On a winter Sunday morning

I am at my computer at the dining room table, with a second cup of my delicious Dark Roast Community Coffee that I save for weekends and holidays....sun is shining brightly through the dining room window and birds busy eating at the feeders....Godfrey, the kitten, is stretched out between the computer screen and the keyboard....I have had to move the screen further back to allow him enough space and so that I can type....he started out draped completely over the keyboard!

Godfrey at the computer

Yesterday I worked in my garden...I can see baby turnips!  Exciting...to me, at least.  Can't wait to see baby beets.  I picked a huge container of greens to enjoy this week with pinto beans and scrambled eggs.

A harvest of  homegrown greens

I hand-washed a whole bunch of dishes and washed a load of heavy miscellaneous items, not clothes which are always done on Sunday afternoons.  Then I came in and watched football and sorted through some things that were piling up.

I have decided that instead of making "to do" lists that it would probably be better for me to make a list of what I accomplished for the day or weekend.  That would be less overwhelming and disappointing in the long run.  I find that sometimes I make a list of things to do for a weekend or vacation and it has so many things on it that I end up doing only some of them and doing other things instead.  Yes, the "other things" needed to be done, but not necessarily at that time.  And then what I didn't do, but should have done, ends up on The List again!  It is a very vicious circle sometimes.  Maybe it is my way of being Rebellious?!  I never was as a teenager.  Or maybe it is just that I am easily distracted.

I have also decided I want to either knit or spin something during the Olympics.  Now I have to decide which and what!  I am not really good at making decisions.  I am getting better, but still have a long way to go.  Having a mother who insists on making all your decisions with no input from you as a child or teenager does not teach you how to make decisions easily.   It is good to give children some choices to make.

I spent some time last night looking at some fiber to spin and writing down all my ideas about spinning it, as in what colors to blend together and ply together and also what I wanted to knit with it when it was done.  I really agonized over it!  I was determined I would not go to bed without making a decision.  I think that I must have a bit of Perfectionist in me which is another part of my problem.  I am so afraid of making the wrong choice sometimes.

This is the fiber combination I decided to work with during the Olympics!

I did make a decision and I did get to bed at a decent hour and now it is another beautiful day to do a bit of playing outside in the garden and about the farm.  It is still pretty muddy here from all the recent rains so I will need to wear my rubber clogs.  Football again this afternoon and some more sorting through "stuff" and possibly the baking of some bran muffins and gingerbread!  Oh, and I think that there is one more Guinness in the fridge left over from New Years!  WooHoo!  Hey, I might even have a chance to knit or spin or, if Godfrey or Jessy will stay out of my lap, process some of my llama fiber or card some of my homegrown cotton into rolags.

Jessy, my sweet pea

I have decided that I want to know what it feels like to be proud of myself.  That is what I want for 2014.

The sun is shining on HeartSong Farm!

What’s in a name?

There is a reason why my farm is named HeartSong.  It came to it honestly.  My patch of ground literally  makes my heart sing!  My Celtic roots have subconsciously instilled a sense of belonging to the land and the importance of having my own piece of it.  As I walk about my place, all 5.61 acres of it, I feel a sense of peace.  As I mow, seed, disc, fertilize I feel a sense of purpose.  These acres are mine!

At the backyard gate of HeartSong Farm

This is not the first HeartSong Farm.  The very first, though it was never officially named, was 30 years ago in central Illinois.  It, too, was around 5 acres, and was a first attempt, a trial run if you will, by me and my husband to live outside of town away from the hustle and bustle of subdivisions and strip malls.  He wanted to be able to hunt on his own land, and I wanted to plant and raise things.  We did a little of both, even built a barn and a pair of pastures.  He hunted squirrels, rabbits and pheasant.  I raised ducks and geese and 2 lambs along with my two young sons and a tri-colored collie named Fancy.  We were located between corn and soybean fields to the south and a hog farm to the north, on a small rise of land that caught the fierce winter wind and snow.  We were there for only 3 years before being transferred again, back to the suburbs and city life, but we began to look for “our dream farm” in the Ozarks during that time period.  I do not know how truly serious he was about that dream farm, but I know I was!  I dreamed of homegrown vegetables, chickens, guineas, ducks and geese…of horses, sheep and goats and ….. llamas! 

