“If dandelions were hard to grow, they would be most welcome on any lawn.” ~ Andrew Mason I’ve dedicated this year to learning about herbs and how to use them. I am certain that I will now be spending the rest of my life on this journey. I’m hooked. As I’ve learned to identify beneficial herbs, I’m thoroughly amazed at the varieties available to anyone with eyes to see. They grow freely along roads and trails and all over my very own property. Perhaps the herb I’ve been most delighted to “discover” has been the ubiquitous dandelion. All parts of the dandelion are highly nutritions. Dandelions ..read more

‘Summer is coming, summer is coming. I know it, I know it, I know it. Light again, leaf again, life, again, love again,’ Yes, my wild little Poet. ~ Alfred Lord Tennyson, from The Throstle Hello from June 17th!  Extremely-rainy-May has merged into torrential-downpour-June, and I have lost track of time. It is a stinky, muddy mess on the farm. Seriously. I have no reflections except that it needs to dry out ASAP! Things I’ve noticed about this wettest spring in 81 years: my huge hedge of shrub roses, normally gorgeous this time of year, is not yet blooming. Our fruit trees that had ample b ..read more

Nothing is so beautiful as Spring- When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush; Thrush’s eggs look little low heavens, and thrush Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring The ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing; The glassy peartree leaves and blooms, they brush The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush With richness; the racing lambs to have fair their fling. ~ From Spring, by Gerard Manley Hopkins ~ April was so consuming that I am just now, eight days into May, having a chance to sit down and reflect. Non-farm life was extremely full: birthdays, Easter ..read more

“Now say to yourself five times, and believe it… “”This is March. The main thing to do in March is to don’t.I don’t dare do much in my garden.. because I know this old fellow March; he fools me every time.” ~ Alfred Carl Hottes, BHG garden editor, 1933 Come March, when the world is blooming, the days are stretching, and the sun is once again warming the earth, it is hard to resist the siren-call of brightly-colored flowers and vegetable starts filling every garden section of every store. But our average last frost date here in the central Willamette Valley is still a month out (April 23). Yes ..read more

Come, sweetheart, listen, for I have a thing Most wonderful to tell you – news of spring Albeit winter still is in the air And the earth troubled, and the branches bare, Yet down the fields to-day, I saw her pass – The spring – her feet went shining through the grass ~ From “The Miracle”, by John Drinkwater ~ February gave us a few blissful glimpses of spring, as it is wont to do.  Sunshine, even cold sunshine, is a balm to the worn-down wintery soul in February. Sometimes in the dreary wet, trudging out to morning chores, I forget that it can ever be different. I forget that there are mo ..read more

Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit,and resign yourself to the influences of each. ~ Henry David Thoreau ~ I discovered the above Thoreau quote shortly after we moved to our farm eight years ago, and I have had it pinned to a bulletin board in my kitchen ever since. It perfectly expresses what I long for on our farm and the joy we have encountered  … to have life ordered by external rhythms, to live according to the seasons, to eat fresh and seasonally, to rest in cold and dark months, to labor in warm and light months. And these rhyth ..read more

Tap, tap… is this thing on??? It has been 14 months since I’ve written here. Every November I receive a bill for the domain name and web hosting for this website, and I have to make a decision…. to renew or not to renew. It is a respectable chunk of change, and so it always gives me pause. Should I continue? Should I shut down? Does anyone even read blogs anymore? (Pretty sure, no.) I’ve never done with this space what I’ve wanted to or had the vision for, yet I can’t seem to give it up. I have spent the past two years writing for a website about faith, about who God is, and about living life ..read more

When I sent my kids to school two years ago after many years of homeschooling, what I grieved most was the loss of Morning Time. It was the heart of our homeschool and consequently of our family. And though I had vague intentions of maybe trying to keep it up on weekends and school-breaks, we got out of the rhythm and so lived without it for two years. I (like much of the world) am unexpectedly homeschooling again this year and what nudged me toward both excitement and peace at the prospect was the realization that we could again do Morning Time.  It has quickly resumed its place at the h ..read more

“It is better to light a candle than curse the darkness.”   ~Eleanor Roosevelt This morning I woke up to rain drumming the roof, a dreary Monday, the 70-somethingth day of quarantine, ahead of me a full day helping five kids do school at home and doing farm chores in the rain. The prospect did not delight me. I walked out of my bedroom and said to my husband, “Well, this is buns” (our family’s all-purpose negative adjective). I was immediately reminded of the childhood song I had learned: This is the day (echo: this is the day) That the Lord has made (that the Lord has made) I will ..read more

“I cannot endure to waste anything so precious as autumnal sunshine by staying in the house. So I have spent almost all the daylight hours in the open air.   ~Nathaniel Hawthorne Autumn and its burnished beauty never disappoints. I find myself asking as I drive down an ordinary city street, “How is this world so beautiful?”  The fiery blaze of leaves letting go and the mist hanging low in the valley while the sun rises on the hills… it all seems like too much, God’s sweet extravagance to us. This season is also fleeting, as October nears it’s end and we’ve been readyi ..read more