a very good day and a recipe....

What a wonderful day we all had today.

I had my first bike ride of the season with kids in tow in the bike trailer, and it was GOOD. So good! K stayed home and built with Lego as he had a bout of the stomach flu yesterday and wasn't feeling quite back to his energetic self this morning.

H and S always run and eagerly hop in the trailer at the mere mention of a ride, they love whisking up and down the streets of our town and looking at everything (cats, dogs, people, interesting houses, trees, flowers...) we pass by. They also like it when I go fast!

Then I spent half of the day unpacking from storage, dusting off and setting up the deck furniture and sun canopy that enable us to extend our living space out onto the deck for the next several months. It really does make our small house feel much bigger when the door is always open and we eat most of our meals (and make most of our messes) outside! Ahhh, I love it!

While I worked on that, the boys built and played with Lego Bionicles (and periodically asked me to take pictures).

a Bionicle fort

These Bionicles were my oldest son A's (who collected them more than ten years ago now and brought many back from when we lived in New Zealand). He handed them down to his little brothers a couple of years ago and they've loved them since. Sometimes they will play with them and almost nothing else for days on end.

so dramatic looking, isn't it?

It was so fun watching them use the outdoor landscape as their battle terrain today. These are the same boys who, on another given day, would spend hours building fairy houses out of nature objects, or pretending to rescue and nurse baby animals, so for me it all balances out ;-)

these ones have rock powers

Even though the play is "supposed" to be all about the "battle", I'd say easily 95% of the time spent with this toy is about the building, snapping together different configurations of body parts, bartering with each other for pieces (nonviolent communication!), testing out new color schemes, naming the new characters, introducing them to the other ones, setting them up in cool poses and asking me to take pictures! I don't actually recall much battling going on come to think of it! It's definitely a creative outlet for them and a whole lot of fun.

scouting and surveying

setting up for more shots

After many, many hours of Bionicle play, running around the yard, bouncing on a new (to us) rebounder I found at the recycling exchange (for free) and much gardening, putting in our sunflower transplants and checking out their very healthy root systems,

mammoth sunflower

planting more carrots, lettuces, peas...

our first round of peas are looking good

we had our first meal on the deck and strawberry lassis for dessert to celebrate a perfect day.

cheers to our first sunny and warm evening on the deck!

Here's generally how we enjoy our lassis, which we love to make together:

1. In a blender or with a hand blender in a large container, add a handful of fresh (or we use our locally picked frozen from last summer) strawberries, mango, peach... whatever fruit you like.
2. Add to that about a cup or two of ice cubes (we have a tray that makes very little ice cubes which are much easier on the blender) and about a cup and a half of plain yogurt. I love Saugeen Country organic whole yogurt, which makes a creamy, full-flavored and super-nutritious lassi.
3. Sweeten to taste with honey, maple syrup or sugar. Add a little to start and adjust if needed. This is not supposed to be very sweet, more tangy still from the yogurt.
4. If you like, add a touch (1/4 tsp. or so) of powdered cardamom for a more authentic and delicious flavor.

Pulse and then blend until smooth. And just try not to get addicted!


Sometimes lassis are made without fruit and with a little salt for a savory experience but we're all about the fruit over here.

rock painting!

H and S experienced much joy playing with color today.

"rainbow swirls" is what H called her first one

S envisioned a sunshine and a rainbow on one of his. On the others, he excitedly experimented with blending colors; choosing two and seeing what how they looked together.

Purple and blue created his favorite result.

H was meticulous about covering every single spot on all of her rocks. She's eagerly waiting for them to dry so that she can paint the bottoms. Leave no spot unpainted!


I just enjoyed watching them make create beautiful works of art before my eyes, freely and fully in the moment.


One thing I found is I really enjoy the way a rock's surface seems to accept paint so readily. Such an easy and satisfying project for any age. These will look beautiful in the garden.

And what a fine way to spend an afternoon.

day 20

OK, so it appears they haven't changed much, but....

They're now wiggling!

They also have a more distinct shape to their heads and their tails are growing long and slender and moving around within their individual little eggs like fish. Soon we'll be seeing them break free from the jelly mass and... we really need to get on those pond plants for the aquarium. Like now.

current happenings on the backyard farm

Recently, we've needed to upgrade the fencing around our yard. We replaced a large portion of rusty old 4 ft chain link fence with a freshly milled, beautiful cedar 6 ft. The reason for this (in addition to aesthetics) was so we could provide a safe, much larger area (than their current run) for the girls to free range throughout the day. The new fence would keep them in and any neighborhood dogs, out.

looking for goodies under fresh straw mulch - they're sure there must be something under there!

