Michaelmas is this Week!

Every Friday the children in our school gather for an assembly. Right now, one of the songs they are singing is a round:

Round and round the earth is turning
turning always into morning
and from morning round to night.

I've been thinking about this song--the movement and circling of the earth that it reveals. It's simple to see how the seasons move round and round, but there's another way to look at it as well--as a rhythm of inbreath and outbreath.

We all work hard at helping children through the day to have activities that allow them to expand out and move back inward in a rhythmic way. So, too, one could say do the seasons and the earth.

At the Spring Equinox, or Easter, one could say that there is the beginning of an outbreath, a lightening--a time when the earth expands and the soul expands, breaths, lightens.

chalk pastel by Helen, age 12

The Fall Equinox, at Michaelmas, the opposite happens--there is a turning, a coming back, a final flare of energy in anticipation of the inward work that will spiral in through the Advent season.

watercolor by Helen, 3rd grade

Often, in order for the best inner work to happen, there has to be an obstacle, an encounter that can help us define what our inner work needs to be. It takes courage and strength to truly meet that obstacle.

For me, that's the picture of the Michaelmas festival--courage, strength, will. Will--a term that I define as the almost unconscious energy it takes to make yourself do something you don't want to do. Michaelmas is full of energy, color, fire, and strength.

watercolor by Lou, 3rd grade

So, at our school right now, I see this season coming forth in verses such as one the Kindergarten is doing right now: "I am a blacksmith, strong and true. Best of work I always do. All day long my hammers go, slinging, clanging, clanging, so,.." In first grade: "We will work, with our will. With our strength. And our skill til the sword shines bright!" In 6th grade: "Beware the Jabberwock, my son! The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!" Many classes are also working on a math block--a subject where you have to work things through.

main lesson book page by Lou, 3rd grade

A picture of Michaelmas can be seen in "St. George and the Dragon." The children are performing this play on Friday. St. George encounters and tames the dragon with the help of the Angel Michael.

main lesson page by Helen, 2nd grade

After the play is our Harvest Festival--also a season of celebrating strength. At the Harvest Festival we not only celebrate with foods and harvest activities such as pressing cider, but we also play games of strength and skill such as obstacle courses and relay races. We try our hand at the blacksmith's forge and show our strength in a woodsman's challenge.

How to bring this important season home to children? I personally think that a strong connection to the seasons as they both turn and move inward/outward is important for our own adult inner work. Making a nature table is a way to reflect what is going on outside, inside. My nature table actually resides on my dining table and is constantly changing as the world outside our door changes.


In addition to having a nature table that reflects change, I think that engaging children in outdoor chores that celebrates their strength is another way to connect them to this season. Learning to chop wood, or build a bird feeder, or rake leaves all provide that energetic engagement with nature that will somehow leave a space inside them for the quiet, almost unconscious soul-work of the darker days.


Michaelmas Day is just the beginning of my favorite season. Smoky fires, bright red leaves, and warm savory stews fill all our senses and beg us to get out and embrace our world. Enjoy the season!

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Stinky Cheese & Other Local Dairy

Eating local on the weekends is easy in Vermont when it comes to dairy. We have always eaten local yogurt, milk, butter, and cheese.

We buy our cheddar in big blocks. I can tell that our children are true cheese localvores because if I slip a slice of white Wisconsin cheddar in their sandwiches for lunch, the cheese will come back home neatly plucked from between the slices of bread. They love their Vermont cheddar--the more seriously sharp, the better.

Eggs are also easy to get locally. It seems as though there are egg signs on every street corner. We try to get our eggs from our neighbor although they charge more than the other people in the area.

Yesterday I went to the farmer's market and splurged on our most favorite cheese. It's made down the road by one of Lou's classmate's parents.

... from the milk of these cows who are all named after Harry Potter characters.

This is a very ripe, very stinky alpine cheese--our most favorite and as precious as gold at $13/pound. Yesterday we took it on a hike up Mt. Ascutney.


