The holy in the everyday

I had one of those conversations last night with a new friend, that meanders from topic to topic, as you find your way through a new relationship. Somehow we ended up at meditation, and the meditative activities that make up daily life.

We all meditate daily; it is probably one of the activities that Western society needs the most, honors the least and sneaks in without even knowing it. In the West where Productivity is king, and the more “productivity” you get out of the fewer people, the more successful “you” (i.e. your boss) are. We disdain the time we need to do “nothing;” to reflect and grow, to sit and stare.

And yet we meditate our way through our days: highway hypnosis, lost on the the internet, “what in the world did I do for the last hour?” and the random thoughts, like my conversation, that meander through our brains when we’re supposed to be doing something else.

Now, what I was going to do for this post was “track” my meandering thoughts as I worked in the kitchen and the garden. But what I found as I worked to clear paths, pull weeds, tame the grape vines, and edge the beds, was simply that my mind both emptied and focused. And that after, rather than feeling tired, I felt energized. I can remember the feeling of sweat slipping down my face, and the scratching of the lawn waste on my arms. I live in the middle of a city; there must have been sounds-dogs, children, sirens, horns-but all I remember is the rustle of the leaves and the droning of the bugs, as though I was miles from anything at all.

Which, in a way, I was.

Meditation, even such everyday, undirected, unintentional sort of meditation, is a conversation with the earth and with the gods. It is the umbilical with the Urmother. It is exercise of the spirit and renewal of the intellect.

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Sunday photos: Harvest

From Xan’s truck farm:

Goldman’s Italian American- a very prolific heirloom paste tomato with large fluted fruits.

Poinsett cucumber-another heirloom, sweet and prolific, with bright green flesh.

San Marzano windfalls, grape tomatoes, heirloom golds, and broom corn. Now all I have to do is figure out how to tie brooms.

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Tanglewood has become a tangle of harvests. Everything is growing all over everything else (except the trellises, but trellises are so faux pas, right?) and nothing is growing where it’s supposed to be. Ah well. Harvesting is a bit like foraging, and I find it’s very relaxing and sometimes a little more rewarding than just walking down the aisles plucking fruit and veggies.

The tomatoes are beginning to trickle in, and I anticipate a break in the flood gate any day here. With more than 15 varieties, and more than 60 plants you’d think I’d be up to my ears in tomatoes by now, but I’m pretty sure that’s scheduled for next week!

Our produce boxes are going over well with friends and locals and it’s nice to have somewhere useful (and beneficial to the gardening pocketbook) to send the produce I don’t have time to deal with. We’re harvesting the last of the first wave of beans, and the second wave is just a few days off so we might not even have a break in them this year. Successive planting is obviously the way to go, though at times I think it might be nice to have a little break to relax and breathe. … Nahhh…

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For the Birds

Have you ever grown anything specifically with wild birds in mind? Many people plant things like thistle, cone flower, rose and various berries specifically to invite their feathered friends to grab a snack as they’re passing through. Even if you’re not a bird watcher (or “birder”) it is definitely nice to have the flit of movement across your vision in the dead cold of winter. We are often seasonally visited by juncos, ceder waxwings and Boreal chickadees, and the cardinals, gold finches and blue jays rarely leave for the winter.

I have always made sure there were plenty of prickly seeds and squishy berries for the little guys, but it wasn’t until this year that I decided to try growing so of my own birdseed to put up for winter.Of course, I’ve grown sunflowers in the past, but the chickadees and finches always managed to pluck all of the tiny morsels from their seats before I was able to bring them in to dry for the winter (this year I did manage to get a few, though!)

Millet. It’s a humble grain, often forgotten, and it has to be one of the easiest things I’ve ever grown. In fact, prior to this year I had been pulling it out of the flower beds in a futile and tangled war between myself and those-things-I-used-to-call-weeds. This year I decided that as long as it wasn’t killing anything else with it’s unruly sprawl, I would leave the volunteer army of millet in various places in the garden.

It isn’t a small plant, mind you. The one I have out front is more than six feet tall and sprawls roughly four feet in diameter, but it is a beautiful plant to see nodding it’s heavy, sleepy seed heads in the late summer breeze. This morning I began cutting the largest of the seed heads and drying them. For now I’ll be drying them in our kitchen, but as the season progresses I’ll be moving the millet and sunflowers to the barn to hang where they will season until the birds need them most: the dead of winter.

