Random pix

Here are a few random pix from the last couple of weeks.

Frosty sunrise. We've been cold, but there's no snow. Looks like we won't have a white Christmas, to the intense disappointment of the kids.

Older Daughter festoons the ceiling with paper rings and snowflakes she made.

The result was quite festive.

While making survival cookies, Lydia decided to, uh, help.

I took the seed corn down. It had been drying over the pantry for the last few weeks, but it was fully dry by now.

Dried corn is easy to remove from the cob. Just rub it back and forth and it comes right off.

All I got was about half a pint of seed, but it's good fresh seed and I'll plant it next year. (Hopefully we'll have better weather.)

Lydia outside on a cold but sunny day.

Is this dog gorgeous or what?

Bumper sticker seen in Spokane:

Plowed field with just the barest hint of snow, waiting for spring.

Our county seat is a logging town. Here's proof.

While the girls do their weekly volunteer work at the animal shelter, I hole up in a pretty little coffee shop that also sells home decor. Makes for a nice atmosphere to get some writing done.

Christmas ornament picked up when the girls were very young and we'd gone to the Oregon Coast Aquarium.

Winter is when the turkeys start hanging around.

The hens always look so surprised when they pass through. "Whoa! Those are BIG chickens!"

A pretty tableau Older Daughter set up by the window.

One day while paralleling a train, we saw a long white plastic-covered... something. It almost looked like a wing. What could it be?

Well, turns out that's exactly what it was.

Guess planes have to be transported somehow!

Progress has been a little slow on replacing the carpet after our church fire. We won't be back in the sanctuary in time for Christmas Eve services. No matter, we'll worship down in the basement as we've been doing for the last few weeks.

But the walls have been painted, giving everything a fresh clean look. First time in decades, apparently! (Please excuse the black spots. They're on my camera lens, not the wall.)

Chicken on the hay bales in the barn.

Saw this sign in Spokane for a suggested Christmas gift. No thanks, we have a better gift that lasts forever, given at Christmas.

Sunset.

Moonrise.

A pond on the horizon!

One of the biggest issues we have here on the homestead is water. We have abundant, delicious water... but it's more than 600 feet down inside the earth. Our well pump is aging and powered by electricity. When we lose power, we lose water.

The lack of easily obtainable water has been a constant concern for us. In fact, it's our biggest Achilles heel. We've discussed endless options for bringing that well water to the surface, but every option -- wind, solar, mechanical means -- is wildly out of our price range. We finally invested in a 1500 gallon water tank (as yet uninstalled) to be filled by the well (when power is available) or roof runoff (when power is not available).

1500 gallons of water is fine for household use and with care will last us through a few dry months... but it's not nearly enough water for livestock (who can suck down 50 gallons a day) or for irrigating the garden. What we need, in short, is a pond.

And rather unexpectedly, the opportunity just came up. Don has a friend who is out of work. This fellow operates heavy equipment and has the skills and time to come dig us a big hole in the ground, and he'll do so for a bargain price. Whoo-hoo, we're going to have a stock pond!

The pond will be filled with roof runoff from the barn. We'll have a drain outlet leading to a natural swale in our pasture, feeding the pond on a nearby property. (You can see the other pond in the distance in the photo below.)

Don did numerous calculations and came away with plans for a pond 50x50 feet, shallow at one end and ten feet deep at the other. Water at that depth won't freeze, which means we can pump water from the bottom for the livestock all winter if necessary. Since the pond will be right next to the garden (where the men are standing in the photo above), we can also pump water to irrigate the garden. We can stock the pond with fish for an additional food source. We can even use it for swimming and skating.

Don's friend is anxious to start the project and will come out next week to dig. Don and I are so tickled with this unexpected development that we're practically sputtering incoherently. A pond! What an incredible addition to the farm!

Linked!

Rob over at PACNW Righty gave me a lovely book review for The Simplicity Primer.

Thanks Rob!

Sixteen candles

Today Older Daughter turned sixteen! Where HAVE the years gone?

We bought a cake for her a few days ago at Costco, pre-made exactly as you see it. The woman who checked us out took a look at the cake and asked, "Is this for an office party or do you really have a birthday?" I smiled and replied, "We really have a birthday. Our oldest is turning sixteen." It just tickles me pink to have a Christmas child.

Since our weekly potluck was held at our house this week, we had a gathering of neighbors to offer our daughter birthday wishes.

Whoosh! All the candles out in one blow!

In town I saw a car with this highly appropriate bumper sticker:

For a birthday present, Older Daughter wanted to go to a movie theater in Coeur d'Alene with some friends and see a movie, so we did.

Her chosen movie was the latest Sherlock Holmes flick, which they all said was excellent.

While the kids were at the movies, I spent a pleasant couple of hours in a coffee shop around the corner doing some writing on my laptop. Then afterward, I took the kids to a Pizza Hut in an attempt to satisfy those teenage appetites.

Movies in theaters and pizza in a restaurant are rare-to-the-point-of-nonexistent novelties in our family, so this was a treat indeed. Altogether I believe Older Daughter had a very happy birthday!

Memorable Christmases

As a sidenote in this past Sunday's sermon, our pastor said something interesting. Do you realize that the only Christmases that are memorable are the ones with, let us say, "unexpected" developments? But the happy Christmases are the ones we forget.

The context for this remark was what Mary must have thought when told by the angel Gabriel that she would be bearing a child. Mary was smart. She knew very well what could have happened when everyone found out she would be bearing an out-of-wedlock baby. She could have been disgraced. She could have been an outcast. She could even have faced a brutal death by stoning. Certainly this was not your ordinary day! But it was, you must admit, a remarkable one. Ordinary days are forgotten. Remarkable days are not.

Our pastor mentioned the opening line of Anna Karenina: "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."

Similarly, happy Christmases (or any other celebratory event) are thoroughly enjoyable and a blessing in every way, but they're all alike. It's the celebrations where we experience unexpected twists (bad or good) that make them memorable.

For example, when my youngest brother turned 14, my parents threw him a party and my mother indulged in a beautiful store-bought cake for him. It was a magnificent creation. Wanting to surprise him, she kept the cake in its box upstairs in a closet.

When the time came to produce the cake with a dramatic flourish, she slipped upstairs... and a few moments later we heard a blood-curdling SCREAM. Alarmed, we all scrambled upstairs. There we found my mother near tears, with a cake smashed at her feet.

She had picked the cake box up by its edges and after a few steps, the box collapsed in the middle and fell to the floor.

Well, I hate to say it, but we all howled. It was hilariously funny. Being a good sport, my mother and brother scooped the cake remains onto a platter, brought it downstairs, stuck in fourteen candles, and proceeded from there.

But we have never forgotten that cake. I can't remember any other birthday celebration for any of my brothers except that one. All the other celebrations went smoothly, you see, and therefore we forgot about them.

So what kind of "memorable" Christmases (or other celebrations) have you had? Tell us!

Mrs. Clause

True story.

Our pastor and his wife recently attended a private school Christmas pageant (where, they noted, it was delightful to see symbols, decorations, and songs about Christmas, not "winter").

After the pageant was finished and as they left their seats, a child stared at our pastor's wife and said in awe, "Are you Mrs. Clause?"

This gracious and gentle lady replied, "No, I'm not even a distant relative." But apparently the child was no less awed.

Nice to know we go to church with such exalted personages...