Monthly Archives: February 2016

Wild Snow Angel

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Beautiful little toes in the snow

Our seventh child is a wild girl.  She has a spirit so free and uninhibited it is amazing this world is able to contain her.  She laughs loud and cries hard.  She loves big and hates with passion. She can be naughty, funny, mean and loving all within the same breath. She is so easy to love.

The other day I (thought) snuck out to put a package in the mail.  It was cold, with about an inch of new snow on the already ice covered drive. I enjoyed the stillness, a moment of quiet that seems to be so rare here on the farm.  I put my package in our over sized mail box, looked around taking a deep breath and turned around to find my wild girl running up the drive way, no coat, NO SHOES. I called out her name in surprise and she quickly turned around, expecting to be scolded.  “Baby, come here, your feet must be so cold!”

“Yes Mama!” and she held her chubby thee year old arms out to me.  I scooped her up, cold arms around my neck, cold cheek against mine and frozen little toes dangling as we hurried into the warm house.

I wrapped her in her little pink blanket and propping her cold toes on the warm bricks of the hearth saying “you silly little girl, out in the snow without shoes!”

She looked at me, her round face flushed pink from the frosty air and just grinned.  This won’t be the last time for my wild child.

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Her little footprints all the way up the drive to the road where I was.

 

 

 

 

 

What is in a Name

IMG_5638A little while ago we were asked how we came up with the name “Quail Run”.  It’s a simple little story, not at all remarkable, but something I figure should be told, for posterity.

We had been at the farm for about a week, it was in the dead of winter, there seemed to be nothing around except snowy mounds of sage brush and a few cold lonely trees. I was in the master bedroom, unpacking, I’m sure, and I looked out the window.  A little ways away was a pile of old dead sage brush, we figured it had been piled there when the land was cleared to build the house.  It had been there a long time, the old sage brush was very dry and sad looking, it was on the top of our list of things to take care of once the weather warmed up.  Well, that day as I gazed out the window I noticed movement in the pile of sage brush, a lot of movement, so much that the brush looked alive. I squinted and looked closer, there were little gray-brown animals moving in and out of the pile, all over, as if the spirits of the dead sage brush were rising and taunting me, begging me to figure them out.  I called Dadzoo and we both looked for a bit, then he decided he was going to get a closer look to see what in the world was making its home in that pile.  I stayed at the window while he put on his boots, hat and warm winter coat and strode towards the mystery animals.  Suddenly birds darted in waves out of the pile, as if in a panic for their lives and disappeared in their little coveys among the bushes and trees.  There were at least a hundred birds, if not more, darting out in all directions.  There were  hundreds of California Quail, the males with their proud fancy plumage and top-knot feather bobbing around and the females with the young birds soft and grey easily hidden in the dusty green bushes. Hence the name of our little farm, Quail Run, I think she named herself on that day when she showed us her little birds.

The Hearth

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A little over three years ago we moved to Quail Run.  We were total novices in many things, one of them being the logistics of heating our home.  At the time we moved in we had two options for heating that ended up not being options at all, we had a propane furnace and an open fireplace. The propane in our tank was completely empty upon or arrival on that cold January day, the temperatures reached the high teens that day.  Our other option was an old fireplace insert, that had had coal burned in it, which in turn cracked all the fire bricks making the fireplace unsafe to use.  We were able to borrow a few space heaters to tide us over until we could get a delivery of propane, but until then the house was cold, bitterly cold.  After that weekend, when we were able to get the furnace fired up and the house nice and warm we realized how expensive propane could be and that because of the manner in which our house was built that we would need a lot of propane every winter and that this was going to break us financially.  Like I said we were such novices.  We decided that we really needed a second source of heat, to supplement our propane  and to be more self sufficient.  We took that old insert out and installed a wood stove.  This is our second winter with a wood stove and it has become our primary source of heat, propane and electric space heaters supplement when needed. I have learned some interesting things using a wood stove, mostly in the management of wood heat, how to heat the house using the least wood I can and how to keep the house warm at night, very practical things. I have also learned other things.  I know the temperatures outside by how the house feels in the morning.  I can tell if the sun has gone behind clouds in a dark room.  I know if the temperatures outside have suddenly dropped or gotten warmer, even if it is just by five degrees.  It has made me more aware and sensitive to the changes, the flows, the rhythms around me.  I’m not living in a house that is heated to a consistent seventy degrees day and night, I live in a home that is in flux, that requires my attention, that lives and breaths with the seasons and it takes me along for the journey.  I love being closer to the cycles of life and of the seasons, even if it makes me a bit uncomfortable at times, it also fills me, creating a connection to the divine I haven’t had the chance to experience before.

Synergy

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Calendula infusing in olive oil in the window

The more I study plants and herbs and flowers the more I am amazed by the bounty around us, how even the ugliest weed can hold treasures.  In this society where plants are categorized: ornamental, grass, vegetable, fruit, weed, we miss out on the diversity of each individual plant.  Most plants have several uses, if we can only look deeper than its category.  For example, Comfrey, one of my favorites, is considered a medicinal herb, which it is, however it is also a bio-accumulator, its roots break up heavy clay soils, it pulls minerals from deep down and deposits them on the surface where other plants can use them, and it is great animal forage. A common weed, plantain, is more than a nuisance, it is also very medicinal, it grows in poor soils, cleaning up contaminates and deposits its nutrient rich leaves on the soil when it dies back for the winter.  In a permaculture landscape/garden every plant is evaluated not only for its use in one category, but for many uses.  Here on Quail Run Farm, each planting, be it tree, bush, flower, herb or vegetable has many uses (4-6 at least).  In this manner we are not only producing, but we are putting back into the land, nourishing it, being a steward over it, building it up. For example an apple tree does much more than grow apples for us, it creates shade for shade loving herbs that grow among its roots, its leaves create a rich mulch where beneficial microorganisms can thrive, the branches attract birds who in turn eat nuisance insects and leave their droppings, and the prunings are fed to the rabbits or used in hugelkulturs. So many uses for a simple apple tree, it creates synergy, fertility and life working together to build and maintain healthy land.