Good For You

Two Gingers Napping

Studies have shown that napping is actually a healthy habit. Our pets know it. Kids know it. In fact, if I'm remembering correctly, nap time was part of the school day back in Kindergarten. It just seems odd that once a kid hits first grade, suddenly the napping thing is no longer allowed. I mean, not even just discouraged, but no longer allowed! In fact, older school children and adults, who might really need a nap, get branded lazy or good-for-nothing if caught napping.

It's unfortunate that our culture forbids napping, because current research shows that there is significant benefit to napping. In addition to promoting health, it also increases productivity and creativity.

I like napping, when I get the chance. Fifteen minutes to curl up on the couch is just exactly what I need on those days when my brain just feels foggy, and if I'm given a chance to rest, quietly and undisturbed, I wake completely refreshed and ready to finish out the day. It's not every day that I get to (or even need to), but on those days when I'm feeling sluggish, having that nap helps get me through the day.

All this talk about snoozing is making me ... *yawn* ... I might kick the dog off the couch and join the little ginger. The only thing better than taking a nap, is having a nap buddy to snuggle.

The Way We School

Little Fire Faery and I were outside in the backyard the other day. She said, "Look at that bird!" It was obviously a bird of prey of some sort. It was light colored - not the very dark turkey vulture, we which know are in the area - and it was lazily circling above us - just watching.

We watched it circling for a while. I had a very brief moment of concern that it might be trying to gauge whether or not we or the dogs were too big for it to handle. I know, given the chance, it would have taken one of our chickens.

She tried to get a picture.

Later, she told me it was a Cooper's hawk, and then, she told me about how she's seen these same birds on multiple occasions. She had a whole litany of places and times when she'd seen them, and she decided to find out what kind of bird it was. While some resources claim that making the distinction between the Cooper's Hawk and the look-A-like, Sharp-skinned hawk, can be difficult, there was no mistaking the sound. I've heard that monkey call on many occasions. It's definitely a Cooper's Hawk, and she further identified it as being a female, based on size and coloring.

And I'm impressed - awed, actually - that she figured it out.


Last night after dinner, while Deus Ex Machina and I were still sitting at the table chatting, Precious sat next to me with a math workbook we picked up from somewhere. We provide resources for the girls, and they have lots of books, workbooks, games (both board and virtual), educational toys, paint/markers/colored pencils/crayons, paper, journals, sketch books, chalkboards, globes, computers, iPods, educational posters (including one on laser doppler anemometry that we're using in lieu of a curtain or blinds on the French doors in our bedroom ;), and other manipulatives (like dice). But we don't *do* formal lessons with due dates and grades. When the girls decide they are interested in a subject, they pick up (or ask for) a resource and do activities related to that project. Last night, for Precious, it was math, and she worked on some addition, and then, she worked on some multiplication, and we sat with her and helped her when she needed us.

That's the way we do most lessons: it comes up because it's related to something we've seen - like the hawk; or one of the girls gets interested in doing it, and just does.

One of the most oft asked questions of us, especially this time of year, centers around a curiosity of when our school year ends/begins. It's hard to explain that there is no end or beginning, that learning is continuous, that everything is learning, and nothing is. The short answer is: our school year ends after dance recital and the next year begins around July 1. No, we don't take summer vacation, but rather, we space our "time-off" throughout the year so that if we have a day when we don't feel like doing anything, we don't.

Of course, sometimes, on those days when we don't feel like doing anything, we still are, and some of the best "school" days we've ever had were days that no one would recognize as being a "school" day.

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2013 Wyvern Academy Highlights

While Deus Ex Machina and I tried (bare-handed) clamming, our girls explored the clam flats and found lots of interesting things.

Katniss doesn't have anything on my girl.

Painting rocks for our Tic-Tac-Toe game in the garden.

Typing class? Story writing? Yes! But to her, it's just play.

Corn art. We grew the corn, we dried the corn, we shucked the corn ... and the girls decided to form it into pictures. who needs a fancy made-in-China etch-a-sketch or doodle pad. We have corn ;).

