This is Sauerbraten night.  My great grandmother, and then my mother, with her guidance, used to make what we called sauerbraten and geduffleglegs… which is really Sauerbraten und Kartoffelkloesse.  About once a year, generally in deep winter, I get the urge to make it…and find some folks who’d like to eat it with us.  It’s not exactly high on the list of modern trendy gourmet meals, more like German comfort food!  But I’ve found six people, friends, who think they’d like to experience THIS phenomenon.  So, I’ve gotten out the Royal Bayreuth china (German dishes for German food).  My sister has my great grandmother’s platters, so I have to make do with this set, which John and I bought in an antique shop the first year we were married, when everyone else was looking for Limoge, so we got a good deal.  It’s a very pale sort of pattern, white with pink flowers and green leaves (tell me you care!  Doesn’t sound like the farmer I usually sound like? Oh, well…) but I love setting a nice table, and so I’m into it.  The potatoes are boiling on the stove in their jackets, later to be peeled, riced, formed into potato dumplings, and set aside for boiling later tonight.  The meat is in the frig, making the whole frig smell like vinegar and spices, despite the ”tight” seal on the bowl.  The apple pie and Quakertown pie (a cousin to Shoo-fly pie) are ready, as is the Sacher torte, a Viennese cake, first time I tried it; lots of chocolate and apricot…we shall see.  John is vacuuming (bless his peapickin’ obsessive compulsive little heart.  So, for the rest of the day, it looks like I can mostly take it easy.  Company comes around five, dinner around six.  I’m excited. I love having people come for dinner, in a world where that doesn’t happen much anymore.

It looks like we may see the sun come today. I hope so, as there is a clump of snow left on the porch roof, which dearly needs to slide off so it doesn’t form ice dams and back up the melting snow into the living room!  (rarely happens, but…) It is supposed to be well above freezing today, which will help. The driveway is a sheet of ice, so John will have to go out with gravel/salt and get some traction later today, so people can drive up to the house.

And now, I think it’s time to do some knitting.

Every year, Princeton Seminary sends me out a tri-fold on reunion. They hype it in their alumni magazine.  Oh, wow!  Look at the speakers!  Oh, wow!  Not my thing.

Every year, my college sends out information on reunion.  Come meet up and reconnect with friends from your class. Huh? FRIENDS from my class are my friends. I AM in touch with them. I don’t need an institutional, expensive weekend hundreds of miles away to connect with my friends.  I’m not a bit curious about John Smith or Jane Doe, whom I didn’t know in college, maybe passed in the hallway, or shared a class with, and what they have done with their lives.  As I said, I think I’m missing a gene…because everyone else I know (except most of the people I count as friends from those years!) are all gung ho on reunions.  Nostalgia for institutions and people I never spoke to in my life just isn’t there.  Schools were for education. I paid. I went. I got it. Sometimes I wonder what’s wrong with me!  But not often.

End of diatribe!

It is starting to get light here on the farm.  Lizzie, the border collie, is starting her “squeaking” at the door to my “study” (?sewing room, private room, whatever), which means “My sheep need feeding.”  Well, actually, no they don’t. They still have a half hour or so before I will go out to feed them. But she is hopeful that this morning, for whatever reason, I’ll give in early, stop what I’m doing, and go feed her sheep.  Not bloody likely.

There are conflicting weather reports this morning. My regular online weather, which is usually the most reliable, has been very weird for the last week or two, wrong most of the time. This has never happened before, and I’m wondering what’s happened at their weather central to have made such a change in their prediction percentages.  Anyway, they say no precipitation til Saturday.  The National Weather Service, posted on my regular weather site, says, however, that tonight there will be snow, 5 inches of it possibly, and then l/2 inch of ice.  Very strange to be so far off.  It will be interesting to see which one is right.  Probably neither.  With climate change, probably we’ll get a warm spell of 50 degrees, OR the temperature will drop to -5 by tomorrow morning.  It’s been a very weird winter. We still only have about 3 inches of snow on the ground.

