Bliss Beyond Naptime

This Moment ~ Big Barn

{this moment} - A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember. ~Amanda Soule

This Moment - Bear Fruit

{this moment} - A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember. ~Amanda Soule

 

The Heat is On

This first year of cow having has involved a bit of a learning curve and now we're at the point of needing to breed her to keep the milk flowing in. A newly unexplored curve to learn. We are wanting to breed her with a pure bred Dexter and since there's not a Dexter bull within sight, or smell, for miles and miles around we are going the artificial insemination route. Lo and behold, little Miss Daisy came into heat last night, about twelve hours earlier than expected, resulting with a frantic call to the AI guy to quickly come over for we don't want to miss this tiny window again.

 So when we were first in talks with AI guy he said he had no problem finding some Dexter fixing's but it turned out his sources couldn't come up with some (Please excuse the puns that happen without me even trying that hard. Damn my super pun powers!). So I told him to leave it to me. I'll source some out. What an investigation that was. I met a lady in Ontario who's really into this breed and she helped me out loads (again, sorry!). But eventually my journey landed me some seeds just out of Vancouver and when I shared my findings with my Ontario contact she informed me I apparently won me the Dexter semen lottery.

(AI guy wishes to remain anoynamous which got me pretty excited because I always wanted to use this mysterious pixalated effect). So that's how our paths crossed with  (insert harps strings shortly followed by Star Wars-style laser gun sound effects)... Galaxy. According to my Ontario contact I found me some of the most primo, gorgeous, perfectly perfect Dexter bull on the planet. The Brad Pitt of Dexter cattle if you will. So when I called back the vet I found on the west coast who provided me with three identification numbers to choose from I tried to play it cool with my findings. "Sure, I'll take number 3948723487234798sedr2394, but whatevah. All mumble jumble to me. I'll take twenty vials of that one. Coo."

Back to the nitty gritty that happened this morning, Daisy was such a little trouper. She didn't even make a moo; just had that "is that a pee I'm taking?" look on her face I always like to impersonate and stood perfectly still through it all. And so if all goes well, crossing my pink gloved fingers here (AI guy gifted me one of those pretty long gloves as a souvenir) we'll have a sweet baby purebred Dexter in late July! Hopefully a little lady so we can pass on another awesome milk cow to a friend (wink ~ you know who you are). Plus can't wait to be swimming in all that milk again. Right now she's back to two latte plus some left over for yogurt status which is just right. I tell you, she's the perfect cow for us! How I love my little girl :)

Thanks Be Given

We're celebrating Thanksgiving today with sweet friends coming over for a turkey feast. We'll be gathering around our new dining table; a generous Christmas gift from Grandpa. It was recently completed by our incredibly talented friend Dan just in time to gather ten souls around and celebrate our abundance of gratitude.

Some things to give thanks for; a semi-surprise visit from said Grandpa last week. Semi because there was a miscommunication between Craig and me. Whoops! Still it was pretty funny to see him poke his nose through the front door unexpectedly and  have him around to play in the last days of Indian Summer with.

And, thankfully, when the grandparents are in town Mama has licence to vamoose and play too! Grandpa watched the kids while I went on a eurythmy adventure with my fellow Waldorf homeschooling mama friend Erin. Eurythmy is a component of the Waldorf curriculum in schools so I have always been super curious about it. Here's an excerpt from wikki to explain some of it and it's relationship to learning:

The gestures in the eurythmist's movement repertoire relate to the sounds and rhythms of speech, to the tones and rhythms of music and to soul experiences, such as joy and sorrow. Once these fundamental repertoire elements are learned, they can be composed into free artistic expressions. The eurythmist also cultivates a feeling for the qualities of straight lines and curves, the directions of movement in space (forward, backward, up, down, left, right), contraction and expansion, and color.

It was an amazing experience. And half the fun was getting there. Almost an hour and a half combined in the car gabbing away about homeschooling and cow having.

