December 25th

 Is it Christmas in your home? Well then, Merry Christmas! Merry anyway, even if you're not a Santa/tree/manger/presents/Yule log/carols person. We all could use a huge dose of merry and bright!

Busy day here, at the farmette. Of course, animals need our care no matter what, so off I go, into a gray and too-warm December morning. This was not the year to give kids sleds! 

Christmas breakfast. Lovely, yummy, special.

(with cat, me at the camera)

(with me cat at the camera!)

And then I have to get at it: dinner is at the farmhouse tonight and we have to get it together. Priorities?  Ed cleans, I bake. I can't bring down presents until the house is vacuumed. (And here's a mental note for next year: no wish lists with huge items (in terms of physical size) allowed! The wrapping was monstrous and it took many trips just to carry the big boxes downstairs. Oh fine, I take it back: if Sandpiper wants big trucks and Snowdrop wants a squishy cat, and Sparrow wants whatever Snowdrop wants, so be it.) And the Yule log -- I have to bake it in the morning so that the filling (orange cream) can set before I frost it this afternoon.

Too, there is the matter of roasting chickens. I like the method suggested by J. Kenji-Lopez Alt. Problem is, for our dinner of seven, one chicken is too little, two are too much. I was hoping that the butcher would sell me half a bird, but he wouldn't so I'm stuck with two. Given that I want to spatchcock them, I need to figure out what pan could hold two butterflied birds and fit in the oven. That process is one huge pain: flatten the birds, nope, wont fit, scrub the useless pan, go on to the next. While the cats watch wistfully, hoping that those birds (4.5 lbs each) are for them.

That is my morning. And afternoon. And really, it's not hard. Past Christmases had even more meals and it had the tumult that comes with having young kids at your feet. This one is quiet (but for the music!) and productive!

Okay, Yule log done, despite warped pan and uneven oven. It always comes out just fine -- it may be fussy but it's easy to fix cracks and twists along the way.

Table set, potatoes peeled, beans trimmed, chickens seasoned. Let the roasting begin! 

And here they come!

Farmhouse gifts.

Farmhouse foods. Farmhouse fun. It's splendid to revel in this season of sharing.

Dinner. The chickens look great!

You have to admire the kids' stamina. They've been running on excitement turned to max power since wake up time this morning. I ask them to decorate the log with twigs, currants and raspberries. And powdered sugar. They are on it!

Merry and bright indeed!

With so much love on this beautiful day.

December 24th

Good morning, day of Eve! My, what heavy fog you're delivering for us! Never mind, I can see my way to the barn. Good morning, hens, cats, and the birds that eat up scattered chicken feed.

Bread. A staple for this week. Favorite bread bakery is closed, but second favorite, Batch is open. I have a reserved pie for Eve and I want to get there early so that I can grab their last warm baguette for Eve dinner, and their last warm sourdough loaf for tomorrow. And a treat for breakfast.

The fog is so dense now that I cannot see our skyline driving in. A white cloud over a warm and unfrozen lake.

At Batch, even at 8 a.m., a line has formed, but it moves quickly. Too quickly! I could take in the fragrance of that place for a good half hour! At least! 

Home again. Breakfast with Ed amidst beautiful winter colors.

Eve day. Music is going non stop now. Ed does not complain. He's working on putting life into his suddenly dead computer. I sit back and think about this day. This week. This year. Next year.

We go for a walk in our local park. Wet, damp, near record highs expected today, tomorrow. And no snow, No rain either. We're having a winter drought. And here's a surprise: on the drive to the park we encounter cranes. Not just one, not just a pair. Why haven't they left? Will this group overwinter here?

At the county park we take pleasure in the damp earthy smells, the forest quiet. 

Friends stop by with a homemade nut stollen. It is exceptionally delicious -- not too sweet, very yeasty. Perfect for Christmas Day breakfast.

 

Milestones that are not Christmas related: one friend is celebrating a birthday, another is attending to a father who is very very old and not well at all. This is what we do, every month, every year: we attend, we pause, we celebrate, we listen. 

 

Toward evening I go to my daughter's house. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It's our tradition for me to cook dinner there tonight. Ed stays home for this one, as there is nothing in the main meal that appeals to him. Beef fondue. So un-Polish! (Poles do not really eat beef and certainly not on the Eve). But so us! I've been making sauces for Eve beef fondue (cooked in a spiced beef broth) for many decades. 

And pie for dessert. From Batch. Cherries from Door County.

And everyone in their pj's, and cookies for Santa and definitely an extra helping for poor Rudolph who has his work cut out for him this year in Wisconsin.

Time to say goodnight...

 

And drive home. Ours is on the farming edge of a small suburb of Madison. This time I drive through the heart of the community, where I come across this very large house with a very ambitious holiday light design.

I like it (though I'm also glad he is not my neighbor). And I also like the smaller displays... 

 

 

... or homes with nothing at all outside, and yet I know there to be lights inside.

And maybe some, where the light is entirely in the heart.

It's all beautiful.

 

with so much love...

December 23rd

Don't you just love the day before the day before? If you're anticipating the pleasure of, say, a family gathering to celebrate Christmas, foods, music, presents and all, then Christmas Eve is your big deal moment. Anticipation, about to be realized. (Of course, if you observe the religious aspects of Christmas or more strictly the traditions that lead up to it, then Eve is important in its own right. In Poland, Eve is more important than Day.) No matter how you slice it, with a heavy or light dose of religion, or perhaps no religion at all, Eve and Day are big! So, the day before Eve and Day is grand -- you have finally reached those heavily awaited days and they are just before you. 

