Thanksbirthday celebrations under way

Yesterday we celebrated Davy's seventh birthday and Thanksgiving. He was delighted to have turkey with all the trimmings, especially cranberry sauce, for his birthday meal, and I was happy to have a leisurely day to prepare, and a leisurely dinnertime to enjoy, our harvest feast, which included all of the usual suspects along with homemade pumpkin chiffon pie and a homemade lemon meringue pie complete with seven candles.

From the top of his new cowboy hat















to his newly refurbished mukluks (collected in time for his birthday),



















Davy, or Gray Elk as he asked me to call him last night before bed, had lots of fun, spending most of yesterday outdoors. Other presents included the Shoot-a-Loop game from Laura; a toy John Deere tractor from Daniel; "Ratatouille", gift #1 from my parents (Pecos Bill, gift #2, having been held up at the border 'til later this week); a small hatchet from his other grandparents; and the much longed for (to complete the collection read endlessly at bedtime in the bunk) Blaze and the Gray Spotted Pony.

Today, after chores are done -- and they'll take a bit longer because it's supposed to be a cold week ahead, going down to -35C tonight and not too much warmer during the day tomorrow -- we're going to hunker down in our warm house that still retains the scents of yesterday's turkey and baking. We have an ample supply of delicious leftovers, the big Grey Cup football on television for Tom that doesn't bother me as long as I have something to curl up with on the couch (and I do, since Film Club finally arrived from the library), and new toys for Davy to share with his siblings.

Home schooling for homebodies

It's hard to home school when you're not home much. I wrote last week that "I'm hoping to get back into a homebody routine again, with plenty of time for schooling at home (instead of out and about schooling, as we've been doing)". With various lessons, rehearsals, and meetings (usually mine) occupying our Wednesdays and Thursdays, the rest of the week has become more precious.

We've fallen into a comfortable routine on the days we are at home, well, not including the hour or more it takes us to do winter livestock chores. Davy has been interested in learning more about Natives; what he would really like is to wake up one morning in an Iroquois longhouse c1600, but there's only so much I can manage. Instead I pulled out Evan-Moor's History Pockets: Native Americans. The kids work on their pockets while I read aloud, the latest installment of Paddle-to-the-Sea or some of our Lewis and Clark books. History Pockets has sections on eight nations: Inuit, Tlingit, Nez Perce, Maidu, Sioux, Navajo, Iroquois, and Seminole. Because I always need to fine tune and fiddle, I'm adding extra pockets -- as well as increasing the challenge for Laura -- by incorporating material from Donna Ward's Canada's Natives Long Ago and focusing on the nearby Cree and Blackfoot nations. The kids thought it would be fun to bind their pockets, and also their pocket dictionaries, with strips of leather from the deer and moose hides we've had tanned over the years. And Davy hauled back a deer skull found in the woods near our corrals so that he can make something (I hope not a candelabra for his mother for Christmas) out of it. And arrowheads out of the rest of the skull. As long as it all stays out of my house, I told him.

The kids have been going hunting with Tom early every morning just after sunrise, and again before sunset in the evenings. One morning the boys were trailing Tom when they came upon a doe and a fawn. To their great surprise, and the boys' initial concern, the doe started approaching them, stopping when she was about 20 feet away. So far, no doubt to the great disappointment of my venison-loving mother, these have been more extended nature walks than food gathering expeditions.

Davy found a pair of homemade traditional mukluks, complete with fur and decorative beading, at the Goodwill shop, and I was happy with the price of $5. But he wants to be able to wear them outdoors and they have the same leather on the bottom as on the top, so we found a cobbler who is able to add rubber soles to the bottom and also warm liners. We visited him at his workshop yesterday, and he reports that they should be ready by next week, in time for Davy's birthday.

There were a couple of warm days, but it went right back to being cold enough to skate on the slough, and when the kids finally make it back in the house we drink hot chocolate and eat Anna's Swedish spiced biscuits with almond (thank you, Ikea). We've found that the slough is enormous, covering the better part of our neighbor's pasture, meandering around for over a mile, past muskrat lodges, dried cattails and reeds, the occasional startled deer and snowy owl.

I'm rearranging the linen closet, still moving books around on the new shelves, helping the kids boil and shape their new mouthguards (I learn something new every day), and planning Davy's festivities and figuring out when to cook the turkey, next Thursday not being anything approaching a holiday around here.

To make the most out of all of our time in the truck, we've been listening to audio CDs, including

Story of the World: Early Modern Times, volume 3 (I see a new edition is coming out in January)

Naxos Audiobooks' Famous People in History, volume 1 (Alexander the Great, Queen Elizabeth I, Abraham Lincoln, Columbus, Horatio Nelson, Shakespeare, and Mozart) and volume 2 (with Alexander the Great, Joan of Arc, Leonardo da Vinci, Isaac Newton, George Washington, Beethoven, Louis Pasteur, Marie Curie, and Ghandi); and if you're as nutty as I am and can burn CDs with your computer, you can remix the two volumes so that all the stories are in chronological order.

And, because you're never too young for Stan Freberg, Stan Freberg Presents The United States Of America. I finally broke down the other week and moved it from my wish list to my shopping cart and hit "send". And am I ever glad I did.

Busy again

I'm hoping to get back into a homebody routine again, with plenty of time for schooling at home (instead of out and about schooling, as we've been doing) and possibly even some blogging.

One of Tom's uncles died earlier in the week, after a long, long illness. The funeral was Friday. The kids also had dental checkups, in addition to the usual art lessons and play rehearsal, a 4H meeting, and somewhere in there Tom decided we needed to get away to Edmonton to the annual fall farm show and rodeo. The kids had a ball, and I had fun too, watching all the drugstore cowboys and cowgirls, and the real ones at the rodeo. We're all quite taken with the miniature Hereford cattle we saw, which are nicely proportioned and not as peculiar as Lowline cattle, which look like the regular thing with no legs.

This coming week, I have an Ag Society meeting on Wednesday, which is music lesson day so that means the kids are coming along too to sit in the office and read or write. And art in the little village down the highway, which is a good time for listening to history CDs. But we are home all day Monday, Tuesday, and Friday, and I hope to make the most of our time. I'm delighted with the way things are going when we are in fact at home -- the kids are doing well, learning lots, and having fun. And it looks as if we will finish Story of the World, volume 3 this year, hurray!