Millet is not a particularly palatable grain for birds, but it does provide protein and vital energy for them in the cold shivery months. The way I have always fed it is mixed with a bit of sunflower seed to encourage them to try it. Once they realize that it’s a source of food, despite not being terribly tasty, they are on the feeders regularly as soon as the wild sources of food run out.

The one thing I try to do above all else is keep the feeders full during the winter. The birds that come to your feeders are there specifically because there is a food source. If the food source stops, they move on, but they don’t always make it to the next food source, especially in some of the nasty Michigan weather we get up here.

I’m sure I’ll be buying birdseed from the store this winter (many stores sell it in bulk and you can bring your own containers!) but I’ll also be supplementing with what I’ve grown. If you have the space for it, give it a shot. This year my millet required absolutely no extra effort at all, except to cut it and hang it to dry. Planting it was simple – in most cases the birds took care of that for me. If I really wanted to plant a patch, I’d just scratch up the dirt a bit and sprinkle it with millet seeds. It’s a pretty intense little booger, so  once you grow it plan to have it around for years to come.

Next year I plan to try a few other bird seeds as well as some millet for our own personal use. I did plant some sorghum this spring, but its long season requirements might mean it doesn’t finish developing before it conks out for the year. Ah well. The point is, while you’re putting up food for yourself this fall, considering putting some up for the feathered folk as well!

Have you ever grown your own wild bird seed? Which varieties have you grown?

Want to read more from Tanglewood Farm? Check out Emily’s blog over at A Pinch of Something Nice where she writes about her experiences with her gardens, her livestock and her leased historical home in SE Michigan.

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The Groundcherry

Back in Tennessee our property was covered with groundcherries (sometimes known as stone cherries, husk tomatoes, and sometimes Cape Gooseberries). Had I known how absolutely wonderful they tasted I would have taken full advantage of this free resource. I should have taken the time to identify the differences between the nightshade plants and the groundcherry instead of ripping out every lookalike for fear that my daughter would find the colorful fruit irresistible. After all, I could easily tell the difference between a tomatillo and Chinese lantern. They’re all part of the Physalis genus, and in the Solanaceae family which also gives us peppers and tomatoes. In my defense, our property was also covered with the smooth ground cherry – a known hallucinogenic (smooth groundcherry leaves are almost hairless and given the Latin name P. subglabrata).

When picking wild foods education is everything.

I said they were delicious, didn’t I? Yes, yes indeed. But it seems they’re a bit like cilantro. You either love ’em or you hate ’em. They have an evolving flavor. For me, they start of tasting like a pineapple, then mellow out a bit like a tomato with a distinctive flavor from its relative, the tomatillo. Hubby thinks they taste like bacon and pancakes, and finish like a tomato. The Kid despises them, but then again she is revolting against all fruits and vegetables at this time. If you can find them in your yard or in the wild, consider yourself lucky! I was fortunate to find them at the farmers market. I hope you get the chance to sample one this summer as they’re not only tasty, they’re rich in provitamin A – a healthy sweet and tart treat. If you get them, buy some up as they can last in cool storage for 3-6 months.

Groundcherry Salsa

(Phenomenal on fish, chicken, or chips)

• 1 cup groundcherries, sliced in half
• 1 cup cherry tomatoes, sliced in half
• 1 cup (about three large) tomatillos, diced
• 1/4 cup diced red onion
• 1 clove garlic, smushed
• salt and pepper to taste
• (optional: green chilies, jalapenos, and/or cilantro)

Remove husks from ground cherries and tomatillos and wash them along with the tomatoes. Chop, dice and mix all ingredients together in a bowl. Ta Daaa! Couldn’t be much easier or healthy to add some flavor to a simple dish.

 

Chocolate covered Groundcherries

• Melting chocolate such as bark
• Groundcherries

1. Pull husks of groundcherries up, but do not remove. Wash fruit and allow to dry. Try not to get husks wet.
2. While they’re drying, melt chocolate in a double boiler over low heat and line a cookie sheet with parchment paper.
3. Use husks as a handle and dip the cherry in the chocolate, then set on parchment to cool completely.
4. If hard chocolates aren’t your thing, consider fondue!

Jennifer can be found at Unearthing this Life; her blarg about self-sustainability, gardening, cooking, and family.

