First snow

Yesterday was the first "big" snowfall of the year. Later than some years, earlier than others. But the chronology doesn't matter. Just that it's here now. It was only about 6" of accumulation but enough to cause the school board to cancel buses. Enough to coat the land with white frosting and dust the trees with icing sugar. Enough.

The kids were thrilled -- snow day! Sledding and hot chocolate and warming cold toes by the fire. And me -- rumbles of dread and panic began burbling inside my chest. Winter is no long coming, it's here. While the snow absolves me from many farm responsibilities and covers a multitude of sins and unfinished projects, winter also makes other day-to-day tasks harder. But it's not the practicalities that fill me with anxiety -- it's the unexpected, the unknown, the whats, the when. Will the power go out this year and if so how will I get the generator out of the garage? What if the barn pipes freeze like last year? What if the winch on the plow breaks again or if it stops running all together? When will I run out of wood/hay/money?

How will I manage the darkness?

I tell my kids there are no such things are monsters, but that's not entirely true. Those are the monsters that haunt my mind and leave me tense, short tempered and fearful. The monsters that fill my thoughts with their disparaging words, their put downs, their judgements, their 'you don't deserve this' and 'you can't handle it.'  

And yet.

Today I walked to the barn under a canopy of peacock blue sky, sunlight captured in the snow. Dancing. Like fairylights. I breathed in the cold air tinged with a tease of woodsmoke. The taking of breath. Breathtaking. I could hear the goats and sheep bleating, the pigs barking (more incessant than oinking), the chickens clucking for their breakfast. In this morning my chest ached with beauty. And possibility. And purpose.

Sometimes I wish my soul was drawn towards an easier path. Living on a farm can be hard; doing it alone can be terrifying.

And yet.

I recently found photos from before the move, when we lived in suburbia in a small semi-detached house that we bought because it was in the right neighbourhood with a small shady garden that grew hostas and patchy grass. I recognized the place but it was like looking at a stranger. I am so different from that woman who went to bed at night gazing out at the neighbour's rooftop wondering, is this all there is?

Stronger. Tougher. Harder. Smaller. Fuller.

The seeds of growing self-reliance, of finding meaning, of realizing a purpose, were there, but dormant. It took moving to the farm for the seeds to grow. Not all seeds flourish; some fail to germinate, others grow weak and spindly, and there are those that die from disease or neglect or for no reason at all.  

I grieve for the woman in the photos who thought that moving to the farm would be a dream come true. In many ways it was, still is. But that dream came at a cost. Fairy tales never talk about what happens when happily ever after ends. But I never wanted to be like Cinderella anyway.

So for now, this day, I think of the healing power of winter. A time for rejuvenation, reflection, next steps. Author and poet Brian Brett wrote that farming is a profession of hope. There is always next season. Forgiveness for last year's mistakes. Another chance. A fresh start.

The seeds are waiting.

Still here

Hello, world. It's me. I know it's been six months since I last checked in -- a record, yes -- but I'm still here.

I'm still on the farm, but tonight my children are not. They're at their dad's place, his small apartment in the village, their new second home.

Instead of reading them stories and tucking them into bed tonight with never enough 'I love yous,' I snatch a hug, glance a peck on each cheek, and watch them rush out the door towards the headlights of his waiting car, moths drawn to a flame.

Instead of strolling down the driveway tomorrow morning and waiting for the bus amidst knock-knock jokes and who-gets-on-the-bus-firsts, he'll send them off from his streetscape doorway with hugs and kisses and reminders about street safety before they walk to school with their friends.

Instead of bracing for after-school bursts through the front door, a flurry of backpacks and artwork and dogs barking and calls of, "Mum, what's to eat?" peppered with stories of schoolyard drama and how many goals, the dogs will still be sleeping in front of the fire at 4:05 pm as their young charges walk to the park or the library or home. His home.

It's exciting, this new second home, and I want to be excited, even happy, for them. For him. And yet, right now, I'm just sad and scared and empty.

But I'm still here.

Discovering celeriac

OK, I know I'm late coming to the kitchen table on this one. It's not like celeriac is this year's 'must try' vegetable. In fact, it's so 2009, based on my Google searches on what to do with this odd, knobby and gnarled, bulbous-headed root vegetable.

