink.

Michael and I got to babysit Imogen as she was running a fever due to teething. Daycare abhors a fever. Whip me. Beat me. Make me hold that baby!

Bonus Grand photos. We all await the time when we can run around outdoors!

Fiber journal: stained glass or starry night?

The couple whose wedding we attended this past October were due to welcome a baby in February. She qualified as a geriatric pregnancy, which means a high chance of a premature birth. I began making a blanket for this child-to-be soon after we came home. It has been a constant effort over the past 3 months. (This tells you why hand made fiber products are either expensive or free).

I completed it yesterday. Her water broke yesterday! (Starry Night? Stained Glass? Either way, it is warm and soft.) We await news of a safe journey through the birthing process for both mother and child.

With 21 below this morning, this is as close to a burnt offering we are likely to get. All of our energy is focused on the labor of love that is life.

Children are the best work there is.

Season journal: resolutions

New year. A good time to contemplate the breadth of meaning in the word “resolution.”

Resolution as focus. To sharpen an image or to allow it to maintain soft outlines.

Resolution as decision: be it resolved that young boys shall no longer be required to push hair out of their eyes, no matter how charming their curls may be.

Resolution in the sense of separating a solution into its component parts. It is necessary to resolve the particulates from cider before bottling.

The chemists out there may complain that lees form a suspension rather than a solution, and a true resolution would require freezing the cider to extract the alcohol, thus making applejack. We are taking the soft focus on this one.

Resolution as a plan of action. I really need to wash the windows that look out onto the duck pasture. The birds will be able to peek in at me as I exercise and I will be able to enjoy their curious presence. The exercises happen by necessity: I would cease to be able to move were I to stop moving. The window cleaning is a luxury.

Resolution as the solving of a problem. I need to make a baby blanket, but I didn’t care for the earth-toned yarn I had. I found that pairing it with other similarly patterned yarn and knitting in the round solved my problem. This is still a work in progress, but it is beginning to look like a stained glass window.

Resolution as bravery: hosting Christmas involving 3 year olds requires a certain fortitude. Having children in the first place is an act of bravery and optimism. They bring change, uncertainty, and the most joy ever.

Solstice journal: La tamalada

On this darkest day of the year, we found light in gathering, working together, and making tamales.

I started preparing weeks ago, making sure we had sufficient hojas (corn husks), that the 10 pound pork roast went from freezer to refrigerator in time to defrost, locating the chile pods my momma sent from New Mexico. Then yesterday morning I put that roast into one of my huge pots with salt, pepper corns, chile flakes, garlic, coriander corns, and oregano. It boiled all day and started to fall off the bone in late afternoon. That’s when I toasted my chile pods in the oven and then steeped them in hot water for 5 minutes. Into the blender with some (a lot?) of the steeping water and more garlic and whirred until smooth. Meat into two fry pans, shredded with forks. Into one: more garlic, more salt, the red chile sauce, and cumin. Maybe more oregano. At this point, it is “to taste.” In the other pan went chopped green chile and MORE GARLIC. Then everything went outside (where it would freeze) overnight.

Today I made the corn gruel (masa) with corn flour (masa harina), yellow corn flour, salt, baking powder, lard, and the boiling pork broth. We smeared the masa on the softened corn husks, added a large dollop of meat, rolled them up and steamed them for about an hour and a half.

Michael made red chile sauce and black beans, I made guacamole, and we have cottage cheese because one of my daughters inherited a Danish palate (where black pepper is spicy). Everyone declared the tamales to be “edible,” which was Aunt Harriette’s word of culinary praise. Or as my Tío John would say: “pasa.”

Being surrounded by these celestial bodies is more than enough to light up our lives. Now it is time to sit down, watch the fire, and resolve to do dishes in the morning.

Toolbox journal: carbon steel knives

We cook almost every day in this household. Hard to justify all the time we spend producing food if we don’t eat it! That, and we cook better food than you can find in most restaurants. This means I get to be very demanding when it comes to food tools.

My newest acquisition is this paring knife. We have purchased and been gifted a number of knives over the years, including Wüsthof stainless steel, which has a great reputation. I have never been thrilled with any of the stainless versions. They do not keep edges well and are difficult to sharpen. Then I watched the movie Julie and Julia, in which Julia Child explained that her friendship with Avis Desoto began with a letter to Avis’ husband regarding an article he wrote about the joys of carbon steel knives. If Julia waxes poetic over knives, a cook needs to pay attention.