We stayed at home today instead of heading into town, as we've done for the past number of years, for the Remembrance Day services. We needed a day to move slowly, recharge our batteries, and get back into the routines of home. I've been doing laundry, changing sheets, and putting together IKEA bookcases (four more, and I hope you're not counting because I've given up). I love my husband because he didn't make any humphing sounds, or exasperated noises, or even roll his eyes heavenward when I pulled up in front of the correct bin and said, "We need four of these, honey."

In the last few days, we've had cold enough weathers to freeze the ponds, sloughs, and dugouts solidly. The kids have been skating across the road on the neighbor's slough for the past two hours, looking for "their" beavers' lodges.

And now I have to go make apple sauce.

Happy Canadian Thanksgiving

Because our harvest is over, we've been enjoying a beautiful, relaxing Thanksgiving weekend.

On Saturday, we went to the big pumpkin festival and weigh-off in the province. The kids got to see one of the biggest pumpkins (this isn't the grand prize winner, which weighed over 1,100 pounds)






















and while my back was turned (buying a couple of slices of pumpkin for starving children), Tom decided to bid on one of the giant squashes. He ended up with the second place squash, all 570 pounds of it, which he and the kids plan to carve for Halloween.

Laura examined some of the other squashes,


















while our our new pet got loaded for the trip home,
















We got home in time to have a quick supper and then head out to meet the fruit truck from B.C., where we picked up a 40-pound box of Macintosh apples; 25 pounds of onions; some blue grapes; three gorgeous summer sausages, very similar to Italian dry salami, made by Mennonites; and two wheels of cheddar cheese from a small Alberta dairy.

Yesterday we had our big Thanksgiving meal with Tom's family, and today we've all been puttering around, Tom and the kids doing various farm chores (Tom helping a neighbor load up some of the hay bales we're selling, the boys using the grease gun for the first time, Laura riding the horse and rounding up cattle), and me canning pears,


















The vegetables and fruits have been cleared out of the garden. I have a few more tomatoes to turn into sauce and freeze, and in a few weeks we'll cover the strawberries with a protective layer of straw. I still have to clean out the flower garden, though.

* * *

By eleven o'clock on Thanksgiving Day the aunts, uncles, and cousins had all arrived. The uncles and Big Kids usually stayed out on the front porch discussing cars, animals, crops, politics, and the price of hogs, soybeans, and corn. Then they would gravitate to the back of the house or, if the gathering was on a farm, to the horse barn, ostensibly to see a new foal or check out a new stall (and leaving the women and the Little Kids to do all the work). It was years before I discovered the real reason: Someone had stashed a bottle of Old Grandad in Old Jude's grain box.

The aunts and Little Kids gathered in the kitchen. Each aunt would have brought her specialty. Green lima beans, mashed potatoes, apple salad, cabbage salad, bread-and-butter pickles, vinegary beet pickles, baked acorn squash, ground-cherry, apple, and raisin pies, devil's food and angel food cakes, charlotte russe, and jams of all kind were unpacked and put on the table.

All of a sudden the kitchen was buzzing with laughter and chattering, questions and answers, orders and suggestions. Everybody pitched in. There were Wealthy apples to be peeled, cored, and sliced, boiled milk dressing to be assembled for that apple salad, gravy to be made, potatoes to be mashed, cakes and pies to be sliced, cream to be whipped, a goose to be carved. Even the littlest ones were pressed into service to bring in more wood for the kitchen fire or fresh water from the pump. They knew that they would get an oatmeal cookie for their efforts.

from Little Heathens: Hard Times and High Spirits on an Iowa Farm During the Great Depression by Mildred Armstrong Kalish. And what's Thanksgiving without Grandma's Apple Cream Pie?

G is for guitar...and giddy

Our first two back-to-school days, which ended up being out-of-the-house days, proved to be a wonderful way to ease back into the swing of things. The local author reading, and getting to meet him, inspired Laura and she's been scribbling away ever since, with plans to write up our adventure with the hawk. Afterwards, we dropped off Tom's lunchbox with plans to head home for lunch ourselves, to find that his current clients had invited us to pick as many apples from their trees as we wished. Since the apples, some crabs and other quite good-sized ones, were already falling off the trees, the kids and I headed to the supermarket, picked up a couple of sandwiches to share and some empty cardboard boxes, and returned to pick apples. Nothing like an apple for the teacher and then some. We'll press them for cider.

Yesterday it was back to the library for a meeting, home for lunch, and back to town afterwards for an afternoon of music lessons. Laura is taking piano and voice again, Davy has started with voice, and Daniel was absolved from piano lessons for evermore. In place of piano, Daniel, and Davy too, started guitar lessons, and were beyond giddy leaving lessons with their two guitars (one small, the other smaller). They adored the teacher, the lesson, the guitars, the picks, the music (a few chords of "We Will Rock You" to be followed, in the next week or two, by, of course, "Smoke on the Water"), and Davy was excited to learn that their new teacher also knows how to play and teach the banjo, instrument of his dreams for lo these past three years (the teacher and I decided that it would be a better idea to start with the guitar and then move to banjo). They would have played their new instruments in the truck on the way home if I had let them but had to wait until our arrival home, where they played for their sister, their father, and me. Then Davy wandered around until suppertime with his guitar in its case slung across his back, like a teeny tiny itinerant musician.

The boys were up unusually early this morning, to practice the guitar, of course ("I heard you rummaging around in bed so I figured you were still sleeping so I waited until I heard you open the sock drawer," my almost-seven-year-old Woody Guthrie told me breathlessly, even before his usual "Good morning", leaving me wondering a) if I really do rummage in my sleep and b) where did that kid learn that word). Later in the day, he spent a good 10 minutes in front the calendar, moaning that it would be "a whole 'nother week 'til the next lesson", darn it all, and why can't we go back tomorrow? I plan on using most of this enthusiasm and interest for the kids' science studies this year, as the kids explore the physics of sound and music with the help of their new instruments and Rubber-Band Banjos and Java Jive Bass.

