Tag: family

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Teamwork

 

Coming off the heels of our farm festival, I am reminded of how important it is to work together or, more importantly, how important each piece is to completing the puzzle. Our annual festival and our weekly “box of good” only happen because people come together and complete the puzzle.
 
Accomplishing these two things is much easier when it is not the farm season. The farm season, at times, seems like a tidal wave crashing upon us, especially when we are planting, harvesting, weeding and trying to maintain some semblance of family life. As the farmer, I am constantly surprising my team with extra vegetables or fruit that they were not planning for because I happen to discover a patch of strawberries or onions or spinach that is ready earlier than I expected. My team is very nimble and can change menus and directions in seconds. 
 
The other day was a prime example of teamwork. Maleah and I are the flower farmers. We have a system in place when it is time to pick flowers. She runs around and gets the asters, cosmos and dahlias and I get the sunflowers, amaranth, calendula, marigolds and straw flowers. She has quite an eye for picking beautiful flowers. Well, the other day she was at a sleepover birthday party and had left earlier that afternoon. The rest of our family was doing some last minute weeding and harvesting for the festival. Maleah and I always start harvesting flowers about a half an hour before dark. Of course, out of habit, I started the flower harvest like normal. At that moment I thought to myself, “What was I thinking, letting Maleah go to a birthday party during harvest time?!?!?” I ran around cutting my usual flowers and then I ran around getting Maleah’s usual flowers, barely finishing as the sun left the horizon. Then it took twice as long to bunch them.
 
That night, I experienced the importance of my seven year old’s help. I got the flowers harvested and arranged, but pinch hitting for Maleah isn’t nearly as much fun or efficient as working with her. I will still let her go to birthday parties, but I will definitely start earlier next time!
 
Farming as a family and a team, 
 
 
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Winter: a time to reflect

The farm is anything but quiet during this time of year. The trains rumble by, the coyotes join in the chorus and trumpeter swans trumpet as their wings carry them barely above the house. Ah…the sounds of a farm at rest.

The pruning is finished and if all goes well there will be lots of pears, apples, plums and raspberries. The garlic is making its presence known as the sentinels of the garden. The potatoes have been ordered and other seeds are on their way.

We are installing two new greenhouses this winter in attempts to provide more local food earlier and later for you. We are busy fixing fences, building fences and getting ready for the grass-fed beef to arrive in April. In addition to mending fences, we are making compost and servicing our equipment. Right now we are focusing on the things we know that need repairing and we will worry about what we don’t know later, when it becomes obvious (sigh).

But mostly, winter for us is the calm before the storm. It is the warm up before the symphony begins—lots of tuning of the strings and tightening of the bows. For me, it is the time (lots of time) I spend with my children, reading and reading and reading and playing lots of games—right now mainly Mexican train dominoes and Settlers of Catan.

I am purposely investing in them, because I know that in a few weeks to a month the weather is going to change. We are going to be farming and outside from sun up till sun down. We will still have lots of fun as a family, but it will be busy fun, not the quiet fun that we get to have right now. Thankfully, the transition from winter to spring is a gracious one and gradually comes upon our farm like the incoming tide. But I also know that our younger children will become young adults before I know it and I want to enjoy them as much as I can now.

I am looking forward to tomorrow evening when my kiddos pick a book out and we all somehow, four or five of us, will snuggle into that easy rocking chair and read together.

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Parenting for the Next Generation

Joelle and I have been raising, homeschooling and hanging with our children for the last 20 years. It hardly seems possible that our eldest, Micah, is nearly 20 years old. Surely it couldn’t have been but a few years ago that I was teaching him to ride a bike. Alas, it is true, our children do grow up with or without us. I now find myself teaching Stephen, his four year old brother, to ride a bike—without the training wheels!

Stephen wants to ride with the rest of the clan to the top of the Pilchuck tree farm and go mountain biking. If he only knew how much uphill there was compared to downhill he might change his mind! The other day we stopped into see Mark at the Arlington Velo Sport to pick up a bike and Stephen got the vision for some new wheels. Funny, it seems that Micah got the vision for some new wheels as well, ones that could generate a little more horsepower than his legs could—a 1979 black Chevy T-top Camaro. Hey, that was the car I wanted when I was in high school! Now, 30 years later, they are affordable for him, but for me impractical. Hmmm??? Maybe things really don’t change, just their price tags do.

One of the first lessons I learned as a parent was to teach our children “no” early and that it is not negotiable. Many parents argue with a two year old and far too often the two year old wins. If a child learns “no” early there will be less arguments (now I didn’t say no arguments, just less), which means there will be more pleasant interactions. Doesn’t that sound nice?

As I enter into this new phase of transitioning children from parent-dependent to independent, I have been learning a lot. When I chose to farm, back when we had six children, I did so because it gave me the opportunity to be more involved in the raising of my children and to have them work with me. Our focus was family—we did things as a family and with other families. It was easier as a parent to navigate this world of young children because they were totally parent-dependent. As my oldest is moving on and his 18 year old sister and 17 year old brother are close on his heels, Joelle and I have had choices to make. Do we hold back or do we release? We have learned to do both—to hold where they want us to hold and to release where they want us to release. The goal of parenting is not to keep our children back for ourselves, but to launch the next generation, to see them stand not fall, succeed not fail, to love that which is good and do good. This is not easy for us, but it is easier because we built a relationship early, played together, worked together, laughed together and went to church together. And now that they are adults we still do those things, just less often together.

