The Last Week in March

The neighbor's mules and horse rejoicing in their freedom!



















They decided to trot up our lane to visit.



















They trotted around the garage and through the garden.
Thankfully it is not planted yet. Ah, the company that comes
to visit in Amish country!

Blustery March: Cold and damp, warm and balmy; joy and sadness, laughter with tears. March is drawing to a close, and soon the springtime of April will be here. It will be time to search for spring flowers, till the garden, and bring out the deck chairs and swing. It will not be long before we clean up the woodstove and unpack the t-shirts. Today (Monday), however, is not spring. The wind’s icy fingers tug at our coats, cause our ears to ache and our eyes to water. The thermometer tells us that winter no longer holds its grip upon the land, but the wind…the wind does not allow us to celebrate the change of seasons. Not now. Not yet. But soon….

(Would anyone like to explain a mystery? How can all these posts have been written with the same font throughout and come out so different? Oh, Blogspot?!? I'll save the attempt to correct it for tomorrow. It is bedtime!)

Thoughts From My Big Green Chair

I am such a slow learner, but I can learn. If worked with long enough and several methods are employed, I make progress. If, however, I take a break, I quickly find that I lose ground and need to begin with the grammar stage all over again.

This is my walk with the King of Glory.

He knows that when I am struggling to find answers and when I am fighting to love and obey, that I am able to learn best. I have begun to think that I should pray to be left inside the pressure cooker to be certain that my life in Him continues to grow. How absurd that must seem to many.

There is a quote that goes along these lines: It is unlikely that God will use greatly any man he has not first broken. Does anyone know who first penned this and how, exactly, it is worded? It seems to me that there is truth in this statement.

It is Lent: A time to remember the truth about ourselves. If we allow ourselves to be broken, than we shall be useful.

The Night Sky

So much for clear skies to celebrate the Messier Marathon! Clouds, clouds and more clouds! The finder scope on my new telescope is now broken—I must say this is one thing Meade did not do well with their ETX 125 PE. I will not be able to use my telescope until it is fixed. Sniff.

If you happen to have clear skies and be in parts of Africa and Turkey this week, you should experience a total solar eclipse on the 29^th. The rest of us will simply experience New Moon early on that morning. On April 1^st, the small crescent moon should be near the Pleiades; on the 3^rd it should be just above Mars; and the 6^th, above Saturn.

Don’t forget to turn your clocks ahead on the evening of Saturday, April 2^nd if you have Daylight Savings Time.

This is a photo taken by Nasa of a spiral
galaxy, M101. For more, stop by their
Web site.

School Days

TWO WEEKS OF VACATION.

Well, at least one week. My youngest may do some work next week while his brother and sister are involved in daily play practice.

I’m beginning to look at what I need to buy next year. I don’t think I’m ready to write about it yet. It is organizing itself in my head, but not on paper as of yet. (Yes, homeschooling seems to have a life of its own and does take over my thoughts to organize itself.)

I’ve cleared off the school table, organized my books in the bay window, and replaced them with an ongoing game of Lord of the Rings Risk. The papers are graded (maybe not—now that I think about it, a history paper awaits me). Now is the time too cook, clean, read, and play, right?

The school table holds a game of LotR Risk

The Fairview Kitchen

Winter soup season is quickly coming to an end. I thought I’d share one of the simple soup recipes that I got from my mother. You must understand, though, that this was never a written recipe that my mother gave me, but only my attempt to replicate the dish she set before us on a cold winter days. I usually double the recipe and like to serve it with warm bread.

Mom’s Vegetable Soup

1 lb. ground beef
1½ tsp. salt
1 medium onion, chopped
2 stalks celery, sliced
2 carrots, sliced
3 medium potatoes, chunked
4 cups water
Pepper to taste
½ tsp. basil

Place ground beef in a soup pot, sprinkle with salt, and brown. Remove grease from pot if necessary. Add remaining ingredients and simmer until they are soft.

If you prefer, you may add a small can of stewed tomatoes (1 pint) to the soup, but it will never taste like mother’s unless it is home-canned stewed tomatoes, right? Be sure the onions are completely cooked prior to adding tomatoes to the soup since tomatoes can chemically react with onions so that the onions never soften.

This is the bread that was rising in the pans that I made
to be eaten with the soup.





















This is the soup that I served with crackers because the
bread was all eaten up.

Cats And More Cats

India has another UTI. How can I help her to get rid of this? Poor girl.

