Good Earth Farm: Mandalas and Cob

We're still on the road this week, but I wanted to post photos from last Friday's farm school.  We arrive early every week to set up before the rest of the children arrive.  Ani likes to organize the childrens' bins on the porch of the old farm house.

After a morning of walking through the garden, collecting eggs, and jumping on hay bales (the universal favorite), we made food mandalas for lunch. The clouds lifted as we began, which was fitting as the mandalas reflected the full shining sun.

Our afternoon was spent mixing cob and working on the shelter that we started last week.

Clay, soil, sand, straw...Eliza adding water...

Adding in the straw, mixing it with their feet...

Adding "cobs" to the wall...

The kids decided to add a roof, made of boards and shale. There was a lot of discussion and problem-solving as they tried to make it leak-proof.  Then they got to test their work.

Ani had to crawl in to check it out...this is a doghouse for the beloved old farm dog, Peggy.

It has a little water bowl (made of cob!) inside, and windows in the sides.  We hope Peggy likes it.

Helping clean off each others' feet at the end of the day.

Mud. Water. Kids. Such a lovely day...

spring in a day

Our family, with complete lack of foresight, will be gone from the Ohio Valley during the peak of wildflower and flowering tree season. What were we thinking??? Not only that, but we are headed for northern destinations. Sigh. So, today, a beautiful day, we packed in spring. After dropping Dan off at the bus to the airport, we headed to the garden to do three days work in a few hours. We tried anyway...

Our primary goal was to uproot the glorious and ever-expanding comfrey plant that I unwittingly introduced to our garden two years ago. It filled a quarter of our plot in no time at all. The upside to that was that we had a bevy of bees well through October - it was absolutely humming at all times. The downside is that it spreads like crazy and it is nearly impossible to get every bit of root out of the ground.  I had incredible help from the girls, who are fair-weather gardeners, usually maxing out their attention span at 10 or 15 minutes. They hung in there for an hour during this endeavor and were so helpful to me.

Our hole got quite deep - you can see how far in Ani is in this photo. She's working so hard!  Eliza kept saying, "We're digging nearly to China!!"

One...two...three...

Jump in!

We were thrilled with how rich the soil was, how many earthworms and critters we found.  The girls pulled out every suspicious-looking grub (is it a cutworm? well, what did it look like? no, I think it was a hookworm - very entertaining conversation) and threw it in the nearby woods.  Here is a photo for Dan, who started this project (see how full the pot is of root bits? and the bag?), and for Debbie of The Loving Path, who wanted me to send her comfrey seeds...Beware!!! 

While the sun-wilted girls waited in the shade for me, I quickly filled in the hole and threw some kale starts and some onions in...we'll hope for the best and see what happens when we get back.

The three of us are leaving on Saturday for Wisconsin, by way of a camping night or two with my cousin in Indiana, so we have plenty of things on our To Do list: make chili for Saturday night's dinner, gather and make snacks and food for the weekend, do laundry, pack, clean out the car, clean out the fridge, etc...but we determined that we had to fit in a visit to the cherry trees along the river before we left, as they are sure to be blown bare by the time we return in a week and a half.  So a picnic dinner it was.

A beautiful sunset and walk home to bed...

good morning starling!

I just realized that in sharing these photos, I am revealing some of the less appealing aspects of our rented house, like the busted screens.  Ah well....this is what the girls and I did this morning. Just above Eliza's bedroom window there are starlings building a nest. If you watch long enough (which we did), you can see them come and go, their little toes holding on to the edge of the gutter, their cluck and chatter as they discuss where to put the various plant material each has brought to the construction site.

The girls were watching on industrious individual try to add "a bush, mom! it's got a bush!" to the nest. Here you can see a bit of what they were looking at...

And here is one of the couple, taking a break atop a telephone pole.

I wish we could see the nest - is it neat? messy? large? small? - but nevertheless, we were very entertained.

Good Earth Farm: Mudluscious

 The math was not promising: 80% chance of thunderstorms + 14 children + one small room...

 We were undaunted. A little rain during morning circle, some wet stumps and muddy boots...nature walk during a break in the drizzle...

 The group helping with the farm work (while the others prepared lunch) gathered eggs and planted onions.  Yes, this is a photo of my child in a head gate, pretending to be a cow. Very educational.

 Lunch was divine: thai peanut noodles and a salad made of homegrown lettuce and wild greens.

 The afternoon's activity was natural building...and it rained again, so inside the old farmhouse to discuss a bit, and to draw up some plans.

 And then the rain subsided to make way for MUD...

 There was mixing of cob - straw, clay, sand and water.

 Much mooshing with happy fingers...

 Applying the balls of cob to a small wall...

 So empowering to make something real with your hands.  This was all going on not far from where two women who live on the farm were teaching themselves how to put in a floor and frame walls for a guest house.

 The thunderstorms never came; it warmed up and was beautiful.  Our friend E. showed up to get her girls, bringing along 2 of 30 lambs born on her farm this spring...

Mud and lambs; it doesn't get much better, does it?

treasure-mapping

 I heard about treasure-mapping here, though the general idea had been floating around my awareness for some time. There is something about that name, though - treasure mapping - that caught me, somewhere between my seeker-self and my inner pirate. A map of your life's treasure - all that awaits you if only you know how to look for it.  Pretty alluring. I put it off for a long time, occasionally trying to cajole some time out of friends and family to join me in an afternoon of intentional cut-and-paste, but it never worked out, the timing was just never right.

 I finally made time over the span of a few days, to make a go of it this past week, during the new moon in Aries. I know almost nothing about the astrological significance of this, except that old farmers and new knowledge-seekers alike recognize it as a time for beginnings, setting new intentions, planting seeds.  I found this about it;  What's great about Aries is it burns off the inessential, the trivial, or what covers up your original radiance. You see through to the searing truth. It's about direct engagement with life. New Moons are fresh starts, making this one the Grand Opening to a new epoch and identity that holds the element of surprise.

"Direct engagement with life". That sounds pretty good, doesn't it?  Magazines, photos, notes from friends, scissors, wine, and glue sticks assembled, I moved through the different aspects of my map - abundance/prosperity, family/community, self-knowledge/wisdom, health, reputation, spirituality, creativity, life-purpose and love - and found repeatedly that there were no major changes I was looking to make. Just more...time for myself, energy for everything, laughter and levity, flexibility, openness, engagement.

  

I felt like I was drawn towards making broad strokes, which might come from not feeling a lot of control over the next two years of our lives, as Dan works towards finishing his degree.  The focus I have is on attitude, mindfulness, staying awake.  I imagine that at another time my intentions might be focused on more of the specifics, as we search for a new community to become a part of and worry over the details of building another incarnation of our family life elsewhere, but right now life is really really good in all of the ways that are important.  It was a gift to sit and focus on that for a while, after weeks of feeling hopeless and helpless and trivial in the workings of the world. A gift to work on something a little beautiful and mine.