I've spent the past few weeks pondering what my 'word' will be for 2017. Last year (the first year I chose a word to represent the coming year) my word was "get shit done in 2016". (Okay, it's more than one word, but you get the idea.)

It was the motto that I desperately needed, because I felt a little frozen. After a couple of summers spent navigating Lyme disease I had lost my oomph. And I was drowning in half-hearted, half-finished, procrastination-choked projects. From boxes in the basement to the thrift store donations that never seemed to make it to the thrift store to abandoned sweaters and quilts all in various stages of partially done, I was overwhelmed. 

It was time to finish what I had started.

And to some extent mission #getshitdonein2016 was a success. No, I didn't finish All of the Things That Need to be Finished last year, but I certainly completed some. I would hear myself saying (or more accurately shouting) the phrase to myself as I set to work on uncompleted tasks from weeks (or years) gone by. It helped me get over the hurdle of restarting projects that no longer inspired me.

And the idea of a word instead of a resolution? That works for me. It's more inspiration and less pressure. 

Which begs the question of: what will 2017 hold?

What direction do I want to move that feels like a warm invitation rather than a harshly shouted command?

On Christmas night, after our celebrations of Solstice and Christmas Eve were done, I told Pete that all I wanted a warm bowl potato-ham soup for dinner, and then I wanted to spend the evening just scrolling my Pinterest boards. (That classic Christmas combination.) And so I did. I checked out after dinner and curled up by the fire to search for a little inspiration.

And I was powerfully drawn to the notion of creating beauty in my world. 

We moved to this crooked little farmhouse over four years ago. But because we rented her for nearly a year before buying, that means we moved in without painting, refinishing the wood floors, or pulling up the aging carpet, wallpaper, and linoleum. 

And once we were in we were in. And farm work was priority, so the rest had to wait.

And wait.

And wait.

And the truth is, I don't really know how to begin. When four (crafty, disorganized, homeschooly) people are packed into 1200 square feet, how exactly do you empty and rework a room? Because there's really no where to go around here with a bed, dresser, and desk for a few days while we rework a room (except perhaps out into the snowbank).

And so we're been just living with the tan and cornflower blue wallpaper and gray vinyl floor. For years.

 

But I am hungering for beauty. I'm starving for it.

To sweep up the cobwebs that are hanging in our corners and dust the picture frames. To paint the hallway and hang some fresh art. To plant flowers around my house and while I'm at it maybe rip off the broken, decaying deck and build a pretty little white covered porch with a spindle railing. To cultivate beauty at ever turn. 

So I think that's my plan for 2017. To create a more beautiful world. Right here on the farm, and spreading outward from our little corner of Wisconsin. 

In the projects I create, in the words that I write, in the work that I do, in the way that I engage with the world. Beauty! Everywhere. It's time. And it's what I want more of in the coming year.

I'll keep you posted on what unfolds.

P.S. If you're choosing a word for 2017 I'd love to hear what it is the comments below! 

P.P.S. If you're hungry for an evening of potato soup and Pinterest inspiration as well, you can find a few of my favorite (beautiful) pins here:

Home

Beautiful Backyard

Garden & Farm

 Let me know if you'll need that soup recipe and I'll see what I can do.

 

Don't be fooled by the calendar telling you that it's November. (And by that implying that it's nearly Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year's Eve.)

There's no need to rush. Because it's still Autumn out there.

And we're still carving pumpkins. 

 

Take that, early holiday season!

 

Enjoy these in-between days, my friends. They are precious indeed.

 

Love,
Rachel

 

 

Wanting to determine if there's been a flash flood while you were sleeping?

Follow these five easy steps to know for sure.  

 

1. Check sheep pastures for trout.

2. Look along the creekside high water or any subtle signs of high water the night before. (Look for a few blades of grass bent down along the water's edge.)