While I'm not intimidated by funky looking vegetables, I admit to not always being the most adventurous produce shopper. While my kids are both enthusiastic greens eaters (Ella actually asks for Brussels sprouts and Jack can put away a shocking number of fresh-off-the-vine cherry tomatoes), they're not the most intrepid when it comes to trying new things. But if they're never exposed to unfamiliar ("weird looking" in kidspeak) veg because I don't want to listen to the chorus of "what is that?" or "you're not actually going to make me try that, are you?" then their palates will never evolve. That's what I lecture tell then at least.

Truth be told, I have another reason for trying celeriac: I don't want to grow celery. Celery has the reputation for being fussy -- hard to start from seed, a gluttonous feeder and a voracious drinker -- and while it's easy to grow bitter, stringy celery, growing tasty celery (I'm told) is much trickier.

I'm not up for growing ornery vegetables this year, so I thought about trying celeriac instead. Even though it doesn't replace celery entirely, unlike its greener cousin, it's much easier to grow and it stores well.

While it looks tough on the outside, I simply topped and tailed it, then used a paring knife to remove the skin, which is thicker than a potato but more forgiving than a rutabaga.

While celeriac is wonderful in soups and stews (so I've read) I wanted to taste the flavour on its own, so I kept the preparation simple: I chopped it into a few large pieces, doused it in some cold water with a shot of lemon juice to prevent browning while the water was coming to a boil, and then boiled until soft. I drained the pot, smashed the celeriac, and only added some butter, milk and salt and pepper. That was it.

The kids likened it to a cross between potatoes and celery. While it was definitely more fibrous than mashed spuds, I thought it had a similar comfort food quality, with a celery-like taste and nutty undertones. Nice.
While this could be a side dish on its own, I'm going to try cream of celeriac soup next.

And while celeriac will never take home any prizes for perfect-looking produce, I think I'll include a few plants in this year's garden. For as Ashley Miller writes in her article from the October 2000 issue of Kitchen Gardener Magazine on "How to Grow Celeriac" ugly is only skin deep.

Backyard sugaring (or how to make maple syrup)

Disclaimer: I realize the title is a bit misleading because this is simply how we made maple syrup from five trees using low-tech methods.

As this is our first year making maple syrup we wanted to do things on the cheap, so our only investment was in traditional buckets and spiles, which cost about $30 (though we could have used recycled plastic buckets had we wanted to). We chose the iconic lidded metal buckets because 1.) I prefer metal to plastic, 2.) we can use them year after year, and 3.) I like the look of them. When I close my eyes and picture a sugar bush, this is what I see.

A bit of nostalgia? Perhaps. But as we're tapping only a handful of trees, collecting buckets is easy and manageable. Even the children enjoy this chore, racing to each tree, lifting the lid off the bucket and tipping the clear contents into the waiting pail below. (We used food-grade wine-making pails that we found in the barn.)

Five almost-full sap buckets nearly fills three 20 litre pails, which can fit side-by-side on a kids' sled (that I can drag when there is snow) or on the back of the ATV (when there is not). The hard part isn't getting the sap out of the trees or the sap into the gathering pails -- it's getting the pails out of the woods, which can be made downright treacherous by the weather (think mud sucking trails laced with patches of ice).


Next year when we tap more trees (we're thinking 10) this bucket method will still be manageable, though instead of the small wine buckets, we'd use a much larger gathering pail that we'd pull by tractor. Still I can appreciate why a growing number of producers, home-scale and commercial, are switching to plastic tubing pipeline systems, which move the sap via tubes that are connected to a centralized collection "vat" in or near the sugar shack.

Sandy Flat Sugar Bush, Warworth, Ont. March 2010

This is certainly a more efficient collection method, but it is more expensive to purchase up-front, more time consuming to set up and can require ongoing maintenance due to squirrel damage. What's more, something of the sugar bush lore and romance is lost when the trees look like they're connected to an elaborate IV.

As we're simply interested in making maple syrup for our own consumption, I quite like the slow and simple process of gathering buckets. Much of our traditional ways have been lost in the quest for greater efficiency, and while we may be able to harvest more sap for less time and effort by using more "advanced" technology, the experience and link to tradition would be lost.

