2010: We Are Thankful

2010: the year of growing thankfulness. It's been a big year.

I stood on the site of our future yurt and looked up slope (above) and down slope (below).

From the road, other than the collection of white poles in the ground, our farm infrastructure doesn't look much different than it did a year ago.

We happily added a motor home to our assortment of covered living spaces, but no barn or workshop, no greenhouse or large storage shed make us look like "real farmers." And yet.

A year ago, we had a frozen row of almost 80 augured holes, waiting for the ground to thaw enough to plant our trees. That wouldn't happen until March. Now we have about 300 apple trees.

A year ago, we had an overgrown corner of our land, covered with small saplings and a few oaks. Now we have a cherry orchard and peach orchard (above and below).

A year ago, we had two growing pigs. They were delicious. Now we have two new pigs in the freezer, and a gilt almost ready for breeding. She's lonely, and friendly in her loneliness.

We have empty structures dotting our farm. Empty piglet pen, still stuck on the downhill slope, waiting for new residents.

Empty beehives. A very disappointing failure, though we hope that the Queen or Queens have found a suitable place to overwinter, and are happy and healthy, eating their honey stores.

Empty pen-itentiary, waiting for the spring and new chickens, to scratch the soil surface and fertilize the orchard. For all my initial chicken flavor disappointment, I made chicken pate today, with the three pounds of saved chicken livers from my pasture birds. I don't think I would have a more intense, delicious appetizer in a fine restaurant in France. Delicious. I eagerly await next year's chicken growing, when we will trust that half our birds won't die of heat prostration. (Another disappointing failure, but at least it wasn't a total loss.)

We've purchased quite a bit of equipment this year. The cattle trailer brought our five new cows to the farm.

The mill will "soon" mill lumber for our yurt foundation (or cut boards for whatever other project we need).

Little Blue, the tractor, is put to use almost every day, and we are happy to have him.

I had more experience in the garden this year: the garlic that grew turned out well. We enjoyed kale for several months; tasted a BLT with the BLT all from our land. And I learned a good lesson in growing: crops you don't water don't do that well. (It was a hot summer, and I didn't want to go outside a whole lot. Farming: it'll grow your character in ways you might not even want!) My garden today nestles several beds of garlic, and several other beds of motley, frost-bitten root crops. Pulling squishy radishes and grape-sized turnips today pleased the cows. I'll try to be more diligent with my planting next year.

It's been a year of much new life, both new to this earth and new to us. Most happily, our two heifers.

Most appreciated: Bianca, our milk cow.

Most difficult to acquire: Fern (and Babe and Toots), with Phil's mammoth, 27 hour straight drive (with numerous stops in frigid weather in strange gas stations in the middle of the night to try to fix the lighting on the trailer).

And, most masculine: Benny the ram and Beau the buck.

It's been a year of death. We buried Chloe the dog. (And almost every day I think, "I can set this pot down and no one will touch it! Hooray!")

And, much more painfully, beautifully, tearfully, we buried my niece, Gracie Lou.

Through all of this, and much more, the Lord has been faithful.

Thanks be to God.

The Tale of a Stockpot

Up early and working efficiently, I prepped a pot of stock, and set it aside to soak for a while before I simmered the pot. When I went into the motor home to heat some soup for Phil and I, I took the pot to the barn to heat.

Hours later, Phil ran out of the barn yelling, "Amy! What's on fire!?"

A thick smoke hung heavy in the barn, immediately permeating my clothes when I went in to bring the pot outside.

As I set my burned mess of nasty bones and chicken feet in a patch of icy snow, I laughed ruefully at the All-Clad pot, no longer a gleaming, professional-looking pot. (In the photo above, you can see the pot as it looked as I simmered baking soda in it to clean it.)

See, the All-Clad pot had been my biggest splurge of my adult life. After Phil had owned his own business for a couple of years, he was earning good money, and I was tired of living with a pinch in the finances. I had taken a short cooking class, and knew that All-Clad was the professional brand, so I spent $250 and bought one.