Snowflake was observed running down the driveway sideways with his back arched and tail flying at odd angles. His eyes were alert and his ears were bent on mischief. Ruffy, the receiver of his attentions froze in the drive watching the whirlwind of white fur approach, ready to dash to safety. The voice of one young boy calling, “Kitty, kitty, kitty, kiiiiiiity!” saved her the necessity as Snowy then turned and ran gleefully toward the call. Silly cat.

Orion has been a bit rude of late; he seems to be oblivious of the effect his 3-inch wide tail has upon his littermates when he rubs himself across their faces.

Observe the tails...

Bright has been given another nickname by a fellow homeschooler who rubbed the little butterball’s chin: I said her name was Bright, although we also refer to her as Not SO. My friend leaned over to look the dear cat in the face and asked, “Oh, sweetheart! Are you Dimly Lit?”

The arsenic hour has now returned. The weather is warm enough that each night at twilight all the cats begin to romp. They dash up trees, fly through the air at each other, and in general, act as if it is full moon. If you come to visit us at this time of the day, you will be glad that these felines are not capable of hunting humans.

Did I post this picture before? I know my daughter had it on her blog
It is amazing what a cat and his boy can accomplish...

Blessings!

Come Cry With Me

I was ready to post (below), and was so excited about our perfect little donkey. He had already made it squarely into my heart with joy and laughter and perfection. This morning we found our baby foal dead. Perhaps it got kicked. We do not know. Penny calls out with a large cry every so often as she stands over the little one that she has not left out of her sight for the last week. I am so sad.

(Earlier Post)

Last year we had the vet in to check cattle and look over our new donkey, Penelope. We were told by the previous owner that Penney was pregnant, but the vet said she was not.
Vets are not God.

Penney gave birth to the most beautiful baby foal I have ever seen last week! This baby has legs like stilts, a small body, a head that is a perfect miniature version of his mother’s, and the most hilarious set of long, wiggling ears on top of his head that make me smile every time I see them! We have decided to name him Telemachus—you know, from Homer’s Odyssey: Penelope was Odysseus’s wife, and Telemachus was his son. Penelope is a doting mother and rarely leaves her little one’s side. I think she missed having a donkey companion when she came to this farm. Now she has someone just like her. Enjoy the photos!

The Third Week of March


Click on the photos to enlarge

The weather has been very normal for March in Wisconsin. We had several inches of blowing snow last week, and two days later it was sunny and 60 degrees. The one constant: the wind. March is flight kying* weather, but we must be careful to choose a day that will not break the kite string due to gale force winds!

This week is also my nephew Timothy’s birthday. It would be nice if you were to say a prayer for the safety for him and all of our soldiers in Iraq. He is a medic. His HMMV was hit by an IEP (improvised explosive device), but thankfully no one was seriously injured. His wife and newborn baby girl are here in the states. I am starting to knit a prayer shawl for them and hope to have it finished by the time he returns. Perhaps some of you would like to add them to your prayer list.

I’ve decided to try typing into my blog as I have time and posting just once each week. This way you can stop by as you have time to read pieces of it, but I do not have to be tied to getting something posted each day. We will give this a try—tell me what you think.

*There was a professor once who was always switching sounds in words around; since the professor’s name was Spooner, his problem became dubbed a Spoonerism. It is nice that I know this story; it makes me feel less embarrassed at my having to concentrate on saying flight kying correctly.

The Night Sky

I have not had much opportunity to use my new telescope. The skies have been cloudy just about every night. I went out one evening to try to find a few things, but all I could find was the moon and a few stars. At one time enough cleared for me to find Orion, and then I knew that I was seeing the stars Betelgeuse, Belatrix, Rigel (all in the constellation Orion), and Sirius in the constellation Canis Major (lower and to the left of Orion, the brightest star to be seen from our latitude). I missed getting up to check the sky one morning this week. If I had checked at 4:00 when my hubby’s Walkman loudly clattered to the floor, I would have gone out. That morning was clear and glorious. I suppose I ought to set an alarm to check out the weather in the early A.M. That means I’ll have to go to bed at a good time, though!

I talked about the Messier Marathon in my last blog entry. If anyone has a telescope and is interested in doing this, this is a good link.

If your night sky is clear on the evening of the 18^th, go on out to see if there is a “star shining just left of the moon; this should be Jupiter. This coming week we will enter into spring here in the Northern Hemisphere. The Equinox will occur on March 20^th.