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Big river

I grew up in Philadelphia, a stone’s throw from Valley Forge. I never really thought about this; we went to Valley Forge often, like going to a city park.

When we moved to Illinois, in 9th grade, none of my new classmates believed me. To them, Valley Forge was a distant myth of the remote past, populated with heroes from history books, not little girls in shorts.

On the other hand, it took me 20 years to realize that I now lived barely 3 hours from the Mississippi.  I had crossed it twice, on various college road trips, before the revelation hit me, that this big river underneath me was the Mississippi. Lewis and Clark’s Mississippi. Mark Twain’s Mississippi. Huck Finn’s Mississippi. As mythic to me, living nearly next to it, as Valley Forge was to my middle school mates. Now I have seen the Mississippi from a levy in West Helena, Arkansas, and a river boat in New Orleans, from bridges in Minnesota, and bluffs in Illinois. I’ve tracked the hills that line it with my eyes, and followed roads that wind along it, knowing the big river is somewhere just around the bend, past the last farm, at the end of this creek.

I think I will never get past the wonder and the awe that I am someone who gets to see the Mississippi River. I’m not sure I could be more impressed by the pyramids.

Like Sam Gamgee, wondering if he and Frodo would be put into songs and tales, we live in myth without even knowing it. I stand regularly where the Mormon trek began. I have followed, without knowing, parts of the Trail of Tears. Pioneer and Potowatomie blood and artifacts fertilize the ground beneath my feet. My line reaches back through my mother and grandmother, through ancestor upon ancestor to the Urmother who birthed us all.

We are part of the tale reaching back into the past and forward into the future. To quote Sam again,

“A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something, even if you were too small to understand why. But I think I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn’t. They kept going.”

We all just keep going, never knowing what parts of our lives will move into the myths of our descendents.

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Fighting Complacency

Since moving back to a more inhabited area I find myself enjoying the benefits of living close to so many resources. No longer am I spending entire days running all of my errands so that I can save gas and time. The convenience of town life definitely has its benefits: the farmers market, bakeries, butchers, artisans, shops and stores, and restaurants. I’m reminded of why it’s so easy to sink into more of a consumer mindset. Especially after spending the day at the beach.

For me, the last two weeks has felt a bit like being on vacation. I’ve actually found myself wondering if it’s necessary to start baking my own breads and plan a garden for next year when I have local resources nearby. It’s hard work to grow your own fruits and vegetables with minimum impact on the environment. Baking bread for the week is a lot more time consuming than walking across the street to the bakery and buying a fresh loaf for $4.00. Raising animals seems expensive to start up over the immediate benefit of purchasing local pastured meat and eggs from a butcher or farmer – and the hard work is done for you.

So why should I can and freeze fruits and veggies for later in the year? Why should I spend my spare time sweating and working hard to get a garden started by the last frost date? Why should I invest in fencing, wake up early, and make vacationing difficult in the name of farm-fresh eggs and the like?

Sure the hard work is done for you and you should support your local businesses, but doing some of it yourself – all that growing and raising and working hard – it’s what our societies did long before there were supermarkets, Amazon, and the Green PolkaDot Box. We used to be healthy for all that hard work without use of a treadmill and we didn’t have to worry about high fructose corn syrup or gluten intolerance.

Growing and making some of our own food is 1/3 pride, 1/3 concern for health, 1/3 concern for the environment, with a pinch of fun thrown in there. I’m proud that I am continuing to learn skills that my grandparents needed to survive. I love that I am building a self-sustaining lifestyle with only minor investments. Our health has only increased since growing and preserving our own, with doctors’ papers to show it. However, with all the dining out over the past month my wasteline has admittedly grown. My activity level has decreased since I’m not working my gardens and I spend less time outdoors.

Finally: my concern for the environment. I believe it’s up to each of us to be environmentally responsible. We need to use our brains when we purchase anything. We need to consider what’s better for us – shipping certified organic garlic from Argentina or purchasing non-certified organics from a local gardener whose hand we can shake and discuss the importance of chemical-free farming with. Growing and saving some of my own heirloom vegetables helps keep cost down because I only have to buy seeds once. And past the initial investment of purchasing jars, canning your own goods can save money in the long run. Then there’s the benefit for my immediate environment by planting a variety of produce and flowers and avoiding harmful chemicals. I’m actually improving the ground itself and I see the payoff with an increased amount of wildlife and higher production rates in the food that I’m growing.

