It was raining this morning which wasn’t in the forecast. I don’t mind at all. I’m so sick and tired of looking at all the brown from this hot dry summer we’ve had. (It was enough rain to make the cows want to take shelter under an ash tree even.)
But it’s August 27th and this rain is a reminder that the clock is ticking. There’s a lot of stuff that has to get done while the ground is dry, from pasture maintenance to getting hay delivered to getting the hog fuel delivered…. This is all stuff that requires dry ground for heavy trucks to drive on, and so yeah the clock is ticking.
It’s all part of what I call the Anxiety of August.
Last year was the first time we turned our attention to our pastures, and wow, it turns out 22 acres is a lot to take care of! You might think, like I did, that’s it’s just grass so hay it or graze it. How hard could it be?
That’s how we thought about it for the first 12 years, but…we were wrong.
For one thing, we have the parts of our land going back to wetland, which we didn’t anticipate, and for another we started learning about the importance of native trees and plants meaning the need for hedgerows and allowing trees to take root. We’ve also learned about the need for soil, not dirt, and the importance of grazing.
And we are much more aware now of the invasive weeds that are a huge and constant threat to our farm, from the tansy ragwort that’s toxic to cows and horses, to the Scotch broom that sprung up when the logging company thinned behind our place…Scotch broom that is making a slow but steady march down the hill towards our place.
Other weeds we battle are Canada thistle which, it turns out, was declared an invasive weed in Washington state in 1850, and bull thistle, as well as the ever present (and destructive) Himalayan blackberry.
Still other invasive weeds have shown up in our garden (from bringing in gravel for our greenhouse) and cow paddock (from bringing in sand for our schooling arena).
So…what does all this look like as far as pasture management is concerned?
It looks like a lot more work than we realized.
It’s pulling tansy and spraying Roundup and brush hogging (aka mowing). It’s figuring out how to do rotational grazing with cows who want to constantly test—and then ignore—your electric fence.
It’s learning you let your horses over graze their pasture, making it an inviting place for weed seeds to take root.
It’s realizing that at some point you are going to have to talk to your neighbor about the weeds they don’t manage that spread seeds on your own land, and accepting that maintaining the weeds on the logging road is going to fall to you because the logging company doesn’t care.
The good news is, we are learning—always learning. And what have we learned?
We realize we need to divide the hayfield with permanent fence to help keep the cows where they should be. (Bonus: That gives us more possibilities for planting hedgerows!)
We are ready to buy our own haying equipment, because relying on others has been a royal PITA. We haven’t done it before due to inflexible work schedules that didn’t allow us to do hay when we needed to, but that will soon change. (YES!!) How does haying help? It keeps the grass cut which encourages more growth.
We’ve learned the weeds are simply going to be an ongoing battle and it will be years before we are the winning side. Simply put, we have to tackle the weeds the best we can knowing this. Last year we spent 95 hours battling tansy ragwort and we took several tons of garbage bags of it to the dump. This year we still had tansy, but probably a third of the amount.
We’ve learned we need to start pasture management in the spring, not after the grass is getting tall.
For now, in 2025, the pastures are kicking our ass-tures because we are so very behind. And this summer’s drought and heat definitely gave the weeds the advantage.
But we will keep learning and striving to do better year after year, because we are farming for a future, and we are in it for the long haul.
And in the evening, you don’t see the sparse grass or the weeds…only the beautiful sky.
My first sighting of Pacific tree frog eggs…the first of many!
Once the weeks-long freeze ended, the Pacific tree frogs came down out of the woods to our wet areas to call out to each other and breed. This has been going on every year since we moved here, and their nightly croaking is music to my ears.
But this is the first year I was moving slow enough to notice frog eggs. Sure, I’ve seen the tadpoles. I go looking for them. But this year I spotted eggs and, once that happened, I found them all over…including along the shoreline of the new pond.
These are the first residents at this fledgling pond, although they won’t live there long. Once the tadpoles morph into frogs, they will make their way back to the woods. And next winter, they will return to our wetlands to start the cycle all over again.
And now these eggs are morphing into teeny tiny tadpoles. I hope you can see that in the photo.
The white specks are the eggs and the black squiggly lines are the teeny tiny starts of tadpoles. How amazing is that??
