limbo, and lambing

We don't just watch The Lion King btw. I suppose we could though (I'd certainly have lots of time to blog... Though wonder what about....!). Whilst visiting, my sister asked me about a typical day for us - as an unschooling family. I said, well this is one. Some days we don't 'do' much (as in I don't have a timetable or label every activity with it's usefulness in educational development). Some days we are very busy, even if our busyness consists of cutting paper shapes and gluing, baking, reading and feeding horses. It is not a strenuous kind of busy. Just a pleasant one. I am in a limbo place for my own part. I might be busy with the garden digging and such but with a move imminent it feels rather pointless. I see logs I'd like to haul back to use as bed-borders but I don't...Because a buyer might not like them. So, I pour over ideas for our next garden, willow arbor's and fence weaving, which vegetables I can plant and when. A play pit... Now this one I really like: Dig out a heap of earth; rough shape of sand pit, stack the earth to one side and hammer in large wooden stakes to stop it all tumbling in. The mound can be used for climbing etc but plant it up with wild flowers and sweet herbs etc too. Line the pit with gravel and then different grades of sand. Keep it a pit though, the idea is a place away from noise, wind and prying eyes. Make a little wood or stone shelf to one side for 'cooking'. Throw in some old pots and interesting chunks of wood. I am sure every child would soon individualise it too. I keep seeing little interesting ideas - instead of a water butt, use a shallow trough for little ones to use with boats and other water play. I am storing these gems away for my next garden which will not have a trimmed lawn and proper flower beds, but will be mostly wild looking. Except when you actually get close up and see how there is a vegetable patch and climbing fruit bushes over there, a conversation pit/willow den hidden just there, a slide sitting on the downside of a slope of earth, a tree house hidden with a rope ladder dangling to show the way. The sort of garden my child self would still love. I am reading up on chickens and their keeping of them. But really they seem quite low maintenance, other than fox proofing (human hair dangling in little bags and spread around the property was one idea mentioned - can you just imagine going to a hairdressers and asking for their trimmings :lol). These garden projects would be gulped up with eager, outstretched hands by my boys I know it. So I am gathering ideas, picking my seeds, ready.

Am keeping my hands busy with knitting and Waldorf doll making instead (and my usual recipe trawlling and experimenting). My oldest son's has a head but now I need to go and take out the rest of my stinking sheep fleece. It needs to be soaked and washed several times, dried and then carded for the stuffing which I have ran out of. It is a really smelly job. I keep putting it off. I like the bit where I have a nice puff of carded fairy fleece in a cloud mountain sitting waiting to be used. I am not going to buy it that way though. Stubborn? No, that would be too lofty, really it is the amateurish satisfaction from doing things right-the-way-through. Martyr style my mother teases, but it is my trying to get to the bottom of things, not having the mysterious process carried out by someone 'other'. Even though no-one would ever see or know what was in the doll!

Of wool - It is soon lambing and my own personal favourite time to spend at the Camphill farm. Always there are lambs (the unlucky third sibling, or motherless waif) that need bottle feeding with raw cow milk. They huddle under the heating lamp, in their makeshift straw bale home and compete to get to the teat. I like to pick out the true runt, the ones with legs thinner than my fingers, their bleats like the mewwing of a cat. Always there are too many for the deaf farm hand to feed and he is glad of hands. I am so glad of this Spring after this Winter. The more seasons that pass me by the more I am glad to see the next one rather than dwelling on the missing of the previous.