Personally I want my money going into the hands of the growers and producers and artisans. Not advertisers and middlemen. And not into gas for shipping. While baking my breads and growing a few crops is time consuming and sometimes hard work, I feel I’m doing better for my everything in my immediate area by growing and making my own. For those things I cannot make and do, I either purchase as close to home as possible or do without. So while I’ve been guilty of complacency the past few weeks, I realize that I am not perfect. I also understand the importance of purchasing locally and using the skills that were taught to me. Yes, I will continue to grow my own, even if it’s in a 5-gallon bucket. Yes, I will continue to can and freeze home grown and locally grown produce to enjoy in the off-season so that I can avoid expensive imports. And yes, I will continue to support the local artisans, farmers, and restaurants to keep money in my pocket and help to limit pollution and reliance on petroleum.

What about you? What do you do to fight complacency and why do you keep going?

Jennifer can also be found blargging at Unearthing this Life and on Twitter as @unearthingthis1.

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Unexpected

Gardeners like to plan things. Despite the wild appearance of some gardens (ahem), and the tendency of plants to have their own ideas, we’re an orderly lot. We plant things in neat rows, or square foot grids. We weigh and measure, label and stack. We plan our days, and color-code our calendars. We map our vacations and set our alarms.

But the world is full of the unexpected. A broomcorn tassel emerging from a storm-damaged stem. A forgotten plant. Too many cucumbers. A missed turn that leads to an alpaca farm, or a wind farm, in the wilds of Illinois.

Or you might meet Mrs. Rice, the 94-year old proprietor of an enormous “antique mall” in Freeport, Illinois, encountered only because we were waiting out the rain, and hear about an Illinois farm girl going to “business school” in 1934, in the building that she now runs as a flea market-cum-museum.

Take the wrong turn every now and then. You never know where it will lead.

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Weekend photos: On the road

Wei and I took our first actual vacation I think since our honeymoon.

In 1983.

We’ve traveled a lot, mind you. But it’s always to go to this convention, or that choir tour, or continuing ed, or to see one of the kids in their farflung phases. Last week we stayed in Galena, Illinois and visited antique fairs, and played tourist, and drove around the countryside, for no other reason than to get away.

And I fulfilled a lifelong ambition. I got my toes in the Mississippi mud.

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Jennifer here! It seems like I’ve been on the road non-stop for the past month. Moving 700 miles has taken it’s toll on us, but we’ve had lots of new experiences already. We’re having a blast in Michigan – exploring, beaching, decorating, and even having pizza delivered for the first time in 5 years.

Having moved so close to my hometown, I’ve already been to visit family and gone to the county fair.

There sure has been a lot of eye candy these past few weeks. I sure can’t wait to explore more of our new surroundings!

Have you been on the road?

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Helping Livestock Beat the Heat

Well, this might be irrelevant at this point as much of the states have made it through the worst of the heat wave, but I couldn’t help but share a few things I’ve learned over the past few weeks while dealing with the extreme heat in Michigan.

If you follow my personal blog, you’ll learn that my little moorit ewe, Gertrude, is sick. We’re not even sure of what she has, but it started when she got “White Muscle Disease” (lack of selenium and vitamin E) at the height of the heat wave. Since then she has been battling a high fever (106-107º) for more than a week, as well as severe anemia causing edema of her entire body, weakness and lethargy. Basically this means that her body stopped absorbing protein, wasn’t producing enough red blood cells and her immune system was fighting either a nasty bug or itself, unfortunately.

The heat wave we’ve had was obviously not helping my woolly buddy to stay cool and comfortable through the worst of her illness, and it was hot enough to inflict frustrating conditions on all of the animals we share our lives with, so I spent the last few weeks reading up on  (and inventing) various ways to keep our animals cool.