Sure we miss them, but aren’t they supposed to grow up, hopefully marry, have their own families and their own lives. My job is to impart whatever I can into them for the short time I am privileged to parent them. I understood the process, after all, I went through it. But now that I am experiencing it as a parent, I have been thinking about it more intentionally. If I am going to be a successful parent and raise children that become good citizens, who are focused on blessing others, I need to not only model that but also involve them in it—at the grocery store, gas station, ball field, church, etc. And I need to gradually decrease in their lives and they need to increase. They need to make more decisions as they get older, yes good and bad ones. But I want them to practice making those decisions while they are still at home, so when they do move out they will have already been making life type decisions for awhile.

We still have little ones to raise and they will be gone before we know it, but I am committed to seeing them develop into what they were created to do with their lives, which means that I have to recognize their strengths and strengthen them and recognize their weaknesses and strengthen them. But I can’t do that if I am still heavily pursuing my own personal dreams, passions, hobbies. At some point my own personal goals have to decrease and my children’s goals (not my goals for my children) need to increase in my life. And at the same time I have to recognize when it is time for me to decrease in my parental role to allow them to pursue their dreams.

Many of you are parents, I want to encourage you that it is not a mistake that you are raising children and the children you have are going to need your insights, perspectives and experiences to negotiate the adult world and no one is more qualified than you to help them succeed. They are a gift to you and you are a gift to them.

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Summer Camping

Last weekend was one of those weekends where there was way too much to do to get it all done. Joelle was busy going to a baby shower on Saturday and hosting a baby shower on Monday, which meant she would be preoccupied with those responsibilities and could use some concentrated time. So, on Saturday, I made the bold snap decision to gather up the five youngest and head to Oso to camp for the night. I knew that this was going to be an adventure camping with our younger children, ages 15 months and 4, 6, 9, and 13 years.

My grandparents used to live in Oso and I have been going to the river property for family outings since I was in the womb. I called Aunt Linda to check on availability and got the go ahead. I quickly scratched out a packing list and my son Andrew gathered everything, even two tents just to make sure we had enough poles to get one up! As Andrew was busy gathering and loading the van, I was busy planting beans, corn, fennel, and dill. Everybody got their clothes and pillows and we were off.

An hour later we were all alone on the Stillaguamish River, putting up the tent and making camp. We built a fire, had some dinner, and waited for the bats. Yes, bats! As long as I can remember I have enjoyed watching the bats fly in front of the campfire from our vantage point overlooking the river. That night I was excited to show these flying marvels to my children. Just as planned, at dusk, they started darting to and fro. And then we watched the stars appear; one by one, starting with the North Star, the sky began to reveal its majesty.

As you can imagine, we have a large tent – you know, the 10-12 man size. Usually we need every square inch, but with only six of us it seemed, well, downright palatial! So as the temperature dropped and daylight diminished we headed for the tent. It was cold and for some reason the ground seemed harder than when I was a kid?!?!

Finally, we were all tucked in. Although the baby wasn’t excited about the change in routine, because she was tired she eventually nodded off next to me. About an hour later, Maleah, the 6 year old, got up and, walking over everything and everyone, joined the baby and me in my sleeping bag. Another hour later, Stephen, the 4 year old, popped up and said in earnest, “Daddy, I got to go to the bathroom!!” In my hurry out the tent door, as one can imagine, I caught my foot and fell back onto the tent from the outside and landed on Andrew, who was sleeping. After making sure Andrew was okay I grabbed Stephen who, thankfully, was still waiting to go to the bathroom. Mission accomplished, I crawled into another, more roomy sleeping bag and for some reason the ground was hard in that spot too!?!

In the morning, we had breakfast around the campfire, had a devotional, and went for a long bike ride, played some ball, built sand castles, and went to the Oso General Store for some ice cream, just like I did when I was a kid.

It has been somewhat of a taxing farm season and I think I needed that connection with my heritage more than my kiddos did. For them it was a fun time with dad, away from the crops, cows, weeds, and work. But for me, it was about sharing the past (the river, the bats, the stars) with the future.

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Pancakes

The other day, I set out to make pancakes and scrambled eggs for the family.  Most of the clan was home, maybe 9 out of 11! So I went to allrecipes.com and found the perfect recipe (you know, the one with 4000 reviews and a 4+ rating), read a few comments to see if there were any important changes recommended and then went for it.

I don’t know how my wife does it. Trying to get that first batch of pancakes not too runny or too thick. Do I double, triple or quadruple it? Let’s triple it. Get out the mixing bowls, one for dry and one for wet ingredients. Oops, I picked out a mixing bowl that was too small for the tripled recipe. But instead of washing another dish, I prudently chose to mix carefully!

Before I headed out to feed the horses around 5am, I checked the quantity of milk in the fridge – “A half gallon, we’re good.” Came back in and started to pull it all together. Got all the dry ingredients together, started on the eggs, oil and milk. Oh no! Between my feeding the horses and other chores our #3 son had gotten up, had breakfast and headed off to work, and in the process had used up most of the milk for his breakfast – the milk that I was planning on using for pancakes! Those teenage boys can consume a lot! Well, he had saved enough for almost the amount I needed. Hmmm…now what? Okay, improvise. Back to the fridge. Oooh, we have some half and half! Catastrophe diverted.

Now comes the challenge for me. How do I get the eggs and the pancakes to be ready at the same time to feed my army of eaters? The eggs are on stove and the electric griddle is on the breakfast bar, about six feet from each other. I have decided this time to cook them slower at a lower temperature. Start the first batch, get out the butter, jam and syrup, turn on the oven to “keep warm,” finish the first six pancakes and start on the eggs. Next, wake up the kiddos, get them to set the table, say grace and start eating. I would have never thought that sleeping was a strenuous activity, but those kiddos polished off 30 pancakes and a plate of eggs. One would have thought they had worked a full day on the farm!
What is your favorite pancake recipe?

Happy Father’s Day!