He's laughing with us, not at us

So for anyone who doesn't believe that God has a sense of humour, you should read my last post. It was a lovely thing about taking time and enjoying life around me.

Giggle*Snort*Guffaw

Sigh.

Well, that didn't work so well. The summer ended up being a little crazier than expected. Henry was working full time at a job that wasn't a great fit for him. I was participating in three farmers' markets a week, which meant Moses was in daycare three days a week as well. It was a little nuts. Granted, we have learned from this process. Two markets a week is good, and we can handle that. Three seems to put us over the edge at this point in time.

The fall was busy with three times the bulk orders as last year, plus a Christmas rush. As well, we raised turkeys for Christmas and some chickens for our own freezer. We made a decision not to pursue a breeding herd at this time, but it is something we'd like to do once we are living on our own farm. I am not complaining about any of that as the increased sales were a welcome surprise. In the middle of all that, on my birthday in fact, I got this surprise as well:



Okay, so it wasn't a complete surprise, but I really didn't think that October was going to be the month. In fact, I was so sure that I was NOT pregnant that the day before when Henry and Moses took me out for lunch for my birthday I had a beer. (God really does have a sense of humour).

Thankfully, we seem to have established a kind of equilibrium. We are still busy, but things seem to be progressing at a pace with which we can deal. Henry is now teaching which is a much better fit. A full-time position may be opening up this summer, and we are praying that he gets it. Work on his thesis is progressing as well, and a rough draft should be submitted by mid-February. We were asked (after I asked to be asked) to participate in a really good market once a week, and if all goes well, we will hopefully be invited to participate weekly in the summer. Ideally, if we attend that market and we remain at our other favorite market, we should make at least as much if not more than we did last year at three markets. (Yes, we are still working out the logistics of a very pregnant woman loading and unloading coolers). I also continue to waffle about whether to find out the gender (final decision date February 19).

In between all that, we hosted my in-laws and parents for Christmas. Have had time to play in the snow. Do a billion and one puzzles. Dance. Play "hockey stick" in the basement. Relax.

It's nice.

Smelling the roses

Henry and I went for a bike ride with Moses in the trailer tonight, and I was reminded why I love living here. We saw Canada geese crossing the road ahead of us. I nearly impaled myself by stopping to quickly when I saw a beaver swimming in the creek. We could hear spring peepers and bullfrogs. We could taste gnats and mosquitoes.

Okay, so the last one isn't really high on my list of favourites.

I find that far too often Henry and I get too busy to actually enjoy living in the country. We bought a secondhand canoe last year, which we've wanted for years. Sadly, we really only took it out twice. There are three lakes within a five minute drive of our house. We should be canoeing every day or at least once a week. I don't know how to make more time to enjoy our landscape. There are so many pressures of work and farming and childcare. We try though, and sometimes we're successful.

A few weeks ago when we had some of our first gorgeous spring weather, we went on a whim to Algonquin Park. A few metres into the park, we saw a moose. We hiked a small boardwalk trail and then went to the visitors' centre. It was better than I imagined. There were animals on display and tons of other exhibits. For days afterwards, Moses said, "See moose? See wolf?"

I stink at keeping promises that I make to myself, but I'll still vow to get out and enjoy the creation around me on a regular basis.

Prayers needed

I feel nauseous about this. A friend of mine from high school is in the hospital with her son, Ike(asaurus). He was born 13 weeks early after Kari had been on bedrest for months. They FINALLY got to bring him home. He is now back in the hospital, seriously ill, and intubated. She tells the whole story here: haikuoftheday.com.

I have taken that ride on the hospital bed. I have been kicked out of the room while my baby was being intubated. There are no words to describe how awful it is. He is having a bronchoscopy tomorrow morning, and I really want you all to pray for Ike, for Kari, and for her husband and two older kids.

She seems to have a supportive community about her, and I think that's HUGE. Her friends have set up a web site for the family here. I'm glad they can care for her so she can care for Ike.

(To top it all off, her husband lost his job about a week ago - there go the benefits. I am so thankful for national healthcare in Canada, and no matter what the problems with it are, I can't imagine having to worry about costs while caring for your sick child. I think it is inhumane that anyone might be denied or avoid medical treatment because they cannot pay for it).

In Memory of Hannah

In May, I was participating in the Great Diaper Hunt contest. (It's fun, and hey, I won a diaper bag, a diaper, and some other stuff in November). When I came across an entry from one of the sponsors mentioning that she just found out her son was stillborn. I went to her blog and began reading.

I was immediately struck by so many things. While the basics of our story are different, I feel like our responses are pretty much the same.

For those of you who don't know, our daughter Hannah died when she was five months old. The short version is that she was born with an annular pancreas, which means her pancreas was wrapped around the exit to her stomach. Because of this, her intestines never developed properly. In order to make sure that she received adequate nutrition, she was given TPN, an intravenous nutrition. The downside to TPN is that it can wreck your liver, which it did in Hannah's case, and she died of liver failure. (Side note: Become an organ donor. No excuses).