And it came, and I liked it, but I sort of wondered: is this all there is to American suburban life? Happy marriage, happy children, nice house in a paradise city, and an expensive stock pot, but ... really?

Shortly after, our friends the Bosleys challenged us to pray for mission, for ourselves and our church, and we eventually found ourselves in Virginia on a farm.

***

Speaking of which, we are in a mad research phase, in between life. Multi-talented Phil surveyed the greenhouse location and drew up a 3-D model, including calculations on how much he will have to dig down and move over in order to level the ground. He also researched which greenhouse to buy (there are, it seems, dozens, if not hundreds, of options).

We were supposed to have a man come out to talk to us about metal storage buildings today, too, but the 10am appointment came and went with an interesting call: "The salesman had trouble with his car. We HAVE to move this building TODAY because it's end of year. Don't hang up on me!"

Which, since we have a friend who briefly sold metal buildings, and had told us this spiel verbatim, made us not too concerned: we prefer not to deal with uninformative, hard-selling (dishonest) salesmen.

We are also trying to come up with a general planting and harvesting schedule, to make sure we have crops all season. Not forgetting, of course, that we have other tasks, like shearing and milking and pruning almost 400 trees.

Fun!

Super Grumpy

Interesting Use for a Tractor, Number 1: Use the bucket to catch the woodchips so the humanure buckets have new, dry, uncompacted chips.

Looking at my vague food journal, I see that the one other time I had dairy this month, the next day I was a "weepy basket case." Blah. That about sums up today, too.

I miss eating dairy products, but I miss cheerful Amy a whole lot more. Self-hurt, anger, and hate was hard to imagine even yesterday, but 1/8 teaspoon of butter made me wonder how I could ever have been happy.

Maybe there's no connection. (I'm not planning to risk it for a good long time.)

We are moving ahead on the greenhouse. We had to talk through all the options, though, and that took most of the morning: do we have to have a greenhouse? Could we use just cold frames instead? How do we go about preparing the soil? When we finally got the corners staked, it was warm enough that the ground was completely mush. (Below is a photo of the greenhouse spot, before any changes.)

Phil spent the rest of the day reading up on growing, and I spent about 8 hours cleaning up from Christmas. I am not sure how our living areas get so cluttered and dirty so quickly, but it does.

Mortgage Blessing

This morning we headed up to our mortgage company to sign paperwork for the new terms of our mortgage. Incredibly, we're dropping not two percent but two and a quarter! "Merry Christmas," said our lender. No kidding!

Back home, Phil and I talked through the buildings we think we'll need for the next several decades, and talked through placement. I'm very pleased with what we came up with: it fits the land, it fits us, it's multi-purpose and practical. And we have settled on a site for our yurt, just down-slope from where we live now.

First priority: greenhouse, so we can start seedlings indoors (I can't think of a single surface that could hold seeds well in the space we have now!). And since onion seeds need to go in soon, and peppers within a month, we need to get busy.

In other news, after a week or so of absolute cheerful thoughts, I tasted a tiny bit of homemade butter. Within fifteen minutes, I grew really upset at Phil, and then started having downright depressing thoughts. Hmm. A connection? I'm hoping not.

Hope and Excitement

I awoke Sunday morning filled with enthusiasm for a full-service CSA. I tried to let my imagination run wild. I think we could potentially serve 10 families (or 20 adults) who would be interested.

The Kimballs in New York (from The Dirty Life, which I mentioned in the previous post), with 500 acres of farm to play with, grow grains and beans, as well as about 10,000 bales of hay. We would skip growing those, but could offer bulk organic grains and beans.

Other than that, with a couple of steers added to the mix, and the hopeful expansion of our garden, we should be able to duplicate what the Kimballs what they have done this coming year. We won't do grains or beans, but could provide organic bulk goods to customers. And we couldn't do maple syrup, but if we try bees again, in 2012, we could potentially have honey. We'd need to buy a steer or two to finish this year, so we could offer beef, and we'd need to hope and pray that our market garden does well. And we should try bees again, so we will have honey next year.

Otherwise, though, we've done what they're doing: pigs, dairy, eggs, chickens, vegetables.