And of course, today I celebrate how much we scored with sweet Daisy. She's been the perfect starter cow. It's been about a year since we welcomed her to our homestead. And Baby Meatballs seems to have inherited his mama's sweetness and gentle nature. He especially loves kids. If kids come to the fence he giddy ups to come over and give them kisses. We are truly blessed that our paths have crossed. And I want to share the feeling of abundance I have whenever I walk back to the house with a pail full of white nectar or see Craig screen their poop into our garden beds. So I'm so thrilled to announce I have recently discovered Heifer International and plan on donating a portion of my Simplicity Parenting work to them. I'll keep you posted on that plan. Meanwhile, you should check out their gift catalogue. What fun would it be to send someone a goat for Christmas? Think of the pun possibilities!

And speaking of cowboys, I'm thankful for this funky little invention affectionately known in this household as 'Run Bike' for all the snippets of cuteness it provides throughout the day and beyond.

What was your favourite part of the day, Kale? "Riding my run bike". What was your trickiest part of the day? "Wiping out on my run bike".

Every time. And the funny thing is he rarely wipes out but he always says that. Lucky he always wears his hand knit helmet.

Which brings us to knitting! I was thankful to finally have found the time to stock up my yarn shop with a few new handspuns, and even naming them after some of you (I'm talking to you Tangerine Meg, Wild Violets and Lil Muse Lily) but then a couple of someones, not pointing fingers, scooped up almost my entire shop's inventory whilst I slept! Not complaining but there's only one left. Poor lonely little Molly.

 So much more to be thankful for but a beep tells me I have two pumpkin pies to pull out of the oven, a turkey to throw in and a quick vacuum of the place is called for before our friends arrive. Our collaborated efforts are going to bring the following to the new Tudors-sized dining table; turkey, mashed potatoes, coleslaw, made from scratch cranberry sauce, saucy broccoli, harvest buns, gravy, pumpkin pie... Ooof. My stomach hurts from just looking at that last sentence! Happy Thanksgiving sweet friends.

A Mount Too Much

I have to admit we were contemplating getting rid of Daisy throughout the last couple of months. As much as I love her it was starting to feel pretty full on - especially when Craig was out of town while the kids and I were taking turns being sick. The worst part of the conundrum was the indecisiveness. First I would suggest to Craig we should maybe sell her and then he wouldn't say anything. Then a few weeks later he would suggest the same to me and then I wouldn't say anything.

In my head I was imagining my mornings and evenings freed up from milking, getting me kind of excited, but then I would remember that I would have to buy milk from the store and then I was back on the keep her camp. And then I remember the solace I find during milkings; being outside, swimming out to the misty pasture to greet her, no one talking to me except Sage from Quirky Nomads and then I would be Daisy's number one fan again. This bliss has been especially pungent since we have recently dropped the evening milkings from our itinerary.

 I came to the consensus that because this was our first year together there was a stressful learning curve. Next year we'll be more confident in what we're doing and have systems more securely in place: things like breeding her, her calving, what to do with the calf once it's out, contending with all that milk that happens after she freshens, getting her safe access to grass around the property and, most importantly, separating the cream from the milk to feed my morning raw breve habit.

So, the latest crux is figuring out when exactly she is in heat so we can call the AI guy to race on over and sprinkle her with some Dexter seed. I'm 95% certain she was in heat last Monday (she was mooing up a storm and she hardly ever moos and there was some other signs that I'll demonstrate on today's vlog episode) which is pretty cool because it seems like she and I are on the same breeding schedule. Girlfriend!

 

Holding Down the Fort

Craig had to go to the field for work this week. I had a sneaking suspicion this one was going to be a doozy. The day he left Edie came down with the flu, then Kale caught a cold and they both had these mysterious bright red bug bites all over their necks that struck me into enough of a frenzy of worry that I ended up taking them to the emergency room to get them assesed (in my defense our doctor's receptionist told me to do so because the doctor was on holiday and I should play it safe). Turns out they are were just some kind of weird bug bites just like the inner mama in me was trying to tell the frazzled Lyme disease thinking mama outside of me.