Shortly after her death, while we were in the heaviest part of grieving*, I began to read books on loss in order to see if I could find something to help me make sense of it all. I couldn't find anything. As a Christian, I was angry and frustrated and sad and everything else, but I didn't blame God. I knew God shared my sadness and in the new earth I wouldn't have to deal with this. (One of the cards I treasure was from a friend who wrote that God was weeping with us, and if you are ever looking for words to send to a grieving Christian parent, those are helpful. Do not, I repeat, DO NOT tell them that their child is better off because now they are with God. That is NOT helpful). All the books I ended up reading had nothing to do with how I felt. In fact, I have never really come across anyone who has grieved in a similar manner to me, until I began reading Heather's blog.

Here is a Christian woman who has lost a child. She is angry and sad but she knows hope too. In fact, this post was what made me finally write about her. (I should clarify. I have never contacted Heather nor do I know her in person. I just admire how she writes about her grief and loss, but I will be sending her a link to this post). I remember so many of her emotions, and I've heard so many of her comments. Her responses have been almost exactly what I've thought or said.

So, to Heather I want to say, it does get easier, but sometimes that makes it harder. Your memories are so few that you desperately want to hold onto them. It's scary when they fade a little. The unexpected holidays are the hardest. I was surprised at how hard New Years was. Hannah's whole life was lived in 2005, so how could it be 2006, a year in which she never existed. You are right to accept joy. If the future holds more children for you, they will never replace Sawyer (as you know), but their laugh provides healing that nothing else can.

On another side note, I struggled with prayer for a long time after Hannah's death. While she was in the hospital, I prayed like I never prayed before. (During our time there, I felt like we got several messages straight from God. I was in the washroom on the ICU floor and carved in to the toilet roll holder was the word "prayer"). But after she died, I stopped praying because how could such honest and open prayer be denied. This year I attended a Bible study at my church, and we spent several months on prayer. It was during Holy week** that I read this post, and I had a major revelation about prayer. God lost his son, and Jesus prayed that it wouldn't happen. How awful it must have been to know that you had to deny such a request. A request that I'm sure was not easy to deny. I've been able to see my loss in a new light.

*Shortly after Hannah died, Henry and I went on a trip to learn how to breathe again. While hiking in Maine, we had a discussion about the difference between grieving and mourning. I think that grieving is an immediate act with a timeline, and it does come to an end. Mourning is neverending. We will forever miss Hannah.

**As yet another side note, when I was pregnant with Hannah, I really related to Christmas - the joyful expectation of birth. With Moses, it was Easter - the joy that comes after loss.

What Not to Wear: The Farm Edition

I've always said that you don't have to dress badly just because you live on a farm. I've tried to avoid wearing mud (or worse) encrusted boots to the grocery store. If I go out for lunch with some friends and then have to do chores afterwards, I bring clothes to change into.


Sometimes, I think I take it too far though.*


You don't want to know what's on my shoe.

*In my defense, Henry said that the paths were fine, and we were planning on going out to dinner afterwards.

Guilty

Tonight I ate pizza sitting on my bathroom floor while Moses splashed in the bathtub.

In my defense, I've been trying to clean out the fridge before we leave in a couple of days, and since Moses is teething and up a lot at night, my brain was too tired to come up with a concoction using pineapple, refried beans, and yogurt. To my credit, I didn't feed any pizza to Moses, and I did add frozen green peppers from my garden to it before I cooked it.


Since he started on solids at about six months, I've been very conscience of how and what we eat. Particularly the "how." When I feed Moses, I try to not do anything else. No checking email, reading, etc. I want to set in motion good habits now. I must admit that as cute as he is, sometimes it's really hard not to do anything else. When Henry has night class, the conversation is somewhat lacking. Tonight, Moses was ready for bed at the same time as the pizza. Since he hasn't been sleeping very well, I wanted to get him in bed as soon as I could. I also didn't want to eat cold pizza. And so, I sat on the bathroom floor.

The "what" we eat is a bit better. (Granted, we were at a Slow Food Toronto event this weekend promoting our beef, and I probably would have been beaten over the head with an outdoor-oven baked baguette if they knew I ate frozen pizza). My freezer and my slow cooker are probably my two favorite appliances these days. I love that I have green peppers, tomatoes, and swiss chard from my garden stashed in the freezer. (I've eaten all the frozen strawberries). Now that I have a freezer full of beef, I am a lot more experimental in my cooking. I'll pull out a roast, look up recipe ideas on the internet, and try it out. It's much easier to decide on dinner when there is a lot of good food in the house, but sometimes a greasy pizza just hits the spot, even if it does come with a hefty dose of guilt and heartburn.

Now it's your turn; we just launched our freezer beef web site: www.fieldsparrowfarms.ca, and I want to post some good beef recipes on there for our customers. What is your favorite recipe? Post it here, and I'll try them out and post them (with credit to you) on our web site!

Dropping fast

So this morning which started out with such promise - a new blog, sunshine, etc. - has gone downhill alarmingly quickly. So downhill that I am now sitting with a spoon, peanut butter (the ground up peanut stuff) and certified organic fair trade chocolate chips.

I pay my bills online and did so today. Unfortunately, I sent the payment for my credit card to an old credit card that is no longer active. That means I now get to spend several hours phoning back and forth between my bank and the credit card company while my money floats along in outer space. ARGH! I hate it when I'm stupid

In farming news, my husband is perusing the Gencor catalogue and comparing Angus bulls' rates to a bull we're interested in buying. We're also trying to think of a name for our personal farm enterprise, but I haven't really had anything click. H is partial to bird names. Suggestions?