I’m 60 years old and only just figuring out something that has been going on around me almost my whole life. What else have I been missing out on? Whatever it is, I hope I discover it soon. Because I heart nature!
And that’s it for now.
Photo of Pacific tree frog on a glove was taken by a conservation district worker out here planting trees.
It’s mid-March and the annual bird migration has begun. Around here, the robins returned in February, and I thought I saw a turkey vulture. As the weeks go by, I will hear plenty of different types of birdsong in the woods, letting me know the seasonal residents have returned and are ready to breed.
But this migration took on new meaning yesterday. Here’s why…
After feeding the cows, I happened to catch a glimpse of movement out of the corner of my eye. I looked up and I saw about a dozen barn swallows flying overhead. At first, I was excited because I thought it was “our” barn swallows returning for the summer. But they just kept flying and I realized, “Oh my gosh. They’re still migrating. They are headed somewhere farther north than our farm.”
All of a sudden it hit me and I was awestruck: Those birds are exhausted and hungry and anxious to be home. They had already travelled thousands of miles to get to where I was standing and they had farther to go. I was watching the wonder of nature play out before my very eyes.
I spent some time pondering why this sighting caused such awe in me. I’ve watched geese migrate. I’ve watched Turkey vultures meander south. I’ve seen the swallows gathering to head south in the fall.
But I’ve never before seen a flock of migrating birds near the end of their journey. It gives me chills even thinking about it now because this wonder of nature goes on around us all the time. This migration has been going on long before we were here and I hope and pray it goes on after we’re gone.
Seeing that those birds working so hard to fulfill their destiny despite everything makes me that much more committed to doing what I can do to help by fighting light pollution, planting native plants, and choosing organic (because pesticide use kills off the insects the birds like the barn swallows eat)…just to name a few.
And seeing that wonder reminds me once again just how much beauty there is to be seen all around us if we slow down and pay attention.
May you also witness a wonder today.
That’s all for now.
Barn swallow photo by Mike Kit: https://www.pexels.com/photo/barn-swallow-on-wooden-stick-17326952/
In my work world, where I make online classes to teach people business writing skills, I constantly preach slowing down.
Why do I preach slowing down? Because a lot of sloppy business writing happens when people are just going too fast. We have this cult of busy-ness in our society that says we have to always be doing and so we’re dashing off emails willy nilly and hurrying through writing blog posts and hurrying through all kinds of writing at work. And then we don’t communicate clearly and we only make more work for ourselves.
So I’m constantly recommending to people that they slow down. I even wrote a blog post on ways to slow down your life so you can slow down your writing your work.
For me, I’ve long prided myself on adhering to not being sucked into that cult of busy-ness. Back when clients wanted me to use instant messenger, I quickly learned that no, that was just too distracting. And then later it was Slack and I said no to that too. I ignored work emails during evening and weekends.
But then with some health issues I’ve been going through, I figured out that I never applied that principle to my life on the farm. As prideful as I was about not being caught up in corporate craziness in my work world, I just took that cult of busy-ness and I made it how I approach the farm instead, with the cows and the horses and the garden and the dogs and the chickens and everything else that we are trying to get going here starting a small farm.
And then I had my awakening.
I’ve been suffering from chronic nausea for years—literally since we bought this place—and so I finally met with a naturopath to see what help I could get. She listened to me talk for about 20 minutes. Then she looked at me and told me she could tell just by listening to me that I spend all my time in fight or flight and no time in rest and digest.
Does your stomach ever knot up when you hear a big truth being spoken and you know in your core that it’s true? Yeah. That’s what happened.
Her recommendation was so simple. She suggested that I sit down to eat (something I don’t do unless my husband is home) and then I stay sitting for 20 minutes. That is my rest and digest.
Oh my gosh. That one change means I haven’t had nausea since the day of my appointment with her. And I have an appetite again for the first time in years.
This is a huge change in my life. Except it’s not the only change. It’s bigger than that.
Why? Because now this turns into self-examination. I have to look at why do I have to be so busy, why do I have to be so productive, and it gets into this lack of self-worth and the fact that I have to be doing things all the time to prove that I have value.
