Hope

I love the fall. I don't know what it is about the fall, the cooling off, things slowing down, turning my energy to inside the house instead of to the yard and garden . . . I think there is a real nesting feeling about autum. I love it. My tomatoes are flopped down on the ground, the pumpkins are all orange (and in tack, thanks to tons of diatomaceous earth) our ghords are off the hook, our chickens are fat and ready to lay any week and our foxes are back. They're looking for chicken dinners but our coop is predator proof, sorry foxes.

We're embarking on our 1st grade year of home schooling and getting over a nasty virus, thanks to Chinese herbs.

The question of the moment is what type of farmers do we want to be? The possibilities seem endless. Goat herders, raw cow milk co-opers, chicken ranchers, peach farmers, cherry pickers, cowgirls and cowboys, pony riders, sheep sheerers, pig petters. vegetable garden slavers, hay sellers or lavender dryers? The urgency of summer seems to be leaving me and the lovely slowing down of fall is setting in . . . thank goodness! I don't have to drive myself insane anymore trying to decide. There is time. There is time for me to mull it over, to see things in my mind's eye.

Due to home schooling, I've found myself more often than not, surrounded with uber-Christian types. They're my friends and we politely mind our manners amongst ourselves. I'm not sure how or why, but lately it seems like I've found myself asking how I would explain my non-Christian status, just in case the subject were to come up and I think my answer would be that I have too much hope to be a Christian. Although I think there are a lot of less than perfect things about the world, I don't exactly think we're all going to hell in a handbag any minute now, like my "its a sign of the times," friends.

I'm saving seeds for next year and for gifts. I'm making lists of all the things I want to plant next year. I'm guiding Francesca in her school journey and practicing violin with both girls, thinking about their next concert. I'm watching Francesca's 2nd front tooth make its way to that hole (finally.) I'm watching Cecilia grow so big, right before my eyes, how did she get so long and strong? I'm hearing Julian talk and babble and sing, all day long and loving every minute. I'm soaking up that look of love and magic in their eyes as we make plans for a treasure hunt tomorrow. I'm mulling over (and over and over and over) the hows of being this type of farmer and or that type of farmer and in that, there has to be so much hope. A friend was saying something along those lines about how in farming its either one thing or another (the frost or the fungus) but I think she was also saying that you just have to have hope. As opposed to that other icky stuff, may we all embody hope. "Hope is the thing with feathers . . ."