I can see in the semi-dark that the sheep are starting to stand and look this way.  They are suggesting it’s getting close to feeding time as well. The roosters are crowing; the big one with his cockadoodledoo; the little one with cockadoo…The third one doesn’t dare open his mouth, apparently…The new hens are finally starting to lay. I’ve found three different shaped pullet eggs in the last 3 or 4 days.  Hopefully, egg production will increase.  My idea of freezing eggs was a good one.  I still have a few “disks” of 3 scrambled eggs, frozen solid in the freezer, with a tiny bit of milk in them to hold them together.  I took two of these out the other day to try; made a poundcake that called for six eggs. Worked wonderfully. That means, basically, that even though the chickens were on strike, resting, during their moult for 3 months, I had enough frozen eggs to get through, and didn’t have to buy any of those pale, confined hen eggs they sell in stores.  Yahoo.  More sustainable living!  I froze some eggs in ice cube trays, so I had individual eggs, and some in the blocks, for omelets and pound cakes.

I’ve just about finished Catherine Friend’s “Hit by a Farm”, her first memoir about the farm she and her partner, Melissa, have in Minnesota.  I think the second one was better (“Sheepish”) but it was good, nevertheless.  I love seeing other people making the same mistakes I made.  I’m wondering, if, like me, she finally has figured out most of the stuff, and has stopped making mistakes funny enough to laugh at, one reason I stopped blogging for so long.  Couldn’t find any funny material, and it just seemed silly to keep repeating the same stuff happening, year after year after year.  Same with a column I used to write for “Black Sheep Newsletter”.  You can’t write about other people’s mistakes!  It’s okay to laugh at yourself, but not to expose others making the same mistakes you made, and don’t anymore.  So, I ran out of stuff to write about sheep raising.  Now, I have other topics as well, so I can keep on keeping on.

But, I don’t think I”ll be going to any reunions any time soon.

A friend emailed me today, wondering if she might come down and we could skirt her fleeces from last spring…at 15 degrees?  I don’t think so!  My hands don’t do skirting or anything else without mittens in winter.  The capillaries close down and those hands BURN.  So, I had to say no.  I’m trying to figure out how I might get the skirting table into the basement, but it’s 4 x 8, which doesn’t promote negociating around halls and down stairs, so I am not sure how we’ll manage this. I think it will just have to wait until the weather is warmer.

I’ve called Gwen for a shearing date in mid-March, but she hasn’t called back yet. Shearers don’t really seem to call back promptly!  Oh, well, she’s a great shearer and worth waiting for.  I miss her dad, who was our former shearer.  He NEVER answered the phone, but would call back after a while.  I think sometimes, they’re away down south shearing and wait til they’re home to call back.

The weather site online says that starting tomorrow, daytime temps will be in the 30′s all week, and nighttime lows won’t go below 25.  January thaw?  I’m sure it will get cold again before winter is over, but I’m looking forward to mornings answering emails before doing chores without sweater, hat, fingerless gloves, scarf, and quilt!

As adults, we moved with our children when they were in sixth and eighth grades. It was very hard on them, too, and took them a long time to adjust.  We moved because we wanted a better school system for them and a better lifestyle.  We got that, but it was a struggle all the way.

Yesterday, I read a book, another Catherine Friend book. (Remember “Sheepish”?) I frequently read children’s literature and count among my favorites “My Side of the Mountain” and “The Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler”, both of which, according to one of  my sixth grade students years ago, got “Blueberry awards.” (Newbury?)  At least I think they did.  Anyway, this book, called “Barn Boots Blues” was about a 12 year old girl who moves from the country to the city with her parents, whose lifelong dream it is to move to the country, and who feel that giving the child a country experience, with no cable or tv reception will broaden her life and improve her perspectives.  (and I agree with all that, actually…I would love my grandkids to move up here to my farm. I have seen how caring for farm animals brings responsibility and joy into the lives of children and improves their sense of self and of the wonder of creation.)

Anyway, Taylor, the young girl in the book, has a very hard time, with new school rules, with farm chores (all of which involve dealing with poop…on boots, in hair, on clothing…)and the mortifying effects of showing up at school smelling of the farm, with making new friends, with the isolation of living out in the middle of nowhere with no neighborhood kids…and with the fact that the farm and the consequences of the move means that her parents are largely unavailable to her.  IN one touching chapter, she has to design a house with another student, a boy (naturally) who is very popular and who had dubbed her “Boots” because she ran for the bus one morning forgetting to change into shoes, mortifying her at school.  The boy, typical of 12 year old boys, wants a house with lots of privacy, where one could get away from younger, annoying siblings; Taylor wants a house where the fanily can be together, reflective of her missing her parents and the things they did together in their city house, which are now superceded by working and commuting and by farm chores.

