Clean.

Thirteen

I'm not sure how it happened, but somehow this guy is thirteen today.

Thirteen! I can hardly remember what our life looked like before he arrived.

And while every birthday is a reason to celebrate, this one feels significant. A teenager. The world opening before him.

Sage, you have been one of my greatest teachers since the day you were born. I am constantly inspired by your authenticity, your mind, and sensitive spirit and your wide open heart. Thank you for choosing us to be your family and for all that you have taught me.

We love you so, so much.

Happy birthday!

Love,

Mama

 

 

 

Back to Unschool

Originally posted in September 2013.

These shall be our "first day of..." photos for the year.

The first day of school is always an interesting day for me as a homeschooler. Especially as an unschooler.

My facebook feed is a parade of back-to-school smiles from kids I know well and kids I don't know well.

From coast to coast and beyond.

Back! To! School!

And it's exciting. And beautiful. And I get butterflies in my own tummy for those little ones off on this grand adventure, many for the first time.

But over here, it's just Tuesday.

There is no school to get back to. No photos to take of us lined up at the bus stop.

Just us. In our jammies. Making tea and doughnuts.

If I'm being honest it's a little bittersweet.

Because I'm actually someone who had a pretty great public school experience growing up.

And so somehow I'm hardwired to the rhythm of September and "back-to-school".

The new notebooks and pencils, the I-hope-I-like-my-teacher jitters, the backpack and the lunchbox, the I-hope-my-best-friend-is-in-my-class longing, the big bus rumbling down my street.

And for my kids that all so foreign.

It's something they've heard about from their friends and read about in books. But it's not their thing.

Their lives have very much remained unchanged since they arrived. It's our life and our life learning, day after day.

So there's no "first day of 6th grade".

There are no grades at all.

(I actually just had to do the math to determine what grades my kids would be in where they going to school. First and Sixth as it turns out.)

And August and September aren't really so different from one another except that the tomatoes are coming in.

And I love that. With my whole heart. I count it on my very short list of blessings each day.

But like any parent, I want to make the best choices for my kids.

And so my shadow self whispers in my ear, "Are you sure? Are you totally sure of this path? Because everyone else is doing something different."

And I'm thankful for that dark little voice.

Because I hear it. I dig in. I ask questions. I roll the idea around in my head.

What would it be like if we made a different choice?

Because personally I don't think school is bad or judge anyone for their choice to send their kids there.

It can be a wonderful experience! Just as homeschooling can.

But it has to be a fit.

And so I hear that little voice, year after year, and then I always remember what brought me to this path.

I look at my kids and I ask myself, "Are they thriving? Are they learning? Are they on fire and loving life most every day?"

Heck yes.

I truly can't imagine how we could be happier.

And so we begin another day. Another season. Another year.

Together.

At home.

 

And as I am each September, I'm so thankful for today.

 

You might also enjoy this, this, and this.

 

Kindness and raspberries

Oh, for the kindness of neighbors.

Thankful today for our friend Dan who welcomes us (and so many others) year after year to pick raspberries on his farm just up the valley.

We pay only with jars of jam or pickles, with conversations across the berry bushes, and with our heartfelt, repeated thanks.

We carry home pails that are loaded with berries, enough to can and freeze and dry, then tuck away for winter.

Such kindness inspires me to become a better person. More generous. Giving. And kind. What would the world be like if we thought first to give all that we could give, not of what we could gain?

 

Hearts wide open.

 

Thankful indeed.

 

Sunshine Jam Recipe (peach, raspberry & ginger jam, sweetened with honey)

As I type this for you today my table is covered - covered! - in quarts of raspberries.

A kind-hearted neighbor invited us to pick last night. Just as he has done every August since we first moved here.

His berries are sustainably grown and he accepts no payment for the fruit he so generously shares (unless you count the jams and dilly beans we leave on his porch.) Last night we came home with not only ten quarts of berries but also a box of tomatoes and a couple of watermelons from his housemate.

Such a deal.

We left them a jar of Sunshine Jam as a small thank you for the epic haul of organic food. Though a tragically undersized token of our thanks, it seemed apropos in content since the raspberries inside are from his farm.

When we got home I poured one quart of fresh berries into a mason jar, added a few slices of fresh ginger root, and covered it in vodka. That will be a gift for our neighbor in a week or so.

Because, why not? You can only eat so much jam and I suspect I'm not the only one leaving jam on his porch ever week or two.

But you still need jam, don't you friends? I thought so.

I developed this recipe over the weekend with our first raspberry harvest. It's so good that I'm making a second batch today. Maybe a double.

Care to join me? Here's my recipe.

(Before we dig in, please note that I use Pamona's pectin. It's the only pectin I know of that still works when you sweeten with honey. I buy it at our natural foods coop.)

Sunshine Jam

with peaches, raspberries, & ginger

(makes approximately 9 half-pint jars)

Ingredients

3 C raspberries

6 C peaches, pitted and chopped

1/4 C + 2 TB lemon juice

1 1/2 C local honey

2 TB Pomona's Pectin powder

2 TB + 2 tsp Pomona's calcium water (included with Pomona's Pectin)

1 Tb ginger root, peeled and grated

1 tsp dry ginger

2 tsp ground cardamon (optional)

Process

Prepare Jars, Lids and Canner

Sterilize 9 half-pint or 14 quarter-pint canning jars and their lids in boiling water.

Fill your canner with water and set on high heat to bring to a boil.

Turn off heat when it reaches a boil.

