CEEEELLLLOOOO!

It was hard but Gabriel let Oliver and I go just for a few days to head back to our home away from home in Celo. It just would have been heart breaking if Oliver's first summer had come and gone without being baptized in the waters of the South Toe, bottle fedding the baby goats, picking blueberries on the edge of Roan Mountain, having dinner at the Knife and Fork, and having dinner on grandma's porch, in the house that his dad grew up in, with the crickets chirping while gazing at Mt Mitchell. Sigh....Once again, Celo just hits the home run as the most wonderful place on Earth.

Sampling blueberries for the first time








Flowers from grandma's garden


Auntie Em and Uncle Alex


Meeting new life


Napping by the river with 9 week old Shaw and Gray








Crawling to grandpa Bruce


Giggles with grandma Marilyn


Many trips were made to the washer and dryer which are right at Oliver height and right outside of our bedroom




More river time with grandmas



Oliver loved riding back up the driveway from the river in the back with no car seat.






He was also a big fan of grandpa's iPad





Becoming the new face of Mountain Farm yarn

The wild flowers on my mom's hillside were just amazing.

September in Celo

We are spending the month of September up on the family farm. It has been really really wonderful. Now that my mom has finished building a second home (right next to my in-laws farm), it has been nice to have our own space when we come up for this long. Especially because Gabe is using this time to study and I am working on my business it is also nice not to have the usual distractions of 20 goats, 2 sheep, 2 lamas, 3 rabbits, 5 dogs, many chickens, the list goes on.

It is also a really nostalgic time of year to be up here. The final days of summer where the line between summer and fall blurs into a perfection of temperature, color, burstingly ripe tomatoes, and the last several jumps in the river for the year. We say prayers of thanks for every warm day that we can still sit out on a big rock in the sun or for bare feet because we know it won't last much longer. Although the surrounding foliage is still a bright blanket of green, the shade seems to have shifted slightly and lonely bright red leaves that seem to appear out of nowhere float past as we dip in the river. Fall, my favorite.

We have been in a really bad drought here in western North Carolina and the river has been soooo very low. But a couple of weeks ago a huge storm brought something like 8 inches of rain in less than 48 hours and the river rose several feet. A few days later Gabe and his dad decided to tube the river in it's unusually swift currents. The pictures below are right after their climb back up the hill from the river after their float. I thought they looked so cute. Usually we never tube with wetsuits or helmets but this was precautionary after the flooding.

Jeremy the Sheep

This is Jeremy. He is the new sheep on my in-laws farm. He is the cutest sheep I have ever seen in my life. He is a Jacob Sheep which can have anywhere from 2-6 horns! He only has 2 but a neighboring farm has some that look like crazy unicorn sheep. Here is some information about Jacob Sheep: Jacob Sheep are a very ancient breed that probably originated in Syria some 3000 years ago. Pictorial evidence traces the breed's movement through North Africa, Sicily, Spain, and on to England. Jacob sheep were imported into the U.S. for game parks and zoos around the turn of the century. Additional imports from Britain in the 1950s and 60s enhanced the genetic pool, at the time the breed was dwindling. Active preservation efforts saved what was left of the breed and established a healthy genetic pool which assures the breed's survival. Cool huh? He is as cute as can be as the lone sheep on a dairy goat farm.

Bottle Feeding the Babes

Gabriel with Corona, Rumi and Niku

I have to do a little catch up...
This weekend was such a wonderful and beautiful celebration of spring. What a wonderful Earth Day! But first, this post really has to be about last weekend. Last weekend we went back up to the in-laws to see the first of this years baby goats. Oh how fun they are. Every year I am surprised at how small they are and how sweet... Things that can only be said about goats for a very short window of time.