Hubble's picture of Venus: If you use a
good binoculars or any telescope, you
should be able to see that Venus has the
same stages as our moon (New, crescent,
gibbous, full)

Thoughts From My Big Green Chair

There are times I find that the best way to verbalize my thoughts is to quote someone who has said it better. When it comes to explaining my faith, I frequently turn to the hymns that I have been singing my entire life. Lent is one of those times when my introspection is best described by those songs we sing each year; they are songs that tell of our part in the cross that Christ bore. Beneath the Cross of Jesus is a song that can remember singing in Lenten services when I was very young. I’ll add a link to the melody if you are not familiar with it. Blessings.

Beneath the Cross of Jesus

Beneath the cross of Jesus
I long to take my stand;
The shadow of a mighty rock
Within a weary land,
A home within a wilderness,
A rest upon the way,
From the burning of the noontide heat
And burdens of the day.

Upon the cross of Jesus,
My eye at times can see
The very dying form of one
Who suffered there for me.
And from my contrite hear, with tears,
Two wonders I confess:
The wonder of his glorious love
And my unworthiness.

I take, O cross, your shadow
For my abiding place;
I ask no other sunshine than
The sunshine of his face;
Content to let the world go by,
To know no gain nor loss,
My sinful self my only shame,
My glory all, the cross.
--By Elizabeth C. Clephane

School Days

My youngest son was a late bloomer, academically speaking. We studied phonics for 4 years before he finally “caught it” and began to read. Since then, he has become a voracious reader; just in the last weeks he has read Robinson Crusoe, Red Badge of Courage, Watership Down, Around the World in 80 Days, and reread The Two Towers and The Hobbit.

I am grateful that we are doing classical homeschooling with him. I believe that the training of his mind to memorize and think is essential to his ability to do well in academics. This year he is working through Latina Christiana I after having done Prima Latina last year; Latin trains the mind to think, and I can see that the constant review of terms and usage is helping him transfer the use of these skills into other subjects. He has always done the memorization of the Bible verses for AWANA, and I believe the training of the mind to recall long versus, and several verses in a row, has helped him to memorize other facts such as those he uses in science class. (As an interesting aside, we found that he could memorize while jumping on the trampoline better than when he was sitting still--curious.) I am also convinced that the requirement of learning scales and chords in piano lessons has helped him to find patterns. Rod & Staff English has much reinforcement and review, and this has enabled my son to learn by age 13 some of the grammar concepts I learned in graduate school. (I will not go into my thoughts on my own education here.) We are moving through Writing Strands, and with each book I can see that he is improving in his ability to express himself on paper. A classical education has been good for him.

There were times I worried about how well I was going to be able to prepare my son for his future, but now I am certain that he will have what he needs for wherever he chooses to go—whatever direction God leads him. For those of you who struggle to teach your children the basics, I urge you to be patient and keep trying different ways to obtain your goals. Not all children are created equal, but they all have talents in them that we can build upon. That is all that is required of us, isn’t it?

The Fairview Kitchen

I have been working on keeping my weight down, and I’d guess there are a few of my readers who are also working on this. I thought I’d tell you about something I’ve been doing that has been a hit here in my home. Each time I go grocery shopping I buy several items in the fresh vegetable department—small tomatoes, green peppers, small carrots, cauliflower, radishes—whatever looks good. Now this is not always easy here in small town Wisconsin since good winter produce is not always abundant! When I get home I clean the vegetables, cut them up, and place them into a container, which has a grate in the bottom so that I can add water to the bottom without submerging the produce. I pull this out frequently during the day, and before it is time to go shopping, the container has been nearly emptied. It helps me to watch my waistline, and it is healthy for the rest of the family as well.

Good things to eat!

Cats and More Cats

I have 12 cats. Now that all of them are spayed and neutered, our population is going down. My neighbor once told me that when he was growing up on the farm, they got up to over 70 cats. Waaaaaay too many!!

Here is a list of my fuzzy friends:

India Ink (aka Indy or Ink Pot): The ornery black tortoise shell cat. She knows that she is the queen of the indoors, and she is offended if petted without having given permission. She has taken up crawling under the blankets of my daughter’s bed to keep warm when she is not curled up by the green goddess (aka woodstove).

Snowflake (Snowie, The Big White Hunter): The “other” inside cat. Snowie will purr if you look at him and loves to play with little mice—if there is no one to play with, he’ll entertain himself by floating the brightly colored toys in his water dish prior to tipping the whole thing over onto the bathroom floor. This causes a few exclamations from the first person who sleepily enters the room in the wee hours of the morning. Any time the last litter of kittens comes to warm their toes by the stove, he will attempt to creep up and pounce on them. We finally belled the cat so that the kittens would be forewarned, otherwise a couple of them would have quit coming into the house for fear of this big snow-monster!

