Happy Birthday

Drew Bear!

Aunt Duck loves you!

Home Schooling

Wes Callihan of Schola Tutorials:

This is the heart of a good education: a small but well-chosen library, a place to sit and study, some friends to do it with, and the time and tranquility to do it in.

This man summed up my philosophy of education in one sentence.

I taught my children to read, write, and do basic math.  After that, they had a set course of reading material, math books, and lots of time to talk to me (and anyone who would listen).

Kim

Riot Summary for July

This has been the month of little change. We haven’t made any huge steps forward, but we haven’t taken any steps backwards. We have just held on.

Gasoline: July usage 5 gallons. Total for the year 14 gallons (14% of allotment)

Electricity: I had hoped to lower our electric to 9 kwh/day, but canning and dehydrating started up this month. Our average ended up being 14 kwh/day. However, I now have enough onions, carrots, green beans, zucchini, mint, chamomile, pickles, potatoes, corn, berries, and jam put away for a year.

Heating and Cooking: July usage 0.5 therms of propane. Total usage 1 therm. Chainsaw 0.33 gallons of gas for a little more than 1 rick of wood. Total heating usage .33 gallons. (I decided to count this as we begin to put up wood for winter. That is the time we use energy to make heat. Winter is basically free since we only use down/dead wood.)

Garbage and Recycling: Landfill 8 pounds, total 26. Recycling 5 pounds, total 24. I am making a point of only buying in bulk or in containers that can be reused.

Consumer Goods: $65 includes pillow, pillowcase, 2 books, and a pasta machine.

Water: Still way to high! Again, I am waiting on the newest bill.

Food: Almost entirely local and bulk.

Five Acres and Independence

Five Acres and Independence by M. G. Kains

Subtitled:   A Handbook for Small Farm Management

Read:  July 2007.  Rating:  A disappointed me!  Some good parts, some out-dated parts, and some I just flatly disagree with.

I first read this book in 1994.  CK was trying to decide if he should stay in the military or turn civilian.  He had 2 years left of his commitment.  We began thinking about what kind of life we would want for our family post military excitement.  We decided a small piece of land way out in the country seemed perfect.   So we began picking up books the dealt with our new desire.

Back then it seemed great.  Now,  I’m not sure.  There are many good parts.  Many things to thing about, but there are parts that annoyed me.  For example, he believes seed saving is a waste of time.  I believe it is important.  I don’t trust the big guys.  I like knowing that year after year I’ll have my garden seeds.  I like knowing that I can pass along my seeds and they will produce a radish (or whatever) and not some 2 headed monster.

So I’ll keep it on the shelf, pull it out occasionally, and remind myself that I know our piece of land better than almost anyone else.  It has unique challenges and great potential.  We’ll continue to work toward self-sufficiency.

I also wonder if there wasn’t another book with a similar name.  The book I thought I remembered had much more to say about actually setting up a five acre homestead.  Maybe that is just time and too many books.  They tend to mush together!

Off to the garden.  (This isn’t Eden, so the weeds need pulling and I will be sweating!)

Kim

Beans

Phaseolus vulgaris: Common Bean

Heirloom Variety: Bush Blue Lake and Cranberry (Pictures from Victory Heirloom Seeds)

Growing: Direct seed when soil temperature is 60 degrees. Sow 3 inches apart. Seed leaves appear in 3-7 days. Non-bush varieties will need something to climb up.
Harvesting: Harvest while pods are slender and tender.

Seed Saving: Leave pods on vine until dry. Open pod and store seed. The simplest ever!! Since there are so many beans in this species (and varieties may cross), try not to plant 2 white seeded beans in the same year. They may cross. You can plant dry beans and green beans in the same garden, just put them on opposite corners.

Bloggers for Positive Global Change

Well, it never rains but it pours. Just as I was getting over the shock of a Thinking Blogger Award along came Rhonda with a Bloggers for Positive Global Change Award.

There was a blog I wanted to include on my Thinking Blogger Award but already had five. So I will list them here. I have really enjoyed reading this family’s journey.

1. Living Deliberately

From Climate of our Future:

“We at the new and improved Climate of Our Future (COOF) believe in blogging with a purpose. Our particular mission is no small task — changing the world we live in for the better — but we take great comfort in the fact that we’re not struggling alone to achieve this.

There are a wide range of bloggers on the Web who, like Atlas from mythology, have taken the weight of the world upon their shoulders and are trying to build awareness among their readership in order to create a more sustainable and enlightened future.

Many like us, but not all, write about the threat of global climate change and ways to reduce our carbon emissions. Others take on various other social and political causes that have to be tackled if humanity is ever going to preserve, persevere and progress. None of us have all the answers, but taken together we form a collective consciousness and wisdom that will help move our world in a positive direction.