Drama club at school is not nearly as cool as local theatre! Because Dad can't be in your school play ;).

Precious, Little Fire Faery and Deus Ex Machina were all cast in last winter's production of Honk! Good times, for sure!

It's math. It's origami. It's a toy. It's stress-relief ;). Yes! Learning and playing. Here's how to make your own.

Family game night ... or geography lesson? The truth is that playing Risk with my sisters was how I learned World Geography as a kid - it's also how I learned I'm not destined for world domination, but that's a very different lesson ;).

Agility, grace, stamina, strength, team-building, personal responsibility, community service, and a positive body image ... those are all lessons my girls have and are learning from dance. In addition to performing at competitions, fundraisers throughout the year, and their annual recital, my girls also perform at nursing homes and community building days (like the Old Port Festival).

Animal husbandry and horsemanship are all part of Precious' riding lessons. She even placed in a recent Dressage competition. Of course, her favorite part about the competition - other than being able to ride for one extra day that week - was being given a toy horse and a ribbon :).

She's very proud of her first-ever knit scarf.

Invasive Asian Long-Horn beetle or native Sawyer bug? We found it in the yard, and since we have a lot of maples, which are the Asian Long-Horn beetle's favorite target, we've saved it for identification.

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There was more, of course. There are ongoing, year-round music lessons with master teacher, Andy Happel (and this June 2012 TEDxDirigo talk that Little Fire Faery was invited to participate in :). There was the Mother Earth News Fair in September at which Deus Ex Machina and I were speakers. We hosted a NaNoWriMo writing workshop class in November. I taught a formal economics/social studies class called World Without Oil, and Big Little Sister taught a class on set-up and maintenance of a home aquarium in the spring.

And there was the every day, little things that we do that often get no formal recognition, but that are very much a part of our learning experience.

It's been a fun year. I'm excited to see what happens during this next one ;).

From Scratch

I was chatting with some other moms the other day. We were talking about food - in particular baked goods. I mentioned that I should have had Big Little Sister bring some of the Mexican Wedding cookies she bakes. They're very tasty, and they look quite elegant.

I didn't teach her how to bake. I'm not fond of baking, and when we need contributions for bake sales, I usually depend on the local bakery to supply any confections I donate. If I deserve any credit, it's only in that I have very little fear in the kitchen and tend to be willing to experiment with and alter recipes to fit our needs and what's in our cabinets.

Last year, we needed to bring baked goods for a fancy bake sale (it's a show hosted at the girls' dance school called "The Cabaret of Sweets", and for a small fee, one gets a decadent dessert and entrance into the dance performance. It's a really good deal, and the desserts are always incredible), and so she decided to learn to make something exotic and cool. Her first fancy dessert was baklava.

I guess I didn't realize how much she liked making it ... and some how I missed all of the times she - voluntarily - went into the kitchen to make other things: brownies, cookies, sweet bread.

A few weeks ago, we were at the library, and she discovered a dessert cookbook, where she found the recipe for Mexican Wedding cookies. Immediately upon seeing the recipe, she knew she wanted to try to make them, and so she checked out the book.

I guess I never really thought a lot about it. Then, one of the moms said something about Duncan Hines, and I realized, in that moment, that my daughters are learning to bake, really bake (especially Big Little Sister, and I'm sure the others will follow suit as they get older), but they don't use boxed mixes.

Big Little Sister makes cookies and brownies, from scratch, and to her, it's just the way it's done, because that's the way she's always done it. I haven't bought a boxed mix in a very long time, but we almost always have ingredients for cookies, brownies, cakes ... and pizza crust.

As someone who grew up making homemade pizza using the Chef Boyardee boxed mixes, I think it's pretty incredible that she can cook without being limited to instructions like "pour contents of packet into bowl and add eggs." She even made a chocolate meringue pie not long ago. To me, that's pretty impressive.

