A couple of weeks ago, we saw a Children’s Theater production of Sleeping Beauty. This was a modern musical adaptation, with the cast renamed to reflect current pop culture (think Kim, Khloe, and Kourtney for the three fairies), and mostly current music. The storyline changed to Phillip being the shy prince’s assistant who eventually falls for and wins Sleeping Beauty’s heart; the actual prince was a pompous jerk named Prince Maximus.

Anyhoo, the Prince had his own “theme music” – the LMFAO rendition of Sexy and I Know It. However, since this was Children’s Theater, the title line was changed to Handsome and I Know It. The funniest part of the whole show was how the actor hammed it up during his scenes. This new version of the song has become a favorite refrain around here – no more so than in preparation for the annual Spring School Sing. The boy does clean up nicely!

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…