I said above that I avoided this in my work world, but that wasn’t always true. There was a time when I was part of the cult of busy-ness, carrying around my Blackberry (remember those?) and keeping it next to the bed so I was answering emails at 6:00 a.m. I was a self-employed single mom and people called me the Energizer Bunny because I was always busy doing things, like being the Cub Scout den leader and running and cooking from scratch. And my sense of self-worth came from being that busy. (I likely did some damage to my kids too because of all that, but that’s another story.)
As the kids got older, I managed to step away from that, to recognize I didn’t want to be part of the corporate craziness. But all I did was step into applying the same principles of long to-do lists and days that are far too full to our farm life instead.
So it’s a bigger journey than learning how to slow down and rest and digest because it’s a journey that involves learning to love myself. (Oh my gosh, it’s even hard to type those words.) I have to learn to believe myself worthy, learn to believe myself lovable, even if I’m not getting a bunch of stuff done.
This drive to prove my worth through productivity and long to-do lists has been my experience my whole life. And maybe one of the biggest lessons I’m going to learn from being on the farm is to finally get to a point of acceptance with myself that I’m OK as I am even if I only get three things done in a day instead of 33.
It’s only when slowing down that you see a spider catch and eat a fly!
Lucky for me, this new awareness I have of my surroundings will help me slow down. Whether it’s learning about the bird sounds around me with my bird app, noticing a salamander on the trail, or hanging out with a newborn calf, this life offers countless opportunities to slow down and savor (and even to spot a spider catching a fly on the underside of a daisy!).
So, yes, I have reasons and opportunities to slow down, but still, I will struggle with justifying it.
Now, why am I telling you all of this? Because whoever you are and wherever you are in your life, I want you to also know that you have value and worth, even if you go against the cultural norm and you slow down your life. Maybe you aren’t trying to start a small farm, but you’re doing something else, and you are okay if you go at a reasonable pace. You are okay if you quit social media and always being busy. You are okay to slow down.
Because—like me—you too are lovable and worthy, despite your to-do list.
I was too young to understand the situation, but I did understand turning off lights. And I already had an inkling that we were messing with our planet. Hence my childhood environmental awakening.
From somewhere I got the idea to make a lightbulb award. The idea was to give the award to a family member when they turned off the lights when leaving a room.
So, I made an award, either drawing it or using construction paper, I don’t recall, and I put string on it so it could be hung on a doorknob or hook. I was proud of that award! I thought it was awesome!
I told my family about the award and how they could win it. Then I waited for my family to turn off lights so they could hang the award on their bedroom door.
And I waited.
And I waited.
After a few days of being the only one who turned off lights and therefore the only one who had the award displayed on her bedroom door, I gave up. In other words, I was the only one who gave a &^%.
That was disheartening for a child. I remember my disappointment as if it just happened yesterday, not 50 years ago.
Here I am all these decades later and I still have a lingering sense of isolation, of being someone who is alone in her passion for this planet.
On the other hand, I know that’s not true. So many people are speaking out and encouraging us to do the right thing, from fighting light pollution to planting native plants. I read their books. I know they care. And I do what I can do.
But it’s hard to shake those childhood experiences. I feel isolated still.
Not Any More
But that was then. And now I say no more. I have decided that this year, 2025, I will shake off that disappointment and seek out people who are like me, people who care and who want to make small steps to bring about big change. I have a list of people to reach out to. I will ask them to connect me with others who think like me. I will start attending county and city meetings to speak out.
It’s empowering to make this commitment to myself, to say no, the message I internalized in the 1970s was a false message and to act counter to it.
Looking back on it now, I think I had two kinds of awakenings as a child. The first was to learn that there were steps I could take to make a difference in the world. The second was that most people don’t give a rat’s ass, not even my own family.
And this is the year I prove to myself that my second “awakening” was wrong. Those who care are out there. I will find them. Are you one of them? Let me know. Let’s do this.
It’s January and I saw the kestrel is paired up today while walking the dogs. We installed a nesting box for her three years ago and she has used it faithfully every year since.
That got me thinking about what’s next, because nature is a sort of calendar for us since we moved here. One event leads to another. It’s a wonderful, peaceful way of tracking time, when we can slow down enough to pay attention to it.
Later this month we’ll start hearing the Pacific treefrogs in our wet pasture areas (and our new pond, we hope!). Sometimes the noise is so loud it’s hard to hear someone talking to you. We love it!
February brings the robins back and it is also what I call salamander season, when we have to start watching where we walk on the logging road. Stopping to watch salamanders slowly meander across my path will never get old!
