The Urban Homesteader

Chicken- the Gift that Keeps on Giving

2011-12-20T07:07:00.000-05:00

I've been talking about ending the lives of our hens for at least a year. They were quite old, as laying birds go. We had 5- of those, 4 of them were almost four years old, 1 was 2 1/2. Last Friday, we finally did the deed.
A little chicken info:
Laying hens typically start laying eggs when they're 4 months old or so (provided it's not the middle of winter). From then they usually lay one egg a day for their first year or so, until winter comes (less light means no eggs, unless you provide artificial light, as they do in factory-farmed chickens) or until their first moult. During moult, the bird loses much of its feathers and doesn't lay during that time. When their feathers grow back, they lay less often. For us, that meant we received maybe 3-5 eggs a week from the older birds.
One of our chickens never laid, but we kept her around because she was sweet (this is not acceptable chicken farmer behavior!). In fall of 2009, we added the two Black Australorps, who were pullets at the time (chicken teenagers, ready to lay). They were quite productive for some time. Well, that is until a crazy dog broke into our yard and mangled one, making it so my husband had to finish her off in a snowy compassion killing.
It seemed the older girls went through two, if not three moults, and over this past summer, we were getting one egg a day from five chickens (!), that egg coming from the remaining two year old Black Australorp. All summer and fall we fed them. Letting them out in the morning, locking them in their coop each night. A habit, I'm finding now that they're gone, as ingrained in me as brushing my teeth before bed or seeking the press pot for coffee each morning.
Part of putting it off for so long was me trying to get over just killing them ourselves. Greg has processed dozens of chickens (we've done meat birds a few years in a row. The first time, he processed them. The next year we put them in a dog cage and took them to be processed.). I'm still squeamish, which given my profession, seems silly. But during birth, blood is in a totally different context, and I can recognize normal and what is not normal in that scenario. Ending a life, even that of a chicken was just too much for me. If I had to, if my kids were so hungry that I needed to do so to feed them, of course I could do it. That not being the case, I finally ended up deciding to take them into be processed at a mere $2.25 a piece. Drop them off in the morning, pick them up in the afternoon, each wrapped in their own plastic bag to be tucked into the chest freezer.
I was interested to see what shape these birds would be in once they free of feathers. Greg made me laugh saying once they scalded the feathers off, they'd be shocked to find that they were suddenly holding an old brown football. When one raises meat birds, those chickens are usually killed at 6-8 weeks of age. They eat like gluttons and grow huge very rapidly (this is how they've been bred). Our laying hens were four years old! Would they be tough as old footballs?
Yesterday we ate one for dinner and it was pretty darn good. Granted, I first slow cooked her for 12+ hours before taking all the meat off that I could. (Such a tiny chicken! Maybe only 2-3 pounds? I forgot to weigh her.) Then I slow cooked the meat in a home made bbq sauce for another 4-5 hours. We ate pulled chicken last night, with Parker rolls and coleslaw and frozen summer corn. It was quite the July dinner in December- and very, very good.
After cutting off all the meat I could from the chicken, I then boiled the carcass in a large pot for stock.
Eating dinner last night, I was definitely filled with gratitude for all those chickens have given us. Years of eggs, then the meat, and finally very rich and delicious stock which will continue to feed us. Amazing. And totally worth the feed and the rituals created by keeping chickens.
If you see me walking over the frozen grass of our backyard in the early morning, only to see me abruptly stop, shake my head and walk back into the house, you'll know I'm still working out my habits of the past few years.
In the Spring, we'll start all over again.

Fall slipped into Winter

2011-12-12T07:06:00.000-05:00

Challah loaf made for Thanksgiving in a very Easter-ish bird's-eggs-in-nest shape!

As usual, when I don't update for a long time, I rely on pictures hastily taken on my phone to help document our life. El, at Fast Grow the Weeds wrote this piece titled, Is blogging dead? Or is it just dying? In it she wonders why so many of her favorite bloggers have dried up, or at least seriously dwindled in their blogging. She blames Facebook, and I definitely agree. I miss blogging, but know that I am guilty for relying on Facebook's ability to grant me a fast check-in with the world and even my community. Not only do I hardly blog at all, I also rarely check in on my favorite blogs anymore, and I don't like that. Part of that is I rarely sit down to a computer. I check and write emails through my phone, and of course, check Facebook through my phone.Sitting down to an actual keyboard is rare. Part of that is because I now have a two year old who likes to help me type or when she sees the laptop open, begs to watch Caillou episodes on You Tube (a sometimes bribe to help buy me peace when I'm cooking dinner). At any rate, I miss the way blogging would slow me down and help me write about our household, our garden and what we're eating. Typically I would write when the kids were all sleeping, or otherwise somehow not needing my attention (which is rare). I'd like to blog more. We'll see how I can make that happen.

The Thanksgiving turkey. Huge for our family. Bought from the farm whose name escapes me this morning. But you know, the turkey farm that the Ypsi Food Co-op gets their birds from.

The first real snow last week. It's funny to see the Quidditch Stand from the street now that the leaves are gone.

Halloween. Have I posted this already? Forgive me if I have. It's such a great picture! E was a lego brick (I knew my stacks of Calder Dairy butter would come in handy some day!!), S is Victor- Victoria and M is a toasty kitty (she still asks me to draw eyeliner "kitty cat whiskers" nearly every day, even though it's December).

I used the biggest garden potato in our Thanksgiving day mashed potatoes. Up until that day, when I'd get potatoes for dinner, I'd pick that one up and place it aside, thinking it too lovely and huge to use for an "ordinary" dinner!

My husband brought these home a couple weeks ago. We have an ancient sewing machine (think Triangle Shirtwaist Company!!) with a foot treadle and a broken LEATHER band that turns the bobbin (easily replaced with a vacuum band). It's very cool but honestly we have NO room for it. The organ is a pump organ (see the foot pumps?) from around 1910 (?). The word work is amazingly intact and beautiful. There's another piece that screws onto the top/back of the organ not pictured here that makes it another 2 1/2 feet taller. That piece has lovely needlework flower squares in it. The valves are stuck, but we're told with G's handiness, he can easily repair it. Even so, none of us play piano, let alone a pump organ. Oh, and I did I mention we have NO room for it? Just the same, it's beautiful and fun and I'm starting to figure out where/if we can move it into the house. Fun and lovely, yes. But if you've got old stuff that is even only slightly functional and you want to get rid of it, don't ask my husband if he wants it, ok?

Last week my mom, M girl and I went to Hamtramck to visit the Polish Art Center and to get delicious food from Srodek's market. I bought pierogies (kraut/kielbasa and potato/bacon) and also a pound of thinly sliced smoked Canadian bacon. Served with our counter-top fermented red cabbage/carrot sauerkraut it was AMAZING! Seriously though, what's not to like about dough fried in butter with onions? Srodek's smelled so good. I realized that the smell I had always associated with old people (ahem, my maternal grandparents) was actually the smell of kielbasa and various smoked Polish meat. Who knew?! There were sausages and hunks of meat hanging all along the back wall, and the women working there would just grab a hunk of dried meat with their bare hands (gasp!) and cut off whatever you needed. It reminded me of the guy at Whole Foods who has a beard and has to wear that ridiculous beard hair net because he works the pizza ovens. I don't like hair in my food anymore than the next person. And to be fair, the meat those women were handling was dried/cured/smoked. There was something kind of nice about seeing that though.

Gloves. I have a love/hate thing for them. (Going off a tangent here...) I remember the first time I had to check a woman's cervix for dilation when I was a student midwife. I put my sterile gloved hand in and looked at my preceptor and immediately said, "I feel like I can't feel anything with this stupid glove on!!" Of course I had to quickly get over that for my safety and for the woman's safety. But it's fun to look at old obstetric/midwifery text books and see old photos of ungloved hands catching babies. It looks so strange! When baby M was born (she came really fast), I remember noticing maybe ten minutes or so after she was out that my friend and midwife didn't wear gloves to catch her. I apologized that she hadn't had time to put gloves on. She told me she had time, she just didn't want to because it was me, my baby. And I so got that, and was so touched. (There was also no internal exams to be done, it was just catching a quick moving baby!) Gloves, no gloves. It can be a meaningful metaphor in my life.

And since we're talking a little about birth. M is all about PlayDoh these days. Being two, her favorite things to make are snakes. We make rows of them. We're not the sort of family who can keep PlayDoh colors from mixing 30 seconds after opening them, so they're constantly swirling masses of color until they just assume a beige tone. The "snake" above looked uncannily like a newly born umbilical cord. :)

Here's a little cabinet I bought last week at a local antique shop. I'm painting it a robin's egg blue, but it's drying very slowly in the garage because it's so cold out. It's very small, I believe someone's Papa crafted this for a child's play kitchen. I'm going to put new knobs on it and get load it up with utensils for M for Christmas. One of her favorite things to do (besides make PlayDoh snakes) is to play with cups, bowls and a cup of dried beans. They end up everywhere, of course, but it's a delight watching her transfer them from bowl to bowl, while stirring, singing, and hearing them Ping! off of things.

Never know what I'll find when I download pics

2011-10-29T22:58:00.001-04:00

I have never been so bad about downloading our pictures! I just did and realized our entire summer was documented in 50 or so frames. Seeing that it's only 35* out right now, it's very nice to see beautiful summer evening snapshots from the garden. Here's E, stealthily looking for lightening bugs, sometime this summer.

And the legs of the Quidditch Stand in the background.

Little M, looking quite babyish here (at least to me). I was just at a potluck this evening and I was laughing with another parent about these Little Tykes red cars. Everyone with a kid 3 or younger seems to have one, yet no one I know has actually ever bought one. They just keep getting handed down. Which is cool. It took us ten years to get one (never had one when S or E were toddlers)!!

This made me laugh. I don't know who did this or took the picture. It's fun having kids who take your camera out for a spin.

Here's M on her second birthday a few weeks back. She does this cute thing where she bites her bottom lip when she's feeling shy, like when we whip the camera out.

We had a fair share of gorgeous praying mantises late this summer! HUGE and beautiful! This particular one hung out on the back porch for 5 straight days. I'd pick him up and move him to the nearby planting bed and he'd make his way back to the house and just hang out on the porch or the wall. I was nervous one of us would accidently squash him. I don't think we did, unless someone's not telling me something. They all know what a "save the bugs!" freak I am, wandering around the house with a glass and magazine postcard trying to catch and release spiders that are big enough to wink at you.

M continues to amaze us all with her stellar potty skills. There's always a stack of magazines to flip through in the bathroom. Here she's flipping through a Lego catalog. Big sister S caught her here. A child just can't seem to escape childhood without an embarrassing potty photo or two.

Nearly done...

2011-10-18T13:55:00.000-04:00

I've had a small list on the fridge of things left to do before the gardens are *really* done. Now, I've only got one thing left to do, and that's pickle some more beets.
A local farm stand was about to close, so G and I snagged up another 5 dozen sweet corn, a 25# bag of beets and a huge bag of onions. We also had 8 cabbages to deal with in the garden and a couple rows of chard and kale. The last beastly groundhog took down the kale but seemed to leave everything else alone UNTIL Saturday morning when I went to let the chickens out and feed them and I noticed the biggest cabbage was half-eaten! I literally growled out loud and stomped over to the cabbages in my pink, fluffy slippers and scrappy bathrobe to inspect the damage. I growled again and began tearing cabbages out of the ground in a huff. Dirt was flying everywhere and my jammies got plenty dirty.

I came back into the house with 7 cabbages and threw them into the sink. I washed, chopped, and salted them (green and purple cabbages) and shredded several large carrots and threw them all in a crock for sauerkraut. I curse the groundhog, but at least he/she got me moving on the kraut I've been meaning to make for weeks.

Now that cabbages are gone, the groundhog has taken down most of the chard. That's fine, I processed most of what I wanted from it anyway. I'd trap the darn varmint, but I loaned our trap to friends who had a raccoon coming into their cat door every night to eat cat food from their mudroom!

I also had a ton of garlic to plant, both soft and hard neck varieties. I did that last night. Besides waiting for the leaves to fall and a few tomato plants to take down, I'm just about done with the garden. And that feels good.

Bring on the weather that pushes me to make bread and soup and meat pies and more. :)

Putting Things to Rest and Celebrating

2011-09-30T14:25:00.001-04:00

I absolutely love this time of year.
As I was growing up my mother would always lament the end of summer and how dreary everything would become as autumn would begin.
I have never seen it that way though. There are so many new beginnings! Maybe it's because school begins in September and that always felt like the marker of the new year. My birthday was last weekend, so as an adult, that always feels a little like new years too. And even though I'm not Jewish, Rosh Hashanah just started yesterday.
It doesn't feel like the end of anything, instead it feels like now is the time to put down roots for new ideas and beginnings. We just bought 3# of rye seed to plant in the gardens for a cover crop. Typically we just mulch a ton of leaves on the gardens, but this year we've decided to do a cover crop in an attempt to pump up the garden. The one garden where the potatoes were this year has been used every year for the past 11 years. It's likely sort of tired despite chicken poo and on-and-off composting. I need to clean up/harvest stuff in the middle garden so that I can plant the rye there as well.
This past spring I won an auction "service" at the kid's school for S's teacher (who is a super cool guy, a great teacher, father to twin two year olds (!) and a Master Gardener) to come to our place and "assess" our gardens. We never got it together to have him visit this spring, so he brought his family over this past Sunday. Part of his consultation was collecting a big soil sample from all over the gardens to send away to Amherst, MA to be tested. He was the one to encourage us planting a cover crop. It'll be interesting to see what the soil results are like. I'm praying low to no lead since I've never tested it and this is a 160 year old property. Ay yi yi.
We also bought a couple of pounds of seed garlic yesterday. That makes for two hard neck varieties (one batch taken from some of what I harvested this summer) and one soft neck variety. If I weren't so lazy, I'd pop up and look at the varieties. I'll need to get that into the ground soon too.

G's days off have been switched from normal weekends to Thursday and Friday off. This was his first week on the new schedule and he got called in both days. Sigh. While it's good financially to have some over time, I always miss him when I plan on having him home with me. However, it's really the first time in 3 years that the opportunity for over time has been an option. We made up for it by going on a "date" sans children to the garden store while also grabbing a quick cup of coffee! It's the little things. I'm also so very thankful for a sweet grandma upstairs who said Yes when asked last minute if she'd watch said children.

Tomorrow marks M's second birthday!! So exciting!
And because I'm such a poor planner, other parties were put in front of hers! And by this I mean that both our older kids were invited to very-hard-to-turn-down parties tomorrow and my mother is going to a 50th wedding anniversary party for her brother. So we're having a little party for M on Sunday (even though her Daddy will be working). I'm planning on making my favorite challah recipe (New Years!), a big pot of soup, and having a LOT of apples around.

September Picture Update

2011-09-08T14:05:00.001-04:00

Oh, what a blog slacker I have been. Other more important things have been happening around here. And that's a good thing. As for the garden and food preserving, I admit to being a passive slacker. And that's okay. On the treehouse front, things have gone pretty well. G and S picked out crazy Brady Bunch material from Ikea for me to whip up into curtains. Above is the south wall with said curtains. The west window has the same (to the left in this frame). It's really lovely up there. Lots of light. You can see part of the roof on the above photo. For now, the walls only have single coat of white primer on. It makes my amazing, perfectionist (I say this with love) husband crazy that we can't make it as he sees it in his head (due to not being independently wealthy!)! He wants insulation, drywall, paint, window framing complete, proper furniture, etc... I keep saying, "Babe! It's a Tree. House. We've got years to make it how we want it!" It's hard to be patient with reality. I so get it.

Here's G balancing precariously at about 18 feet above the ground putting the roofing panels in place. My most stressful day of being his assistant. I kept wondering how the ambulance would make it's way all the way to the back yard... fortunately, no one fell off the roof!

Lacto-fermented pickles. FAIL. Okay, so actually this was the first time they stayed crunchy. I haven't tried counter-top pickles in at least 10 years due to soggy pickles. However, I clearly put too much salt in them. I rinsed a batch and tried storing them in a less salty brine, but then they got soggy. Damn. I should have just canned them. I know I would have wasted all that precious bacteria had I done so, but at least they'd be edible. Perhaps I can tie them to trees in the woods for winter time deer salt licks. Ack.

