In yesterday's post I promised more photos of our farm pick up on the bay. 

We live on a big peninsula, a fat thumb that sticks out into the Gulf of St. Lawrence. On one side of the peninsula is the St. Lawrence River (Fleuve Saint-Laurent) and on the other is the much smaller (and warmer) Baie des Chaleurs (I only know it by it's French name). We're on the bay side. Where the water is warm enough to swim in the summer, or so I'm told. I'm not much of an ocean swimmer. 

There are many beautiful municipal beaches along the bay. Though they are visited by tourists and locals during the summer, they are never over populated. At least, not the ones around here.

It is at one of these municipal parks where our farm pick up is each week. I haven't actually been to the farm, I hope to go someday. The vegetables this family grows are beautiful. I would love to see the soil and surroundings where the food comes from.

For now, I'm content with getting to know the farmers. Thank goodness their English is good because my French is still at the less-than-basic level. (I had high hopes for starting language instruction this summer but moving and living in renos and releasing this e-book has thrown that off.)

I pick up our weekly veggies and the kids run down to the water. They play around in the driftwood till I'm done chatting. When I get down to the beach they go for a swim, goggles and all. They play with the boats they made last summer while we lived with my parents in Nova Scotia.

Laurent tells us he misses the surf in Nova Scotia, though I think the water is colder there (my kids are oblivious to cold ocean water it seems). There aren't many waves here in the bay. But an ocean beach without waves is better than no ocean beach at all.

And an ocean beach paired with farm vegetables - it doesn't get much better than that. 

This was our share from this past week, pictured at home on our deck. I can't believe all that beautiful broccoli. The bagels, pitas and organic, local, greenhouse tomatoes were purchased separately. The farm is also a bakery and they supply us with the few baked goods (I don't bake anymore) we eat during the week. We've since started a new food tradition - Friday morning bagels. 

I still miss our farm in Maine. I think it's ok to miss things you've loved and lost, like our beloved farm share. But even in that loss, there are new things to love and appreciate, like farm pick up on the bay.

I started keeping a journal when I was a eleven, or maybe thirteen. I don’t exactly recall. I wrote sporadically, mostly the usual growing up angst. Lists of boys I had crushes on. Personal struggles and heartbreaks I find embarrassing, even now, to read.

I thought everyone kept a journal. Where else could you work through growing, in secret and in safety, without judgement?

In school I was a competent writer. But it wasn’t easy and I could never pull off an all-nighter, madly writing an essay hours before it was due. It was hard work to express my thoughts, coherently, on paper. Not second nature.

What I had going for me perhaps was my natural motivation to thoroughly explain my position, to logically categorize and order my thoughts. I studied hard, and was eager to please (and get good grades) and always did my best. My writing, no doubt, lacked the compelling insights of true creative genius, but it was solid.

I found my collegiate writing stride in my last years of university - when I started to write about things that lit my fire - the whys and hows of learning. When a professor finally challenged and required us to read classics. Classics that at first glance had nothing to do with becoming a public school teacher. I found ideas that inspired me, writing about those ideas wasn’t easy but it had meaning, beyond getting a good grade.

University degree in hand, teaching career on hold indefinitely, I wrote about what mattered most to me - my family. Pregnancy journals, post-partum journals (Help me God!) and baby books where I scrupulously recorded my children's first years. Scrapbooks of our life, as a family.

All three children have baby books and scrapbooks. I set high standards for myself and I didn’t want to be one of those moms who remembered everything about her first and precious little about her last.

Recording and remembering mattered to me then, as it matters now.

I started blogging to write about my life as a stay at home mom and homeschooler. A mommy blogger. I had ideas I wanted to communicate. Ideas about mothering, my journey down a more natural, organic path of living, and homeschooling.

I discovered photography and wanted to share the beauty of this work I do; the home I make, the people I nourish and love. I wanted to teach what I knew (soapmaking for example) and encourage other homemakers, moms, and homeschoolers with my words and photography.