Our next stop was the Nashville, TN, area in another subdivision and there I practiced growing flowers and shrubs and playing with landscaping.  Then in another 3 or 4 years we were in Connecticut where almost everyone is a gardener and the weather and soil are amazing.  The short growing season caused everything to bloom with gusto and I practiced growing all kinds of wonderful English garden flowers and plants among the rock ledges and stone walls on our 2 acre lot in a small town along the shoreline.  From May to October there were numerous u-pick farms where I experienced the joy of picking my own blueberries, apples, plums, peaches and pears.  The fresh just-picked flavor was wonderful and I wanted my own fruit trees on my dream farm.  We went to a local farm and picked out our Thanksgiving turkey each year and I decided that the taste and texture of a fresh, never-frozen bird for our holiday table would be a must from then on.

The time came to leave Connecticut and we had found that dream farm in the central Missouri Ozarks.  The big move was made in April of 1997 to 344 acres of wonderful rolling fenced and cross-fenced countryside, half wooded and half open, with 11 ponds, a house with full length front and back porches for sunrise and sunset viewing, and a substantial barn….out in the middle of nowhere!  For me it was heaven on earth, truly!

This place called out to be named and, for me, HeartSong was more than perfect.  My heart sang loud and joyously of the fresh air, the possibilities, the freedom, and the wide open spaces.  I ordered my chickens, guineas, ducks and geese and they arrived before I even had a place for them.  Big mistake, but they survived and thrived.  I planted a small vegetable garden and some flowers and dreamed of where I would put what, and when I would acquire the livestock and life was good, it seemed, on HeartSong Farm.

But apparently not so for my husband who was entering his mid-life crisis (I suppose), and by August of that same year, after almost 26 years of marriage, he decided he would be leaving, and HeartSong Farm came crashing down around me.  Hopes, dreams, joys ……swept away from me like dust before a broom.  I tried to hold on.  I pretended I could survive all by myself on my “dream farm.”  I went ahead and bought my foundation herd of six female llamas, and my herd sire, Smokin’ Jaguar.  I watched the seasons change, I grieved for what was lost, and by the summer of 1998, with the divorce final, I gave in to the appeals of my parents to come back to East Texas to take care of them in their old age.  But I was determined that I would  be bringing my llamas!

Lulu & Razzle in back pasture of HeartSong Farm

And I did bring my llamas with me to a new farm, a much smaller and less picturesque farm but one that I could afford and handle on my own.  And I named it HeartSong!  It has taken quite a number of years for that name to feel right for this patch of land.  It certainly is not my “dream farm” by any stretch of the imagination, but it has grown on me and I have grown to love and embrace it.  

Barn swallow nest on back porch ceiling
 of HeartSong Farm

I sit in the back porch swing and look out over the back pasture and watch llamas graze and interact.  I see the foxes come out of the dense woods at the back fence line, I hear the coyotes yipping at night.  I watch vultures circle on the air currents in the sky above me while dragonflies cruise over the pasture grasses during the day and fireflies dance in the summer twilight.  And each fall for the past five years, a red-shouldered hawk I have named “Token” returns to spend its winter and grace my world. 

Life is good here at HeartSong Farm. 

Red Shouldered Hawk hunting in front pasture of
HeartSong Farm

Red fox in pasture on HeartSong Farm

Let's Hear It For A New Year!

HAPPY NEW YEAR, EVERYONE!

I HOPE YOU HAVE AS MUCH FUN IN 2014 AS A KITTEN WITH A ROLL OF TOILET PAPER!

I am ready for a new start and I am always glad that every twelve months we get a fresh slate to try to make a better go of it.  Some years are definitely better than others, but New Year's Day tends to give us all a bit of hope and I am reminded of a favorite Merle Haggard tune from the 60's, "If We Make It Through December," with its poignant grip on such optimism. 