The book put me in mind of my similar experiences, though I think Taylor was a more together kid than I was and had more resources to bring to the problems she had to face.  And the passages and chapters where she learns to spin from an old lady and delivers some lambs made my heart sing.

I know a couple of kids I want to recommend this book to.  I want their opinions on it.  I wonder if they will like it as much as I did.  I’m thinking they will, but time will tell.  If you know of a middle schoolish, fifth or sixth grader who’d like a good read, you might check out this book.

And now, I just had Catherine Friend’s other memoir type book, “Hit by a farm” I think it is called, put on my Kindle, so when I finish reading “Below Stairs” a memoir of a woman in servive in early 1900′s in England, I’m off for another frolic with a beginning farmer, who apparently had a hard time adjusting to that life, as Taylor did!  ‘

Time to do chores.  John is out shovelling the snow from last night off the walks.  The sheep are waiting for breakfast. Lizzie is out there telling them “five minutes”.  So, I’d best get with it.

Stay warm.

When I got up this morning, the fire had burned down, with almost no cinders. It was interesting getting the fire back at full force, but finally I got it.  Twigs are marvelous things!  So are logs. So are woodstoves. It is now nice and toasty in here.

I didn’t sleep well last night, so instead of heading to church this morning, I will take a little nap and then goi check on Octavia again, hoping all will be well.

Yesterday we had some snow, following on Thursday’s snow.  Still not a lot, but at least the ground is covered and it seems like winter. My guess is tomorrow morning when it is zero or even colder, I won’t be quite so gung ho on winter, but for now, it’s sure nice to see the snow.  Because the temperature is to drop significantly, I gave the sheep a bit of hay this afternoon…they really don’t need it, but a little extra fuel might help them, or at least console them when the cold hits.  Or they can burrow down in it…(probably the goats will, anyway!)

I sure wish I knew why these chickens haven’t started laying yet.  They are 7 months old and ought to be laying.  They sure are beautiful, many different kinds of wyandottes, but they aren’t here to be beautiful; they’re here to lay eggs!

I started another Einstein coat today out of some handspun yarn which is a combination of blues and purples I bought from Spunky Eclectic plied against silver grey coopworth.  I’m eager to see how it turns out…but since it’s a coat, it will be awhile before I’ll have it done.  I also have tons of roving to knit before shearing…which reminds me, it’s time to contact Gwen for a shearing date in March.  One more month of kind of reduced farm chores, before preparing for shearing and lambing, and then the spring shows start again.

AND, as if that weren’t enough, it is snowing!  For the first time this winter (I’m not counting the October freak snow as winter!) we have snow.  I had been worried that we were in for a N.J. winter…all damp and rain and yucky, but it is snowing. Probably won’t amount to more than four inches, but hey, it’s snow, and it’s beautiful.  Hopefully, it will be over for a few days by Saturday morning, as I’d like to go to the Poultry Congress at the Big E in Massachusetts, if possible.  My little wheaten Old English Game bantam hens have both died, and poor Napoleon, their roo, is very lonely, and eyeing the big girls, but he’s WAY too small to be of interest to them.  We shall see.

I’ve been slowly working my way through a book on the Bible written by my college Hebrew professor from about 100 years ago…or it seems that long. (Sometimes, and sometimes, it seems like it was yesterday.)  It is slow going and pedantic in places, but informative and interesting in others, so I will continue…One interesting comment he made in the introduction is that most people don’t register the fact that the New Testament is some of the finest writing by Jewish authors of the first century, AD.  (or CE, I guess, to be politically correct.)  That was something I’d never thought of, and it makes good sense.

Okay, end of tirade.  Lizzie woke us both up at 4:45 this morning with a very impressive barking fit…at what?  The rooster was crowing, because the lights came on in the henhouse.  Did she hear a fierce monster outside? Coyotes?  The fisher who lives in the woods behind the house?  No idea. We heard nothing. Sometimes I think she fakes monster protection noises because she’s lonely and wants us to get up.  So, we’re up.  It’s 6:24 and pitch dark out.  (It IS getting lighter earlier and darker later, though…I have noticed that.)

