The wind is just howling - the roads slick with a coating of a couple inches of snow and a little bit of ice. I need to go out and feed and water the cows and check on the chickens, but I'm dreading putting myself outside the back door!

Days like today I like to bake bread and make soup. Today I was supposed to drive to a conference in Burlington and is taking a snow day instead. You can't even see the house next door with the white-out conditions.

roasting red peppers

Today I'm taking a little time to roast 10lbs of red peppers, roast a pound of green coffee beans, and make home made ice cream.

For dinner we're having meatloaf and then a carrot cake to celebrate Bob's birthday. So, today is a great cooking and baking day. With the rain and fog outside - it's perfect to hang out in the kitchen.

We're picking up our beef this week. The cow was a very noisy one - so it wasn't so hard to send her away a couple weeks ago.

Well, I'm stumped. I made camembert, kimchi, and caramels this year, but the cuckoo clock can't be fixed! And the model train is making me cuckoo too! I am not so great at fixing things I think.

Making cornbread and stew this morning. And some veggie broth with some veggies in the fridge that don't look super fresh anymore. I keep doing that every other week or so rather than throwing slightly tired vegetables out. I use the vegetable broth from the freezer then, every time I want to make soup and want a nice flavorful base to start.

I'm also roasting red peppers today. I bought 11lbs on sale - I know they're not local by any stretch of the imagination, but they were gorgeous. And, I use the roasted red peppers in all soups, stews, and sauces all winter long. We ran out of the case of peppers I roasted in September - which I had stored in jars of olive oil in our second fridge. Big jars - 1/2 gallon jars - all used up.

The other food that we are close to using up before the calendar year is over are my pickles. This year I used tarragon instead of dill and also put fresh, long hot red cayenne peppers in the jars. The pickles kind of blow your socks off with flavor and heat. So if Black River has small cukes I might make more of those too!

Working from a home-based office is often a real challenge, especially at this time of year when the pressure is on to finish end of the year activities for all the grants we receive while needing to get ready for Christmas. In past years I've been part time in my work, so I've handled the crunch -- starting next year it will be different as the projects we've taken on get more numerous and complicated. In some ways I can't wait, in others I have a little trepidation.

When it comes down to it - it will mean scaling back the complications of the season. And that's what I should be doing anyway. Does having the silver polished make the world more bright? The planet more peaceful? It makes the kitchen more bright - but its effect kind of ends there. Having our little farm and home in order makes me feel good - but having a clear purpose for being on the planet feels even better.

This year I want to focus on big picture:

• how am I impacting my community, my state, my world?
• how am I nurturing my own body, soul, and heart to be strong and attentive?
• how do the millions of tiny chores I do daily really impact the big picture, or am I just spinning my wheels and do I need to reset in some ways?

I'd love your thoughts on this.

I buffed the silver, shined the brass, and washed windows the last 2 days. I'm getting ready for the holidays and even though we're not entertaining much, I wanted to have things just so. So, I'm dusting and vacuuming, straightening and throwing stuff away - hoping to have the place in order for all the holiday cheer.

It's time to be of good cheer!

Chores

These are the major chores I tackled since the end of May 2011 - it feels good to have done so much this year!

1. May
1. Clothes – went through all the closets and drawers
2. Kitchen drawers, cabinets, counters - got rid of broken things, sorted items, got new spices
3. Put in vegetable garden
4. Put furniture outside
2. June -
1. Cleaned pantry
2. Cleaned out fridges and freezers
3. Mudroom
4. Did flower gardens – killed the bishops weed
3. July –
1. Cleaned office drawers, closet, cabinets - threw out old files
2. Organized art supplies and drawings/paper
3. Gardens – kept battling the bishops weed, watering, feeding, deadheading, planting new roses
4. Aug -
1. Organized more computer files, paper files
2. Cleaned out the linen closet
3. Cleaned out the basement
4. Cleaned up area near driveway - weeding, cutting back weedy trees, pruning lilacs
5. Made pickles, jams, froze corn, peppers, etc.
5. Sept -
1. Den – cabinets, drawers, family photos
2. Dining room – cleaned out cabinets
3. Living room – debulked
4. Roasted red peppers and stored in fridge
6. Oct - 
1. Oct 2 - Tried new cooking things -made soufflé, flan, crème brulee, and a whole wheat bread with 12 grains
2. Canned 21 quarts of applesauce – and jam
3. Organized getting bull
4. Polished all the brass and silver in the house
5. Got the chimneys swept, got the roof fixed/estimates, got the chimney repair estimates and booked dates
7. Nov -  
1. Cleaned out all bathroom cabinets 
2. Work travels and visiting family
3. Farm – organized cow going to processor, bull going back to Someday
4. Helped Bob split, stack and store 3 cords of wood
5. Cleaned out the chicken coop
8. Dec -
1. Cleaned barn and  took stuff to dump       
2. Did outdoor decorations – wreaths, garland, lights
3. Planted bulbs
4. Fixing broken things - Japanese lamps, rush chairs, cuckoo clock, electric train

                                           

Snow - is winter almost here? The paddock is still muddy, but the bull has gone back to his home and the younger cow sent off to be processed. It's just the 4 month old calf and the old cow now. They crowded into the barn this morning to get their hay and water. Too cold to run the house out to water tank in the field this morning, so I carried two buckets out to fill the heated buckets in the stall.

Mama cow stands at the doorway trying to reach inside the stall to eat the hay. Still not sure if she even wants to come inside. But, it snowed last night, and it's a bit windy today so I think the two will come in eventually. Tomorrow the vet comes to castrate and remove the little budding horns from the new calf -- so I need to get them inside today so tomorrow won't be as difficult. They get a bit wild in the winter running around the back fields.

The paddock is chronically muddy even though we keep them out of there in the summer and we plant grass seed. They are a little nervous about walking on the mud but soon it will be frozen hard and we can feed and water them in the stall and in the paddock. We'll have to move the round bale feeder by tipping it up on its side and rolling it down the hill and through the gate. Then I'll position it just below the opening from the hay loft in the barn. This way I can cut the strings off the square bales and push them through the window, to fall into the feeder below. That works all winter.