April is also when the migrating birds start showing up in the woods behind our property. The bird song gets louder as we move into May and the Merlin Bird ID app installed on my phone starts telling me I’m hearing 20 or more birds at once. It’s mind blowing!
Then as we progress into summer, it’s bees and butterflies and dragonflies.
Admittedly, summer is kind of a blur because we are so busy, and it brings with it invasive weeds to hunt down and dispatch. But it also means baby swallows. The violet green swallows usually only hatch one batch but the barn swallows easily do two and sometimes three. It is a delight to see them in their nests (barn swallows) or sticking their heads out of the nesting boxes we’ve installed for the violet green swallows.
Once the nestlings are fledglings and all are flying around, we see the swallows start to gather in groups which tells us they are getting ready to fly south in the late summer, early fall. That’s when we start to hear the crickets and grasshoppers in the pastures and the bird song in the woods starts to quiet down as those birds fly off and start their fall migration.
That’s also about the time I start walking through spiderwebs when walking the dogs in the woods. I haven’t yet figured out the seasonal significance of that one!
By October, it’s quiet as nature starts settling down for a good winter’s rest. We are usually busy doing our winter prep, from storing hay to spreading gravel to stacking firewood to canning. So I look forward to that rest as much as nature does, I think.
It’s not an exact calendar by any means. I certainly couldn’t schedule a work meeting or dentist appointment using it. But it is fun to be dialed into the world going on around me, because nature doesn’t need to know the date on the calendar. Nature knows what needs to happen when. And paying attention to that grounds me and slows me down, especially in winter as I’m learning to appreciate the restful time of dark.
Wherever you live, I hope you get the benefit of nature’s calendar too, and you find some joy in it.
If Christmas left you exhausted and broke, this post is for you. Why? Because we have a new way of doing the holidays that you might like.
OK, actually it’s an old way. But we’ve made it new again and we want to share it with you.
First, let’s be clear that I am writing from a place of faith, but you don’t need to celebrate Christmas as a religious holiday to benefit from our approach.
This approach can help anyone to slow down and get more out of the holiday season, whether you celebrate in a faith-based or secular way.
So, let’s get to the point, shall we? Here’s how we slow down the holidays in 6 steps…
Step 1: Make Christmas Day the beginning, not the end
So many people treat December 25th like some kind of race to the finish line. And on the 26th, it’s like they have a massive holiday hangover. They can’t wait to put the decorations away and be done with the whole thing. Stop doing that!!
December 25th isn’t the end date. It’s the beginning. Christmas is a season. In the old days, it was 12 days long (hence the song The 12 Days of Christmas). Christmas ended with Epiphany on January 6th.
Today the Church celebrates it as an octave, meaning it ends on whatever Sunday is closest to January 6th. But at home, keep the party going!
“What?” you’re thinking. “I’m so sick of Christmas by then that I just want to be done.”
Right. Because you left out the most important part: Advent.
Step 2: Celebrate Advent
For Christians, Advent is the time of preparing for Christ’s coming into the world. It used to be a lot like Lent, in fact, complete with fasting.
It’s not like that anymore, but it is still a time to prepare. And what does that mean in a secular world? Even if you’re not preparing your heart in a spiritual way, you can prepare your home slowly.
To everyone who puts up a Christmas tree the day after Thanksgiving, just stop! The tree goes up for Christmas, not Advent. In the old days, the tree went up on Christmas Eve. Even in Bob’s family, his parents set up the tree on Christmas Eve after the kids went to bed.
Why? Because it is a CHRISTMAS tree. You put it up at Christmas and leave it up until the end of the Christmas season.
At our house, with constantly changing work schedules, we can’t count on both being home Christmas Eve, so we set it up a few days before, on whatever day works. And it stays up until January 7th.
Step 3: Decorate over time
This really helped me to take the pressure off when I started doing this. Rather than throw up all the decorations all at once, spread it out. As long as you have all the decorations up by Christmas Eve, you’re good! At our house, the nativity goes up the first Sunday of Advent (empty: see below). I put out my Santa collection on Dec. 6th, the feast of St. Nicholas. We put lights up around mid-month, again depending on work schedules. (We currently have cats that mean we don’t decorate as much as we used to.)
