Last week I went out particularly early one morning to get some fresh mountain air and milk Phoebe. As I stepped out the door and looked across our yard to the adjacent field of uncut hay, I saw a sight I have never seen before. The sun, just a little above the horizon, was coming in at an angle that lit up the seed heads of the uncut grass. I gasped and walked closer to thoroughly take in what I was seeing. It looked like a large field of frosted Christmas lights swaying gently in the breeze. Not knowing how long the effect would last, I ran back to the house and tiptoed in to get my camera. I raced back and took some photos. As I had to point the camera at the sun, more or less, they were sort of hard pictures to get but I hope you get the idea. It was much more splendid in person, to tell you the truth.

Why this grass is still standing in the field at this point in the summer I don’t know. What I do know, though, is that being greeted by this natural sight every morning is dazzling and shows grass in its true light when you think about it. We modern day humans may find grass to be beneath notice or only use it foolishly to carpet what has come to nowadays be referred to as “lawns“, but Nature knows that ancient grass is life giving and life supporting for the entire planet. Every morning now I am reminded of this - just in case my cows ever let me forget.

Well no matter what this sight might signify to my mind, for my heart it creates a reverential atmosphere for milking our generous cow. What better way to greet and be greeted by a mountain morning?

From the beautiful mountains of southwest Virginia,
Leslie

On Father’s Day, Paul decided to put the final layer of clay and dung mixed together on the wood fired earth oven we have been building out back. He didn’t consciously decide to do this on Father’s Day but rather did it spontaneously on Father’s Day because he is such a good father. Isn’t that a wonderfully natural way to celebrate this modern-day holiday - being Father’s Day by being a good father on that day as opposed to celebrating it by settling down into a cushy sofa and opening boxes of ties? In any case, that is how it worked out here and I admired it.

He called me out to share applying this final layer with him. I am glad he did. The dung mixture is lovely to work with. Smooth and easy to shape. Cool on a hot day. A rich color and sort of sweet smelling. Very earthy and grounding and satisfying.

Here he is being all fatherly and creating something useful for his children’s present and future:

Here we are contentedly working together:

Here is a close up of this clay/dung mixture laid onto the oven:

And finally here Paul is smoothing out the surface with a special tool. I just love watching him do this:

As we worked, I chuckled and said to him, “I bet you never would have guessed that one day you would be spending a Father’s Day slinging cow dung and loving it, eh?” He laughingly agreed. I added, “Aaand I bet you never would have thought you would be slinging cow dung so that we can bake delicious breads out of doors for your six children!” He paused and laughed a little more. Then he got right back to the business of being a great father.

All told, it was a very pleasant day.

From the beautiful mountains of southwest Virginia,
Leslie

How much land you own and the choices you make about how to use and treat that land determine what kind of life you will live upon it. You could build a McMansion on it and spend most of your life elsewhere or, at the other extreme, you could turn a city lot into a high-producing mini-farm and teaching lab like the Path to Freedom Dervais family.

As for us, I guess we are somewhere in between although far towards the Dervais’ end of the spectrum. We have just under four acres to provide the space for house, gardens, livestock, ovens, cooking areas, sitting areas, basketball courts and so on. I don’t know exactly how large the main pasture is but it is something less than three acres. Maybe closer to two acres. I don’t know. In any case, the livestock load of three cows, a heifer and a donkey the pasture was carrying was far too much. We have had to sell some of our animals.

I blogged earlier about selling Pezra, our first cow. She went to a wonderful spot and that made parting with her easier. Now we have sold Bo, our donkey. We appreciated his good looks, his boyish charm and his bone rattling bray but there just wasn’t enough pasture to justify keeping him. Our priority is our cows because they provide us food and dung.

When we first moved here to Floyd County I was told several times that coyotes are a problem around here and that donkeys are good protection. You see them in with cows quite often hereabouts. Plus we thought it would be wonderful to have an animal our children could ride. Bo seemed to fit the bill on both counts as he was a donkey who was at least somewhat trained to ride. My mother heard about this and gave him to us as a gift which was exciting.