There were many blessings in the past year for me, including but not limited to and in no particular order (isn't that the proper disclaimer?!):

• Having a job that pays the bills in a companionable workplace.
• Periodic bonus checks from that same job.
• My continued good health.
• My son Ben's continued employment, and his consistent paying of his bills without complaint.
• Ben's growth in his sense of responsibility and dependability.
• My being able to replace my truck with the car I had wanted for three years.
• Attending Wildflower Fiber Retreat once again, as well as Knit Camp.
• A good harvest and learning experience from my summer vegetable garden.
• Being gifted in July with two wonderful cats, Godfrey and Axl.
• Renewing old friendships and making some new ones.
• Making old friendships stronger.
• Taking a cross country train trip to visit my son, Matt, for his graduation.
• Matt's finding a job in his field soon after graduation.
• Getting to know Matt's girlfriend, Melissa, better.
• My successful transition into crone status awareness.
• My being able to be in the presence of my ex-husband for the first time in 15 years and not feel those feelings I was afraid I might feel.  Whoo Hoo!

In previous years on the first day of a new year, I would take out my new and specially selected calendar and joyfully fill it in with birthdays, paydays, appointments and special notations, while enjoying several cups of my usual hot, strong, black morning coffee.  My favorite is Community Dark Roast right now, but I also enjoy their Cafe Special and Coffee & Chicory blends.  With the Coffee & Chicory, I prefer to add some foaming hot milk to each cup, making it into a delicious, comforting cafe au lait.  Spending part of my life in New Orleans taught me the goodness of such a treat.  Sometimes, but rarely, I will add some sugar and a touch of cinnamon.  

But I digress....  

So, after filling in my new calendar, I would then write down three or four New Year's Resolutions that I would honestly intend to accomplish at the time. Then it was on to preparing the day's well-planned menu while listening to the Rose Bowl Parade on TV.  A menu which, of course, would always include some form of black-eyed peas (for luck), eggs (for new beginnings) and cabbage (for money), a lemon pie, and which would be eaten in front of the TV watching my favorite sport, football.

As a matter of fact, it was because of a football game on New Year's Day in 1963 that my Daddy finally decided it was time to buy the family our first television.  That game was the Sugar Bowl down in New Orleans with the Ol' Miss Rebels playing the Arkansas Razor Backs. The Rebels won the game that year, which pleased Daddy, and the rest of us were pleased because we finally owned a television!

But this year I broke with some of those traditions, mainly the calendar (which in the last couple of years has been misplaced or forgotten) and the resolutions ( which, as is common for most of us, will have fallen by the wayside long before the first day of that year's June) and the menu that requires too much time for me in the kitchen.  This year we were going to have easy!  

So, I dumped some canned black-eyed peas, chopped green onions and celery, parsley, what was left in the bottle of balsamic vinegar, salt, pepper, garlic, and a couple of "bloops" of bottled lime juice in a medium sized bowl, stirred it up and put it in the refrigerator to chill.  I boiled eggs last night and made deviled eggs.  I found some rolls in the freezer left over from Thanksgiving.  And I sauteed bagged coleslaw with some onion, garlic, caraway seeds, salt and pepper in olive oil.  Ben offered some of his Christmas chocolate covered cherries for dessert (he got 3 boxes!).  Along with store-made guacamole and chips on the kitchen counter, we can snack and munch and eat whenever we want....on paper plates.  

Around noon I grabbed a Guinness from the fridge and plopped down in front of my computer, with football on TV in the background, to write this blog post, which is exactly how I had envisioned my New Year starting off.  I am really liking this!

Instead of resolutions, this year I have decided to make "life changes."  I will keep these changes in the forefront of my heart and mind until they become a part of Me, rather than writing anything down on paper to be misplaced or tossed aside.  

As for the calendar, my Kindle Fire has an app for my notes and appointments when I am on the go, and my new computer with Window's 8 has a very workable calendar that shows up on my desktop right under the weather report and my email inbox.  I am really thinking that Simple is Better.

There is a great and exciting year ahead at HeartSong Farm!

