New Year on Cedar Hills Farm!

Needless to say, it's been a long time since I last updated the Cedar Hills Chronicles. However, I'm more determined than ever and have much more free time on my hands to devote to this journal.

I will begin with a recap on the holiday season at the farm. The holidays always begin with Thanksgiving, when Marco's family drives up to spend a week with us. Marco's mom and his youngest brother joined us this year and we enjoyed a wonderfully relaxing five days together. Marco's mom shares our loves for walking and each day she was with us, we took long walks through our woods. The first day we snuck up on a group of 20 wild turkeys! They suddenly took fight before our eyes and I marveled at how such a large bird can take off and fly so easily!

Snow came late to Minnesota this year, so over Thanksgiving Marco and his brother succeeded in hauling in two loads of firewood. We're being proactive this year and continuing to increase our firewood. We figure it's better to do a little at a time, rather than squeeze it all in over one week in the summer. These are the things we're learning with each new year on the farm.

On Thanksgiving the whole family worked together on creating our delicious meal. This is a picture of where Boston, our black lab, spent much of the day...on the kitchen floor, awaiting a tasty morsel. Instead of the traditional Thanksgiving fare, we made chicken enchiladas with red mole sauce, Spanish rice, re-fried beans, twice-baked potatoes, mashed yams with brown sugar and two kinds of pie: apple and pumpkin! A feast!!! None of us missed the turkey.