snapshots

We're at the far left of the pasture above, just in the trees (photo by my grandpa, Lauren Rice).

Today's our five-month anniversary here. Although I meant to blog more this spring, I'm settling for snapshots instead, as I look back on where we started on April 1 and where we are now.

Moving here was a huge adjustment. First, the creatures called sheep that are now in our care! The lambs are not so cute as this one pictured above anymore; they're almost as big as their 200-pound mamas. But when we moved here, they were barely a few weeks old and jumpy and basically stuffed-animal adorable. I've been jumpy around them myself, especially lately; the pasture is so dry that we're feeding them hay and grain like it's winter, so when I feed them in the evenings, well, it's a stampede. With not-200-pound-me in the middle. However, tonight I wrangled one of them--pretty sure it was the lamb above, one of two all-white ones--when it escaped out the gate. Hauled it bodily back into the pasture, and felt like I'd graduated to the next level of shepherding.

The other huge adjustment was, well, that Seattle is far away. For a city girl at heart, it is still the weirdest thing to live so removed from normal noises like cars driving by, sirens wailing, neighbors talking, airplanes roaring overhead. Here, the soundtrack is sheep baaing. Wind sighing, sometimes. And okay, the volunteer fire department siren a-wailin' whenever there's an accident on the highway.

But the view is ever stunning. Mornings, mist waves across the golden pasture. Afternoons, the grass and the foothills and mountains in the distance shimmer in the heat, or appear and disappear through dramatic clouds. Evenings, Sauk Mountain flares pink--we watch the reflections of the sunset through our east-facing windows. Often, we count elk grazing at dusk. On nights with full moons, we go to bed with the light silvering the metal roof of the sheep shelter out in the pasture and the shivery sound of coyotes yelping.

Has country living already gotten under my skin? Maybe.

To top off all the change, we got a kitten--a little black thing named Ginger. From her two-pound beginnings here, she's been a wild one, playful and curious and actually sort of insane sometimes, like Jekyl and Hyde. She can be tearing laps around the house one hour and purring on the couch the next.  We built her two cat towers early on, one with a cozy box on top and the other with three different perches. Tim's dream come true would be to turn our whole house into a cat kingdom for her; he's that obsessed with this crazy cat.

Okay, I am somewhat obsessed, too. Even though she types things like this on my computer keyboard when I'm not looking:

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mid-May

My very favorite thing about this new place is our garden, nestled between the empty house next door (gets more sunlight over there) and a big shed.

early June

Now it's a veritable jungle of winter and summer squash, green and soup beans, potatoes, onions, leeks, tomatoes, cucumbers, lettuces and greens, cabbages, beets, and baby brussels sprouts and baby winter kale and cabbage.

The garden bookends my days. I water and harvest in the mornings, then water what needs it at midday. Our nightly ritual (and sometimes morning too) is to wander out and peer at things and exclaim over new growth. 

Weekends and some evenings this spring, through June, we were pretty much addicted to working here: turning new soil, planting new seeds, weeding, and chipping away at the garden fence we still need to finish, which will be our attempt to keep out the bunnies that nibble at our onion tops. 

Even as we're harvesting cucumbers by the basketful, and crossing our fingers for the tomatoes to overcome an all-around awful blossom end rot plague, and drowning in zucchini, and pulsing basil into pesto for the freezer, we're looking ahead to winter already. Above, the curlies of a winter squash plant. 

We have a regular fermentation factory in the coolest kitchen cupboard: turnips, radishes, beet kvass, sauerkraut, and pickles bubbling away at all hours of the day and night. I made the beet kvass with some trepidation, as the tang of fermented foods is not honestly my favorite and my obsession with fermentation up until now has been merely with the process, half romantic and half scientific--it's both magical and creepily fascinating to watch substrates transform by the actions of microbes I cannot see. But at the first sip of kvass the other week, I was hooked. Sweet, a little salty, and tongue-twistingly sour, it's now my summer drink of choice, cold and slightly carbonated. 

When we're not gardening, we hike the trail around the property here, a three or four mile loop through the forest along the river. Or explore our bigger backyard...the North Cascades. 

The swimmin' hole (I have yet to go swimming--glacier water!) on the property

Baker River

View from Sauk Mountain at sunset 

Phinney Creek forest road adventures (photo by my dad, Andrew Rice)

Cascade Pass

Lest this all sound and look too perfect, let me say that these five months have been a roller coaster, lurching through the lows of not knowing too many people around here as well as soaring through the highs snapshotted above. It's been lonely and hard, yet full and sweet all at the same time. But even in the midst of the lows, I would not change a thing about our decision to come here.