The rest of the day wasn't nearly exciting, especially as I insisted on getting back to our usual schedule, hitting the books and such. Though we started the day without math books and with a new multiplication board game (from the Frank Schaffer folks), simple and fun. Then moved on to penmanship for the boys, and Laura wrote a letter. We started our new readaloud, Laura Ingalls Wilder's Farmer Boy, while the kids decided to map out on the chalkboard what Almanzo's family's farmyard must have looked like with the three big barns. Then some world history with Story of the World (volume 3) and my new summertime find, the out-of-print Golden History of the World by Jane Werner Watson, 1955; Davy likes it and its illustrations almost as much he likes guitar lessons. Now that Davy is just about seven, I'll see if we can get through World War II by the end of the year. I'd like to get through the second part of the 20th century with just Laura thereafter, and I'm mulling over an idea already for her history studies next year, when she'll begin the cycle again with ancient studies. My idea is something along the lines of "History, heroes, and hubris"; the thought started percolating quite against my will, and after some recent conversations and a radio interview on modern heroes, within the past month, and then just last week I ran across a copy of the May 2007 issue of Calliope Magazine all about the Epic Heroes of ancient history, with a number of articles by editors Rosalie F. Baker and Charles F. Baker (poking around the Calliope website, I learned that a free teacher's guide is available for that issue and others as a PDF). I'll have to check History Odyssey 's Ancients, Level Three (meant for the rhetoric stage), to see if it fits the general idea of what I'm looking for, or if I'll have to cobble together something for Laura on my own. Though it's early days and the plan is just a glimmer in my eye, I'm leaning toward the latter, but using two books HO/Ancients/3 does, Classical Ingenuity: The Legacy of Greek and Roman Architects, Artists, and Inventors and The Classical Companion, both by Callipoe editors Rosalie and Charles Baker. Must see if I can find the books at the library.

Sorry, I think this post is much too rambly. I guess the boys aren't the only giddy and distracted ones...

Retro-progressives of the world, unite

A call to arms in today's Globe & Mail, from Kate Tennier (who by the way is founder of Advocates for Childcare Choice and a former primary school teacher):

On Being a Retro-Progressive
by Kate Tennier

I've recently discovered the joy of baking cookies. Although Hillary Clinton famously does not want to make them, I do.

Producing homemade snacks may not bring world peace but it has brought an unexpected degree of empowerment to my domestic life: Knowing the ingredients that go into them, smelling the home-baked aromas wafting through the house and hearing the appreciation expressed by my family are all reason enough for me to put in the extra time it takes to make them.

So, if the most famous feminist in the world doesn't want to bake cookies and I do, does that relegate me to the status of fifties housewife? No. I'm just being "retro-progressive."

The term is most often used to define a category of music, but it can just as easily apply to any behaviour that draws from past "best practices" to create a better life in the world we inhabit now: a retrieving of the baby from the proverbial bathwater, if you will.

The problem, though, with reclaiming anything from the past is that it takes a lot of work to persuade others that it really is "back to the future" -- emphasis on future -- and not just a nostalgic trip down memory lane.

Take laundry and the return of the humble clothesline. You know there's a trend afoot when a movement has sprung up to promote it. The Right to Dry campaign -- also known as Project Laundry -- emerged after dust-ups between homeowners trying to conserve energy and municipalities that enforce bylaws protecting citizens from the sight of their neighbours' skivvies.

I recently bumped into an acquaintance reading a book in front of a local laundromat. When her dryer broke down several months ago, she simply decided not to replace it; although cost was not an issue, she opted instead to put her family's clothes "on the line."

Her visit to the laundromat that day was because truckloads of sheets needed a wash after a recent family vacation.

While she gets points for being a clothesline user, points for reading a book (how retro-progressive is that?) and even more points for using a laundromat powered by -- of all things -- solar energy, it was another, different retro-progressive action that pushed her into the vanguard of this movement.

After I asked where her kids were -- standard greeting for anyone with children under 12 -- she told me they were playing at the nearby park on their own.

This was followed by the "parent glance" -- that little look one parent gives another when the first parent feels she may have gone too far out on a parenting limb and is seeking affirmation from the other. Not only did she not go too far, I envied her confidence in knowing that her kids would, in all likelihood, return unscathed and happier for the experience.

It was nice to see a bit of activity from The Dangerous Book for Boys in my own corner of the woods, and equally appealing and retro-progressive to see that when her kids returned -- in high spirits from their adventures at the park -- they pitched in to help fold the laundry.

There's a lot more than homemade cookies, air-dried clothes and free-range children that are making comebacks. Farmers' markets, car-free days, 100-mile diets and counter-consumer movements have all grown in popularity.

Perhaps no trend illustrates the retro-progressive ethos of going to the source more than Britain's fastest-growing hobby, that of keeping laying hens. Yes, hens -- for eggs!

Weekend hen-keeping courses are all the rage in England and even Madonna is rumoured to be in on the act. Cholesterol concerns and fox frustrations aside, it is an illustration of just how far (or in this case just how close, considering the hens live in people's backyards) city dwellers will go to reclaim a practice from the past that gives them some control over their lives in the present.

Like all complex and nuanced labels, there is an element of subjectivity that prevails when deciding if something is retro-progressive. What is considered progressive by one person may be reactionary to another, and what is retro to some may never have been discarded by others. It is a thinking person's term, one that compels people to reflect on the value and validity of actions in their own lives.

As with Jews for Jesus, Catholics for a Free Choice, Feminists for Life, Crunchy Cons and the Libertarian Left, retro-progressive, with its counterintuitive paired words qualifying each other, creates a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. These terms also serve as powerful examples of the maxim that quite often, "the truth lies somewhere in between."

Getting back to my cookies: I was recently shown up by a friend of the family less than half my age (less than a third if truth be told), who, although I'm reluctant to admit it, makes better chocolate chip cookies than I do.

Can it get any more retro-progressive than a teenaged boy making homemade cookies? I wonder how he is at building root cellars.

Hey Susan, you and Junior the chicken whisperer are in good company!