Source: Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder

In keeping with our low-tech, minimal cost approach, we, too, decided to boil the sap down over an open fire. Larger hobbyists and commercial producers use evaporators, but even a small evaporator for up to 150 spiles would set us back $3,000.

We didn't have a big iron kettle like the pioneers used, so instead I built a rough three-sided "oven" out of cinder blocks in our fire pit and topped it with an old grate. Lucas found a stainless steel stock pot on sale ($13) and we used that for our main boiling pot. (I think it's only a 12 quart size and while a larger pot or shallow pan might have been better, we wanted to make use of what we had or was readily available.)

I had a second pot (not shown) that I used to pre-boil the sap, so as the larger pot boiled down, I added the pre-boiled sap to it to keep the temperature fairly constant (unless the sap in the larger pot threatened to boil over and then I'd add cold sap to cool it off).


I didn't need to sit there the entire time, but I did enjoy several hours of quiet contemplation at the fireside watching the steam billow and the sap dance over the glowing coals as the fire hissed and crackled. Pure magic.

It took about seven hours to boil roughly 55 litres of clear sap down to 4-5 litres of thin golden syrup. At that point, I brought the sap into the house (while it was still hot) and filtered it into another stainless steel stock pot. While I'd already filtered the sap once in the woods, to remove the bugs and pieces of bark, quite a lot of particulate matter (from ash, cinders, etc.) had collected in the boiling sap. It's also wise to remove the gritty sediment called 'sugar sand' (or niter), which is minerals and nutrients from the trees that concentrates as the sap boils down.

I then put the remaining sap on the stove top to finish it. As I'd already boiled most of the water off outside, I didn't need to worry too much about excess condensation in the house (as sap is only 3 - 5% sugar and the rest water, sugaring inside the house can peel wallpaper and invite mould into the walls), but I used the vent fan all the same.

Finished sap boils at approximately 103.8 degrees Celsius (218.8 degrees Fahrenheit) (at sea level). It's important to keep an eye on the sap/syrup as you approach this point because as the concentration of sugar increases, less water is available to boil away, which means the syrup can easily boil over and/or burn.

If you let it boil too long as I did with our first batch, it'll start to thicken and crystallize. (Ironically, this happened as Lucas and I were arguing over whether the sap/syrup was ready yet. Guess he was right.)


The above syrup has a creamy consistency flecked with granulated maple sugar bits and is delicious in coffee, drizzled on ice cream, smeared on toast, eaten by the spoonful...

I was much more careful with the second batch and while I didn't have a candy thermometer handy (I broke it with the first batch) or a hydrometer to check the density of the maple (finished syrup is roughly 65% sugar) I'd say this one turned out perfect -- deep amber in colour with a smokey rich sweetness.

Sugaring season is short, with most sap coming during a 10 to 14 day "run," depending on the weather. We'll continue to collect sap and make syrup until the buds open and the trees stop producing. With this strange spring, that may come sooner than we hope.

Like many of our "simpler" pursuits, there is a lot of time and work involved transforming sap into syrup, especially when making it the traditional way. But this process fosters a deep appreciation for the gift that nature provides us and helps create a connection to the folks who settled our land and had their own sugaring-off celebrations. If these trees could talk, I'm sure they'd have many sweet stories to tell. Instead, we're sharing our own.

First sap!

While we tapped some trees on Saturday, three days passed before I got a chance to check the buckets. So after finishing barn chores yesterday morning, I took the dogs for a walk on our usual loop, which passes through the woods where we're tapping.

As I walked towards the buckets I wasn't sure what to expect. Would there be any sap? Did we even tap the right trees? The temperature had been below zero the last few days, so I told myself, "don't be disappointed."

I lifted the first lid and let out a loud whoop -- sap!

There was only about 4" of accumulated sap on the bottom of the bucket, and approximately 2" of it was frozen solid, but it was maple sap all the same.

I emptied all four buckets -- the first two much fuller than the buckets on the old tree that we'd double tapped (I think we're going to move one of the spiles to another younger tree) -- and dragged the slushy sap home using a sled I'd expropriated from the kids.