The only carbon steel knife we had in our arsenal is this unmarked 14” blade. It could serve as a short sword! But it does keep an edge well and can be honed on a steel quickly. We don’t use it often due to its unwieldy length, but it works beautifully on our huge cabbages and other large garden produce. Sometimes you need a giant knife. A giant sharp knife minimizes injuries.

What convinced me to squander my saved up pennies (dimes, nickles, and large bills) was this birthday gift from Michael. It is a Henkel carbon steel chef’s knife. I use it daily. It remains sharp. When it dulls, I can sharpen it myself on a steel. The handle fills my hand and allows a firm grip. Carbon steel knives require care to prevent rusting and pitting. I wash and dry my carbon steel immediately after every use.

I’m showing the knife with onions as having a clean cut on an onion reduces the amount of irritating chemicals an onion releases when cut or bruised. The thin edge of my new paring knife allows me to skin onions efficiently. I love it! Today we are making venison stew with corn and wild mushrooms, rosemary, wine…and a lot of onions. A good use of our garden produce on a snowy December day.

As Julia would say: Bon Appetit!

Thanksgiving journal: every day is a gift

Michael and I cut our Christmas tree this week. A friend offered us access to her land on which she and her husband planted a wide variety of evergreens. He died a few years ago, but the love they shared for this land remains. I give thanks for good and generous friends.

I welcome the beauty they created into my home and my life. Most of the ornaments on our tree have been given to us, or were made by children. I love taking them out every year, with all the memories they bring.

We did feast on Thanksgiving. The Grand Girl had three helpings of carrots! I made them with butter and fresh thyme this year. Michael added fresh rosemary to the squash. Most of our feast came from our gardens. I give thanks every day for the energy, time and space for creating good food to share.

Michael’s father bought this china when he was stationed in the Philippines right after WWII. He gave it to his mother, and then received it back when she died. Now we have it. We use it! The flatware was a gift from a dear friend in Alabama. We have been showered in generosity.

I am thankful for family! I grew up far from an extended family. Not that we didn’t visit, but it was not on a weekly or monthly basis. Having the ability to watch the Grands grow is a true blessing.

Jackie, a friend who now lives in Illinois, stopped by on her way home from visiting in the Cities. Having time to talk and catch up with long time friends is a blessing.

I have been walking this road for ten years now, and it brings me something new every day. How light hits the seed heads against the darkness of the woods. Finding where deer have bedded overnight. Frost on tall grass. The patterns of wind and sun and clouds. So much to do! So much to see! It’s a wonderful life, lived one day at a time.

Harvest journal: making tallow

Suet is fat taken directly off an animal, and usually refers to the type of fat that is solid at room temperature. Tallow is what you get when you render suet, and also is solid at room temperature.

This is snow, but it reminds me of suet…without the blood. You are welcome, all my friends who really don’t care to see dead animal parts.

Once I have a batch of suet, I put it into one of my big pots and add water until I can see water start to float the fat. I cover the pot and bring it to a simmer. I simmer the fat for a couple of hours, until all that hard suet becomes soft. I then uncover the pot and mash the fat into small pieces with a potato masher.

I boil that fat on a low fire until all the water has boiled away, stirring occasionally so the fat solids don’t stick to the bottom of my pot. This can take a couple of days, if only because I turn off the fire when I’m not around to supervise. A grease fire would be bad. Eventually, the fat gets to be this clear golden color and the solids begin to brown and crisp.

I separate the tallow from the solids by ladling the whole thing into a wire sieve over that big glass mixing bowl. I’ve tried pouring it from the pot into the sieve, but it tends to splash all over. Tallow is like paraffin or wax and sticks to the table and everything else. Before the tallow hardens on my sieve, I sprinkle it with baking soda and then wash in hot sudsy water. The baking soda combines with the fat to release it from everything else.

Once cooled, I cover my bowl and put it into a cold place. I let it cool uncovered to keep water from condensing on the tallow. The picnic table qualifies as a cold place this time of year. Because the fat shrinks at a different rate than the glass, it pulls away from the bowl and slides right out.

Small bits of fat solids sink to the bottom and need to be removed before using the tallow to make soap.

Michael was a potter in a prior life, and would like to be again. This means we still have clay trimming tools, which work perfectly for trimming the solids off the tallow. This process need to be done quickly because those trimmings become sticky as the tallow warms.

