{Insert Favorite Song Lyrics About Change Here}

In the time I have been away from this dusty old blog, we have had quite the... ahem... "adventure." I had so many appropriate titles for my first blog post back that I couldn't decide between them, so you can make up your own. Top three were:

Ch-ch-ch-changes
There and Back Again
Things Fall Apart

But gosh, it could really have been anything.

To make a long and complex story short and to the point, I will say that we were really good at homesteading. We knew what needed to be done, and when we were able, we did it. We took good care of our animals and loved them a lot. We had amazing experiences and a lot of successes, punctuated with a few failures. We had really big, beautiful dreams for living off the land, as so many people do these days. And when it all began to unravel for reasons completely unrelated to homesteading, really, I felt the need to explain it to people. Explain what happened. But after a few weeks of settling in and telling the story (which I just did, again! Just now! To a total stranger!) I'm tired of telling the details and I will just say this: Evidently, we were meant to come back here. At least for awhile.

Back to "the ghetto." Back downtown. Back to the exact same house that never sold in our 2.5 years of trying to get rid of it. And while the idea at first seemed completely awful, after being down here for about two weeks, I can't tell you how incredible it feels to be back. Back with new ideas and new experience and new knowledge. When we last lived here, nothing seemed like "enough." We can't supply our own food! We don't have enough room! I can tell you with full honesty that I had more successful gardens, both in planting space and in growing luck, when I was living in this house. And coming back, we have all sorts of ideas and resources and experiences to make our gardening ventures tremendously prosperous. Aside from what we've brought back home with us, the area has boomed in our time away. We left amidst the economic downslide, when we lived across the street from a scary, empty warehouse. We returned to find some great new community spaces, new projects, and a revived love for the downtown area by it's inhabitants. There are neighborhoods pulling together and starting community gardens. The sidewalks are being made to look lovely. Everyone is so happy and friendly! This cool but somewhat shabby downtown area has exploded into being a hopping place, and we are so, so fortunate to be back here.

I've been playing music again. Through that, I've been reconnecting with old musician friends. People  I didn't even realize I missed! It feels so wonderful to pick up my instruments and walk to wherever I'm playing music. And to see my little family walk down later to join me. It's a kind of simplicity that I didn't realize we had the last time around. I took it completely for granted. How foolish I was!

In this life, we can walk to everything we need. If our car breaks down, there isn't a place we need to go throughout the week that a bike or our feet can't take us. And no matter our mode of transportation, there's hardly any travel time to consider! The minutes of my life devoted to buckling people into carseats has diminished considerably, I'm pleased to say.

My kids are really, really happy.  I don't know if it was the crammed living quarters at our last home, I don't know if it was because, as my oldest told me later, they just felt like they were on a long vacation, but the instant happiness that came over my girls when we came back to the old house was unmistakable. It pleases me so much to see them so cheerful again. When we came back to the downtown house with the initial idea that our stay was going to be temporary, it was amusing to watch the older two girls showing the younger two around, touring them through the house, telling stories about what happened in which little corner of the house. "This is where we hid and jumped out at Daddy when he came home from work!" Or, "This is where we had a bookshelf and we would dump the books out and play bunk beds!" In all my own struggles of living here, I never realized how happy the kids were. And now coming back, it just feels like home to them.

And of course, the whole reason we found ourselves back here was because of the problem most of us face: $$$. I'll tell you a little secret I've learned: When you want less, you need less. It's really shocking! And I'll tell you another secret: Having a farm isn't having less. Farm supplies is expensive, and you need a lot of it. It's so easy to think "I'll live in the country, where we'll never have to mow and we can just let our animals roam free and then eat them, and we'll never need to go to the store for anything, and my kids will never get sick, and it will all be a big blisstastic experience." That's what I thought. (Because I'm an idiot.) But then we actually moved to the country, and realized that if we didn't mow the lawn, the ticks were completely out of control, and I'd be picking ticks off my kids and dogs and cats constantly, and I will find them *in my bed* at night, and that is just gross. Gross! But do you know how much a mower costs, when you're looking at mowing the plural form of "acre?" It costs a lot of money! And unless your entire property is tightly fenced (or you live truly in the middle of nowhere,) you can't always let your animals roam free, because people driving by will call animal control and they will come and knock on your cabin door when your babies are naked and bathing in a washbasin because you don't have inside bathing equipment and they will tell you you have to do something about your goat getting out and while we're on the subject, how many cats do you have and are they all spayed and neutered? And after you get the goat back into the fenced area, the Animal Control officer will leave and you will spend a good week and a half just waiting for CPS to show up at  your door asking why you don't have a normal bathtub and why your kids aren't dressed, or in school. ASK ME HOW I KNOW THIS.