It was fun having a new kind of animal and family member about the place and it was fun doing something new like riding. The children did ride him quite a bit but he was balky and obviously still needed a lot of training before the children riding him could be a smooth and regular part of our homestead life. Furthermore, we never saw any coyotes. Never even heard any. I think one advantage to having such a small homestead is that everything is near the house. The animal and plant sections of the homestead basically wrap right around the house/human sections of the homestead. Everything is close to everything else. It is easy for us to keep our minds, our attention, on the whole place and easy for the presence of our dog to be felt everywhere. We have not been bothered by any stray animals of any kind as of yet. We realize that we don’t really seem to need Bo for protection at this point because so far our protection comes through being intimately sized.

We listed Bo on Craigslist for weeks. There was a lot of traffic to the web site looking at him and a few inquiries but nothing solid. One Saturday Paul and I took a trip to The Greens Garage. This is a marvelous local business the size of a large living room that sells practically all of the kinds of foods that we eat, including lots of luscious local produce. What really sets the place apart, however, is the fact that it runs on the honor system. Isn’t that marvelous? What a great atmosphere it has and, therefore, what a great place to buy food.

Paul and I went there every Saturday for a while as a sort of date but we had gotten too busy and hadn’t been in months. A few weeks ago, though, Paul thought we should go again and he made sure it happened. It was there that we met a very interesting Floyd County resident whose husband had just decided he wanted a donkey four days prior. Within the week we all met and liked each other, they bought Bo and transported him to their 10 acre place. A win for everybody and hopefully we will go visit both him and them often. This was definitely a charmed Floyd County kind of interaction and connection.

So once again, the right time and place showed up which made parting with one of our animals a bit easier. While seeing the “rightness” of a change isn’t required or guaranteed, having the luxury of seeing it surely does make adjusting to the change easier. We are grateful that the “rightness” here was so obvious. Below is a video with scenes of Bo and the activity involved in getting him ready to go.

May he grow well in his new home and may they enjoy their relationship with him.

From the beautiful mountains of southwest Virginia,
Leslie

As I have posted before, I keep one gallon containers of grains and beans in the kitchen and five gallon containers of back-up supplies in the basement. Some days ago, I refilled the popcorn container in the kitchen and made a note to buy more of a back-up supply. Then a couple of days ago, I happened to be standing next to the part of the eye level shelf in the kitchen that holds the popcorn container and noticed that there was only about an inch of popcorn in the bottom of the popcorn container.

I thought, “I know I am not losing my mind that much. I definitely filled that popcorn container. What happened?” I searched the entire shelf of ten or twelve containers and finally discovered what I had done. You see, we use red popcorn we get from the local Mennonite store. It is a lovely deep plum color (and pops up very white by the way). In fact, it is the exact same lovely deep plum color as kidney beans. Yes, I had poured the popcorn into the kidney beans and what with popcorn being very small and all, well the popcorn and the kidney beans were thoroughly mixed together in the kidney bean container.

At that moment, I was deep in the throes of trying to work out a suitable kindergarten program for our newly turned 6 year old. I had ransacked my homeschooling library looking for ideas of light, interesting activities he could engage in at the table with us while his brother and sisters were there every morning doing their MEP math. My dismay at my bizarre mistake turned into an atmosphere of education “aha.” “What is a typical early math activity,” I asked myself? “Why sorting, of course!”

I called Andrew to the table and told him I had a special activity for him. I explained to all the children the funny mistake I had made. We wondered together at the probability of a person having bulk kidney beans among many other bulk items on one shelf, another of which was an unusual kind of popcorn (also in bulk) that happens to be the exact same color as kidney beans, and then added in the probability of a kitchen manager dazed enough to confuse the two while filling bins. OK, they are too young to really figure probability but they knew enough to know that this has to be a rare kind of mistake.

I set Andrew up with two bowls and the two containers in question of kidney beans and popcorn. See, they really are the same color.

He picked out the kidney beans and put them in a separate bowl.

Here he is happy with his math-doing brother and sisters.

As a matter of fact, this activity was apparently so compelling that his seven year old sister raced through her math so that she could help. What fun they had finishing up the job and how grateful I was to have all the grains and beans back in their proper containers.

It is within just such a natural home atmosphere of education and gratitude that the possibility always exists that mistakes can be transformed into that which is best for us all.

From the beautiful mountains of southwest Virginia,
Leslie

I walked into the office the other day and was greeted by this heartwarming sight. And of all the books on that shelf, they picked my favorite ones on goat and cow care by Pat Coleby. It is great having more readers in the house interested in the same subjects that I am. We definitely can use a research team around here.

From the beautiful mountains of southwest Virginia,
Leslie