S dressed as a maid in a mid-summer production with the local youth theater group. Always fun there! This was her fourth (or maybe 5th?!) time acting with them. Love it!

Peaches! From our tree! This was the first year since we've planted this tree that we harvested peaches! Granted, not a whole lot of them, but still! Yum! We got a 9 x 13 cake pan of peach cobbler from this year's "harvest". Obviously there's other things in this basket that did not end up in the cobbler...

I've canned NADA this year. I processed and froze corn from a local farm. I've also frozen lots of cilantro, garlic scapes, and kale. I've dehydrated a ton of garlic, tomatoes, strawberries and currants. I made tomato glut this afternoon that is now in the freezer. I will likely make more sauerkraut when I harvest the cabbage. We've got tomatoes continuing to ripen out there, a lot of leafy greens, some beets and the entire potato patch to harvest yet. But that's it. See?
A very garden passive summer.

Miss S turned 12 on September 1st. Holy cow, I've got a 7th grader! A very wonderful, amazing, funny, helpful, sweetheart of a girl, So sweet she's letting her little sister help her blow out the candles on her cake! She also decided to cut off all her hair in a decidedly brave move a few days before school was to begin. I love it! And more importantly, so does S!

All 3 kiddos at the "fish park". Can hardly see E, but he's there. :)

I took the kids swimming at the local pool the day before Labor Day since Labor Day was going to be 64 degrees. Even though the temp was 70 or so, we were still the only folks there. The life guards were all wearing hoodies! I admit, I didn't get in either. It was windy and cold! The kids being kids, swam with blue lips saying, "Awww, Mom! It's not that bad! You should get in!" Instead I sat pool-side in jeans and t-shirt, wrapped in a towel!

Tree house. Windows are all in. Curtains hung. We just need to figure out how we're building the railing and then build the stairs. I love it. I'm thankful for a heck of a crafty husband. Ready though to start tearing down the garden and prepping for winter.

Tired of Wood and Grateful for Many Little (and not so little)Things

2011-07-18T16:01:00.000-04:00

Forgive me if you're friends with me on Facebook and have seen some of these before. I'd much rather blog than post on FB, but it's always a time thing and how little there seems to be on any given day (and that's all right!). I love this picture of M- picking/eating strawberries and looking the epitome of summer and good eats.

On July 2 (our E's seventh birthday!), we had a crazy, violent summer storm blow through that made the sky various shades of Superman ice cream and trees to bend literally sideways- that is, until one tree in particular broke clear in half. It fell directly on our potatoes and I was just beginning to moan about my precious potatoes until I realized how much was spared in the actually very good landing of that tree. We've got a deep back yard but it's fairly packed full. The tree could have:

fallen on the nearly complete tree house
fallen on the power line that runs over the tree house, causing God only knows kind of damage/fire
fallen on the wooden swing set
fallen on the chicken run

When you look at that picture above, it's hard to see, but it's the yellowish spot half way up the tree trunk that marks the break. You can see the tree next to it continues well out of the frame. This tree was just as tall.

Above is the top half of the tree. It did also manage to knock down my two pole bean teepees and uproot a couple bean plants, but I just replanted them and stuck the teepees deep in the ground again. Our neighbors were over the fence in a second, in the rain, with a chainsaw cutting the tree up to get them off my potatoes. Is that sweet, or what?! Really, we're surrounded by such good people.

The potatoes were mostly okay. Some plants were broken off at ground level, but most just squashed a bit. We've let them be and everything looks to be sprucing back up nicely. And again, for all the things that could have been hit, I have no complaints.

Last week I harvested the garlic. We got around 60-70 heads of mostly good size. Again, feeling super grateful for how well they grew. My friend A at Dragonwood Farm gave me the garlic to plant last fall. I'm a little wary of saving too many downstairs in our cool, though sometimes damp basement. Once we're well into October, the humidity is low enough for storage down there. I've never grown soft neck garlic varieties, but I'm told they store longer and better than hard neck types. Maybe I'll try those next year. At any rate, I wanted to see what I could do to preserve them a little longer. I decided to try dehydrating several cloves to use later in winter meals. Peeling fresh garlic is surprisingly easy and sitting on the kitchen floor for two hours doing so felt like meditation (similar to shelling peas?). Once I had a bowl of garlic cloves peeled, I sliced them in the Cuisinart processor and placed the slices single-layer in the dehydrator.

It only took around 10-12 hours and then I had nearly a quart jar full of beautiful, dried garlic slices and pieces. It smells amazing! I think I'll do more, as I have plenty more garlic heads to use this way. This morning I roasted three full heads to add to a white bean dip with fresh basil and parsley. So simple, so good. Totally worth it to heat up the kitchen for a short while!

Here's Greg chopping down the rest of that mostly dead tree. We spent a good 5-6 hours outside yesterday dealing with all that tree stuff. It was hot as blazes but it felt good to work together to clear all that wood and branches and leaves. I often think about the pros and cons of city vs. country living. I day dream about moving to a farm in Vermont where it is legal and supportive to practice midwifery and to also eat/grow whatever and wherever.Yesterday as we worked in our urban/suburban back yard, it felt an awful lot like working on a farm. Sawing, bundling, carrying heavy pieces of wood while being covered in sweat and carrying around about a cup and half of itchy wood chips in my bra while children and chickens clucked all around us. It partly sucked, of course. But then you'd think, Well, who else would do this work? We can't pay someone to deal with all of this. Besides, their equipment would likely mess up the garden! I felt very grateful for the gift of labor yesterday. For the gift of our own little slice of earth to care for and maintain while also minding all the growing food out there.

This will just have to do.

And it does just fine.

Picture update for June

2011-06-30T12:48:00.001-04:00

Here's a rather blurry shot of the playhouse when we had just the walls framed. The doorway is to the left. We have one front window spot, one on the right, and two in the back, leaving the north wall without any.

Here's G putting up the exterior siding (before cutting out the window spots).

Three years ago I planted three red currant bushes and three blueberry bushes. The blueberries have not faired so well. One of them was accidently incinerated by being too near the fire bowl and the other two are just puny and silly. The red currants however, are going gangbusters! I made a nice loaf of quick bread with currants and strawberries that was pretty good. The kids aren't super crazy about them fresh (they're fairly tart), so I've picked as many as I could and have dehydrated them for future muffins and pancakes and oatmeal.

A partial shot of the center garden. My pal pointed out how it looked like a quilt this year since it's divided into squares. I liked that. :) It's different every year, just playing with what works best. I mustn't forget to mention that last weekend while weeding, we noticed our beets and greens were annihilated. Looked to be like the work of a ground hog. I set the trap and sure enough, by the next morning, we had a ground hog in the cage. I set it up again the next night to see if we could catch another and was a little surprised to see a big, fluffy skunk! Fortunately, no one got sprayed, although we did release both ground hog and skunk a few miles away. The veg is looking good again.

So the peach leaf curl that I thought was inflicting my peach tree seems to either not been the case or removing all the affected leaves seems to have helped the tree because now, both the leaves and growing peaches look great. If that's the case, then my only other peach enemy are these dastardly urban squirrels who know just when things are at their peak.

Potatoes growing by the chickens are doing well. We hilled and super mulched a few weeks ago.

June means harvesting garlic scapes. After using as much as we could in potato salads, green salads, and sauteeing them with onions as the base for various dishes, we were still left with a ton. So being fairly lazy, I pulsed them in the old Cuisinart and packed them into the ice cube trays for future use, 2 tablespoons at a time. They smell amazing!

Here's a tray of the red currants before dehydrating them.

I ended up with four trays.

And of course, any time you dehydrate a whole bunch of anything, you end up with not quite a pint jar of dried goods! Ha!

We also dehydrated a whole bunch of strawberries a couple weeks ago too. I just couldn't bear making a bunch of sugary jam this year (partly lazy, partly cringing at the sugar content). The dehydrated berries taste really nice! Will be super good in oatmeal when it's cold again.

Here's the playhouse with walls cut, window spaces cut, exterior painted, door installed... We need to put on the roof, install the windows, make a railing around the deck and build the stairs.

There you go. This is a fairly accurate shot of what we've been doing most of the month! In two days we celebrate E's 7th birthday and I'm waiting for a local mama friend to have her baby. Other than that, our days are filled with trips to the library, the pool, and playground. S is in our local youth theater again, so we've got various rehearsals throughout the week. Little M is doing great and it's so much fun having her enjoy the outdoors with us this summer! Love it!

on Cheating

2011-06-06T14:13:00.001-04:00

I think someone finally hit the OFF switch on the rain. I usually don't mind the rain and enjoy Michigan's intense mix-up of various weather conditions, but having April and May be near record-breaking months for rainfall seriously messed with my head a bit. It also messed with my garden.

In the spring I typically direct sow a lot of our plants. This usually works very well. For more delicate things that take a longer time to germinate and grow, I will barter with a friend for her amazing heirloom tomatoes and peppers that she starts near her wood stove under grow lights sometime in February/March. I've never had much luck with brussel sprouts and sweet potatoes (they both have a loooong growing period) and neither get very big before the cold weather necessitates harvesting. Or at least, that's been my experience. I am admittedly, a very low-key gardener.

At any rate, direct seed sowing. There were a few warm, sunny days in May that fooled me into thinking "real" May weather was here. I readied the soil and planted a lot seeds. I held off on the squash and cukes, knowing that the seeds usually won't germinate in cold, wet soil. Well the next 3 weeks seemed to be nothing but cold and wet. Every day I would squat in the gardens, squinting through new weeds, trying to discern seedlings that surely should be coming up. Seedlings that come up for me every year when I throw them in the dirt. Not so.

Well no, not all. Actually, things did come up, although they took much longer. Lettuce mixes, chard, cilantro, beets, radishes, turnips, carrots (spottily), parsnips, spinach and some basil came through.
Sacrificed seeds: parigi carrots, pole beans, French green beans, some basil...surely more that I'm just blocking.

As for the cukes and squash, I kept holding off waiting for warmer, dryer soil until I waited too long and felt like if I planted them now, they wouldn't have a chance to grow enough before autumn. So I cheated. I drove my butt to the local market and bought pole beans, bush beans, cucumbers, a few more basil plants, a couple varieties of squash and watermelon just for fun.

The gardens are now fully planted. The potatoes I planted a month or so ago took longer to sprout than usual, again I think because of the weather. Now, they're totally gangbusters and need to be hilled/mulched. The tomato plants from my pal are doing great and also need to be weeded. Everything else looks good for now. I spent a few hours weeding last evening and I'm full of mosquito bites to prove it. (Thanks super wet spring for lending a hand in producing hummingbird-sized mosquitoes.) I always remember how Michigan used to be one big, frickin' swamp before it started becoming settled in the 1800s.

Oh well.It's all good. Happy to have fresh food beginning to grow. Leaves more time for the construction of Fort T in the back yard. ;)

New Developments - Playhouse!

2011-05-31T13:24:00.001-04:00

A few days ago I noticed our otherwise thriving currant bushes and peach tree looking a little funny. Despite having loads of currants getting ready to ripen and wee, fuzzy peaches no bigger than the tip of my finger growing seemingly well, the leaves are turning all bubbly.

After a little bit of research, I think we've got "Peach Leaf Curl" on our hands. What does that even mean? Apparently, when it is super moist out, fungus thrives. Go figure, April and May here in Michigan gave us record-high rainfalls. We've had SO much rain! I've never seen so many miscellaneous types of mushrooms growing all over our property. And now, this weird fungus on our fruit trees. Grrrr. As I understand it, this peach leaf curl is a systemic fungus that doesn't kill the tree, but it does significantly weaken it. The tree puts all of it's energy into dropping the affected leaves and growing new ones in the same season that there just isn't enough energy left for the growing fruit and the peaches just kind of peter out. In the fall, you're supposed to treat the tree with some sort of copper solution. I don't know how friendly that is or what the ratios are for that solution.

Good old Garry Entropy talks about it here:

And despite no playhouse building due to torrential downpours, G kicked butt on construction this weekend!

The whole thing is about 7' in the air on 6 posts. The base is 12' x 16'. The back half that G is standing on here has 3/4" plywood on it. That is 8' x 12' and will make up the actual house floor. The other 8' x 12' bit is covered in decking and will be the deck of the playhouse. The deck will be surrounded by a railing. We want to make this something the whole family can enjoy, not just the bigger kids. Since M is not yet two and we have a lot of little neighbor friends, we will also make a real stairway with a railing.

Yesterday the North and South walls were framed and erected. The roof will be on a one pitch angle from 8' high to 6' feet high. The North wall (8') will not have any windows. We intend to build 3 built-in bunks along that wall. The South wall (6') will have a nice 36" x 62" window in it. Here's G and S taking a break after working in yesterday's intense sun.

We will be working on the East and West walls over the next few days. The East wall (the back of the playhouse) will have two windows that are each 17" x 36". They will be placed up high and lengthwise to give us privacy (there's a small apartment building behind us and in winter when the trees are bare, we can see clear through and vice versa). The West wall will be the front and will have a door and one large window just to the right of it. The stairway will come down the North side.

It's super exciting to see this come together! I can't get over how huge it is. It will comfortably sleep 5-6 people once it is done. What started as a playhouse has grown into this cool space that will hopefully serve as a guest house/playhouse/meditation room!

More pics to come!

Making a little progress

2011-05-10T11:34:00.001-04:00

The peach tree finally blossomed! I think this normally occurs in April. Thanks to all the rain and cool weather, it happened on Cinco de Mayo, or Intl. Midwives Day. ;)

This picture cracks me up. We went to the Henry Ford museum last month. Here's little E being an Oscar Meyer hotdog with all the fixin's.

This past Saturday, G took down the garage chimney. I really loved how it looked, but it's been a long time since it's been functional. It's been leaning more with every passing year, coming away from the roof. It was either going to smash the deck or seriously hurt a person if it ever fell.

Here's little E having a go at the demolition.

We also got a couple of storm doors for the back of the house. It's nice to contain small little M and allow some ventilation. We still need to put up the other door for my mom's apartment.

Ugh. What to do with all these bricks?! Actually, this is a good shot of where the future wee greenhouse will go. I think we'll use at least some of these bricks for the floor of the greenhouse, which will be a lean-to style g.h. next to the garage. All the hops need to come up. They're just getting going now- they're those green things about 2-3' high next to the garage.

The middle garden has been tilled and divided. There are 15 beds in here. Six are still open for planting. It's too cool for peppers and tomatoes yet, but I've got in cabbages, carrots, broccoli, lots of greens, etc. Things that can handle cool soil.

This is the square behind the garage and chicken run. While G was knocking out the chimney, me and the big kids planted potatoes here. We put in 10# of Red Pontiacs and 10# of Kennebecs. There's a smallish space left in here that I think I'll fill with a mix of sunflowers and calendula. We'll see. I still have the narrow strip next to the garage to fill as well. I think I might do tomatoes there. I can get in around 20 plants in that space and they've done remarkably well in the past.Also wanted to mention I finally got around to painting the front porch floor! This has been on my to-do list for oh, 4 years or so. It looks so much nicer but once done, I realized how the porch railing and spindles look flakey and drab now...and the front door too! That's the problem with making one thing look a little nicer- it brings out all the flaws of things around it.

Things left to do:

dig 6 post holes for the future playhouse/tree house

build the tree house

fill the rest of the garden

put on other storm door

paint the replacement cedar siding that was put up last fall

build greenhouse (likely end of summer/ early fall)

remember to wear sunblock! (I keep forgetting when it's cooler like this! Very chapped lips and red shoulders!)

Pictures. Spring Symbolism Galore!

2011-04-25T13:04:00.001-04:00

Last week I had the honor and blessing of being invited to the birth of a very special girl named Stella. Words cannot express how much her arrival meant to me, and that her amazing family invited me to be with them. As you might know, I only recently tried my hand at sewing via quilting. The above is a small baby quilt for Stella. The middle bit is an abstract rose of sorts, surrounded by spring time earth tones. There is a lot of symbolism around this wee girl. The rose (for her sister), gestating during Lent/dark meditative times, a due date on Easter and very beautiful birth just days before. This quilt is my favorite so far. Thanks to my kind and supportive pal Amy for helping me through the process.

