Arrived 6pm Monday evening, 10/2/2023. Settled into our temporary basement dwelling by making the bed with our own cozy blankets and pillows. Welcomed in to the large kitchen table with wooden, mismatched chairs and a delicious home cooked meal. Mateo played in the basement with new friends while I hand milked Princess the cow. Fell in to bed about 9pm and slept peacefully.
Tuesday brought hand milking Princess while the other two cows were milked with a machine. Wasn’t time to finish Princess by hand so she was emptied by the machine. Then Mateo joined the “Roots and Shoots Farm School” that gathers here two days a week this fall. He participated with the “Thistle” group, about 10 children ages 7 to 9, until 3pm. I focused on settling in to our personal space in the top off the red cabin. I swept the plywood floor and wiped it all down with a wet cloth to clear the dust. It’s a lovely space with a few useful pieces of furniture and a nice rug. I like being up high in the trees. Jack lives in the bottom of the red cabin and he carried the mattresses from the house basement across the property to our space upstairs.
Towards the end of Farm School, I joined the kids outside for their snack time, enjoying the apple crisp they had made. By then, two different teachers had commented to me how nice it was to have Mateo in class and that he was joining in easily and enjoying himself. He confirmed all this when I finally saw him on the playground next to the house. During the day, he had earned a toy and was happily in love with his new ball, tossing it around and kicking it through the grass. Now we use the ball in our own homeschool “movement” session, playing catch together.
With the kids clear from Farm School, I drove my van back to the red cabin and carried load after load of belongings up the sturdy outside stairs to our loft. Jack was busy making a nice window in the door to allow more light and air into the space. It felt great to unpack and nest, putting the small table by the window for Mateo’s lego play and setting up our candles and reading light for bedtime. It was a busy day but I felt like on our first full day here, we could relax and settle into our new home, know where all our things were, and just feel secure and loved.
Wednesday morning, well its all beginning to blur together already. Laura and I have talked quite a bit, mostly in the kitchen. She is kind, smart, curious, secure in herself, open, organized, and makes a lot of wonderful things happen. She is pleasant to be around. Mateo loves Eli, her 10 year old, the best. They have spent hours together playing boy things. There’s a huge maple tree just outside the kitchen window and there aren’t any branches until about 10 feet up, but the boys use a rope and pulley to haul themselves up into the branches and it is pure joy to do dishes at the kitchen sink while watching my son play with a bunch of kids up high in a loving tree. There are a bunch of other kids, some older, and some younger and its just a pack of children running about and enjoying their life. There’s a family in the brown cabin back here by our red cabin and they have little 3 year old David who is part of the pack. Both M & her husband A are easy to get along with and have been helpful and kind as the two new people have arrived.
There are chickens and ducks wandering about, a pack of dogs, and a stall of puppies that won’t be separated from mama until the 15th. I told Mateo he needed to put on different clothes for sleeping and he agreed because he happily explained to me how he had laid down on his back, in the puppy stall and let them crawl all over him. I love hearing about his day. We’ve had our own homeschool sessions here in the red cabin Wed and Thursday and that has felt grounding and inspiring. He’s playing the recorder now instead of the piano. We’re continuing with his “Life of Fred” math books, which we both Love. He’s doing narration now from the Charlotte Mason book I looked at and we still do movement and drawing every day. He’s so smart, reading the sentences in the math book. This place is great for him. And for me.
https://stonegardenfarm.com
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