Today has been such a delightful Christmas eve puttering around the house and farm. This morning I brought my neighbor some eggs as requested and threw in some sweet potatoes and frozen tomatoes as a Christmas treat, ending up helping him walk his Percheron horses from the barn to the field. The horses were so massive that I couldn't see over ( Read more... )

About when I gave up on sitting upright a week ago and took to my bed, our electricity hit a snag. The stove stopped producing heat --- although the light continued to go on --- and one circuit of outlets just stopped working ( Read more... )

For those of you who enjoy reading about current events in the woods, you might want to check out my new "This
Month in the Woods" column on The Clinch Coalition's website. It's all part of my nefarious plan to get people to visit our website more often, which is part my even more nefarious plan to get more members. But you might enjoy it anyway ( Read more... )

I was thrilled to be able to walk this morning, to stretch my legs and soar down the driveway rather than hobbling along at a snail's pace. So Lucy and I went out to check on the state of the farm ( Read more... )

I was feeling awfully sorry for myself this morning as I contemplated a birthday feeling not quite well. Then people were awfully sweet (Thanks, Sheila! Thanks, Mom and Maggie!) and I perked back up. Truthfully, I feel about 80% better today and was able to spend all day out of bed ( Read more... )

I've been more sick this year than every before in my life, which I blame on a low-grade infection in a tooth compromising my immune system. I've got an appointment for a root canal right after new years (joy, joy!) which I hope will make me my usual healthy self. At the moment, I'm once again sick, this time with some sort of boil on my shin ( Read more... )

I came out of Swarthmore about $8,000 in debt, and it would have been much more if I'd played by the rules. Instead, every year I scrimped and spent nothing above the cost of (used) books, thus allowing me to repay a few hundred dollars on my loans annually while in school from the money the school had allotted for living expenses. (Sometimes I ( Read more... )

Due to popular demand, I printed another run of "Winter Wonderland" notecards this week --- get them while they're hot! :-) I also printed up "Back to the Land" as a notecard. Visit my website --- http://kitenet.net/~anna/notecards.html --- to see these and many more notecards

I've been having very disturbing dreams the last few nights. I need to take the time to really think them through, but have been too busy... First there was the one where I cheated on Mark and ended up weeping on Jay's shoulder asking him why I'd done it. Next night, I dreamed that my boss hit a deer with his car and died and I had to go comfort ( Read more... )

Today was a long day on the road. Mark and I joined my boss and a volunteer in Dungannon at 8:15 to carpool for half an hour then meet with the grants administrator for the $40,000 trail improvement grant we got last year. Since it's state money on federal land, after we learned we got the grant so many months ago, we still had to jump through ( Read more... )