The scrapings and fat solids go to the birds. Less fat than in suet blocks sold for winter bird feeders, but the chickens still love it. The ducks, not so much.

So far we have about 8 pounds of tallow, and will probably end up with a total of about 10 pounds.

Michael will turn the tallow into soap. I LOVE deer tallow soap. Michael is not concerned with making uniform bars that are pretty, but the soap treats my delicate skin well. Thank you to these lovely animals that provide us with so much!

Harvest journal: making burger

Today we made hamburger out of the odds and ends left over from the cutlets, stew meat, and roasts already packaged and frozen.

We cut the larger pieces into strips and layer everything between waxed paper before freezing. The fat is almost all gone, but the tendons grind better if frozen first. If left unfrozen, they tend to wind around the grinding barrel, which then requires frequent stops to clear them out. Ask us how we know…

Michael put the strips through the grinder once.

Then once again.

Then I weigh and package. The Foodsaver uses plastic bags. I suppose we could use butcher paper. But having the air vacuumed out of the package means less spoilage from freezer burn. It’s all a balancing act! We recycle as much as we can, but frankly, plastics are amazingly versatile and form a huge part of our surroundings, even on our subsistence farm. If we didn’t use plastic packaging, we would probably smoke more of our meat, which involves nitrates, those notorious carcinogens that keep the meat from spoiling while smoking. By not purchasing a lot of other stuff that keeps our consumer economy going, we minimize our plastics footprint.

We ended up with 30 lbs of burger, for a total venison harvest of 65 pounds. It has taken about 5 days of hard work to take that 65 pounds from hoof to freezer. I am ever thankful that we are both still strong and well enough to do this work.

Harvest journal: “Shoot deer. Cut them up. Eat them.”

Gun season opened late this year. The rut was done about two weeks ago. No reason for deer to be running around. Even so, you will never see a deer unless you go and sit, quietly, and listen to the sounds of the woods.

The mice had been in my stand, nibbling on hickory nuts.

The trumpeter swans have been out in force.

A few Sandhill Cranes lasted until the second day of the season, when the temperatures dropped and water began to freeze.

I didn’t have many birds at my feeder, and very few squirrels. Another year without a crop in the field has suppressed their local populations.

A pair of pileated woodpeckers eat the dried grapes off our fences. ‘Tis the season for jays and woodpeckers.

I saw a couple of deer moving in the brush. They would move a few steps and I’d see them. They’d stop and disappear. I never had a shot and they wandered off across the neighbor’s field.

To give you an idea how well prey animals can hide, there is a rabbit in the middle of this photo.

Around 1 PM I crawled out of my stand and went inside to warm up. Then back out, but I stayed on the ground. My knees can’t take sitting on the stool in my stand, so I looked for an alternate place on ground level. This is the ladder to my first stand. The basswood blew down several years ago, taking the platform with it.

It’s still a good spot to find signs that deer have passed by. A buck stopped and rubbed the velvet off his antlers at the base of the basswood. I was leaning against my ladder when I heard two shots and knew Michael had seen a deer.

As indeed he had.

Two deer. The first doe he shot through the lungs. She ran off and the second doe stepped out of the woods. He shot that one through the spine and it dropped in its tracks. I stroked this second one, admired its clean smell, and thanked it for its life. I got the Ranger and we brought them home and got them hung to cool.

Felix loved petting the deer. He’s the one who chants, “Shoot deer. Cut them up. Eat them!”

Imogen stayed inside and chased Zeke. She started crawling on Opening Day!

Michael skinned and quartered the deer the next day. We’ve been cutting them up ever since. (We did take time off for Thanksgiving.). I got the last bits of meat and fat separated today.

The fat is rendering. Michael will make soap from the tallow. My skin loves the soap he makes. Tomorrow we will grind burger. We will end up with about 45 pounds of venison in the freezer.

We had venison liver and onions to celebrate. The last of our cabbages stir fried with brown rice balanced the meal. “Shoot deer. Cut them up. Eat them.”

Harvest journal: a warm autumn extended our harvest season

Mid-November and my deck flowers still bloom.

We harvested small cabbages that grew from stumps we left in the ground two days ago and have been using them as fresh greens.

I sliced up the last of the large cabbages on October 30th. They sat on our dining room table for two weeks, and were still good. I brined them and made another batch of sauerkraut. Michael says it’s the best he’s ever had. This will go into the outside refrigerator to keep company with the pickles. Good thing we still have some kielbasa!