We don't celebrate Easter here with a big family dinner (although I did make bread and a yummy ground lamb/veggie soup). We spent the day playing outside and getting dirty. I did take the kids to church. The music was incredible and they were able to wear their fancy duds sent from my dad in Florida. Even though there's not a huge meal to celebrate the day, my mother bought me a butter lamb. It's just not Easter without a butter lamb. My mom also told me a nice memory of being a young girl growing up in Detroit. On Good Friday, all the moms and kids would bring their Easter baskets to church to be blessed. She said the church smelled incredible because inside the baskets would be kielbasas, ham, brown bread, pastries, cheeses and so on (lots of Polish food! Our family and all their old neighborhood were mostly Catholic Poles). The women would wrap their Easter food in their prettiest hand-embroidered linens, put it in their basket and take it to the priest. It was clear by her telling it, that the memory was a very sweet one.

With all the warm weather (not quite warm, but um, not precipitating?) over the weekend, G was able, with the help of our neighbor, to complete the driveway gate/fence. G is known for making insanely over-the-top secure structures/projects. I'm more of a "good enough" sorta gal when making things. The posts that support the gate are 6x6s! Our neighbor dubbed the project "Gatehenge". Too true!

Here's the front side in all of it's icky, chemically treated glory. We'll end up weather sealing it too. The natural color will best suit our house, I think. (That ugly green will fade.) I'm so happy it's up! There is so much room for the kids to play safely in the driveway, free of cars. I won't have to worry of baby M making a beeline for the street or about various shady characters eye balling our stuff. Love my husband for so many reasons, but planning and actually doing so much for our family ranks super high (as opposed to my more lofty, rarely done ideas) ! Next project: kid's playhouse to be followed by a greenhouse at the end of summer.

Today I met with an old client who wanted me to see how much her son has grown and also to give me a present. I've not seen them since he was two months or so. He's grown to be a sweet, gorgeous baby- a year old soon! Both of his parents are artists. His sweet mama made a pysanka for me. On it are a pair of hands (midwife's hands!) with hearts painted on each. A spiral design with a heart in the middle...

A very beautiful tree...tree of life...Just below the tree is the baby's birth date!

the top...

the bottom.

Besides being so beautiful and sentimental, the Mama told me she made these eggs from the dozen eggs from my chickens that I brought her at one of our very early postpartum visits when her boy was just a few days old! (I think I gift eggs fairly often during the warmer months because I hardly remembered that part!) She saved a few eggs and only got around to painting them a few weeks ago! How amazing! I am so touched at her sweetness and thoughtfulness.

This little boy had the sweetest, most peaceful birth: born about a week after his due date on a lovely summer's evening. Not only born in the water, but he himself was born in the caul. A very auspicious sign in many cultures.

All these gifts reminded me what lovely people are in my life... I'm feeling very grateful.

Grey and Sunny

2011-03-31T12:17:00.002-04:00

A brief photo update... it's cold here still. 40 during the day teens/20s at night. Lots of clear blue sky and sunshine though, which makes the temps bearable.This time of year is so weird for it's complete lack of color. Even in winter there seems to be color (even if it's a lot of white snow, the contrast is at least pretty spectacular --think snow on dark tree limbs--). But in spring, it's all mono-tone dead stuff. We are getting the first inklings of things beginning to sprout, so I felt compelled to grab the camera to capture it.

There's no real reason to post a picture of these old birds. Little E has quite suddenly taken an interest in them though. G showed him how to catch and hold one, and since then E has spent loads of time in the run, holding birds and telling me all about how "they coo when they're happy, and I make them happy!"

What the heck is this?! Can you see it? Barely, I know. I realized on Saturday that we had loads of garlic sprouts coming up! I had put such a thick layer of leaves over it all in the fall that I had totally forgotten about it.

Crocus. They're popping up here and there. I love how small and humble they are. Just the smallest glimmer of growing things to come. It's always refreshing when they pop up. Purple harbinger of hope.

We received our seeds yesterday (well, the first batch anyway). This prompted me to run out and plant some spinach and lettuce in the front yard bed. It always tickles me to me plant seeds in something my oldest two kids slept in for years. I love the way this simple pine rectangle keeps giving to our family.

This summer will mark 12 years in this house. I have only painted the porch floor three times during that span. It definitely needs to be done again. I took this picture to remind myself to do it this year!

Sweet M. Tomorrow she's 18 months old. She continues to be a sweetheart. True to any child that comes after the first, there are just not many pictures of her! There are many silly quick ones taken on my phone, but as for getting the camera down, it just doesn't happen all that often. She has many, many words that we are all slowly learning. Newer words:

May-May= Eamon

Makees= monkeys= pajamas. This took me a full week to figure out. Every evening I'd tell her to get a pair of jammies and she'd come back with a pair saying, "Makees! Makees! We thought maybe she was saying something like, "it matches", but that seemed unlikely. It wasn't until I put on my pair of very silly pj pants with monkeys all over them that I figured it out. She shouted, "MAKEES!" Oh! Now I get it!

Cheese=eat=hungry=someone's taking my picture

Chicky=chickens

swuarell=squirrel

pup=cup

Amy=our pal Amy

Nanny=Nan (my MIL)

Bizzy=our neighbor Elizabeth

Say-na=Bizzy's son Sena (pronounced as M says it)

STU!=carpool buddy, Stu. Tho M says it clearly with an exclamation point every single time
thank you= cookie

And many more words: grandma, Maddie (g'ma's dog), shoes, many various body parts, book, hot, cold, Sarah, phone, Dora (the Explorer), dance, etc.

growing, but not in the garden (yet)

2011-03-16T07:15:00.001-04:00

Where the heck has time gone?
My blog...my garden...my time...

Well despite not updating here all that often, I am happy to admit it's because I'm actively doing what I set out to do earlier last year: reprioritize my life. The impact of this is made larger by events taking place around me locally (never mind globally- BIG). Over the last year and on into this year, I am witnessing many relationships unravel and become something new. Some of this is within my own life and some are of close friends. I'm seeing a lot of friends go through divorce; family members losing healthcare, their homes, their livelihoods. At times it feels like it's all coming undone, and yet (being the annoying optimist) it's kind of exciting to see what is coming out of the ashes. The resiliency, buoyancy and perseverance of those I love is incredibly inspiring.

While not blogging or really being social at all, I have been:

spending a lot of time with my kids (just normal, hang-out time. not rush, buy food, buy entertainment, rush home time)
enjoying being in my house and knowing I don't have to go anywhere except the kid's school
reading for pleasure (I keep wanting to create a post about my winter reading list and all my fortunate library finds)
planning a playhouse and greenhouse made from mostly recycled materials
writing a binder-full of material for a 7 week class I'm teaching on assisting a midwife
compiling a year's worth of receipts, mileage and more to do the dreaded task of taxes (mostly done and phew! it's looking good-nothing owed!)
planning our garden but not obsessively. it's nice not to obsess
honestly, being a bit bored but finding peace in that too!
paying attention to my health and what I'm eating and how I'm feeling (much better, thank you)
seeing my very small handful of all-local midwifery clients and planning how to better outfit my bike so that I can be less dependent on my car
cultivating friendships-some old, some new
consciously thinking about money but not fearing it or hating it (most days! ha!)
reflecting, praying, rethinking and achieving a little more balance every day

Today I plan on finally cleaning the chicken coop. I am normally a bit OCD about it and clean it weekly. This year however, I decided to leave the poo all winter. Every week I'd clean the nesting box and just put a new layer of straw and saw dust on the old poo and straw. It seemed so wasteful to not use the manure, so I've left it to break down all winter. Now that it's warmer (it's gonna be 50 to day and 60 tomorrow!), I will finally clean it out and mix it into the compost pile.
It reminds me that nothing shows the growth of the kids like the seasons. Magda will be 18 months old on the 1st and she's all over the place. Throwing her on my back and cleaning the coop isn't possible (I've got a shoulder injury from holding her as it is! Hefty baby!). It's also too muddy to let her rummage through the yard and our gate is down. She could quickly escape the back yard. Little E did that once when he was her age and it scared the sh*t out of me. Busy street, loads of college students, missing toddler. Thank God some young woman found him around the corner and heard my insane screaming and quickly brought him back to me.
Will have to ask grandma to come down and watch the girl so I can get on my wellies and muck muck muck. The thought of working in the mud makes me happy this dark morning.

All the Urban Homestead brouhaha (Oh no! I said "urban homestead"!)

2011-02-20T14:01:00.000-05:00

Seriously, have you all heard of this business with the Dervaes family trademarking the term, "urban homestead" and "urban homesteading"? There are bloggers out there who have received polite legal letters telling them to please refrain from using the term(s) and to also change their blog names, as now, the Dervaes family of Pasadena, California OWNS it. The Dervaes site currently claims they are not suing bloggers (yet?), but this blogger at the Urban Homestead Experiment received a letter last week from Jules Dervaes, explaining their newly owned trademark. What will they do if bloggers do not change their blog names?

As it stands, no letter here. Seems many folks received theirs last week. Maybe my blog doesn't warrant a nasty-gram. I definitely don't blog nearly as much as I used to since child #3 was born. I don't sell anything off my blog and I don't receive ad revenue. So maybe that has deemed me permissible in their eyes. Wait a second, my blog is titled, The Urban HomesteadER- a name that isn't trademarked (yet?)! I guess I'm in the clear for now. At any rate, it's all kind if exciting, isn't it? That is, if it weren't so freakin' ridiculous and against the very notion of growing your own food and honoring your local community!! Argh!

Adam Parfrey, publisher of the book, The Urban Homestead: Your Guide to Self-Sufficient Living in the Heart of the City (2008), authored by Kelly Coyne and Erik Knutsen, seems to be having issues with the Dervaes too. Even though his book was published before this silly trademark, the Dervaes have filed suit against him. More on that here.

And if you're on Face Book, there's a whole lot of controversy there as well,with a new group called Take Back Urban Home-Steading.

Ack. All this makes me a little sick to my stomach. It's all so sad, stupid, greedy.

Rouladen

2011-02-03T11:52:00.001-05:00

I forgot to take a pic of our meal, so the photo above came from this blog

Lately we've all been craving fresh green things to eat. It's getting to be that time where winter has lost some of its luster, to say the least. My son E went shopping with me and even though it was a quick run to grab a few key items, he kept throwing fresh vegetables into our cart. I felt like a bad mom taking them back out! I consented on bananas, a red pear and fresh broccoli. I would've spent $50 on fresh produce if he had his way.
2010 was not a huge year for us for preserving things, so we are very low on the things we managed to put by. The beef I bought in August is just about gone (seriously only have two porterhouses left). The canned items are down to a few jars of dilly beans, pickles and strawberry jam. I have a small jar of dehydrated tomatoes left. The pantry is in a sad state and growing season is still a long way off. (However, that groundhog yesterday apparently claims spring will come early this year. And my observant neighbor noticed the Super League of Urban Squirrels that live in our backyards have been surprisingly active and silly these days and the starlings have begun making nests in our other neighbor's garage. Those are spring time activities! So we're hopeful the groundhog is right.)

Yesterday while trying to creatively scrap together a meal from a paltry pantry, I came up with one of my favorite meals! When I told my husband we should have rouladen for dinner, he told me I'm crazy, we can't afford that! See, when there's a special occasion, we like to go to Metzger's (German restaurant in A2) and spend too much money on very good food and beer. It's indulgent and I hate having buyer's remorse for food, but it is very good. The place also brings on nostalgic olefactory delights for me, as Metzger's smells like my grandma's house used to: caraway; moth balls; some sort of beef/sausage stewing for hours; dark bread...
So I said, NO! We're gonna MAKE rouladen!
And here is what we did:

Defrosted two huge t-bone steaks (courtesy of beef from another midwife in Hesperia, Michigan at Earthscape Farm)
Cut the bone away, pound the meat to 1/4" thickness and cut into strips 3" wide.
Smear stone-ground mustard on beef, lay a strip of bacon on each strip. Add a layer of thinly cut onions and add a pickle (cucumber). Wrap the beef into a roll and hold in place with toothpicks. Sear the beef, then add 2 1/2 cups beef broth and let simmer for 45 minutes or so.
Remove rouladen, make a gravy with the left-over juices and add 1/4 cup sour cream to gravy. Pour over the rouladen and eat!
We tried to also make spaetzle, which was a huge FAIL. I love spaetzle, so I will try again another day.
We ate the rouladen with our homemade sauerkraut and mashed potatoes. Delish!
From the two steaks, we got 5 rouladen rolls. We fed four kids (we had a friend over) and two adults. Cheap and so tasty. All I forgot was the romantic polka crooner music...next time!

Chicken Gone. Woman Weeps.

2011-01-26T22:39:00.001-05:00

Yesterday, just as I was getting ready to get the big kids from school my phone rang. It was neighbor saying that a dog was in our back yard (we do not have a dog). She told me it was taunting the chickens in their run. Then her voice changed to panic and told me one of the chickens flew over their tall fence!
With my baby girl on my hip, I ran outside in my socks and grabbed a broom. I saw the dog pick up one of our black australorps and shake it in it's mouth. My neighbor shrieked and shouted NO! I ran at the dog, who dropped the hen. Then I ran up to the house and banged on my mom's door and handed her the baby. Being as silly as me, she ran into the snow with no shoes on and the baby on her hip. The dog picked up the hen again and shook her some more. I threw a plastic plant pot at the dog and he dropped the chicken again.

I should add that the dog was a good-sized husky and if you know me at all, you'll know that I have a fear of big dogs. I was bit by a German Shepherd when I was 6 and since then I just don't trust them. I like dogs, but in my mind, as cute, clever and charming as some can be, they're still animals. They hunt. They bite. And aside from dear old Agnes Mae (my old Basset Hound, may she RIP), I just can't run up on many dogs. To me, they're fairly unpredictable.

At any rate, I ran the husky out of my yard and it cantered down the street. It had a collar on, though I'd never seen it before. With the dog gone, I checked on our hen. She was alive, and there wasn't any blood in the snow, but she didn't look good. Her breathing was labored and when she tried to walk, she stumbled and fell. Aside from being late now for picking kids up, I also was coming down with a chest cold and had a fever and aches. Not knowing what to do, I grabbed a blanket from the house and put it in the snow for the hen to rest on until I could get back home and figure out what was next. I didn't place her back in the run or coop because I was afraid the other hens would peck at her once they figured out she was injured. All the other hens had hid in the coop when the dog ran up and down their run fencing, it was just this one panicky gal that flew the coop.

Getting to and from school in the afternoon typically takes 45 minutes or so. Once I was back, I sent my son upstairs to hang out with his Grandma and put our oldest daughter in charge of the baby. I tried calling my husband several times but he didn't pick up. I knew I had to kill that hen. Ack. I've never killed a chicken before. So like any person looking for how-to instructionals, I turned to You Tube. Why?! I've counseled so many pregnant people NOT to go to You Tube when looking for births. You just never know what you'll find and by the time you see what you don't want to see, it's too damn late. I watched several different types of chicken killing courtesy of You Tube. The more I watched, the less confident I felt about my ability to kill this chicken. I was shaking cold, feverish and very, very sad. I also thought about what a pathetic "urban farmer" I am to not be able to complete this cycle of life, yada yada. I'll be the first to admit that I am a wimp here. I grew up in crappy, urban rentals with meals that came very far away from any farm-like source. I am not a child of the land. I was a vegetarian for 7 years, and before that did my best to avoid meat for at least 10 more. Crap! There I sat letting my boots melt snow all over the dining room floor when I heard my husband pull in the driveway.

I met him outside and explained the whole debacle. I told him how I'd been watching You Tube videos trying to muster up the courage to just end that hen's life but I couldn't do it. G is a very practical guy. "It's just a chicken. Just kill it." I can't. With a big sigh he went into the snowy back yard and picked up the hen and agreed she'd be better off not suffering any longer. She clearly had a broken leg and wing. A few years ago when we raised meat birds at a friend's farm, G would go there every day after work and kill and process 2-3 birds a day, bringing the meat home in a new garbage bag for me to rinse them off and then package them properly. I never witnessed any of the processing though. G told me his preferred method of offing a chicken is to just obstruct the airway, i.e., strangle her. He very tenderly picked up the hen and laid her in the straw, belly down. He shushed her and with one strong hand around her neck, tightened his grasp. Just as wings fluttered to flap wildly (like I saw on You Tube), he held down her wings very gently and she didn't move at all. She was dead in 45-60 seconds. I stood in the snow and wept with sadness and shook with fever.

Stupid dog.

