Ben on his way to the Assembly at school to honor Veterans. Click for movie of someone else you know!

There’s something about veterans. They are an incredible bunch. Words are not enough to thank them for their sacrifice and service. I admire them and am proud to be a part of our family’s four-generation military tradition, thanks to Dave’s nearly 20 years of service. Sam’s teacher inspired the kids to learn their national anthem, and not only learn it, LOVE it. It’s been a favorite song here for a month. They also know the Pledge of Allegiance. And they know how to stand respectfully. So when Sam was asked to play at the assembly today to honor veterans, we were thrilled. He picked out a red/white/blue outfit, including a lapel pin on that his dad got him (with the US and WA flags).  We were also doubly honored to have in our company a dear friend, SGT Matt Martinez, who delivered remarks on his service and what veteran’s day means to him. His remarks were so on-point and well delivered. He also thanked the teachers for their service, and brought tears to my eyes when he honored his friend Alex who was killed in Afghanistan when his chopper was shot down in August of this year. Then he concluded with how his medal means much to him, but the letter he received from a school student in Indiana meant much more than that – “priceless” he said. In the video you’ll see a young man whose mom is deployed off the coast of Africa right now. Watch what the young man does. Sorry for the glitch at the beginning – I was way more jittery than Sam. I wasn’t sure it was recording, then at the end I was shaking like crazy and had to stop. Enjoy, and hug or salute any veteran you see! They appreciate it, even if they’re too humble to say so.

Hungry men having farm breakfast cooked by Daddy while we were out doing chicken chores on Sat.

So I was tucking Sam in last night and reflecting on herding Merlin (the rooster) back into the pen out of which he’d flown after Ben gave him a good chase. When you herd a big, fast rooster, you need to go very surreptitiously – carve a wide swath, approach slowly, pretend like you don’t care if they go where you want or not, and that you have all the time in the world. He’s got to think it’s his idea. I realized this has so much relevance to how I should strive to parent. The swath gets wider with age, but arms remain outstretched for guidance, and yet a gesture of love and acceptance at the same time. I have got to (somehow) pretend like I am not invested in the outcome myself – go through the gate if you like, or not. And I’ve got all the time in the world, right? Sure. But the key is – I do. They are my first priority. I have to somehow keep that top of mind despite all the other immediate pressures. These kids are a gift on loan to me. My mom always says that, and she’s a great role model. I have a patience issue – I do get a lot done in the typical day, but I’m breathless much of the time. So these mornings spent with Ben doing chicken chores (and finding eggs followed by “Thanks girls!”), then a walk on the trails in our woods to see Racky asleep in his tree are precious moments.

So thankful for time with my family. We are all healthy again, the washer is fixed after a two-week hiatus, and the leaking pipes under the house are fixed!

We enjoyed time traveling together out to Port Townsend yesterday, and trail work today. It took me about 4 hours total to cut another 200 feet of trail. Wow. It is a lot of work, but very gratifying to get out into our woods and work, machete in hand. I am a human brush hog. The trails are machete-swath-width, and bare to the ground. They are beautiful. I even carved out a foothold in a downed tree to help kids climb over it. Now we do wheelbarrow loads of mulch. I finally updated the pictures in Oct and Nov, so you can have a peek by clicking on the crazy picture to your left, which will take you to November, and some nice videos. Just click on the little square at the top of the page to get to the folders for each month so you can look at the last of October.

Hope you all had a great weekend! Thanksgiving is almost here. It’s easy to find things to be grateful for every day.

"That's an A!" at Gazzam Lake

We enjoyed a family hike at Gazzam Lake in the south end of BI. Ben is really doing well with recognizing letters – the ones that he can trace with his fingers like this trail sign are particularly fun! When we got home we split some madrona – very hard wood, but it burns so well it’s worth it. We saved about $100 on a cord by buying it in rounds vs split – we bicker over who gets to do the splitting! We really enjoy working around here vs going to a gym. We are blessed to have space and projects that need attention. The CrossFit folks have a workout of the day (WOD) that they do. So it’s fun to think of alternative WODs around here! While I was stacking the wood that Dave split, I had a couple of random thoughts. 1) My husband is really strong – he just wields that axe like nobody’s business! 2) Have we forgotten what hard work is all about because so many of us are now doing intellectually demanding jobs vs physically demanding? 3) If we were doing more manual work, would we be less apt to complain about the economy? 4) Would we be more likely to be activists locally (vs protesting remotely), making our own communities better by doing/giving/helping – pick a gerund and get it done!  5) Have we as parents dropped the ball a bit by hovering and praising overly much, such that our children’s generation is not only out of touch with what it means to do hard work, to sacrifice, to suffer from time to time even, but they are also out of touch with just plain old dedication, keeping their eye on the ball, focus from minute to minute, set goals and take responsibility?  I remember from caring for horses on our small farm that if I left the stall door unlocked, I could pretty much bet that I’d be up all night walking a horse with colic (who had gotten into the feed and eaten too much). Colic is a deadly illness…plus I’m a big fan of sleep. So I did develop a touch of OCD regarding keeping doors locked, but also an acute sense of personal responsibility. Figure out how I’m going to feed myself after graduating from college. It wasn’t a vacation in any way – it was a time for preparation for emancipation. I never lost sight of ensuring I had a practical skill that I could use. Unfortunately, that driving focus on ensuring I could work meant I did give up some dreams, like being a large animal vet. I didn’t think I could do that and be a mom (couldn’t go out on lambing calls at 3am and stay on the farm well into the next day like James Harriot). So there’s a balance to be struck here for sure. Off to close up the chicken coop and go on coyote patrol – I saw suspicious ears stalking around about 50 yards from the coop the other day around 6pm. Exciting stuff!

