Our peaceable kingdom

by June

Where have we been? Not far really. Home is a good place to be. But since we've been away from here, how about some postcards of our summer?

We've been watching the garden grow in the new beds...

and playing with the silly goats...

Blossom and Fern "pretend" ride the goats.

 ...and the beloved cat and chickens, too.

We've been raising ducklings...

...into ducks named Peach and Ping.

That's Ping with Fern's big toe in her beak.

We sit on the back porch—when we can grab the closing moments of a hectic day—and we watch our peaceable kingdom and think of friends near and far. We've been thinking of you. I can't tell you how intertwined our life on this land is with the friends we've made through the blog. We've heard from some of you lately, asking where we've been and when we'll be back. And we, too, have been wishing we could pick up the conversation where we left off. And now we have. What's new, dears?

The glory of leeks

by June

Fortunately, goats don't eat leeks. They do eat kale—bite, gulp, gone. Chewing as they went, Buttercup and Clover explored the garden one day this spring. Oh, the girls and I flapped along behind them, waving and yelping and shooing them toward the gate. But still they managed to munch through blueberry shoots and raspberry leaves and the lovely ruffled Beedy's Camden kale that survived our  harsh winter.

2010, when the leeks were at their headiest

Friends joke that goats will eat anything. We reply glumly that mostly they just want to eat what we want to eat. But they eat faster.

Somehow they spared the Bleu de Solaize leeks that stood through the snow. Lucky for us! (Shhhh....don't tell the goats what they missed.)

Leeks are one of my favorite things to grow. It's hard to purchase them the way I love them—the size of a pencil. And it is even harder to find something that is so gorgeous in all its incarnations and so friendly to the bees. I always let some go to flower.

We are late with our garden this year because the snows were slow to melt, and we had already determined to dismantle the old raised beds and build them higher and stronger. We're also enhancing the fence to dissuade woodchucks and, ahem, certain members of the family who can't control their appetites when they come nose-to-leaf with a goody. Ours has been the ugliest garden on the planet, swathed in chicken wire and crowded and... Out with all that. But this transformation has meant that some things are behind sprouting schedule (and the blog and our blog friends have been sorrowfully neglected).

Fern and I finally got the leek seedlings and some seeds planted this week. We always put out seedling King Richard or Lincoln leeks for summer eating. But we also plant Fedco's Bleu de Solaize seeds. They grow all summer, then overwinter with nothing but snow as a blanket. In the spring, they are always one of our first meals from the garden (even this frigid year and despite the goats).

One of the simplest ways we prepare them is that old French favorite: Leeks Vinaigrette. My new favorite recipe is from my new favorite cookbook, Around My French Table. It calls for walnut oil in the vinaigrette, and...swoon.

We ease a double fistful of slender leeks out of the garden, then trim their roots, strip their outer leaves and soak them in water. I don't tie them in bundles (as most recipes suggest) but just lay them into salted, boiling water (often in a shallow skillet).

While they cook, I shake up a jar containing:

1/2 teaspoon Dijon mustard
1 tablespoon sherry vinegar (or champagne)
2 tablespoons walnut oil (this is Dorie Greenspan's inspired variation)
1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
sea salt
ground pepper

When they are absolutely tender (less than ten minutes when they are so fresh and thin), I fish them out of the water and douse them in the vinaigrette. They soak it up as they cool.

Eating leeks in vinaigrette is almost as much a celebration of spring as planting the seeds that will be next spring's feast.

Happy gardening and cooking, dear friends! We'll be back soon with more on the goats and the little...waddlers we are expecting! And we'll be skipping over your way for more news and to catch up on your gardens and kitchens and families, but please sing out here too. Happy spring at last!

