Some of you have written, wondering how Ula is coping with Saoirse gone to New York City to work for Plowshares Coffee. They are, after all, the best of friends…Until Saoirse screams at Ula for leaving her socks on the floor, or Ula constructs homemade nunchucks and tries them out on her sister. Which is […]
We interrupt this podcast to bring you a DIFFERENT podcast
I’ll never forget the day a doctor sent my seven-year-old kid out of the room and told me that she was so severely visually learning disabled, she’d likely never be able to read or ride a bike. He didn’t even want to work with her, as her case was too hopeless. My first step was […]
Listening
I’m wondering how to include pig castration on Ula’s homeschool quarterly report. “It’s definitely science,” Jenn reminds me over lunch. “And don’t forget dissection!” “Is that vivisection?” Bob wonders. No. That would be if it were for research purposes. I think it might be more of a surgical procedure. All of this language would […]
Spring Headstones
One of our favorite history lessons with the girls was to walk the dirt roads and through the forests and fields, studying the historical clues: the stone walls and foundations that made the first homesteads and paddocks, the barbed wire that followed the civil war, the monoculture timber that came in the great depression, after […]
Vacation
It’s only a queen, the same size we have at home. But at home our bed typically holds some combination of 1-3 dogs, two cats and two daughters. Many nights when Bob comes upstairs he clings to the very edge, sleeping like a bird on a perch while I cling to the opposite side. Some […]
Spring Peepers
We’re rushing this afternoon, whispering encouragements to the pork to finish braising, washing bowls and spatulas as quickly as we dirty them, slamming utensils back onto their shelves and racks as fast as possible. There are more important places to be than prepping in the cafe when the light is like this, when the temperature […]
Prognosis
They don’t know I’ve been crying. I give them credit for persistence. They’d shown up the first time right after we’d closed and I uncharacteristically turned them away. “Sorry, we’re closed,” I’d called out as soon as they’d walked in the door. They shrugged their shoulders, settled for a pint of ice cream as their […]
Talking Dogs
“Please. I would like to play catch-peanut.” Kit, our border collie-blue healer cross, stares intently at Ula as she flops down on the couch on the screen porch. Her pointed ears radar themselves at my daughter, as though she can summon special powers through them. “It’s a very excellent game, Ula. I really enjoy playing […]
Do What You Want.
Shannon Hayes, 40, doesn’t do anything she doesn’t want to do. I’m going through a box of newspaper clippings when I find this. It’s the opening line to a story about the health benefits of simple living in the Nov 5, 2014 edition of US News & World Report. I’m wondering if they fact-checked that […]
Endless Growth
If you’re not growing, you’re dying. This aphorism has annoyed me since I heard it in my first farm business management class twenty-two years ago at Cornell. I heard it repeatedly in my entrepreneurship and human resource management classes, and again in the farm transition and business planning classes I took before we opened the […]
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