The sun was going down, the kids were hungry, I was sick and G had on sweaty clothes from working out at the gym. None of us had it in us to scald the feathers off this bird and clean her up for eating. As wasteful as it was, I double-bagged her in garbage bags and buried her in a garbage can and drug the whole lot to the curb. It was garbage night.

Sigh.

Here it is!

2011-01-20T14:19:00.000-05:00

Okay, I knew I saved it somewhere! Here's the link to the pit greenhouse that I wanted to post. So cool!

Also, S from Put Your Shovel Where your Mouth Is (love that title!) sent me this link about pit greenhouses from Mother Earth News. Thanks!

There are times in my life where my mind is totally blown and I actively want to know every thing there is to know about a particular subject. Pregnancy, birth and parenting were very much like that for me (and still are today). I love growing as much as we can because I love being in the dirt and I hate paying a ton of money for organic foods that we can grow ourselves. This whole idea of what is essentially a very deep cold frame (pit greenhouse) ranks super high in making my mouth drop at the potential growing possibilities (and extended growing period) in our small city space. Yowza.

Like I said last post, I don't think we'll get up to digging this huge hole for such a pit. Today we picked up 10 or so very nice windows to add to the dozen or so we have. We are like 4 years late in building the kids a playhouse and they are determined my greenhouse shall not come before their playhouse. I'm thinking we can do BOTH this year. The back yard is going to look like an odd little village of small houses, a sandbox, children, chickens, lots of vegetables, a swingset and a very confused Shitzhu.
Bring it on!

I dream of... greenhouses and more

2011-01-19T19:13:00.000-05:00

Celebrated 40 years of this guys life! Very low-key, at home celebration with very good food: turkey lasagna with a ton of veggies and home-made chocolate chip cheesecake. Oh my. Good stuff.

My nightly snowy walk to close up the Ladies for the night.

Chicken confusion and kerfuffle... "Wait, what is she doing here? Are we eating? Did she bring food? Is it bedtime? Hey, get outta my spot, Dottie! False alarm, she's only shutting the door!"

In other news: I'm obsessing over building a greenhouse this spring. We have a good stack of windows in the garage we bought off craigslist over a year ago. I also just got another 9 or so from a lady in our community whose neighbor got new windows today. I've been watching tons of you tube clips and there's one in particular that totally blew my mind. What looked like a fairly large cold frame was actually a pit greenhouse! Imagine using the earth as your walls! The top was made of hinged windows and when the guy opened it, he walked down a small flight of stairs that led into this long pit greenhouse that was around 7 feet deep. I cannot find this clip again, but really found it so inspiring and cool! Of course one has to take into account where the water table is so that your pit doesn't fill with water... but wow.
As cool as I think a pit greenhouse is, I don't think it's within our means to do that level of greenhouse. I don't have the funds to fork out the grand or so that it would take to get me the real deal big hoop house/greenhouse that I want. I am very drawn to using what we have on hand (and we have a lot of scrap wood and windows right now, as well as concrete blocks). So now we're thinking about doing a lean-to style greenhouse. This would work for us because our only free wall is south facing. That is the wall of the garage.
Here's a clip of a guy in Florida (why do you need a greenhouse is south Florida?!) who built a lean-to style greenhouse with relatively little:

Then there's this guy, Garry Entropy who has a whole lot of very cool videos (his wood burning stove turned mod fireplace is especially cool!). His greenhouse is lovely.

Tell me fellow urban gardeners, what are you dreaming of for this year's growing season in your neighborhood?

Oh did I mention portable herds? Not super possible here in our neck of the woods, but I dream of having little milk goats collectively. Moving them around, taking turns caring for them, milking them, making cheese, sharing, etc. I suppose in the same way that our family shared with all those laying hens and meat birds cooperatively for a couple years before we brought some hens home. We helped build an enormous chicken condo, shared feed, eggs, and meat. Can we do that with goats? Whatcha think neighbors? Anyone already doing this? Anyone WANT to do this? :)

Home-Made presents winding down

2011-01-06T13:29:00.001-05:00

A very plain, basic, don't-look-too-closely throw quilt I made at the last minute for my Mom.

These are nesting doll-style hand puppets that my pal Grace enlightened me to via a designer off the Etsy How-To page. If I were a better person with more time, I'd link to that guy! I made these for baby M made of soft fleece and cotton duck from old Martha Stewart curtains that used to hang in our bedroom.

My husband used to make me crazy by grabbing two or three tea towels and wrapping them loosely around the press pot in the morning. A very small kitchen does not need 3-5 tea towels out at any one time! We've all got things that make us twitchy, right? Right? At any rate, with the scrap wool I had left over after felting sweaters and making us all mittens, I made this press pot cozy that closes with velcro tabs. The wool is thin but works well to keep the coffee hotter, longer.

Here's S on a pair of the stilts! (She looks 3' tall in this picture for some reason.) We've had a blast trying the stilts, although we can only practice on the linoleum in the kitchen or in E's room (he has a big rug) since all of our floors are hardwood. Clearly with the snow and ice, going outside to practice is out of the question. They're super fun though and they're so smoothly sanded, we don't need to worry about getting splinters! These are also adjustable with four different settings. S is already asking for me to raise them up, but not until we can get more practice outside!

We've got a ton of family birthdays surrounding Christmas and New Years here. My sister and husband share a birthday. This year she turned 45 and he turned 40! My sister has always had a thing for Hostess cupcakes, King-Dons and Ho-Hos. So aside from her gift, I also made her cream-filled chocolate cupcakes, frosted with chocolate icing with the classic white stripe across the top. I used an apple corer to pluck out space for the cream filling and then plugged them up again. They were delicious! And not at all healthy, aside from the wonderful nurturing powers of chocolate to the soul. For my husband, turkey/veg lasagna and a chocolate chip cheesecake with a chocolate glaze.

My mom's birthday is Saturday and with that, we will conclude the eat-o-thon that begins with my birthday at the end of September, through the Halloween candy, the Thanksgiving feast and Christmas, Boxing Day and four family birthdays! Here's to my more giggly butt. Happy New Year!

Seed ordering and garden planning is about to commence!

Frugal Festiveness

2010-12-06T14:09:00.000-05:00

On Friday night, my mom, big daughter, little daughter and myself dressed ourselves warmly and walked to our Fair City's main drag to see the tree lighting next to the library, listen to lovely carolers, be pelted with candy canes from Santa Claus in a ladder bucket on a fire engine (very exciting!) and then peruse the local businesses for potential gifts. I really wasn't in the market to buy anything, but it's nice to look and the business owners are so nice. I try to shop their stores when I need something unique for the special people in our lives. My mom somehow snuck a purchase and then gave it to me once we were home- a pretty coral colored hand made pottery crock. Small yet useful. I think I will make it a salt cellar to sit next to the stove.

I've been making mittens for all of us here lately. From 3 felted-down thrift store wool sweaters, I have made 4 pairs of mittens and still have much left over. I've lined them with soft sweat shirt material for extra warmth and to make them cozy. The pair above were for Big Daughter S. My husband won't wear the wool because they'd be shredded in no time in the outdoor work he does. He's quite the seamstress these days though and has made himself 3 pairs of lobster like mitten/gloves. Basically, the thumb and index finger have their own place, but the remaining three fingers are confined together as in a mitten. I need a photo. He used very nice gortexy fleece with a waterproof liner and then grippy stuff as well so he can tie down the chocks used to keep cars in place on the rail cars. They're a very cool invention.

These are terrible pictures, but here's my other gift this season for neighbors, nephews, teachers, etc. It's just a washable sandwich wrap so that one doesn't need to rely on disposable zip-loc bags all the time. After a lot of research and a look into what I had on hand, I ended up (ironically?) using one side of a large zip-loc bag to line these wraps. I was going to buy better fabric that had it's own moisture proof side, but I used what I had on hand. I also know that my more traditional family members would be more likely to use these if they actually had plastic in them. Don't ask. I just know.

I love this fabric. It's very colorful Japanese mountains, streams, Geishas, trees. I made a summer skirt for myself from it too.Super fun! At any rate, I've made several over the past week during baby M's afternoon nap. I have a lot of great fabric scraps to work with. Good stuff. Our son E has been taking his sandwich in one of these all last week and it seems to be working great. It just gets a wipe and then is tossed into the container drawer until we need it again. He likes it because it serves as a handy placemat too.

G spent the better part of yesterday in our freezing garage making two pair of stilts for the older kids for Christmas. We have a huge stack of a mix-mash of assorted scrap wood, mostly in the form of 2x4s. He managed to turn four very scrappy, dry, cracked and warped boards into beautifully smooth and rounded stilts. I think of those 4 poles, one is ash, one is oak, and two are pine! I'll post a picture when I get time. I was planning on painting them bright colors, but the wood grain is just so pretty, I think I'll only water seal them with the clear deck stuff (as I know they'll be left outside a LOT). I'd like another two pairs to gift to our nephews as well.

On the food/garden front... we're going through our canned and frozen goods at a fast clip as I try to avoid spending any extra money. We still have a good lot of beef left from the 1/8th we bought at the end of summer. We've got 6 hens and receive one egg a day. We've got two girls coming out of moult, one that has NEVER laid, four of the six are seriously geriatric and well, it's winter. I've been putting off offing a few of these ladies for quite some time. Sigh. They're all just kind of charming in their own ways. We shall see.

I received my Fedco seed catalog over the weekend. Now I always look forward to receiving seed catalogs after the holidays. They serve as kind of a balm to the postpartum let down of Christmas and New Years. I was kind of shocked to receive the catalog so early. I just planted garlic only 6 weeks ago! I placed the catalog on our wooden bench near the front door and wouldn't allow myself to open it all weekend. It's like opening all the doors on an Advent chocolate calendar before those days arrive. It's just not right. I'm saving it for after Christmas when the kids are home from school and we're all vegging and going a little stir crazy. Besides, I've got to get an earlier start on the school fundraiser we do with Fedco seeds in the new year.

All right, now I need to do something productive. It gets cold sitting still in front of the computer!

Something New from Something Old

2010-11-19T10:52:00.001-05:00

I think a lot of folks that are interested in a more DIY, grow it/make it yourself lifestyle do it for many reasons, but among the top three gotta be 1. it feels good to create/make, 2. you tend to recycle and that means consuming less, and 3. it makes being frugal (ahem, cheap) a lot of fun.
Earlier this year, my pal Jamie visited an exhibition at the Flint art museum that featured the quilts of Gees Bend.
I was so intrigued by what she told me of the exhibition. I've always loved quilts but have felt that was crafty territory this chicka could not travel into for my complete fear and intimidation of all things using PATTERNS. I'm just not the type to follow directions apparently. Whether it be knitting, sewing, gardening, cooking... I like to do it free-style. And quilts to me equal insane perfection. Perfection that I so respect but just have no patience or aptitude for.
But GEES BEND!... Amazing!
Our library carries a couple lovely over-sized coffee table art books on the quilts of Gees Bend. One in particular is great because it features not only detailed photographs of the quilts, but also contains dozens of narratives from generations of African-American quilters. Amazing women to read about! If I had half a brain, I'd tell you the title, but I can't remember it. I'm sure it'd be easy enough to find though. At any rate, reading this book and looking at the pictures totally inspired me. These women crafted quilts, many by hand, out of necessity to keep their families warm. They didn't have money to buy bolts of fabric and fancy edging. They didn't have $2000 Swedish sewing machines that could add a monogram and an embroidered reindeer (and if you have said machine, I'd love to see what it does. To me those machines are like my old Volvo next to the space shuttle). These women quilted by hand (and later, with simple machines) with what they had on hand. Old work pants, shirts, etc. Later they would use leftover corduroy and other fabric scraps from area businesses. What came from all their work were amazing, beautiful, useful and well-made quilts.

Reusing fabric! Something useful! A creative outlet! No patterned perfection required! Yes!!

Inspired by this, I bought an old Sears Kenmore sewing machine circa 1973 for $20 at a local yard sale this summer. For an additional $8, I was able to buy a scanned pdf of the original manual off the internet because I had no freakin' idea how to use a sewing machine. Our daughter S took lessons all last year, so she was very helpful! However, the machines she learned on were very fancy and not like the Kenmore I share a birthday with.
At any rate, I've been making little things on this machine. I made a very simple elastic waistband skirt for myself and felted wool mittens for myself and the kids. I've made several insanely colorful log cabin style quilt squares but have not pieced any of them together into a single quilt yet. My mother in law (who can sew quite well and is strictly a pattern woman-- who ironically cannot cook or follow a recipe to save her life) has a birthday coming up. When I asked her what she'd like, she said she'd love to have a quilted pillow cover or two in shades of pale green for her couch throw pillows. From me? Seriously?! I said I shall do my best, but would not be offended in the least if they ended up a dog bed at the local pound. Nonetheless, I was excited at the challenge and her good-natured belief in my questionable craftiness.

So I spent around 8 hours over a few very late nights cutting and piecing together what came to be a quilt! Both my mother in law and a good friend gave me fabric scraps late summer. Using those fabric scraps, the cut off length of my bedroom Ikea curtains, an old Ikea duvet cover (that had a very stubborn hot chocolate stain on it), a piece of fleece for batting and some twine (yes, I said twine)...I made a quilt! It's more like a throw, I suppose. Something to put in your lap as you sit in your favorite chair and sift through junk mail and knit. (That's the image I have of my MIL using this quilt.)

Here's the front

and the back

And a wee bird with twine feet

(I had to run out and grab the twine roll from the musty, leaf-covered garden box the other night to make bird's feet!). I also did some wing-like stitching on the bird that you can't quite see in the photo.

So there you go! I'm so stoked that I was able to make something useful without buying a single thing! I am fortunate to have encouraging friends (Amy) and family(Margaret) who have gifted me scraps and helped me jump my sewing machine fears. This quilt is faaaaaaaar from perfect and that is so okay with me. And as my pal Grace reminded me yesterday, the Amish always leave an imperfection in their near-stellar quilts because only God is perfect. Righty-o. I am happy to be ye old humble, scrappy, eternally novice quilter.

Giving Praise Where Praise is Due

2010-11-17T10:09:00.000-05:00

I know I've mentioned the upheaval in my bedroom earlier in the year, but today I'm feeling so grateful for my amazing husband and all the work he's done on this very old house. At the end of January, our bedroom ceiling started raining water on our bed. This was due to the plumbing upstairs in the apartment where my mother lives. My husband and brother tore out the bathtub and replaced it along with the plumbing, the tub surround and then even more plumbing in her kitchen. That was a lot of work. We thought all we had to do downstairs was cut away the ruined ceiling plaster and patch it. Above is a picture of my brother assessing the rotten wood and the upstairs plumbing.

Once a cut was made into the plaster, it all came raining down. We discovered a lot of rotten wood and mold. Our carpet was ruined during this time, so all of that was tore out, leaving us with a bare subfloor full of staples. Okay then. New flooring and patch the ceiling...

But no, not so fast. Upon sanding another wall to smooth out some bumps, we realized a whole corner of another part of the room was completely rotted. Here's G after he pushed through the drywall and knocked out some of the rotten wood leading him directly to the back porch! Argh!

Here's my lovely looking 20 years older thanks to plentiful drywall dust and at least 3 months of sanding, patching, putting up whole new walls and finally painting.

The inside has been done for at least 4 months or so now (excluding some shoe molding to nail in place). This weekend the outside was finally completed! We rebuilt the exterior wall months ago, but putting up the cedar siding was just put in place. And oh my, that stuff is NOT cheap! I can't imagine what it must cost to cover an entire house! At any rate, all that's left to do now is to paint it and settle in for winter. Ahhh. The joys of living in a 150 year old timber-built house.

Thank you dear husband, for all your good work. :)

Those Doors

2010-11-12T14:10:00.000-05:00

I really love how true real truths can be.

I love how simple things become when one simplifies.
Clarity abounds.
Grateful for so much.

One door closes and another opens.

And here I go...

Simple as that.

Autumn Thus Far

2010-11-10T10:33:00.000-05:00

Our sweet M. turned one!

Our last scraps of garden harvest for 2010 (well, except for the eggs)

Sorry if you're squeamish. The Michigan Midwives Association just had an awesome conference on the female pelvis. We were fortunate to have real pelvic models. They were amazing. This one shows the female organs in amazing preserved detail. You can also see the pubis and sacrum very well.

