Our little warrior, in his dress uniform testing from yellow stripe to yellow belt in Kyuki-Do.

Jazz ran laps.

Mandy played keep-away with her toy.

Abbey made a wide circle and took her time surveying the yard. Incredibly, she is still limping along on her three half-ass okay legs and one pretty bad leg. But she makes sure she stays away from the antics of the other two.

Fantastic day today. Morning meeting working with some creative types on promotional videos – not my area of expertise, but interesting and good energy nonetheless. Then, it was an afternoon of working on the farm. Mr T. does the heavy lifting; I get to take pictures, watch the kids collect eggs and feed the goats, and chitchat. I have to work on bylaws and business stuff and update the website yet, but still…

ZZ ran and ran and ran. Ran around the chickens, ran with the goats, ran around the horse. Ran with a new friend, ran to eat, ran to play on the trampoline. He’s plenty tuckered out now.

We had a lovely potluck dinner of fall veggie soup, quiche, breads & cheese, and applesauce, on probably one of the last nights we will be able to eat outside this year. Bundled up and clutching our mugs of soup, but outdoors all the same. I’m so thankful to be working with this group of people, thankful for the eggs we bring home still warm from the coop, thankful for the milk we’re storing to make cheese soon, thankful for the beginnings of a garden that will feed us next year. But mostly thankful for the little community we are building.

I’m in the last minutes of waiting for another batch of boiled apple cider to be finished. My computer is right by the boiling pot; at this stage of the game, as the cider becomes thicker and more like syrup, it doesn’t pay to walk away for long. The first pot of cider I boiled taught me this lesson. The syrup burned before I had a chance to catch it. Burning happens that fast.

So basically, I pour 2 gallons of cider into a large pot, take a measurement with a stick so that I can monitor the reduction by 1/7, and start the pot on a hard boil. As the syrup gods would have it, the raw cider measures to nearly seven inches. No math necessary for this non-math wiz! Five to six hours later, the cider becomes a deep, dark amber. At 1 inch in depth, it’s done.

Poured into sanitized jars, the syrup should be shelf stable. I keep mine in the fridge nonetheless.

Pictured is a bit of boiled cider with sparkling water – a very yummy soda in its own right – topped of with a dribble of cinnamon liquor. The syrup is nearly as good just drizzled over ice cream. I’ve stirred it into hot oatmeal in the morning, and used it as a flavor boost for apple muffins. Tomorrow I’ll add a bit of syrup to the apple bars I’ll be making.

Okay – time to hover over the pot…

We’ve gotten together with a group of friends with the intention of creating a small, co-operative style farm. The main goal is to raise some of our own sustainable food, while spreading the costs and the burdens amongst all of us. Also, most of us live in areas that restrict livestock and bees, and on lot footprints that are too small for diverse gardens. Creating a bigger farming project allows all of us access to things like fresh eggs that we wouldn’t normally have.

Right now everything is very unofficial; we don’t have a solid framework, and although we have a name and a website, we don’t have a formal business set up. But we do have some land available for our use, and on that land we have a bunch of chickens, the outline for next year’s garden plot, a few bee hives, and two dairy goats – one of whom is producing milk.

The boy learned how to milk her today. It only took a couple of tries before he was getting full streams of milk. And Amber remained happy as could be whilst being milk – meaning that ZZ was doing good by her.

His comment? The teats were soft and squishy. Heh.

It’s our first official frost this morning – white roof tops against a baby blue sky. Time for some hot tea…

Jazz, doing what Labs do best…

Abbey is quite literally on her last leg. A few weeks ago she blew out the ACL on her hind right leg. We’ve given her a series of shots and laser therapy to try to promote some healing in that leg, but it’s a chore for her to walk and her limp is very pronounced. Essentially all of her back weight is being supported on her left leg.

Still, she continues to stubbornly limp along. It’s not enough for her to hobble to her dog bowl, she has to follow me to the garage door to make sure that I return with her food. She reminds me at 4:00 p.m. that she hasn’t eaten in several hours, and you know, what the heck about that? We have a ramp to help her down the outside deck stairs so that she can do her business, but sometimes she insists on taking the stairs back up, on her own, which I swear will kill me before it kills her.

One thing has not changed. Abbey remains the most stubborn entity I have ever witnessed.

The most likely thing to happen next is that her left leg will give out. If, or when, that happens, we will probably have to put her down. She is 12 1/2 years old. She is riddled with arthritis, but especially in her front shoulders, which would make doing any sort of hind wheelie contraption very hard. She is one of those Labs that has always showed all of the classic Lab problems: bad skin, allergies, odd bone structure, joint problems, arthritis, and now blown ACL’s. That she has made it to her current age is probably testament to her sheer stubborness. Her last day is creeping up on us; knowing this reminds me to stop what I’m doing to love on her, and also catches me in teary sobs when no one else is around.

On that dog level that none of us really understands, Jazz knows that too. More and more, she shadows Abbey when Abbey is on the move. More often, now, I see them sitting near each other. Never touching, mind you. Always at a respectable distance. But together, nonetheless.

I promised the boy some new Legos as a carrot for helping to clean out some of his old toys and organize his room the last few days. This is not an easy task for him; letting go of his possessions is hard, and he is not by nature an organized child. But cull we must, and organize too. Especially if we are to donate complete sets of toys. Heh.

Legos are one of his most favorite things. Funny enough, I have a picture of him from China playing with those big-block Lego knockoffs. He is quite good at following the initial instructions for a set, and then he promptly dismantles the thing and recreates it into a brand new something.

Before we left for the store, he assembled a battle ship with all sorts of men to wait for the arrival of the new set. He explained that they were excited to watch the building. The ship is in the background of the picture, consisting of mainly Star Wars characters. The new set is a Dragon with Ninja warriors. It should make for an interesting story.