which came first?

one of my favorite daily chores is collecting eggs. i’m still astounded at the variety: blue, green, brown, yellow, big, small. why did i not know this before? lynea and i collected 25 yesterday during our nightly egg hunt routine.

surprised by spring

growing up in florida, i never really experienced the seasons. well, i guess we did have slight variations - very hot, hot, less hot. but overall, i didn’t seem to mind. however, i now realize that i was missing out on one of the common human experiences: winter! cleveland winter’s are long. “always winter, never christmas” as some have said. i didn’t notice it the first time i experienced it back in ‘07-08, but then again, i was engaged and my feet rarely touched the ground. this year, i experienced it fully. maybe it’s because i’m a rookie to this weather thing, but it was admittedly hard. all i wanted was shorts and a t-shirt and a nice jog. or frisbee. or the sun. it was never ending! until, all of sudden (drum roll)....spring! life! joy! flowers! no words just sheer amazement! i’ve never experienced anything like it. something in you shifts, indeed, something in nature shifts. the birds are singing again. my shorts have come out to play. the long, cold death of winter has produced the vibrant life of spring. i can’t stop smiling when i walk outside. i’ve even laughed out loud a few times, then looked around to see if anyone saw me laughing at nothing. no one so far, but now it’s on the internet.

i understand now why we use “cold” as a negative adjective and “warm” as a positive. not that winter is all bad. to be sure, there’s sledding, snowballs, activities by the fire, holidays, seeing your breath (which i still think is pretty neat). but this new season has produced in me a wonder that i’ve never before experienced, and i can only attribute it to winter. without winter, i would not have known these feelings and emotions that i’m experiencing presently. without winter, i would not have known what it was like to be surprised by spring.

Day 3-5 on the Farm

Day 3: Clean out the maple taps.

Maple sugar is made from boiling the water out of the sap. Every winter (usually January or February) a hole is drilled in each tree for the tap to be put in. Each tap is run to a main line leading down to a sugar shack creating a large spider web of tubes draping through the trees. From there, nature does its thing dripping sap flowing down through the tubes. When the barrels are full, someone must boil all the water out of the sap which takes hours...usually through the night. 40 gallons of sap will be boiled down to 1 gallon of syrup!!! When the boiling syrup reaches 219.4 degrees F it’s ready to be bottled up! Fast forwarding a few months brings us to Day 3: cleaning the maples taps, lines and shack. The taps need to be removed from the tree truck, flushed out with water, and plugged up until next year.

Day 4: Cleaning the sugar shack.

When boiling such huge amounts of syrup, you are bound to burn some at the bottom leaving the vessel a mess. Imagine burning rice to the bottom of a pan and then having to clean it without soaking it....multiply this by 1,000. It took 4 of us for a few hours scrubbing and scrubbing. Don’t worry, we’re strong that thing is sparkling!!!

Day 5: Transplanting blackberries.

I used to love transplanting flowers with my dad when I was a little girl...so fun. Transplanting blackberries...not fun. Those darn prickers!!! They were everywhere. Took us a few hours, but we transplanted about 20.

Knocking out the taps.

The Sugar Shack.

Cleaning.

Clean.

Kyle bottling the syrup.

The syrup.

Morgan finishing off the row of transplanted blackberry bushes.

Adventure 2011: Taft HIll Farm

Two days ago we moved to Taft Hill Farm in West Townshend, VT which has the most beautiful view of the Green Mountains. The DuGrenier family is kind, inviting, and extremely knowledgeable. Robert and Kathy have lived here for 14 years with their 10 year old son Luc. Critter, however, is not that inviting...he’s the male llama that I’m sure you’ll be hearing more of. He shows his affection by awkwardly staring you down and randomly running at you.

So far our responsibilities have included learning how to feed the animals in the morning and to put them away for the night. The animals include: 2 llamas, 5 mini horses, lots of ducks (moscovy, shetland), lots of chickens (taft hill blue foot, lady kathy, copper scotch, and the special breed of luc dugrenier), 5 emus, 1 sheep, 1 ram, 1 donkey, 1 dog, 4 peacocks, 1 rabbit.

The weekend also included 2 inches of snow and slush which caused us to stay in doors on Saturday and work in the apartment in which we will be living once it’s done. Luckily my dad was here to help Robert put in bathroom tile while Kyle and I painted the ceiling.

Easter Sunday was spent eating a feast of a brunch, visiting a friends’ day old lambs, hiking down to Hamilton Falls, operating a back hoe, and feeling old jumping on the trampoline. The best way to convey how wonderful it has been so far is to show you!! Here you go.

PS- We miss everyone in Cleveland!!! Love you all so much. Thanks for being excited with us for this experience!!!

Peanut Butter and Fluff is the closest mini horse.

Horse poop turns into soil that is full of nutrients...notice how green the grass is that grows under the poop!!! This is why animal poop is composted and then spread in gardens...rich and nutritious!!

Dominant male peacock.

The pond.

Emu.
Critter the llama and Black Lightening the ram.
Marmalade the pregnant donkey.

A rooster.

Food

Still have a few days before school starts, so why not work on our cooking skills:

Lynea made dinner last night: roasted veggies (yellow squash, zucchini, carrots, onions, sweet potato, baby corn, garlic) and gouda spinach chicken.

We collaborated for dinner tonight: I made bread bowls with Papa Harrill's homemade bread recipe and Lynea made some cheddar veggie soup.

Trip

just got back from our winter trip around India and Sri Lanka. teaching definitely has its perks. if you can survive in the classroom, the long breaks are quite nice. also helps to live in a country where traveling is crowded, hectic, but very inexpensive.

all in all, we had a mixture of fun and tiredness, relaxation and the reality of suffering, good deals and bad ones, time together and time spent with old friends and new ones. Lynea and I got to spend more time together than maybe ever, and fortunately, she still likes me a lot. we dreamed about the future, tried to live fully in the present and talked about how we could learn from the past. here’s a few things we did (click on the images to enlarge):

our trip from Kodaikanal to Bangalore to Calcutta to Shillong to Darjeeling to Chennai to Sri Lanka. follow the green line:

lynea applying henna to her arm in downtown Banglore. notice the yellow “rickshaws”. those are fun to travel in.

a slum school we got to visit in Calcutta. a couple people went to the slums and started teaching kids a few things on the street (kids that don’t have the chance to go to school). next thing they know 50 kids are coming to their place for school each day. so they pull a couple women off the streets and say, hey wanna be a teacher. one of our favorite parts of the trip. hmmm...how can we get back here someday?

Lynea cut some hair at the school…and found lots of lice.

found a treehouse in shillong

at an elephant orphanage in Sri Lanka.

notice the sign. notice who went beyond that area.

beach!

(no photoshop needed)

stilt-fisherman

lynea made a girls week at the train station in colombo…I can hear her trying to tell her friends, “I’m serious! a white girl painted this on my hand at the train station!”

slum school in Calcutta.

stumbled across a wedding at a temple in a narrow street in Calcutta. if you ever wonder what weddings, funerals, marketplaces, clothes, kitchens, relationships, life was like a few thousand years back, check out India. the traditions and lifestyles are rich and ancient.