However, after some careful consideration, we agreed that, while the happiness of our girls is always a priority, none of us wants to turn the whole yard into a "poop zone". We didn't want to lose the already limited clean, green play space that we enjoy around our small home. From experience we know that the chickens would, eventually, turn it into bare, slippery, gray, clay ground like they have done with their large run. Yuck. I also knew that I'd be seriously limiting our gardening space to the small area in front of our house. No good!

So we decided instead to enlarge their run in the backyard even further and put up a new 6 ft multi-purpose wire fence around it; one they can't jump over. It works great for us, and they've got lots of space, but unfortunately it means they can't free range, find fresh weeds, grass or bugs...


So instead, we do the chickens free ranging for them :-) Luckily at this time of year we do not have to walk far from our home to find an abundance of dandelions, chickweed, grass and a plethora of bugs and worms.

S and H like any opportunity to snip with scissors. This is great, because the hens have a hard time eating really long weeds/grass that have been pulled out of the ground and aren't rooted down so they can nibble bits off. So H and S snip our harvest into more manageable bits for them before tossing it in their run. I'm sure the girls are grateful.

backyard farms provide manageable yet satisfying work ;-)

The kids also enjoyed the opportunity to freely toss an entire bale of straw into the air and everywhere, to add a fresh layer of mulch to soak up the moisture from our clay ground. Chickens don't like constantly wet feet, it isn't good for them! So the straw works perfectly. Over time, once it is really broken down (by our walking and the hens scratching), we'll rake it up and use it in the compost and as mulch in the gardens (with the added bonus of nitrogen-rich chicken poop!). Then we'll replace it again.

Happy girls, waiting for their salad (extra croutons -aka bugs- and hold the dressing, please).

Happy Easter

We had such a fun Easter weekend. The focus was mainly on spontaneous and comical creativity... and lots of good food and chocolate.


When as I was putting out the recycling this morning a toilet paper roll in the bin triggered my memory of a craft project Sam wanted to make. Egg people! I brought them in, snipped them up, gathered a few more supplies from our craft shelves (googly eyes, wool roving, oil pastels, pipe cleaners, ink pens, glue and tape...), set it on the table with the eggs we'd dyed the day before... and the creativity began. The whole family got involved and before we knew it, hours had gone by. I nearly forgot I had a turkey to put in the oven!


While we worked, we all oohed and ahhhed and laughed over each funny mouth, comical tuft of hair or googly eye that slid down the face because of too much glue. I took a snapshot of each, then we loaded the photos to the computer and processed them; together we added funny captions or jokes, giggling at how silly they all looked, each one with its own personality.

This was the best part of Easter for us all, I think.

I also used the holiday as an excuse to gift the kids with some new Playmobil sets (spring theme) and some useful items for outdoors and many seasons of nature watching: a good magnifying glass, another more powerful pair of binoculars and some good quality sketchbooks to doodle anything inspired by nature (or otherwise).

so excited to receive a colorful gift and some good chocolate

at last I was able to find the chicken coop for my chicken-loving boys

a rabbit hutch and a woodland stump with hedgehog family were also fun finds

Sam spent a lot of time in his bunny suit. He was just so excited about the whole Easter affair that he could hardly talk about anything else. He even spent time waving and flashing big bunny smiles to everyone in our neighborhood. He brought smiles to everyone's face.


We don't do the conventional Easter Bunny story with the kids, so they knew by mid-day it was time to urge me on to get hiding the eggs outdoors so that they could find them. The hunt is the best part for them, of course, they could keep finding the same eggs over and over and over...



It made me think, why wait until Easter each year to do this? We really need to organize more scavenger hunts throughout the year. Also it has been a desire of ours to get geocaching as well for the same reason, the thrill of the seek. Yes, we'll have to get on that.

What a laid back, easy and fun-filled weekend it was!

spring days are here

....even if the nights still feel like winter and we're still using the wood stove daily and waking up to thick frost (which was responsible for the death of some nasturtiums that I risked putting in the garden yesterday - boo!).

Today was a day of practicing cartwheels,

using a string to help keep his cartwheel straight

puzzle-building (and some geography),

recently thrifted puzzle map of Canada

completion of a puzzle is always satisfying - especially when you find all the pieces are there!

egg dyeing,

they loved experimenting with color blending and layering - we did also experiment with homemade dyes (cabbage, beets, turmeric...) this year but they didn't work. we have yet to figure out what went wrong

Age of Empires playing, which Kale opted to do with Aden while we were dyeing eggs, saying he was fine not to participate. He realized later he didn't really want to miss out on the egg-dyeing but the lure of his favorite computer game felt so big at the time... He was sad about skipping out on a tradition that he normally enjoys (and feeling the inclusiveness of us all doing it together), so we just talked about how we can learn a lot from our feelings if we pay attention to them. All you can do really, when you feel regret, is try to learn from it...