DIY Gowns

Buying dresses would have been easier, certainly. We looked at five different stores (both second-hand and new retail), for what seemed like hours. The problem is that we had to have three dresses for three vastly different-sized girls and all of them needed to be that "poofy", Southern-belle-esque style ... and they had to be the same color.

Yeah.

In the end, we decided to head over to the fabric store, where we bought six yards of a satin fabric (on sale, because it's graduation and prom season ;)) and an equal amount of tulle-type fabrics.

I worked from a skirt pattern - using the same one for all three skirts and made adjustments for their differing sizes.

They're each a little different in style, and the tulle I used is different for each skirt. The youngest has a dress. They aren't professional quality, but they're good enough for a costume the girls will wear on stage for two nights in a waltz with their father.

There are some little things that I would have changed if I had more time or more knowledge, but overall, I'm pretty happy with how they turned out.

My girls are going to be beautiful up on stage, dancing with their daddy. I might even need a box of tissues ;).

The lesson here is to not be afraid. The dresses aren't perfect, but they're at least as good as (better if you consider that they are much closer to what we wanted) anything we found in the stores.

I may not have the opportunity to be up on stage with my family while they're dancing, but I can, at least, be present with them in the dresses I made.

Saving Water for the Future

I read an article about Nestlé's plans/attempts to siphon water from the Arkansas River. I guess I'm a little hypersensitive, because I can still remember when Poland Spring was a Maine-owned and operated company, and I remember when Nestlé started flirting with Poland Spring, who turned over on its back like an attention-starved high-schooler being wooed by the super jock (please excuse the imagery). At the time, I said - out loud - that it was a bad idea to sell out to Nestlé (I thought it was a mistake for Tom's of Maine to sell-out to Colgate, too, but since I don't own any of those companies, I don't have say-so). Those big corporations don't really care about the communities they buy into, and invariably, what's good for their business is bad for the community.

Not too long ago, I saw a video in which the CEO of Nestlé stated, in not so many words, that access to clean water is not a right, but rather a commodity. He sat behind his big desk and said that corporations (like Nestlé's presumably) need to be in control of these resources, like water, so that they can ensure it goes where it needs to go. Hmmm .... I wonder who is the most deserving of this essential-to-life resource. If you believe Nestlé's CEO, it's the person who can afford it ... oh, and those poor starving souls who tug at the heart-strings of the rich and are therefore tossed a few bottles, maybe enough to keep themselves (but probably not their children) from dying of dehydration-related illnesses.

Lest you think I'm talking about some typical third world country, think again. How about this Canadian town where Nestlé has won the "right" to drain the aquifers of as much water as they wish ... even in the midst of a drought when the citizens of that town do not have unlimited access? Really? So, basically, the folks who live there have to pay Nestlé for the bottled water that was taken from the town's own aquifers. Nice. Certainly, it's not as dire as a place where there is no access to clean water at all, but it could escalate to a scenario in which the locals don't have any right to the water that runs right under their homes.

Did anyone see that cartoon movie, Rango? It probably wasn't as fictional as we might want to believe. Pump all of the water into bottles, and then charge for the water. Sounds like a solid business plan.

Reminds me of southeastern Kentucky, where my paternal relatives settled. People could buy land, but the coal companies owned the mineral rights, and if they found a coal seam running under a person's land, they had the right to come in and mine it. I saw it happen. Broke my heart, because coal mining is a dirty and destructive business, and it creates an incredible amount of pollution, and often, when the coal companies get done with their digging, the land is so toxic it's barely even fit to live on.

Thanks to attitudes like that, legislation that gives preference to corporations over individuals, those of us who are concerned about the state-of-the-world and wish to start becoming more self-sufficient, often run up against all sorts of brick walls from restrictions on the height of the plants in our front yards to the inability to set-up a water catchment system. In some states (like Colorado), rain water is not a free resource and collecting it in rain barrels (and preventing it from flowing into the Colorado River where it can be accessed by every one) is illegal.

I wonder, though, if there are legal options that serve the same/similar purpose. Like, are swimming pools illegal in Colorado? Could one use rain gutters on the house (which are commonly used to protect a home's foundation by diverting the rain water and keeping it from eroding away the support structure) and just point them toward the pool? Are swales illegal? They are, after all, a water catchment system, of sorts.

