Buckeyes for the monastery

Many extra services and visitors to the monastery near our home.  I made two batches of buckeyes to share.  Tomorrow is Bishop Luke's namesday.  It also marks 25 years since Brother Jose died.  He is buried at the same cemetery where my father is...

There was a "pannikhida" or memorial service at his grave with many people, the visiting Metropolitan Nikoloz of Georgia, who spoke kindly and lovingly.  Brother Jose was the one who cared for the Iveron icon.  At the end, we venerated the copy of the Iveron icon of the Theotokos, which was actively streaming fragrant myrrh down the analoy.

Ferdinand is quite a handsome bull, and he's almost 8 months old.

Our sheep are almost as old as he and getting quite a thick wooly coat.  This is one of the ewes we bottle fed, so she's quite friendly.  The male and female Jacob's sheep have horns.  

We got a set of colored pencils, acrylic paints and brushes from an older lady at church!

Frost came

 

We had a light frost, but had a hard frost a few days ago and I had picked all the green tomatoes and peppers that were still in the garden.  Monday we went to the 6am Liturgy for his namesday.  My mom arrived that afternoon and we had his favorite, cheese pizza.  We've eaten a lot of butternut squash from our garden.  The boys got toy guns that have a little spool with a little gun powder on it.

We had so many chilly, yet sunny days, so we've been looking at the constellations. The Big Dipper is the easiest for us to find. We hiked at Glimmerglass state park with Grammie.  We did NOT see any bears.

It's supposed to be in the 60s the next few days.  We'll be outside a lot, I'm sure.  I still have a lot of beets and carrots in the garden. Below is my mother and Paul. Hope you have a good week.  

Axios

We say "Axios!" which means "worthy," at an ordination. Yesterday we went to church for the feast of the Protection of the Mother of God.  My passport expired a month ago, otherwise we would have gone up to Ottawa, Canada to celebrate this feast day.  My sister's husband was ordained to the diaconate.

My husband is milking the cow.  He milks the cow most of the time.  I did just once this week.  

Grinding wheat berries into flour.  We made waffles with the flour Thursday.  Later, we went to our homeschool co-op.  We studied China and made a sweet and sour chicken with the children.  Then they had a music class.  We also have a science and a preschool class, then lunch and a poetry class.

The kittens are a week old now.  7 year old Paul took this photo below:

I made a yarn censer for my nephew. This is the card we made last week for Uncle Andrey:

Fall on the farm

The fall colors are beautiful here!  I haven't made a sign yet, but we'd like to call our place Morningsong farm.  Should "morning" and "song" be separate?

We took our 1st trip out of state since we moved to upstate New York a year ago.  A friend of ours who lives in Massachusetts celebrated his 40th birthday!  We met up with my Aunt Ellen and Uncle Jim and took a tour of the Boott cotton mill, a National historic park in the town of Lowell.  They restored some of the looms and were actively weaving while we toured.  Then, we went on a trolley to the canal boat tour, which was really neat.  I bought a few kitchen cotton towels made on the looms there.  Paul and George earned a junior ranger park badge!

Today is Saturday. I mixed in chicken manure to our garden and planted garlic cloves.  In the spring, I'll cut back the tops (scapes to cook up with eggs), then hope that we will get big garlic bulbs in late summer.  

I'm using up scraps of yarn I've had to make some little bowls.

In the above photo, there are the 2 cats who had their 1st batches of kittens in June and July.  Snowflake was looking pregnant, so I canceled her spay appointment, kept the appointment for Sandy, as her kittens had been actively nursing from her, still, while eating dry cat food well.  All their kittens are in their new homes now.  Then, Snowflake just gave birth to 3 little ones in the layloft!  I didn't think she was that close to giving birth, but now am so glad I canceled that appointment.  Now to make one in 8-10 weeks!

Laundry soap

Horse chestnuts can be used for laundry!  I found out last year when we discovered a tree with many nuts on the ground.  Here is a link that tells how to utilize them as laundry soap.

Can you see 4 kittens by the barn door?

Every Thursday we have a homeschool co-op for a few hours.  I teach a class on geography through children's literature to 4-8 year olds currently.  We looked at the map of Russia in the wonderfully illustrated book called Maps by Mizielinska, made borscht and read The Firebird.  I used beets from our garden.  Two girls excitedly told me the potatoes and cabbage they brought were from their garden.  Next, we'll study China, then Japan.