Tuesday, May 24, 2016

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year!

Our New Year's letter, reflecting on 2015...

Like any respectable country person, I am going to begin this letter by talking about the weather. Thanks to El Nino, we have had quite an unusual winter.  Christmas was almost tropical with rain showers and mud puddles galore—which our new ducks thoroughly enjoyed. The world seemed completely topsy-turvy when I was harvesting cabbage two days after Christmas. Now, however, we are officially snowed in.  Looks like we might have a real winter after all.

With the weather bit taken care of, I’ll continue with more “personal” news:

This year has been eventful for all of us here at Walnut Grove.  In April, Lance returned from Afghanistan and has since shifted to inactive reserve duty in the Navy.  He has also taken on a more administrative role at the VA and continues to take pride in serving the veterans.

In addition to running the farm (and running after Thomas), I still play in the symphony and volunteer at Exchange Place.  My family recently co-sponsored a symphony concert that featured “Appalachian Spring” (one of my favorite pieces) and brought Bela Fleck to the stage to perform his “Impostor” banjo concerto—a real treat and challenge for all involved.  At Exchange Place, I continue to expand my Junior Apprentice and hearth cooking programs, and this year, I helped construct a new hog lot, which will house two male Guinea hogs come spring.  (Guinea hogs are not the same thing as guinea pigs, mind you.)

In September, my dear Aunt Betty passed away after suffering from severe dementia. Over the years, I have gotten much gardening advice from her, and I take joy in the fact that zinnias—from seeds she gave me over a decade ago—continue to bloom each year in my own garden.  Next month (February) my (step) grandfather turns 100, and we’ll be traveling down to west Tennessee to celebrate the special occasion with him—and maybe get some advice about raising those hogs.

Thomas began his homeschooling journey in the fall and enjoys being a student at “Walnut Grove Kindergarten.”  He spends most of his “free” time building with Legos (or “Lego bricks” as the company claims is the proper plural term), carrying sticks, and showering our cat Ollie with attention (as you can see from the picture on the card). He has lost two teeth since his 6th birthday in November, yet he still enjoys eating apples and other crunchy foods (like bacon when Mamaw sneaks him a piece).  Just a few weeks ago, he saw the new Star Wars movie—his first movie in a theater.  His favorite character is C3P0—no surprise because he likes all things golden and shiny.

In June, we all traveled to Colonial Williamsburg.  I participated in a “Farmer’s Boot Camp” at a living history conference there, and Lance and Thomas joined me at the end for a family vacation.  The temperatures reached 107 during the day, but that didn’t stop the learning process.  Thomas especially enjoyed getting tips on muzzle loading and growing cucumbers from folks well versed in the ways of the past.

In animal news, Marley, our new dog who showed up at the farm last Christmas, has proven quite the guardian of the farm.  My worry about her digging up tomatoes (that I mentioned in last year’s letter) proved unwarranted (probably because we keep her out of the garden!); but she does have a nasty habit of killing chickens when they fly over the fence.  Recently, she killed my favorite hen, Hoecake, which makes me wonder if we should resort to the “old time” remedy of beating her with the dead chicken and then tying the corpse around her neck and leaving it there until it rots off—a drastic measure we have so far avoided. I don’t know, though, she’s an awfully sweet “dawg.” As mentioned earlier, we have new ducks—four White Pekins that were a gift from my father. Named “The Puddle-Ducks” after favorite Beatrix Potter characters, they are charming, but messy. Over the summer, we had to put our goat Lily down, as she was suffering from chronic bloat.  She was one of the triplets born to Iris, one of the goats that my uncle gave us as a wedding present.  We have since added a new goat to the herd, though—Marjorie, a tri-color Nubian, who my mother says looks like a spotted heifer. Hmm…maybe a milk cow will be next!


And now, I’ll return to the weather: Time to shovel snow!

Christmas in the Country

Here are photographs of Exchange Place's Christmas in the Country.  My apprentices did an excellent job demonstrating hearth cooking and heritage Christmas traditions.

Me and some of my apprentices
Stringing popcorn for the cedar Christmas tree


Checking on the apple pudding baking in a pumpkin


Produce from the winter garden
Making cinnamon waffles


Cleaning parsnips
Me and Thomas
 (wearing our new clothes made by my friend Susan Jarrett)

Plum Pudding!
Preparing the wassail


Trying to flambe the plum pudding (it never worked)

A surprise visit from The Garza-Snells!




Broken Arms and Lost Teeth

Thomas had an eventful fall (pun intended) with expected and unexpected changes to his body.  In September, he broke his right humerus bone (just below the shoulder) after crashing to the ground when one of the ropes on his tree swing snapped in two (understand the pun now?).  After crying for about 30 minutes, he resorted to pure stoicism during the rest of the healing process.  Because of the location of the break, casting was not possible, so Lance and I made him a muslin sling (like the kind Civil War soldiers wore), which he preferred over the fancy modern sling that his doctor offered him.  While it was a challenge for us as parents to make sure that he kept that arm protected (and more importantly, that no object or person collided with it), the recovery was quite smooth.  Now, he is completely back to normal, arm bone-wise.