Holiday Traditions

Well, Christmas 2013 has come and gone, and thankfully all the commercials on my TV have subsided for at least the next 6 months.  We had a nice, quiet Christmas Day here on HeartSong Farm with a phone call from my oldest son, Matt, who moved to California this year, brunch at our local IHOP, and a matinee of “The Hobbit” in a neighboring town.  I spent Christmas Eve watching “Dr. Zhivago” on my DVD.  I wanted to see snow and romance and costumes!  Usually I watch “Steel Magnolias” at Christmas time, but this year I wanted something different, and I had picked well.  I bundled up in two fluffy afghans I had gotten as gifts on previous Christmases, with two of my kitty cats and some hot chocolate by the side, and enjoyed seeing the snow, hearing the sleigh bells and beautiful music, and admiring the period costumes and fine acting.

Before going to bed, I ventured out into the cold night for what has become an annual Tradition for me since I moved to this farm.  I took with me a tray full of treats for any wildlife that might pass by, and placed it under a live oak tree near one of the brier patches in my front yard.  I had loaded it down with carrots, raisins, marshmallows, soy nuts, whole grain bread chunks with peanut butter, suet, and hay.  I also added a handful of llama fiber in case a warmer nest was needed for the winter.  The night sky was clear and crisp overhead.  I breathed in the cold air and stood there gazing at the spectacular cosmos above me for a few minutes before heading back into the warmth of my log home and bed.  

2013 Nativity Tray

I began this Christmas Tradition after having read Sarah Ban Breathnach’s wonderful book, Simple Abundance, A Daybook of Comfort and Joy, throughout my first full year back to Texas in 1999.  Newly divorced, I was very much needing to do away with past Traditions and birth some new ones.  This quickly became a favorite with me, as did going to the movies on either Christmas Eve or Christmas Day.  This year, Ben and I decided to add going to IHOP (the only place open in our town) for brunch as part of our holiday celebration.  Letting someone else do the planning, cooking and cleaning up seemed like a wonderful thing to me and part of me wondered why I hadn't thought of this before!  Ben enjoyed biscuits and gravy with pork sausage links and scrambled eggs, while I opted for a loaded fajita omelet and 3 buttermilk pancakes with lots of butter and some warm maple syrup, along with glasses of ice-cold orange juice and delicious strong hot coffee just like I like it.  Needless to say, we will be doing this again from now on!

I no longer put up a tree for the holidays.  That is another of my new Traditions.  Oh, I still have most of the ornaments in boxes in the storage closet, along with beautiful stockings, a manger set, wreaths and bows, but decorating a tree and hanging stockings seemed pointless and a bit sad with just me here at first.  After all, my wedding anniversary was December 23rd and he had moved out the day after Christmas in 1997.  When Ben moved back in with me in 2001, being a fairly typical male of the species, he said it made no difference to him one way or the other.  For sure, there are plenty of decorated trees, houses and offices for us to enjoy around town without all the hassle associated with hauling ours out and then packing it all back up later, especially when those chores would have fallen most certainly to me to accomplish.  I can tell you that there is a certain amount of peace associated with this new Tradition.  So please don’t think me a “bah humbug!”  I am not a Scrooge by any means.  I just really need simplicity in my life along with serenity, joy and creativity.

With fondness I remember the Traditions my family had at Christmas time when I was growing up.  Things were so much simpler back then in the 50's and 60's, and that is certainly not a bad thing!  Some years we traveled 13 hours by car to my mother's parents house in Mississippi, some years we stayed at home.  

If at Mom and Pop's house, there was never a tree in the house until Christmas morning when we would awake to find one complete with decorations and lights and presents in the living room!  Magical!  I learned when I was grown that my grandfather would wait to buy a tree after he closed his downtown drugstore on Christmas Eve. He would pick from the leftover, marked down trees at the tree lot on the highway and prop it up on the far side of the house, unseen, when he got home.  Then once the house was all quiet, he and my grandmother would decorate it, place the gifts underneath, and fill the stockings we children had hung up on the mantle before going to bed.  In our stockings there would always be three of his favorites:  Wrigley's chewing gum, a roll of Lifesavers, and spicy ribbon candy.