All roads lead to home and hard work

"Too many parents make life hard for their children by trying, too zealously, to make it easy for them."
German poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832), quoted in "The Case Against Adolescence" by Robert Epstein

I started Farm School two years ago in part because I blathered on for much too long on the subject of children and independence at L's blog Schola. Independence, self-reliance, and responsibility are among the values Tom and I talked about teaching children when we thought about getting married. And these values are a good part of the reason I decided that it would probably be better to raise children on the Canadian prairie than Manhattan's Upper West Side; I'm not saying it's impossible (I think my parents did a fabulous job), but 40 years on it seems rather easier in this neck of the woods.

While we didn't start homeschooling with the idea that it would be a good way of further inculcating those values, it didn't take Tom and me long to realize that this educational experiment is as ideal for our child-rearing purposes as it is for our academic ones. And I'm always keen to read anything that supports our rather old-fashioned notions when it comes to raising kids.

So I was more than interested to learn a couple of months ago, at Susan's blog Corn & Oil, about the new book, The Case Against Adolescence: Rediscovering the Adult in Every Teen (Quill Driver Books, 2007) by Robert Epstein, a psychologist and former editor-in-chief of Pyschology Today magazine. The idea behind the book is that (from the front flap)

teen turmoil is caused by outmoded systems put in place a century ago which destroyed the continuum between childhood and adulthood.

Where this continuum still exists in other countries, there is no adolescence. Isolated from adults, American teens learn everything they know from their media-dominated peers -- "the last people on earth they should be learning from," says Epstein.

Which, in my case at least, means the good doctor is preaching to the converted. While I tend to think that part of the problem with the way kids are being raised is that they are being raised by advice from books rather than from parents' hearts or instincts or the way they themselves were raised by their own parents (somehow that all seems too easy...), at least there seem to be some better parenting books to choose from nowadays, including Dr. Epstein's. And as you can see from the bit above, The Case Against Adolescence contains echoes of Hold On to Your Kids by Dr. Gordon Neufeld and Dr. Gabor Mate, another book I like, though I don't find mention of the title or authors in the index.

But I've already found, just partway through chapter three, mention of the two home education gurus, former New York public school teacher John Taylor Gatto and the late John Holt; a peek at the index shows three mentions of "Home Schooling" toward the end of the book. Dr. Epstein notes that Gatto addresses "quite explicitly, ... the artificial extension of childhood" in his latest book, The Underground History of American Education (an excerpt of which was published in Harper's Magazine in September 2003, and which I saw the very week I hit upon the alternative of home schooling for Laura. Yes, I took it as a good omen).

The Case Against Adolescence owes a considerable debt to Jean Liedloff's 1977 classic, The Continuum Concept: In Search of Lost Happiness, which I read while pregnant with Laura, after coming across a secondhand copy at a library book sale. Indeed, the CC website's main page features glowing quotes about the book from both Dr. Epstein ("This book is the work of a genius" in Psychology Today) and John Holt ("I don't know whether the world can be saved by a book, but if it could be, this might just be the book.")

Just last night, I read Dr. Epstein's handy summary of Liedloff's two years with the Yequana Indians of Venezuela:

There is no distinct separation between childhood and adulthood in the tribe; instead, there is a continuum of activities, behaviors, and expectations. Expectations are modest when children are young and increase gradually and smoothly over the years, but the goals are always clear: the development of self-reliance and the full integration of the child into the world of responsible adulthood. Responsibility and authority are never forced on anyone, but they're given freely as soon as a child shows an interest in taking them on. Independent decision making is encouraged, because "leaving the choice to the child from the earliest age keeps his judgment at peak efficiency," and the child's "self protecting ability" is trusted to keep him or her from serious harm.

In contrast, she says, we weaken and damage our children by overprotecting them; we even impair their ability to make reasonable decisions and to protect themselves.

And then, still mulling over the development of this "self-protecting ability" this morning, I happened upon today's New York Times article on claims of possible child abuse in connection with Kid Nation, a new show to air in September:

The ads promoting “Kid Nation,” a new reality show coming to CBS next month, extol the incredible experience of a group of 40 children, ages 8 to 15, who built a sort of idealistic society in a New Mexico ghost town, free of adults. For 40 days the children cooked their own meals, cleaned their own outhouses, formed a government and ran their own businesses, all without adult intervention or participation.

To at least one parent of a participant, who wrote a letter of complaint to New Mexico state officials after the show had completed production, the experience bordered on abuse and neglect. Several children required medical attention after drinking bleach that had been left in an unmarked soda bottle, according to both the parent and CBS. One 11-year-old girl burned her face with splattered grease while cooking.

The children were made to haul wagons loaded with supplies for more than a mile through the New Mexico countryside, and they worked long hours — “from the crack of dawn when the rooster started crowing” until at least 9:30 p.m., according to Taylor, a 10-year-old from Sylvester, Ga., who was made available by CBS to respond to questions about conditions on the set.

I also came across a Los Angeles Times article from last week, "Kid Nation" parents: What were they thinking?, where three women were interviewed to "respond to the critics condemning them for allowing their children to participate in the CBS show". Said one mother, about her 10-year-old, an only child,

He does live in what I call a sheltered environment. He goes to a small school. Most of the schoolmates and friends that he knows he's known almost his entire life. I thought that this was a good opportunity for Zachary to experience some independence and learn some self-reliance. And if he was able to do this, I thought that was a very good way for him to build confidence in himself.

I worry that in today's world kids don't realize things they might have to face in life that might be difficult because, I think, as baby boomers we tend to be very protective of them. And I want him to know that he has the capability to be out in the world and be independent and self-reliant.

All this of course after I've spent the past few weeks on and off delightedly wallowing in Mildred Armstrong Kalish's charming memoir, Little Heathens: Hard Times and High Spirits on an Iowa Farm During the Great Depression. Unvarnished and homespun, these are the stories, words, and advice of a real grandmother eager to share her own part of a disappearing world, and to let later generations know the lasting value of pulling up your socks and putting your nose to the grindstone. As I read through each of the chapters, from her earliest reminiscences to the recipes to her later life as detailed in Epilogue, I realized that Mrs. Kalish has written about a happiness and freedom in childhood, and a contentment in adulthood, that today are sadly rare. From Little Heathens,

The summer after I graduated from eighth grade I ... was delighted to go to work as a hired girl on a large farm south of [the town of] Garrison. The family consisted of Cecil, Anna, and their two girls and four boys, ranging in age from one and a half to eleven. Cecil hired one or two extra men in the summer. That meant that Ann and I cooked, set the table, and did the dishes for at least ten people, three times a day.

