Barn raised
how we do things around here
Every girl needs a dog…. to lead her horse for her!
this moment
this lucky moment
you realize you’re in too deep to ever get out…
…when it hits you that it isn’t even weird that you are serving dinner on the same dining table that is also holding your chick brooder, your homeschool chalkboard propped up and one of the lights in your lamp is switched out for a heat bulb.
You know that saying about being raised in a barn? Umm…
this moment
this moment
drive
“This is going to help me with getting published…
And, when I’m published I’m going to acknowledge you”
My response: “For being your mama?”
“For being a supportive mama and doing my editing”.
Quiet…clicks of typing
“How old do you have to be to publish a book?”
My response: “I don’t think there’s an actual age”
“Oh good, good, good!”
Back to the clicks of typing.
This is the morning scene and talk here. I’m literally typing this into my phone as she says it because I want to remember. I swear my kid makes homeschooling easy. I’m literally sipping coffee on the couch. “School” is still on break for us. These are the moments when I totally get “unschooling”. We’ve been talking about a little more computer use for her and starting typing skills since she is getting older-ish. This morning was free to be lazy, play with Christmas toys…she asked to use the computer and write in a “document”. Thus….
You go girl, you go!
This was the story she started working on yesterday while we sat with a banker making a retirement contribution and discussing where to invest it. So happy the guy had an inviting notepad and pen on his desk.
barn celebrations
An unexpected white Christmas, an impromptu snowball fight, a Christmas eve spent with sudden rushing about to get the animals warm, get them dry spots to sleep and thaw out their water troughs before it got even colder into the night, scrounging for tarps to cover the hay and firewood, a moment in the middle of shoveling shavings where I felt guilty that this is how we’re spending Christmas eve when my daughter looks at me with sparkles in her eyes and says “mama, I feel like Almanzo on Christmas eve…this is so cool!”…(we recently read Farmer Boy in the Little House series), when I then started a cedar shaving fight in the stalls and called her “Almanza” and “Farmer Girl” which she just loved and… the moment I realized this was not such a bad way to spend the eve- like pioneers, hot cocoa REALLY appreciated afterwards, walking into a house with heat also really appreciated. A fourth-and probably final- attempt at making snow molassess candy, turning the leftover boiled molassess into a bran-oat-carrot mash to warm the horses. Definitely a day of reminders to not take things for granted. That’s for sure. Reminders that there is joy and magic even in hard work. If you just look through a child’s eyes. Appreciation for the gentle warmth of candles and modern appreciations such as those battery operated star twinkle lights. Just setting the right mood for some Christmas and solstice reading. T’was the night before Christmas…and what fun we had at the barn on a snowy Christmas eve….
this moment
barnraised 