Busy Hands Homestead

All of the sudden time has slowed down. The month has been a whirlwind: meetings, birthdays, kiln firings and school outings. Ideas for blog posts scratched on scraps of papers, just to be piled up while we go on to the next thing. These are the matching journals I stamped for Ivory and Adam as his 30th birthday gift.  Last fall I started having Ivory draw a picture of her day for Adam on those days that he doesn't come home from work.  This way they can share their days with each other even when they don't see one another. This is the double layer meat cake I made for Adam's birthday party.  Two layers of meat loaf, a layer of bacon in between and the entire thing is iced with mashed potato "frosting" all topped off with sauteed onions and mushrooms.   This is the bright white glow of the Anagama Kiln firing. In a few more days, we get to unbrick the door and unload shelf after shelf of transformed clay.  This is the...

     Our household has been pulsing from chaos to mess, chaos to mess, chaos to mess. For the last week we (with the wonderful help of friends) have been shuttling everything we own, including our two dogs, seven chickens and massive piles of wood, across our neighborhood with Sylvan and Ivory in tow. Figuring out where to sleep, where to wash laundry and how to cook dinner on top of the mess. The washer and dryer are finally hooked up, and while many small piles remain everywhere, I am beginning to see our new house become a home.      All through this process I keep thinking of someone I love very much, who is day after day taking care of someone she loves very much, as he is fading away, and wishing I didn't live thousands of miles away. I have no words to offer. I know nothing of death and dying except that it is inevitable, and I often wonder what exactly we talked about in that Death and Dying class I took in college. Why is it o...