Anna paid me four dollars a week for my work on the farm, and I was especially proud of that for my closest girlfriends and all of my other friends were being paid only three and a half dollars. Of course, we all received room and board, too.

Here I should report that we were also accepted as full-fledged members of the family, for hired girls were not treated as maids. In fact, I was the only one in this family who had a private room. Located at the top of the crooked stairs, it was about five feet wide by ten feet long, and it had a window overlooking the huge vegetable garden. To me it was a palace.

During those summer months we rose at five-thirty A.M., unless it was haying or threshing time on the farm; then we got up at four-thirty. Anna and I timed it so that we got up just after the men, who immediately disappeared to the barns to do the morning chores. Anna built a fire in the iron kitchen range, while I put the copper teakettle on along with the gray, graniteware coffee boiler and got the bacon started. As the kitchen filled with the delicious fragrance of the bacon crisping and browning, I carried jam, a whole pound of butter, sliced bread, a large pitcher of milk, and a smaller pitcher of heavy cream to the table, which was already set for ten people. Then I carefully broke twenty eggs into a mixing bowl and waited for one of the boys to report that the men were ready for breakfast. At that point I poured the blow of eggs into the gigantic iron skillet and fried them to perfection in bacon fat, sunny-side up.

If there was a delay, or if the men had an especially busy day before them, I might make an applesauce cake -- the very one I described in an earlier chapter. Here again, the family training in thinking ahead and always doing more than was required stood me in good stead. I could whip up that cake in just a few minutes since I kept a ready supply of homemade applesauce in the pantry; it would bake while we were eating breakfast and would be ready to eat with our second cups of coffee.

I could handle almost every task in Anna's household; I could even make gravy without lumps, for heaven's sake. There was always something to do on that farm: cakes, cookies, and pies to bake; potatoes, radishes, beets, carrots, peas, lettuce, tomatoes, and beans to pick, wash, clean, and peel; chickens to kill, scald, pluck, singe, draw, and disjoint; dishes to wash and dry; clothing to wash; laundry to be hung on the line, then taken down from the line, folded, and ironed. And every day, we made beds for ten people. Everything I had learned in my early years [up until eighth grade] I put to use as a hired girl for this family.

The children all helped in as many ways as they could. They would make their own beds, wash vegetables, carry wood and water, set the table, dry dishes, and gather eggs and apples. Like the children I grew up with, they understood that hey played a part in making the family work.

We had fun with one another. There was a lot of joking, laughing, and good-natured teasing. And often in the evening, on those occasions when we had somehow managed to finish our chores as well as our supper before dark, the kids would hep me with the dishes if I would agree to come outside afterward and play with them. We played hide-and-go-seek, touched-you-last, and may-I. Some evenings we would have water fights, tossing pails of water on one another. Or we might just sit out on the front porch and sing.

Or, as The New York Times article on alleged child abuse concluded,

“Everyone usually had a job,” said Mike, an 11-year-old from Bellevue, Wash., who participated in the show. Among them were cooking, cleaning, hauling water and running the stores, where, he said: “It was hard work, but it was really good. It taught us all that life is not all play and no work.”

Taylor, from Georgia, agreed. “I learned I have to work for what I want,” she said.

I'm sure both Mrs. Kalish and Dr. Epstein would approve. Pass the applesauce cake, please.



(Very likely more thoughts to come on The Case Against Adolescence, and Little Heathens, in upcoming posts.)

Artists in residence

I had to take some of the kids' artwork out of frames to exhibit at the fair, so thought I'd take the opportunity to photograph a few of the paintings to send to my parents and post here.

The two watercolors -- Daniel's rabbit and Laura's hummingbird -- were in the same category, and were the only entries in the youth section to tie for first place. I thought they were beautiful when I received them for Mother's Day, and now I'm even more delighted and proud of the kids.























Hummingbird and fuschia, watercolor with pen and ink, by Laura (age nine and a half); the background is watercolor paint blown with a drinking straw
























Resting rabbit, watercolor, by Daniel (age eight); background done in the same way as hummingbird painting
























Bluebird on a fence, acrylic on canvas, by Daniel (earlier in the Spring, before he turned eight)

Poetry Friday: Go and play till the light fades away

We are all of us, especially the kids, aware of the shortening days (dark comes around nine now, instead of eleven), and that the first day of school is just about one month away. I'm trying to make the most of what's left of the summer, which is why I haven't been online much, except to order some school supplies and things for Laura's birthday later this month.

The country fair is always a natural marker for folks around here. It means the end of summer and also, usually, the warm weather. But this year, though autumn is fast approaching, the heat remains. We've had an unusual four weeks now in the high eighties/low nineties and no rain, and the gardens and especially crops are beginning to burn and shrivel. The barley is turning white, and many farmers are considering swathing and baling it for cattle feed instead of combining it, since the grain heads won't amount to much. Though I have to admit that all the extra watering I have to do in the garden gives me that much more time to spend in it. The peas are ready and the beans are coming, and I'm about to pull up all the spinach, which has bolted, and seed some Swiss chard in its place.

And though we all roasted at the fair, it was a wonderful three days, a mini holiday for the five of us, as well as a chance for the kids to shine -- all three did exceptionally well in the exhibit hall, with lots of prizes (including firsts for Lego [a fire engine and fire, Monet's garden, and army fort], art work, handwriting, handmade greeting cards, wooden bird houses and tool boxes, grain and sheaves; and also at the chicken show (what's a country fair without chickens?); and, for Laura, in the show ring again with her heifer. On the midway, the boys were excited to discover they had grown tall enough for some of the previously off-limits rides with dangerous-sounding names -- the Zipper and the Scrambler. Friends -- other mothers -- and I camped out in the shade, with folding chairs and iced coffee, while our kids raced from the Tilt-a-Whirl to the bumper cars with ride-all-day bracelets on each slim wrist. And of course, the once-a-year binge of cotton candy, candy apples, homemade pie from the church booth,

The hot weather had an unexpected bonus; tidying up around the beef barn, the kids started gathering up recyclable cans and bottles. And there were lots of cans and bottles, especially water bottles. By the time the kids were done, after three days of the fair and the two clean-up days following, they had collected 12 garbage bags full -- worth much too much, it turns out, at the recycling station. It's all gone into our empty glass Mr. Peanut jar, pooled with the exhibit hall winnings, as part of the new collective horse fund. And the kids have been busy with living math, sharpening pencils and totting up the numbers to see just how much of a horse they might be able to afford at the moment. A surprisingly large percentage, it turns out.