3. Walk fence lines looking for any small sticks, bit of grass, or debris. 

4. Walk along the creek. Are you swimming (or at the very least wading through muck)?

5. Look for more fish in the grass.

If you answered "yes" to three or more of these questions, you've had a flood! 

And with that, we're off to mend some fences and count some sheep. Who probably could use a shampooing.

 

Stay dry, friends!

Love,
Rachel

 

(All of this said playfully of course, and with our hearts in Louisiana. Yes, we had a flood last night, but it's nothing compared to the destruction our friends to the south are navigating. Stay safe, everyone.)

 

 

 

There is a simple presence that comes from living here, with roots growing deep in this land.

A connection. An awareness. Memories taking form.

It comes in the echo of my daughter's laugh as the leopard frog I caught slips out of my hands into the creek.  I catch it again and again and her eyes are wide, taking it all in, her laughter getting higher and wilder with each escape and recapture.

When we let the frog go my son, watching it swim downstream, remarks that it "looks like a tiny person" swimming there.

Indeed.

We see ourselves in this place.

It comes in the way his eyes sparkle when he runs to me, fishing pole in hand, announcing that he caught a fish in the creek and that it got away but that it was amazing.

A love for fishing, his father's passion that he has never shared. I saw a twinkle of it there as the sun slipped low.

A new sparkle. A new way to love this place. 

His first sleepy words upon waking today were, "That fish was amazing."

And it came in the way she paused, climbing a tree, to smell the bark and announced that it smells "exactly like the water in the Wolf River". She urges me up into the high branches and I oblige, sniffing the orange lichens there.

She's right. It's a dead match.

How does one notice the scent of a lichen and the scent of a river and draw an invisible line between them?

I am awed.

Already her roots are deep.

These days our bird feeders explode with hummingbirds, oriels, finches, and the others. We fill the seed and sugar water diligently, as connected to these wild birds as to the chickens in our coop. Perhaps more.

The same for foods foraged and foods gardened. Both nourish us. Both belong on our table but the wild food brings extra delight.

The children picked wildflowers for our breakfast on Mother's Day. Lupine chose violets for the fruit salad while Sage made dandelion fritters. Bouquets from garden, field and marsh were arranged throughout the house in tea cups, vases, and bottles.

Before we ate Lupine went out alone to pick plantain leaves. She wrapped her violet salad inside like a wild food burrito. Plantain is immune boosting and good for people on antibiotics. (Yes, she is.)

I foraged too, nettles to saute and to dry for tea in the winter. My fingers still tingle this morning a prickly memory of last nights gathering.

Tomorrow we'll go for ramps. Watercress. Morels. And the song of the birds in the hills.

Spring is abundance.

And we're watching it all with eager eyes and deep roots.

Last night when the moon rose over the hills and we listened to the barred owl in the woods, Lupine perched high in that box elder tree that smells of a river racing toward the sea, hundreds of miles from here. We saw a halo around the moon through the brances.

"Will it storm tomorrow, mama?"

"It might," I said.

And in the early morning darkness I woke to the sound of thunder and rain. I smiled.

As I drifted back to sleep I felt my roots sink deeper still into this place.

This place where we belong.

 

Originally published in 2014.

 

 

Thanks for your patience, friends, while I got my life back in order.

The car has been replaced, the computer has been replaced, the basement is dry, and slowly but surely we're finding our center and getting caught up once more.

Thank goodness.

I'm all kinds of grateful.

When the weekend arrived the sun was shining and it was unseasonably warm here in Wisconsin. (Don't let Lupine's short sleeves, bare legs, and flip flops fool you. She's a Wisconsinite, so 50 F means summer to her!)

We hit the ground running with something that felt like spring fever in February.

So! Many! Projects!

There was deep cleaning of the house to begin, one teenager's bedroom to rearrange, and lots and lots of sunshine to soak in.

