September: It's not a dream

I came out of a nice deep sleep the other morning at about my same time...to a faint teasing from the sun...enough sunshine to bring the flower garden which grows outside of our Eastern window out of its restful state...triggering another bright day of photosynthesis. I could hear that May had apparently beaten us to wakefulness, the sound of pitter patter in the hallway, mindfully light on her feet. What does she do with these bits of time with the house to herself...the rest of us still wandering in the land of nod?
As I drank in that satiating few minutes of morning quiet, letting myself slowly come to, I stretched my body, reaching my toes deep under the sheets. Lavender-scented sheets and a slow stretch always bring me some morning euphoria and calm. I guess its that stimulation of the parasympathetic nervous system that brings on such a rich sensation. When I sat up I could see the feet pitter patter again through the crack under our door. Suddenly I had a transcendental realization that what we have is incredible. We own this house and brought two kids into it. It's a proper home, with eastern-facing sunkissed walls in the morning and hallways where we sometimes pitter patter and sometimes run wild from Rich the Dinosaur Dad. I can't believe this is our wakeful life and not a dream state.
Back when we were pregnant with May, living in my folks' basement looking for a farm we could possibly pay off, I was in disbelief that we would be here one day...waking up in OUR house being paid for by our honest work in the field. But at some point when we closed on this property I cashed in my doubts and decided that Rich was right and it COULD be our reality.

And so that morning, I realized that before dropping May off at school, we could write our own Monday morning. Rather than the routine Monday mornings which get a bad rap, May and I could break all the rules and make our favorite fluffly souffle pancakes and surprise the guys with a picnic breakfast amongst the tomatoes in the hoop. The two of us could pop into our rain boots and pitter patter through dewy grass to watch the sheep come to life, the lamb gang rejoining each other after sleeping with their mother ewes throughout the night...all with another sorbet sunrise in the background. We could sneak up on Kapoosh the rooster and his two lady friends who refuse the coop and sleep in the pine tree instead and count how many branches high they sleep (we're very much into counting these kindergarten days). As it would turn out, May was more interested in breakfast at her seat at the table, ruminating over what would happen at school this week. That meant that I got to lazily sip my coffee and daydream along with her, both respectively refueling for another day living the dream. I hope that if this schoolgirl of ours learns anything, it's that "the dream" is what you make it.
What's New:
-Lambing is finally over: All the gals lambed over the course of the summer. All ewe lambs were born until a yearling (young first time mama) successfully lambed a little brown and white ram lamb. It's great news that our flock is growing enough to 'manage' the pasture we rotate them across.
-Market: The field is quite prosperous this time of the year: peppers, tomatoes, salad, winter squash, onions, ginger, and soon beets, carrots, leeks and more greens. Our market booth will continue to abound with these goodies.
-Missing a market this month: We are going to miss the September 17th market for a friend's wedding. We will instead be popping up at the University of Dayton's Flyer Farmers Market on Tuesday September 13th from 2:30-5:30. There are other fantastic vendors there including some Oakwood Market favorites: Little Miami Farms and Stillwater Valley Orchard. We will all pop our tents up in the Kennedy Union Central Mall.
-Kids Market Event: This year, we signed May up for the kids market weekend at Oakwood Farmers Market. So on September 24th we will be running our regular booth while May runs her own booth in the parking lot next door with her 'clay creations' and bookmarks...and to be honest, whatever else she conjures up :). It'll be a fun day.
-We are preparing for fall and winter all the while harvesting our summer goods. We're building 'compost beds' as we did year 1. This is time consuming, but allows us to manage weeds more effectively as the inches of compost smother weed seeds. So long as we don't till or cultivate too deeply, we can get away with multiple years of low weed pressure, and deep layers of thriving soil biology :).