Halloween! Little E. was Mario (complete with silly mustache!) and S. was a Zombie Prom Queen

Here's my sauerkraut crock. I remembered to take a picture half-way through scooping it out. I wanted to take a picture of the scum on top but forgot. I've never made it with red cabbage before, but isn't it pretty? The wooden bowl you see if actually a dough bowl to let your bread rise on. It's now a very dark shade of pink thanks to the cabbage!

So what else has been happening? A lot and then thankfully, less.

I know I mentioned before that I was taking a sabbatical from midwifery for a while. I've been full steam ahead about birth work for a decade. Granted, when I started this work I had one child who was nearly two. Now I have three kids who are all 5 years apart. My life for the past two years (especially) has felt harried and rushed. Full of excitement, blessings, sadness, drama, laughter...but ever so rushed.

A lot of folks think being a midwife is crazy for the on-call part of the job. That's the first thing people ask me about- the unpredicatability of being called away at any time. Yes, that part can be difficult but you get used to it. It's been a month since I've been off-call (but still finishing 2 week and 6 week postpartum visits here and there) and the biggest thing I notice is how trained my brain is to make contigency plans in case I am not around for my family. My brain's constant inner chatter: "If I'm not able to get the kids from school today, I can call K and see if she can get them for me. But shoot, S has a party at 6pm...Ok, so K can pick them up and then I can ask T if she can swing by and take S to her party. And dinner...screw it. They can order pizza..." Having that chatter and constant planning cease has been LOVELY.

The bigger thing however, is not having to hold 20-30 different women (and their families) in my head. Putting other families ahead of your own can lead to resentment and burn-out if you cannot quickly strike a balance. And I want to be a good midwife. There are skills and then there is compassion and empathy. A good midwife has all of those things. ONLY thinking/worrying about/praying for/ putting my energy into only my family is wonderful! It sounds dumb, like, OF COURSE you would only worry about your family, but a midwife doesn't. She thinks about what she said/did at her visits. She worries over someone's edema, their hemorrhoids, their inverted nipples, their cheating spouse, their inability to pay their midwife (and how can the midwife pay her own bills?) and so on. And then you hear at 9 o'clock at night, "Mom! I need to look up X on Google for my report that's due tomorrow!" and then another child, "I can't sleep! Can you read another story to me?" in a loud enough voice that wakes the baby that has just been nursed down to sleep. Which then makes you groan and roar because you really needed to finish up birth certificates, replying to emails and paying bills before hopefully having some intimate time with your hubby before the phones rings at 2am to go out the door to the next laboring Mama (and worrying about who will drive the kids to school in the morning?!).

So for now, just my family in my head. Very nice.

Actually, I lie. I have a good friend due in February and a repeat client due mid-summer that I am being a midwife for. However, both women live within 6 blocks of my house.

Now I'm trying to figure out what to do with myself. Ha! I need to do some kind of work to bring in income and I've had no luck with finding anything local and part time. I'm so used to being my own boss and putting my skills out there for others that my mind has been a-buzz with what sort of thing I can come up with next. And that's exciting, if not a little overwhelming. There continues to not be enough hours in the day for all that I want to do but that's okay. I am honoring that and doing my best. We shall see.

So I hope dear reader, that you did not swing by here to read about new and wonderful things from my garden and all the things I've preserved to feed my family with. Honestly, there just wasn't a whole lot of that this year. It's felt like I all I could to hang on and stay sane most days. I did can a lot of amazing basil-tomato sauce (and we've already eaten ALL of it!), loads of pesto, strawberry glaze,corn, dilly beans, pickles, pickled zucchini and banana peppers (thankfully, my kids love anything with vinegar in), sauerkraut and dried tomatoes and apples. That's IT. Much less than years before, but it's all good.

My head right now is taking a break from garden things (until the seed catalogs begin to arrive in January!). Right now I'm thinking of DIY Christmas gifts for my family. Mostly, simple skirts, mittens made from recycled wool and cloth napkins from recycled fabrics/sheets, etc.

My kids have noticed the down-side of me being off-call, as excited as they were initially to have me around more often: Mom not working means no extra money. Slimmer times for the whole family. When I was crazy-busy working, we ate out often because there was 1. money to do so and 2. no time to plan and make dinner at home on many days. I've been trying to discuss these changes positively because I don't want to worry them about adult finances, but I also want them to see and respect the different ways of living for our family and what we need to change accordingly.

A friend of mine told me that she asked S (11 y.o.) how she liked me being off-call and S said, "Well, I guess it's nice to have my mom home and know she's not leaving the house in the middle of the night. We can do more things, except we CAN'T do more things because now we don't have the money to go anywhere!" This made me laugh. This is a very typical sort of thing for S to say.

And Little E called me into his room a week or so ago after I had tucked him in for the night to ask me, "Not ALL of my Christmas presents will be homemade, will they?"

Yep, their world is being rocked just a little bit. :)

My husband and I laughed. We will be Ma and Pa Ingalls and gift each child an orange, a corn-cob doll and a shiny new penny! Woohoo!

Catch of the Day

2010-09-07T12:53:00.000-04:00

Look who we caught!


And another!!


We processed 5 dozen very yummy ears of sweet corn in August


Is it wrong to let your baby eat corn kernels off the floor?

So after a long summer of a fairly neglected (by humans) and decimated (by groundhogs) garden, I am happy to say that the season is coming to a close here. We still have plenty of tomatoes and basil. Those two things seem to do well with no one giving an ounce of attention to them. I've made plenty of pesto and marinara over the past weekend.
Working full time and having three children pushed me to the edge this summer. I happily admit defeat this year. I still put up a lot of canned goods despite not doing much of anything in that back yard. This was also the first time in three years that my husband was not laid off for the summer, which meant I didn't have that Other Adult around to help me tend things. It really makes a difference, that's for sure. Or at least when there's a quick and danger-prone baby scaling the lot. ;)

But did you see the groundhogs?! I lured them in with apples from my neighbor's yard (thanks, neighbor!). We released them waaaaay down the road at a wetland preserve. One of them pooped in the car and it smelled awful-- totally got my sinuses riled up. G commented: "Well at least we know that smell was courtesy of an all-organic diet." Funny guy.

Growing

2010-07-29T08:26:00.001-04:00

red currants, lovely in muffins

Here it is nearly August and I've only posted 8 blog posts this year. Ah, well.

Life is busy and very full. Better to live it than blog it, I suppose. Tho I do miss my garden/food blogging get away time.

Here's what's happening on our itty plot of land:

*The red currant bushes I planted last year gifted us with many beautiful fruit.

*Our peach tree is going nuts this year for the first time ever. I really hope we can get through to full fruition and tasty peaches this year.

*That dastardly, gluttonous groundhog is back and living cozily under my deck. He's eaten an entire head of red cabbage, about 6 broccoli plants and a lot of greens. I suppose it could be a she, but whatever. And don't talk to me about live traps. We have one. We've been trying to catch this beast for over two years. I could place Carmen Miranda's head piece in a live trap and the groundhog would choose to decimate my row of kale instead.

*I finally weeded. Having a very mobile baby who likes to chance her fingers on chicken beaks makes it more difficult to park myself outside for long periods of time. But I finally weeded. You know, that way the groundhog can clearly see where to find the veggies now.

*Potatoes are doing well. I think I'm on the verge of a tomato blight.

*I've been using my pressure cooker a lot lately. Making lots of fresh hummus and refried beans. Pressure cooking the beans saves a lot of time (tho I do still soak/sprout them). I love my pressure cooker, especially when I don't want to have pot of cooking beans on the stove for hours on these hot, humid days.

*I've started baking our own bread again and that feels good.

On other fronts,

I've come to realize that when I'm financially slightly more comfortable, I'm not home enough to enjoy my family and be the mom and wife I want to be. When I'm super busy with work, I'm running from sun up to well after sun down and I eat crap. It's been a hard, busy year and I have way more fast food receipts in my wallet than I'd like. I feel my health has suffered as a result (not surprisingly, via intestinal distress). On the other hand, when I'm less busy (and poorer), I have the time to make good food from scratch. Doing so becomes a necessity when the funds aren't in anyway and the benefits are clear in the happiness it brings me to prepare such food and feed it to my family to support their good health. I decided very early on in the year that I need to take a break from midwifery. I wanted to see my commitments through with my current client load, but definitely time for a break. This has been a hard and big decision to make, but I think its for the best.

Just like a garden, we've got to find and keep the balance. Repeatedly. The groundhog decimates a row, a hailstorm knocks down peaches, a blight takes our tomatoes. Breathe. Tweak. Adjust. Make a loaf of bread and hug your family. Keep the faith and keep growing.

Unintentionally Eating Local

2010-06-05T23:53:00.000-04:00

I wish I would've brought a camera today. We saw lots of beautiful red and green in a large farm field and we dove right in.
The kids and I parked the car and picked several pounds of ripe, luscious strawberries and maybe two pounds of sugar snap peas. On the way home from the strawberry farm, we stopped at the food co-op and bought pierogies, sour cream, and heavy whipping cream.

We swooned over our tasty dinner of pan-fried pierogies in yummy Calder butter and carmelized onions, roasted garlic sugar snap peas, and sauerkraut (that we had made last year and preserved). For dessert we ate strawberry pie with fresh whipped cream on top. It was just one of those meals where you can taste every single ingredient and wonder how something so humble can taste so good. Halfway through the meal, I realized that everything on our plates (aside from the graham crackers I had used to make the pie crust) was locally grown or produced. Aha. That's why it was all so delicious.

Isn't summer nice that way?

What's Growing only. just

2010-05-25T16:35:00.001-04:00

Here is the little girl who was plopped into an American Girl lawn chair by a big girl and then had her picture taken. Her face says it all.

Here are potential peaches on our dwarf peach tree. Hopefully they will grow into actual peaches this year. There are several out there and my mouth salivates at the thought of peach pie and cobbler. Last year we had many promising peaches out there, that is until they were all knocked off due to a crazy wind storm that had trees bending over sideways. Every. Single. One. Of. Them. Knocked. Off.

The other picture is our small back-door bed that has a strange mix of plants that probably shouldn't be neighbors: hyssop, raspberries, oregano, garlic chives and regular chives. Right now it looks fairly orderly- wait until August. By then it will just be a mass of spaghetti-smelling green with pokey thorns thrown in.

This here is Grandma's Garden. The space is naturally shady so we have various shade plants like hostas, ferns, lily of the valley, and geraniums. Grandma can see this from her upstairs apartment window. The Virgin Mary out there used to live at my grandma's place in Detroit for many years before she died. No self-respecting Polish women with grandchildren would have a garden without the Blessed Virgin overlooking it all. ;)

The middle garden is planted. Potatoes, kale, lettuces, turnips, broccoli, calendula,two types of carrots, spinach, beets, and more (but I'm too lazy to get my garden map right now). The smaller garden behind the chickens is now full of 20 tomato plants (various types) and 4 Thai pepper plants. I'm waiting for it to be consistently warm before planting my beans and cucumber plants.

Here are the hops. I know I post this every year. They're just so pretty and grow so well and quickly. They're already much bigger than this. Maybe this year we'll have time to make beer again.

All right- the big kids just got home from school. We're gonna take a walk to the farmer's market to buy things from those folks who have greenhouses and have produce to sell. Yum!

Potatoes from Space

2010-05-10T14:11:00.000-04:00

Here's a mix of those freaky potatoes from the crawl space. The potatoes I threw in the ground willy nilly. Over the last week, I've noticed other things growing too, things that I have not yet planted this year. Which just goes to show that harvesting the garden at 37-38 weeks pregnant does not make for clean grounds. In last year's potato spot, I have at least 20 or so potato plants coming up. They're not in rows or anything resembling order, they're just growing where they fell. Apparently I was too large and grumpy to deal with grabbing up those little puny spuds and now I've got potatoes growing all over the darn place.
Same is true for radishes. I've not planted any radishes yet, but they're all over the place too.
I found this out by grabbing handfuls of greens (weeds) from the as yet unplanted garden to feed to the chickens. I was out there without my glasses and was wondering which one of the kids threw red bouncy balls in the chicken run. Wait- hold a sec...those are radishes? Where did those come from?!
They came from the spot in the garden that I just got fed up with and let go to seed sometime last September.
Funny how these things persist despite a long winter and having a rototiller mix it all up- twice! Once last fall and again last month.

I have a lot to plant, but I'm not trusting the weather and the soil temps yet to put too much in. I'm going to give it another week or two. These 35* nights and mornings are not my idea of fair May weather.

In other news, we've got ourselves a broody hen. One of the black Australorps has gotten it into her head that she's determined to sit on and hatch our unfertilized eggs. Every day one of us has to go in there and tell her otherwise (i.e., shoo her off the nesting box and eggs). I feel bad for her, but it's a big pain in the butt. Time is so tight and there's a million things going on and now I've to counsel a hen to boot? Oh honey...

All right, back at it.

A few more things in the ground

2010-04-26T12:02:00.000-04:00

So last week, baby M and I put some new potential in the ground. Namely, more spinach, broccoli, stattice, and various potatoes. This year I didn't buy seed potatoes. Instead, I planted last year's left overs from the root cellar. We did this last year- sort of. Actually, the potatoes that were left over were put into the compost pile in the spring and later gifted us with a ton of nice potatoes. And last year, we bought and planted seed potatoes from the seed company for the "real" garden. So I'm trying something new to see how last year's potatoes treat us. I was too lazy to sort the potatoes though. If and when the plants do grow, I'll have no idea what kind of potato it is. I've got three long rows of a mix of russets, rose apple finn fingerlings and norland reds.

It has felt good to be outside again. My face actually felt a little sunburned last Thursday after working in the yard and my body was a wee bit sore. Happily so.

In other news, our bedroom is coming together. At the end of January, our bedroom ceiling crashed down due to a water leak in the upstairs bathroom. It literally rained (from the upstairs plumbing) multiple times all over our bed and floor. We've spent several months sleeping in every room but our bedroom, tearing out rotted wood and replacing drywall. Our flooring was also ruined, so all of that came up as well. So far, the ceiling and walls have all been repaired/replaced and now painted. A new laminate floor is nearly finished and a proper bed is back in place. Oh, and the upstairs bathtub and all plumbing has also been replaced. Last night felt like a small victory in that we were finally able to move my dresser out of the dining room where it has resided for a few months now. So no more getting out of the shower to fetch underwear in the dining room. You know, sometimes these little things make for a better day.

Another good thing: one of the non-laying chickens is laying again. Seriously, either someone is laying two eggs a day, or the Wyandotte has come back from her 7 months no-egg hiatus. Glad to have you back, honey. :)

Reemerging

2010-04-16T13:07:00.001-04:00

Little M, fixated on the new spring leaves on the blowy Maple trees

I am slowly reemerging from the frozen ground of winter and all that came with it. Many things have happened in the last 6 months, things that have stopped me in my tracks and have changed a big part of me. During this time, blogging was the last thing on my mind. Today, I have somehow scored on a quiet hour and a half to myself. I planted more spinach, cleaned out a garden bed, cleaned the chicken coop, and mowed the front yard with Little Miss M strapped to my back. Now she's napping and I'm eating lunch over my keyboard, blogging.

Ahhh. Nice to be back.

At any rate, I hope to be posting more pictures and writing even more boring posts about the ins and outs of our wee urban homestead. And maybe I can even write a post for my pal Bridgit on how I use our pressure cooker (the food one, not the canning one).

I've got a friend in from California who should be showing up any minute with her sweet boy. So off I go...

Pondering Potatoes

2010-01-20T10:10:00.003-05:00

not very straight rows of Rose Apple Finn fingerlings in last year's garden

I've heard folks say that planting potatoes in urban gardens takes up too much space. I wonder about this. If I didn't plant potatoes, what would I put in their place? To be honest, I just don't know.
I love potatoes. Like black t-shirts, they go with everything.

If you get the right type, they store well. Every year, I typically pick out a nice storage potato and then an early variety to enjoy during the summer months. I've looked into growing potatoes in containers, tubs, buckets, etc and have determined that that method just wouldn't give me the quantity of spuds I desire. At the end of the growing season last year, we harvested 50# of potatoes. This came from six 20' rows. Not bad on taking up space, in my opinion. After all, each plant gives you 6-12 potatoes! That's a great return. Much better than say, radishes, which grow so quickly I can never eat them fast enough and the chickens don't like them!