I've started reading the amazing Eliot Coleman again, reading up on four-season harvest, so we wouldn't have to grow and store all the food for the winter months. Phil and I stayed up until 1am, talking through farm layout, infrastructure.

Suddenly, he said, "I wonder if it's time to go with the yurt. I just don't see us building an underground house any time in the next year."

And I think I'm about ready to make that order. So in the next few months, perhaps he'll get some wood milled and built for a yurt foundation. It might take most of the year, but it could be that in 2011 we'll have a larger living space.

I don't know if the hope and excitement are a result of a success GAPS diet, or if it's just that the Solstice has passed, and my body recognizes that spring is coming, but I have such happy anticipation!

Merry Christmas!

We all awoke this morning to open our Christmas stockings. They were really full!

Jadon worked through the presents methodically and quickly, reaching in, opening, announcing, and setting aside.

Joe worked through slowly. He would open a present, show it to Phil, show it to me, set it down carefully, and then look down. "Open more?!" he would ask each time.

Here Phil is hamming it up, pretending to be enthusiastic about a box of Ziploc bags (actually much-needed new muck boots).

I read one of the books I got for Christmas, A Dirty Life, which my Dad reviewed on his blog here. (For the record: I did not like it quite as much as he did. I took exception to her claim that they were "starting a farm from scratch," when they had experience, free land, excellent soil, a house and farm buildings—even electricity and water. We're REALLY starting from scratch by comparison! And I would love to have $25K in free hay the first year, and over $50K in income, but I have been working on not envying, and am trying to get past that.) I really appreciated the author's farm idea: provide all the food a person would need for a well-rounded diet for a year. All the milk, cheese, butter, lard, pork, beef, chicken, eggs, vegetables, and maple syrup.

This is so elegant, so diverse! How could we make it work here? I don't know if we could, but it might be fun to try.

In other news: Phil went to roll a hay bale in to Bianca's dry lot the other day. She came out to meet the bale, and then, as it rolled, she charged into the dry lot so fast that she spooked the three Vermont cows, who then bolted out the open gate. Phil called for help then. We have certainly done our share of animal chasing this year (though, from the sounds of the book above, we're not alone in that. Farming, apparently, is a series of animal escapes).

One of the benefits of a small town: at 11:15 yesterday morning, the Postmistress called me. "We have a package for you here still; if you need it before Christmas, come on up. We're closing at noon today, but I'll probably be here until 12:15."

I cannot imagine such service in the city. She had to hunt for our number, too: unlisted cell phone with a Colorado area code. So nice!

Christmas Is Closer

Shortly after breakfast on Wednesday, I found the gifts that sounded most like Legos among those for the boys, and hid them around the farm. The theme of our scavenger hunt was, "New things this year." For Joe, he found his gift on the new tractor.

Abraham found his near where we had new chicks hatch.

Isaiah went to the "new" cattle trailer which picked up five new cows.

And Jadon ran to the beehives and found his gift.

Then back to the house for our big opening. While all boys were excited, Abraham's utter glee surpassed them all (in the photo below, he is hoisting the Lego box above his head, like a triumphant weight lifter). He has lamented for months that his older brothers have Star Wars Legos, and he has none. He watches the imaginative scenes his brothers act and re-enact, and has had no way to participate.

When Abraham opened his gift, he was immediately a part of the story, and said to me that afternoon, "Mom, look! We're all playing happily together!"

And at night, he said, "This was the best day of my life."

I was torn between sorrow that something small and plastic would be so transformative, and glad that he is young enough that a Lego set is sufficiently amazing to warrant such enthusiasm.

Perhaps we are silly, opening such a special gift a few days early, but I rather like it. The boys have had two days to really enjoy a single gift before we get to further opening.

Oh—and I opened a large box, with a much-hoped-for jab planter. Next year: heirloom corn.

And Phil got a garden digging fork: next year, maybe better potatoes?

Christmas Is Coming Photos

Jadon came into the room the other day, dressed as "a WWI fighter pilot," complete with helmet (made by his shirt wrapped turban-style about his head) and goggles (formerly used at the pool).