I miss my country life. Even with the fear of getting in trouble, the constant driving to town and the showering outside in December (or not showering for all of December because of frozen pipes, either one,) I miss it. But there is a line of simplicity and I feel like moving back downtown has allowed us to embrace a different kind of simple life. One in which friends drop by unannounced. (Sometimes they bring beer or freshly written songs!) I'm looking forward to walking down to the Farmers Market on Saturdays and getting anything I don't grow myself. I'm looking forward to the creative layout of our garden that we've planned and are going to start building this weekend. I already see the benefit being back here is to my songwriting and my playing gigs, and it's been really refreshing. Homeschooling is a whole lot easier when you can zip right across the street to the library. There are good things about living down here. With new eyes, I'm ready to embrace the simplicity of downtown life, again.

Everywhere Nature

One reason we moved to the country more than two years ago was because we desired to be among the natural world. Closer to nature. We wanted space where we could plant and grow things among only natural surroundings. And we did achieve a close to that ideal, though we didn't fully attain it. One of the most shocking things upon our move to the country was the distinct lack of wildlife. It was crazy. We thought for sure living in two-acre meadow surrounded by corn fields, we would have deer so plentiful they would be pests. Negative. We never, not once, saw a deer near our property. On our road alone, I only ever saw one deer, in the entire time we lived there. 

Living so far from any neighbors, with good oak and walnut trees all around the property, Martin looked forward to stepping outside and squirrel hunting in his underwear. Do you know how many squirrels we saw on our property? Zero. Not one. 

When we first moved in, about the second day we lived there, we saw a rabbit. After that, we never saw another rabbit again. 

We had absolutely no wildlife predators to endanger our chickens. We never locked them up, they were free range and roosted low to the ground in a coop whose door usually stood wide open. We didn't lose one chicken to natural predators. (We did, however, have our entire flock wiped out by one of our dogs. Very sad.) 

I'll tell you what we did have: We had thistle. They were so beautiful to look at and watch bloom. They were everywhere out there and even though they caused us to all get really good at remembering to wear shoes outside, I think we all loved them. 

We had dandelions. Plenty of dandelions. They were so gorgeous, growing all over, making our little cottage house look as if it were floating in a yellow sea. I love dandelions, and to live in a meadow full of them was a delight. 

We had birds. Boy, did we have birds! So many beautiful wild birds would perch along our pasture fence. Mostly those sweet little yellow things (I don't actually know my birds at all) and also sparrows and other songbirds. We had an eagle nearby that flew low over us in the driveway more than once. We had a buzzard in our driveway one day that we sat and watched for a long time until he flew off. They are so big! The birds were really lovely. It was charming to wake up in the morning and see them hopping all over the tall dried stalks of last year's ragweed in the unused portion of the pasture, singing their happy morning songs. 

The original Possum Cottage was such a beautiful place to live. The sunrise over the misty farm fields and the sunset over the wooded hill were outstanding. We spent so much time walking up and down the gravel driveway, the girls learning to ride bikes (and trikes, in Elka's case,) swinging on the swingset, playing in their secret fort, hidden among the pine trees. 

But as for an abundance of wild animals, the place was seriously lacking. Still, we were among nature and it was so special. 

When we moved to the new homestead, on the ponds, we thought "this is where we'll be able to hunt from our doorstep!" and, "This is the place that will provide our abundance of natural harvest!" I will admit that there was *slightly* more wildlife at the second homestead. We did have a deer in our yard... once. And there was one morning when Martin came running inside shouting that he had seen a squirrel on our property and he'd be back later. He sat on the porch of the big farmhouse for the longest time, but the squirrel never came back. 

We did have the ponds though, which provided more birds and small creatures like frogs and toads. We had a toad who came every night and sat underneath the hose spigot. In the morning, there would be a fresh indentation where he'd sat. I do know that there were natural predators around; after we moved out and took Ivy (our English Shepherd who was an almost-always outside dog, but especially at night) away but hadn't gotten our chickens to their new homes yet, we lost a few chickens to predators. But the neatest bit of wildlife at the ponds property was the osprey. We watched it all summer and found the tree where it nested. whenever one of us would see it, we would cry, "the osprey!" and all the family would run out to the porch to watch it catch it's meal. (Or try. He missed a lot.) 

Life at the ponds was full of it's own delights. The walks around the pond were wonderful. We had wild black raspberry bushes on our property, but they were also all around the pond in various places and in the evenings we would walk around with cups and gather them for a snack. We would walk to the creek just across the far road and brave the stinging nettles for a splash in the water. Even without the wild animals, there was so much nature to experience there. To be fair, that homestead greatly lacked the quiet of the original Possum Cottage, being situated right on a highly trafficked road, but still, it was full of natural beauty. 