So I've been thumbing through my Fedco catalog. Reading the description of each seed or tuber thrills me. Seriously. There is just so much potential with each and every one. Even if you order seeds from somewhere else, I encourage you to obtain a copy of Fedco's annual catalog. There's so much information tucked in all that small print- and lot's of snarky humor as well!
I've pretty much got my small order together (we have lots of saved seed from last year). I'm stuck on spuds. Which varieties this year? I'll also have sprouted potatoes left over from the root cellar to plant too. Oh, these little things that make dirty snow and cold days so much more bearable!

Confessional: winter tomatoes

2010-01-15T13:02:00.003-05:00

This is picture of last summer's tomatoes. I apparently took so many pictures of tomatoes that I created a folder under My Pictures that is simply titled: Tomatoes. This folder contains several pictures of red, green, yellow, orange and everything in between tomatoes. I forgot I created this folder. Where would I be without my fat folder of tomato photos? I should sell it as stock photos should any tomato company need ad help.

At any rate, I'm posting about tomatoes because I gasp! bought two Romas today at Whole Foods. Shipped all the way from California. Most certainly they'll be fairly tasteless and gummy in texture. As I went into the kitchen to make myself a cup of coffee just now, I spied those two tomatoes sitting in the fruit/veggie bowl on the butcher's block. They looked so odd and out of place there, with a load of snow just on the other side of the window where they sit. If it were summer, I'd be complaining about how those counter-top tomatoes seem to breed while we're sleeping. But it's January. There shouldn't be tomatoes on the counter-top.

We've really done a lot to eat as seasonally as possible (barring a 3 month period last year when I was incredibly nauseous with first trimester misery) for the last three years. We've always had a garden, but only recently tried to really eat what was local and in season. And surprise, surprise! Things taste better when they're local and in season.

But

something came over me yesterday when I popped into Trader Joe's to get a couple incidentals. I spotted a tub of tzatziki sauce. That delicious sauce that makes me salivate to think about it. Tzatziki sauce is the creme de la creme of Coney Island diners across America. Tzatziki sauce goes on gyros, hippie hash, Greek omelettes... anything with feta! I love it! And while I know that I can make it myself, I haven't. And I was hungry. And I've been gone all day, every day this week. So I bought it! Snap! Impulsive!

Of course, I didn't buy anything to go with it last night.

This morning, I remembered the chicken breasts I have in the basement freezer. Chicken gyros, yum.

That meant that I had to pick up pita (because I've never successfully made pita to be like real pita). And what's a gyro without tomatoes? Even if they're gummy, winter tomatoes (most likely) artificially ripened on their trip across the country? Okay, and I bought two cucumbers as well. From California.

Hey, I'm not perfect. I've been working a lot and I fell powerless to a tub of tzatziki sauce from Trader Joe's. And I can't wait for dinner tonight! Gummy vegetables and all!

Planting Placentas

2010-01-08T13:52:00.002-05:00

My daughter came home yesterday telling me that they were studying the body's musculature and circulatory system and that she was to pick one or the other, pick a spot in the body and create a report about it. When asked, she said she wanted to focus on the circulatory system but couldn't think of what she wanted to report on, when suddenly I had my big, "Oooo! Oooo! I know! I know what you can do!" moment (and yes, I actually said that).
The Placenta.
What a very, very cool, temporary piece of amazing circulatory brilliance!!
This lead to an in-depth discussion about the placenta, how it oxygenates and nourishes the baby while somehow keeping the maternal and fetal blood separate. "How does it do that, Mom?"

YES! My kid is finally somewhat interested in the geeky stuff that I am so passionate about! S has been privy to all things birth and reproduction related since she was 2. My 5 year old son could probably handle a phone call from someone who's water just broke.

So we continued discussing the placenta, it's function and the exciting fact that we still have Magda's placenta in the freezer waiting to be buried in the spring under some new tree or bush.
(And check out this awesome shirt. I'm so gonna get it someday!) I said we could thaw it out and bring it to school to demonstrate the vessels, the fetal and maternal sides, and how it works. I'm sure it wouldn't be allowed as it's considered a "bio-hazard". Still, fun to think about. I was going to post a pic of Magda's placenta because it was huuuuge (to match her hugeness, no less), but it's in color and I'm not able to crop as I'd like. ;)

At any rate, all this placenta talk and burying the placenta talk led to what kind of bush or tree should we plant over it? Honestly, we've a lot of trees I don't much like (half dead, big old trees), so I don't really want to grow something big to create more shade over our growing spaces. Perhaps a dwarf fruit tree? Another blueberry bush? Something different like currants or gooseberries?
S was sad to learn that because she was born at the hospital, I wasn't able to save her placenta and plant anything over it. I did plant E's placenta and planted an ornamental Zebra Grass over top, but the plant should have been in a full sun spot and it died after the first year. However, I usually plant morning glories or peas where his placenta was buried and they do great!

How about you? Did you plant a temporary body organ in your own yard and plant something over it? Come out and tell me about it you crunchy granola parents out there!

Getting back into my groove, at last

2009-12-30T22:39:00.005-05:00

My! That baby has large hands.
And she's already 3 months old now!

S received a beginner's sewing machine for Christmas. I cannot sew. I took a sewing class in 7th grade and got a D-. In my defense, I went on a two week vacation at the end of the semester and therefore was unable to complete the stupid lion pillow I had begun.
At any rate, I'm just not the sewing, knitting, crocheting, follow-a-pattern type. There is no "type" per se, except that I generally feel that those crafty souls out there have a lot of patience and are keen on perfection. Me, not so much. I like instant gratification and/or making do with whatever is on hand and being at peace with that. Patterns=perfection and that just makes me cranky.
However, I was in need of cloth diaper inserts and couldn't bring myself to buy them. Instead, I remembered that we now have a sewing machine with an instruction manual (!) at the house. So I bought some pink micro fleece off the remnant shelf at the fabric store. I used G's old work tshirts for a couple inner layers between the fleece and whipped up these very imperfect diaper liners- 20 total so far. I'm very proud of my most unstraight lines and ragged edges. The Urban Homesteader gets another Carolyn Ingall's point for attempting a new project and kind of pulling it off. I actually enjoyed myself. Maybe I'll move up to patterns some day after S has a run at her lessons. She'll be able to show me a thing or two!

Ahh, the bean plant. This poor gem was sprouted from saved bean pole seeds. Little E started it some time in November. I was so excited that he wanted to grow something indoors that I didn't think ahead to what we'd do when it reached more than 12" or so. You know these plants grow to be about 8' feet tall. So it's a bit raggedy now, because I just could not find something tall enough for it to grow on in the house. It has flowered and produced some green beans though, which is super fun. On Thanksgiving, after saying a thankful grace, we each had a turn at saying what we're most grateful for. Me and G said typical, boring, parent things like, we're thankful for our family, friends, health, etc. When it was Little E's turn, he said, "I'm thankful for my bean plant."
I love it! A couple weeks later he was at the table drawing and writing. He asked me what made the chuh sound. "C-H", I answered. Later I found a sticky note stuck to the bean plant's pot:

NO TUCHING
!!!

As grown ups, G and I don't swap gifts for Christmas. We only receive two gifts: one from my mom and one from his mom. My mom gave us a very nice Cuisinart Belgian waffle maker. This is an awesome gift because we can make our own healthy waffles and freeze the extras for quick breakfasts on weekday mornings.
G's mom gifted us the Kitchen Aid pasta maker attachment. Woo hoo! Here's a fettuccine noodle made with white whole wheat flour from West Wind Milling Company. I worried the flour might make it too dense and tough, but they turned out lovely. And we had enough left over to freeze some extra. The sauce was whipped together with a friend's gifted ground beef from her sister's cow mixed with some of summer's tomato glut sauce.
Clearly, this family has no fear of carbs. ;)

Yesterday for New Year's Eve dinner, I made a delicious veggie and chickpea korma with peas puloa (rice dish) and garlic naan. Korma sauce is yummy because it's made with a nice amount of butter, yogurt and cream. Add cumin, coriander, ginger, and garam marsala and it's heaven! Made even better because I finally had time to make a batch of home made yogurt. The yogurt is so much tastier and tangier when it's made from scratch.

Cold in the Backyard

2009-12-23T23:13:00.003-05:00

I wish "Babs", the knitting hen in Chicken Run lived here. I'm sure the ladies would love their own cardigans about now. I know they're fine, but every time I see their bare feet, I shiver.
We're somehow out of eggs. It's so strange to go nine, ten months of the year with having 4-5- dozen eggs in the fridge at any given time and then one day in December realize there's only two lone eggs sitting on the shelf. Our hens have slowed down due to the shorter days, and the hens at our little chicken cooperative are molting. It feels so strange, and so pricey to have to buy eggs!

The last of the broccoli that I've been meaning to harvest for oh, a month now. It's still okay, despite the snow. I think I've subconsciously been avoiding harvesting the last of it in order to prolong something edible and green in the cold. Maybe I'll make a small broccoli slaw salad to accompany Christmas dinner. I've been tearing off the broccoli leaves and feeding them to the chickens for the last couple months. Broccoli is high in calcium, you know. Helps make for stronger shells. :)

Seed Catalogs and Babies

2009-12-22T07:00:00.004-05:00

I miss blogging. The days have been flying by. Life is very, very full but also very fulfilling.
I'm happy the kids are on break now. It's nice to have them home during the day and to not have that school world of commitments for a couple weeks.

I just recently received my Fedco Seeds catalog! This makes me a very happy lady. I'm trying to hold off looking at it until after Christmas. Don't ask me why, I just feel I can savor it more after the flurry of holiday activity. There is something so peaceful and calming about plopping my butt on the couch with a cup of Earl Grey, a legal pad, a sharp pencil and highlighter, and my seed catalogs. It's such a fitting activity at the beginning of the year: planning the growth of our family's food. The best kind of resolution to make, in my opinion. :)

Fedco has a very cool seed fund-raiser for schools and non-profits. I've passed the idea to our school PTSO. They're interested, so we'll see if anything happens with it this year. There are three different fund-raising options, the easiest being a seed sale that works like Girl Scout cookie sales. I'm not on the PTSO, but I'd definitely help with a seed sale. It would totally fit in with the school's healthy eats strategies and organic gardening/sustainability ethos.

Aside from seed catalogs rolling in, my only other plans for the next two weeks it to chill out as much as possible. The work load has lightened a bit. All the December mamas have had their babies now, and an early January baby arrived too. So there's a little sit back and relax time as far as being on-call goes. We still have normal prenatals and a couple postpartum visits left for the recent ladies, but with the kids out of school and no babies due until mid-late January, I feel like this is a real Christmas vacation!

Magdalena has been to five births in 6 weeks. I can't believe it! I feel so very blessed to have such a sweet baby and such lovely births. It's been interesting to see Magda's reaction when a woman is in labor. When someone is moaning or even making loud noises with the effort of pushing, Magda becomes real still and listens so intently. When a baby is born, she quiets again and listens to the meow of the newborn's cry. Her reaction makes me wonder if there's memory there. Does she remember me moaning and growling during her labor? Does she remember that smell of amniotic fluid and blood? Does she remember the chill of air on new skin and the warmth of being clasped to my chest with salty tears falling on her head?
I'll never know what's going on behind those huge brown eyes of hers, but it's amazing to watch her still herself and listen during those pivotal moments, as if remembering another time and place.

Growing=amazing.

Bad, bad blogger!

2009-12-08T22:23:00.002-05:00

Yes, I've been a bad, bad blogger lately and this is why I can not maintain any readers. But you know, it is December. There's not a whole lot growing in our fair city these days. Well, apart from a ginormous and super cute baby girl. Miss M is now 2 months old and weighs 14 pounds 6 ounces! She's also grown 3 inches since birth. All on high-octane Mama Milk. I've been really busy lately with work and kids and trying to wrap my head around the holidays. Miss M has attended three births with me now and many, many prenatal and post partum visits. She's an awesome baby and very sweet. Counting my blessings every day for this family of mine!

And this picture? Well, it's not a very good one but it is a shot of farm animals in the city. On Sunday we attended the Cobblestone Farm Christmas shindig in Ann Arbor (very nice, btw). Aside from having a lovely old museum/farm house, they also have 4 small goats, many ducks, chickens and geese, a couple of ponies and two huge hogs (in the back pen there). How I would love my back yard to be full of these animals! Oldest daughter S (who is prone to drama and pouting now and then) harrumphed: "I wish our house was old and cool like this! I wish we could have all these animals!"
Mercy. Seriously, this girl mooooooaaaanns if I ask her to help clean the chicken coop or to let the girls out in the morning. And when I reminded her that our house was built in 1860 and is definitely cool, she just rolled her eyes.

But back to our urban homestead...
Goals for this winter:

demystify bee keeping and figure out if I can bring on the honey in the new year
possibly add another raised bed or two in the front yard next spring
look at the last two years of hardcore food growing efforts and make a list of what worked, what didn't and re-think space issues
do the same with canning lists
take stock of saved seed; organize and try really hard to remember not to order more when those seed catalogs start rolling in
try to be a better blogger!

Last Warm Days

2009-11-07T22:27:00.002-05:00

Enjoying the 65* day!

Local Walking Trails and Wetlands

I don't have anything to post regarding gardening or growing my own food. The only thing being produced on this city lot these days are a few daily chickens eggs- and I certainly can't take credit for that.

The maple trees have finally dropped most of their leaves (allowing tons of sunlight to flood the house- I forgot what a perk this is!). Now is the time to rake all the leaves onto the gardens like a big fluffy comforter. Time to sleep, my beloved dirt. See you in the spring.

Life has been keeping me super busy these days and that's all right. I've come to realize though that we really need to start some serious menu planning (as much as I love last-minute pizzas from Whole Foods!). It feels like I either put a lot of energy into our meals or none at all. Depends on the day, I suppose. I've had some days lately where I drop kids at school, come back to pick up the baby (who stays home with my mom while I cart big kids) and then go to work. By the time I finish up and get kids from school, it's 4pm and there's nothing ready to eat at home. And because I'm breastfeeding, I'm ravenously hungry oh, every 45 minutes or so. This leads us to occasional pizza nights. Again, not opposed, but I can't live on pizza. ;)

I have made some nice things lately though. Tonight we had awesome French onion soup with mushrooms. Had delicious pulled pork and homemade coleslaw the other night. Made an interesting red lentil/chickpea/saffronny stew. Also a nice cassoulet another night. And of course, when all else fails and we need something quick, we scramble up a ton of eggs, make a bunch of toast and roast some of our beloved fingerlings and have breakfast for dinner.
One of the things on our family agenda tomorrow is to make some serious meal planning lists. There's 4 eaters/1 nurser in this family who fly in all different directions and meet back again for dinner. We need to make breakfast, lunch, snacks and dinner a bit more cohesive and easier to deal with.

In other news, I've not succumbed to my personal guilt of not canning a crap load of applesauce, apple butter and dried apple rings this year. Despite being the owner of small children, my kids just don't dig applesauce. Nor does my husband. I'm the only one who eats it. And I certainly do not need to consume 24 quart jars of applesauce over the winter months. In fact, I just finished off the last jar from last year's batch. Apples are lovely. We'll just have to enjoy them as they are, when they're in season.

What's for Dinner? One of my faves...

2009-10-20T12:37:00.002-04:00

Ahhh, settling into a routine of sorts. It feels good to have my body a bit more back to normal and not so sore. There's some lingering pubis pain, but it's sooo much better. I can't run yet, but then again, I really have no desire to run. ;)

Lovely fall weather. It got very cold last week-- into the 30s with cold wind to boot. Currently it's 55* and feels downright balmy. I've been craving rice dishes lately. Good, stick-to-your-ribs type food. This could be because this lovely and large new daughter of mine loves to nurse. I forgot how ravenously hungry breastfeeding a newborn leaves me. It's crazy and wonderful.

Sunday I had two frozen chicken breasts- not really enough to feed 4 hungry people. So I combined the chicken breast (chopped into many small bits), brown rice, onion, broccoli straight from the garden, and carrots from the garden into a yummy one-pot meal. Add a heap of roasted fingerling potatoes (also from the backyard) and we had an amazing meal. (I realize it's a culinary faux pas to serve rice and potatoes in the same meal. Two starches, etc. But it was delicious.) The carrots were amazing. They tasted so... carroty. And orange. Can you taste colors? I swear we all could. I will be planting more of Fedco Seed's Danvers carrots next year.

