Bathing suits in January?

To all my readers on the snowy East Coast, or in the freezing Midwest, or anyplace with frigid temperatures: Please don't hate me.  We have enjoyed many, many days of sunshine, and what's even better, warmth.  For some of us (namely stubborn, hot headed pre-schoolers), it was hot enough to run around our south-facing backyard in a bathing suit.  Yes, I know it is January.

Here is my friend Sharon with her dog Shanti, and Eva in her bathing suit.

It is very strange to have such a mild January.  Visions of sowing seeds and getting the green house ready float in my head, but I know it's too early for almost everything vegetable related.  Winter WILL come again, I'm sure.  In two weeks, I will start my onions in four inch pots, germinate them in my house, and then transport them into the greenhouse by the end of February.
In the meantime, we are getting a lot of work done in the yard.  The pesky Alder trees have grown so tall that they are shading parts of my garden, so I convinced Steve to cut them down.  It's a family affair, this tree cutting business.  Steve does the dangerous and noisy work of actually felling the tree, and the kids and I clean up branches and gather fire wood.  The boys are working - not just "working".  We are finally getting some real work out of these guys - and they will get stronger every year.  My brain is cranking with "projects" for them.

These sunny, warmth filled days were not just all about work.  Plenty of play happened as well: walks to the river, kicking the soccer ball around the yard, stump shooting with bows and arrows.  Trying to get all our home schooling done feels like pulling teeth when the boys would rather be outside, and I don't blame them.  So we do math, go outside, work, play, and when we get cold go inside for some comfort food, do language arts, and a social science or science segment.  Or not.  Who cares?  The kids are learning science by spending time outside, yes?

A picnic by the creek.

Talking of comfort food:  I have gotten addicted to baking bread.  Not just any bread, but real European, old style bread you would pay a lot of money for at a bakery.  It's a special no-kneading technique, where you mix the flour, water and a little bit of yeast and let it sit for 18 hours.  Then it's baked in a dutch oven (or in my case a chicken brick from Sauk Mountain Pottery).  This bread tastes incredible and looks super fancy.  My family could eat a loaf a day.  I have to buy more chicken bricks to have an assembly line of bread going.

This is the book describing the technique.  It's a great read with lots of recipes.

Bread is rising, with the chicken brick in the background.

The chicken brick doesn't look particularly fancy, rather prehistoric in fact, but it bakes superior bread.

Fancy, yes?

Easter egg festivities and hail

As Equinox has come and gone, spring is teasing us. She invites robins onto our lawn (I counted 45 pecking on the grass this morning), but she also asks snow to join the party. As sun breaks through, snow gently falls. Not enough to stick, mind you, but enough to remind us that winter still hasn't said Goodbye. In fact, as I am writing this blog entry right now, hail started pelting down, and everything is covered with tiny ice balls!
It went from this, with just a few hail balls...

to this, with the whole ground covered, in less than ten minutes...

Hail is starting to fall.

Eva has never seen this stuff.

What better day than to prepare for Easter? We were in full Easter egg mode today: blowing out and decorating eggs, boiling and coloring eggs with natural dyes, and making signs that say “Happy Easter!”.

The blowing-out-eggs part was very entertaining to watch. Steve, ever the handyman, used his drill to scramble the inside of the egg, which was supposed to help the egg white and yolk to exit easier. Then, he charged the boys with blowing out the liquid stuff with a syringe. After watching that for a while, I suggested to just prick a hole in the shell, and then to blow it out the old fashioned way, like my mother used to do. It worked marvelously, and the boys were really into it!

First, make a holes in the egg, one on top, one on bottom.

Then watch the pro use his power tools.  The offspring looks very skeptical.

Then the offspring copies Dad.

Now comes the syringe part.

This is truly a family affair.  It's complicated business, this.  Notice Eva is wearing a ballet dress for the occasion.

Heck, let's do away with the power tools!  Lungs are old fashioned power tools!

While we waited for the now empty eggs to dry in front of the wood stove, Kai whipped up some Challa bread, all by himself. It's a great bread for spreading butter and honey or home made jam on it, and the dough uses lots of excess duck eggs. Here is a picture that represents our day: dough rising in front of the wood stove, while the blown out egg shells are drying, in the midst of newly planted seeds waiting to germinate. And do you notice all the lovely dust under the wood stove?

While the bread is rising, we decorate the blown out eggs, who had a chance to dry by now.  Even Eva gets to paint her own!

Why not hang our beautiful easter eggs from the kitchen lamp, so we can look at them at every meal?

Earlier in the day, the kids were inspired by all the robins.  So they got out our bird reference books and started drawing pictures of birds that visit us often.