Battle Hymn of the Bunny Mama

by June
That Tiger Mom has certainly stirred up a conversation, has she not? As an American mother raising daughters who were born in China, I am alert to cultural differences between western and eastern ways of teaching or parenting or... I haven't yet dipped into the book (though I am eager to read it cover to cover). I have read the Wall Street Journal column written by the author. A Yale law professor and devoted mother of two, Amy Chua wants her daughters to succeed. Her approach to their success involves a rigorous dogma (that she says reflects Asian expectations in general): No playdates or sleepovers or school plays. No tv. No being number two in any subject except gym or drama. No choosing their own extracurricular activities.  No playing any instrument but piano or violin.


I am riveted by the window Amy Chua gives onto her family's life. She recounts how she coerced her seven-year-old into learning a complicated piece on the piano. Her daughter shredded the sheet music, only to have her mother tape it up and put it in a plastic sheath. The mother withheld food, water and bathroom breaks until the daughter learned that piece. In the end, the daughter was thrilled with her accomplishment. Mother and daughter snuggled in bed, laughing.


Because of Amy Chua's articulate argument, I understand and even sympathize with what she's trying to do—instill in a child a belief in her own capabilities, a belief that will remain steadfast whatever life brings. But I'm just not a Tiger Mom. I'm more of a bunny really. For instance, I begged my daughters to give up the piano.

Fern and Blossom, age 7, at the piano in their footie pajamas

Blossom and Fern started taking lessons when they were four. They loved their teacher. They loved learning. They worked at it diligently, and they progressed. But, as the years passed, they began to approach the piano with dread. They hated when they made any mistake. Each one couldn't help comparing herself to her sister. Every practice involved tears, theirs and mine. The bitter tone of those practice sessions was seeping into all the learning that was happening in our home. And they never ever ever sat down to play the piano for the joy of it. Never.

I just couldn't ignore a deep discordance between their struggle and what I believe is the point of playing the piano, which is music. Music has always been something I cannot accomplish myself but which moves me deeply. Listening to a wonderful composition is akin to reading a grand passage of literature. It transports me beyond the moment in which I am living and gives me a glimpse of something beyond myself, something greater than myself. I was a terrible piano student (unlike my daughters), but I did come to recognize that I too could transport myself beyond the moment in which I was living—through reading and writing. Writing became my work, and by that I mean it became the thing I cannot not do. It requires discipline and rigor. It requires me every day to overcome frustration and impatience with myself. Yet every day it brings me joy. It is my music.


No one ever made me do it. My parents read constantly. I remember standing at my mother's knee as a very young child.  I watched how still her face was as she read. Her lips weren't moving, and yet I understood that words were spilling into her awareness and filling her with the emotions that showed in her eyes. I spent summers reading. In third grade, I got in trouble for reading under my desk when I was supposed to be learning grammar. Later, I began to write radio plays and stories. As a young child, I began the work of my life, the work of making my own music through words on a page.


That's what I want for my daughters, I want them to find their music. I want them to find what awes them in the world, what they cannot get enough of. And I want each of them to feel that inner upswelling of necessity, that bursting sense of realizing that it's all up to her. Only she can make her own music.


Years of homeschooling have changed what I believe about success. I no longer believe that success comes from a GPA or class ranking or a professional title or a tax bracket. And I'm saying this as someone who was valedictorian in high school and had  a 4.0 in college and who grew up to work where I always dreamed I would work. But, truly, I now see that my dearest successes can't be quantified by anyone but me. My greatest accomplishment has been to pinpoint what I want and to make that my life (regardless of what success others would have me seek). Amy Chua probably wouldn't recognize my life as a success. Some days I don't either. But I cannot imagine living my life for any greater reward than my own deep sense of fulfillment.

By this measure, my daughters are already successful. They design their days around their passions: They love math and go to Khan Academy when they need more help. They play with Vi Hart's ideas. They do science experiments with Robert Krampf, the Happy Scientist. They study Mandarin and study it and study it. And what they don't like about the world, they find a way to change.