But alas, I survived the days left alone on the farm with that giagantic rooster to fend off and a sweet cow to milk twice a day (though Daisy's fairy godmother, Sam, came over a few times to relieve me from the evening milkings). And here's something for your too much information file: thanks to the recent nightweanings my moon came back on Monday from being missing in action for over three years. This might have explained why I was so weepy the night before Craig left asking him to get out of it because I felt so vulnerable for some inexplicable reason.

It's all good now. Craig's home safe and sound and the kids are on the mends. This has been a hybrid of vent session and long winded explanation to why I've been missing in action all week long. Love having life return back to 'normal' (whatever that means!). I'm ready for those lazy hazy crazy days of summer any day now!

Cow and Chow

Craig woke up Sunday morning with a card containing the scribble: "Happy Father's Day, You can do whatever you want". Upon reading this the next thing we saw was the puff of smoke he left behind as he ran towards the car. Have I mentioned that Craig has been revisiting his obsession with climbing? He's been in such a jolly mood and is looking even more buff than usual so I'm not complaining much. After his climb we had plans to reunite at the restaurant for dinner. As much as I love cooking any excuse for going out for supper - hook me up!

As Craig headed for the hills the kids and I immediately started planning a picnik lunch right by Daisy and Baby Meatballs' fence gate. It's pretty cute how social these critters are. Especially Baby. He comes running up whenever he sees the kids wanting to say hello.

Daisy, on the other hand, seems more partial to me. The whole time we were eating our lunch she was trying to suck my toes the whole time. Through my sock. I believe this means she thinks I'm her baby! I'm down with that.

This moment has pretty much summed up the bliss I've been embracing ever since I had reached a bit of an epiphany during a recent accupuncture session:

I can do whatever I want but I can't do everything.

Since I have recently nightweaned Kale I've been able to start attending my Thursday night knit circle with my ladies again. The first night out I think I was high on the taste of my new found freedom for I caught myself babbling incessantly on about all my plans I had on queue;  Etsy shop projects, my dream consulting sessions,  Grade One homeschooling , the launch of my Backwoods Mama Fall Sew Camp in the Fall.

And then a half hour into my babbles I had an outer body experience. I could see myself standing behind my babbling self twirling my index finger in circles around my temple. Reality check! I can't do it all, damn parralel Universes!

Accupuncture helped me pin point (ha, ha) what activity out of everything brings me most joy and what I'll continuing persuing. So far it's down to blogging, homeschooling and the sew camps. The spring one was such a succeess and I loved it sew (another ha, ha), homeschooling is a no brainer for us (now, anyway) and blogging, well, I just simply love this.

I'm not sure exactly how this is going to pan out or how this ties in with picniking with cattle but I'll keep you posted here on where my bliss leads me!

Bull, You'll be a Steer Soon

Baby Meatballs has had a pretty nutty day.  Oh, how we flip flopped on the decision to castrate him or not but we arrived to the conclusion that it would be in the best interest of all involved not to have a potentially dangerous bull in our midst with a potentially icky Oedipus-complex. We got psyched to do the deed ourselves but luckily our really, really, really kind friends, owners of many a cow, offered to come over and help us out.

 So I milked Daisy while Joanne pinned down Meatballs, Craig kept his legs down and Ben attached some special elastic bands to his, well, meatballs. It didn't appear to phase him much. Apparently it's suppose to feel like you have a ponytail tied on too tight. But, like, between your legs. I'm not asking how people know this. Circulation is cut off and then, over the next few weeks, the prairie oysters just kind of shuck themselves off. No blood or open wound. Still, this part of farm life is what trips me out and wonder if I'm cut out for this reality checking. At the same time it tickles me to see what a happy little guy he is, his sweet set up here and the love that happens between him and his mama all day long.

 

The cutest moments happen when I reunite Daisy and her little Motherboy after her morning of grazing in the backyard. She lets us know when she wants back in the pasture by standing at the gate trying to kiss her baby through the holes in the wire. Then they usually run up to each other and gently butt heads for a bit before he goes to town nursing. So sweet! I tried to captured this today but Baby had no time for headbutting formalities. He just went straight for boob! Hmmm... feels like I can relate somehow!