In other words, by this logic, December 23rd is the best! 

Here, at the farmette, we wake to a misty morning. It'll be on the warm side today, tomorrow, and on Christmas Day. Second warmest in Madison's record keeping history. Rudolph's nose will be much in demand.

Breakfast. I seem to have forsaken oatmeal in favor of cinnamon. What can I say... my love of coffee with a yeasty or buttery pastry knows no bounds.

We have a quiet morning. Ed's head is in his machine design project and he spends many hours working through the details in the sheep shed. This frees me to play music without restraint in the farmhouse. I do promise him that in three days, I'll shut off my playlist for a whole eleven months!

 

 

In the afternoon, we take out our bikes. I cant say that it's a beautiful day for it (in the low 40sF, so maybe 6 or 7C), but we need the movement. I need the movement!

Misty, a bit wet. Dramatic. I swerve to avoid a car I hadn't initially spotted and throw out my wheel. Three fire engines and an ambulance come zipping our way. And birds. In the thick of a fog, we see the birds. Geese, crows maybe. And these two. See them? Cranes.

The lake is lost in the fog. We pause to stare into white space.

And then we go home, where my hero takes on the bike repair and I retreat inside for a warm cup of tea.

 

In the evening I have a date with my daughter and her two older kids. Sparrow had been asking to see the Nutcracker. We hesitated. He's a chatterbox and keeping him quiet in the auditorium is not easy. Snowdrop has seen the Nutcracker several times and though she likes it and was enthusiastic about an outing, she's a girl who favors words over music so I wondered if she'd get impatient with it. Still, we decided to go for it!

The four of us meet up at Cento for a pre-theater supper downtown.

(here they come!)

And now it's time for the show! I got side tickets that afforded some privacy in case things got a little too wiggly.

For me, personally, the Nutcracker is a big deal. I'd first seen it in New York, as a little girl and I was enchanted by it then. I came back to the ballet when my younger daughter ascended the Madison Nutcracker ladder, first performing as a 9 year old -- as one of the polichinelle children that come out of Mother Ginger's hoop skirts, eventually moving up to a party girl and then, at age 12 to Clara. That was her first en pointe performance and of course, it was thrilling for all of us to see her grace and artistry on stage. The last Nutcracker I attended was some two dozen years ago when she danced the snowflake dance. Somehow once she left the production and indeed, left ballet altogether (at her level of dance, it's very much an all or nothing activity), I shut the Nutcracker door for myself. This is the first time I return to it, looking at it afresh, with the eyes of the two older grandkids sitting by my side. Same theater, same stage, different generation.

Tears were shed.

Did they like it? Yes, very much so, we all did, in our own way (during the Sugar Plum Pas de Deux, I leaned over to whisper something to Snowdrop and she tells me  -- gaga, please, no words during this dance), each looking at it from her own perspective -- of dance, of story telling, of music, of time.

 

I drive home with the music in my head. The misty skies hide the stars, the moon. The warm air is too warm. The lakes were solidly frozen last year in December. There's not a hint of ice on them this year. The eve before the Eve. All is calm. For that and for everything else, I am so profoundly grateful.

with so much love...

December 22nd

Shopping for food. I should have used that as a header. Because on the day or two before Christmas Eve, I shop for food. Not staples -- flour, sugar, eggs -- those were stockpiled earlier. But the stuff that has to be fresh: berries and chickens. A cut of beef (yes, beef -- my once a year beef purchase comes now!). Flowers and croissants.

Such luxury! Impossible to justify in any way. Except maybe that it is a holiday where we gather at the table, for sure, all of us, together and there will be food. Gloriously shared. Loved.

 

It's another gray day, but a tad warmer. I am up early of course. I drive first to Madison Sourdough -- my bakery of choice. (I know the route so well that I can take the photo of the skyline at the right moment without even glancing in that direction. Today the lake is utterly still...)

 

 

It will be the last visit this year because they close for ten days beginning this Sunday. So I stock up here as well. (So does everyone else: their sourdough shelf is empty by the time I get there half an hour after opening. Luckily, I reserved.)

Breakfast with Ed and a very needy Dance.

And now I go back to my new grocery store. This place too, threatens to have empty shelves -- not of everything, but of my essentials. I take the last piece of beef, the last containers of whipping cream. Shopping for Christmas meals is tricky: you have to do it just before, but not just before, because just before is when the cream disappears and you really need that cream for the buche de Noel.

I meet my daughter at the store. Deliberately. We have our own carts, but this is a good time to catch up and plan for the days ahead. And compare notes. And then we return to our own homes.

 

It's time to pick up the kids. The last day of school this year! 

As a parent, I've always loved the reprieve winter break brings us. All of us. Sure, crazy busy because of the holiday (so many special meals to prepare! so many gifts to purchase, wrap and exchange!), but still a reprieve. When I worked, it would signal a break from teaching. And from getting up early to see the kids off. When they were little -- a break from packing lunches. A break from homework! A break, a reprieve, a gift of time! Intense, but still, so wonderfully special. We focused on home. Magic unfolded.

Now, as a grandparent, I still feel that sense of relief, even though it is no longer my job to hustle kids through school, or to get work projects tidied up for the semester. Still, we all made it, and now the family is coming together, and friends send messages, and it is so incredibly beautiful!

This afternoon, of course we do the usual: read, eat, play, read some more. The Christmas tree is already a fixture. We've grown used to its presence. And yet...

(He's proud of his pj's)

(She's proud of her recognition)

They leave, I make an aperitif of a Torino vermouth and white wine and I settle in on the couch with Ed, feeling so incredibly lucky and yes, joyous. 

with so much love...