This morning, the birthday girl looked like this.  She’s four!

So naturally, she’s ready for bikinis, movies, and moving in with the nice family who lives down the street.  She thinks.

It is, of course, incredibly hard to believe that this girl has been with us for four years – sweet, fierce, determined, and hilarious.  As always, I’m counting my blessings, and she is right at the top.

Yesterday was Tu Bishevat, the Birthday of the Trees on the Jewish calender. It’s traditional to plant a tree on this day, but, um, there’s more snow falling outside on top of our three-foot drifts.
We spent the week planting some of the season’s first seeds (lettuces and cold hardy greens), deciding which fruit trees we’ll order this year from St. Lawrence Nurseries (sorry, they don’t have a webpage, but they’re awesome for cold-hardy fruit trees!). We decided on two peach trees (to replace the ones the sheep and horse mauled), a Honeycrisp apple, a highbush cranberry, and two American chestnuts. I’m giddy with excitement.
Last night we celebrated with the traditional meal of fruits – for us, it’s extremely unusual to buy (non-local) citrus fruits, so it was a true treat to have a fruit salad with grapefruit, banana, orange, and apple. We also ate Black Bean Coconut Soup (I do a simplified version of the recipe in Eric Ripert’s excellent book Return to Cooking), and olives (another unusual treat!).
It was so lovely, like the original Earth Day, to think of all the amazing things trees do for us, and to enjoy some of their many fruits.  It was also a perfect recharge in the midst of a snowy week – bright citrus fruits, blooming flowers, and dreams of the gardens to come.

Thanks so much for all of your kind words about my article for Rhythm of the Home!  It’s a joy to be part of such a supportive community.

This is another big month for us – planting beans for Pioneer Valley Heritage Grain CSA, training a great new crew at Wheatberry, making new aprons and other exciting sewing for Wheatberry, hosting family . . . Ella turned three years old yesterday – I didn’t finish her present, but lucky for me, she’s three, so she didn’t notice!  She was, however, thrilled to have family here to play with, and excited to see her birthday banner up on the wall again.

While all of these projects are happening, though, my heart is very heavy with thoughts of the oil spill in the Gulf.  I have a lot of family in Louisiana, and I swam in the Gulf as a child – this both matters, and it doesn’t – the Gulf belongs to us all.  I’ve been thinking a lot about Jim Merkel, author of Radical Simplicity – he was an environmentalist who worked as a military arms trader, flying around the globe.  Sitting in a bar, watching the footage of the Exxon Valdez spill, he realized, I did this.  And he went home and changed his life.

How bad does it have to be, how much do our hearts have to break, before we open them?

And then, how do you change a life?  How do you take responsibility?  Merkel’s insight is as true now as ever – we did this. We drive cars, eat food flown around the globe, buy products we don’t need made through extractive, polluting practices – we did this.  And now what?

I donated to Center for Biological Diversity, I’m writing my congresspeople and the President, I’m going to join Craft Hope’s gulf project, but to me, the most important path is to reaffirm our personal vows (whatever those may be) to live in line with our own values.

It is so easy, as the days pass, and new situations arise, and temptations strike, to drift.  To live in a way we don’t believe in.

For myself, I’m renewing my dedication to the ten steps we’ve talked about here.  As I go through my day, I’m going to be asking myself, once again, Am I doing this because it’s easy, or because it’s right?  We may all be angry at BP, angry at lack of regulations or enforcement, but none of that matters when placed alongside our own actions – they have been trying to pump oil as cheap as they can, because that’s what we have asked them to do.  And they will continue to do it until we truly ask them to do something else.

The current issue of Yes! is, in perfect timing, all about water, and it has a fantastic article by Francis Moore Lappe about power.  I’ll leave you with her words, because this is definitely a time where we all feel powerless – and yet we are not.

“It helps to remember ecology’s core teaching: We all exist in densely woven networks.  From the cellular to the societal level, our context shapes each of us from moment to moment . . . From this view, our power is evident.  The only choice we don‘t have is whether to change the world:  Every choice we make sends out ripples . . .

In the early 1990s, neuroscientists were studying the brain activity of monkeys . . .They saw specific neurons firing for specific activities . . .the same neurons fired when a monkey was simply watching another monkey perform that action.  . . For me, our ‘imprintability’ is itself a source of hope.  Our actions, and perhaps our mental states, register in others, so that change anyone observing us.  That’s power.”

Personally, I’m working on our Ten Steps.  I’m holding close to my heart the old St. Francis of Assisi prayer: Make me an instrument of thy Peace.