But wait ... he transforms into a super-hero, too! (I absolutely love this photo because, since about age 2, Jadon has been leery of the camera. To see him with a huge grin of delight is normal in real-life, but rare on camera.)

Isaiah wasn't going to miss out on the fun. He emerged shortly as both fighter pilot ...

... and super-hero.

We have been having a great week leading up to Christmas. My Grandma sent me some crocheted snowflakes (she'll be 90 soon, and still making delicate Christmas decorations for her grandchildren: amazing!); they also spruce up our house (here on the towel that covers the window at night).

We've been reading The Twelve Days of Christmas in Virginia, which Phil's aunt sent last year. It's fun to have a better sense of place now, and we've even been to a few of the locations in the last year. Jadon, especially, sings out at the top of his lungs, "Five pewter mugs!" and Joe waits and then, when we get to "a cardinal in a dogwood tree," he yells "Card dog tree!" Any song he can yell in is a good song for him.

We finished school today for Christmas break, and the boys celebrated with gelato.

And we've opened a couple of presents. With our living space so small, it's good to spread out the opening, so we can find a place for all these things. (Or at least, so I tell myself.) In my family tradition, we open a present each, starting with the youngest and working up. My Dad would take the obligatory photo of each member of the family. So, for your viewing pleasure, we have the Lykosh boys, opening presents a bit early.

Joe, overwhelmed with his good fortune of not one pair of boots, but two—one set even Lightning McQueen!

Abraham, yet to uncover what treasure the package holds. (Books, including two in the Mercy Watson series. He now has six, and has checked with me several times: "I have all of them, right, Mom? They're all for me?")

Isaiah's present, too, turned out to be books. It kills me that I didn't have my camera ready at the exact instant when he realized that the box contained sequels to Spy Mice; had I captured it, you would have seen unalloyed joy. However, I have the moment immediately afterward, above, and a bit later, when he was able to pose, below.

And, for good measure, his reaction when he saw the illustration of "ants in the pants" on another book of fun. (Ah, the humor of a 6-year-old.)

Jadon opens his box, with instructions on a variety of card tricks. My brother Justin is an expert, and I think Jadon will have fun with that.

***
In other news, Bianca is still throwing small clumps in her milk, and her somatic cell count is getting higher. However, I found in a book a likely explanation of what is happening. Apparently, cows can get a quarter with scar tissue, that will feel like an egg (yes). This harbors bacteria, and, if a person starts to feed aloe pellets, the cow might throw some of that infection. And, surprise!, I started feeding aloe pellets earlier this week.

I again stripped out Bianca's quarter four times today, and dosed her with garlic juice and a variety of homeopathic remedies that sound applicable (and more aloe pellets). She is still not acting sick, so I am hoping that she is simply building her immunity right now, and that her quarter will be better than it ever has been very soon.

(Her unproductive quarter may be part of the reason we're her fourth owners in five years.)

And we resolved our mortgage issue, very favorably, with a lower interest rate (such, such welcome news!).

Happy First Day of Winter!

Our Little Loan Snafu

While sitting in church yesterday, I had an overwhelming compulsion to be done with the family finances. Over the years, Phil and I have talked about it, but I like paying the bills and seeing where the money goes.

Except I don't anymore. It's become a burden too heavy for me to bear.

So I gave it to Phil. And, hooray! Perfect timing.

I got this month's mortgage bill and noticed today that the payment due for next month was not a monthly payment, but the remainder of the loan. "Ha, ha," I thought. "Their computer issued a bill in error. I wonder how many thousands of calls they've received this week. What a bummer for them, right before Christmas."

Imagine my surprise when I called the mortgage company and found that we have an entirely different type of loan than I expected! AND, somehow, Phil and I have no "Truth in Lending" paperwork, or any paperwork that describes our loan. I'm not sure, after all the home loans and refi's we've done over the years, how we closed without seeing and filing those documents, but we did. (At least, I thought I was fastidious about keeping all paperwork together in the proper file. It is conceivable that we have missing paperwork somewhere, but, I think, unlikely.)