For instance, they wanted to live in a world of animals. Turning this dream into a reality would be a major accomplishment because they were living in my world, a world from which I had carefully carved away the allergens that made it hard for me to breathe. In New York City, I'd found a way to live without asthma because I lived largely in a world without animals. In Maine, because of my daughters' careful engineering, I now live with a cat, sixteen chickens, and two goats. My daughters earned those animals by first earning my trust and respect—and the money to make it all happen. Having their animals is no small accomplishment, nor is it any small amount of work. Last night, it was sixteen-below-zero at our house; this morning, Fern and Blossom got up and fixed warm oatmeal for their friends out in the barn. They pulled on their Carharts, and out they went.

For now, goats are their music. And they are willing to work at that music until their fingers and toes are numb from the cold...until it hurts. The work fulfills them because it comes with joy and awe and laughter. They cannot not do it. Around here, that is success.

Christmas-morning watering (in their footie pajamas)

Comfort me with apples—and long autumn walks

by June

We're saying goodbye to the colors—to the oranges and reds of October, but also the green grass that sprouted early this year and has stayed long.

Autumn calls us out for long rambles.

We climb along rocks by the river.

Or we take rides along curving roads and end up at the apple orchard.

This is the season of bittersweet truth though—a crackle of ice on the chickens' water, tracings of frost on the window. Winter will close in.

So we go out with our cameras and dazzle ourselves with the light on the water, the snap in the air, the antics of the goats.

We sit in the grass and stare into our hen's eyes.

We lie down and look at the blue sky and the red leaves and the white clouds. Everything is clarified to its purest hue.

Dark nudges us into the house finally. But we have apples and more time for dinner. What should we make? What should we make up?

Since we have a pizza dough ready to go, how about spinning a pizza inspired by our adventures? How about a Savory Applesauce and Ham Pizza?

We peel and dice up two apples and put them in a sauce pan with a tablespoon of olive oil and two cloves of garlic. We cover the pan and keep the heat low. When it is all good and soft, we roughly mush the apples with the garlic (though you could remove the cloves if you just wanted a garlicky nuance).

While the applesauce is cooking, we slice a red onion into thin rounds and sweat them over low heat, then fire it up a little to caramelize them.

We have a bit of ham and dice it up.

Birch smoothes out the pizza dough. The applesauce goes on first, then the caramelized onions, then the ham, then some shredded mozzarella. We finish it with a sprinkling of ground coriander, pepper and salt.

 Darkness may come early now, but it brings with it the gift of having more time together in the kitchen—more time to make dinner out of what we've found growing all around us this long, lovely season.

Goats will eat anything

by June

I always tell Blossom she's good enough to eat.

Clover thinks so too.

Make Way for Goats

by June

We've been consciously slowing our lives down for years. It all started when I was ping-ponging coast to coast for work. Living in the city frayed my every edge (and I had a lot of edges back then). Saturday mornings, I'd eagerly seek sustenance at the farmers' market, and I came to realize I wasn't just after the fiddlehead ferns or the apple-blossom branches or the Jersey tomatoes or the pumpkins or the Christmas trees. I longed to participate in the growing season. It wasn't enough to live off the fruits of the land, I wanted the land and the sky and the rain falling down and the plants growing up, up, up.

And here we are years and years later with a home on a piece of land where we grow some of our food and gather eggs from our own chickens and put up pickles for the winter. It feels like the whole world is right here where we live and yet, by necessity, we still do the work of the world-at-large. And there's where the grind comes. I rarely look at the clock, but even as I'm picking the first Sun Golds (hurray!) and stirring the jam or feeding the sourdough starter, I'm beholden to three or four different projects on my computer. And Birch started a new business this year. Even with the homeschooling, the girls have been taking on more and more responsibility in their studies. Sometimes it feels that we spin as fast in our slow lives as we ever did in our quick-quick version.

Always a blur of snuggle and spin

Then the goats came home. Adjectives for Buttercup and Clover that we regularly use include joyful, curious, magical, silly, hungry, voracious, ravenous, ornery, adorable, loyal, loving, snuggable (our coinage), cuddly, playful. Consider also some of the exclamations that have come out of our mouth since the goats arrived:

"Get off the car!"

"Get out of the car!"

"Don't head-butt the cat!"

"Oh, no, not the roses..."

"Don't chase the chickens!"

