Chickens!

So we're pondering our chicken options.
We want egg layers that are winter hardy and mellow.

A list we developed:
Barred Plymouth Rock (Lily really wants a speckled chicken! See note>)




Buff Orpington (Georgia really wants some yellow chicks)



and the Araucana that lay the bleautiful blue eggs that Rob and I are excited about. We'll order two of each chick at the Bernardston Farmer's Supply unless we can get the actual chicks at Hatfield Feed and Seed.







Also on the list are:
Rhode Island red (might be nervous)
New Hampshire Red (nervous, too)
Golden Laced Wyandotte

Georgia is sick so she's crying for her chicks. Off to bed hopefully with dream of clucking birds and no more nighttime vomiting.

Budget Books

I've held onto budget notebooks from the last 10 years or so. They take up alot of room in the file cabinet so I decided I would toss them after I looked them over. Today, I was home with a sick Georgia so I tackled them while we watched the movie Babe.

I had thought I'd find lots of foolish excess and thoughtless spending, but I didn't. Instead I tracked all the way back to the difficult process, 9 years ago, trying to save money for my trip to India by working tons of hideous overtime at understaffed nightmare nursing homes. I had forgotten how difficult it was to save enough to pay for ongoing bills at home while I was gone, as well as travel expenses for my 4 months away.
Then, when I got back from my trip I was quickly trying to create a maternity leave, buy our first house and keep up with the two cars we now needed. Then the childcare expenses arrived, then insurance and utilities that were always going up! My budget grew each year and much of it was things like food, housing and insurance. It was sad to see the travel and savings go by the wayside.

The money part of my current organizing is moving along. I'm trying to computerize and then automate our bills. After looking through the old budget notebooks I am feeling more tender toward the young couple that built up the debt we've got.

I tossed all of the old notebooks into the woodstove when I was done. Then Georgia and I took a nap together in front of the fire.

The books burned really hot and bright, the layers of paper puffing up like a red and black pastry.

No need to have them around any more.
I know we did the best we could.
and I know that things are about to get much better.


Georgia's feeling better, too.
Drinking peppermint tea and giggling with Lily.

NMH Farm

We went to NMH farm in Gill today after we picked Lily up from school. Cold snow was sprinkling down through most of the day and we were chilly but we had time to visit a sweet new calf who let me scratch its ears and snout, play on the tractor, and admire the bright wheel on the hay cart and the cool brake on some other mysterious piece of equipment.






The students have been collecting sap from the buckets around campus and we went to visit the sugar house. The very friendly man in charge gave each of the girls a jeweled jar filled with the warm amber sap. It smelled like hot maple candy in the shack and if I had brought my wallet I would have bought maple syrup, candy and ice cream.
Next time I'll bring cash!

Power Failure

We lost power pretty early in the storm so we had plenty of hours of daylight to collect all the needed supplies for the long dark night that lay ahead of us. Thank goodness for our wood stove which kept us really warm. We all slept in the living room and went to bed at 7:30 (I passed out at 8pm!)

Sap is running!!!

Hooray!
A sure sign of spring.
We drank the sweet cold water and listened to the plink plink of the drips hitting the bucket after we picked Georgia up from school.

Singing

Singing lullabies to the children and taking Music Together classes has been an amazing part of motherhood for me. I can sing in public now; I'm not shy and awkward like I used to be. I like my voice fine, which feels really good. When Lily was born I consciously sat down and thought of the songs I wanted to sing her. It was really important to me that I be a lullaby-singing mother.
I loved the scene in Raising Arizona where Holly Hunter is singing "Down in Willow Garden" to the stolen baby! Loved it! I wanted to sing songs like that and so I did (although I try to keep murder out of it)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWYvDsyfqnI

I sang Joan Baez songs like "Wagoner's Lad" and "The Trees They Grow High" and Hey, Hey Watenay/ Walk in Beauty" and "Blackjack Davey" from Sally Rodgers along with traditional lullabies like "Rock a bye baby", "Pretty Little horses" and "Lullaby and Goodnight"
Georgia loved "My Bonnie lies over the Ocean" so I sang that thousands of times and We got some new ones from the Music Together collection like "Raisins and Almonds" and "Hush a Bye"

I was thinking I'd like to start singing even more. The children don't always want my lullabies anymore and I was missing that daily singing. I mentioned to our violin teacher that I might want to sing when I play the fiddle wondering what she might recommend. She just told me to start singing and if I had questions I could come to her. Hmmmm. It's so funny how much I want instruction or validation before I start something new, but there you have it. Try singing.

