Clean.

My favorite fair.

This weekend was the Kickapoo Country Fair in La Farge, Wisconsin.

Sponsored by Organic Valley, the KCF is what every county fair should be (in my eco-mama opinion). The events are sweet and magical from the stilt-walkers to the uber chill animal tent; the glittery tribal face painting, and the amazing flower labyrinth. In the true spirit of our region (birthplace of Organic Valley) all of the food is organic. And the speakers are always world class (or so I hear. My kids chose the animal tent over Anna Lappe and organic brats over Jim Hightower).

Here are a few photos of our day for your enjoyment.

Sleepy pigs.

Stilt walking butterflies.

Exploring the trails.

Vintage tractors.

And the highlight of the fair in our family - maple cotton candy!

Play.

Yesterday I took some time with Sage to dwell inside his imagination.

We built a playhouse/tent/tepee and spent most of the afternoon gathering wild edibles (sour sorrel) and pounding mint for tea. It was magical.

He was thrilled to share it with Lupine when she woke from her nap, and she dug it. Right up until the snacks ran out.

This summer has been a busy one, filled with visitors and sleep-overs and travel and friends. These quiet days alone with my kids are a gentle blessing.

I feel so blessed that this is my everyday.

We are living the good life indeed.

Things.

Things can be comforting. They can feel like safety in an uncertain world. Like the bag of (mostly clean) paper napkins that my great grandmother kept under her bed. A really large bag.

But stuff also is an anchor. It holds you down, clogs your energy.

We've only lived in our home for two years and everyday I am amazed at how much we have managed to accumulate. I have a passion for thrifting and treasure hunting which certainly doesn't help. It's hard for me to resist a rusty 1950's shell chair on the curb or a bargain set of awesome vintage dishes. (Even if I already have three sets of awesome vintage dishes. Yes, really.)

If my sanity slipped the teeniest bit I could easily become like this guy, living in a heap of treasures, slowly decomposing behind his shed.

So this weekend five (treasure loving, stuff accumulating) mamas came together for an enormous yard sale. Some left with more than they sold (other people's goodies) but most of us really moved some chi. At the end of the weekend we filled out truck with the leftovers and hauled them off to the thrift store for donation.

What do I feel like after letting the stuff go?

Lighter. Clearer. Freer.

Even Sage got into the spirit and put out mounds of under-loved toys. He made $20, which feels great when you are 5 (or 35 for that matter). Between our five families we made over $1000, a surreal amount of money for parting with things we didn't love, need, or use.

I am taking this weekend's clearing as an inspiration from here on out. It's that concept that everything you have in your life must be beautiful or useful.

Or my ultimate goal, beautiful and useful.

That sounds like bliss to me.

Magic.

Although I am a spring girl, summer is spinning some major magic around here these days. As homeschoolers we don't need summer vacation to come together as a family or to find needed down time. Our life revolves with the rhythm of the seasons, organically. Our structure doesn't change from busy to relaxed because school's out.

And yet, summer...

We've had a blast already, and I wanted to share some summer photos of this journey we are on in the past few weeks.

Endless hours of kid-bliss in the warm sunshine...

The standard assortment of bike rides, tea parties, sandbox play, gardening, and leaf/rock/any-natural-item of-interest collecting that make up our days.

A blossoming friendship and love between our two kids...

The past few weeks we've seen Lupine and Sage start to connect like never before. He is helping her get dressed, wiping her hands, playing with her, and she is needing to hug and kiss him three times before she can fall asleep at night.

Much nature magic...

This mama snapping turtle let Lupine, Sage, and I watch her prepare to lay her eggs in the sand. When we came back to the cabin to tell Pete about her Lupine kept telling him she was "mama" turtle. Mama Turtle was preceded that morning by a doe and fawn wading in the river and followed by a young black bear who watched Lupine pee on the side of a road.

That's another story.

And endless hours of imaginative play.

Summer has also made me busy in a Laura Ingalls sort of way. I have (in the past 48 hours) processed twenty pounds of strawberries (into amazing thick delicious rhubarb strawberry jam and miserably watery strawberry not-so-jam), baked three loaves of bread, made three quarts of yogurt (outside no less), cultured cream for butter making, and scrubbed my toilet. I even vacuumed. And washed my stovetop. Mom would be proud. My floors are still a mess, but there is progress in the air.

The Cabin.

We spent the past five days in the cabin that my grandpa and great-grandpa build on the Wolf River in Northern Wisconsin. It's a few hours from Viroqua so we haven't visited much recently. But last week we found ourselves at the Midwest Renewable Energy Fair and were more than half way there.

So off we went.

Vacation!

I had forgotten these pleasures...

Coffee on the dock at sunrise,

Playing in the river,

Roasting marshmallows in the fire,

Sipping cocktails on the deck at sunset.

It had been a year since our last visit to the cabin. But I expect we'll be back in just a few weeks.

Relaxation suits us well. We had all forgotten.