In case you aren’t aware, chickens are pretty much like pigs with wings. Every night after dinner, the kids ‘slop’ the chickens with the table scraps. Not just veggies, but pasta (think about it, spaghetti looks a lot like worms!), meat and poultry bones, leftover bits of meat, you name it, they love it! Our oldest son said the other day that when they do start laying eggs, we’ll need a chisel to break the egg shells. No doubt. We even crush up egg shells to provide them with the grit and calcium they need. They are the first stage in our compost pile. After we mow the lawn, they get the clippings sprinkled around their pen. As we feed them our leftovers, they create, well…..which drops into the clippings. Every few weeks, we clean out their pen and put the ripe clippings in our compost pile. (You cannot put chicken droppings directly into your garden as it will burn your plants.) It’s an awesome recycling system!

On the morning of October 14th, the following email was in my inbox, received from a dear and close friend of ours:

“So I have never sent such an e-mail, nor to so many people. As you may or may not know, my youngest daughter Shayla was diagnosed with cancer yesterday. With further tests, we now know she has Stage 4 neuroblastoma with a large tumor above her kidney and a spread of the cancer to the bone marrow throughout her body. This is a shock for me. I had taken her to the doctor for a simple tummy ache. Needless to say , my life has changed. To the various people on the list I call family or friends, know that I will be contacting you sometime soon as things settle down. Some of you are collegues whom I felt that in someway, without knowing Shayla would realize ways that this will affect me professionally. I don’t know the outline for things to come. Chemo is soon, more surgery later, bone marrow transplants and radiation- all in the next 11 months. I will be taking FLMA through my employer. Savannah is dealing the best she can now with the news of her sister. I will try to keep her life as “normal” as possible. For now Shay and I are at Mission hospital, may be for several weeks. Please keep the three of us in our prayers as we begin this new journey in life. Thank you. “

Needless to say, it changed our lives, too, and how we look at each day, at each moment, at each other and at our children. I can only imagine the horror that Jennifer is living through. I imagine, but only allow myself to imagine so far because going further is just too painful. What an unfathomable nightmare this must be for her as a mother. Shayla is only 3 1/2 years old. Just a little younger than our youngest. In fact, she, Jennifer and her older sister, Savannah, were just at Frankie’s birthday party last month. She looked fine. Not a thing to indicate anything was wrong. And then this.

Shayla was able to come home from the hospital last week, but this morning I got another email notifying us that she had to go back to the hospital late last night because she started running a very high fever. Having just finished her first round of chemo, her white blood cell count is very low, and any infection is next to impossible to fight off.

We are keeping her in our thoughts and prayers. Jennifer is a single mother, who can now no longer work as she has to be home with Shayla because Shayla cannot go to daycare anymore, for obvious reasons. I don’t know how she is going to make it, other than through the love, caring, support and prayers of friends and family. OUr own children have set aside a jar to put their money into to help out, all of their own accord, which I find so very touching.

If you want to send prayers and thoughts to Jenn and the girls, you can visit Shayla’s website on Caring Bridge at http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/shayla1

Please take a moment to hold your loved ones closer to you, to tell them how much you love them every chance you get. You just never know what the next moment might bring.

I’m heading out to M&M Freezer Locker in Hendersonville this morning to pick up a side of local beef to put in the freezer for the winter. 221 pounds of beef: steaks, stew meat, roasts, ribs, ground beef and more. All neat wrapped and labeled in the amounts we requested for just $2.46/pound for all of it! Can’t beat it. I love stocking the freezer and being able to get local meat is such a bonus. Of course, we’ve also been canning and freezing vegetables and grapes from our gardens and local apples that we picked. We’ll carve our pumpkins that we got last weekend this Saturday and make roasted & salted pumpkin seeds. Those, however, will not last long around here! The kids and I have started baking for our Christmas party and we’re putting those goodies in the freezer, too. The chill in the air and the falling leaves are reminders that the cold months are coming and it’s time to ready our pantry.

We just got back from pickin’ our pumpkins from the patch at Hickory Nut Gap farm. Joe’s mother, brother, sister and brother-in-law went with us. It was the perfect fall day for the ultimate in perfect fall fun! After picking out our pumpkins, we wandered back across the road and visited with the sheep, goats, pigs, cows, horses, chickens and turkeys. The kids jumped in the piles of hay in the barn. We, of course, had to get a gallon of their wonderful apple cider, also. We’ll wait until next weekend to do the carving but we came home with some beauties!

Joe has beer can chickens on the grill for dinner and TJ and I have an apple crisp in the oven for dessert, made from some of the apples we picked last month in Hendersonville. Yummy! The girls are enjoying the apple peels and cores from our efforts.