While Dave was working on his paper for class, we embarked on a fish outing. It is spawning season here for salmon and we had a lot of learning to do to get up to speed!

We started at Dogfish Creek, the largest freshwater tributary to Liberty Bay, by hiking around a park in Poulsbo up near the high school. Not finding salmon there (we didn’t really expect to, but one never knows!), we headed to Fish Park. Surely we’d find fish, or at least information about fish, there, right? Well, the park was awesome but the brochure said more about the park’s history (development, funding, etc.) than about fish. So I grabbed a nice local couple out walking their dog while Sam and Ben climbed around on this salmon structure. Not sure if it’s an oversized bike rack? Play equipment meant for kids? Artwork? Anyway it kept them busy while I researched! So – you CAN view salmon spawning (or returning further upstream to spawn) from the viewing platforms here. The park has undergone tremendous work to restore the estuary and make it suitable for fish and wildlife (a culvert had made it very difficult for salmon to return to their birthplace). The trails were easy and numerous. We had a great time. Then on to the Poulsbo Marine Science Center for some time with the docents and reaching into a VERY cold touch tank to pick up sea stars. We learned lots of interesting things (nudibranch means naked gill – that’s how sea slugs breathe). Of course Foster’s daddy (Ben) was very interested in the sea slug. There is an octopus and a very sinister looking wolf eel in residence. Dave met up with us for JJ’s dinner afterwards. YUM! Sam says there should be national Fish Day. He may be onto something – there’s a FISHING day, but not a day for EAT FISH as far as I can tell. Hmmm… Stay tuned for more fish adventures. I have something up my sleeve for Friday with Ben as my co-conspirator (he is game for anything!). But I’ve really got to stop having so much fun – it takes time to offload the pictures and then get them up here! It means no down time because I’m desperately trying to whip up a good fire with damp wood while the house cools off – I want to get it going before the heat kicks on – who will win??? If I drink Scotch while blowing on the fire, will the air I’m blowing be more flammable and likely to really get it kick started???

As a scientific/technical/medical communicator, clear, concise, accurate communication is important to me. I think about public health and education policy messages with respect to the data upon which they rest. Remember the mammogram recommendation controversy in 2009 – do we start at 40 or 50? I watched a UW lecture on that last night in my down time (scary, I know). So when I happened to catch a press conference today that did not uphold what I consider to be key tenets of credible communication, it gave me pause.

President Obama announced the troop withdrawal from Iraq is going to remain on schedule for Dec. 31, 2011.  Bush signed into the law the termination of US forces in Iraq during his term in 2008 – see attached status of forces agreement. This is not a “new policy” as stated by Obama in his press conference which I’m listening to now. See page 15, Article 24, #1: http://usiraq.procon.org/sourcefiles/SOFA-11-19-08.pdf

While all politicians engage in shaping news to their advantage, when they do so without appropriate context, it diminishes credibility. This agreement was jointly negotiated by the Bush administration with the Iraqi government, three years ago. However, President Obama several times indicated that he had developed a “new policy” to withdraw troops in 2011. If he were to actually have credited Bush’s policy upfront, and then gone on with his remarks as planned with respect to his determination to uphold this “new” policy, his message would have remained intact. His credibility would have been enhanced, not eroded. Not only did he forget to footnote a reference, he plagiarized policy. If this were a journal submission, it never would have made it past peer review.

Reference your sources. Ask questions, keep an open mind. Be discerning. Another election is around the corner.

At the pumpkin patch! We decided to let them haul separate wagons and we'd buy what they could haul. Well...$41 and 164 pounds of pumpkin later (and a quick trip home to get more money!) we had lots of carving in front of us. Two strong boys! I think this might be an annual event. I will keep track of pumpkin poundage as they grow.

