Dropstone Farms

After at least one (maybe two?) years of thinking about it, and deciding it would be too hard, and wishing I had done it, I’ve finally signed up for Laura at Urban Hennery’s Dark Days Challenge. From November 15 – March 31, eat one meal a week that’s as SOLE (Sustainable, Organic, Local, Ethical) as possible, then blog it. Laura will round them up weekly and we can all see what everyone else is eating, and get inspiration from each other. It’s extra hard in the winter, though it helps if you have been busy preserving all winter. We didn’t can nearly as much as I had hoped — it was a tough season in many ways, but we’re almost through — but there’s a lot of good stuff in the freezer and much still in the ground, plus our two easily-accessible year-round farmers’ markets to supply what we didn’t manage to grow ourselves (Brussels sprouts, parsnips).

Anyway — join us in the Dark Days Challenge! Sign up here, and let me know so we can commiserate in, like, February.

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So let the sun rise, bring hope where it once was forgotten

Just before noon, the snow started again, and I lit several candles on the hearth and Garth put another log on the fire. We made some bloody marys with homegrown and -canned dilly beans (just you wait, we’ll learn to make vodka someday!) and settled down to open our solstice stockings, which I sewed on Friday. Mine contained a super fancy mechanical pencil, and a delicious-looking German marzipan cake, some CUTE pink moleskine notebooks!!, and a beautiful bottle of Basil Hayden bourbon. Garth’s had a little gym-style whistle for calling the dogs in from the woods, and a small length of dinosaur-fossil-patterned fabric he was coveting at the fabric store but which sold out before we got there, a chunk of British goat cheddar, a cute bamboo rice paddle, a sink drain screen that we hope doesn’t suck, and the Seed Savers catalog that came in the mail this week. Garth’s big present was the welding class that he took in November, and I have some long johns on the way.

This afternoon we will walk the dogs in the snow, visit the chickens, and leaf through the first seed catalog of the year, dreaming about what will be in the next year, and reflecting on what was. And also we will drink some fancy bourbon. Happy new year!

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… I can’t wait.

Anyone have any good solstice plans?

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