The old white van is finally gone. It was picked up early Monday morning. We did not shed a tear, even though so many memories go with that van: our awesome German WWOOFers Tim and Till, who left the van behind as a last resort sleeping option; one day we picked up our goats, Dagmar and Butterfingers, with the van, two of us in back holding their leashes and the other steering us back from…

Last Saturday was special! After a week of pouring rain, the sun came out and we got to listen to Madison. What an interesting man and really cool dude, too. The sun's been out since and now we can do what we've been wanting to do for weeks: plant some vegetables! (For the delicious food that our interns Courtney and Daniella made for Madison's Author Talk, we used our own potatoes, fava beans and oranges! How…

  We harvested our first pumpkins this week. They are really a gift from nature - we never put pumpkin seeds in the ground, but the young plants sprouted by themselves on our compost. How lucky we are that they turned out so beautiful!

  Our goats Doris and Butterfingers just gave birth to three goats! We are so happy about the new residents and that we will soon have goats' milk again. My own babies, Coco and Anaïs, never tried goats' milk before, but I'm sure they will like it - it's supposed to be the milk most similar to (human) mothers' milk; and we know how much they like(d) that!    

When you don't know what to say, you can still talk about the weather. But the rain we've been experiencing here has been an unusually frequent topic of conversation lately. And like Coco I love water, but these days more in the form of a hot bath than a mud puddle. It's the element that calms me down and makes me feel more balanced. But the sheer quantity and steadiness of the rain, combined with…