I started reading other mommy blogs. Other mommies read mine. We talked (blog comments and e-mails) about the struggles we faced at home, even in the beauty. I met people with similar values and interests. My desires as an extrovert to meet, connect, talk and share, found another outlet outside my immediate community.

And then I realized that writing was something I did every day - on purpose and with intention. That I was cranky without it, that it met a deep need I had to communicate and connect.

So I started calling myself a writer. Because I wrote.

I’m not a writer because I’ve always felt a calling. I have no desires to publish a traditional book. (Ok, not totally true. I think a book with my name on the cover is cool but the actual “behind the scenes” work of writing a full length book? Nope, don’t want to do it.)

No teacher ever told me I had a particular gift for writing. I was however told I have the “gift of gab”.

I’m not an introvert longing to express myself, using the written word to speak my mind.

I’m not a “born” writer, crafting words from the time I was able to hold a crayon.

Publishing a book has never been on my bucket list. I don’t have a bucket list.

I write to communicate, because I have something to say. But I love expressing myself verbally also.

I write to mentally order my life. I write to record. I write to encourage, to speak my mind and share a little love (sometimes these all intersect).

I write because I love it.

I feel insecure sometimes (there it is again, my nemesis - insecurity) when I read the experiences of other writers and bloggers, people who feel they have been called to write. Women knew from the time they were a child that writing was what they were meant to do.

Woman who put aside writing dreams to be a mom, or thought writing wasn’t a “real” option, who found that dream again and are going great guns. More power to them! 

I don’t have an English background and I don’t know how to diagram a sentence. I make grammar errors all the time.

I’ve never felt called to write. But I do feel compelled. If I don’t write, for even a few days, I’m antsy and uptight. Words want out. I want to connect. I want to express. I want to make order.

I’m not sure what kind of writer this makes me. An accidental writer?

Or just a writer.

I had promised a Sunday post, and I'm just squeaking in under the wire here. My plan was to write and schedule this ahead of time. That didn't happen, but an epic hike day did.

We do that once in awhile, have an epic hiking or backpacking trip. Something that pushes our limits.

Today it was a 17 kilometer (10.5 miles) mountain hike. The longest distance we've ever done in one day. I'm beat. But I really wanted to post this before I crash for the night.

Look what came in the mail this past week from Graham Gardens.

In my never-ending quest for 100% natural and thoroughly effective bug repellent I contacted Graham Gardens earlier this year to ask if I could trial their BugBar. Bug repellent is one of the few skin care items I don't make for our family. Sunscreen is the other. (I would love recipes for both, if anyone has any.)

Along with the BugBar from Graham Gardens, Christopher and Gina sent soap, lip balm, body scrub and body oil. 

Some of these goodies went straight to the girls, as I requested the items specifically for them. But the ipanema body scrub is all mine and good gracious is that heavenly stuff. 

Can you believe that I've never used a scrub like this before on my skin? I feel so pampered after using it. And I smell good enough to eat. (I actually had a teensy taste of the scrub, it smelled so good.)

And their soap? Oh my. My favorite so far is Bella Luna. I've been making my own soap for years but I keep it pretty simple - with the least expensive essential oils and basic carrier oils. Graham Garden soaps are luxurious and smell so incredibly good. I'm tempted to just keep them wrapped up in the bathroom, looking and smelling so pretty. 

The girls got these balms. Mom has to borrow. 

I'm leaving a review of the BugBar for later, but I will say the bugs don't like it. 

Thanks Gina and Christopher. Check out Graham Gardens for yourself. Their stuff is luscious, beautiful and their service is great (you get organic candies with your order - my kids loved that.)

That was fun last week, to recap the happenings with photos and a few words. I don't think posts like this will become habit, but I'm going to give it another go this week. 

Our driveway in the morning. This isn't the best morning photo, by any means. Mornings are my writing hours so I don't take time to stalk and compose beautiful photos. But this one will do.

I write, holed up in our bedroom, in a little green alcove. Bright green. Some day I'll show you but I haven't yet figured out yet how to photograph green walls.

Our house is full of bright colors. Green, blue, orange, red, yellow - colors I would honestly never think to paint on walls. But it works. The fact that I love bright colors is a good thing.