Michael gathered all the green beans we neglected and dried on the vine. I’ve been shelling them out in my spare moments in front of the fire. We will save some to plant next year and will boil up the rest for dinner one of these days.

My furboys keep me company.

Michael picked all the apples in October, but the weather was warm enough to press them on November 8th. We got a new press that uses a bottle jack to push a piston down on the ground up apple mash. The apples were very dry this year and gave us very dark cider. I look forward to trying it after it has fermented. We got 5 gallons, which is more than we thought we’d get, given how the early hail harmed the harvest.

I gathered these shaggy manes from a hillside in town. I was driving to the store on a lightening-fast trip for more wallboard mud on Veterans Day and hesitated about a millisecond before pulling over, hiking back, and picking these lovelies. We had them as a base for duck breasts. Whatever else I was supposed to do took a backseat to cleaning and sautéing the shaggies. They tend to turn black and bitter if left too long.

The very next day I found more oysters on the big elm log. We had those with venison medallions.

We had them with the last of our garden tomatoes. We will have tomatoes canned and dried, but will wait for our garden to gift us more before having them fresh again. The long, dry autumn gave us ripe chiles, a singular event. I am drying them for seed.

Orange and yellow jelly mushrooms. Not edible, but fascinating.

The field mostly grew weeds this year. We need to find a new renter. Even so, I would look up as I cleared out the tomato cages and rolled up fencing and marveled at how the sun makes those weeds shine like gold.

Imogen steals the show again and again. Either that, or she’s easier to photograph than those grands who have learned to run and make good use of that knowledge.

It storms outside as I write this. The sunrise comes late enough to enjoy while drinking coffee. Michael puts the birds to bed at 4 pm, shortly before sunset. We sleep more during this season. Good night.

Celebration journal: Days of the Dead and of the Living

The Days of the Dead come on November 1 (All Saints Day) and 2 (All Souls Day), although most people only recognize All Hallow’s Eve (Halloween), on October 31. In Mexico, people gather in Hallowed Ground (Campo Santo) or cemeteries to commune with the ancestors. It is much colder here in the North, but we try to maintain the intent of spending time with our Dearly Departed, maintaining their memories and their love in our children and their children.

Clyde and Irene took up residence in the Veterans Memorial Cemetery near Spooner, Wisconsin. Other people came to visit their loved ones while we were there. I think they appreciated our idea of picnicking with our vets. The 3 year olds had a great time throwing snowballs at each other. Irene got to meet Imogen for the first time. She really wanted a sister for Felix.

Our Grantsburg stop didn’t have snow. The Grands had a great time running around and eating cheese curds. Auntie Harriette was notorious for stealing other people’s cheese curds. Uncle Klink loved to drink wine, even though he would never be seen buying any. Drinking was something one did not do as a pillar of the community. We spent many Thanksgivings and Christmases with them. It is only right to spend All Souls Day with them now.

Our last stop was in Cushing, where many of Michael’s family reside. When our time comes to return to dust, we will mingle with our ancestors here. We will be in good company.

It is also Felix’s birthday: we celebrate both the Dead and the Living on November 2nd.

I made Felix’s cake on Halloween. It snowed all day, after raining an inch and a half. Talk about a trick and a treat! I remember taking our girls out begging door to door during various snow storms. Luckily, the weather cleared for our outing today. Here’s to many more years celebrating, come rain or come shine!

Grands journal: visits and babysits

We love having our children visit. It helps that they bring their children!

We like them so much we’ll go and visit them!

I find it reassuring that my grandbabies will fall asleep on me.

Dog walk journal: random beauty

Late October and we still have flowers.

The leaves have been falling, sometimes even before turning colors.

Even so, the woods are worth a walk.

Spills from harvesters provide Zeke with mid-walk snacks.

A trapped rabbit provided a snack for someone else.

Foraging Journal: October oysters

The end of gardening season allows me extra time to walk with Zeke. This past week, I made it down to the river after a couple of weeks (months?!?) of not having the luxury of long walks.

Early morning light now comes at mid-morning!

Lichen clothes boulders in lacy finery.

After a very wet summer, drought now looms and the river runs low.

A stump where I found oyster mushrooms last year had them again, but they looked old.

I went traipsing through the underbrush just to check, and found my reward!

Oysters have a floral smell that reminds me of lavender.

Wild mushroom omelette! It fueled our fishing trip.