And you?  Tell us what convictions you’re working to live truly.  Change us.

Before you do anything else, hop over to Rhythm of the Home’s Summer Edition, where I wrote an article on loving your mother – Earth!

(our family, according to Ella: from the left, Ella “with stripes”, Ben “with a beard”, and me “with little feet”)

There’s so much happening it’s hard to find a moment here, but there’s also a lot to say!  June 1st is Ben and I’s 7 year wedding anniversary, this week is the one-year birthday of this blog (wow!), and on Sunday our daughter turns three.  Plus lots of family visiting!  Whew.  So – take a look through the past year while you’re here.  It was a pretty incredible year – we got a draft horse, and then he let himself into our living room.  We brought home two big ewes in the back of a Subaru.  We harvested a whole lot of beautiful grains, and we got them to our first CSA members.  We made some aprons, and some sweaters.  We renewed our commitments to buy less, and we starting washing our laundry and dishes by hand.  And, you know, a few other things!  So, enjoy friends, and I’ll be here soon.

On Tuesday, we celebrated Ben’s birthday.  As you may remember, we’re a big fan of birthday pies around here, and so at Ben’s request I made Pascal Rigo’s Caramel-Pecan Chocolate Tart, from our favorite American Boulangerie.  With the help of my, um, assistant pastry chef Ella (just don’t tell her she’s not the main chef), it wasn’t quite as beautiful as I’d hoped, but I was somewhat amazed I pulled it off at all, and once we cut into it, I didn’t hear any complaints.

Since Ben’s birthday was on Candlemas, we waited and did our Candlemas celebration on Wednesday.  Neither of us had ever done one before, but I was tickled when I first read about it in Mrs. Sharp’s Traditions, and then when I read this post on The Parenting Passageway, I knew it was meant to be.  First, I love breakfast for dinner, and pancakes are traditional for Candlemas/St. Brigid’s Day.  Secondly, in addition to celebrating the half-way mark from Winter Solstice to Spring Equinox with candles, it is also a traditional time to bless your seeds for the coming year.  I brought that big beautiful jar of Tiger Eye Beans to the table, we lit some new red beeswax candles, and we said blessings and good wishes for the season to come.

My other favorite Candlemas tradition?  The beginning of spring cleaning.  Ben and I have definitely being going on a bit of a spring purge around here, and I am very excited about it.  On Sunday, Ben took Ella to the bakery for a few hours since she and I were driving each other nuts, and I suddenly had to move my sewing room from its tiny, dark room upstairs to a big, bright room downstairs.  This room has been rented to housemates in the past, and housed WOOFers, but it was standing empty.  No longer!  I got my sewing table set up, some of my fabric in, and took 10-year old inspirations off my inspiration board and made room for the new. It feels great to be moving into a fresh space, with great light.  Soon – shelves going up, fabric organizing, yarn organizing, space for projects, a bigger table for cutting out patterns.  I am just a little bit excited.

That night, I stumbled across this:

Yes, yes, and yes.  That totally sums up how I feel – we started really trying to de-clutter our home (and therefore life) last summer, and we’re now entering round 2.  Bring it on.

On Sunday, we had a big tri-birthday celebration, aka a pie extravaganza.  I proposed to my dear friend Seth, and our farm apprentice Jeanine (the other two birthdays) that we try birthday pies instead of birthday cake, and they gamely agreed.  And oh my, it was fabulous.  Cauliflower-Potato Pie, Chicken Pot Pie, Buttercup Squash Pie (the best “pumpkin” pie you’ll ever have), Apple Sour Cream Pie, and Rhubarb Pie.  Ben had planned to make Chocolate Mousse Pie, but spent all day down at the fields getting ready for winter wheat planting – so I suppose we can forgive him! So why a photo of an empty crust?  Because I was too busy eating the pies to photograph them, sorry!  I have to tell you, it is all about the birthday pies.  Yup.

(Ben and Jeanine discing the bean field at home with Cole last weekend)

It’s probably going to be quiet here this week – we’re super busy getting the fields planted in next year’s wheat, getting ready to meet our brand new nephews (born this morning!), and then this weekend, we’re off to Animal Powered Field Days.  Plus the usual animal care, harvesting, baking, fencing, etc etc . . . you know how it goes!  Wishing you all a wonderful week.

Here’s the booties for the new wee ones (so close to finished!), and a hat for their big sis, which Ella is now claiming is hers.  Hmmm.