Just a few days after his sixth birthday, another big (but good and exciting) change occurred to his body--he lost his first tooth (his right lower incisor).  Just for reference, I lost my left lower incisor first, and Lance doesn't remember which tooth he lost first.  I'm still looking for photographic evidence to know for sure.



Thomas has since lost his left incisor and is patiently waiting for more teeth to jiggle.  He has gained a new mindfulness about eating apples during this process, but he hasn't yet learned to whistle.



Getting x-rayed

The broken humerus

Thomas after losing his first tooth
Mommy after losing her first tooth


Halloween Frolic


We had another successful Halloween Frolic in October with friends and family (and jack-o-lanterns).  Thomas chose to be a Fiffer Feffer Feff, a character from Dr. Seuss's ABC's. ( I'm still finding feathers from the boa I used to make the costume. )  He also went trick-or-treating for the first time this year and no doubt left more feathers at the front doors of the candy-laden hosts.



The Klosterman cousins in their costumes

Thomas, as Fiffer-Feffer Feff,
 and Anna as Baba Yaga, the witch

Walnut Grove Kindergarten




In August, Thomas and I began our homeschooling journey together.  The first order of business was to transform the sunroom into a space for learning and exploration.  I had custom bookcases made to fit under the window ledges, and Thomas and I painted them a sunny yellow, a color fitting for an awakening and active mind.  These cabinets hold art supplies, nature guides, and craft materials to support our scholastic adventures.  Thomas's kitchen, of course, is still an important part of the room.

Painting the bookcases

Job finished--with date and handprints of the family

The bookcases in place

Thomas's first assignment was to prepare a new nature table for our gnome friends, who left him a letter and a poem about summer to inspire him in the task.  After collecting flowers, moss, tiny vegetables, and other seasonal objects, Thomas arranged them into a lovely home for the gnomes and a pleasant little shrine for the natural world.  He also painted a wet-on-wet watercolor that represents summer to him.  (I was hoping for a green meadow, but the end result was a melancholy blue background with ghost-like splotches of light floating in the foreground.  He named it "The Old Grounds of Sorrow.")  Refreshing the nature table will become one of our core homeschooling activities. It involves both scientific and artistic discovery and develops empathy and appreciation for living things.

Assignment #1: The late summer nature table

Another view of the nature table


The Christmas nature table

Making an advent wreath for the gnomes

The curriculum I am using--Oak Meadow, mixed with Waldorf and Enki--teaches all "academic" concepts (like letters and numbers) through art (storytelling, music, painting, etc).  To introduce a letter/number, for instance, I always start with a story.  Thomas recalls the story to me the following day, and then I point out the letter/number we will focus on.  The letter/number does not have to be a "star" of the story.  I introduced the letter "A," for instance, through the story of Peter Rabbit, who squeezes under the garden gAte (long A sound) to escape Mr. McGregor.  Thomas then practices drawing the letter along with a picture of the object from the story that represents the letter (in the case of Peter Rabbit, "A"s on gates.)  We continue our exploration by making letters out of different objects (sticks and yarn for A and beans for B, for instance), and we do a craft related to that letter.  We undertook a traditional Appalachian, and quite ambitious, craft for letter A--an apple head doll.  We invited friends Inge and Anna (also homeschooling) over to participate in the craft.  We all carved our "heads" out of fresh apples and strung them up to dry and later made clothes for them.

Leaf rubbings
Making clay letters
Shaving crayons for melting and making wax paper butterfly wings


Carving apple head dolls

Thomas working on his apple head "monster"

Fully dressed apple-head doll (who now serves as my 'kitchen witch")

Stay tuned for more musings about our homeschooling journey...













Thomas Feels the Force of Six Years

On November, 4, Thomas turned six.  As is tradition, we had a meal at Mamaw's, and Thomas invited friends Anna and Gable to join the celebration.  He requested spaghetti and meatballs for the dinner and a chocolate sheet cake (rather than a layer cake) for dessert.

Lance wrapped up his old Star Wars land speeder to give Thomas and included Obi Wan Kenobi, Luke Skywalker, R2-D2, and C3P0 (Thomas's favorite Star Wars character) as "extras."  Most of Lance's Star Wars paraphernalia has been stored in our basement for the last decade.  It's good that these figures can once again see the light and feel the force as re-gifts!

The birthday ring
Blowing out the candles.
(The "Magic Sorcerer's Birthday Hat" was loaned to us by Gable for the occasion.)

Daddy's old Star Wars landspeeder