So, today I was singing a song as Lily and I put our violins away after a practice and I was really enjoying myself. I discovered the singer Susannah Park at the revels this year and I got 2 of her cds. Her voice is clear and gorgeous. As I was singing this song that she sings

http://store.revels.org/Media/iknowroad/brother%20ephus%20clip.mp3

Lily looked uncomfortable and said, quietly but insistently enough I had to stop singing,
"Mama! Mama!" "Then she continued, "When you sing that song; it makes me feel sick, you know, like I have hair in my mouth."

I laughed. For a while. Shoots of growth and confidence grow in the act of mothering, but when that growth is reflected back to the children who helped create them, they sometimes reject it! Denounce the very thing they inspired!

Later when I told Rob what she had said and he was shaking his head with a chuckle, she admitted to me, "I actually just wanted you to stop singing. I wasn't going to throw up."

I was relieved she hadn't actually had a visceral gagging reaction. But she must have thought I wouldn't stop unless she was going to puke. And she might have been right.....

Decanting Balsalm OIl

I've had big jars of Balsalm branches from our no-spray Christmas tree soaking in olive oil for months.

I got an email in January from Heidi (who designed by beautiful label) saying she wanted to make me a price list with some crows in the background.

A price list!
Hmm but that would imply I had a variety of product AND that I was going to sell it.

I sent her a whiny email about never having sold stuff before, not knowing how much to charge and having difficulty making time to pull it all together.

She sent me back:
just do it. :-) -xoh

Perfect.

Then on Friday morning my friend called and asked if she could purchase a bottle of massage oil! She wondered how much they cost. She had used up the one I gave her for Christmas as a gift and wanted more! She asked about my different varieties. I was flabbergasted. I've given things away for years and no one has never asked for a refill. Or offered to pay for it. "We loved it." She said, "We'd like some more. Can I pick it up this weekend?" I had a customer. An eager customer!

My sister was here on Friday so she watched the girls while I pulled out the big bottles from the pantry where they had been steeping. There were little waxy balls all over the needles when I first took them out. They melted as the jars sat out on the warm counter. I don't know if it was the olive oil made solid by the cold cabinet or if that was the actual sap emerging from the needles, but it looked really cool.
As it warmed the oil turned a lovely deep green. I poured all the delicious smelling oil into a saucepan while the pretty blue bottles sterilized on the stove in boiling water.

Then I poured the green oil into the bottles and capped them up. I love looking at them all tidy and filled with good stuff.

Then I put them upstairs on my Reiki crystal grid with my "Language of Light Master crystal" and charged them up with loving healing power, sunshine and light.

Tonight I labeled 8 of them and put on pretty bows. I was trying to figure out what to write on the label so I looked up balsalm on-line and was pleased to discover its wonderful healing attributes.

Here is a blurb from http://therapeuticreiki.com/blog/the-essential-oil-of-idaho-balsam-fir-abies-balsamea/
"There is some evidence now that the “liquid gold” referred to in the Bible was none other than Balsam, an oil fit for kings and royalty. It was one of the three oils found in King Tutankhamun’s grave in 1922 and it is now thought that balsam was the “Balm of Gilead.” Balsam has been used for thousands of years as a medicinal oil for respiratory and muscular and rheumatic pain. Balsam Fir is mentioned 18 times in the Bible. Balsam fir has been used for respiratory and muscular system ailments. Hildegard of Bingen referred to balsam and said it was of royal nature and advised that it ought to be used as a medicine with great caution because it was so powerful. She used it for fevers, for paralysis, and for someone who was insane by making an ointment with it and rubbing it on their temples and around the head to restore their mind and good health.

Modern Use: Balsam fir has proved to be an anticoagulant and an anti-inflammatory. It is used by many massage therapists because it is a relaxant to the nervous system and to muscle spasms. Balsam can lower cortisol levels. Studies have shown that balsam will inhibit MCF7- (Aggressive Breast Cancer cells). Balsam fir is anti-inflammatory."

I'm going to put a little selection of massage oils, dream pillows and therapy pillows together and bring it to a few local shops. Yikes! And I am working on the price list, Heidi.