Snowflake and India Ink

Ears (aka The King, Ear-ly): This cat is believed to have supplemented his diet with Baby Beef Protein Pellets. He has loooong white fur complemented by a black tail and two black ears. He has a unique way of chirping at us with a husky voice when he demands attention. If you visit and do not plan to scratch his chin, make sure he doesn’t nip you for ignoring him!

Charcoal (aka Chuck Bunny—don’t ask): This is my 2^nd child’s dearly beloved. He wears a black and white tuxedo and has been well trained to ask to come into the sun porch prior to every meal so that he can loudly complain about your not sharing. This cat can be held upside down, laid on his back and his feet used as a steering wheel (vroom, vroom!), and used to remove all cats from the room by pretending you have food in your hand while you walk out of the door.

Nickabrick (aka Mama Kitty): This little lump of lard is the mother or grandmother of all the outside cats on our farm. She is a white calico and has the personality of a sledge hammer if any of the cats disrupt her nap. She has the respect of all fur balls on the farm, and to this day will grab anyone she wants, force them to the ground, and give them a face wash.

Mama Kitty giving Orion a face wash

Ruffy (aka Ruffy Tuff or The Witch): I love this little girl, but the children remember her early years where she would fly through the air to take possession of anything she thought was food—leaving them scratched and in tears. She reminds me of the cat I grew up with, having long orange fur, and therefore is his namesake.

Bright (aka Not So): This little orange and white, shorthaired butterball is the smallest cat on the farm. She curls up in the corner of the room and silently gets forgotten. Her goal is to become the next inside cat.

Spit Fire (aka Spit): Spit is a black tortoise shell cat. She deserves her name since she had the ability to spit, snarl, and sink her teeth in fear into anyone who was unfortunate enough to get too close. This little beauty has settled down a lot over the years, but she is still very skittish and can be seen dashing away from anything or anybody (or nothing). For whatever reason, several of the barn cats like to pick on her, and it is not unusual to hear her blood-curdling war hoop on someone who has pounced upon her. If I pick her up, she will hold on tightly with her claws and purr very loudly.

Orion (aka Fluffy Boy): This black and white tuxedo boy is trying his best to take after his big brother, Ears. They are apparently taken from the same cookie cutter, and this huge –pawed, gorgeous, longhaired beauty is trying to grow just as big. He has personality: We’ve decided that if we could put how he looks at us into words he would say, “Dumb human.”

William of Orange (aka Willie): Another scaredy-cat. He is a small, wiry, orange tiger cat who always looks worried. He’s probably as skinny as he is because he burns all his food by his constant fear of the world—that and his constant running off the deck to hide during mealtime.

Betelgeuse (aka Bug): This white with orange spotted fur ball got his name from one of the stars in the constellation Orion. Since the name Betelgeuse sounds like “Beatle Juice”, my son decided to nickname him Bug Syrup, which later got shortened to Bug. To tell you the truth, he is called Bug so much now that I had to think a few moments to remember his real name. This squirmy, never-sits-still, lover-boy is always in need of attention. If you ignore him, he will be certain to jump on your lap and wiggle around there until he begins to fall off; then he will use his sharp claws to grab onto you. If brought inside, the house would never be the same…

Oreo (Cookie Boy, Cookie Monster): We thought this name was fitting for a white and black kitty. This little guy is friendly in a quiet sort of way. His brothers outshine him, but if you want a cheerful little guy, this is the one you should scoop up and give a chin scratch.

Hold loosely all that comes into your heart. Blessings.

The Second Week of March

A view from our farm, Fairview


Thoughts From my Big Green Chair: Lent

Ah, Holy Jesus

Ah, holy Jesus, how hast though offended
That man to judge thee hath in hate pretended?
By foes derided, by thine own rejected,
O most afflicted.

Who was the guilty? Who brought this upon thee?
Alas, my treason, Jesus, hath undone thee.
‘Twas I, Lord Jesus, I it was denied thee;
I crucified thee.

Lo, the Good Shepherd for the sheep is offered;
The slave hath sinned, and the Son hath suffered;
For man’s atonement, while he nothing heedeth,
God intercedeth.

For me, kind Jesus, was thine incarnation,
Thy mortal sorrow, and thy life’s oblation;
Thy death of anguish, and thy bitter Passions,
For my salvation.

Therefore, kind Jesus, since I cannot pay thee,
I do adore thee, and will ever pray thee;
Think on thy pity and thy love unswerving,
Not my deserving.

