Cob Ovens and Birthdays!

Whew..once again, I have been meaning to write more frequently, but I find myself inside the house less and less which cuts down on my internet use. A couple of exciting things have happened since my last post but first I want to share about my adventure when coming home from work today. Because my trailer is so small and because I brought quite a bit of clothes for the winter, I have been storing some of my things in the barn. Well, I got into one of my bags the other day and forgot to zip it up. When I went in the barn today to grab something I saw my bag wide open on the floor and automatically assumed there was probably a mouse or snake family living inside. I was right! I saw the momma mouse jump out of the bag to which I screamed and ran out of the barn. As I was screaming and dancing around outside one of the guys said "Meg you can pick up beetles and bugs and spiders, but you can't handle seeing a mouse?" to which I replied. Yes! So I dragged the bag outside and carefully started going through my clothes. Once again I began to dance around and shreek because there were two newborn red little baby mice just hanging out in my bag with my clothes. Ugh!! It was quite an afternoon. They did however chew through one of my favorite black dresses and one of my many blue sweaters, but there are worse things. 

The cob oven we used to cook our pizza

So about a week ago we headed on down to Pickards Eco Institute for some delicious homemade cob oven pizza. Pickards is a teaching facility that has a beautiful garden and we spend time with the folks that live there. That is where we harvested all the edamame. When we arrived, I went and helped chop the wood for the oven. That was really fun because I felt like I was really earning my dinner. I had to work for it! The delicious sauce was already being prepared made from fresh tomatoes from the garden, garlic and peppers. We brought fresh veggies to put on top of the pizza from our garden. Peppers, eggplant, shitake mushroom from our mushroom logs, and basil. It was so much fun hanging out and eating delicious pizza. 

The veggies we took and our awesome shitake mushroom logs

Sara, Rachel and I getting ready to cut the yummy veggies

Matt teaching me his pizza dough skills

Then when we got home from eating the delicious pizza, Kenny drove his scooter down to the barn, so I went on a midnight scooter drive. Notice the cool driving hat from Norway. Thanks Sam!

The guys worked very hard on getting the fire going. 

Barb gave me this shirt. It was hers from 1983 when she was traveling around the middle east. I made it my official birthday shirt. 

The yummy food. Scramblies and baked butternut squash. 

So the next big event that occurred around here at the farm was my birthday! I felt so loved by my family and friends with all the calls, letters, packages and whatnot.So thank you!  We had a big potluck bonfire celebration on Tuesday and it was so much fun. I had friends from work and Durham come, along with some of our community friends. We brought out the banjo and had a lot of fun celebrating!

I'm totally posing. Not playing anything worth hearing. 

Matt helping Lyndsay hold the banjo

Matt, Lyndsay, Megan, Laura and I

The last and final big thing that has happened was my Gramanie and Aunt Anne and Martha came to see me! It was so great having family come and see this silly and exciting world i'm living in.