This isn't the end of the world. Apparently, the loan will change now, but we're waiting to hear details about this oddity in the world of banking. (We do have vague recollections of when we purchased: it's challenging to get a loan on unimproved land, and we must have taken a three-year fixed, assuming we would have a house at the end of three years, at which point we could have a "regular" loan. Enter Joe, and a year's delay; enter house not selling, and then selling for less than expected; enter a year of personal growth in a trailer, and, voila! no house in three years, and, thus, no new loan.)

Besides that little snafu, Phil has taken over the finances with vision and spreadsheet expertise. I would expect no less from an engineer. I should have given it to him years ago.

A nice vision, after the day began horribly. Waking from bad dreams in the night, I went out to milk and found that Bianca had a quarter with clumps that looked like butter.

That seems like it should be mastitis. The books say that mastitis involves a quarter that's hot, firm or hard to the touch, and painful.

Bianca's quarter feels lumpy, not swollen; normal temperature, not hot. And I prodded and massaged her udder for 15 minutes with nary a moo or a kick on her part. How painful could it be, if she reacts not at all?

The California Mastitis Test revealed high somatic cell counts; maybe mastitis level, or maybe just elevated, "concerning" level. Could it just be a plugged duct? I don't know! And it's the quarter that always gives less milk, so maybe it's been an issue for a while, and I just haven't noticed? (Oh, the guilt!)

Frustrating! She eats nothing but hay and some dried molasses while milking (which, while not a product Bianca could ever graze in nature, it is a remedy for restoring health that some books recommend). She has full access to kelp, and is not pushed at all production-wise. On paper, there is no reason she should have a problem quarter.

On the other hand, she is from warm Tennessee, so the cold weather, combined with a sudden shift to once a day milking around the same time of plunging temperatures, may have caused this issue, whatever it is.

I went out to strip her quarter four more times during the day, and she gradually threw fewer clumps. She didn't milk out much at all any of those four times (a few teaspoons at least, maybe a cup at most).

Anyway, after the first depressing milking, I went to bring today's milk to the freezer for future spraying on our fields. With the processed chickens, the frozen vegetables from our garden, and various chicken carcasses waiting to become stock, our two small chest freezers didn't have room for the meat of two pigs, too, so we thankfully turned on our industrial freezer for the first time, put the boxes of pig there along with the milk-for-the-fields (that we haven't needed to keep at a constant cold temperature, and, thus, just stored there).

I opened the door and found all the jars of raw milk frozen so solidly that they pushed off the tops of the jars an inch high, with frozen milk running down the sides and all over the bottom of the freezer.

What a way to start a Monday!

I closed the freezer and went to eat breakfast. I'll deal with it another day.

Picked Up Pigs

Phil was out of town from Wednesday to Friday, so I wasn't too surprised when it started to snow on Thursday. Of course! Inclement weather while the man is out of town.

Thankfully, I knew in advance, so I parked the van at the top of the driveway, and had no trouble getting out to get Phil on Friday.

On the way, we drove up to get our processed pigs. We were pleased to find that our two pigs, after their heads were removed and their innards taken out, weighed 168 pounds and 138 pounds (the purebred Berkshire as the heavier of the two). We had a few disappointments with the processing this time, compared with when Phil and Ara butchered earlier this year (no feet, hocks, or heads, and no internal organs), but we are pleased to have meat that we could potentially sell.

Despite continued cold weather, Phil was able to thaw the lines in the motor home, so I was able to do dishes today for the first time all week. What a relief!

And a few photos: Isaiah has built several impressive Cuisenaire rod structures.

Joe, up late one night after a late nap, found some goggles and put them on.

And we are in Christmas cheer now, with the recently uncovered stockings hanging, brightening our room.

Much to Be Thankful For

I have the solution to keeping warm. Long underwear, regular long-sleeved shirt, two wool sweaters and, when exiting the house, down jacket and wool scarf.

The lower half, though, was a bit chilly, despite long underwear, flannel pajama bottoms, and jeans. In my continued quest to rediscover my possessions in the storage trailer, though, I came across an unopened package of air force quilted pants from Phil's Dad (size medium, which might explain why they were unopened: they fit me, and Phil's Dad is about a foot taller than I am).