So outside we went. To tap maples and box elders and sit by the fire cooking sap and casting off one knitting project after another. (And yes, Pete was knitting too, working on a hat for me.) It was good therapy for my heart to go to bed each night with the smell of maple sap and woodsmoke in my hair and one less project in my knitting basket.

The kids too relished the sunshine – and the abundance of sap to drink up - hot, cold, carbonated, or right out of the bucket. (The Driftless Big Gulp.)

And because that wasn't quite enough to fill our weekend, on Sunday we borrowed a chicken plucker and butchered our extra roosters (there had been some bloody battles lately), a few ducks, and two naughty hens who had been pecking eggs each day in the chicken coop. 

We've never butchered a mature hen before and it was fascinating to see the partially developed eggs inside. Each bird had dozens of yolk sacks and one shell-less egg that would have been laid this morning.

It doesn't take much to turn farm chores into a biology homeschooling class!

And I'm greeting Monday with enthusiasm for the week to come to get caught up at LuSa - now that I have a way to get there and a computer to work from.

Expect to see a lot more of me around here, too. I've missed you.

 

Love,
Rachel

 

The winter has been late in coming, but I risk saying it is finally here. Below zero days and nights and more snow (at long last!) and we're in it, enjoying a proper winter once more.

The goats aren't so sure, their coats as fluffed up as they can make them, and hanging out as deep in the barn as they can much of the day. So each morning I haul a bucket of hot water with a big glug of molasses and a pinch of cayenne added down to the barn to warm them up. (It's like goat hot chocolate, if you will.)

And every day they manage to drink it to the bottom before lunch time, then look at me with pleading eyes, begging seconds.

The sheep, on the other hand can't understant what all the fuss is about. This is the weather they got dressed for, after all. And as long as we keep the feeder full of sweet, fresh hay they hardly notice a thing.

But the kids and I? We noticed. Because winter was finally here.

We had spent much of yesterday around the table, working on various homeschooling projects and lessons. (Some days lately we're more homeschoolers and unschoolers, it seems.) We'd been there all day and still had a few things to complete.

And then the snow began.

And our school day was suddenly over.

It was that silent, slow-motion sort of snow. As we cleaned up our work I kept hurrying the kids along, glancing out the window. Hurry! Before it stops! We put away the books, papers, and craft supplies, piled the dirty dishes by the sink, and raced outside.

This is my favorite sort of snow, like feathers floating silently to the ground. Fluffy clusters of flakes, no wind, and total silence. Oh, the magic of it! We clipped into our skis (a hodge-podge collection that I'm so thankful for, pieced together one thrift store trip at a time) and set out.

To the creek, to the woods, to the ski trail.

To the quiet. Just the crunch and shush of our skis.

And for that I was so thankful.

Winter! It's finally here.

P.S. This 30 second video from my Instagram of our ski is absolutely worth your time. Wait for the ending.

 

A video posted by Rachel Jepson Wolf (@lusa_mama) on Jan 11, 2016 at 2:16pm PST

 

 

When I said that my motto for this year was going to be #gettingshitdonein2016 I meant it.

And while (if you know me) it will be no surprise that I don't have a proper plan, I do have a lot of energy for clearing out the stagnant chi that is clogging up our home, our farm, and our life, and my head.

I started with my craft room.

Our – more accurately – my craft corner of our bedroom. Our bedroom isn't huge, considering that it's shared by two beds, three people, two sewing machines, and all of my craft supplies. (Having a small house with not enough bedrooms means we have to be creative.) And yes, it created a crazy messy jamming a craft room into an already crowded bedroom. So this space was first on my list for a ruthless purge and reorganization.

And in one short afternoon, the space was transformed.

There is still much work to be done, but gosh, I've made a solid start. Between my craft room and our linen closet we filled three contractor-sized trash bags with donations for the second hand store. Old bed sheets and blankets; fabric and yarn; sweaters and t-shirts; clutter.

And just like that our space is opening.

Space to breathe, space to create.

And it feels incredible.