After all of that, after years of country life in different settings, we are now back downtown. Away from nature. Away from all things natural. 

Is that so much true? That's what I thought when I came back. When we first decided to stay here, I was not at all on board. (Even though our situation didn't really care if I was on board or not; this was our only choice. Still, I was swinging!) I didn't want to be taken away from my sunrises and sunsets, my barefoot-all-the-time life of barnyard smells and bramble bushes. Not to live downtown. Downtown, where there are no flowers, no animals, no meadows. 

Okay, well there really aren't many meadows, BUT, look at the crocus we found in our yard, growing up underneath an empty gas can! Defying odds of survival, it's thriving in our urban yard! And we have a particular cat here now, whose favorite pastime is perching on the back of the big yellow chair in our bedroom and watching out the window as the squirrels play. So many squirrels! And rabbits too! We used to go on evening rabbit walks in the summertimes, all around the area here and see a tremendous amount of rabbits--we even found a nest of cute babies one year!

And let's talk about the bald eagles! Along the river here, the bald eagles are thriving. We have seen one, literally, every time we've crossed the river. They are beautiful and amazing, and EVERYWHERE.

Tonight we took a walk after dinner and found a tree stump. This was the first time my girls have counted the rings on a tree stump. It was not far from where we stopped one fall on our walk to my parents' house and watched a cicada hatching out of its shell. We saw the whole thing and it was completely amazing. Tonight we also observed lots of blooming crocuses of all different colors, and some daffodils. (The daffodils around here are mostly still just buds. It's been pretty cold and rainy so far this spring.)

Life in the city is different from life in the country. Even the nature is different. But it's still there, all around you, in either spot. Both areas are so full of goodness. Both spaces offer a beautiful, simple lifestyle. Sometimes I really miss the country. I miss my animals, I miss the cabin, I miss the grand potential the homesteads had. But I don't miss the simplicity, and I can't say I miss the nature either, because it's all around us here too.  Our life here is in most ways MORE simple than when we lived outside of town. We didn't change who we are by moving. We are just living our same life in a different spot. Martin will still hunt for our meat every fall, just as he has for the past six years. I will have a nice big garden, just like I did when we lived here before. (It will be bigger this time though, I have vertical plans!) And if we can't get backyard chickens legalized here, we'll eventually just move across the river, I guess, haha.

What I'm trying to say is, the natural world is everywhere. I might not watch the sun rise over misty cornfields here, but I can rely on that same sun to shine into my home and help my plants grow. And maybe I can't walk across my yard to the pond (which is actually a man-made pond, filled in as such after a building company finished using it as a gravel pit,) but I can walk down just a few blocks to the edge of the River. We can take our wagon on a walk and collect acorns to grind up and use for flour (which I've heard is actually disgusting, but hey, survivalism.) Or, we can just go around the corner where there are two big buckeye trees and find buckeyes in the fall and make buckeye necklaces. These are things we did when we lived here before. Because it might take a little more thought, but if you take a close look, you'll see that you are among the natural world, no matter where you are.

Oh Wow! Blogging Again!

I know I fell off the blogging wagon for awhile, but our old laptop suffered cardiac arrest and we JUST got a new one last week. I like blogging and I like some of the things computers can do, but for the most part, I hate computers and my life was probably better without one. But now that Martin has a NEW JOB (can you hear the angels singing?) he needed a computer. And so, we got one.

Life at Possum Cottage is going along nicely. Did I update when we had a baby LAST YEAR??? Ingie is almost one year old... in fact, her birthday is a week from tomorrow. I cannot believe it's been an entire year since she was born. It was a really nice year, too. I will now give a brief update of the happenings of the last year, since Ing's birth.

We have acquired two goats and a sheep to our little homestead. Zelda is an Alpine dairy goat we bought with the intention of using the milk for everything... but then I actually tasted the goat milk and I thought, "I think I'd rather have a cow." Still, we had this goat that we had kind of fallen in love with, and we got her in September, which meant winter was coming along quickly and she was all alone out there in the "barn" (which is really a garage that Martin is converting to a barn by building stalls into) so we thought we ought to get her a friend. We found a Nubian-Alpine goat nearby and we bought her and named her Rosemary. Now, here's where the story gets interesting. The goat came from a farm run by some older people who seemed to be getting out of homesteading altogether and were rehoming all their animals. Rosemary was the second-to-last animal to go, the last being a Dorset ewe, with home Rosemary shared a stall. When Martin led Rosemary out, the sheep tried to follow and the farmer said they had spent their whole life together. Well, when Martin came home with just the goat and told me this story the next day, I said, "WHY DIDN'T YOU GET THE SHEEP TOO?!?!?" a week later, he brought home this big fat sheep and we named her Lottie.