Color indoors, color outdoors. I look out our bedroom window (right this very moment) onto our very quiet, green canopied driveway. 

We visited the local fabric and craft store this week, and spent a long time talking with the owner. He remembered us from our last visit early this spring. The kids had their handmade dolls with them on that trip and apparently that made an impression.

Craft and fabric stores are my children's toy stores. This of course delighted the owner and so I took out my computer, used his ethernet cable to access the internet and showed him the kid's crafting I've featured here at FIMBY. I am one of those embarrassingly proud parents. But honestly, he was interested!

Crafting was one of our usual routines that we missed in Montréal. The kids have wasted no time in our new home in getting back into their creative groove.

In our mountain "neighborhood" there is a river. If you follow that river (which you do when you drive to town) it leads to the beautiful Baie des Chaleurs. We are a 20 minute drive from the ocean beaches. 

We've only explored the most common and easily accessible beaches so far. But this week, when our friends came over for supper, we found out where the really cool beaches are and how to get there. (If you want to know about the kid's swim wear read this.)

There is just too much (never!) nature stuff to do around here. Mountains, rivers, ocean. We'll only experience a fraction of all that goodness this summer, but even that fraction fills us up. I'm already starting my "next summer I want to..." list. 

A salad e-book is forthcoming - July 30th. I'm working through the edits now.

Meanwhile, we are loving our farm panier (basket). The produce is gorgeous and plentiful. The farm also bakes bagels and pitas - which I buy for the kids and myself, as Damien doesn't do wheat. Buying food directly from the farmer is my happy space. Buying beautiful, organic food from a family farm (three kiddos, one on the way) is my over-the-moon happy space.

I'm fairly removed from the goings-on of society at large in our mountain home but I've heard about the heat waves in other parts of the US and Canada. I don't think the Gaspé gets those, being out on the ocean as it is.

We've had some hot days (enough to make these peaches, "fresh" out of the fridge, sweat on the countertop) but nothing remotely unbearable. I'm guessing the only thing extreme around here is winter. And we can handle that as long as we have skis, a wood burning stove, and someone to plow the road.

I'm going paperless in my kitchen - all the way. I have three recipe binders full of my cooking repetoire. I've grown these binders over the years. I regularly cull and clean out the recipes I no longer prepare but now it's time to get rid of them altogether. During our moving over the past two months, I haven't used them once - the binders that is. 

I've cooked from memory, from Heather's e-course offerings, other recipe e-books I have, and from the few recipes I already had in our recipe software - MacGourmet. I am slowly adding all our family favorites to that software. In this way I will eliminate the need to store three huge binders in my kitchen. Not to mention seriously de-clutter all those recipes I never cook anymore. 

This is what the chef's view in MacGourmet looks like. Want that recipe for yourself? You can find it on this post as a printable.  

There is much more to the program than just this view. I've used it for years, very casually, but I'm starting to use it regularly now. Whenever I cook something that isn't in there, I add it while I'm cooking. This takes a bit more time but is worth it since I am building a great digital resource that's easily searchable and replaces cumbersome binders.

Digitizing my recipes will also allow me to easily produce cookbooks (digitial no doubt) to give our children as they contribute to more of the cooking in our home and eventually start their own kitchens. I love using technology to meet my needs. 

Hard to think these little twerps will someday have their own kitchens. 

I never get tired of this view from our main living area. Last night at supper we talked about how living here, so close to nature and yet not very far from civilization (twenty minutes to town where I do all my shopping) and in such a beautiful home, is raising the bar pretty high for our family.

This morning the kids will be taking a morning hike with Damien along the river. I don't want to think about the next step but we love living in the woods and the mountains and for now, have found "home". 

I love this little nook in my kitchen, directly over the sink. The dark blue wall behind makes for stunning contrast against white daisies.

The left wall of this nook is a chalkboard. I plan to paint the right column into chalkboard as well. I'd love to write lists, notes and inspiration here. But I think I will always be negotiating with my resident artists for space.

Have a great weekend everyone but do check in both Saturday and Sunday since I have posts planned for both days.