As a result I am flooded with creative energy.

I didn't see that coming, but of course I am. There's room for it now. Energy to sew, to make, to write, to photograph, to create.

All because I moved out clutter and made space for my passions again.

Needless to say, it's a good feeling.

Do we still have a lot of stuff? Sure. Is space still tight in our little farmhouse? Of course. Do we still have a long way to go? Yes we do.

But it feels do-able now. Like this one corner was so rewarding I'm ready to tackle the rest.

And then, after spending all day creating a proper craft corner for myself, I pulled out my serger for the first time in five or six years. I bought it when Lupine was small, inspired to sew more of her clothes. (And for some reason I was on fire to sew underwear. I can't explain it.) But I struggled with this machine. Oh, how I struggled! To the point of once I shipping it off for repairs. They called after a couple of days and said, "We can't duplicate the problems you were having. Your machine is fine. You had just installed the needles backwards."

Sigh.

I tried again, but my thread was constantly breaking and I gave up and shoved it in a closet and went back to the trusty vintage machine I had inherited from my grandma.

And there my serger sat. For years.

After I cleaned out this corner I decided it was now-or-never for my serger and me. Because I was getting rid of everything that no longer served me, and this machine no longer served me, unless I needed an expensive boat anchor.

So I took a deep breath, set up my machine, and found a YouTube tutorial for my machine.

And guess what. It worked.

It worked!

They were right. There is nothing wrong with my machine at all, except that I had no idea how to use it.

And by clearing clutter and letting go I made space for that knowledge in my life, my craft room, and my head.

So at the end of the day, not only did I clear out 200 lbs of clutter from our life, I also gifted myself a brand new (to me) incredible sewing machine that makes me feel like a stitchery super hero. (Can you see my patchwork cape flapping in the wind?)

And that is what clearing space is all about, isn't it? When we're overwhelmed with the chaos and clutter we don't have the emotional space to focus on something (else) that might stress us out, so it sits in the corner collecting dust. Literally.

But when we open up just a little space, well, then there's room for magic to happen.

And, in this case, for napkin sewing to happen. (I started these last summer, found them when I cleaned, and discovered that they're the perfect excuse to play with my serger.) There's a real risk of having more napkins made that dinner made at the end of the day. Because – serger!

Win, win, win.

This getting stuff done business is pretty spectacular.

 

: : 

If you're looking for more inspiration you might really enjoy this, this, and this.

: :

 

Edited to add: Don't you love serindipity? This popped up in my social media feed just after I posted this morning. Perfection.

 

 

 

 

This weekend, Pete took the kids and set out on a little adventure. So it was just my dog Charlie and me for 2 1/2 days. I balanced my time between caring for the farm animals (and catching errant sheep/mending broken fences), working on my book, and knitting and crafting up a storm on Solstice gifts by the fire. Mostly the latter.

Honestly, I listened to more pod casts and watched more documentaries this weekend than I have in the past year or two combined. It's a rare treat and I binged a little. There are worse vices. (If you're looking for an inspiring movie I can't say enough good things about the film I Am. Just delightful.) 

I'll also confess also to eating cookies for breakfast not once, but twice. (In my defense there was also a hike in the woods on Saturday, so, balance.)

Silence is rare in my life. Between homeschooling and running a farm and a business, solo time is scarce. If I'm not with my kids or at work we're doing projects around here. Life is full and we rarely stop doing. So these two days of stillness? Of doing whatever I wanted whenever I wanted? Well, it was downright glorious.

And to those of you in the trenches with babies or young children, know that your time will come. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but it will happen. I remember that constant feeling of just wanting to use the bathroom alone or sleep – just once! – right through the night without having to be the mama. And it felt like it would never come. I found a new normal, but lost myself a bit along the way.

And now suddenly – poof – here I am.

Alone for two days.

Knitting.

And eating cookies for breakfast without an ounce of guilt.