So now we have two goats and a sheep cozied up in our "barn" (it is SO not a barn, but I don't know what to call it because saying you keep farm animals in a garage sounds weird, and really, it's more than a garage now. They have a beautiful stall, hand built by Martin!)

We still have the rabbits. We've gone through a lot of chickens, thanks to that pesky dog, Ricky the Chicken Killer, who finally after many chances (chances that ended in the death of almost THIRTY chickens) finally had to find a home elsewhere. He was a good dog, but wrong for this place. So, we've replaced the hens we lost with an assortment of 8 Isa Browns, Black Orpingtons and Brahmas. But then my sister told me they were making a big chick order from a hatchery and we'd get free shipping if we bought 100 and some were free or something like this, and somehow through all that we have ended up with 50 Rhode Island Reds and 25 Barred Rock chicks. Well, they aren't really chicks anymore and a few of them died and my sister kept a couple and we took one of hers, so we have on Black Australorp and...... well, I don't know about the numbers for certain, but we have a lot of chickens. We're going to move them to the empty building in the pasture. This one:

It's springtime now. Or at least it's supposed to be. We had our woodstove installed over the winter. Then we had it inspected and reinstalled. But now it's working perfectly and keeping us toasty. And here is our beautiful, wonderful, dog, Brynja:

Other than animals, we have these four human girls running around. We're homeschooling this year and both Anja and Greta enjoy reading a lot and enjoy Math a lot less, but we love studying maps together and singing and drawing. I'm hoping to be getting our etsy shop back up and running soon and we've been doing a good job of making our house into our home over the past year and a half.

I wish I could spend more time writing out some good details, but hopefully this will be the post that gets me back into blogging regularly. Hopefully.

The Comings and Goings

Please excuse my absence in blogland these past few months. I've been really busy savoring every nanosecond of not being frozen to my core. I'm so glad it's not winter anymore. I'm so happy that even though we don't have central air and it's been a million degrees, and even though we've sometimes gone into town just so we could cool off in the van during the drive in, I AM NOT COLD. I'm not cold and that is a glorious thing.

A lot has happened since we've thawed out. Almost all of our chickens are dead! We started with eight hens last fall. They made it through the winter with nothing more than a little frostbite on their combs. They really did well. Then this spring as it started to thaw out, one of them got sick. She stayed sick for a long time, then suddenly one day she looked like she was completely better. It was amazing! The morning after that, I found her dead in the coop. Really sad. Another of the hens was beginning to show the same symptoms, so we killed her. We think it was coccidiosis, and we got the medicine to give them. Nobody else died from sickness. But then we got this dog, Ricky. He's a fantastic dog--five years old, raised in a family full of little kids, a truly smart and fantastic dog. His one problem is that he likes the taste of freshly killed chicken. And so even though we got two more chickens (Silkies!) to replace the two who died from disease, Ricky has eaten all of them.  He's eaten eight chickens. Very distressing. So, we are trying to rehome him and holding off on chickens until that happens. It's sad because we haven't had him very long and he really is a great dog, but it's necessary because, obviously, we can't have a dog eating our animals. And it doesn't help that Brynja (the goofy newfie, who was a puppy in that last picture but now is HUGE) opens the gate to the chicken yard because she likes to go hang out with them. She's such a nerd. I love her. Today Elka and I went in to feed the rabbits (because now we have three rabbits as well) and Elka just fed Brynja scoop after scoop of chicken feed. Brynja loves the chickens and they don't seem at all afraid of her.

Then there are all these cats. We are like cat collectors. You might remember that last fall after the tornadoes a calico showed up whom we (Greta) named Calick. Then the boy kitten, Simon came to us. In the very early Spring we took in an orange cat that we call Marmalade from some friends who couldn't keep him. All these were added to the two cats (Mary and Matlida) that we already had. Well, they all survived the brutal winter. They've taken care of our mouse problem in the garage and the house and have eliminated the voles that were tearing up the front yard. They were good hunters! But then the inside ones (Mary, Matilda, Marmalade) started peeing on everything and peeing in the bathtub and I said "No way," and I kicked them all out. Mary and Marmalade still hang around but Matilda has kind of disappeared and Simon and Calick........ well, Simon turned into a great big tomcat and it appears they might have run off together. I think they're bunking up in one of the sheds in the pasture. Is that considered "shacking up"? Those buildings certainly are shacks. I'm not going to be a bit surprised if Calick shows up one day with a collection of little ones in tow. And just in case that doesn't happen, Martin found a tiny stray in his mom's driveway today that he brought home and now we're bottle feeding it kitten formula.

And we got meat rabbits. We're feeding them from syringes.

Do we sound like crazy people yet?