Now I am warm! I go outside and do chores, and cook, and peek in boxes in the storage trailer, all in 20 degree weather, all without chill! I am so thankful.

And at night, we've capitulated and allow the three younger boys to join us. For some reason, though, one boy or another cries out in the night, so the one night of uninterrupted sleep has not repeated yet.

Yesterday morning, I was especially grateful for the new pants: it was so cold the night before, the ice in the cattle trough was over an inch thick. Thankfully, Phil has started to drain the water line every night, so the line wasn't frozen. However, the pump house was, so we had no water at all for a time. (I had checked the pump house a month ago, and the lightbulb we keep there to prevent freezing had burned out. We purchased new, but had not installed the bulb yet. Thankfully, about four hours after we turned the new bulb on, the pump worked again.)

It was so cold, a butternut squash left in the barn had frozen to the core.

But we are all warm. The boys even decline sweatshirts much of the time. Their circulation must be better than mine.

I had a marvelous day today as I peeked in storage. I realized last week that, after last Christmas, I packed away our Christmas stockings ... somewhere. So I have tried to open a box or two a day, seeking those socks (and any clothes or books I no longer require: make way for the new!).

I found them today! All our socks! What a relief. Christmas can come now.

Even better, I found my shoes. The week before we moved to Virginia, I went to a great Goodwill and came away with about six pairs of shoes, mostly church/city shoes. Living in the country meant that those shoes weren't practical, and since living space is so tight, and since we didn't even attend church the first six months we were here, I packed them away, pulling out one serviceable pair, in case I needed to go somewhere dressy.

That serviceable pair wore a hole in the bottom after a few months, though, and I was left with holey sneakers (now replaced with new) and wooden sandals as my choices for church footwear.

One Sunday I made a frantic foray into storage, seeking shoes. I didn't want to buy new: I had six pairs waiting for me. But they were not to be found, and that was a Sunday I cried on the way to church, embarrassed to feel too poor to have anything but wooden clogs, despite chilly weather. (We aren't poor, but the shoe situation made me FEEL poor, if that makes sense.)

Today, the shoes turned up. How fun, to put them on again, to admire their colors and shapes, their make and their quality.

When we visited my friend Jill last year, a bizarre circumstance (instigated by one of my sons and a Guido Cars-the-Movie car) caused her brand new Jeep keys to vanish. Months later, she found them, and called to say, "I am more happy to have them back than I was if they were just always there!"

And so it is with my shoes: so, so thankful to have them.

***

I had an epiphany of sorts earlier this week. I mentioned to my Mom that our house in Boulder averaged about $7K a year in maintenance and upgrades (we happened to own it around its 40th anniversary, a time, I've noticed, that houses tend to give up the ghost on many original fixtures, fashions, and fences). What have we spent on this little space?

Probably not nothing, since we had to put up shoe racks, needed sealant for the door, and bought several space heaters to keep from freezing (and the window A/C to keep from cooking). So maybe we're at $500 for the year. I like that!

I like that I pulled a box of old Playmobil out of storage today, and all four boys played in the room while I worked, happy, focused, creative. While I don't like cooking in a fully separate area (either barn or motor home), I do like that I trust the boys to get along, that I rarely hear loud outbursts of hysterical crying while I'm away, often for an hour cooking or washing dishes. I miss hearing their chatter, but I like that they don't need me right there.

We've been in this unconventional living space about a year and a half. I realized that there's a part of me that has been waiting for a house all that time, almost like I'm waiting for my real "life in Virginia" to begin, once I have all my possessions around me, and a real kitchen to cook fantastic feasts.

I'm done waiting for that day, and am ready to embrace my life here, trailer and all. That doesn't make me trailer trash; I would like to think it makes me thankful.

Anecdotes on a Wintery Day

This December is colder than last year. I don't think my eggs left outside froze solid until January, and they were mostly frozen this morning. The lead rope for Bianca yesterday was frozen stiff, like a twig. Eventually I managed to get it tied, but it was tough to make it bend.