We are creating an award meme to salute these efforts. This award goes out to all of the Bloggers for Positive Global Change. It’s not limited to any specific ideologies, religions or philosophies. It puts a premium on human compassion and the desire to make the world a better place for all of us, without exception.”

Fellow Positive Global Change Award recipients, it’s easy to participate in this meme. At minimum, you can proudly display the BPGC badge on your blog and bask in the glow of our collective good will. If you are sharing the kudos, however, please make sure you pass this list of rules to the blogs you are tagging. The participation rules are simple:
1. When you get tagged, write a post with links to up to 5 blogs that you think are trying to change the world in a positive way.
2. In your post, make sure you link back to so that people can easily find the exact origin of the meme.
3. Leave a comment or message for the bloggers you’re tagging, so they know they’re now part of the meme.
4. Optional: Proudly display the “Bloggers For Positive Global Change” award badge with a link to the post that you write up.

Busy, Busy, Busy

I feel like a bumble bee this week. I have been running back and forth between the garden, the house, and the animals. This is a very busy time of year around our little farm.

The Garden: The Garden is in full production now. The early crops have been harvested and processed, the mid-season crops are ramping up and are being processed as quickly as I can move, the late season crops are almost all planted. I have even kept up with the weeding! Whoohoo!

I have seeds saved from radishes, lettuce, spinach and potato starts.

Food Processing: We have dehydrated strawberries, strawberry jam, blackberry jam, blackberry syrup, dehydrated carrots, dehydrated green beans, dehydrated zucchini, frozen spinach, frozen swiss chard, frozen grated zucchini, dehydrated peppermint, dehydrated spearmint, dehydrated chocolate mint, dehydrated rosemary, dehydrated bee balm (Monarda), dill pickles, sweet pickles, bread and butter pickles, potatoes keeping cool, dehydrated onion, and onions keeping cool.

The House: HM and I are keeping up with the house work too. Sometimes it is easy to be so busy in the garden that the housework suffers. This year we have found a balance and it is wonderful. We have a 1600 square foot house. 3 bedrooms, 2 baths, a living room, eat in kitchen, laundry room (the size of a large closet), and a project room (that was supposed to be a formal dining room, but we need project space more than an extra eating space). It takes us about an hour to do a thorough cleaning of the house and only 20 minutes to do a tidy up.

The Animals: The chickens are doing well. We still mourn the loss of our 8 best layers. The others are keeping us supplied, but without a surplus to share with neighbors and friends. The goats are happily munching away on the pasture and staying healthy. They do a fantastic job keeping the underbrush out of the woods. Rabbits appear to be healthy and happy. They nibble on odds and ends from the garden plus fresh grass when we move them in the morning. We have definitely decided to add sheep next spring. It makes sense. We have the grass and the fence.

Our Routine: Here is a glimpse of our home routine.

• 6:15 get up and get dressed
• 6:30 take dogs out for walk
• 6:50 begin garden work and feed animals
• 7:30 break for breakfast and start laundry
• 8:00 back to garden, yard work and hanging laundry, short computer break for me
• 11:00 start lunch, move animal cages, refill water
• 11:30 eat lunch
• 12:00 housework
• 1:00 school /sewing or crafts / reading / quiet time / computer time
• 4:00 check water for animals, have a snack, bring in dry laundry, fold and put away laundry
• 5:00 household business: mail, bills, plans, prayer journal update, menu plan and grocery list
• 6:00 dinner prep and final tidy up of house
• 6:30-9:00 quiet family time
• 9:00 head to bed and prepare to do it all again tomorrow

Thinking Blogger Award

Bryan over at My Fair Share sent me a Thinking Blogger Award.  Wow!  Such things have never happened on this blog before.

I spent a few days thinking about which blogs really get me thinking.   I present the following list in no particular order.  Some of these probably don’t even know I read their blog.  I tend to me more of a lurker.  I am learning to come out of my shell, and this is a huge step!

1.  Evan at http://mustardseedpea.blogspot.com  Sorry Evan, I know this has already come your way, but you are so helpful and I enjoy reading your blog.

2.  Rachel at Simplicity Soup   Rachel is another Christian walking this path.

3.   Rick at Cumberland Books  I have learned so much from Rick over the years.

4.  P~, A Posse Ad Esse

5.  More Deliberate Every Day

The Unsettling of America

The Unsettling of America by Wendell Berry

Subtitle: Culture and Agriculture

Read: July 2007. Rating: A book that should be read, re-read, marked up, and also purchased for each of our children!

This is perhaps one of the best books I have read recently. Mr. Berry wrote the book in1977, but it is still very applicable today. He looks at industrial agriculture and traditional agriculture; exploiting versus nurturing; unity versus diversity.