Today I cut up butternut squash from the garden and made one of my favorite dishes: curried pumpkin soup. I threw in some red lentils for a bit of protein too. The house smells awesome like Indian take-away. Will be served with brown rice. I was going to make some sort of savory quick bread to go with it, but I hear little Miss M beginning to stir, readying herself to suck down another bazillion calories from her mama.

We'll see if I get time before the onslaught of the later afternoon hits. I've got to pick up boy wonder and his friend from school. Big sister has Girl Scouts, about 20 minutes at home before she's off to theater practice. I also need to go to the bank and I wouldn't mind hitting the farmer's market if there's time. Maybe I'll just buy a nice loaf of bread from the co-op bakery stall at the market. Yes, there ya go.
Cutting corners, delicious corners.

Later that day on October 1st...

2009-10-13T09:22:00.005-04:00

Best fall harvest ever.

Tired, ecstatic mama minutes after birth (with big sister's hand meeting baby for the first time!).

So our baby arrived. Hours after I last posted on this blog.
That Thursday was the first day I had been outside since I had fallen off the treadmill at the gym and rendered myself unable to walk for a few days. I was going stir crazy and it was a lovely day. I asked my mom to come with me to the library just so I could get out of the house. I brought my borrowed cane and painfully hobbled out of the house.
At the library I picked up some new books for myself and some music. I wanted to create a play-list for when I was in labor.

We stopped on the way home and splurged on milkshakes and french fries. I felt defiant and grumpy. Screw healthy eats. I just wanted some sugar, grease, and salt. Lovely stuff that lightened my mood a bit. It was also wonderful to be out in the sunshine and wind. It had only been 4 days since I had hurt myself, but I was fairly depressed. While I was happy that I hadn't gone into labor with this major pubis ligament injury, I was also scared that if I did, I wouldn't be able to handle labor while not being very mobile-- yet I was also ready by Thursday to have my baby on the outside. It felt like in order to continue healing, I'd have to get this baby OUT of the bowl that is my pelvis.
At home, I compiled a lovely labor play-list of Django Reinhardt and Ibrahim Ferrer.

At any rate, with my mood a bit lifted, I ventured out again that day. I wanted another taste of the outdoors and relative freedom from my bed. I dropped my daughter off at theater practice and even went to the grocery store for a few items. I felt like I had two heads as I hobbled huge and imminent with a cane around the grocery store. Folks stared and promptly looked away when I looked back.

When I came home, I found our neighbors (and past home birth clients) talking to my husband in our kitchen. They so sweetly brought us curried squash soup and a swiss chard torte. (Healthy food to make up for my sugar, salt, grease lunch.) I was so touched at their kindness.
All week, family and friends came out of the woodwork with food, driving our kids to school and back, chiropractic care at home, etc. My husband was amazing and attentive and sweet. I literally hung off him with most of my weight as I gasped with pain while I tried to walk to the bathroom. My dad brought us take-out 3 days in a row. My mom made great pots of soup. My sister hung out with me and helped me in and out of the shower and to get dressed! I felt like I was getting my postpartum help before the baby. Would you call that pre-partum?

That evening after putting the kids to bed, I climbed into bed with my book. ( Cheerful Weather for the Wedding, by Julia Strachey. It's a little novella that was originally published in 1932 by The Hogarth Press- Virginia Woolf's small publishing company. It was one of those books that I picked up solely for the title and the fact that it wasn't current.) I was nearly done with the book. I had my little reading light on (which makes my husband crazy- but I have to read before sleep comes!) I had two mild crampy sensations sweep across my lower abdomen. Nothing new though. I had been feeling this nightly for 3+ weeks, more so since I had injured myself. I sighed heavily at the end of one of those little cramps. My husband mistook this for my "off to sleep" sigh and said, "Honey, turn off your light."
I thought he was complaining about the light. I had 5 pages left of the book, so I got out of bed and left the room to finish it. I decided first to take a shower, to see if I could relax and see if more contractions would come. Nothing. Nada. Zilch. Grrr.

I went to the living room and sat on an exercise ball. I finished up those last 5 pages, put the book down on the coffee table, glad that I had finished it before bed and then had two of the biggest, craziest, back-to-back contractions out of nowhere. I sat on the ball and breathed through them. When the second one subsided, I felt my water break. Hmmm.
I hobbled to the bathroom to check things out. I noted the time on the kitchen clock: 10:20pm. The fluid was lightly yellow- evidence of old meconium (possibly passed when I fell?). It was well-dissolved and I wasn't much worried. I said a little prayer asking for no more mec, to keep the baby protected, then went into my bedroom to put on some fresh underwear. But first, another strong contraction.

"Babe, wake up. My water just broke. There's a bit of old mec, but I think it's fine. I'm gonna get my prenatal bag from the car so we can listen to the baby."
"You okay? You want me to get your bag?"
"Naw, I can do it."
So I went outside to my car. I had another strong contraction at the gate. I saw a man walking down the street. He was only a silhouette, but I saw him pause as he watched me grab the gate and audibly breathe through a contraction. I giggled to myself, imagining how I must look to this stranger, then walked to the car. I put the key in the lock and had another huge contraction. The man was still stopped at the end of my driveway. I let the contraction finish, then waved him on with a smile, meaning to say, "I'm okay, really."
I grabbed my prenatal bag and remembered that I didn't have my doppler. The apprentice was carrying it. So fetoscope it was. Even though only 10 minutes had passed since my water broke, I was very definitely having strong contractions every two minutes. I couldn't believe it. I explained to my husband how to use the fetoscope as quickly as I could between contractions.

"Put these in your ears. The baby's back is over here. Listen low. It's gonna be fast. Now take my watch and count the beats for 15 seconds- you're gonna multiply that by four. Put the post against your head and take your hand away once it's against my belly. Wait, not yet. Shit, here's another contraction."

He positioned the fetoscope against my belly and said he didn't hear anything. Go lower! I instructed. He moved down a bit, smiled, and said, "Wow. That's so cool. It's so fast!"
Knowing another contraction was coming very soon, I barked, "Just COUNT!"
The heart tones were fine, in the 130s.

Next, I grabbed my phone and called my midwife partner. I tried to give her as much info as is humanly possible in a 120 second period. Another contraction came on and I threw down my phone to deal with it. I felt the baby push lower and lower every time. In my head, I was flabbergasted- This is coming too fast. This can't be. I want to push. It was about 10 minutes before 11pm. I tried to ignore my panicky feeling of knowing my partner lives 35 minutes or so from me. I really wanted her here for the birth.

I had all the gear needed for a water birth. My husband asked me if I wanted him to blow up the pool and grab the hose from downstairs. I nodded yes but then said, "Wait!" Another contraction. I needed to hang on him. It ended and I said he could go now. But no- "Wait!" again. Another strong contraction. He wisely said, "Honey, we don't have time to get the pool ready."

More contractions. I was getting really vocal now. With every one I had to resist the urge to push. It was completely overwhelming and scary. It was 10:56pm and I called my friend and former apprentice, A. Even though she stopped apprenticing a couple months ago, she had attended a lot of my prenatals and this was kind of her last on-call birth. I wanted her here and was glad this was happening at night when she was home from work. I asked if she could come over and help. Again, another phone call I couldn't finish for throwing my phone down and growling/grunting/blowing through another contraction.

I stood by my bed with my husband at my side. I was so confused. I was trying to figure out where I wanted to be, what I could do to make this more bearable, less intense. Damn, I needed to PUSH! During contractions I'd alternate groaning, praying, and swearing like a sailor. Something like this: "Oh gawd, another one already! Please God, protect this baby. Slow this down, God. I can't cope with this. I need more time....uuuuggggghhhh! Fuck, shit....damn it!"
A. and my husband were giggling at me. I didn't mind, I knew how silly it sounded. But it felt really reassuring to pray and I couldn't help but to swear.

Next, J. our friend and apprentice came in with the doppler. I wanted her to listen. She did first thing. Baby was great, heart tones 140. Oh, I wanted to push. I had tried to lay on the bed for one contraction thinking lessening the effect of gravity might help but it was awful. So I continued standing at the side of my bed, squeezing my buns so tightly together (my butt cheeks were really the sorest part of my body the next day!) and blowing, grunting, praying, swearing.

A. and J. were a flurry of activity setting up birth supplies. I was partially still in my midwife brain, trying to utter direction between my litany of verbal coping. "You guys, my birth bag is in the trunk of my car. It's unlocked if you need anything. I brought my instruments in, they're sterile. I.....shit, shit, shit!!! Please God, give me the strength and the calm to deal with this. It's tooooooo faaaaast! Uuuuuuuuggggghhh."

Minutes later, my midwife pal and partner arrives. Thank God! I felt better for her being there. I immediately told her I needed to push, but that I was scared. This was so fast. This couldn't be, right?
She calmed me and said it was fine to push.
"I have to poop," I said. She gave me that Look. The Look that all midwives give because having to the urge to poop means there's a baby really there, not poop. All that pressure and what-not.

So I said, "No, I really do have to poop. I can tell it's there." And I could feel it. I was too afraid to sit on the toilet before she got there!

"You're on blue pads. Just poop here. It's fine."

Damn cultural programming. I could not bring myself to poop on the floor, blue pads or no blue pads, standing upright in front of my husband and three close friends. No way. I needed to sit on a toilet, preferably alone.
So I was escorted to the toilet and sat down. Ugh! The pressure! I waited so that I wasn't contracting when I sat. I quickly pushed and felt this egg-size bit of poop come out, and the next thing was the baby slamming down as a contraction began. Later I laughed at how I knew that poop needed to come out, and how it seemed to work as a baby-blocking speed bump as I waited for my midwife friend to arrive! Next, I shot up standing, not able to bear the sensation of sitting on the toilet. Before I knew it, I was surrounded by everyone in the smallest room of my house (because most home born babies end up being born in the absolute smallest room of the house!).

"Have you checked yourself?" My midwife pal wanted to know.
I shook my head no and then tried to feel for cervix or baby. All I could feel was wrinkly baby scalp (coming down quickly!) and hair?! My babies are born cue-ball bald! I couldn't say what I felt except to utter something, "Baby.....coming."

And so I pushed, standing over the toilet. My left hand on the window sill, my right on my husband's shoulder. Midwife on her knees in front of me, apprentice hands scurrying in and out of the frame, handing over blankets, blue pads, etc. I kept my eyes closed for most of it. I pushed as our baby's head came down, and crowned. The worst part, so intense. Then that contraction ended and I was told, "Good job, the top of your baby's head is out."

"The top?! Just the top? Damn!"
"Reach down and feel."
"NO!" And more pushing.
This time though, lots of verbal guidance. "Slow, slow. Don't push. Just do little grunts. That's it, slowly. Good job..."

And my goodness, this was my absolute favorite part of my labor. In comparison, this was the most calm and controlled part. I could feel the baby's head slowly oozing out. Everything stretching to accommodate forehead, eyes, nose, lips, chin. Very intense, but equally amazing and ingrained in my cellular memory for life, no doubt.
Head was out. With the next contraction, I felt the twist and rotation of the baby's shoulders and the body came away from mine. In relief, I plopped onto the toilet and was handed this sweet, chunky baby girl with a mass of wet, dark hair. It was 11:34pm.
We've named her Magdalena, or Magda for short. She weighed 10# 7 oz; 22" long; 14 1/2" head. My biggest baby yet.
My quickest, and by far, most mentally overwhelming labor yet. And thanks to the skillful hands of my midwife and friend, there was nothing on me that required repair!
-And for what it's worth, I never had time to listen to my labor play-list!

The past week and a half has passed quickly, but well. Half of my brain is hazy and slow, fogged by the effects of prolactin release thanks to breastfeeding. The other half of my brain is forced to stay awake and on top of things: bills being paid, one kid to theater, gathering school permission slips, book orders...What's for dinner? Did you buy my costume yet? Do we have groceries? Did you throw in the laundry, Mom, where are my shoes?!...etc!
This is what comes with having older kids and a new baby. I must say though, both kids have been amazing, sweet, helpful little nurturers.
I am so thankful for our new healthy baby girl, for our sweet children, for my awesome husband and for all the family and friends who helped us through the past few weeks. Love to you all! You know who you are. (And if I have your dishes, I'll return them soon, I promise!)

Harvest Time Already

2009-10-01T13:53:00.003-04:00

The Baby Ticker widget keeps ADDING days now that we're post due date!
What's up with that?!

Okay honies, the only thing I'm hoping to harvest, and/or CARE about harvesting is this sweet kicky child in my belly.

Baby, I want you in my arms!
Come on out. You've got loving parents, awesome siblings, chickens, and lots of squash on the counter!
-xoxo,
Your Loving Mama

Fall Harvest and a Cranky Mama

2009-09-23T07:16:00.004-04:00

The weather around these parts has been making me cranky. I know I'm prone to exaggeration at cranky times, but I'd like to know when south-eastern Michigan transformed into Bangkok.
80-something degree days with 90% humidity is not okay at the end of September!

The gardens are a mess. I've been avoiding even going out back for the last few weeks because I cannot stand disorder and yet feel too overwhelmed to deal with it. The last couple of days I've been sleeping better (like nearly all night, not in an upright position! -Baby has moved much lower, making the carpal tunnel much better). So yesterday I found enough will power to at least go clean up the patch of garden in my neighbor's yard (the donated land!). I had various squashes, tomatoes and kale growing over there. Oh my, it was a mess. Armed with a basket, work gloves and a huge butcher knife, I pulled up all the squash vines and tomato plants but left the kale intact because it's fine and needs to be properly harvested. I sawed through the thick, incredibly spiky pumpkin vines and harvested 6 pie pumpkins (have a few more in our yard left growing). I got a good number of butternut squash and yellow crooknecks as well.
My mother came down and accused me of working too hard. I was literally soaked through with sweat. I crankily sneered, "What? Are you worried about me going into labor? Not gonna happen."
Sweet mother left my comment be and got the wheel barrow for me. We cleared all the squash vines and tomato plants and then picked up all the green and red fallen tomatoes that we could. The plot is for the most part, cleared. I just need to deal with the kale and then have G turn over the plot so it's dormant for the winter.

In our yard, ugh... so much to do. Really just need to clear the plots and get them ready for winter. The tomato plants are still producing a few red tomatoes, but I swear they don't taste as nice. Plus, I'm absolutely done with tomatoes this year. I keep picking and tossing them to the chickens, who love them.
There's a row of now-scrappy looking collards I need to pull out, and swiss chard that could be processed (I've been giving the chickens chard every day too-makes me feel like I'm using it despite really not dealing with it).
The pole beans are done in my opinion, and need to be pulled down. I've got 3 rows of Vermont Cranberry beans that need to be picked and plucked.
The broccoli plants, which have grown really huge this year without any sign of making actual broccoli heads, surprised me. One plant on the end gifted us with a really nice head that looked like it came from the store. I've only ever had measly little florets grow in the past (that's when a ground hog hasn't decimated the broccoli row). So yesterday despite the heat, I made creamy, cheesy broccoli soup. The kids loved it.

All this complaining and list making has inspired me to go out there and work. It's currently 66, very humid degrees outside. I know the mosquitoes will be thick and hungry for my blood, but I should just get out there before it gets too hot. This weekend promises to be a little cooler, thankfully. Here I go, we'll see if there's any pictures worth taking of whatever I can salvage out there!

Baby Garden Quilt

2009-09-17T09:41:00.002-04:00

You'll have to click on the pictures to see the beautiful detail of this gorgeous and thoughtful quilt we received from my pal Amy. A month ago we had a small Blessingway for this baby. Amy brought her guitar and sang this great song that combined growing your own food with growing a baby. Everyone in the room was sobbing by the end! Two weeks ago, Amy brought by this quilt that she'd been working on. It has lovely swatches of different green and brown strips that look just like garden plots. Around the quilt are the embroidered lyrics to the song, and in one corner, a gorgeous, silky red rose. I love and appreciate all the work and love that went into this quilt. It's also a good reminder for me to remember that even though I put by a lot less food this year, I put a lot of energy into growing our baby. :) --Baby, I can't wait to meet you and to show you our gardens.