We have had so much fun working on projects with Gramma and Richard that 2 1/2 weeks have flown by! We can only tell how hard we’re working by how sore our backs are from stacking or splitting wood, stapling fencing to posts, trenching the driveway to install low voltage line out to the coop…you name it. Richard is a work horse. Stuff gets done, and done RIGHT. What a guy. The chickens are very happy. We celebrated tonight by letting them go out to the big pen where all the GOOD bugs are. We decided to see how they’d react and if they went back in the coop on their own. Yup. Merlin is a good rooster. He got the hens in, all except for OliEdnamode who was still out thinking about more snacks. She is a big eater. She did come in, though, when mom went to close up the coop.

I love this picture of Sam in the hay bale maze…he is turning into a real handsome guy like his dad.

The hay bale maze was a lot of fun! The boys were running around in there while Gramma raced home for money to buy the pumpkins!

We also did some carving tonight…

Sam designed the face of this monster pumpkin and mommy did the carving. It was so thick that it resisted cutting open! I had to use my machete. Seriously. But I am always happy to have a good reason to break out the big tools ;0 Thanks for the picture, mom! The chickens also have a carved pumpkin, in their run 🙂

A few pictures of our time enjoying the hens, and collecting our first egg today! It was a brown one, laid by the Red Star hen (Oli Ednamode is her name, per Sam).

Collecting eggs is as magical as it was the first time when I was a kid! Our little hen managed to lay an egg between laps around the coop outfoxing Sam and Ben trying to catch her. And if you’ve ever wondered if chickens are smart…well, I think so. A quick web search of the lay literature turned up this interesting article about chickens and sentience regarding the future, self control, and higher level reasoning…http://animal.discovery.com/news/briefs/20050711/chicken.html Mom and I think that they have more self control than the boys do! Can you picture Ben or Sam holding out for 22 seconds after dessert is put in front of them?

Mother hen in the new coop with her young roosters!

At last we have the chicken coop on site and ready to fill with hens! We have been studying and studying and reading and interviewing and thinking about this. After all, we are adopting 6-9 hens and don’t want to mess up! The boys are so excited! Click on the picture to see what they did when the coop was delivered on Friday…

Now on to building the run with Gramma and Richard’s help.

Thank you little wild yeasts for raising my bread!

When the weather looked like it might be warm enough for a few days I set about cultivating a new batch of wild yeast sourdough starter. This was four weeks ago. In Hawaii, it took me about 5 days to have a very active starter which we enjoyed using for bread and pizza dough for five years. My friend Nikki now has the starter and is taking good care of it while she bakes for her family. I am thankful that “Henri” has such a great home and is continuing “his” legacy! But back to my starter challenges. It just wasn’t growing. I would peer in every morning, looking for bubbling activity. There was definitely gas emerging, but after the initial release of gases from bacteria, the yeast just didn’t seem to develop. I considered the effects of chlorine on my little buddies and distilled water every day to add to my mix. (You feed the starter every 24 hours with flour and water.) I also considered the type of flour, the hydration level, the temperature of the kitchen, etc. I did everything I could to find a warm spot, even bathing the yeasts in a warm bath when I was home (sinking a glass into another bigger glass with hot water). I ran out of my Hawaii flour and bought new flour. I also finally added some wild blueberries we had harvested at a neighbor’s farm. This particular neighbor is special – Gordon Wilson’s farm has been in his family for generations. Unfortunately he and his wife will need to move and retire in Eastern Washington because it’s too expensive here for them on his pension. So he is selling off his farm, the home he was born in, everything. I was so sad. But I learned later that a young family bought the blueberry farm portion of the land and intend to keep farming it. So…it seemed appropriate as a last resort to add Gordon’s blueberries in hopes that the flora on their surface would kick-start the yeasts in my glass. (I was holding out for just the variety in MY kitchen, but alas, I am happy to add Gordon’s blueberry flora because they have a neat story.) SO – in a day or two I was able to show the boys lots of little gas bubbles distributed throughout the starter! Over the next several days, the bubbles became bigger and more prevalent. Friday morning I was brave enough to try an actual bread, to see if my little “yeasties” were up to the challenge of rising dough. I mixed a wet dough, folded it, checked the gluten window, shaped it and retarded it overnight. Today my schedule did not allow a rigid adherence to proper warming, shaping, etc. so I just went with it and adapted. The oven spring was nevertheless quite impressive! I am ecstatic!!! So happy to have a starter on hand that seems to have adapted to my little ecosystem here, temperature, feeding schedule, hydration, etc. It’s like getting to know your newborn…sort-of.

Healthy wild yeast starter. Lots of air bubbles, slightly sweet yeasty smell. Blows the lid off the yogurt container when left on the counter for a few hours. Really freaks you out if you don't know what's happening and the lid hits the ceiling!