Here are a few of those that I found worked best:

• For Wooled Livestock: Evaporating water cools the air around it. Try installing sprinklers in various places, not to wet the animal themselves (this can cause wool to flatten and can overheat the animal!) but to create an area with cooler air. We set up sprinklers to shoot water up onto the undersides of the leaves of trees that provide shade, as well as on the grass beneath. This worked really well for us and Gertrude spent some time when she was feeling a bit better digging up the grass with her hooves to expose the cool dirt below.
  The other place we put a sprinkler for the sheep was definitely the most beneficial. We hooked up a rotating-head sprinkler on the corrugated metal roof of our barn and twice a day would run the sprinkler until the water running off the barn roof was cool to the touch. This would cool the barn down by at least 5-10º!
  It’s important to remember that fuzzy animals (well, all of them really) burn through a lot more vitamins and nutrients when it’s hot out. I provided my sheep with extra vitamins E and B, and a bit of extra selenium as well as a new more palatable mineral mix. When it was really hot (and when Gertrude got sick) I provided higher protein hays that included extra alfalfa, and a sprinkling of black oiler sunflower seeds in their morning grain for extra protein as well.
• For Chickens: Provide lots of water, obviously. I found that they love to dig in deep sand and dirt when they’re hot, dust bathing and using the fine grains to cool their bodies. They also loved to lay in the areas of grass that I wetted each morning, both because of the cool air and because the cool air attracted bugs that would otherwise be too hot to fly around. The chickens also were given a bit of extra scratch in the evening, as they weren’t as active in foraging during the day.
  To compensate for mineral loss, I splurged and bought the chickens a free range poultry mineral block which they spent pecking and scratching at for days.

• For waterfowl: Our ducks struggled quite a bit in this heat. Whenever I set sprinklers for my gardens, I always considered the ducks a bit and offset the sprinklers just a tad so that they would sprinkle cool water over an area the ducks could have access to. I also occasionally just set a small spot-sprinkler up in the middle of the yard to let them cool off in. The biggest trouble was that the large bins of water that I normally have for them (2 x 3 x .75′) are black plastic, so when the heat really got bad the water in those was too hot to cool the ducks down, even in the shade. I made sure to give them lots of small pans of water throughout the day so that they could cool themselves internally, rather than drinking water that was hot and miserable. The mother ducks were very good at recognizing when the ducklings were struggling, and they followed the cool spots around the property throughout the day, often huddling in the deepest of shades beneath the mock orange bushes.

The heat makes everyone miserable, and as a fairly new farmer it’s important to be able to adapt your ideas, construct your own remedies and think on your feet. One of the things farmers often forget when caring for overheated animals is to care for themselves as well. Take LOTS of breaks, keep hydrated, and realize that sometimes even if you are taking breaks and hydrating, it is possible to overwork yourself. Learn to recognize signs of heat exhaustion (dizziness, slurred speech, extreme irritability) before they become as serious as sun poisoning or heat stroke! Remember, if the farmer can’t tend her/himself, they can’t tend the farm either!

Do you keep livestock, and how do you cope with extreme heat?

Want to read more from Tanglewood Farm? Check out Emily’s blog over at A Pinch of Something Nice where she writes about her experiences with her gardens, her livestock and her leased historical home in SE Michigan.

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In case you’re wondering, Gertrude is very much so herself these days. She is on her feet at least 50% of the time, but she still struggles with a fever of 106º that breaks for a few hours and then resumes. She is on banamine (anti-inflammatory) as well as just about everything I can think of to shove down her throat (I can tell she is feeling better, since she has knocked me on my butt at least three times this week alone), and has been treated with two types of antibiotics at this point. She is still eating and functioning well, just very tired from the fever. Alas, a mystery.

 

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On Moving

In my adult life I’ve moved seven times; two of those as a family with a child. Averaged out, that’s once every three years! Ugh. No wonder I despise the process so much. Each time I move, I dislike it more and more. (I say as I’m breaking from unpacking.) It seems as though we’ve got this thing figured out, though, and perhaps I can offer some advice to those of you that are planning on a move any time soon.

I’ve learned that it will always take longer than you plan, or want it to take to get everything moved and unpacked and in working order unless you downsize your belongings. We Americans like our Stuff, even those of us that don’t consider ourselves “Normal”. As soon as you plan to move, begin ridding yourself of excess. Reduce, recycle, or give it to someone to reuse (or if you’re a glutton for punishment, hold a yard sale). E-bay, Craig’s List, or Freecycle are some excellent alternatives to a yard sale or Goodwill – and I like them because it is a lot less stress than spending an entire week to set up and clean up a yard sale.

Avoid purchasing items for your new place until you’re moved in. Yes, you’ll want your new joint to be happening and functional the day you walk in. First of all, that’s a completely unacceptable expectation to put on anyone, even your own self. Second of all, why bother getting more stuff you’ll have to pack and transport when you probably have too much as it is?

