life beyond the riot

It has been two months since the conclusion of the Riot–year 1.   Life beyond the Riot has been a little different.   I wanted to get some distance from the project so that I could look at it with fresh eyes.  That has been quite helpful.

Gasoline: We’re still using it.  We have gone to mowing the grass every other week (sometimes every third week).  HM is still using the reel mower to collect food for the rabbits and chickens.  The scythe doesn’t get used as much as I had hoped.  I need a new top handle.  It is hard to swing it correctly with that piece broken.

Gasoline–part 2: We’ve been looking for 2 months for a more local church.  There are many reasons.  One has to do with the distance, the price of gas, and how much of our day the travel used.  The second has to do with thinking more locally.  Our church is so far from home that we cannot practically be part of their daily lives.    We want to be part of a church.   We want to be part of their lives — help them with projects, take food when they are ill, shop if they can’t get out.   We want the same measure of community returned to us.  That just can’t happen when church is 70 miles away.  So we’ve been visiting all the churches within biking distance.  I think we’ve picked one.  We’ve been attending for 3 weeks and will attend our first “sociable” meeting this week.

Electricity: With summer comes a return to food processing.  Canning and running the dehydrator all use significant amounts of electricity.  Our daily number has jumped up between 16-20 kwh.  With our green credit that is 4-5 kwh.   We’re still living AC free.   We did buy a nice size portable pool for cooling off in.  It is a nice way for the family to relax and cool off together.  We all enjoy it.  We do run a pool pump for a few hours each day, but it doesn’t seem to use any traceable kwh.    Otherwise our electric consumption has stayed quite low.

Natural Gas and Wood Energy: We aren’t using any natural gas or propane.  We are starting to lay in our winter supply of wood.  It is still coming for 100% down or standing dead trees.

Garbage: We have garbage service now.  The company has a route that covers all our rural area.  It ends up being almost as cheap as buying the special bags required at the landfill and then driving all the way over there to drop it off.  We use one 30 gallon trash sack a week.   Occasionally we’ll have a second bag if something special was going on.

Water: Excluding the water to fill the pool when we first set it up, our water number has remained quite low.  We all got used to short showers, not letting water run at the sinks, and using the front loading washing machine.  Using dish pans definitely helps keep dish washing water to a minimum.  I love my granite ware dish pans.  They can be boiled to heat water and they don’t stay greasy like the plastic tubs.

We are not doing the gray water buckets this summer.  We have normal rainfall and the trees didn’t need the extra.   We still have the system in place should it turn dry.

Consumer Goods: We added the pool (and sand to build a level base).  We’ve bought a few DVD movies.  We’ve been buying sturdy metal shelves to hold all the food I have been preserving.  HM is taking an herbal medicine course and that required bottles, jars, beeswax, and various oils and alcohols.  We also put together a pretty complete first aid cabinet.

Food: We’ve been working hard on this category.   It is pretty much covered in the Independence Days Challenge.

Overall, we are sticking to what we learned, what became habit, and trying to improve in the food category.

Kim

portable rabbit cages

Sarah asked about portable ground cages for rabbits. So here goes . . .

We’ve found that rabbits are the easiest of all the livestock to care for. Their needs are very easily met on a small amount of land. They can get their feed from grass, weeds, root crops, and a salt block. Water should be available at all times and kept clean. They don’t like to drink soiled water.

The hardest part about keeping a rabbit is protecting it and protecting your garden. They can squeeze out of tiny holes and never forget where they found the hole. Our favorite ground cage for a rabbit was made of cattle panels cut and wired together to form a flattened cube. On the outside of that was hardware mesh on the tops and sides. The bottom had regular fencing with 2″x4″ holes. That kept the rabbit from digging out, but still allowed the grass to push up through the bottom. Over all that we had some corrugated metal to form a little house for them. We’d move these cages all over the grass in the summer. In the fall and winter they went into the garden to fertilize different beds.

That cage was great except for 2 problems One was when there were kits (bunnies). Once those kits began exploring they could squeeze out between the 2×4 holes in the floor. Someone was always chasing them around and putting them back. The second problem was cleaning them out in the fall and winter. The hay we put in to help keep them warm would mat down in the bottom. It was a mess to clean out. We never did find a great solution to that problem.

Now that MA isn’t here to man-handle the cages we’ve gone to a permanent colony arrangement. So far it is working out well. We just have to shovel manure each week instead of just moving a cage.

