Saying goodbye to Colorado...

Today all our worldly belongings were packed into boxes which terrified our youngest daughters. They simply could not stand it, so the children and I visited some friends while the professional packers from the moving company packed like fiends. Everything in the house disappeared quickly and orderly into scores of brown cardboard boxes. It was a strange feeling popping back in the house for a minute when I came back to my husband and two oldest children who stayed to supervise. It didn't seem like home at all, it was somehow vacant and empty in a way that went deeper than the mere absence of possessions. It was our home yesterday and today it just wasn't.

 

We feel so homeless; we are a people without a place. All those relationships to places and people and things that we so carefully constructed over the years are being snipped. One by one we break these threads and watch them fall away. The last time at dance, the last time we see that friend, the last Mass at our parish, the last goodbye to this neighbor. Snip, snip, snip.What we are left with is this strange floating feeling as the home we are leaving is no longer home and the home we are going to is not yet home. When we get to Michigan it will be completely new to me and the kid. Not that we have never been but that we have never built up this web of relationships yet. My husband was born there but has been living elsewhere for many years and so while it is still a homecoming for him, it will be work to pick up all those all threads that he cut before. Until we build up our web, we will still be homeless.

 

 

My dear, dear friend Hanna made her famous peanut butter cookies for us and carefully packed them for our trip. As we left her house I looked at those cookies and I cried. Seeing my broken cookie made me feel like my heart was breaking. I have her email, her cell number, her cookie recipe but I won't have her. Snip, snip, snip...and I watch those threads that held my family in place dropping. It's a wonderful opportunity for us to move to the farm, for the kids to be able to run in the woods and to really know their father's family. It's a gift and all gifts come with a price. Sometimes the price is difficult to bear. As we drove to my mother's to spend the night I looked and my cookie and thought of my echoing and empty home and I cried. It is not that I did expect it to be hard, it was that I embraced that difficulty. I know that soon we will feel at home and not so adrift; it is not that I am not hopeful. It is that I truly understand the price that we are paying.

The people and places we leave behind are beautiful gifts as well and they are worth grieving. The pain in leaving them behind will make visiting them so, so much sweeter.

 

It's moving day...

So just how the heck did this happen? The day has finally arrived. We are moving to the farm this week. The movers come in the morning to pack (Tuesday) and then they load the truck the next day (Wednesday) and then we are off. It's exciting and scary all at once and I cannot tell you how grateful I am that I am not some pioneer venturing into the great unknown in some godforsaken covered wagon. Those folks had guts, I tell you. There were a few things in the kitchen that did not get eaten and so we divided it between two friends, hence the boxes you see on my counter.

It is things like peas and beans and some pastry grain and some ground wheat. I am in something like shock as I open my fridges and freezers and the only foods left are the canned salmon and sardines as well as the raw milk for our trip. Wow. I feel so vulnerable. No food, no security blanket. We have also been washing like mad people all day so that every single article of clothing in my house will be clean and washed before the packers descend on us in the morning. Yeah, there is nothing like the intense drive to wash a family of thirteen's clothes in a single day. Makes you feel like you are draining a filling boat with a teacup. Or maybe a thimble.

But the day has not been all bad. Some good friends invited us for dinner so we had to go only down the block and make no mess in our house nor did we have to go out to eat. They infact received the box on the left. We had grilled beef tongue and steak in pitas with Cesar salad. Fabulous. And then to top off the night we played with a lovely hat knitted by the recipient of the other box. It is knitted from golden brown eyelash yarn and the result is shockingly wig like when worn by people of a certain coloring. Nothing like laughing until we cried as we watched the kids (and one or two adults) tuck up their hair under the hat and play at "mullet". Oh, yes, the wild times we have.

The light from the lamp shining behind Greg is only icing on the mullet cake. Suh-weet! You know you wish you were there. I'll add some moving photos tomorrow and we'll see how it all goes. Wish me luck as I try to move a family of 13 over 1,300 hundred miles with (and this is totally true) 13,000 pounds of Earthly belongings. Did I mention that our 11th child, the 13th member of our family was born on 3/13/13? Seems like 13 is our lucky number.

Cupcakes, freaky hippy style...

Tonight was my children's last dance class before we move, it is also my son's birthday and we have a daughter with a birthday on  next Monday. What better way to celebrate than cupcakes? I don't buy cupcakes; I personally cannot stand cheap store-bought soy shortening frostings but I love either American buttercream or meringue buttercreams. I also refuse to shell out for quality cupcakes when they really aren't that hard to make. I mean, they are only cupcakes, after all.

Today, despite having a needy nine week old, I managed to bake four dozen cupcakes. I used the America's Test Kitchen Family Cookbook (the Cook's Illustrated people) yellow cupcake recipe but swapped out the flour for homemade sprouted pastry wheat and switched sucanat for the sugar which I reduced by 25%. I have found that the rich, complex flavor of sucanant hides the more nutty flavor of sprouted whole grains and I always make sure to tell people that the baked goods are "caramel" or "butterscotch" which makes them less weird. They taste great even if not like fluffy white cupcakes. I used  a killer frosting, a dark chocolate American buttercream from the same cookbook which uses not only cocoa powder but melted chocolate. I also used all organic ingredients so the final product was as healthy as a chocolate frosted cupcake can be. We used a giant star tip and each of put classic swirls on the tops of the cupcakes which were then sprinkled with coarse cane sugar (I didn't want to do food dyes).