Prepare your Jam

Combine peaches, rapsberries and their juices with calcium water in a medium sized cooking pot. (Mix calcium water according to package directions.)

Add lemon juice, ginger root and dry spices and stir to combine.

Bring fruit to a low boil over medium heat, stirring frequently.

Meanwhile, combine room temperature honey with pectin powder and stir well until fully combined and free of lumps.

When fruit begins to boil, add honey-pectin mix and stir well until honey is completely dissolved.

Taste for sweetness and add additional honey if needed.

Bring to a boil again, then remove from heat.

Jar it up

Fill sterilized jars to 1/4" from top. (I find that this works out perfectly to be just beyond the bottom of my canning funnel.)

Wipe jar rims with a damp towel.

Lid jars with sterilized lids.

Lower jars carefully into your almost boiling water in your canner and set over medium-high heat.

Bring to a boil again, then simmer for 10 minutes.

After 10 minutes lift jars out and allow to cool, undisturbed on a towel for at least 2 hours.

After 2 hours check each lid for a good seal, then allow to rest for 24 hours.

After 24 hours check lids again and move your preserves to your pantry.

Peach & raspberry cobbler recipe (GF, DF, EF, vegan)

After my last peach adventure I took a year off from buying peaches.

It felt like a good choice, considering.

But when a friend cued me in on a bulk buy of organic peaches that a local farmer was organizing I had to join in the madness.

Only two bushels, I said.

I could restrain myself.

Really I could.

They ripened after a few days on our shady porch, and only one was lost to marauding wild life. (A song bird found her way into the box and devoured our ripest peach. I guess she feels the same way I do about peaches.)

 And so, this weekend at our farm, Saturday was Peach Day.

The kids and I bagged and froze diced peaches that we'll use in winter smoothies, muffins, and other treats. Then I canned peach-raspberry-ginger jam (I'll share that recipe too if you're interested!) and my favorite, a mildly spicy, kid-friendly, tomato-free peach salsa with just a few hot peppers from the garden (a crazy addictive recipe I found in this book).

We had cobbler for breakfast on Saturday too, because, well, why not? It's only peach season once a year.

And I jotted down my cobbler recipe to share with you today.

Because it's gluten-free, refined sugar-free, vegan, and can be made either nut-free or grain-free (and by subbing sweeteners you can even make it GAPS legal and Paleo), I named it Everybody's Cobbler.

The kids each made an additional cobbler batch to stash in the freezer, too. (Sage subbed in blueberries for the raspberries and added 2 Tb lemon juice.)

Everybody's Cobbler

Ingredients

Fruit filling

7 fresh, ripe peaches, pitted and cut into bite-sized pieces (approximately 7 C)

1 1/4 C fresh raspberries (if using frozen, thaw first and drain off excess juice)

1/4 C plus 2 Tb coconut sugar

1/2 tsp peeled and grated fresh ginger root

pinch salt

1 tsp ground cardamon

1/4 tsp dried ginger root

2 Tb coconut flour

2 Tb tapioca flour

Topping

1 c rolled oats (or chopped nuts, coconut, or a combination)

1 c almond flour (or oat flour, your choice)

1/4 c sugar

1/3 c tapioca flour

1 tsp cinnamon

1 c coconut oil, melted

Preheat oven to 350 F and prepare your cobbler pan by lightly oiling a large pie pan or 8x8 oven-safe dish.  (I used coconut oil.)

Combine fruit filling ingredients in a large mixing bowl and topping ingredients in a second, smaller mixing bowl.

Stir each to combine.

Allow fruit filling to sit for ten minutes. If it is exceptionally juicy add an additional tsp each of tapioca flour and coconut flour.

Transfer fruit filling to prepared pie pan and top with oat/almond crumble topping

Place pie pan on a cookie to catch drips. Bake for approximately 40 minutes until bubbling and nicely browned on the top.

Allow to cool somewhat before serving, and enjoy!

(Since we ate ours for breakfast we served it with fresh, homemade yogurt or coconut yogurt. Needless to say, homemade vanilla ice cream would be a win as well.)

 

Back home

Two days ago I drove away - alone - to a city a few hours away.

I had some LüSa business there, as well as an appointment for a tattoo (more on that another day). It was a fast-and-furious day-and-a-half long trip, but I had been looking forward to it for weeks.

So! Much! Time! For anything I wanted.

I had a vision of snuggling down in my hotel room, writing away on my book for hours on end. I packed two knitting projects and dreamed of quite hours spent working on anything I chose.

In the end, I felt more out of sorts and out of place than ready to write.

I paced around in my hotel room (a fancy suite that I was upgraded to after I burst in on some unsuspecting man in his underwear in the first room they gave me. Um.), connected with a new friend (so, so good to meet a kindred soul), and finally settled into some knitting in my hotel before sleep.

But even falling asleep alone felt foreign - though there was something delicious and decadent about sleeping straight through the night without waking for stray feet, arms, or pets making their way into my space.

I woke up early on Friday morning, thinking that it was almost time to milk our goat, feed the chickens, and begin the day.

But there I was, in the city with traffic hurrying by my window.

 

So I knitted a few rows and drank my tea in the quiet, marveling at how out of place I felt so far from home.

 

After my appointments were done I didn't waste any time in aiming my car towards home.

Home!

And this morning, waking to the sounds of our three silly roosters (who usually disappoint me with their early calls) felt just right.

This is my place.

My home.

And for all the work, for all the energy we pour into our life here, it is the only place where I belong.

 

It's good to be back.