Yesterday, I managed to install new internet protection on both this computer and my little netbook, which took me a couple of hours. I really am technologically challenged. But having succeeded at such a daunting task, I proceeded to attempt to install my Rosetta Stone Italian series on my laptop. (It was on the old laptop, which died, and the Italian died along with it.)  Got it sort of installed, but couldn’t get it activated.  So, I finally managed to find a place on the Rosetta Stone website, to contact them. I’ve had an answer requesting information, and am hoping they can somehow activate the program on this computer.  (When you buy it, it is good for two computers, but it doesn’t say what provision is made for when one’s computer dies, which seems to happen quite regularly after a few years for me.  There ought to be a way you can continue to use it on your new computer, so long as you are the same person…so how can they tell that, online, I wonder.  We shall see.  If they can manage to let me activate it, then when I finish level 3, I might just buy levels four and five, so it would be to their advantage to let me do it.  If not, I doubt I”ll invest that much money again.

Bored yet?  Well, remember, I was up early, and am groggy as a result!  John and I went to my sister’s house this past weekend for a wonderful family party.  We haven’t been together in years.  It’s been almost 10 years since I’ve seen some of my nieces and nephews.  It was great re-connecting with them.  Why so long?  Lots of reasons, including Navy family all over the globe, family feud, getting away from farms…but not important. What is important is that we all got together: Jo and her kids and families, me and my kid and family.  Cousins met cousins for the first time, in some cases.  Plans were made to get together more often.  Jo cooked sauerbraten, served it on Great Grandma Fischer’s dishes, it was a great event.

Yesterday, I had planned to go to the gym, but then I remembered (thank God) that the piano tuner was coming to fix some loose hammer or another on the piano.  That took the whole morning.  He is thorough but slow.  Luckily, I had my knitting.  I’m working on a Baby Albert jacket, the small version of the Einstein jacket from the Knit Stitch book.  I’ve recently bought both the Knit Stitch and the Purl Stitch.  They are meant to be beginner’s books, but I’ve learned a great new cast on with crochet hook accompaniment, and a new way to weave together parts of a sweater.  (Usually, I do only sweaters from top down or bottom up that require no sewing, but this weaving thing is far superior to sewing, so I don’t mind doing it.)  There are several other patterns in the books I want to try. But for now, this little sweater is for Sue for the store (Hodge Podge) because she has some great yarn which isn’t moving and she wanted a “sample” of what one could do with it, so I volunteered.  I’m hoping to finish it today, bring it to her tomorrow.

And today is Upper Valley spinning.  We’ll be at Gen’s today instead of our usual winter location, the library.  I much prefer peoples’ homes, but in winter, parking can be interesting. With snow piled up…or so the theory goes. We still have no snow!

Not a whole lot going on at the moment.  Winter can be like that…But with events to look forward to: the yearly knitting retreat at St. Thomas’ in Hanover (not a religious retreat; just a day of knitting) and SPA in Freeport, Maine, both in February, then shearing and lambing in March, and before you know it, Spring will be upon us.  My guess is we’ll be deluged with snow in February and March, but maybe that’s just my hope.  I don’t quite trust a year without our quota of snow.

Lizzie is now making “I want to go out” noises, so I guess I need to quit this and pay some attention to her.

I bought a ram!  I’m very excited about him. He is living at Fine Fettle Farm til spring, since I have no other rams for him to hang out with here for winter. (and don’t really want to have to dig out TWO pens with the snows…although the snows haven’t made their appearance yet.)  He is from Pennsylvania, from Anthony Berger’s farm. Anthony brought him up for Laselll at Fine Fettle two years ago when he came up to get some ewes from me and from her.  So, I guess I”m committed to breeding for another two years, anyway!  I do miss Isaiah (Unzicker Ike) who has now gone back to Unzicker’s. I hope that Dierks is as kind and gracious a gentleman as Isaiah was. 

I subbed on Sunday at our church, as our priest was away recovering from Christmas.  It was fun.  I do like keeping my hand in occasionally, though in general, I’m very happy to be retired.  Unfortunately, I consecrated too much wine (out of practice, and each chalice is different, so it’s hard to gauge how much one needs!) and had to finish off a lot of wine, which meant headache and general malaise for two days, since I”m kind of allergic to wine.  But that’s life. 