And so, for Laura, Daniel, and David, in the waning days of summer -- leap and shout and laugh in the warm sunshine while you can:

Nurse's Song
by William Blake (1757-1827)

When the voices of children are heard on the green
And laughing is heard on the hill,
My heart is at rest within my breast,
And everything else is still.

"Then come home, my children, the sun is gone down,
And the dews of the night arise;
Come, come, leave off play, and let us away
Till the morning appears in the skies."

"No, no, let us play, for it is yet day,
And we cannot go to sleep;
Besides in the sky the little birds fly,
And the hills are all covered with sheep."

"Well, well, go and play till the light fades away,
And then go home to bed."
The little ones leaped and shouted and laughed;
And all the hills echoéd.

* * *

More William Blake, from the Tate Online.

And more Poetry Friday, with lovely lupines and the round-up at The Miss Rumphius Effect today. Thank you, Tricia!

The still-lie down

Our beautiful, loyal 12-year-old German Shepherd, mistress of all she surveyed on the farm, died last week.

While she was older and ailing, she was nevertheless coping wonderfully and enjoying all the usual summer activities -- chasing chickens, getting to know the new bull, playing and dozing with the cats, gulping down treats left over from barbecues -- until she was hit by a neighbor's truck the week before. After the first few tough days, when we thought we might lose her, she started walking again, albeit stiffly and slowly. She was rallying well until she took a turn for the worse last Tuesday. We're all rather at sea without her now. As Davy said Wednesday morning in tears, "I knew her even before I was born."

As a puppy, she pulled all of the plants out of my windowbox to make a more comfortable bed for herself. As a young dog, she had more than her fair share of adventures, come home from her wanders in the woods and fields smelling of skunk, with a face full of porcupine quills, soaking wet from a quick dip in the pond on a hot day. One early winter I saw her coming across the field lugging what I thought was a long tree branch. It turned out to be the haunch of deer who had died in the trees. She welcomed the arrival of new small people around here, though she occasional knocked them over with her enthusiastic tail, and never showed them anything but love and affection, even in her last moments.

From "Dogs" by Harold Monro (1879-1932), for our friend. We will talk about you and remember you, dear, in the light of candles and in the sunshine.

Thus, for your walk, we took ourselves, and went
Out by the hedge, and tree, to the open ground.
You ran, in delightful strata of wafted scent,
Over the hill without seeing the view;
Beauty is hinted through primitive smells to you:
And that ultimate Beauty you track is but rarely found.

Home . . . and further joy will be waiting there:
Supper full of the lovely taste of bone,
You lift up your nose again, and sniff, and stare
For the rapture known
Of the quick wild gorge of food, then the still lie-down;
While your people will talk above you in the light
Of candles, and your dreams will merge and drown
Into the bed-delicious hours of night.

Keys to my heart

A very happy Father's and Grandpapa's Day to my father, and a happy Father's Day to Tom, with whom I'm also celebrating 13 lucky years of wedded bliss. He and the kids -- who made us a fabulous breakfast of homemade pancakes and bacon with whipped cream and fresh pineapple -- went out this morning to see our new bull, bought from a neighbor on Friday, and later today there just may be some fishing.

For Tom, my joy and only dear, from his Becky Thatcher,

The Key of My Heart
(traditional, author unknown)

Madam, I will give you a new lace cap,
With embroidery on the bottom and insertion at the top,
If you will be my bride, my joy, and only dear,
To walk and talk with me everywhere.

Sir, I will not accept of your new lace cap,
With embroidery on the bottom and insertion at the top,
I won't be your bride, your joy, and only dear,
To walk and talk with you everywhere.

Madam, I will give you a new silk gown,
With nineteen gold laces to lace it up and down,
If you will be my bride, my joy, and only dear,
To walk and talk with me everywhere.

Sir, I will not accept of your new silk gown,
With nineteen gold laces to lace it up and down,
I won't be your bride, your joy, and only dear,
To walk and talk with you everywhere.

Madam, I will give you a little silver bell,
To call up your servants if you should not feel well,
If you will be my bride, my joy, and only dear,
To walk and talk with me everywhere.

Sir, I will not accept of your little silver bell,
To call up my servants if I should not feel well,
I won't be your bride, your joy, and only dear,
To walk and talk with you everywhere.

Madam, I will give you a little greyhound,
Every hair upon its back worth a thousand pound,
If you will be my bride, my joy, and only dear,
To walk and talk with me everywhere.

Sir, I will not accept of your little greyhound,
Every hair upon its back worth a thousand pound,
I won't be your bride, your joy, and only dear,
To walk and talk with you everywhere.

Madam, I will give you the key of my heart,
To lock it up for ever, that we may never part,
If you will be my bride, my joy, and only dear,
To walk and talk with me everywhere.

Sir, I will accept of the key of your heart,
To lock it up for ever, that we may never part,
I will be your bride, your joy, and only dear,
To walk and talk with you everywhere.


From my copy of The Puffin Book of Nursery Rhymes, gathered by Iona and Peter Opie* with charming pen and ink drawings by Paline Baynes (Penguin Books, 1970); from the back cover:

The Opies [Peter died in 1982, and Iona continues to write] have three chidlren, and live in a Victorian family house in Hampshire, which, as a necessary milieu to their studies, is steadily being filled with old and rare children's books, toys, games, pictures, and the paraphernalia of bygone nurseries.

I quite like the idea of "a necessary milieu" to our studies, but, as usual, I'm rambling off the subject...

* A very interesting Time Magazine article from 1959 (more than 40 years before The Dangerous Book for Boys), which begins: "Have children forgotten how to entertain themselves?"

