Memphis Democrat Column from December 11, 2005

It has really been a "winter wonderland" the past week or so. I lived in places with cold winters when I was young (Colorado, eastern Canada, northern Japan), so I have been enjoying it a lot. The low temperatures have been somewhat challenging since we have been having to pay extra attention to the home fires with only three adults at home and making sure our poultry flock and pets stay in good condition. But Gigi and Renay have been able to do some cross-country skiing and Renay has also been getting in some sledding during this time.

It has been a quiet period here at Sandhill Farm. Laird and Stan left the day after Thanksgiving for points north. They stayed overnight with their friend Donald in Minneapolis before Stan dropped Laird off in Duluth for a visit with his college friend Sue and her family. Sue and her late husband were also good friends of the community and used to visit every year during the holidays.

Stan then went on to Manitoba to spend time with his family. He stayed with his mother in Altona, which is very close to the U.S. border. The whole family has a reunion at a hotel in Winnepeg each year and he attended that. He also got in some ice-skating at the rink in Altona and on a lake there and attended some local hockey games. Stan arrived back home late this past Friday night after a long drive. He said we had more snow on the ground here then there was in southern Manitoba.

Laird travelled on to Ann Arbor, Michigan after his visit in Duluth. He is doing the first session of a new facilitiation training class at Great Oaks Cohousing Community. Like the other training classes that he has done, this one will extend over a two year period. He is due home this coming week.

In spite of the cold spell, we have been having some social times also. Our friend Farnaz and her daughter Sariah came over from Kirksville to spend some time with us last week. Farnaz has been substitute teaching in the local schools there and her husband Mark teaches in the Sociology Department at Truman State. For the past several years, they have lived in Beirut, Lebanon and it is interesting to hear her stories about their life there.

Farnaz and Sariah had lunch with us and then Farnaz helped Gigi with some of her work that afternoon and Sariah and Renay had fun hanging out together. Renay then went back with them to Kirksville to spend the night at their house. She and Sariah had another play date when Gigi ran some errands in town at the end of this week. Renay also has been over Dancing Rabbit to spend time with Cinder, her girlfriend there.

Renay's Girl Scout troop made Christmas ornaments for the patients at the nursing home during their meeting this past Saturday morning and then afterwards went there to deliver them. They had a good time visiting with everyone. Renay and her dad French had a chance to spend some time with our friend Audrey who is a resident there.

We have kept busy working on various projects during this time. Gigi has been doing some work on some of the rooms in Karma, our largest residence. This included finishing some paneling in a couple of the bedrooms, some floor repairs and working on a window in one of the rooms. She also did some work in the lower hallway of the building.

Michael has been trying to make sure our strawbale chicken house is tight and comfortable for our chickens and turkeys. He also been creating some snow-free spaces for them to hang out during the day.

Gigi and I spent this past Saturday afternoon reorganizing the library shelves in the White House. One of our sorghum season visitors built us a new bookcase and we finally had a chance to fill it up. I still have some community library work to do, but this put a big dent in it.

One of the perks of this time of the year is the chance to get in some serious reading. We all have a stack of books and magazines we have been wanting to get to for a while. At the moment, I am reading a really charming book that has been on my to-read list called Rosanna Of The Amish. It is the true story of an Irish girl who was raised by an Amish family in Pennsylvania in the 19th century.

Gigi is currently reading historical fiction with an English focus and she and Stan recently both read a very good novel called The Samurai's Garden that I picked up from the sale shelf at the Memphis library.

I loaned Stan a non-fiction book for his trip to Canada that Michael and I really enjoyed reading while we were on vacation called This Cold Heaven. It is about Greenland, written by a women who spent time in the northern part of the country over a period of several years.

Michael reads a lot of magazines, keeping up with his interests in agriculture, current affairs and science. He has been dipping into a book about Sicilian food called The Heart of Sicily I got for him a while back. Renay has also been reading a lot. Her latest book is The Ghost Sitter, which is a combination mystery and ghost story.