I'm not suggesting that anyone flout the law or blatantly ignore or violate local building/land use codes, but I am suggesting that, perhaps, there are alternatives to doing nothing, and it would serve all of us, living in this country where the government, invariably, passes laws that benefit corporate interests (and, often, those laws are passed under the pretense of making life better for us, or protecting us, or some other BS), to start thinking around the issues.

Rain barrels are illegal? Build a pond or a pool and collect/store/save water that way.

There's always an alternative.

Today's harvest:

56 lbs chicken (in the freezer)
and
spinach, kale, chives, and fennel to add to the lamb stir-fry.

My Farm

I'm coming to grips with the fact that I am a suburban farmer. It's different, perhaps, from a typical farmer - someone who makes a living selling agricultural products - but the fact is that I do raise food, and while I don't make a living, and I don't make any money, we do use some of our farm products for bartering for goods and services with other suburban farmers. We do have a garden (and I'm struggling to get cabbage to grow, as my chickens keep killing it), and we raise meat animals.

We're not wholly self-sufficient, but most farmers these days aren't either. Those with animals, like me, depend on commercial feeds, and those with gardens (or fields of crops ;) depend on seed. And we work outside jobs, but I know plenty of farmers where one spouse works the farm and the other works a job off the farm. It's the way my grandparents, who had a dairy farm in Ohio back in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s did things. It's the way Deus Ex Machina and I do things (although both of us have paid work, and we both do farm work, too).

My farm is on a much smaller scale, but it is a farm, and it does feed us - at least some portion of our diet. More importantly, though, this farm allows us to dream of some day being truly self-sufficient, living outside the money economy, and being able to produce most of what we need on this quarter acre.

One of these days I'm going to challenge myself and my family to eat for a month (or at least a week) only those foods we produced here on our farm and any foods we can barter - not buy. It would definitely be a challenge and would certainly take some serious thought when it comes to meal times. We'll probably eat a lot of eggs ... and chicken.

Speaking of, the chickens went to see Ken, which is our special euphemism. Ken is our butcher. This time tomorrow, we'll have ten home-grown chickens in the freezer. By September, we will have quadrupled that number. With the pig we'll be purchasing from our 4-H friend and the beef and lamb we still have in the freezer, and the hoped-for deer and/or turkey Deus Ex Machina will bring home this year, and any fish my son-in-law might gift us, we're probably set for meat.

With what we grow this season, and with using our greenhouse for some season extension this fall, we should be set for the plant half of our diet (we're even attempting some rice this year - should be interesting to see if it really produces).



And these guys are being trained to keep it all safe. They look like farm dogs to me.

Repurpose

Some time back, I mused about the merits of recycling versus reusing and I posted a link to a tutorial on making wine bottles into glasses.

We reuse wine bottles and beer bottles, but we also, occasionally buy (locally brewed) soft drinks (from the Maine Root company which is headquartered in a neighboring town and within comfortable biking distance to my house) in glass bottles, which are returned, crushed and turned into something else. All those glass bottles, which must be remade, using so much energy and so many resources. We thought it would be fun to be able to do something different.

And so we are. We'll be making glasses, and in the long run, those glasses we make will be a lot cheaper - both for us and for the environment, than even buying used glasses secondhand at yard sales or Goodwill.

Even better, though, is that making glasses from repurposed wine or soda bottles will give us a stash of dishes for when we have parties - like this past weekend to celebrate a family wedding. We hosted the reception here at Chez Brown. Dinner included home-cooked foods (some of which were grown here and much of the rest of which was locally sourced) served on real plates with cloth napkins. The only waste was composted food, which isn't waste.

At this party, we used canning jars for drinking glasses, but at the next party, those jars will more than likely be filled with something grown or gleaned over our too-short summer. Being able to make glasses will be both fun, and a pretty cool conversation piece.

Now, we're scheming what to do with the tops of the bottles.