Thought of the day

If we shouldn't depend on our husbands financially, should we then expect them to fight our battles for us?

Just wondering.

Lucky number eight

Daniel is eight today, and we've been celebrating his birthday (and continuing to celebrate mine from the other day) with waffles, sunshine, Lego, books, and flowers. His plans for today include working on the fort he and Davy started the other month in Tom's shop, and which finally made its public debut the other day (Daniel in blue, attaching chains to pull the fort out into the grass):























It's two stories high, each one of which is carpeted with carpet samples. The boys added shelves for a radio, flashlight, and handy dandy manuals. There's been some talk about adding a telephone, and knowing them I have a feeling they're not talking about the paper cup and string variety. While they're hammering away, I get to work in the garden and peek into Daniel's new books, including The Dangerous Book for Boys (UK edition), a present from his grandparents, The Unofficial Lego Builder's Guide (with an entire chapter on storage, perfect for the parents of Legophiles, too), and my own new copy of Cultural Amnesia: Necessary Memories from History and the Arts by critic Clive James.

Tonight we're going out for dinner to his favorite restaurant, and when we get home we'll have the homemade Rocky Road Oreo ice cream cake and, as we always do, look through the birthday child's baby book and wonder where the time went.

Shades of gray

Well worth reading.

Brava.

And thank you.

(Also, as of tomorrow, worth a look. Good timing, eh?)

The little ghouls of Anatevka

Today at rehearsal it was time to experiment with makeup for the graveyard scene. Even more exciting, the posters are starting to go up around town.

And yes, it was great fun to swan around the supermarket after rehearsal in full makeup.

Festival report

We spent most of yesterday at the first day of the town's arts festival. The boys each recited a poem in the morning for Speech Arts, and in the evening Laura performed her musical theater number, "I Have Confidence" from The Sound of Music.

For the past few years, the kids have entered just the Speech Arts part of the program. This year, I gave Laura a pass on that part, since her voice teacher wanted to enter her in the singing portion, and her piano teacher wanted her to enter the piano portion (tomorrow morning, with "Home on the Range", like a good cowgirl); plus she had two speeches to give for 4H. But I feel as if we're letting down the Speech Arts program, which yesterday had only 11 entries (down from a recent high of 26 in 2004, and, in earlier years, as many as eight days of entries compared to today's two hours). Part of the problem is that poetry, and memorization, are no longer included in most provincial school curricula (in part because neither is included on provincial exams, which goes to prove the unfortunate importance of teaching to the test) -- which no doubt explains why six of the 10 entrants yesterday are home educated -- and as we see all around, there's just not much worth nowadays, you know, in like being able to talk good and stuff. Whatever.

But the kids who came out yesterday did an amazing job. In addition to my two boys (whose archy and mehitabel selections by Don Marquis are at the very bottom), the entrants included

a seven-year-old girl reciting Roald Dahl's "Aunt Sponge and Aunt Spiker",

a 10-year-old boy reciting "Abou Ben Adhem and the Angel" by Leigh Hunt,

his eight-year-old sister doing a brilliant job with Charles Dickens's "The Ivy Green",

an 11-year-old boy reciting "Casey at the Bat" by Ernest Lawrence Thayer,

a 14-year-old boy reciting "The Policeman's Song" by Gilbert & Sullivan,

a marvelous rendition of Alfred Noyes's "The Highwayman" by a 16-year-old homeschooled girl, who brought the piece to life before our eyes,

a prose recitation of Something from Nothing, one of our favorite picture books, by a 14-year-old friend of ours, who also gave a public speaking solo, her 4H speech from last month about her exchange trip to Japan. I'll try to add links to most of the poems later.

All in all, a wonderful morning, even without Davy winning the prize for the six- and seven-year-old category (from the adjudicator's report: "That is quite the smile! What a wonderful job you did with all of those big words! You have a very clear and easy sound. Great work!"), and Daniel managing exceedingly well with his first stab at free verse. The kids have each had a chance at winning festival awards now, and it was heartening to see Laura and Daniel so pleased for their little brother. Best of all, because the kids didn't have classrooms to run back to as did some of the other competitors, we were free to spend the entire morning at the church hall, listening to (and learning from) all of the other recitations.

We stepped out of the church at lunchtime to unexpected heavy snow (happy spring to you, too), got home as fast as we could under the road conditions, ate lunch, relaxed as much as we dared, and an hour or so later, hopped back into the truck and drove back to town for music lessons, an abbreviated Fiddler rehearsal, and then dinner at a restaurant in town at 5 p.m. so Laura could be back at the church for the Vocal program just after 6. Her voice instructor arrived for a bit of a warm-up, and she changed into her costume. Only to discover that she had left her straw hat on her bed. Thank goodness for some dear friends, homeschoolers too, who live literally across the street from the church and saved the day with the loan of a hat five minutes before show time.

Laura and her accompanist did a terrific job -- simple, appealing, enjoyable -- all the more impressive since, as the youngest as the category, Laura was the first to go on. The adjudicator, the same one from Speech Arts earlier in the day, enjoyed it too, and gave Laura a very good critique. She was followed by a selection of Disney Princesses, which after L's comment on the other day's hot-to-trot-tot post, with this link to Off-Duty Disney Princesses (the play) from Breed 'Em And Weep), seemed more even more disturbing than usual (relevant, L? You betcha). There was Beauty minus Beast, the mermaid complete with shockingly bright wig and homemade tail, and Aladdin's midriff-baring princess pal, all complete with not particularly memorable -- nor easy to sing or suitable for 10- and 11-year-olds -- Alan Menken drivel. Why do mothers and women teachers do this to their girls? Which only made the good stuff -- including the only boy's performance of Chim Chim Cheree (the same lad who had given us Casey at the Bat earlier in the day), an 11-year-old girl performing a number from "Annie" and a 12-year-old's "Just You Wait ('enry 'iggins)" from "My Fair Lady" -- stand out that much more.

There followed some classical vocal solos, including oratoria, and a rousing finale from two local adult choruses. Beautiful stuff. A late night, but the kids were still singing on the way home -- mostly selections from Singin' in the Rain -- and planning their entries for next year.

