Sprout and Wild Thing tell about our day...

We petted pigs and chickens!
We played outside on the farm and there was lots to do.
Then there was a SCARY LOUD noise!

(There was a malfunctioning fire alarm)

Nanowrimo

Darkmirror asked me to join him in Nanowrimo as a writing buddy, and I said yes. Then I remembered that I don’t write fiction!

A few minutes later Wild Thing asked me to bake with him. He held up a magazine article that showed a tasty treat to make. It started with a tube of prepared biscuit dough from a huge multinational food corporation, Pillsbury. Pillsbury works in partnership with another huge multinational food corporation, Nestle, that we boycott because of their tactics in selling breastmilk substitutes. I was morally outraged

Next, I googled the ingredients.

Enriched Flour, Bleached (Wheat Flour, Niacin, Ferrous Sulfate, Thiamin Mononitrate, Riboflavin, Folic Acid)Buttermilk, Partially Hydrogenated Soybean and Cottonseed Oil, Sugar, Corn Syrup Solids, Baking Powder (Baking Soda, Sodium Aluminum Phosphate)Salt, Xanthan Gum, Propylene Glycol Alginate, Enzymes.

We do our best to eat whole foods. I avoid bleached flour products, hydrogenated oils, cottonseed and soy, high fructose corn syrup, and oh yeah, toxic antifreeze. This added to my outrage.

I had a really hard time finding the ingredients online though. The first few pages of links were all to people wondering how to make Pillsbury biscuits if they couldn’t find them in the store, as if Pillsbury invented the buttermilk biscuit. How did something so incredibly simple become the domain of the processed food industry?

Then I started thinking about the slow food movement and the general dismissal of it I see in mainstream society. It is all well and good for chefs (who make their living out of a cooking) to talk about a return to local fresh ingredients and taking time to cook from scratch, but most people don’t have time for four course menus. Contrary to popular belief amongst the big name slow food writers, most of us don’t live in southern California, with year round access to lemons and avocados and red peppers in the spring.. I think for the most part they’re adding to the disconnect with simple whole foods by turning it into an intellectual gourmet racket.

I thought about blogging about it and then realized I had my Nanowrimo project. I needed to write a whole foods locavore cookbook for the rest of us busy, lazy, disorganized cooks with a conscience, who don’t make food our hobby.

So that's what I'm going to be doing. It isn't a novel (yet, we'll see what it morphs into) so I'm technically a Nanowrimo rebel. If you want to be my buddy I'm mudmama!

A Wee Little Pity Party

I am so tired of showing our house. I'm so tired of second showing our house and then being runner up in the "which house will we buy" show. 2nd runner up is for chumps.

It isn't the cleaning I don't like...I kinda like the push to wipe hand prints off of light switches and getting every last dust bunny from under the bed.

What I hate with a passion is that while we are showing the house wonderful kid art cluttering the windows and spilling out of sketchpads and filling the walls is a big fat NO NO. The giant block castle they made has to be dismantled. I hate the sterility of it all. And we've been living like this for a YEAR now.

The kids watched Mathilda and I looked at the bright happy classroom, and them hurridly packing it all away before the mean headmistress comes in, and I thought "This is how I feel every time we have a showing!"

I just want it to end!

In our new house there will be kids art work and projects on the go EVERYWHERE. Our family photos will fill the whole stairwell upstairs. I'll fill every corner with US. I will leave our library books out in a giant pile. The pillows and sheepskins will stay on the floor filling reading nook corners and the binkbeds can be a pirate ship for weeks on end.

A family from Halifax is coming tomorrow to see the house. Please let them buy our house so we can be in ours before winter!

Noggins Farm Straw Bale Fort

This would be when I realized Wild Thing wasn't actually wearing any pants. Only long underwear.

"Nature Girl get down from that precariously hanging wall of hay."
"WHY? There's a board in here, I can climb anything, you're not the boss of me, and besides I refuse to go home!"
"Nature Girl, does the cast on your right arm mean anything?????"
"Okay, you're never any fun mummy!"

Noggins Farm

About a kilometre from our house, is Noggin's Farm.

They look after some beautiful old growth forest that lies between the corn field and the apple orchards. In the very centre of this you can see a 25 year old bald eagle's nest. Every year it gets bigger.

It is a really beautiful place to visit.

There are more pics on the homeschool blog, we went because of a homeschool field trip - apple picking time!

My baby is a genius at unstructured block play!

We came into the playroom to find that Sprout has passed through the block tower destroying phase, skipped the stack a few blocks phase and is now building HOUSES - complete with inhabitants!
Here he is telling us about his house...
About the person who lives there...
and pointing out the iconic triangle roof when asked where the roof is!

We are all very impressed with him!

I'm less impressed with the amount of dog hair in the playroom.

Wild Thing's Take on the Fair

Okay so I feed them these seeds?

Only Wild Thing could havea peaceful time in a petting zoo with pockets full of grain.

ZenMaster at work.

The pony he wanted to bring home.

Sprout's Take on the Fair

I like you wooly head!

Come with me, we're going home!

I'm sorry, they won't let either of us out of this cage.

Okay you kids! Help us rush the gate!

Nature Girl's Farm Report

We need a llama!!!! PLEASE!!!!

We also need a pony.

I don't even mind that she sneezed snot on my face!

I learned how to properly milk a cow. Mummy says it's easier without a poopy tail smacking you in the face. Pretty good with only one arm!

Autumn means the Maritime Fall Fair!

Wild Thing's "Dinosaur Tree" is all aflame...soon it will just be bones. Which reminded them of the Fair!

First stop - Agility Dog Show!!!

Which reminds me, I need to thaw our turkey for Thanksgiving dinner.

Once a year my poor children get to try a new treat. Last year they got cotton candy, this year a candy apple. Believe it or not the turkey picture was taken before the red dye and sugar syrup fest!

Tailgate Farmer's Market

One of my favorite things about where we live is the fact you can't swing an apple branch without hitting another roadside produce stall, or community farmer's market. I was sent these pics from the Tailgate Market out by Kingsport on Oakview Farm.

Wild Thing is rocking to the live entertainment - Resisting Gravity. Nature Girl is no where to be seen (she's their official groupie - her friend Rock Hound is their drummer)

Help me design a working kitchen out of this one!

I'm posting here for my design friends to help us figure out an affordable kitchen renovation in here.

We love the wood cookstove but it requires a fair deal of clearance around it. It heats the place too so it isn't going anywhere!

Isn't it pretty? Nature Girl loves it!

Those window sills are too low for counters - a kid friendly countertop sure, but not counters for grown ups not even 5'1" me! There's a radiator coming out perpendicular to the stove right beside it. Beyond that off to the left of the picture is the mud room, water closet, and laundry space.

The pantry is a saving grace as far as storage goes.

What I don't have pictures of (my battery died) is the wall with the pantry door on it - double sink - 2 ft of counter beside it.

The wall from where the picture looking out the windows was taken - ALL doors.

The room is 14x15 ft.

We need some good thoughts!

Last year about this time we found an awesome country house that we could totally afford and fit our family really well.

Our house didn't sell and the offer expired and then the original house wanted to buy in Nova Scotia was available and we put an offer on that.

Then then she got an unconditional offer and we were HEARTBROKEN for 3 days. That deal fell through but the bloom was off the rose and the owner was suddenly unwilling to show us the inspection report. So we've been looking everywhere, all the while our kids have been getting more entrenched in this community and we'd like to be able to afford to stay right here.

We found the perfect house, again! Three kilometres from our current house.

So once again, our house NEEDS to sell, before they get an unconditional offer.

Send all good thoughts you can spare!