I left it to fully melt and then measured it -- approximately 2.5 litres! I felt a bit silly being this excited about our first harvest as this amount of sap will yield only about 1/4 cup of finished syrup, but I was giddy. Ridiculously so.

Until I took Jack to hockey last night. It seems everyone around here is tapping trees. The first woman I talked to already has 300 spiles in, and hopes to tap 100 more. She said they'd max out their taps at 500 trees as that's about all they could handle this year.

I was more than a little sheepish when I told her that we'd tapped just four trees, because we thought that was all we could handle this year. I started thinking, maybe we should tap some more -- we could do at least 10, right? Or 15? Or...

Then I caught myself doing that thing that I always do. I compare myself to what other people are up to, and I never seem to measure up. Folks are always 'further ahead' on their homesteads and farms, doing more, achieving more, and I often feel like I'm just dabbling, or when I'm really hard on myself, I feel like a fraud. I'm not a particularly competitive person and yet I always seem to be keeping score.

Since moving to the farm I've become horribly impatient. I want to do it all -- grow food, raise animals, live the "good life" in our ultimate efforts to become more self-reliant -- right now! But I too often forget (or ignore) that it's the journey that matters, not the destination.

I'm learning most of these skills from scratch, while raising two kids and working three jobs. I know I should cut myself some slack, but it's hard. I waffle between feeling like an underachiever and feeling totally burnt out and exhausted.

What we're doing is enough. I'm enough. And even if we only harvest enough sap to make one bottle of syrup, it's one more bottle of homegrown goodness than we had last year.

So in the spirit of celebrating another first, before the kids left for school this morning I passed around a tiny sherry glass and we each took a sip of this spring tonic.


It was a sweet way to start a new day and a new season. It was enough.

Tapping the trees

Saturday marked our first time tapping the trees in 'the old sugar bush'. To get there you must first walk through the big hayfield towards the south-east corner of our farm, a crossing made easier by our snowshoes, which have had little use in this wet but mild winter.

It was my favourite kind of winter day, cold but sunny, with a healthy base of snow (thanks to Friday's storm), which felt dense and solid under our footfalls. We walked single file through the outskirts of the forest stand, with its mix of young maples, evergreens and sumac.

The cedars gave way to the oak trees and then rounding a corner we passed into the part of the woods populated by some sugar maples. We had a hazy sense of which trees were maples, but without any leaves we couldn't be 100% sure.

While we'd meant to mark the trees last fall, we didn't, and the monochromatic winter forest is markedly different from its green and leafy warm weather persona -- it's more quiet and reserved.

Undeterred, or just plain stubborn, we located two of the trees that we'd eye-marked last weekend based on what we thought was classic maple bark design, and decided we'd hang just two buckets here. I've come to appreciate that book learning can only take you so far; the true teachable moments come from experience.

We drilled the first spile...

...and hung the first bucket.

The lid barely had time to close before the kids clammered around, looking to see the first sap flow. But the trees were still sleeping on this cold morning.

While the kids and Lucas searched for suitable trees on the other side of the trail (to hedge our bets in case we'd misidentified the first two) I remembered one special maple that I'd found last summer .

I know so little of the history of our farmstead, so when I first learned about 'the old sugar bush' during an unexpected visit last August from a woman who told me she was "born here 70 years ago", I checked the sugar maple tree trunks for some evidence of their productive past.

I found only one spile scar. At the time I was disappointed, but this day it was enough.

I used that same scar as a map (of sorts) to show us where to hang two more buckets

Nature has much to teach us if we open our eyes and look -- with a little help from those that came before us.

Baby duck love

It looks like my computer issues are finally resolved. It wasn't the satellite after all, but the router that probably got fried during the big windstorm. My internet service is still slow at times (granted, the signal is travelling up to space) but at least it's not timing out anymore.

And that's great, because tomorrow I'm offering another giveaway sponsored by Penguin Canada.

But before I get to that, I'm going to subject you to a ridiculous number of photos of our new addition: Mrs. Nibbles. Yes, Ella named her.

I was on my barn rounds this morning when I decided to check on Betsy -- the newly-single broody hen who recently kicked out her duck partner Jemima.

I thought I heard some peeping, so I took a quick peek under her skirts.