Each of the kids got to participate and pipe some frosting, from the rising college sophomore down to the two year old. The baby was in someone's arms at all times which means she kind of helped. They got to share them with all their friend's at the dance studio and say goodbye to all their friends. And I got to sneak some freaky hippy style cupcakes past all the kids, right under their noses. The best part? That one of the kids liked them so much, he wanted me to tell his mom how to make them.

Linking up to Real Food Wednesday!

Oinkment...

Lately I have been using homemade tallow balm for my family's skin care. I have used it on a diaper rash following a six hour sleep in a dirty diaper by the newborn, on a patch of eczema on myself, on my crow's feet, on my feet (getting ready for sandal weather, on every inch of my kiddos who tend to have dry skin in the dry Colorado air. I made a batch for my godson who has a bad patch of skin. So far, so good and I am liking this stuff. There was recently a great article in the Weston A. Price journal about it (see HERE) that got me on board after first reading about it in the DIY Organic Beauty Recipes (see my review HERE). My balm is made with organic extra virgin olive oil and pastured tallow from our side of beef as well as lavender essential oil. My husband calls it "oink-ment" which even though it is not made with lard is a completely awesome name.

Oinkment

1 Cup rendered and cool (but still liquid) tallow

1-2 Tb organic extra virgin olive oil

1/2 tsp liquid vitamin E (acts both as preservative as well as is nourishing to the skin)

1/2 tsp mild essential oil (vanilla, lavender)

If you have never rendered tallow, the link above to the Wise Traditions Journal shows you how. Combine and pour into glass containers and cool completely in the fridge. The essential oils are not absolutely necessary but are helpful to create a more skincare scent. The tallow smells like tallow and this is oddly reminiscent of mashed potatoes and while the aroma is not unpleasant it is a little confusing. As for the amount of olive oil, I think I prefer it at a firmer consistency but if you want it creamer go with the higher amount. Just a tiny amount goes a very long way and if you use too much it will sit on rather than be absorbed into the skin. It really is amazing on rough skin and I have to tell you I think that my crow's feet look better.

Have you made tallow balm before? Let me know what you think of it!

Linking up to the party at Fat Tuesday!

Stand up mama...

This beautiful little cloth diaper modeled by my chubby seven week old baby was made by a stay at home mama. I love mothers. The things that mothers can do amaze me. The power that they hold because they send their hearts out into the world is profound. I have the utmost respect for mothers and I think they are undervalued. Yet, I don't like the modern celebration of Mother's Day. Here in the United States, Congress adopted the second Saturday of May as Mother's Day after Anna Jarvis successfully lobbied to have the holiday enacted in honor of her own mother, Ann Jarvis (read more about her HERE). Soured and embittered by the heavy commercialism pushed by the greeting card company crushed the younger Jarvis who, with her sister, sought to abolish the holiday she fought to enact. Mother'd Day should not be about cards and forced pressure to recognize women ad naseum, it should however, be a deep and abiding sense of gratitude for what mothers do as mothers.

Today, most women feel the pressure to be useful and productive. They are told they need to write their names in the stars and bring home a big paycheck. They tell themselves that changing diapers, kissing scraped knees and cooking dinner is somehow not enough. Not only is it enough, it is life changing. How many Olympic athletes accept their medals while thanking their accountants? The owner of their favorite coffee shop? The president of their bank? Or the president of the country? They thank their mothers. They do it because their mothers deserve it. When mothers go out into the world and make it better, safer, cleaner and happier they do it because their heart aches as mothers for their own children and the children of other mothers.

• Ann Jarvis (see link above) started nursing organizations run by mothers which not only treated soldiers of both sides of the  American Civil War, but found ways to soothe hostilities and tensions after the war. If that wasn't enough she also started inspection programs to perform health inspections on dairies to make healthful, properly produced milk available. At one time distillery waste was fed to milk cows to produce a secondary income stream, ultimately poisoning both the children and the cows (see HERE).
• Mothers controlling feeding behaviors can reduce the chance that their children suffer from malnutrition even when food security is unstable and other children in the community suffer. How they select and feed their children can mean the difference between life and death (read more HERE at The Healthy Home Economist).
• The Healthy Child, Healthy World campaign is fueled by the energy of mothers (and fathers) who want to see children world wide live vibrant lives unaffected by toxins, malnutrition and environmental destruction. If you don't know who they are or what they do, you need to stop by their site HERE.

So, Mama. Stand up. Let me give you a high five instead of a greeting card. You deserve it, today and everyday. And like Anna Jarvis wanted, I am not doing it on Mother's Day, because really, everyday a mother cares for her children and those children of other women is really a mother's day.