I know it’s not the same, but exciting nonetheless to nurture a living organism to a point where it can really work for you. The product of my efforts is in the picture. You an click on it to see the crust and crumb structure. Not bad for first effort at a baguette! The bread of a wild yeast starter sourdough is inherently denser (I did not know this until this round of research and experimentation) so I am not going for a light, commercial yeast style bread. Mine is going to be denser. Nice to know that is a distinguishing feature. Looking forward to getting back into making a variety of breads as time allows.

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Ben is pushing me pretty fast on a merry-go-round and then JUMPED ON by himself! Wow!

I was so excited to make a soup today using leeks (have never cooked with them before, honestly didn’t even really know what they looked like) so it seemed a perfect time to do Safeway home delivery. You can search for the ingredients using a search bar (no wandering the aisles) and just plunk it right into the virtual cart. Sam was under the weather yesterday anyway and didn’t want to go to the market. So I did my order online and scheduled delivery, so psyched to have dinner in the bag, so to speak. Well, the order came but a couple ingredients did not. So…I had my gorgeous leeks but no cannellini beans. The leeks were too cool to let just sit idly, so I improvised. Sometimes I improvise fabulously, other times it just goes horrendously bad. Seems I don’t improvise well here in WA. In 8 weeks I have had 2 complete misfires with the crock pot. Both involved putting pasta in. I have done well timing rice so that it turns out well with beef, but not pasta. I don’t seem to do well with that. And I am not sure leeks EVER want to be eaten in a pasta. Oh well. The dinner was so bad I walked it out to the trash at the road, ready for pickup tomorrow. It is not welcome on my property. However, I was tempted to see if my farm friend’s hogs would eat it. Probably not. They would know better about leeks and pasta. While the crock pot was going I had chicken in the oven, so thankfully the family did have some edible food.

While all that cooking was going on, Sam and I were working hard on a special project for the harvest fair – creating bread dough to form a decorative sheaf of wheat. The bread dough was made from wild yeast I’ve been nurturing for the past couple weeks. Very very slow to grow here in the cool kitchen. I have tried baby-ing them, distilling my water, feeding regularly, changing the hydration, sitting the container in a warm bath… I really wanted to cultivate the wild yeast from my kitchen but decided, finally, to give them a little boost. I put a few blueberries from the farm nearby in there and got fresh flour (vs the Hawaii flour). Boom…it started to get more active. I am excited! So one small victory in the kitchen today, but it is not for eating 🙂

The harvest bread! Sam helped create 115 ears of wheat for the top!

For more uplifting news, please click on the picture of Big Ben above to see what we’ve been up to. I loaded more photos a day or two ago. Aloha!

We were invited to participate in a tree planting today at Meigs Park. We tagged the trees and named them. I will go back with the GPS and mark the coordinates so we can check on them periodically and see how they're doing. The boys had a great time playing in the mulch pile afterwards! They would run up, take a breath, then run down and face-plant, flossing with the mulch I think! Laughing all the way! A crowd of kids stood around the side, watching and wondering. As were their parents.

We are fortunate that so many people here in the NW really seem genuinely interested in the outdoors, conservation, and teaching the children. We make events of everything here on the island – planting, harvesting – the kids are involved at every turn. The farmers make an effort to connect with schools and allow the kids to really see what is involved in the cycle of agricultural life. So when an opportunity came up to plant a tree, we jumped at it. We brought the wagon and shovels, gloves, and many layers. It hit freezing for the first time last night! When we headed back to the truck a couple hours later, the boys piled into the wagon with all the stuff, and I ran to shouts of “faster! faster!” Right through the leaves, down the hill, through the mud. Everything was going great until a wheel fell off the wagon and everyone came piling out – shovels, mittens, boys, with granola bar held fast in a little paw (Ben). Somehow Ben never messes up his food when he wipes out.  We managed to find the wheel, and COUP of all – the little thing that supposedly holds it in place. We fixed the wagon and piled in again. Well, only Sam. Ben insisted on pulling slowly so it wouldn’t happen again. Then off to the farmer’s market to stock up on our friend Betsey’s potatoes for Thanksgiving. We also bumped into our friend Larry who plays uke, guitar and mandolin in a local band. He let Sam play his guitar at the Farmer’s Market – the national anthem, to a round of clapping after the impromptu performance. Larry has a gorgeous guitar he built. We are conspiring on a kanikapila (Hawaiian ‘kine musical jam session) sometime in December. Then home to split wood, but that was cut short by me breaking the axe. I am such a brute! Then to inside play after chasing chickens and biking jumping. We played Hawaiian music on YouTube and Sam played his guitar. It is cold cold here, but our hearts are warm with thanks for all our blessings.