Start gathering boxes, newspapers, and other packing material as soon as possible. These are items it seems you can never have enough of. Liquor stores, grocery stores, and farmer’s markets are all great places to look for boxes. Also, look for sales on packing tape and big permanent markers. Find a home for them and put them away every time you’re done with them so that you know where to find them the next time you start packing.

Do a little research of the area you’ll be moving to beforehand. Get contact information for utilities, locate grocery and hardware stores, arrange internet/cable/telephone start dates, and find a convenient restaurant or two to make things easy on yourself.

Keep tape, markers, scissors, box cutters, garbage bags, and newspaper available even when you’re UN-packing. Surely you’ll have second thoughts on a few items and need to repack them for storage.

Label. Label. LABEL! You will never remember what is in each box unless you only have five of them or have a photographic memory. Write clearly on the top and two adjacent sides of the box what is inside and a general idea of where they belong. You may also want to come up with a color code for especially fragile items. We used bits of blue painters tape on fragile boxes so that we knew at a glance which weren’t good boxes to play basketball, soccer, or football with.

Don’t stress about dusting or making things spotless before packing them. Dishes and glasses will inevitably get fingerprints on them when unwrapping, and you’ll want to wash any newspaper/box germs off your dishes, silverware, and cooking tools anyway. You never know what’s crawled on those boxes or papers.

A quick rinse through the hot cycle of the dishwasher may be good enough to get some of those prints off. If you’re worried about germs, you can use some mild detergent in the machine, or quickly wash them in the sink.

Put your toiletries in a carry-on bag so you don’t have to search for them when you’re bedding down for the first night. It’s an awful pain to have to dig through boxes to find saline solution so you can take out your contacts. Even worse, fumbling around for your glasses once you’ve taken your contacts out!

Make sure that you have enough clean clothes to get you through the move and a day beyond. A washer and dryer will probably be one of the first things you hook up if you own them, and keeping a load or two running while you’re unpacking and cleaning is almost painless.

…however it’s a good idea to wash all your towels, bedclothes, and curtains to have them ready to hang or put away as soon as they’re unpacked. I put mine in large garbage bags for easy transport, then reuse the garbage bags for clean up in the new place.

Prepare food in a crockpot, cook a roast in the oven, or even (gasp) order out if it helps you stay sane. There’s no reason to cook big meals, bake breads, or go over the top if it’s going to add to your workload. Think of simple meals that you can make at home to save money, perhaps eggs with mushrooms and kale in tortillas topped with hot sauce and sour cream; an easy salad with sliced leftover roasted chicken; or even a bowl of oatmeal with nuts, fruit, and cream. And keep healthy snacks available! You’ll most likely be using up more calories than normal, so keep your energy levels in check. (Don’t fail like me and fill up on junk and completely crash when everyone is counting on you….)

Use up all of those disposable plates and cutlery you’ve been hording because you’d otherwise feel guilty having thrown them away.

Arrange tools like screwdrivers, wrenches, drills, and hammers in a small carry-on bag so that you don’t have to dig for them when you need them. Don’t forget any hardware you may need.

Keep cleaning supplies nearby all the time! You will drop something. Something will spill. Food will spoil. Your child will dump her drink in the backseat of the car during a poorly-timed trek through rush hour traffic in a major city. The Gods of Moving say it must be so. Keep rags, towels, a broom and dustpan, mop and bucket, trash bags, and some simple cleaners around for basic cleanup.

Don’t forget to spend time with those kids when you can so that they’re feelings don’t get completely crushed when you scold them for dumping said drink in the car during your poorly-timed trek. Remember that time spent with your loved ones is also supposed to be relaxing for you.

Ask, pay, or bribe friends and family to help you early on. Remind them (although not obsessively) when they’re expected. It’s considered excellent manners to feed people and even provide cold beverages!

Take time out to celebrate, relax, and just be with the people you’ll be leaving behind. Goodbyes are difficult, especially in these times of email, Twitter, and Facebook when short statements are the norm. Say what you feel, and keep in touch.

Finally, remember that you’re not perfect. Be realistic with your expectations concerning your time, finances, and energy, and do the same for those that are along with you for this crazy ride.

Jennifer can be found blarging at Unearthing This Life and on Twitter as @unearthingthis1.

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