 

Two days ago I drove away – alone – to a city a few hours away.

I had some LüSa business there, as well as an appointment for a tattoo (more on that another day). It was a fast-and-furious day-and-a-half long trip, but I had been looking forward to it for weeks.

So! Much! Time! For anything I wanted.

I had a vision of snuggling down in my hotel room, writing away on my book for hours on end. I packed two knitting projects and dreamed of quite hours spent working on anything I chose.

In the end, I felt more out of sorts and out of place than ready to write.

I paced around in my hotel room (a fancy suite that I was upgraded to after I burst in on some unsuspecting man in his underwear in the first room they gave me. Um.), connected with a new friend (so, so good to meet a kindred soul), and finally settled into some knitting in my hotel before sleep.

But even falling asleep alone felt foreign – though there was something delicious and decadent about sleeping straight through the night without waking for stray feet, arms, or pets making their way into my space.

I woke up early on Friday morning, thinking that it was almost time to milk our goat, feed the chickens, and begin the day.

But there I was, in the city with traffic hurrying by my window.

 

So I knitted a few rows and drank my tea in the quiet, marveling at how out of place I felt so far from home.

 

After my appointments were done I didn't waste any time in aiming my car towards home.

Home!

And this morning, waking to the sounds of our three silly roosters (who usually disappoint me with their early calls) felt just right.

This is my place.

My home.

And for all the work, for all the energy we pour into our life here, it is the only place where I belong.

 

It's good to be back.

 

 

 

After writing yesterday's post I decided that making my house "look like my heart" had to come first.

Cleaning sounded joyless so I found the most compact corner to work on – a half-bath – and decided to give it a makeover. 

It's tiny and there's no furniture. Plus it was beige.

We've never lived in a house this long before without painting.

Since the mid '90's Pete and I have lived in six houses. We painted them all either before we moved in or within a few weeks. Even when we had wee babies or big pregnant bellies. It was always a priority.

This time not so much.

We rented here for six months and agreed not to paint until we purchased the farm. When we finally closed we already had big remodeling dreams (and no remodeling budget) plus animals and new gardens to distract us. Se've been hanging here in limbo for almost three years, quietly waiting for our remodeling budget to materialize. All the while staring at our beige walls.

Because really, why paint a wall you're about to demolish? See what I mean? Exactly.

So yesterday when I started talking about my much needed mama groove reboot I decided that this bathroom was the first project up. Future remodel be damned, I was painting.

With my non-budget in hand I went shopping in our basement and found a charming full gallon of an agreeable yellow that the previous owners had left behind. At some point I realized that it was the color of the kitchen when we moved in – the only room I have repainted since we've been here.

Funny that I didn't love it in the kitchen but it's swoon-worthy in the bath. Fickle.

Lupine and I were home alone so I surrendered myself to doing this project together. (Yes! for fun, whoa! for mess. Breathing through the pain.)

Working together in a joyful fashion meant suspending any need to micromanage or be obsessive about brush strokes and drips. As a bonus she learned a plethora of tricks for wiping up spilled and running paint, including that juicy blob I landed on her nose. Oops.

And so, we painted.

It's a hard color to capture but it's a charmingly buttery yellow. I love it.

Is it perfect? Of course not! (You must be new here. See exhibits A and B for back-story.)

Our walls are wonky but I don't care. There is a half-wall of 1960's vinyl wall board in a fake tile motif. I still don't care. (Some day I may cover it with with wainscoting, but no, not today.) There are drips, bubbles, cracks, and more vinyl in the form of an ugly and unnecessary tub surround.

But the walls are happy yellow and I'm happily finding my groove again. Right there in that paint can.

 

P.S. Total bathroom remodel budget: $0. Winning!

 

P.P.S. Framed artwork by my talented and thoughtful sister (the Lupine and Sage watercolors) and by the mind-blowing Lucky Nilson whom I adore (the fairy mama and child piece by the window).