If we were to spend Christmas at home in Houston, Daddy and I would visit the tree lot outside the A & P and pick out a tiny tree that would fit on top of the lamp table in the living room.  I remember that one year our tree cost a whole 75 cents!  Once home it would be decorated with a string of lights that was almost too heavy for it, cranberry and popcorn garlands, mostly homemade ornaments, and aluminum icicles that tended to end up in clumps if my little brother got hold of them before I did!  On Christmas morning we always had to wait until Daddy had gotten the furnace turned on and the house declared "warm enough", the coffee made, and my mother ensconced on the sofa wrapped in a blanket. Then the rush was on.....always to the stockings first, where we would find an orange, some nuts, some candy, and some times a small toy or book.  One year, I found a can of cat food in my stocking and was truly baffled until a tiny black kitten peaked out from under the quilt on my oldest brother's bed on the other side of the living room.  One of the best Christmases ever!!!

For some reason, one of my fondest memories of Christmas Traditions past was ironing the used wrapping paper to save for the next year.  I absolutely loved doing this, and each year it was just as much fun for me to open the box of those old wrapping papers and bows and try to remember what gift had previously been wrapped in which. When I had a family of my own, though, it was hard to keep up this treasured Tradition as my two little boys seemed to delight in ripping and tearing the paper off their gifts and tossing the bows on those Christmas mornings! Well, after all, it had been a simpler time in my childhood. 

Traditions are a wonderful thing, if you ask me.  Don't you agree?

So what are your favorite Holiday Traditions?

Transitions

It has been rather blustery here on HeartSong Farm lately.  The transition between summer and autumn, and then autumn to winter has been unusual everywhere in the United States, and East Texas has been no different.  The dry hot summer lasted a bit longer than what the calendar told us was fall, and then winter got here sooner than December 21.  We had our first hard frost on November 13th preceded by some really good hard rains.  This combination of events seems to have blessed this area with an unusually colorful fall landscape.  Along the highways, byways, and streets of my town there were significantly more reds, oranges and yellows mixed in with the more prevalent evergreens of the Piney Woods area of Texas.

East TX fall foliage

The cold snaps have come one right after another until I have lost count.  Most of those came with rain, lots of it, causing all of us around here to remark, "Oh, why couldn't we have had some of this rain during the summer when we really needed it?!"  I have had to scramble to construct portable greenhouses for my winter vegetable garden, buy winter hay for the llamas, and keep the bird feeders full....all before I was prepared to do so.  This transition was a bit too abrupt for me.  It seems my favorite time of year had been squeezed tightly between summer and winter, wham! bam!, with little time to adjust between hot and cold.  This is not easy on my aging bones and joints!

Oak leaves beginning to turn

Even so, I enjoy watching the transitions from one season into another...just one of the many circles of life and the cosmos.  When it is cold and frosty, I look out the back porch windows to see steam rising from the backs of the llamas as the sun rises.  Their escaping breath, warm and moist, makes me think of dragons breathing smoke.  The flurry of activity at the bird feeders on cold days is nonstop.  There are cardinals, juncos, wrens, goldfinches, purple finches, chickadees, titmice, chipping sparrows, cardinals and pine siskin, all puffed up,coming and going on the feeders and suet basket. Watching the antics outside my dining room window, it occurs to me how similar to humans these feathered creatures can sometimes be:  some play nice, some don't. On the ground below all the commotion are a dozen tiny Inca doves, the kind my Daddy called "chi-chis," politely and methodically pecking at the seeds that have fallen from the feeders.

Bayley staying warm in the sun

Bayley, my very old Pembroke corgi (he is 13 years plus), is spending most of his days and nights curled up in his warm comfy house by the back door, coming out only when the sun is high and the concrete of the back porch has gotten warm. Inside, my three cats (Jessie, Axl, and Godfrey) take turns sitting in or near the dining room windows to observe the busy puffed up birds at the feeders, or else curled up in a favorite spot, most likely dreaming of catching those same birds.  I suspect this because I see them licking their lips and twitching their whiskers in their sleep!

This week my winter garden greens were ready to begin harvesting and enjoying with roasted sweet potatoes and acorn squash from the produce stand.  I have never had a winter garden before, and so there was a transition in my raised beds from summer veggies to those of winter.