"Goat in the house!"

"Oh, no, not the bok choi!"

"Two goats in the house!"

"Don't drink out of the toilet!"

You get the picture? Wild.

Those two cinnamon streaks ahead of the girls? The goats.

Fast as they are, the goats have finally, finally, finally taught us about slowing down.  I've always loved that Gandhi quote about being the change you want to see in the world. Getting the goats has made us become the change we professed to want in our lives. The goats made us truly become slow.

This summer, learning to tend goats has led us to trim back our expectations of ourselves. Fern and Blossom looked forward to turning eleven so they could take the Red Cross babysitting course and become official for the work they love. Instead, they're babysitting goats. They are also reading for hours and picking blackberries and baking and playing in the river while the goats scamper along the rocky ledges.

It is the best summer we've ever had, slow and full: a growing season.

We're linking up with other families who are all striving for the good life with Simple Lives Thursday. Prepare to be inspired.

Oh, the goatiness!

by June

Sigh.

I know the homecoming of our sweet Buttercup and Clover has inspired much elation in our bloggy neighborhood — and a pinch of envy too. (Dear Lyanda confessed as much.) And while there is plenty of bliss here over the jump-and-tumble goatiness of our new lives (goats scampering on the picnic table, goats clambering up the wood pile, goats cavorting in the meadow), there is also some...how shall I put this delicately? Well, there's some consternation on my part. I am, after all, the gardener of the family. And while I love the goats, the goats love the leafy greens of my labors, and that has caused some tension between us — just as some of our perspicacious friends (I'm looking at you, Tom, and you too, Clare) predicted.

The goats started with the raspberries and moved to the roses and ended up standing in my herb garden. You have to understand that my herb garden is pots on the back porch. Rosemary branches ended up lying torn on the boards. Thyme was hanging out of little mouths. I looked up from cooking to see Clover standing in the thyme pot and eating the Swiss chard from another pot. I might have shrieked. I might have muttered something about rosemary-and-thyme seasoned goats roasting on a spit. (Sorry, Blossom! Sorry, Fern!)

The leash was a good idea, but who leads whom?

Blossom and Fern are very vigilant about the goats' whereabouts. But goats move fast... One minute they are trying to get in the back door, and the next minute they are around by the front door eating the ornamental pine tree that finally, finally, finally got tall enough to disguise the ugly retaining wall, which the goats were standing on so they could eat the top out of my lovely little evergreen.

I might have shrieked some more. Later, Blossom tried to console me: "But, Mommy, the pine made their breath really really fresh."

Birch has intervened. Fencing the goats' run was slow work. But he made sure that it was a large, shady space with lots of jumping opportunities: a goat playground. When he finished and the girls led the goats in, it was glorious fun. Birch reported to me, "We've achieved TGH!"

"What's TGH?" I asked.

"Total Goat Happiness."

It remains to be seen whether we've achieved Total Mommy Happiness. I'm worried our little darlings can climb fences.

Dream goats!

by June

It's beginning to look a lot like Heidi around here...only without the spectacular mountains and the gruff old grandfather. But we do have goats and two young girls who love tending them. Buttercup and Clover are —at long last— home!

At first there was some crying. The doelings cried in their new pen, and Blossom and Fern cried because the doelings missed their mama and their old home. But we all sat in the grass and talked about patience and giving the babies some time, along with lots of love and fresh grass.

The love abounds now, thank goodness. The goats only cry when the girls walk away from them. Not that the girls walk away from them much. They pretty much run out in their jammies and stay out until the fireflies are flittering in the meadow.

While we were waiting for the goats, we spent a lot of time soaking up all things goat-y. We've joined up with the fun family over at Jump into a Book for a Heidi summer-reading adventure (along with Treasure Island and Swiss Family Robinson).  And we loved finding the latest version of Heidi on film (with Max von Sydow as the grandfather). It's a beautiful version that made us ache for the mountains and some curious goats to clamber about in the green grass.

It may not be the Alps around here, but the view...it is now splendidly goat-filled.