Then we put the decorations away slowly. We leave the nativity, tree and lights up until January 6th or 7th, but everything else gets put away a little at a time, in reverse order.
Step 4: Save the sweets
We don’t eat Christmas cookies until Christmas. We bake them ahead of time and they stay in the freezer. This makes Christmas seem more like Christmas because it’s the waiting and the prize.
Before I started doing this, I’d bake cookies and we’d eat them all before Christmas. There was one Christmas Eve when my kids were little that I was baking cookies that night because we didn’t have anything left to put out for Santa! Crazy!!
Now we have the anticipation of knowing we will break out our delicious cookies on the special day.
Step 5: Spread out the gift giving
If you’ve ever seen kids do the crash and burn after a frenzied Christmas morning opening gifts, you’ve wondered if there is a better way. And there is: Spread the gifts out over the 12 days of Christmas.
These aren’t big gifts. At our house, they’ve taken the place of stockings. We give our big gifts on Christmas, then little ones, one per day, until January 6th. But you could spread out the big gifts too!
Once you’ve spread out the gift giving and there’s one every day, you will never go back to the crazy way.
Step 6: Celebrate the end of Christmas
We had our first 12th Night party in 2022 and wondered why we had never done it before. It was so much fun to celebrate the end of the Christmas season with a party!
You don’t have to have a party, but marking the end of the Christmas season in some way will help you to not feel the burnout of treating Christmas like a one-day event.
Bonus Step 7: If you’re religious…
If you are celebrating Advent and Christmas as Christians, rethink your Nativity set. I used to be like everyone else and set up the whole thing at once. Now, the Nativity is set up on the first Sunday of Advent with only the animals in it and the shepherd to the side watching his sheep.
On December 17, we start the O Antiphons and we set Mary, Joseph and the donkey out to start making their way toward the manger. Every day we move them a little closer.
On Christmas Eve, we add the Christ child and the angel, we bring the shepherd closer, and we start the three Magi on their journey toward the manger. Every day, the magi move a little closer.
Just making this one change when my kids were young really helped us to refocus on Advent and slow down the whole process of “rushing Christmas.”
Congrats! Now you’re counter cultural!
I hope you follow at least some of this advice so you can slow down and enjoy the holiday season. And if you do, guess what? You’ll get to be counter cultural too! Why? Because you won’t be part of the rat race dashing towards the imaginary finish line of December 25th. You’ll slow down and savor the season. You’ll probably spend less money and eat healthier too. That’s what we’ve experienced once we took the “rush” out of it.
We evolved to be seasonal beings. We have a need to be in tune with the light and the dark, but also with feasting and fasting. When we can celebrate the Christmas season slowly, with the anticipation ahead of time and the closure at the end of it, we can truly treat it as a special time. Then we return to ordinary time refreshed and renewed, not worn out and broke.
Doesn’t that sound better?? It is, I promise.
P.S. That photo? That’s the centerpiece we made this year for Christmas dinner. We have time to spend on it because we aren’t busy rushing around. It’s fun. 🙂
We had a lot of rain and the pond that is the cornerstone of the wetland restoration project filled up…and overflowed. But I guess that’s the nature of a wetland! (You can see a video of the pond full of water here.)
To be honest, it is shocking to see how much water is in that pond, yet still overflowing. And the swale leading into it is full too. Yet, we still have standing water. Just think how much waterlogged ground we’d have if so much of it wasn’t captured in the pond!
Part of the swale. The swale goes over a gravel road that was installed for access to the project in order to haul out all the dirt. It’s called an armored crossing in wetland speak.
Full of water, it looks like it has always been there, even though the 500 native trees and shrubs have yet to grow. It has definitely become a happy place for us. We love to visit it each day, and we are anticipating migrating waterfowl will also be visiting it soon. (You can see it without the water here.)
This is where the swale goes into the pond. You can see all the standing water around the pond.
Personally, as much as I love birds, I’m also looking forward to seeing salamanders since they are one of my favorite creatures. We have them all over the farm and the garden, and we see them when we hike and ride the logging road. But I hope to see several of them moving in to the wetland area.
So for now, we sit back and enjoy, and wait for trees to grow and wildlife to show up!
We have a huge project happening on our 22 acres: a wetland restoration project. And not just any wetland restoration, but the first for our conservation district. So it’s a big deal for them too.
