Long winter evenings with no time to measure...

Loved ones with whom we share warmth and our dreams!

I washed a big pile of dishes after supper. It is a dark and stormy night, but cozy and warm inside the house with the fire burning in the woodstove and candles flickering on the shelf beside the china mugs. When I was done, I turned on the battery light and relaxed on the recliner. The others joined me as they came in from chores: feeding and bedding down horses, and milking cows. Milkmaid brought in two jars of milk.

They hung up their wet coats and set their boots beside the fire to dry. I made popcorn using the ghee we made after Christmas. We love ghee! Its high smoke point makes it ideal for popcorn, and the finished product has a lovely buttery flavor.

We wake the next morning to clear skies. The wind has blown all the rain away, and it threatens to take my wash as well. I pin it firmly to the line. With this fierce wind, it won't be long until it is dry!

The cows opened the barn door (again), slogged out through the cold wet mud, and hightailed it for the winter pasture. They can find their way out in the dark! It is much too boring in the barn!

"We know you meant it well, dear Farmer. We appreciate the interest you had in our well-being that prompted you to heap big piles of sweet-smelling hay in our feed trough. But young winter grass, with the snow just melted off, is so much better-tasting.... and the exhilaration we feel when we've been nudging at the barn door all night and it finally opens is just out of this world."

We'd been busy all day today. There's always a lot to be done on a farm. But its wintertime and we decide to make a little wintertime treat. Since we're low on eggs and rich in cream cheese, it will be a no-bake cheese-cake, using cream cheese, unflavored gelatin, vanilla, and a little bit of sugar. Mm! We'll make a brownie bottom, set the cheesecake mixture out in the cold to set up, and pour a little strawberry pudding over the top. Unfortunately, when we set the brownie bottom on the stoop to cool off, some very tragic happening occurs.

Abigail is a little kitty almost a year old. She loves sitting on the front stoop waiting for someone to come along and stroke her soft gray fur. She was not on the stoop when some silly person was baking a brownie bottom for her cheesecake; nobody is quite sure where she was when I came out onto the stoop, took a few quick looks around to make sure Abigail and her friends are not around, and set the cakepan out to cool. No one knew where she was... but she came by and of course, felt it to be her duty to investigate this situation.

What a strange sight it was, to be sure! There was a cakepan all by itself, and a cookie sheet was set over it for protection from all elements. Abigail didn't waste a minute. She called her cousins Christopher and Samantha (because mischief is funner in groups) and they all prowled around, nudging the sheet until it fell off. Abigail happened to be quite close to the edge of the cakepan when the sheet moved, and she fell right in! She denied it later, of course, when the baker came out, but it was obvious that someone had fallen in, as there in the soft brownie were imprints of small paws.