This picture is so old - 4 years and it feels like it has been about that long since I posted. The new version of this picture would have Beatrice milking along side with me and Baxter holding out a cup to be filled with warm milk.  I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with this little monster of a blog that I created. I tend not to post as I'd rather participate in my life than record it, but then again I have moments when I really do feel that what we do here on the farm is a dying art yet so many people are yearning to read about it and learn more and connect more. So here I am, trying to share.

What does a farm wife do? I ask this question to my compatriots and they laugh at the myriad things on our to do lists.  Here are the things that I've been doing: trips to the dmv to register our new delivery truck, driving our daughter to school & other school things: play and summer birthday celebration, milking a few mornings a week, bringing the kids to the farmers market so they can be good customers for anyone who has any prepared food, trying to get us signed up for a new farmers market, accounting, finalizing csa memberships and tracking membership payments, sending out csa newsletters complete with link to new recipe blog(!), popping in to lend a hand to the crew when I get a chance, hosting a once a week playgroup in our children's garden.... Sitting inside while it is sunny and dry out trying to wrap up computer work when I really should save it for when the kids are asleep. So here I go to get out into that sunshine!
Have any burning questions about farm life? I'd be so curious, feel free to leave a comment.

Welcome Spring

After a long blog haitus during the fall and winter months, here we are again. The winter, however mild it was, has renewed and recharged us for the new season. To be honest I think Dan and I have been getting a little squirrelly without the dirt under our fingernails. Although we've kept plenty busy with the off-season office work, daily chores, seed orders, crops plans and all that it isn't quite the same as getting dirty and witnessing things grow.

Personally, this winter I've had the opportunity to reevaluate where I'm at in my health, my role at the farm and as a mother. Now that Baxter is 3, he is more and more independent on and off the farm. He rambles around always finding a task to keep himself busy - hoeing in the silo garden, collecting rocks, visiting the chickens or snuggling up with the kitties. And of course big sister Beatrice, 6 now, is the queen bee of the farm and if she is not at school she and Baxter are off on their own adventures.

For the past 7 years I've most likely had a baby on my back or on the ground crawling through the rows or toddling around - at each respective age needing to nurse, eat, sleep, be held, be "protected" from farm animals, be carried along the farm paths, have a diaper change. While it has been tremendously rewarding to raise our kids at the farm it can be a bit of a mind meld. Even as a laid back, down to earth mother I have had my share of needing to be "productive". I think I'm getting there - both with opportunities to do physical "real" work and with the patience to find the balance between work and home and kids. Last season I started to see the coming change as I was able to help pack bins on harvest days, hoe a half row of some crop or other or occasionally leave the kids at the farm while I ran back home to catch up on office work.

It can be a real challenge and juggling act to be a work at home mom and farmwife. It isn't always the bucolic dream you might think or as productive as the modern, western, busy work-a-day mind wishes. But at the end of day it is pretty great to be cooking your own food for dinner and think back to the morning when your kid was drinking milk straight from the cow. So here we go again for another farming season, one during which I hope I'll get dirtier than ever.