A just-hatched Muscovy duckling.


Unfortunately, as soon as Betsy saw that her tiny charge wasn't one of her kind, she freaked out a bit and started pecking at her. Given last year's tragedies with our duckling losses, I simply couldn't go through that heartache again, so I quickly scooped up the new hatchling, cupped her between my closed hands and brought her back to the house.


She was still crusty, so I'm thinking she was less than an hour old.

As I wasn't finished the day's editing work, I set up a makeshift brooder in my home office, using a deep plastic bin, some dried grass newly warmed by the sun and my desk light, refitted with an old incandescent bulb that throws off a surprising amount of heat.


It didn't take long before she started fluffing up and looking more duck-like and less on-the-brink-of-death like.

When the kids came home from school, I fabricated some excuse for getting then into my office -- even though I'm usually telling them to get out of my office. It took them a few moments to notice the brooder on my desk (perhaps a testament to just how messy it is in here) but when they did, Ella gasped and Jack broke out into a huge grin.

"Where did this come from?" they asked. Given that I was the kid who brought home wounded birds, stray pets and even tried to convince my parents that the garage was the perfect place to house a horse (in Toronto, no less) -- and never truly outgrew these tendencies -- it seemed a fair question.

"Betsy the chicken hatched her," I said.

"Really?" said Ella. "Wow.... Can I hold her? Please, can I?"


I said yes, but only after they washed their hands, unpacked their bookbags and lunches, and had a snack. We were gone for about 10 minutes, if that, when I hear a "peeping" sound clear across the main floor.

"Maybe she's hungry," said Ella.

"I don't think so," I replied. "Maybe she just misses us," I said with a smile.

Ella and I walked back into my office (nothing gets between Jack and his post-school snacktime) and even from across the room, I could see the brooder was empty. Empty? Where could the duckling have gone? She could barely stand up, let alone fly...

Right. I looked down and there she was, stumbling around my office rug like a drunken sailor.

"Are you my mother?"

Ella dropped to the floor, gathered the duckling in her dress and proceeded to stroke its tiny fragile body. She started chewing on Ella's dress buttons, so I thought maybe we could introduce a bit of food to our new charge.

I was out of the room for all of five minutes.

I guess any creature that comes to live on Rowangarth Farm has to get used to some degree of silliness around here. That and a whole lotta love.

This farming life

The kids are on the school bus, the barn chores are done, and I'm getting ready to drive three-plus hours east of here to attend EcoFarm Day, a conference hosted by the Canadian Organic Growers.

I'll be attending workshops on the overwinter storage of fruits and vegetables, as well as food safety on the farm, but the one I'm most looking forward to is 'Decisions for the viable and sustainable farm', a presentation that might help me decide whether to take the next step on our farming venture/adventure.

When we first moved to our farm almost three years ago, it was to become more self-reliant, to live closer to and in harmony with the earth and to raise our children in such an environment. Those intentions remain, but over the past year or so, I've been thinking about ways to have the farm as my livelihood, and not just a way of life.

The thought terrifies and excites me. I'm already climbing a huge learning curve and sometimes my legs and arms feel so tired from all the scrambling. I have no illusions that this will be easy -- for instance, I know just how physically hard this life can be, especially when I'm not a very big person to begin with. (I'm thinking back to a time last summer when despite putting all my weight behind a broadfork, it stayed stuck fast in the dirt, only to have Lucas walk over to it, grab it by the handles and hoist it clear from the ground. And don't get me started on how heavy those big bags of chicken feed are!)

It means digging deep, finding courage and coming to terms with and accepting that regardless of how stubborn I am, I will need help. Lots of it. And it's not like I don't already have two other jobs -- one as a mama, the second as a writer and editor.

I don't expect to get rich this way, but there are financial benefits to having an income-generating farm; even a small-scale one. For one, Ontario farmers who generate a gross income of $7,000 are eligible for a Farm Property Class tax rebate, which means we'd only pay 25% of our property taxes.

More importantly, generating more income on the farm means spending less time generating income off the farm, and while we do our best to reduce as much spending as we can by buying less, growing more, doing with what we have, the list of things we need money for remains long -- mortgage, property tax, vehicle repairs & gas, insurance, dental bills, savings for the kids' education, and on and on.

