This has become my favorite way to enjoy the zucchini harvest we look forward to all year. It is a rich and savory soup base that can be frozen and thawed to bring back a taste of sunshine anytime of year. We serve it with a variety of toppings—roasted rosemary pine nuts, chopped tomatoes and…
Tag: old farmhouse
Winter days in our old farmhouse: Making, resting, and planning.
Winter in the Pacific Northwest is distinctively dark. Here in our old farmhouse I like to imagine all the quiet fireside chats that have been shared here over the past 120 years while our home’s residents settled into the rhythm of “getting through” these long, dark winter days. One of my favorite parts of winter…
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Riding the tractor with dad.
Brian mowed the lawn this weekend, and I spent the morning mowing the far reaches of our property earlier this week. It’s been forever since we mowed the whole place, and I had an epiphany about the crazy joy of wandering through dappled grass and carving out play space and trails and platforms for…
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So, you want to move to an island?
Do you sometimes dream of moving to rolling green hills in the country? Or to a small, perfect cabin by the sea? Maybe, like we did, you want to make the leap to a different life in a place you only dare to dream about because dreams are just for dreaming, right? Where do you…
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Buckets of wild beauty.
I have been silent over here. I know. I’ve just been posting little piddly Facebook things here and there and I have been missing my time writing in my little writing studio and connecting with all of you. I am finally back at it, but that doesn’t mean we were silent over here. We’ve had…
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Old farmy things.
Things are happening in our house. Good things. We’re finishing our kitchen. We have fancy new accouterments like kitchen trim and wainscoting and columns and–voila!–a kitchen island that is anchored in one place instead of scooting around the room if you bump into it. Soon we’ll have shelves to put our drinking glasses and dinnerware….
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Ladybug season.
It’s not ladybug season in our garden yet. But it is in our house. We have a small colony living inside a sunny south-facing wall. Little ladybugs march up the shiplap siding in our kitchen and visit with each other. It’s like a little party–a Sunday social with ladies in frilly dresses sipping tea and…
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Lights out.
We lost power last night following a snowy windstorm on a freezing day. We built a roaring fire, cooked a pile of pasta and fresh veggies and sausage, and the kids whittled by candlelight. There is a beauty to these long moments of pause. No music, no phones, no computers, no movies. Just the sound…
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Endorphin blast.
We woke this morning to riotous springtime birdsong and sun–precious, blessed sun–blasting through our bedroom window. Our rooster was crowing his head off, surprising even himself with his bantam lung power, I am sure. The poor girls trapped in the henhouse were pretty grumpy when the kids finally arrived to let them out. We gathered…
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Legacy.
What will we leave behind? What characteristics, trinkets, furniture, work, or pieces of land will define us? What knowledge will we bestow? What work ethics or heart will pass through us to future generations? I am making yogurt out of semi-expired milk and cooking hiziki seaweed on the stove while thinking about these things. This is…