He gives us a picture of a healthy farm. “The health of a farm is as apparent to the eye as the health of a person. To look at a farm in full health gives the same complex pleasure as looking at a fully healthy person or animal. It will give the impression of abounding life. What grows on it will be thriving. It will seem to belong where it is; the form of it will be a considerate response to the nature of its place; it will not have the look of an abstract idea of a farm imposed upon an area somewhere or other. It will look cared for–groomed, so to speak–like a healthy person or animal; it will look lived in by people who care where they live.” He goes on the mention that the healthy farm will have a variety of trees, plants and animals, and be self-sustaining as far as possible.

Here is a yardstick by which to measure our own efforts here at the homestead.

KMH

A Weasel

We lost 8 Buff Orpington hens yesterday. It was such a sad sight; the poor girls didn’t have a chance. We found them in the morning while doing chores. At first we weren’t sure what had happened. We went over what they had been fed, did they have water, were any of the others sick? What could have happened?

We couldn’t see any blood until CK began to remove the bodies. Then we found a clue. They were bitten at the base of the head, but there wasn’t much blood. A weasel? Probably. Weasels have a bad reputation for a good reason. They will kill much more than they can eat. They bite the head and drink the blood.

Later we were sitting down to eat lunch and my mother-in-law said, “What is that?” Out at the scene of destruction we spotted the weasel. It came back for more. My husband and son shot it and disposed of the body. Later they went down to the corner store to chat with the other men. A lot of the older farmers are also reporting many more wild creatures coming into the home area. The dry weather is forcing them out into the open at unusual hours and further from their natural domains.

My son was sad that he had to shoot the weasel, but understands that we have “promised” our animals food, protection, and loving care.

KMH

Help Wanted

I need help. I can’t decide what steps to take to reduce our water usage.

The bad news: Our household, including animals, uses about 250 gallons of water a day. Way to high!

What we are doing:

• We are using a primitive gray water system (ie: buckets under drains). Using this we found we average 1 gallon/person/day in the bathroom excluding showers.
• We already have a low-flow shower head. (2 men working that shower every evening, 2 ladies that shower every other day and sponge off the other day.)
• We use our gray water from the sink for flushing.

What we have in the plans now:

• Our animals average 35 gallons a day. When we redo the chicken house, shed, and barn we will be using metal roofing. That way the animals water will be rainwater catchment.
• We are setting up rain water collection off an asphalt roof to use for laundry. Will this be ok? We figure we can save 80 gallons a day this way.
• Eventually we would like to replace our roof and have a nifty system like Evan. However that has to wait at least a year. Finances forbid taking that step now.
• We’d like to use a bucket under the kitchen sink, but just haven’t taken the time to do so. I have a feeling we use a lot more water in the kitchen than I realize.

All right, have at it. I really need constructive help at this point.

Our Path to Green

Why (or rather how) does a conservative Christian become a tree hugging, compost making, chicken farming, goat milking, hippie?

 

Good question. The answer is:

I believe God created this world and declared it very good. It was a beautiful garden. We were told to tend and keep it. But man had his own ideas. He would be in charge, he would make the rules, he would rule with an iron fist. And the beautiful garden began to be exploited, damaged, and poisoned.

We have choked the seas with plastic; we have filled the water with toxins; we have sown oil in our soil. Now we are beginning to reap the consequences. Seas that increasingly have no fish, water that we cannot drink, and food that is no longer capable of reproducing itself naturally.

But God’s command never changed. He still means for us to care for the land.

For us it started with a small garden and a few animals so the children could learn responsibility. It grew into a concern over what we were ingesting along with our food. From there we went on our anti-chemical spree, which led to the anti-GMO spree, which led to the agrarian lifestyle. Agrarian reading led us to anti-”big box,” and that led us to tree hugging, compost making, big gardening, chicken raising, goat milking hippies.

Steps we have taken to care for God’s creation:

• organic gardening
• square foot gardening (uses less space more efficiently)
• heirloom seeds / open pollinated plants
• seed saving
• herbs
• herbal medicine
• cooking from scratch
• buying whole foods
• learning to can and dehydrate
• making connections with local farmers for bulk produce and honey
• raising farm animals more naturally
• raising pets on a more natural diet
• non-chemical cleaning
• making our own cleaners based on vinegar, baking soda, and pure soap
• making soap
• cloth hankies
• cloth toilet paper
• cloth feminine products (along with the Keeper)
• hanging laundry to dry (even in winter)
• learning old style handicrafts
• reusing plastic
• eliminating plastic
• stainless steel water bottles and glass storage containers
• CFL light bulbs
• monitoring energy usage
• planting trees, letting a 1 1/2 acre pasture go to woods.
• using junk mail as scrap paper
• opting out of junk mail
• UL wood burning stove fueled by down/dead wood
• second hand shopping
• perma-culturing front yard
• refusing plastic bags
• making string bags
• making canvas bags
• joining Low Impact Week
• building an outdoor kitchen
• signing up for Riot for Austerity
• primitive gray water system (buckets)

Quietly stepping down from her soapbox now,

Kim

 

Blackberries

Guess what we found! Wild blackberries!