This has been a year in the making, although all we’ve had to do is sit around and wait…and open and close gates for the many visitors who have been out to survey, discuss, measure, dig, etc.
Now it’s October, 2024, and the final stage is taking place as 500 native trees and shrubs get planted as I type this.
What is this wetland restoration project?
Our 22 acres sits in a river valley. It was tiled and drained at some point in its 134-year history, but we don’t know when. All we know is the tiles have been breaking down over the past 12 years that we’ve been here, returning parts of our property to the wetland it used to be.
We had two choices: spend a lot of money to redo the drain tiles, or learn to live with the wetlands.
Since our goal is to farm for a future–meaning creating a place where farming and nature coexist in a way that benefits the planet–learning to live with the wetlands made the most sense. We are part of a voluntary stewardship program, learning to run our small farm in the most responsible way. That made it easy to talk to our local conservation district about the standing water issues and what we might do other than fence the livestock off. They offered to find the funds to restore a wetland on our property. That would help with some of our standing water issues, and provide critical habitat too. Of course we said yes!
From wetland mess to wetland restored
The half acre area that is being restored is technically wetland on geographical maps. For us as the property owners, it was simply a weedy overgrown mess that we couldn’t even walk through due to a neighbor getting his huge tractor stuck there—twice–and needing an even bigger tractor to pull his out. The tractor tires left huge ruts in the ground, making it uneven to the point of dangerous. So that part of our land sat and Oregon ash trees and Pacific crabapples sprouted and we thought we’d just let it be since we couldn’t use it.
I guess you could say it was kind of, sort of a wetland, but far from ideal.
But now…now it’s something! After months of meetings and budget approvals and paperwork and discussions and tours, the plan was finalized and the project began.
While the ground was still dry in September, the contractor dug out a pond and swales and hauled away 60 yards of dirt. He placed felled trees and brush piles in strategic places for habitat. Native grasses were planted in and around the pond and swales, and the area was fenced to keep livestock out but let wildlife in.
As the rain has started to fall, the pond has started to fill. And now 500 native shrubs and trees are being planted as the final step.
From weedy mess to wetland reality
What used to look like a weedy mess is starting to look like the wetland it used to be. We walk out there every day now to see the grass seed sprout and the water collect in the pond. It’s amazing to have this project happening right here, right now on our property.
To see what it looks like today, check out this video. (In the future, I plan to have a longer video showing every stage…and of course we will be tracking progress in the years to come.)
It has been a warm fall so far and we were able to put off the first fire of the season…until today. The chill this morning was too much to bear, so we cranked up the wood stove.
Our farmhouse was built in 1890. It doesn’t have central heating, unless you count the wood stove. And since our house is only 1,293 square feet, the wood stove works.
It Takes More Than a Fire
As much as we enjoy the wood heat (best heat ever!!), however, it’s not without its concerns. Wood smoke contributes to air pollution, so we burn as responsibly as we can…starting with waiting as long as we can to start using the wood stove.
And we burn clean wood.
And we make sure our fire is burning cleanly. The photo with no smoke is our chimney. You could see the heat, but no smoke, this morning. The other photo is our neighbor’s chimney. It smokes like that every single day. Some days the smoke is so thick it blankets the valley. It’s frustrating.
Our fire doesn’t burn clean all the time. Sometimes I’ll start the fire or stoke it, then walk outside to do a chore or walk the dogs or something, and I will see the chimney smoking. When that happens, I head straight back into the house to deal with the fire until I know it is a clean burn.
There’s a saying: “Wood heat warms you twice.” Spend enough time stacking wood and getting it from point A to point B and you’ll realize it warms you many times over…with sweat.
The wood stove puts out wonderful heat, but it does take work. Obviously we have to stack the wood, cut the kindling, stock the porch and maintain the bricks and gasket of the wood stove. We have the chimney sweep check it every three years.
And it makes a bit of a mess. Now that we are burning again, I will be sweeping up dirt and little pieces of wood that get tracked in, despite all my efforts. Plus it seems to lead to more dust in the house, and we have smoke damage from those rare occasions when we have a down draft and I don’t catch it in time.
Still, it’s cold outside, and our little wood stove warms our little farmhouse without too much effort.
And we do it in the best way we can, to keep the air as clean as we can. Because we care.