Let's talk about humans who are able to feed themselves.

My kids are growing up too fast. Anja and Greta are riding two-wheelers now. As with all their milestones, they've been late, but because of that, they just have done it without effort. We got them two free two-wheelers by chance from two different people on back-to-back days, and they both just hopped on and started riding. It's been so fun. They are both reading now and Greta especially has been writing stories. It's so fun to watch this stage of creativity... Anja still seems to be really into poetry. She always has been!

Elka is two now. She is my challenge child, as everyone says third children tend to be. But, she has a smile that slays you, so it's ok. She's got her own two-year-old language and funny way of dancing with her arm up in the air, and really I can't put into words how weird and great she is, so I'll just stop talking about her now.

Little baby Ing is three months old now! She is what people would call "a good baby." She's really beyond good though. Elka was a good baby.... Ingrid is a sensational baby. Right now as I type this she is lying on the couch next to me chewing on her fingers and kicking her feet and cooing happily. It is a rare night that we walk her while she cries, even when she was a newborn. She (*gasp!*) sleeps through the night!!! Her naps are not regular and she doesn't sleep a whole lot during the day, but I can usually put her down for long enough to accomplish something like switching the laundry or pouring drinks for small people.

It's been interesting to experience this new place over what has now been almost a full year. It looks pretty different than it did when we first moved in... we have let the front yard go wild up to the firepit, with the intention of making it a pasture with stone walls somewhere down the line. For Father's Day (he's never going to hear the end of this) I built (ALL BY MYSELF! GIRL POWER!) a patio for Martin as something he wouldn't have to do. In the "backyard" Martin has kept a large square mowed, then made some mown paths connecting the backyard to the front. It's really beautiful and fairy-like. My parents (who generously gave us the marble slabs I used for the patio) gave us a porch swing frame, which we put down by the giant playset, under some trees that look like they should be fruit trees but are actually just nothing trees. It's nice! Improvements inside are slower going, I guess because it's summertime. We need to get our woodstove installed, we need to work on insulating the windows better and we need to build a dividing wall in the bedroom to make it into two bedrooms. That's the short-term goals. Long term is an addition, refinishing the attic, and renovating both the bathroom and the kitchen. We are constantly having to remind ourselves that this is our forever home and that perfecting a place takes lots of time, especially when you have small kids and not much time or money. But we are doing what we can with what we have!

One thing I miss about living in town is walking everywhere. I have definitely put on some pounds since moving here (pregnancy didn't help) but I've recently started walking down to the stop sign, which is .75 miles from our house and back. It's a nice walk, a pretty walk and a great way to snag 20 minutes of "me-time" at the end of the day.

Catching Up!!

Catching up on my catching up! This is a post I started many weeks ago, and am just hopping on Blogger again to try to start (again) trying to routinely blog. So, here is this outdate post and hopefully a more current one will be shared soon.

 

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Spring has sprung at Possum Cottage!!!!!!!  Finally!!!!! Winter seemed to have a hard time giving up his spot as king this year (as everyone noticed.)

 

So now, here we are, enjoying our first Spring at our new place. It's been fun to watch everything green up again. And along with the fresh new life of the grass and trees, we have purchased two new chickens: A "couple" of Silkies. They don't seem to live by very strict Christian morals, so we wonder if perhaps we'll get some baby Silkies at some point. Aren't these birds so crazy looking?

 

The lady is the one in the very poofy hat.

 

Our yard became Dandelion Land for a long time. The girls would love going out and picking them and my heart went pitter-patter every time someone would bring me a scraggly bouquet. The first batch has gone to puffballs and were all scattered in the storms over the weekend, but we have a fresh new batch of yellow ones popping up today. Do dandelions grow all year? I don't care if they're weeds, I love them. I need to break out my dandelion recipes, knowing that these ones aren't being peed on by humans I don't know.

 

The girls are glad to be out of the house after that long winter. And the chickens aren't the only new things in our family. On Mother's Day we took in a dog who needed a home. His name is Ricky and he is a fantastic dog. He's five years old and was raised in a family with lots of small children. He's evidently a lab-border collie mix sort of mutt. But he's wonderful! He needed a new home because he kept running off from his city house every time the door opened. Not a big deal out here, but where they lived he was running into busy streets. We really feel like he came to us though (much like most of our animals) and are grateful to have him. I've always wanted lots of dogs!

And speaking of New Life....

 

This is a picture Greta drew the day before her baby sister was scheduled to be born. She is saying "Why are you so grumpy?" and I am replying, "Because I don't like having this baby in my belly." It's pretty darn accurate. To say I was tired of being pregnant is an understatement. It was so sick of being pregnant, I was trying all the tricks to naturally induce labor before my scheduled cesarean day. But, it didn't work. (As usual. I have NEVER been successful at inducing labor with any of those old tricks. Bah.)