Today, we start the return to normal from Christmas mode, by bringing the big table top back to the basement.  I know of no dinners for more than six people in our lives for the next month or so, and if we need it, we can always bring it back up.  But it will be nice to have our normal size table back again, which means a little more maneuvering room in the kitchen/great room.  Thursday, Twelfth Night, we’ll take down the tree and decorations, and then, we’ll be firmly out of Christmas and into Epiphany and deep winter.  I’m not sure what the January thaw will look like later in the month, since we haven’t had the January freeze/snow yet.  I have a hunch we’ll be hit hard in March and April, that winter and all seasons have shifted somewhat, coming a bit later than the calendar tells us they should come.  Seems to me it was warm into October last year and cold into June.  Time will tell.  I wonder how long it will take the larger segment of the American public and the government to wake up and smell the coffee: that climate change is real and we must curb our fuel habits and eating habits to save our planet from major catastrophic changes?  We really CAN do without kiwis and other things that come from miles away. I’ve read that a lot of the greenhouse gases come from the seeming necessity on the part of America’s eating public, to have a wide variety of food out of season, that has to be trucked in from 2000 miles away. I’ve always suggested we don’t have to be an all or nothing country; if each of us gave up one more thing with each passing month that came from over 100 miles from our home, and slowly continued that practice, until we were mostly eating local, it would go a long way.  But, God forbid we should have to do without kiwis and bananas and fish from Seattle!  I am not suggesting we have to NEVER eat anything that isn’t local, especially where health is concerned. (How many elderly people should eat a banana a day?) BUT, we can moderate our gluttony for sure.  Perhaps there’s something to be said for the philosophy that food is best to eat when it is in season, and in winter, we need to concentrate on eating food that has been and can be preserved naturally; that eating “with nature” so to speak, instead of against nature, might be better for us in the long run? For example, we already know that although it’s a bit tougher, grass fed beef is so much better for our health and so much healthier for the cows than feed lot grain fed sheep, whose pH changes and whose stomachs harbor e coli that in grass fed beef just doesn’t have a chance, since their stomachs are designed to kill it off.  I much admire Switzerland, who has designed a program, so that if it’s borders are closed for any reason (war, natural disaster?) they can feed their populace. How? By encouraging the people who live there, when possible, to keep livestock, to have gardens in their back yards instead of lawn chairs and barbecues exclusively, to grow crops instead of lawns.  So, one neighbor might keep two goats, one a cow, one a pig, and they can trade meats.  John once, having read an article in the paper about disaster planning, suggested we needed to stockpile some meats in our freezer (this was before we had the big freezer, which is now full of meats) and have a plan for what to do if the freezers have no electricity available, and no gas available for the generator.  I looked out the window and said, “UH?”  For with our sheep and goats and chickens and turkeys, we have meat on the hoof to last a long time which doesn’t require refrigeration or fossil fuels, and half the year, can live on pasture.  We have neighbors with cows, and hay fields, and another neighbor who knows how to slaughter…so this neighborhood, at least, is set for any disaster that befalls us.  And we all seem to “can” veggies and dry them and store them in the basement when that is the way to store them.  I guess we’re a little Switzerland right here in Vermont.  I know this is easier for rural people to do than village people or city people, but if everyone raised one little thing…(and they loosened zoning laws to permit goats and chickens and such) even city people could raise windowsill herbs and tomatoes and sprouts, and there’s now a movement for people to have one or two hens as pets in apartments, for eggs…it could work…and in disaster times, we’d have to do what England did during WWII with it’s children: we’d all have to take in city people and live side by side with them to survive and feed each other.  That would be more difficult. Sharing isn’t our strong suit in this country!!  I guess that’s not fair: people are willing and able and generous when disaster strikes, like the hurricane flooding here in August.  Amazing numbers of people donated amazing amounts of food, clothing, and household goods…but not too many opened their homes to the homeless…and with a true disaster that was more than local, that would have to happen, I imagine.  Oh, well, I”m rambling again, babbling like a brook.  Gotta’ get the day started; lots to do.