We are letting our back 1.25 acre grow up into woods. Since we live out in the boondocks, my husband makes treks occasionally to make sure no one is growing anything illegal back there. (Yes, that is a problem in our area. See the DNR helicopter fly over, that is what they are looking for.) Sunday he came up to the house with a surprise — 1 gallon of blackberries. Today HM went out picking and came home with another gallon.

Whoohoo! Free food, and about as local as it can get!

KMH, the purple fingered one.

*DNR stands for Department of Natural Resources

Garden Journal

I am “The Keeper of the Garden Journal.”

Oh doesn’t that sound glorious? In reality it is a vital part of our little homestead. I keep track of what is planted in which garden bed, what the soil is like in that bed, how closely I sowed the seeds, when the seeds were sown, when the first little sprout showed, when the first true leaves appeared. Each day I record the low and high temperature, the humidity, the cloud cover, precipitation type and amount, and any dew. Each day also includes what we planted, harvested, noticed, how many eggs, any milk, rabbit doings, and goat doings. I also write down any ditty I learn about old style gardening.

I lost my old garden journals in the Great Computer Crash of ‘06. I will NEVER keep my journal on the computer again. It has been painful starting over. I used to be able to compare one year to another. Seed time to seed time, harvest to harvest. I have lost the variety names of some of my heirloom seeds. Although I have 98% written on the seed envelope. I have also lost the ability to track weather changes from year to year from my journal entries.

I keep the new journal in a spiral bound notebook. At the end of each month I transfer information to a regular calendar. Eventually I will make a special calendar that will have the most important dates and data right on it.

What does everyone else do to keep track of gardening information?

KMH

Local Food Month: Days 4-7

Wednesday Breakfast: pancakes (bulk wheat, homegrown eggs, bulk baking soda, bulk oil) with strawberry syrup (homegrown last year and canned)

Wednesday Lunch: leftovers

Wednesday Dinner: Egg Salad (all homegrown except celery and mayo), bread (store)

Thursday Breakfast: Eggs (homegrown), tea (bulk)

Thursday Lunch: leftover stir fry

Thursday Dinner: leftover taco fixings

Friday Breakfast: scrambled eggs (homegrown), tea(bulk), and a chocolate donut ( a treat from my husband)

Friday Lunch: leftover taco fixings (yes, again)

Friday Dinner: “catch as you can” Also know as each man for himself. We open the fridge and everyone tries to find a meal.

KMH

Water Blues

Good news: We do not have a leak in our plumbing.

Bad news: We really do use 250 gallons a day at our house.

Well, at least now we can take an honest look at our usage and make some plans. We are, apparently and much to my dismay, quite wasteful with our water.

Water wasn’t on my schedule yet. I didn’t want to have to confront this beast until later. However, I cannot in good conscience continue to be so wasteful.

I’ll be back tomorrow in a better mood.

KMH

Local Food Month: Days 2-3

Monday Breakfast: blueberry muffins (local blueberries, bulk wheat, local honey, bulk baking soda), eggs (homegrown), and tea (bulk)

Monday Lunch: Leftover Taco chips

Monday Dinner: Pizza (Don’t ask and I won’t tell.)

Tuesday Breakfast: French toast (bulk wheat, bulk yeast, local honey, homegrown eggs) with blueberries (local), tea (bulk)

Tuesday Lunch: leftover Quiche (all homegrown)

Tuesday Dinner: Stir fry (all homegrown vegetables) with couscous (bulk)

KMH

Garden Bounty

Here is a picture of what we harvested off our land in one day. We have onions, potatoes, cucumbers, yellow squash, zucchini, swiss chard, green beans, carrots, radishes, eggs, mint tea. Also included are some local blueberries.

We aren’t even up to peak production yet. We will be eating well this summer and fall. I hope to put enough back to feed us all winter too. We fell short last year by about 3 months. I hope to do better this year.

KMH

Local Food Month: Day One

Sunday Breakfast: toast, butter (not local), honey (local) and tea (bulk)

Sunday Lunch: beans (bulk), tortilla (last of the store bought), tomato (local), onion (our garden) and cheese (not local)

Sunday Dinner: Quiche (all from our land)

KMH