 

And so, on April 3rd, Martin and I showed up at the hospital bright and early (not bright. The sun wasn't even up yet it was so early. And then there was a big thunderstorm during her birth) where I was very routinely sliced open and this little beauty was removed:

 

 

Ingrid MaryDell! It was an uneventful procedure (always good!) and my hospital stay was really something else. I kind of can't believe how much fun I had. Still, it was good to go home of course, and jump into everyday life with FOUR daughters. Wild!

 

Ing is a great baby. She's five weeks old now and juuuuust beginning to flash us smiles every once in awhile. She typically wakes up early, then naps again mid-morning to mid-afternoon.

 

The Adventures Continue (is this like "glamping"?)

 

It's cold here.

 We are currently in our snowiest winter since 1884 or something like that, according to our local meteorologist. It's a funny thing, too, because there doesn't seem to be that much snow on the ground. I guess that's because it's all blown away. On or property, it's all blown to the back (south) fence and created this amazing frozen tundra that we can climb up and walk across. There are a few places to sled down, but there are also a few steep spots that form something closer to a cave. I kind of can't imagine how cool it must be for the girls to play out there (on the days when it's warm enough to play outside, which have been scarce) because the little cave spots are higher than Greta. We have a bush out there by the fence that looks like it should be a lilac bush, but it isn't, (to give you an idea of it's size) and the snow is about halfway up that bush. Before the last weather event (generally a weekly occurrence) Martin picked up a sled for the girls, a little one-seater with a high back and a rope for someone to pull it. This Sunday was really warm so we all went outside and Martin pulled them up the little hill and across the big drift. Elka LOVED it.

So, it's mostly a lot of fun living out here.

But then sometimes it's less fun.

Like on Friday night when the girls and I ran errands in town and my parents invited us to dinner, and we accepted. It was fun! All the cousins were there and the girls had a great time. After a long and drawn out debate with myself, I had decided not to bring Brynja the puppy along with us. We knew that a winter storm was coming in that night, so when Martin came in from work he ran out to the grocery for a few things we needed and we took off from  my parents' place at a good time, before the snow started.

Unfortunately, it wasn't before the wind started. It was kind of a crazy drive home, but we made it safely to our road. About halfway down our road, a big truck coming from the opposite direction stopped us and said the road was drifted over two to three feet, we'd never get through. He had barely made it through and had had to pull out the car behind him. At this point it was beginning to snow and we were kind of in a pickle. Martin drove on ahead (we were in separate vehicles, since he had come from work and we'd gone into town earlier in the day) while the girls and I waited at the gas station, to check it out, and he barely got farther than where we'd been stopped when he saw that indeed, the whole road was drifted under. Awesome.

We are lucky to have family in town though! We drove back to my parents' house (another treacherous drive) for a family sleepover. Anja was pretty excited, even though she was worried about Brynja. Greta and Elka were asleep by the time we got back there, so they didn't realize until morning what was going on. (Actually, Elka woke up around 1:30 and didn't go back to sleep till after 3:00. So she was completely aware. For a long time. While I was not asleep. But it's okay, I'm not bitter, I'm used to it.)

Once we got there, Martin was really nervous about leaving our house. A mischievous puppy and multiple electric heaters as well as the potential to be gone from the rest of the animals for possibly days made him concerned enough that he decided he would go back and stay there until he could come back to get us. I was kind of worried--these were near blizzard conditions and the only way he'd be able to get to our house was by parking at the gas station and walking two miles to our house. Two miles with only three other houses between, and only farm fields otherwise. But, he felt it was the right thing to do, so off he went.

He texted me as he was setting off from the gas station and about half an hour later I read on Facebook a warning from an amateur meteorologist about not letting your teenage drivers out in the weather. And if you slid off, it stressed, "STAY WITH YOUR VEHICLE. If you get out and try to walk in these whiteout conditions YOU WILL NOT SURVIVE!" Oh. Em. Gee. So, I started frantically texting Martin things like "I think you should turn back" and calling him repeatedly (and of course he didn't answer) and I was pacing nervously around the bedroom when I got a text about fifteen minutes later saying he was halfway there and "This is easy! I'm even carrying five gallons of kerosene! Doing great!" Of course. Captain Headlamp would be the one to defy the odds of blizzard survival. Knowing where he was, I knew he was within short distance to the three houses (all in a cluster) and past the worst of it. A few more minutes and he sent me this:

He had made it safely. He did have some pronounced scratches around one of his eyes from where the ice was pelting him for the entire two mile walk, but other than that, he was fine. Thank goodness! Not only that, but he said our road had been plowed and he thought he could probably get out to pick us up in the morning. And he did! And we were so happy to all be together again. It was an adventure that was  a lot more fun in hindsight, as adventures often are.