But even $7,000 seems like a monumental amount of money, especially when our sole farm income right now is the eggs from our 40 hens, which we sell for $3/dozen.

So we'll see. I'm not expecting to make any decisions tomorrow, only to gather more information. Maybe I'll realize I'm crazy or idealistic, or this is something to put on our 'five-year plan.' But this idea of growing the farm and making it fiscally productive has got a firm hold on me. I'm not alone.

In Kristin Kimball's book "The Dirty Life, On Farming, Food and Love," a story of her leap from a thirtysomething Manhattan-based writer to a new life on a sustainable cooperative farm in upstate New York, she writes:

"I've learned many things in the years since my life took this wild turn towards the dirt... But one lesson came harder than any of those: As much as you transform the land by farming, farming transforms you. It seeps into your skin along with the dirt that abides permanently in the creases of your thickened hands, the beds of your nails. It asks so much of your body that if you're not careful it can wreck you as surely as any vice by the time you're fifty, when you wake up and find yourself with ruined knees and dysfunctional shoulders, deaf from the constant clank and rattle of your machinery, and broke to boot.

But farming takes root in you and crowds out other endeavours, makes them seem paltry. Your acres become a world. And maybe you realize that it is beyond those acres or in your distant past, back in the realm of TiVo and cubicles, of take-out food and central heat and air, in that country where comfort has nearly disappeared, that you were deprived. Deprived of the pleasure of desire, of effort and difficulty and meaningful accomplishment. A farm asks and if you don't give enough, the primordial forces of death and wildness will overrun you. So naturally you give, and then you give some more, and then you give to the point of breaking, and then and only then it gives back, so bountifully it overfills not only your root cellar but also that parched and weedy little patch we call the soul."

I often tell my kids, "do one thing every day that scares you" and "make the most of yourself, for that's all there is of you" -- at the same time, accepting that where you are right now is perfect.

You'd think leaving our lives behind and moving to the country would be the hard part. That was easy. It's what comes next that scares me. I'll keep you posted.

Have a lovely weekend, folks!

Confessions of an absentee blogger

There have been a few times lately that I've sat down and started a blog post about silly things happening in the barnyard or my late-night knitting bouts or my new obsession with alpaca wool, but after a few lines, I'd always hit ‘delete.’ The words came out sounding false, forced and lifeless. I’ve been reading too many blogs lately, and other people's posts are invariably more interesting, moving, eloquent or hilarious than anything I’ve been able to come up with.

So here’s my dirty little secret: I'm suffering from a serious case of writer's block. Well, it’s not exactly writer’s block – it’s more a sense of having absolutely nothing to say. I have no trouble writing about other people’s lives for work, but when it comes to my own, the well is looking pretty dry. It helps that I've got a part-time editing gig that keeps part of my creative brain cranking away. That's what's been keeping me so busy this past six months of radio silence. Well, that and I've become somewhat derailed.

It began last September when Ella started grade one. It was a day that I'd been dreading for most of the summer. Each time we talked about going back to school, her big blue eyes framed with long dark lashes, would fill up with tears and she'd say to me, "But mama, I'm going to miss you." And every time, she broke my heart a little bit more.

You see, when Lucas and I decided to have kids, the deal was that I'd stay home with them. I'd finished post-grad journalism school in April, was pregnant by May and interned at a magazine until two days before Jack was born. I'd work when I could, but my main job was one of "mum." That was nine years ago.


My freelance writing work load was fairly steady, though there were crazy times that I'd clock lots of late nights after the kids went to bed and too many weekends. Money was tight, I was always juggling and it was exhausting and often frustrating. There were dark times when my fuse was especially short, when I couldn't wait to have "my" life back, whatever that looked like. But then I’d chide myself with the reminder that this time home with the kids was so short.

Jack was the first to leave the nest five days a week, starting grade one the September after we moved to the farm.

After an intense summer of spending all our time together as we explored our new home, and our new lives, he was suddenly gone from Monday to Friday. I'd walk him to the bus in the morning and pick him up at the end of the drive at 4:00pm, but for seven hours each day, his world was foreign to me. I knew this was a part of growing up and letting go, but still, it felt like a piece of me was missing.