We enjoyed our bread and cheese up on the mountain as we looked down on the farm.


We realized just how local we were being when we turned over the label and realized we were eating Ascutney cheese on Ascutney Mountain.

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Eating Local on the Weekend

Over the past few months, we have drifted away from having the bulk of our meals be prepared from local foods. This weekend, I proposed to my family that we take a step back toward a more local diet by eating as many local foods as possible on the weekend. We began this step with a lot of food processing on Sunday.

We baked and froze butternut squash.

Stewed and froze tomatoes.

Picked apples--Helen has already processed a bushel into applesauce.


There is absolutely nothing that makes Helen happier then when she is processing food. She says it makes her all cozy inside and reminds her of this picture:

We'll keep you posted on how the move toward being more local on the weekends goes!

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An afternoon on the river

I spent the afternoon on the banks of the Connecticut today.

I stopped for tomatoes--tomorrow, I'll be making sauce to freeze.

I stopped for some beef and corn and put my money in an honesty can. Drove away.

I sat in my chair by the cattails and read my book...
Their Eyes Were Watching God
(my river spot so different from the southern swamps).

I was waiting for some adventurers. I heard them before I saw them.

Helen and her class arrived by canoe after two days on the river.
They were all so happy and had grown so much.

I, too, felt renewed by these waters.

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Fun Summer Journals

As you may already know, we really love to journal. We take our journals with us everywhere.....last year we journalled about our gifts from the sea.

This year we brought them up on the mountains

and down to the sea.

This year, thanks to an old issue of Martha Stewart Kids, I came up with two new formats which I thought would be fun to try.

Lou brought along little jewelry gift boxes, paper that she had cut to fit into the box and had folded accordion-style, scissors, a glue stick, and gel pens. She cut up various brochures and made a page for each day. She was also able to layer in some little pressed flowers and other treasures she found each day.


She covered the top of the box with the beautiful image of Acadia which we picked up in an art gallery and the bottom of the box with a map.

Helen got excited about making tiny little books with covers made from various maps and brochures. She made a little book for each day of her trip and then put them into plastic baseball card sleeves.

Here are two of the little books.

My journal kit includes: gel pens, aquarelle water pencils, pencil sharpener, and a niji waterbrush. It's all you need.....

along with a great view.

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First Week of School

The girls just finished their first week of school. We're finding our rhythm again with early mornings, lunch packing, and homework. Phew. It feels really good.

On the first day of Waldorf School, there is a Rose Ceremony where each new first grader walks up on the stage to greet the new teacher with a handshake. Each eighth grader then hands his/her "buddy" a rose and walks the child to a spot in a semicircle where they are welcomed into the school community. It is tearful and beautiful. The eighth graders will spend the year reading to their buddies, helping with social issues on the playground, and doing fun things as well. On the last day of school, the first graders will give the eighth graders roses as the school says "farewell." Helen is wearing her Rose Ceremony dress in this photo. Finding the right dress was a big deal.

Lou's class uses placemats at their desks for snack and lunch. She decided that we didn't have any cool enough placemats at our house, so she made one. Here she is the morning of the first day, finishing it up.

She embroidered a purple peace sign on one piece of denim, sewed the right sides of the denim together, and then top stitched in a lighter purple. I'd say that's a pretty cool place mat for school!

The morning fog has been beautiful. We stopped to touch the sunbeams on the way to school--a good thing to do after a rushed morning.

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the seasons, they go round and round

Labor Day weekend brought a turning of the seasons to our house.

I worked in the garden--these lupine seeds attached to this spider web still need to be spread about.

There were pants to hem in time for the first day of school.

Blackberries to pick before the neighborhood bear (!) got them.

Blackberry jam to make.

A birthday to celebrate (mine) with friends from near and far.

Fall can come now. We've said our goodbye's to summer.

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