End of the summer garden

Mustard, beets, and turnips in my first winter garden

Not only did this promise to supply me with some delicious fresh produce during the colder months, it also gave me a chance to try my hand at building some small, portable hoop houses out of PVC pipes and 6 mil plastic sheeting before diving into the construction of a walk-in sized greenhouse next spring.  I am gradually practicing and preparing, you see, for my retirement in 2016 (31 more months!) when I will be able, at last, to begin living my lifelong dream of being as self sufficient and self reliant as possible within my physical boundaries.  Baby steps, baby steps.....

About a week before that first cold snap in early November, I spent a week in an unusual fog of sorts. I felt very quiet inside and out, slightly sad, and I seemed to be moving and thinking in slow motion in my workplace and at home on the farm. At first I thought it was the impending holiday season since I have a history of being depressed during that time in varying degrees, but I was actually quite calm and rather peaceful.  By Wednesday, I realized that what I felt was akin to being in a walking meditation.  I could think of no better way to describe this strangeness that had come over me.

I had also been sleeping better than I had in recent months, and when I woke up Saturday morning on the sixth day of this phenomenon, the odd feelings were gone, and I "knew" what had taken place.  My gut was telling me that I had gone through some form of Transition, and although I was not sure exactly how, my life had changed and, now 64 years old and heading into my "crone years," everything was going to be alright for me.  I felt comforted and joyful even with the cold and drizzling rain outside my windows, and with this realization the fog was lifted.

Life is good on HeartSong Farm!

I love dirt!

I am a farmer at heart. I know this. I have known this for many, many years…as a child even, before I knew what I was feeling.  An attachment to the land and its elements….its beauty, sounds, fragrances and textures. As a four year old, I enjoyed digging in the dirt in my Daddy’s vegetable garden, letting it sift through my tiny
fingers, enjoying the smell and feel, and marveling at how you could drop a tiny seed into a hole made with your finger, add a bit of water and in a matter of days there would be something green sticking its head up through the brown earth, seeking the warmth of the sun. My Daddy told me it was all part of the Magic of the Universe, part of God’s Plan. That he and I were witness to it together made it all the more magical to me.

I remember beans, peas, asparagus, squash, eggplants, cucumbers and tomatoes growing in those garden plots, and the summer supper table being set with the wonderful fresh bounty. There is nothing like a sandwich made with a freshly sliced homegrown tomato!

We also had a few chickens scratching around, providing us with eggs and sometimes meat. I didn’t care much for the smell of wet, burnt chicken feathers or the plucking, but the resulting crispy fried chicken pieces cooked to a perfect reddish-brown from the Crisco and cast iron skillet on the Sunday dinner table was certainly worth the price of the unsavory preparation. Chickens from the grocery stores these days do not taste like those free rangers did, and it is not just nostalgia telling me this.

And so, throughout the decades from then until now, I have longed to be settled on a farm and have a vegetable garden that would ultimately provide me with what I needed to live a healthy life. I moved around quite a bit during those years, but here and there I was able to work a garden of some sort into my life as well as chickens, guineas, ducks and geese. Those experiences served to reinforce my connection to the land and my desire for rural life and self-reliance grew to where it was becoming hard to contain it.

In 1998, I moved to my present home here in East Texas due to circumstances in my life that I had little control over, and I knew when the choice was made to move, it had to be to a spot where I could fulfill that desire that I had nourished all those years. I would put down roots at last and so I did, but still a full time job to pay the bills and taking care of my elderly parents, as well building a barn and fences and hand shearing upwards of 25 llamas some years, got in the way of any serious gardening until a few years ago when my son
and I built two 4’ x 16’ raised beds and tried out square foot gardening.

That was a great learning experience, but once again circumstances necessitated that I concentrate on other aspects of my life and it was not until this past spring (2013) that I was able to return to those two raised beds, pull a magnitude of weeds, turn over the soil with some llama “beans”, and plant a vegetable crop.