My consolation was that I still had Ella at home. She, too, would ride the school bus, but only attended kindergarten on Mondays, Wednesdays and every other Friday. I would have the day to myself -- to work, to get chores done -- and then we would have her off days together. But life gets messy and there were days that I'd have to work when she was home. I still never seemed to have enough time in the day and the burden of "mummy guilt" weighed heavily.

But two years of kindergarten passed quickly and this past September saw them both away at school. Surprisingly, to me at least, when D-day came it was something of a non-event for the kids. As Jack was entering grade three, he was an old pro at this full-time school thing; Ella just wanted to be like her big brother.


After a bazillion photos, hugs and kisses, they trooped off down the driveway with their dad, climbed the big steps to the school bus and were on their way, waving madly out the window before turning their backs to chatter with their friends.



Like a scene out of a B grade movie, I watched the bus pull away and only when I turned did the tears start spilling down my cheeks.


I braced myself for some kind of aftershock once the novelty of "back to school" wore off. I still ache with the memory of sitting on the edge of Jack's bed while I rubbed his six-year-old back, trying to console his desolate sobs while I gently explained that yes, he did have to go to school every day of the week now.

He had it harder than Ella: he was the shy new kid at a rural school where everyone has known each others' families for generations. He got through it and today, he's got his own tribe of school chums.

But Ella never went through that: she embraced school as she does most things -- with enthusiasm, exuberance and joy. Perched at the kitchen table during after-school snack time, she'd tell me stories of what she'd done that day. To any onlooker, I was the quintessential proud and smiling mother, but deep inside there was this pit of loneliness and disorientation. I had "my" life back. Five days a week. And I was lost.

I knew all too well the dangers of the empty nest syndrome. I vowed not to be one of those parents who lived their lives vicariously through their children. I'd model parental devotion as well as interest in my own life through writing, farming, cooking, yoga, crafting -- whatever. That was the plan, at least.

When I'm busy being busy -- those days when I've got so much work to do and the chores are overwhelming and I need 28 hours in the day to get everything accomplished -- then I'm ok. Well, not really – I’m often grumpy, strung out and frazzled. But lately, during the quiet of winter when much of the farm sleeps under a thick blanket of snow, when I'm forced to slow down and come face-to-face with that insidious question -- what happens now?—that’s when I get derailed.

I'm sure most folks would shake their heads and tell me I'm wasting my time with such preoccupations. I'm blessed to send my kids off to school and be there at the end of the day. I'm with them on field trips, snow days and we'll drive each other crazy during the long eight weeks of summer.

I know what I have to do. It's time to get off my duff and stop thinking so bloody much. Seize the day, be here now, be the person I want to be in the world, and all that. But it’s scary. It feels a bit like starting over, reaching for that next monkey bar without someone there to catch me if I fall. I’ve spent the last nine years preoccupied with the needs and wants of these two wonderful, and often demanding, little people; now I’ve got to start thinking of my own needs and wants.

It’s no longer a case of asking them, ‘what do you want to do today?’ I’ve got to start asking myself that question. It's just harder than I thought it'd be; that's all.

Phew! For all of you who made it to the bottom of that monster post, kudos! I feel remarkably better getting that off my chest. I'm even getting some inspiration for a new blog post on... wait for it... knitting my first sock! I'm living on the edge out here...

Our morning sadness

After yesterday's wonderful surprise, when I found that new baby duckling, I was looking forward to being welcomed by a chorus of peeps this morning. Instead, I found only silence.

When I shut down the barn last night, I discovered that the second duckling had completely hatched from her shell. She was still all curled up in a ball -- hatching is exhausting work! -- but she was already starting to dry off.

Mama only let me take a quick glimpse of her newest charge before settling back down on the nest. I secured the duck pen, making sure the barn cats couldn't get in and then turned off the barn lights for the night. I debated whether or not I should bring the babies into the house or simply put the heat lamp back on as I know ducklings need supplemental heating for their first few weeks. But I decided that since mama was here, I'd leave her to take care of the new arrivals. Perhaps I made the wrong choice.