There was also our first trip to the lake of the season, it was beautiful, sunny and warm and so there was game inventing,

bulls-eye and sand bowling were a couple of fun games we improvised

Hillary preferred working on some of her Jedi Mind Tricks - notice the incredible the focus ;-)

lake wading and log balancing,

concentrating hard on balancing because in April you don't want to fall in

....and what else? Oh, a little bit of snake charming,

Kale thought watching the snake's body expand and contract with each breath was very cool

"S"

And lastly, we've been making up word lists lately for fun, starting with the same sound....
"S" for snake, slither, sneak, side-winding, scaly, slick, slimy, sunshine, spring, sssssssssssss.....

a sweet surprise

We received a surprise package from the postman this week. My 70-year-old Aunt, who lives in Manitoba and hasn't seen me since I was little, sent a collection of treasures that suit our home learning family so well it was just magic to see it all. I couldn't have put together a more interesting and fitting collection of items for a family that I've never met!

thank you from all of us, Aunt Irene!

There were quilting books for me, a book on how to make tabletop fountains, plus a submersible water pump (!), a book on rock painting, two on wild birds and bird-feeding, a pair of binoculars which the kids have all been wanting (we may need to pick up another pair now because they have been extremely popular since getting them), a compass/multipurpose tool, paints & crayons and a book on container gardening (which I'm always wanting to learn more about, living with no soil on our property....). Perfect!

fitting together the tubing

Kale set to figuring out how the pump works right away, using a large bowl of water on the counter-top. He perused through the fountain book and now he's letting ideas percolate in his imagination about how he'd like to design his own for out on the deck (who doesn't love the musical and soothing sound of trickling water nearby?). We've collected a great selection of large rocks recently from an abandoned lot which I'm sure will be incorporated into the plan.

Sam and Hillary don't go anywhere now without the binoculars slung around one of their necks. It's been a big lesson in taking turns. Yes, I think binoculars will be next on our list of purchases...

sweet violet jelly

sweet violets

Very shortly after my recent post about not picking enough violets to make jelly, we were pleasantly surprised by a friend dropping off a container-full at our door that he'd harvested for us while out harvesting nettle; 2 lightly-packed cups' worth. It was just the right amount to make the jelly!

Hillary packed them all into a quart jar

Because the violets are so tender, we set to using them right away.

fitting in every last one

we filled the jar with boiling water, to cover

topped with a lid, we set them aside to soak

Generally you only need to soak them overnight to get a good amount of color and flavor from them but we soaked about 24 hours which gave us a very deep purple infusion...

violet liquid after 24 hours

Kale enjoyed the next step: measuring off 2 cups of the beautiful liquid (discard any extra) and adding 2 tablespoons of lemon juice, then watching it instantly react and change color...

a chemical reaction

After that, with jelly-making being such a rapid process, things moved too quickly to take photos. We poured the liquid into a pot, added a packet of pectin and brought to a boil. Once boiling, we added 4 cups of sugar and brought it back to boil hard for one minute and removed from heat. I'd like to experiment with honey and Pomona's pectin next time which is what I normally use for all my jams and jellies to avoid the refined sugar.

sweet violet jelly foam

Kale had the next job of skimming the foam off the top with a large spoon. It tasted like sweet violet mousse! Delicious!

skimmed jelly on fresh from the oven yam biscuits

The last job was to pull our sterilized quarter-pint and half-pint jars (this recipe makes approximately 3 half-pint or 6 quarter-pint jars) and their lids and rings out of the boiling water bath where they were sterilizing.

We quickly and very carefully filled them, leaving a half-inch space at the top, topped with lids and rings (the jars were too hot to touch so I did all of this part) and set them aside to self-seal. No further processing necessary!

the sweet results!

While a shorter soaking time usually yields a fainter, more delicate looking purple jelly, our jelly turned out to be a jewel-like ruby red in the jars. On a background of cream cheese on crackers it looks more pinkish-purple.

Kale and I both describe the flavor of the jelly as an "in your head" experience, literally. You don't really taste the violet immediately with your tongue but rather as a subtle and sweet floral scent in the back of your mouth and in your nose as you swallow. It's simply delightful! We'll be making this every spring now, for sure.