In fact, I think that's how I'll feel about this entire winter. It's been so cold! It was so cold last week that I couldn't stand it anymore. We all went into town after Martin got home from work and we went out to dinner at Outback Steakhouse to warm up. I felt like I hadn't been warm in years. It was awesome.

By chance then, on Sunday night, we saw my parents at church and they invited us out to dinner--at Outback Steakhouse! What a treat!

Last night we got a crazy windstorm. I thought we were going to get blown to Oz, but we came out okay without even losing power. (It went out 7 times, I think, but always came back on within seconds.) Martin and I sat up until almost 2:00, wearing our headlamps, preparing to move the kids into the warmest room of the house if the power were to shut off for good, and the wind even woke up Anja, who is a heavy sleeper! I'm thankful that we came out of that okay because today our high temperature was forecast to be something like.... 9. Did it even get that high? At one time I checked it was 7 and another time it was 2. Right now it's -5. HOWEVER, as long as the wind isn't blowing, the house stays pretty cozy! You know, as long as we close off a couple of rooms and keep multiple electric heaters in the rooms we are using.

Brynja doesn't seem to mind the cold.

Today was another adventure. When we woke up we started arranging the heaters throughout the house, but a fuse kept flipping. (I can't tell you what room it was, because it was connected to different things in three different rooms. But it shut off all of the library, the washing machine [but not the dryer], and half the dining room lights. So I kept having to go down to the basement and flip the switch. It's not easy to get to our basement... If you'll recall, our basement is accessed through a trapdoor in the kitchen floor and you have to maneuver through the joists to get to the stairs. So at one point, I just left them off and the house stayed warm without the extra heaters, so I stopped messing with it. I figured I'd continue the laundry later, and I decided to hit the dishes which were super piled up because I had opted out of washing them the night before in favor of knitting some mittens for Greta. MISTAKE! MISTAKE! MISTAKE! Suddenly, as I was washing my second bowl in a collection of thousands, my water shut off. Rats!, I thought. Another blown fuse! But, no. Sadly, it wasn't just a fuse. It was all the water to the entire house. Our well pump had burned out.

Back down in the basement, it was a lot stinkier than it had been during my last trips down. You know the smell..... like a shorted out well pump. Electrical stinky. At this point it was noon. At 1:00 (his usual lunch break) Martin talked with his very understanding boss and took the rest of the afternoon off to try to fix our house.

We think it can be fixed relatively cheaply and we think Martin can put a new one in himself. So, that's good! Until then, we spent our day filling our two 7 gallon water containers at our old house and stocking up on water jugs (and a few other things) from the store. Tomorrow we are supposed to have windchills down to -40 so basically the whole world has been cancelled, including Martin's workday. So hopefully we can have our water restored within a day or two.

But we are having fun!! We are making memories!! And throughout all of this I sometimes have to stop and remind myself that I'm thirty weeks pregnant.

Because it's easy to forget how big you are when you're wearing all your sweaters at once.
(this photo was taken on Sunday when it was so warm. Our inside temperature was up to 75! Wooowheee!)

Winter at Possum Cottage

Well, one thing is for certain: this first winter has been anything but uneventful!

A friend of mine recently commented on how interesting it is to live out the first year in a new home. To discover as you go all the quirks and tricks of living there, to see the seasons change, to experience old traditions in a new place... it's definitely an adventure. At least, in our case it has been. This winter has been kind of a rough one, both in personal losses (family members and pets) and in weather. Our area has experienced a string of mild winters, which makes this one--snowy and cold--seem harsh, even though it's the sort of winter we remember from when we were kids. It's really nothing spectacular. It's just winter. But recent years have seen 70 degree days in January, so this one is kind of throwing us for a loop.

Not to mention we're out in the flatlands now. In a 100+ year old house with no insulation. But at least we have electricity!!!

Christmas was nice. Here are the girls and me getting our tree:

Notice the girl in pink. She didn't want to be in the traditional tree picture. Poor Greta. I can't even remember now why she was so mad. I think it was just because we were taking the picture, because after that she and Anja went running off merrily together.

We've had many cozy mornings.

Elka has finally discovered the joy of books. Hooray!

Sometime before Christmas we had a kitten dropped out of a car into our yard and Martin ran out to rescue it from the three terrorizing dogs in the yard (two dogs were ours, one is their neighbor friend.) He brought the kitten in and it lived in our bathroom for a few days (pooping everywhere) while we tried to find it a home before we kind of realized that it wouldn't hurt anything for the kitten to live on the porch with the other stray who turned up. A good plan, except that this kitten seems to suffer from slight identity confusion. (There was a little bit of gender confusion too... the kitten was originally named Brenda before we got a better look and it became Simon.) This cat moved into the garage with the dogs, specifically befriending our big black dog, Karenin. It was an unlikely match, Karenin being a big scary looking dog and this kitten being itty bitty, but they became best friends and within a few days you couldn't see one without the other.