When I checked in to the duck pen this morning, there was mama sitting on her nest. And lying still beside her was one of the ducklings. While she'd started to fluff up she was still a bit crusty in spots (so I'm assuming it was the new one), but she was long gone. I'm not sure what happened -- I know babies are very fragile and perhaps she died shortly after emerging from the shell and no matter what I'd done, we would have lost her. But it's hard not to think, "or maybe she froze to death because I didn't turn the lamp on or take her inside."

(Thankfully, I found the other duckling -- still alive -- with her head shoved into mama's chest. She seemed no worse for wear and in fact, showed quite a healthy appetite for her duckling feed.)

The kids and I buried the new hatchling down by the pond and then slowly made our way back to the barn to continue on with the morning chores. As I was feeding Gall his bucket of grain, I felt some comfort in the sheer numbers of living beings around me -- especially the fully-grown ducks that I'd raised from day-olds.

But what got me about the dead duckling was an overwhelming feeling that because of my inexperience, I'd made the "wrong" choice.

The qualities that make me particularly well suited to caring for these creatures -- my deep love and commitment to raising them to the best of my ability, my appreciation for their quirky personalities and the immense sense of satisfaction I get from just being with them -- also creates a lot of pain as a caretaker.

With life, there is death, just as with happiness exists suffering and I think I'd find a much greater sense of peace by simply accepting these moments without taking personal responsibility for each and every one of them. It still sucks, though.

And now, I'm faced with another decision. Do I leave the remaining duckling with mama or do I take her inside? My instinct is to leave them together -- perhaps put the heat lamp on tonight just to help -- but I'd really hate to be met with more silence tomorrow morning.

Our morning surprise

The barn is usually a fairly noisy place first thing in the morning. The chickens are clucking, the rooster is crowing, the goats are bleating and the ducks are quacking. Well the Rouens are, at least. The Muscovies try hard but only manage a pitiful little squeak.

But today, I noticed another sound amongst the usual cacophony -- a tiny "peep, peep, peep." I looked down into the duck pen and there she was -- our very first hatchling!

After screaming and scaring the hell out of the donkeys and horse (they're a little touchy before breakfast), I went tearing across the barnyard while shouting at the top of my lungs, "Go get the camera, there's a baby duck in the barn!" once again, providing ample entertainment for our barnyard creatures.

We have two ducks sitting on eggs right now. One is in the feed area (she deserves her very own blog post) and the other is in the duck pen. Recently, I'd looked up the incubation period for ducks and while baby chickens hatch in 21 days, Rouen ducks hatch in 28 days and Muscovies in 35 days.

As this is our first time hatching our own -- in fact, we're not hatching anything... we just allowed the ducks to go broody and let nature take its course -- I wasn't sure what to expect. I'm horrible at marking dates but I didn't think she'd been sitting on the eggs all that long. I didn't even know if they were fertile, though I must say that our drakes are quite insatiable when it comes to their attempts at procreation.

Obviously, the boys did their job and so did mama duck.

What I find amazing is that the duckling isn't even technically hers. Mama is a Muscovy while the duckling is a Rouen. Doesn't seem to matter though. Lovely, isn't it?

By the time I finished taking a bazillion photos and finally got the rest of the barn crew fed, I realized it was 11:40 am. Because we weren't expecting babies yet, we had no duckling food on hand and the closest farm supply store -- which is 30 minutes away -- closed in 20 minutes. What's more, it wouldn't be open again until Monday (today is Saturday).

I quickly called the feed store, explained my predicament and pleaded for them to stay open another 15 minutes. After some hawing and humming, the disgruntled voice on the other end of the line agreed and 30 seconds later, the kids and I were in the truck and racing down the driveway.

It's a good thing too because when I got back with the duckling feed and put it and some fresh water into the pen, mama duck finally got off her nest and gave us a peek at the rest of her eggs.

Looks like duckling might have some siblings soon.

This first photo was taken at 1:00 pm.

And two hours later.

I just checked on them about an hour ago and mama is still sitting on her nest. I've read that hatching can take 24 to 48 hours so perhaps by tomorrow, I'll be met with a chorus of "peep, peep, peeps."

In the meantime, I've told the kids that mama needs her rest. She's going to have her wings full with this lot.

Our midnight surprise

Lucy and her triplets - two boys and a girl!