After a chilly rain on Saturday night, we awoke to running water on Sunday morning. After five days without, and imposing on our friend for showers on Saturday, I was thrilled to be able to do dishes in the sink again. It was a good reminder: I may bemoan the lack of dishwasher at times, but lack of running water suddenly restored made me extremely thankful for any homemaking aid.

When we returned from the snowy Shenandoah yesterday night, our water was again frozen, but maybe it will thaw again soon.

You can tell from the photo above that Buttercup remains sad and lonely: her tail is uncurled. Since all had curly tails before the older pigs departed, I hope her tail will curl again.

As we approach the end of 2010, I realize this is the first even year of the Twenty-first Century that Phil has not had an addition to his family. I have been thankful for the physical and mental reprieve of not having a pregnancy this year. It's been full enough and hard enough without the morning sickness and diminished mobility, the fatigue and mental incapacity.

I love the result of pregnancy, but the nine months itself is just tough.

Some stories from the boys.

Jadon and Isaiah have discovered string games, and have worked their way through the three books I had in my youth. They come to me periodically to "trap" my hand and miraculously loosen it, or to "bite" me with a mosquito, or to tell a story about stolen candles and the thief who rests, and is taken to jail in handcuffs, all with accompanying string figures.

Six months ago, I got those books out and the boys weren't interested. Another instance of a little bit more maturity, a bit more dexterity.

Isaiah created a Lego house for a Playmobil bat, which he named "Krunkia." I have never heard a word remotely similar, and I think it's quite difficult to come up with a name out of thin air. (So if you're looking for a good business name that hasn't already been claimed, consider asking Isaiah!) This little Lego house comes with three doors: one especially for summer, to allow "proper ventilation" (which I thought quite a mature concept for a lad of six).

Jadon has been overcome with the desire to read the Word of God (King James, no less). After completing Job, he started at Genesis, and, in the last two weeks, has read through Genesis, Exodus and Leviticus, and has started Numbers.

Abraham cut me to the heart yesterday. We were scurrying about, trying to get to Costco, and I gave him his jacket to put on. After carrying one son to the car, I returned to find Abraham in tears: "I'm just dumb at zippers!" he said.

It brings tears to my eyes. I had never shown him how to zip a zipper, and here he was valiantly trying, and failing, and blaming himself. I spent 30 seconds showing him how to make a zipper worked, after which he competently zipped his jacket. I asked him, "Were you dumb at zippers, or did you need a little teaching?"

"I just needed a little teaching!"

Phil headed to be early yesterday evening, at the same time all the boys were going to bed. With the wind, the "RealFeel" weather showed about -1, so Phil invited the boys to join him. Jadon eventually got fed up with the elbows and knees flying, but the other three boys stuck it out. I slept in the mummy bag on Joe's bed, and enjoyed the first night of uninterrupted sleep in my memory. (I am not sure I have had one since Jadon was born.)

As we contemplate what we can do next year to earn money, we tossed around a CSA or weekly vegetable subscription box next year. Even a couple dozen families might be enough to help a great deal, and we have most of the equipment we'd need.

Of course, other than books, we've had no training in market gardening, but then, we've had no training but books for lamb obstetrics, cow milking, and lumber jacking. That might be a good option for us.

And, finally, I will leave you with a sober thought. We sang a good many songs in church on Sunday about the lamb of God that was slain. And I was overcome with the knowledge of the death of Jesus, in a way I had never considered before.

I have always thought of Jesus death as sort of sterile: he stopped breathing, and went in the tomb, and then started breathing again.

But I have had several opportunities to witness death this year, and it's not sterile. The life is gone: the eyes dull almost immediately; the tongue hangs out; body waste leaves in awkward ways.

I don't want that to happen to Jesus. I don't want his eyes to be dull, his Spirit to leave his body. I can handle a death that involves still limbs and fixed eyes that close. I can't handle death that involves urine and excrement, limbs stiffening and the pungent smell of decay.

But it did happen to Jesus. It happened for me.

In this holiday season, I rejoice in Jesus' birth.

Thanks be to God.