My veggies included crookneck squash, okra, cucumbers, Ichiban eggplant, bell peppers (red, green, purple and chocolate), Cherokee Purple slicing tomatoes, Roma tomatoes, and a several types of cherry tomatoes. I planted two basil plants, a little rosemary “bush”, and some oregano.   And I planted white, green, and two shades of brown cotton. Yes!  I might have been a bit more excited about my cotton plants, to tell the truth, but I can tell you that I ate a lot of fresh, grilled, roasted and sautéed produce over the summer months and into early fall!

Cotton plant seedlings in front, okra in rear

So why plant cotton? Well, I am a spinner and this year at our annual Wildflower Fiber Retreat we learned about growing and spinning cotton and were given seeds for white cotton and Sea Island Brown cotton to plant if we wanted to try our hand at growing our own spinning fiber. Many of those that attend the Retreat each year raise fiber animals like angora goats and rabbits, llamas, alpacas, and various breeds of sheep, but less than a handful had ever planted a cotton seed to harvest. And so, for me, the year of learning to spin cotton began in March, 2013, and included planting cotton along with my vegetables. If I was going to do it “right”, I wanted green cotton, too, and online I found Earline’s Green Cotton, and also some Nankeen Brown seeds to order, which I did without hesitation.

I planted about 5 or 6 white, 15 green, 10 Sea Island Brown, and 12 Nankeen. The latter did not do as well as the others because I planted them too late, I think, in a new bed quite a way from the others. Still I got a nice bag of lint from those 12 seeds. With the others, however, I got a bumper crop and I will never have to purchase cotton seeds again! I discovered that each individual boll produced about 20 seeds and each plant produced at least 12 bolls (all from 1 seed!). If you would like some, contact me and I will share!

Early bloom

Old bloom

Bees love the blooms

The plants and blooms are lovely. Cotton is related to okra, hibiscus and marsh mallow plants. The blooms start off white and end up pink, yellow or red before dropping. The bees love them, and the natural colors of the cotton lint are gorgeous! Cotton plants are frequently grown in pots as ornamentals and in the far, far South can even be perennials, but mine were victims of the first serious frost in early November this year.

Cotton boll forming

Cotton lint

Harvested bolls

Currently, I am spending the majority of my evenings during the week hand-ginning my cotton bolls and looking forward to spinning the lint...maybe even dying some of the white.  Next year I plan to expand my cotton planting to several new beds in various places around the farm. I need more practice with spinning cotton!

Giving Thanks

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday.  It makes me think of a warm kitchen full of wonderful fragrances wafting from the stove top and oven, and family and friends gathering around with smiles and hugs, sharing memories, making new ones.

Christmas is just too hectic for me and it tends to cause me to hyperventilate and have panic attacks just thinking about the possibility of going to a mall where everyone seems to be in a hurry, pulling out cash and credit cards,with many spending more than they can truly afford, and businesses flashing ads in front of us at every possible angle (beginning before Halloween nowadays!).  It seems more about materialism and competition, and less of joy and good cheer.  Stress is evident in so many faces and depression rears its ugly head.  In general, the Christmas Season seems to have lost a lot of its original meaning and therefore its appeal for me.

Thanksgiving, on the other hand, is about sharing and giving thanks for the many blessings in our lives.  We share this holiday with those who are special to us while eating too much, and, for many of us, traveling to visit with family members or friends we have not seen in awhile.  And for some, there is a wonderful tradition of helping bring food and fellowship to those less fortunate in our communities.

I must inject here that I subscribe to the spirit of the holiday as portrayed in the First Thanksgiving, with the welcoming Native Americans generously bringing food to share with the starving Pilgrims, but not at all to the pain the Native Americans ultimately suffered at the hands of the White Man.

Tradition for the Thanksgiving meal is part universal and part individual.  To most the turkey is the centerpiece, but there is controversy on whether or not to stuff the bird with "stuffing" or have it as "dressing,"  to serve canned cranberry sauce or make it from fresh berries, to put marshmallows on the sweet potato casserole or to have baked potatoes instead.  The green bean casserole....well, some like it, some won't touch it.  And let's not forget the jello salad!  Growing up, in my family there was dressing, fresh cranberries, baked sweet potatoes, fruit salad,and cold canned asparagus....and two kinds of pie:  pecan and sweet potato.