Can’t really ask for a better day than this!

Pumpkin pickin

What a gorgeous day! The air is crisp as the leaves make their tumbling fall onto the freshly cut grass in our yard. The sky is crystal blue, not a hint of a cloud. The light from the sun is no longer quite so warming as it was just a few weeks ago. Lightweight jackets and shoes to cover our bare feet are now a necessity, but it is a welcome feel. This afternoon we shall drive just up the road to Hickory Nut Gap Farm and pick our pumpkins. Welcome fall!

I just got a load of laundry hung out on the line to dry. Another load (with five children, they never, ever end) is spinning in the washing machine. The girls (our chickens) have moved from the starter feed to the scratch grain and they are feeling like big kids as they scratch the ground for their cracked corn and grain! Having just mowed the grass yesterday, they have fresh grass clippings to scratch around in and having a blast. Joe’s mother and brother, who is visiting from Cape Cod this week, are coming over for dinner this evening. I still have to figure out what to fix. I’m starting to rev myself up for beginning the baking for our Christmas party. With less than two months to go, it truly is time to start working on that and putting the baked goods in the freezer for the big throw down. We’ll also be having a nice gathering here for Thanksgiving with my sister and her family, Joe’s mother, my mother, Dawn, Thomas and Jed, Joe’s sister and her husband. Oh, I love the Thanksgiving gathering! And the weekend before that, we are going to be in the Asheville Holiday Parade for Support-Local.com, so there are many things to be preparing for. The hustle and bustle of the holiday season is upon us.

We’re wondering if the powers that be are suggesting that we build an arch. Thursday afternoon while sitting on the front porch, Barbara and I heard a strange meowing and looked over the side rail, and lo and behold, there was the cutest kitten. Miss Puss wrangled her way into our front door and adopted us. Our other cats are still deciding upon whether they want to adopt her or not, but they’re getting closer to a positive decision.

Then yesterday afternoon, while Joe and the kids were out in the backyard building boxes in a factory like way, a literal pack of dogs showed up. Apparently there was one of them they decided to ditch, maybe they didn’t consider him cool enough, and Poodee Doots ended up staying. He’s the cutest thing. Probably a beagle/dachsund mix. Of course, then introductions had to be made with Roscoe, our one year old Great Pyreenes but they are getting along famously. The sublime and the ridiculous.

Have to wonder if a zebra or horse or goat might show up today!

It’s even more important to support our local businesses right now, due to the recent and ongoing gas shortage and price increases. I’ve been reading a lot of articles, talking to business owners and the need is glaringly apparent. Many of our local business owners depend a great deal on the tourism in our beautiful mountains but because of the rising costs of travel, they are being heavily affected by the drop in visitors to our area.

Who is being affected? Who isn’t affected is more of the question. You-pick farms have been hit hard because a lot of people from neighboring states come to Hendersonville to visit the apple orchards this time of year to pick their own apples. But these travelers have heard about the gas shortage in the mountains and are afraid to come up here, run out of gas and be stranded. Volunteer organizations such as Meals on Wheels are feeling the effects because their volunteers are, by necessity, having to conserve their fuel. Of course local attractions, hotels, bed and breakfasts are being touched by the crunch as well. It all has the trickling down effect and hurts all of them and in turn, it touches us, as consumers and neighbors as well.

So, what to do about it? Obviously, each of us has to think seriously about where we go and how to best use our vehicles to get from point A to B to C and back again. And still, we need our weekend diversions and want to do some fun things with our families. And that can still be done. We just need to do it closer to home. As is so often the case, us locals tend to always think the grass is greener somewhere else and don’t actually take advantage of those fun things to do in our own backyard. But let’s face it, let’s celebrate it: we live in one beautiful area here in the mountains of western North Carolina and there is always something to do, no matter the season. Hiking trails abound, apples are ready to be picked and enjoyed, corn mazes are scattered around the region, fall festivals are being held by our schools, local events are happening everywhere and they’re all within a reasonable distance and a great deal are free or don’t cost that much. The more we each do locally, the more we all benefit!

Just came in from feeding all the birds; the wild birds and our girls (our nine chickens). They are busy, busy. Especially the wild birds. You can definitely tell that fall is in the air. All the youngsters are learning how to eat on their own, but moms and dads are still overseeing, but from a further distance. It’s time for the little ones to be on their own.

Our chickens are growing by the day. We’re looking forward to fresh eggs, probably around Christmastime. That will save some money. But above that, there’s nothing like fresh ‘real’ eggs. The shells don’t crack when you put them in boiling water and the yolks are the most beautiful golden color. Yum!

Our Girls