By Johann
Heermann; tr. Robert Bridges

Tonight’s Sky

Planets: Saturn, Mars, Jupiter, and Venus are visible this month. Venus is the morning star now and shines brightly in the east just before the sunrise. Get up some morning early enough to peer out an eastern facing window and if the clouds have been blown away, you should see Venus, one very bright “star,” announcing the rising of the sun.

The Moon: Full on March 14th

Constellations: Orion is getting farther into the west, and in another month, we will find him slipping away for another season. I love Orion. I miss his shining belt during the summer months. Virgo, Leo, Cancer, Gemini, and Taurus are riding the ecliptic this month. The ecliptic is the path the sun, moon and planets take through the night sky.

Messier Marathon: The MM is coming up around the time of the Equinox because it is when we can see the most in our night sky. Our mission? To tour as many of the possible 110 deep-space objects in the Messier Catalog, which were originally inventoried by the French astronomer Charles Messier in 1774. We will spend the evening looking at star clusters, nebulae, and galaxies and an assortment of sky objects. If you have access to an astronomy club, join them for a night time of telescope fun. Starts at sun set and goes until dawn (or whenever you give out).


My New Baby: Meade ETX 125PE

My telescope has arrived. I’ve saved my money for birthdays and Christmases, Valentines Days and anniversaries until I finally had what I needed to buy my dream ‘scope. It arrived on Friday. Yeah! The tripod had a broken leg. Oh, no! They are sending another one…























My Meade ETX

On the Farm

We have had a couple of new calves this week. New life is exciting! It also keeps the farmer busy going up to check the expecting mamas—all hours of the day and night. One cow was due soon, so hubby brought her over to the pasture where we could more easily watch her, and when he went to check on her, she was dead! We do not know why. She was one of the daughters of the cow we called Twin Mama because she always threw twins.

We also have a small show calf that was having problems with bloating. The vet came three times and finally she inserted a filter—a tube “screwed” into his side that has a hole in it so that the extra gases could escape from his stomach. Even though it must have hurt terribly, the calf seemed to be greatly relieved by no longer having all the gas built up in his stomach, which was making it very hard for him to breathe.

Mud season has arrived in full force. This is not good for the new babies. We’d rather have cold weather. My floors would rather have cold weather, too, since less tracks into the house when the ground is frozen!

Farming is not for the faint of heart.



















Our new calf

Cats and More Cats

I should soon qualify as a veterinary cat assistant: India has a UTI and I’ve been giving her Clavamox; Ruffy had blood in her urine, and she, being a barn cat, is on less expensive amoxicillin; Ears has been looking droopy and I’ve been trying to figure out what I should do for him—he did get some eye med for a couple of days because he was not opening it. Oreo had an infection behind one of his ears that started draining a STINKY liquid, so he was on amoxicillin, too.
One night both India and Snowflake decided they wanted to sleep with me. This is unusual because they normally cannot curl up on the same bed without a few paws thrown at each other. All night long I had Snowie sleeping on my feet and India trying to get comfortable at my side. In the morning I determined that the next time they tried to do this I would send them off to sleep next to the big green goddess (otherwise known as the woodstove) so that I can have a better night’s sleep!
















William of Orange resting on the wood pile.

School Days

School is going O.K. Sometimes we all weary of the task (it’s March, you know.) We now open most of our books past the midsection, and once in a while I get a child coming to ask if he can skip a lesson or lab. Yes, it is March.

I’m already starting to make my plans for next year, It will be my daughter’s last year of homeschooling, which reminds me that I need to get those hugs, conversations, and laughter piled thickly into our days. And then I’ll hope that she finds the school of her choice CLOSE TO HOME!

By the way, my daughter has had some fun photos and blog entries this week on Farm Girl.

Blessings to all who visit here!

Blogging

I'm updating my blog. If you see a mess here at any time, just overlook it for a while. If I don't seem to get it fixed, let me know. Maybe my computer doesn't "see" the problem! I thought I'd post a few pictures to make you smile. God is Faithful. Blessings.

















Silly donkey!

Oreo and Willie at play 

Fairview 

For Moira--my dad's cat door. It worked!

My Computer Skills are Showing

I tried to add my daughter's blog to my side bar. You may ask, "What side bar?" Good question. It is now all at the bottome of the page... Sigh.

Jean

Something Worth Reading

Cathy in KY on The Well-Trained Mind boards has a great post:

The Top 10 Reasons You Should Homeschool through High School

Wow. Thanks.

Jean