I hope that helps Sarah!

Kim

a deep dark secret

I am going to admit to a deep dark secret.  Are you ready?

I absolutely love the Osmonds!  I can’t help it.  My cousin gave me most of their albums when I was child.  I am pre-programmed to respond to their smooth voices and incredible talent.  So anyway, I have been listening to all my old favorites and finding that they are still really good.

One particular favorite is Crazy Horses.  Have you heard it lately?  Go to you-tube and find it.  Go on.  Isn’t it fun?  This is one of the few songs where Jay (drummer and usually had green on his costume) sang lead.  Merrill (usually lead, sings chorus, and usually had black on his costume), Alan (oldest, blue on the costume), Wayne (deepest voice, guitar solo, and orange on his costume) and of course, my favorite, the always almost perfect Donny (piano, purple on costume).

After listening to the song I also realized I was destined to become more environmentally aware.  God indeed works in mysterious ways!

*KGH knows all too well how often I played these songs as a kid.  She probably has the words to most of the songs seared into her memory.

Ah, it is good to be back.

Kim

hm’s graduation

For 17 years I have been a home school mom.   But on June 14 that all came to end.  My daughter, HM graduated from high school.   She is such a joy to all of us.  She is the ever-willing helper, my companion, and the delight to know.

Here are some pictures from the celebration!

independence days; 11

We’ve been experiencing some major internet trouble.  I’m not sure how much longer it will be until it is all straightened out.  I had started some regular posts, but they fell victim to the server glitch.

I hope to get back to posting more regularly as soon as things get settled down.

Planted:  winter squash

Harvested:  dewberry, blackberry, raspberry, currants, lettuce, arugula, green beans, rio zappe beans, basil, parsley, kale, broccoli, radish

Preserved: basil, parsley, berries

Prepped: finished emergency checklists, finished medicine kit

Managed:  We kept up with all the work.  Coop order turned in.

Local: None this week.

independence days; 10

Ten weeks?   Has it really been 10 weeks?

Planted:  pumpkins, winter squash, sunflowers

Harvested:  basil, parsley, kohlrabi, broccoli, lettuce, black currants, mint

Preserved:  basil, parsley, mint

Stored:  salt, tvp-chicken, tvp-ham, dehydrated veggie soup mix, shelf-stable milk

Prepped: continued working on emergency checklists, AIP self-evaluation

Managed:  wool sorted, washed and dried; all gardens weeded,  Sally (rabbit) got her eye cut open.  She’s been in the house receiving medical care and recuperating.

Local:  milk pick up, talked with honey man, getting plums from someone CK works with (very nice!).

cleaning the wool

We started our first ever attempt at processing wool. I can’t guarantee the results will be pretty, correct, or that we did things the way it should have been done. We did read a book, a web-site, and talk to some people. It seems to be one of those things you just have jump in and try. So here goes a journaling of our attempts.

We had the sheep sheared in March. It has taken us until this week to get started. For the first few days we let the wool air so that the extra moisture would evaporate. Then we stored the wool in 30 gallon plastic trash sacks. We kept the tops open for another couple of weeks and then folded the bags over. It stayed in those bags until Monday.

Monday we sat on the front deck and opened the bags. Whew . . . the smell was still a bit strong. We dumped the wool on the porch and picked out the big stuff. There was a lot. I suppose if we were “high tech” homesteaders we could have used special sheep blankets, but not us. Therefore, there was a lot of burrs, twigs, and dirt in that wool. By the way, lanolin can make you really itchy. It is like rolling in a tub of cheap, oil-based, crap!

Today we washed the wool. We used three buckets with warmish water. The first bucket was for washing, the other two for rinsing. The water immediately turned brown. It was not pretty. The rinse water did stay pretty clean. We used a sheet and an old dishwasher tray to dry the wool. Right now it is dripping away. When it is done, we’ll spread it out on a clean sheet and let it dry a little longer.

I’ve learned three things already today. 1. I don’t like slimy stuff on my hands. 2. Wool is dirty and smells when it is wet. 3. Next time we’ll sort the wool into smaller sections prior to washing.

Coming up in a few day . . . . carding!

***I wrote this post Tuesday, but couldn’t get the pictures uploaded. Wednesday morning we washed the next batch and I sorted it into smaller sections. It was much easier to handle that way.