So 2013 was wonderful and hard work and now wonderful again as we’ve moved into the House on the Hill that Wayne designed and built. Lots of people will be invited just after we settle in…here’s our letter to Friends of Oasis Farm just outside Petaluma city limits on Skillman, 2nd driveway on the right past Lombardi’s barbecue. You’re welcome to come walk about and eggs are generally available, first come basis, for $5. 35 happy chickens roaming the front pastures.
Dear Friends and Family,
We are pleased to tell you WE’VE MOVED into the House on the Hill, 282 Skillman Lane, Petaluma, CA, just outside City Limits – the House that Wayne designed, and, largely, built himself! Still quite amazing to see the brilliant sunrise from our bed just beyond the deck and sunset out the kitchen windows. Seems we’ve befriended the Moon and the Stars and the Sun! At least one horse still parades around on the hill across the way in the late afternoons, Cooper’s hawks frequently swooping down onto a fence post. Just had a deer peering at me through the window in front of this computer – looking for a hand out?
A few housewarmings can’t be too far behind! You’ll be invited. And prospects for a Barn Raising are getting stronger – next summer?
We were so busy building the house, building our Petaluma Grange and the CA State Grange Convention in Sebastopol, but, even with all this going on, the peaches, the apricots, the pink pearl apples and Bosque pears came on quite remarkably!
So there’s apricot chutney for family (next year for Oasis Farm families?) and loads of fruit in the freezer. About 150 fruit and nut trees and the veggies pop out of the hoop houses and the ground when we put them in! Way more to share in 2014!
We learned a lot about our chickens this last year – that a little one becomes a best pal by asking you to help her get food till she comes to roost on a kitchen chair. Sadly, our Kitchen Chicken got offed by a bobcat; we have only one little egg (blown) to remember her – and the 35 laying now protected by electric fence, today enjoying a dive into the loose straw that got away. They always think there’s a bug in there.
Still love the Butterfly Gardens and made sort of friends w. a daily hummer when she came close to observe me a couple of times – plan to grow milkweed and pipevine plants so can send for Monarch and Pipevine Swallowtails in a year or so.
Our first Morgenthaler/Waterbury/Madden/Hamm Traditional Christmas Eve. – dinner w. all the trimmings, house full of kids and their parents, went without a hitch, though we have more extended family than we thought – 25 people for dinner! These children are great friends and play together very well. We are blessed. And we want to share that.
– Yours, Connie Madden and Wayne Morgenthaler