Dear Daisy,

 

(image from Fiverr)

Dear Daisy,

So nice to have your life giving cream back in my cup of espresso these mornings - how I missed you sweet nectar! Just want to let you know how proud I am of what a loving and couragous mama you are to your little baby. We might just have to end up naming him Baby because the whole family had all these different names come to them in different psychic avenues. We still have to have a family meeting on whether to answer the angel that whispered 'Chester' into Craig's ear, the dream that announced the name 'Saurkraut' in Edie's deep sleep drama or go with the practical 'Meatballs' that is the farm living reality my pscyhe is preparing me for.

Well, this abundance of milk you have bestowed upon us is something to contend with! Ironic, isn't it that a couple of months after we welcomed you to our home the kids got diagnosed with milk sensitivity? Ha, ha, ha. That was funny. Looks like we may have overdosed on your milk at the beginning of our relationship because we were so excited about finally having you in the family. The naturapath told me that yogurt should be fine for the kids so Craig, the yogurt maker in the family will be making lots of that with your booby juice. Hopefully Kale won't be getting too much breve cream through the breastmilk. Ack, maybe it's time to wean the little man.

So cheese and yogurt making galore it is. That's what I've been up to these days because our fridge could only handle three gallon jars in there at a time. The cheddar cheese recipe I've been playing with, it's the one in my favourite cow book, calls for two gallons of milk so I've been making that every couple of days. It's easy but the instrucions call for weights of up to 50 pounds to press the cheese over night. I didn't know what else to use so I've been using our ottoman for that task which is resulting in some lop sided hunks (not to mention watching Project Runway before bed on my laptop at a slant) so we might have to invest in some kind of cheese press with a cheesy name like the Easycheesy or the Cheesypress.

We also made Farmer's cheese which was more straight forward and tastes excatly like the cheese curds we use to eat with corn on the cob growing up in Montreal (or like the cheese you see on Poutine my friend who tried some yesterday pointed out). There are even more simple recipes that involve adding splashes of white vinegar to milk and, voila, Queso Blanco. But still, now's not the time for too much cheese eating in our household lest we get another ezcema patch. That's why cheddar's where it's at because it has to age for at least two months and we can hoard it forever. By then, hopefully the Craiglettes can hop off of the goat milk and back on to the cow milk wagon.

But of course, the whole family can indulge in butter which I made this weekend and it turned out perfect! We slapped lots of it on our Smokey Sunday pancakes which I made with the buttermilk from that batch. It was incredibly yummy so thank you Sweet Daisy! We're trying not to let a drop go to waste and you and Baby are so wonderful for sharing. Okay I'm just going to pop this in the mailbox now and I'll be out there to milk you in a jiffy.

much love,

Mama

Clay Date

What a glorious Mother's Day I had. It began with a nice, stiff goat latte, then milking Daisy the first time since we dried her out almost three months ago, followed by bike ride to the restuarant for a freshly squeezed Mother's Day breakfast, and finally some sweet Mama time home alone while the rest of the family picked up my mom at the airport. Yay! I'll try to get a vlog post with her in it. She's fun!

That Mother's Day milking - hoo boy! Her teats were so huge I was barely able to get my hands around them and was only able to squeeze out a meager half pail. Daisy's bag was getting scary full and tight so her godmother, Sam, came by last night to milk her out completely. This lady can milk! Thankfully Sam was able to bring relief to her ballooning udder situation by milking out almost three gallons so Daisy, as you can imagine, seems much more comfortable today. Thank you, Sam!

We're going to have a family meeting tonight to nail down his name. Currently we just call him 'Baby'. Hey, do you want to meet him? Cuz, guess what? Here's your opportunity! We're going to be hosting a natural buillding workshop here in July. You can find more information here. The workshop will use Craig's office as the canvas for learning the sculptural technique of using natural clay plaster to beautify and finish a conventionally built structure. Kata Polano will be leading the workshop and it promises to be really fun. Craig took a familiar course, a strawbale building one, whilst we were still city slickers and I think it was what finally lured us to move out here. So, come on! Move out here with us! Meatballs (that's one of the contender names) would love some more god parents!