Today we're recovering with a quiet, unschooly day, with plans to reread Something from Nothing, which ties in nicely with the kids' Fiddler on the Roof production; Casey at the Bat (there are more than a few good picture book editions to choose from), and a few other stories. Tomorrow morning Laura bangs out "Home on the Range" for the piano part of the program. And we stop off at the hospital afterwards to have Daniel's stitch removed.

Daniel's excerpt from "some maxims of archy" by Don Marquis (from archy and mehitabel)

i heard a
couple of fleas
talking the other
day says one come
to lunch with
me i can lead you
to a pedigreed
dog says the
other one
i do not care
what a dog s
pedigree may be
safety first
is my motto what
Ii want to know
is whether he
has got a
muzzle on
millionaires and
bums taste
about a like to me

Davy's prize-winning excerpt from "some natural history" by Don Marquis (from archy and mehitabel)

the patagonian
penguin
is a most
peculiar
bird
he lives on
pussy
willows
and his tongue
is always furred
the porcupine
of chile
sleeps his life away
and that is how
the needles
get into the hay
the argentinian
oyster
is a very
subtle gink
for when he s
being eaten
he pretends he is
a skink
when you see
a sea gull
sitting
on a bald man s dome
she likely thinks
she s nesting
on her rocky
island home
do not tease
the inmates
when strolling
through the zoo
for they have
their finer feelings
the same
as me and you.

(Yes, we talked about that last line and why it was needed for the rhyme. Ha. And about the saying "a needle in a haystack". Both poems got the biggest laughs of the day, so it seems Don Marquis was a big hit on the prairie.)

Poetry Friday: A unicorn for spring

Laura, the one child who isn't reciting anything in the speech arts part of the arts festival next week (because she's up to her eyeballs in 4H public speaking), selected this because "it makes me think of Spring":

Unicorn
by Anne Corkett

Unicorn, Unicorn,
where have you gone?
I've brought you some silver dew
out of the dawn.
I've put it in buttercups
for you to drink
and brought you some daisies
to wear round your neck.

Silver and gold
and petals so white,
these are the colours
saved from the night.

Unicorn, Unicorn,
where have you gone?
I've brought you nine sunbeams
to wear for a crown
and made you a blanket
of new thistledown
embroidered with lilies --
O where have you gone?
Unicorn, Unicorn,
I can't stay long.

Petals so white
and silver and gold,
these are the colours
that never grow old.

From Til All the Stars Have Fallen: Canadian Poems for Children, selected by David Booth (author of Even Hockey Players Read) and illustrated by Kady MacDonald Denton, recently available in paperback as a Scholastic school book club edition, perfect for handing out to your nieces, nephews, and children's friends who need some more Canadian children's poetry in their lives.

***

My own kids have had a bit more trauma than poetry in their lives this past week. First, Laura's voice teacher almost ended her festival season before it started, thinking to yank her because, having left it too long, he couldn't find an accompanist for her. Tuesday evening, after class, after had he told her (in costume as mini Maria in "The Sound of Music") that he'd be making the call in the morning to pull her out, her face quivered and her shoulders sagged but she was stoic, I made phone calls as I made supper, and finally located an acquaintance who agreed to give it a try. They rehearse together this afternoon before art class. "I Have Confidence", indeed.

Daniel's trauma involved a trip to the hospital the other afternoon for a stitch near his right eye, and I was as surprised as anyone to learn that it didn't happen during the boys' two-hour outdoor hockey game on ice and concrete. The doctor on call at the emergency room, a genial and capable young man, a locum on loan to our little hospital from Edmonton, in turn was surprised to learn he didn't need to talk me into a suture. I explained that this was the fifth occasion for stitches between the three kids (though two of the three occasions never received them -- one incident overseas with a very small nose was treated by Tom with tape to avoid a larger scar, and a two-year-old's thumb, the one that was nearly cut off, was neatly mended with magic purple glue at the doctor's suggestion) -- and I don't drive into town just before suppertime (especially when there's a roast in the oven) unless it's for something I can't manage on my own. And I draw the line, for now at least, at stitching up my own kids.

But all trauma has been forgotten while enjoying the first DVD in The Mr. Wizard's World collection from Zip.ca. The kids are entranced with Mr. Wizard's version of a volcano, which involves not namby-pamby vinegar and baking soda but a match and a fuse. Which I suppose sounds like a recipe for some more home doctoring.

***

Liz at A Chair, A Fireplace & A Tea Cozy has the Poetry Friday/Saturday roundup, not to mention a passionate Celtic love story, for the week -- thanks, Liz!

Hi honey, we're home

We arrived home on Sunday evening, and Monday was spent unpacking, doing laundry, moving the mounds of extra snow that arrived in our absence, much to the kids' delight, especially since a family friend had dropped off a snow saucer as a Valentine's present.

Yesterday we all jumped back with both feet into our usual routines (though I saved the return to home schooling for today): grocery shopping, music lessons and "Fiddler on the Roof" rehearsals for the kids, a lunch meeting for Tom with the town's Main Street rejuvenation program, and an after-dinner meeting for me, the Ag Society's annual budget meeting for the country fair. Tom was supposed to come to the latter as well, but I promised to take good notes and not volunteer him for anything else so he could stay home with the kids and get them in bed early. Tonight I have a library board meeting, and then we should have clear sailing until we go listen to the 4H district public speaking event on Sunday.

I'll post some photos from our trip shortly, and then I have to switch over to my new Mac Mini.

Look what you can do when you take the digital camera out of the sock drawer

(and borrow some of your son's rechargeable batteries):



















A merry band of tobogganers; from left, Daniel, Davy (kneeling), and Laura





















A cat may look at a king... (Daniel's calico cat, enjoying the Christmas garland and lights)

Unplanned blog holiday

Last Wednesday thanks to small and very remorseful child who shall remain nameless, my laptop developed water on the brain....

Can get online and fetch email but keyboard is kaput so can only cut and paste like ransom note. veryveryvery tedious. Can't be fixed, need new computer, but that means a trip to big city so who knows when. So haiku and fibs and archy-the-cockroach-lowercase and Tarzan-speak order of the day. So bye for now ;-)

veryveryvery cold snowy and windy since last Weds too, near minus forty, icy roads, travel even to town dangerous. ah, home.