Pea Salad

About thirteen years ago I added a new dish to     my Thanksgiving table....pea salad.  This cold         crunchy, cheesy vegetable dish is a delicious           alternative to that green bean casserole! (When I figure out how to do it, I will put the recipe on the Recipe tab.)  It contrasts nicely with all the hot dishes.  Yummm!



This year I am especially thankful for a number of things in my life.

In January, my little red truck with 165,000 miles on it "died" and needed too much work on it for me to keep it going. With the help of my boss, my financial advisor, my girlfriend, and one of the managers of my local Expert Tire, I was able to find a new home for that faithful vehicle and to wrangle an affordable deal for the Kia Soul I had been wanting for 3 years!  I am so thankful! I named her Steel Magnolia (Maggie for short) and still cannot believe she is mine!!!

Maggie barely escaped damage....Whew!

During a powerful September thunderstorm Maggie barely missed being harmed by a falling maple tree at the corner of the house near where she was parked.  I am very thankful that she suffered nary a scratch although several branches came within an inch of her driver's side exterior.




In May my oldest son, Matt, graduated from Arizona State University with honors, and I traveled by Amtrak to be there.  It was a wonderfully  relaxing trip and I am thankful that I was able to make it!  It took 36 hours by train each way and I reserved a spot in the sleeping car for privacy and comfort.  That way all my meals were included in the price of my ticket, and on the way back I had all my meals served in my roomette.  It was like eating in bed and watching the world go by outside the big window to my left.  I really enjoyed it!

My Amtrak train  2013

I highly recommend taking an Amtrak trip with a roomette if you ever get a chance.  You do not have to deal with the crowds of people and security and waiting that comes with airplane travel, although it does take longer to get where you are going.  It is also not necessarily cheaper, but I wanted to relax and enjoy my trip, and to try something new.  It certainly filled that bill, and I am thankful that I was able to do it that way.

Matt on Graduation Day

I am thankful that Matt graduated after all the hard work and dedication it took him to complete his course of study (Accountancy).  He stuck with it and made excellent grades all the while working as a waiter/supervisor at an Applebee's in the Phoenix area to support himself.  Within two weeks of graduation, he was hired by the State of California as an auditor and he and his girlfriend, Melissa, made the big move to Sacramento.  They seem happy and I am so happy for them!

Matt & Melissa in Olde Town Scottsdale, AZ

Mine are the blue ones!

I am thankful that I got to spend more time getting to

know Melissa (or Miss M, as I call her!).  The two of them have been a pair now for four years. Matt brought her to Texas about 2 years ago for our first meeting and this graduation trip was only the second time we had really had a chance to visit.  Since I never had sisters or daughters, I really wanted to do something "girlie" with her....and so we had mani-pedis!  It was my very first pedicure and it was such fun and I am very happy that it was with Miss M!

Benjamin, my youngest son, is still employed part time for almost a year and a half now, and for anyone who knows me, this is something to be very thankful for, indeed!  He likes the people and the work, and we only hope and pray that soon he will be able to get full-time hours once he gets his health insurance through the Affordable Care Act.  He will have to get more hours in order to pay for it, but that will also mean he has more funds for other necessities, too.

Ben and Pilgrim in the front pasture

I am very thankful that Ben lives here on the farm with me.

There have been many times when he has been a huge help with the fences, the barn, and the llamas.  He is also good company and a pretty good cook.  One day I will try to get his secret recipe for Awesome Spaghetti to put on my recipe page (when I get it figured out how to add that page to the blog!)

I am thankful that I was, once again, able to attend the Wildflower Fiber Retreat this past March and Knit Camp in August.  Being part of a community of fiber sisters and fellow knitters twice a year has become a must for helping to keep my sanity in a world dominated by electronics and mass manufacturing.

I am especially thankful for my job and for all my friends here and across the country.  I couldn't survive right now without the job, and my friends would be impossible to live without at any time.  I am thankful that my home and farm will soon be paid in full (31 more months!).  I am truly thankful for all I have and have experienced.