And it was that way for a month or so (you can see in the picture below how big Simon is now, and he was just tiny when he first came) but then a couple of weeks ago Karenin got hit by a car out in front of our house and Martin found her dead in the ditch. It was a very sad day, and we were all sad for ourselves but all of us felt especially sad for Simon, who is still a baby, and who had already been abandoned once in his short life. Poor Simon. When Martin found Karenin he was on his way to work and didn't have time to bury her, so he put her in the hay pile outside the garage. All that day Simon slept in the hay with her. It was really heartbreaking. Karenin was a fantastic dog and we will always miss her!

And we got a blizzard. It was a combination of weather events that made for a pretty intense week. Martin was let out of work early on a Friday afternoon and he didn't go to work again until the following Thursday, and even then he only went half the day and had a hard time actually GETTING there. It started out as a little snow and then over the weekend it turned into a blizzard (actually our county never had a Blizzard Warning issued, but some did.) Thankfully, our power never went out during the worst of the storm, because after the storm came an arctic blast giving us two days of temperatures down to -18.

Our inside temperature got down to 49 degrees. Luckily, Martin had bought himself a kerosene heater for the garage for Christmas and he'd also gotten a really nice electric heater to replace one that had broken a few weeks before. We all holed up in the bedroom and kept toasty warm (or at least moderately warm) until the temperature outside came up and the wind stopped blowing so much and our house warmed up to it's regular cozy warmness. The thing that kind of wrecked the adventure part of all this was that we all got a stomach bug! So aside from freezing our tails off, three of us were throwing up while the other two felt kind of lousy and Anja ended up with a double ear infection. So, memorable, yes. Fun.... not so much. But hey, we survived! All the outside animals survived too, which is great. And spring must be somewhere in the sort-of-near future, because we found two eggs this morning! The first in many weeks. Yay!

In our neighboring world to homesteading, the world of parenting, Elka is both entering and exiting some distinct phases. The phase she's exiting is one I'm more than happy to leave behind. That would be the phase of crying inconsolably all day, screaming because I won't let her do dangerous things or draw on herself with permanent markers or pull her sisters' hair, and wanting to do more than she is able and therefore becoming frustrated and turning into a demon. I am sooooooo glad to be leaving all of that behind us. Even if it means we are entering the Terrible Two's. This is the first time I'm experiencing a typical "Terrible Twos" child. Elka is the master at throwing herself (literally! THROWING HERSELF) down on the floor, kicking and screaming. If she doesn't get what she wants, that is her immediate reaction. Then she stands up, asks again (the denial is usually of something like handling knives or eating cat food) is again given an answer with which she doesn't agree, and so she throws herself back down on the floor kicking and screaming. This cycle can last for a pretty long time before any sort of distraction works. I'm used to it now and try hard not to laugh.

But along with the tantrums comes the pretend play, which completely melts my heart. One day she had a pile of sunflower seeds and she spent all morning putting them into the little wooden teacups in the play kitchen and serving us all tea over and over again. It was so sweet! And she can finally play with her sisters. Lucky for her, they are loving and kind and help her keep up with them. One day Anja and Greta said they were going to dress like queens, and Elka heard and ran off after them. They dressed her up too and she was so proud! She is a lucky little girl.

The big girls had an overnight with their grandparents and girl cousins this weekend and while they were packing their bags the morning of, Elka joined in, packing her baby doll into a book bag and putting on her shoes. Sweetest thing ever. I was afraid she would feel left out when they were gone, but she didn't seem to, and in fact the next morning she seemed to really enjoy getting undivided attention from both parents! All the way till lunchtime!

Also, being not old enough for the sleepover meant she got to come with us on a drive down south to pick up this:

 This would be Brynja. (The J is a Y like Anja!) Brynja is an 8 1/2 week old black Newfoundland puppy. The name Brynja is Nordic meaning "shielding, armor" which is just what we expect her to be for our little homestead. So far though, she's just a big, loveable puffball!

We're all pretty much in love with her. We didn't intend to get a dog right away after Karenin died. I didn't want to feel like we were trying to replace her. But we realized pretty quickly that we needed another big dog around... And as Anja pointed out, it's hard to be a one-dog family when all your life you've been a two-dog family. And she's right. So now we're a two-dog family again!

Did I mention we're due to have a baby in just over two months? Uh huh... this first year might just go down as The Year of Insanity at Possum Cottage.