Lyrics:
pulling weeds and picking stones
we are made of dreams and bones
feel the need to grow my own
for the time is near at hand
grain by grain
sun and rain
find my way in natures chain
tune my body and my brain
to the music of the land

Big Days Going By...Thankfully, Less Veg

2009-09-08T11:38:00.002-04:00

The last of the counter-top tomatoes! Soo excited about this! There are more in the garden, but they're not as plentiful. I've even been feeding tomatoes fresh off the vine to the chickens, just because I'm tired of tomato labor. I have many, many pounds of roasted tomato glut sauce in the freezer and many canned jars.

A handful of pole beans, a scrawny cucumber, and two gorgeous, huge red peppers.

Some more carrots, yellow squash, and sigh, more tomatoes.

Two kids on their first day of school today! S is starting 5th grade and Little E, kindergarten. Neither was sad to see me leave this rainy morning. Which is great, I'm glad they're so excited about school. Little E is my baby though (at least for a few more weeks). I kept asking him as he sat at his spiffy new desk with his name tag on, "Are you okay? Do you need to use the restroom? Here's your water bottle. Are you all right?" YES, MOM! I managed not to cry until I made it back to the car. Bittersweet, but exciting!

In other news, we picked up two new pullets last night from a lovely local woman with a lot of chickens. Our current birds are two Rhode Island Reds and two silver-laced Wyandottes. The reds are awesome layers. The Wyandottes, not so much. One the Wyandottes lays maybe 2 times a week if we're lucky. The other gal, not at all. She's huge and lovely, but completely daffy as chickens go- which isn't saying much. So sadly, she's stew pot bound. Having an ordinance on the number of chickens we can have makes keeping a non-layer sort of difficult. I really don't mind paying for her room and board, as it were, but I'd really like to have all our birds be layers. I just read about "lazy layers" in the recent issue of Backyard Poultry. Their physical characteristics totally match Spot's (our non-layer). Big bird without a comb on her head, hard abdomen, pubis that doesn't have a palpable separation... sort of interesting.

The two new birds are Black Australorps. If the garden weren't so wet, muddy and full of mosquitoes right now, I'd walk out and take a picture, but I can't muster myself to do so. They're beautiful shiny, sheeny, healthy teenage girls who are just starting to lay.
Spot the lazy layer will be processed soon. Dotty, the hit or miss layer might just be relocated to my friend's farm very soon. Hopefully she'll be goaded into action by being surrounded by so many happy, laying chickens, or at least like free-ranging with a couple handsome rooster around.

In the meantime, we've made it through birthday parties, a blessingway, back to school night, the first day of school without any births upsetting the schedule. 3 more women due ahead of me. I'm looking forward to finishing up the garden once and for all, to having a freer calendar, and to meeting this baby. I'm so ready for it!

Pick tomatoes, dig potatoes...

2009-08-24T09:54:00.003-04:00

See the new empty space?! I'm so happy to see empty garden space! Not because I'm going to plant anything else in it this year, but because it means things are being harvested and soon we can rest! (I realize I'm a lot grumpier about gardening than I've ever been this year.)

Here's what we harvested from the empty space. Around 25 pounds of potatoes! 3 more rows to harvest. Most of them are the beautiful Rose Apple Finn fingerlings, though there's also some Norland Reds (the old root cellar sprouted ones we planted in the old compost pile) and some Russetts.

Venus of Millendorf fingerling. (I'm a midwife, I see goddesses everywhere. ;)

Aside from the ever-ripening tomatoes in the garden, this is all I have left in the house! Woo hoo!
I made it through that huge box on the floor (and admittedly, gave some of those away to visiting friends on Saturday).

Urban deck fishers. Sadly, the only thing to catch are more tomatoes.

Making a Dent

2009-08-22T04:41:00.003-04:00

Thursday I was appointment free and the weather was just a little bit cooler than it has been. So I got to work on those tomatoes. I ended up with 7 quarts, 12 pints canned. While running tomato skins out to the compost, I spied about 30 new red tomatoes in the garden that still needed to be picked. Made me want to cry!

My favorite gardening mentor, El at Fast Grow the Weeds, sent me a link to her old post about making Tomato Glut Sauce. This was a nice way to use up a good number of tomatoes as well as various root vegetables and herbs from the garden. Toss with balsamic vinegar, olive oil and salt and pepper and roast for 45 minutes at 400*.

"Process" lightly in the food processor at 3:30 in the morning when a client in labor calls (but who doesn't need you quite yet). I got 5 quart bags of this delicious smelling sauce. Ingredients ended up being: tomatoes, carrots, turnips, potatoes, onions, yellow squash, zucchini, basil, oregano, balsamic vinegar and olive oil. (Ha! I just noticed the little dish of cherry tomatoes in the background! They are everywhere!)

The tomatoes picked after canning/ glut sauce that day.

And still, more tomatoes...

Tomato Torment

2009-08-19T18:14:00.003-04:00

Just the beginning of the counter-space invasion...this pic was taken a couple weeks ago. A few baby fingerlings, the start of red tomatoes, yellow squash, and pole beans. We're now up to our necks in tomatoes. Loads and loads of tomatoes, loads of yellow squash.

Some garlic laid to dry on the kayak in the warm garage.

I'm really trying to rouse myself into canning all these freakin' tomatoes. I'm just sooo tired and it's been sooo hot! Granted, today was a bit better as the humidity calmed down a bit, making life a little more bearable. My body and this baby have decided that I really only need 4 hours of sleep a night, which is kicking my butt.

I don't mind canning. In fact, I normally quite enjoy it. There's a great satisfaction that comes with all the kitchen prep time spent chopping, preparing, stuffing jars, and listening to music. However, I must admit tomatoes are the worst in my humble opinion. You have to scald them, them pop them into ice water in order to remove their skins (and you have to keep replacing the ice water as it gets warmer. We only have 4 ice cube trays, so we end up using every frozen thing we can to keep the water cold.). Core them, quarter them, and put them into jars. Thankfully, the pressure canner processes them in 25 minutes once you're up to pressure, as opposed to the 85 minutes it takes in a hot water bath. Talk about a hot kitchen!

I was going to can tomatoes this evening. I even made myself a real-deal caffeinated iced-coffee to wake up a bit. But after doing a couple loads of laundry, washing dishes, cooking and eating dinner, I just feel ready for bed. I've got at least another 3 hours before the kids will allow that to happen.

I seriously wondered today if there's any city ordinance against my erecting a "road side stand" on my residential street to sell my tomatoes and squash and green beans and eggs. Drive 20 miles south of here and there's all kind of end-of-the-driveway veggie stands. Why not here in college town? I could simultaneously make some cash while avoiding canning tomatoes...

Adult Summer Reading-What I've Read This Summer-Clearly Not a Food Post

2009-08-11T02:04:00.006-04:00

Doghead, by Morten Ramsland is an excellent book. It's a hilarious and bittersweet first novel. The story follows this crazy Norwegian family over three generations, from WWII on. Made me wish it never ended. Excellent writing.

American Thighs is yet another gem from Jill Connor Browne, the Queen of The Sweet Potato Queens. Hailing from Mississippi, Jill Connor Browne writes with menopausal southern wit that had me laughing out loud on many, many pages. I'm waiting for someone at the library to return her book, How to Raise Children for Fun & Profit. Great take-your-mind-off-things sort of reading.

The Herring Seller's Apprentice, (link to someone else's proper book review!) by L.C. Tyler is a book I'd normally never pick up. It's a mystery, and I just don't read mysteries. However, I liked the cover and the title and sometimes you just get a feeling about these things, no? Proved to be another good summer reading pick. Very clever, very British.

How to Cook a Tapir, by Joan Fry was a decent read. It's about an American woman whotakes a "working honeymoon" with her anthropologist husband to British Honduras (now Belize). The woman can't cook to save her life, but soon learns how to cook while living it in the rough in the jungle bush. Because this all takes place in 1962, you definitely get the feel of how her husband is an academia, patriarchal jerk...which made me want to scream, but it ends well. Interesting read.

The Birth House, by Ami McKay. (The cover above is actually from the Lithuanian printing.) Sigh. Loved it. Every birth worker I know has been urging me to read this book for the last year or so. I tore through it in just a couple of days. It's about a young woman being unofficially trained as a midwife during the early 19-teens in Nova Scotia. There's a beautiful setting mixed with WWI issues, early feminism and the attempt of the "good doctor" (or obstetrics in general) to undermine and demonize midwifery and normal birth. Great writing, fabulous book.

I'm not a huge graphic novel fan, but The Professor's Daughter , by Joann Sfar and Emmanuel Guibert was another book that I picked up solely for title and cover picture. The illustrations are gorgeous (simple but lovely watercolor) and the tale a sweet love story. I read it in the course of an afternoon and found it to be a great little get-away.

Ms. Nina Planck has been rockin' the world of all the foodies and localvores that I know. Real Food- What to Eat and Why is a great read. Super informative and helpful in knocking down food stereotypes that we've all been fed for decades in this country. If I had loads of cash, I'd buy a copy of this book for each of my family members who still eat margarine and empty, crappy "fat free" foods in an attempt to eat "healthy" and lose weight. Not only does Nina Planck rave about eating real, whole foods that have been deemed unhealthy and fattening (think real butter, meat, eggs, etc), but she defends it all with great, easy to understand research. Especially a lot of great info and breakdown of understanding cholesterol (both "good" and "bad"). I have yet to read her other highly popular book, Real Food for Mother and Baby. Have heard awesome things about it, just waiting for its return to the public library!

My husband is notorious for borrowing so many books from the library that he never gets time to read all of them. He often gets weird technical stuff or dry books on the economy or some weird selection, totally random, about two particular decades of Moroccan government 3 centuries ago. On one of our weekly library trips, he picked up Gimme Shelter, by Mary Elizabeth Williams. This lady is funny, cynical, and a decent writer. She talks about her 3 years of searching for housing in NYC. Being in the mid-west, the price of NYC housing shocked me. I mean, I knew it was outrageous, but still. I would've left the city, but she and her husband are determined to stay with their two young daughters and settle on a mortgage one way or another, even though they're not filthy rich, nor do they have even moderately well off parents to help them out. If you've ever bought a house with damn near no money (or are thinking about it), this book will gladly commiserate with you (even if the monetary figures are waaaay different). By the way, I read this book. My husband, did not.

Up the Rouge! by Joel Thurtell and Patricia Beck was another good read. Both author and photographer were Detroit Free Press staffies. They convinced the newspaper to let them paddle up the Rouge River for 5 days and do a photo essay of their trip. Not only did it run in a briefer version in the paper, they published an entire book about it. The Rouge River is a long river that starts at the mouth of the Detroit River and carries on through many suburbs of Detroit. Henry Ford did his share to dump and ruin this river years ago when he first started his factories. The pollution carries on til this day, from Ford to various other industries, and not excluding general run-off into the river, on account of being surrounded by miles and miles of concrete development. Despite the crazy pollution (abandoned boats, cars, log jams, kitchen appliances, um, bones...), Thurtell and Beck manage to entertain, educate and show you this famed "nasty" river's beauty.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

This entire post was supposed to go into my Adventures in Ypsiville blog, not here. That's what happens when I blog at 3am in a fit of insomnia.
At any rate...

Every summer I sign the kids up for the library's summer reading program. We keep track of minutes read, and at the end of the summer, they pick up their earned prizes (usually some free passes to local businesses and a free Scholastic book pick). This year, the librarian finally convinced me to sign up for the adult summer reading program. All one has to do is read 8 books (I kept track of 9), submit the titles and authors when complete and then pick up your prize. I earned a free travel mug! Woo hoo! Plus, my name will be entered into a drawing for a Border's gift card. Not bad. It was fun keeping track of the varied titles and genres. I was so pleased I kept picking "winners" all summer. Honestly, you don't always get such a streak of good reads. So I thought I'd share them with you folks.
I'm terrible at writing book reviews, so I'd say Google any one of those titles for much more articulate reviews. :)

Dilly Beans and How to Can Them

2009-08-06T08:17:00.004-04:00

Check out Nourishing Days for a great blog and the weekly Food Roots links that happen every Thursday!

Because some folks asked about the recipe...

This recipe has been tweaked from The Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving.

6Tb pickling salt
6 C water
6 C white vinegar
5 pounds trimmed green beans (short enough that they fit into your jars- I used some quart jars, some pint jars)
~20 or so black peppercorns
~10 sprigs of fresh dill
~10 cloves garlic (one for each jar; more if you love garlic)

From the picture above, I used 7 pint jars and two quart jars. I often go off the beaten path when canning and use whatever I've brought up from the basement. :) Clean and leave your jars full of hot water while you prepare the recipe. Soak the lids on hot water. Fill your canning pot half full of water and set it on high heat (it takes forever to bring to boil, so I always get it going before preparing the recipe).

*The original recipe said to prepare only 6 pint jars and the liquid measurements were half of what I listed above. I ended up having to make more liquid to pack the jars for 5 pounds of beans.The ratios are the same, just doubled.

In a large stainless teel saucepan, combine salt, vinegar and water. Bring to a boil over medium-high heat, stirring to dissolve salt. Add beans and return to a boil. Remove from heat.

Place 3 peppercorns, one sprig of dill, and one garlic clove in each prepared jar. Pack beans into jars and ladle hot liquid into each jar to cover beans. Leave 1/2" head space at the top of each jar. Remove air bubbles (if any- by sliding butter knife along inside edges of the jar). Wipe rim of jar and put lid on. Screw down band until resistance is met, then increase to finger-tip tight.

Place jars in canner, ensuring they are completely covered with water. (You may have to add more hot water to cover. This is when I love my electric kettle.) Bring to a boil and process for 10 minutes. (Remember, you start the 10 minutes when the canner water is actually boiling, not before!) Aftr 10 minutes of processing, turn off heat and remove lid. Wait 5 minutes, then carefully remove the jars, allow them to cool. Check each lid to be sure they sealed before storing them away. If any of them haven't properly sealed, place in fridge and let sit a week or two to allow flavors to meld and then promptly eat!

Not as Productive as I Should Be...

2009-07-31T22:39:00.002-04:00

S & E trying to catch swimmy things at a local park. Not foraging. :)

Small batch of Dilly Beans. We looove Dilly Beans.

My favorite local farm stand is open for business and they're oh-so-affordable! A couple weekends ago the kids were with my MIL. G and I took the time to see the new Harry Potter movie, and the documentary Food, Inc (which was great, btw), and to buy two heaping bushels of green beans. We spent 3+ hours on the deck, kid-free and chatty as we snapped beans. How romantic! We ended up blanching and freezing most of them, and only doing a small batch of Dilly Beans. All in all, I estimated around 26 pounds of beans, once they were all processed.

Two thick batches of Yarrow bundled and ready to be hung to dry. Every year my sweet neighbor gives me what she cuts back. Dried Yarrow is amazing in a post partum herbal bath. Yarrow helps staunch bleeding and also helps to heal any tissue trauma or damage. It's hung up downstairs next to two fat bundles of Comfrey (which is also amazing on healing tissues).

This time last year I was the canning queen well into the season. This year, well...
there's a lot going on, mainly growing this baby and trying to take care of myself while working and being a mom and wife. It's been a stressful year financially. G works within the auto industry as I've said before. He had 5 straight weeks without work, which has rendered us without health insurance for 6 weeks. He started back on a 3 day work week last month, which will put us back with health insurance in a few days. He's always been the bread winner, with my income being necessary although supplemental. Ack. I hate being stressed about money. I can still count my blessings though as I know things could be far worse and we have a lot growing (and laying!) around us.
When I think about not preserving as much food as we have in the past, I try not to feel too bad about it. Normally we'd be strawberry picking, raspberry and blueberry picking, etc. I just couldn't make that a priority this year. Fruit seems so non-essential and dessert-like right now compared to food that plays a more major part in meals.
Ha! I must admit to buying two pounds of blueberries while the kids were away and eating all of them in less than 48 hours! Clearly worked out as a meal during that time... :)

Other Ways of Preserving...
In a fit of pregnancy nesting, I inventoried the kid's clothes to see the state of back-to-school possibilities and how many pairs of decent pants they each had. I was able to make a list of what they actually needed for the fall and winter and from there, landed at our local Once Upon a Child store. I love this store. Their by-line is something like, Clothing With Previous Experience. I like that. Everything is gently-used (or sometimes even new), good quality clothing at a decent price. I ended up buying E 2 pairs of pants, a new pair of cool European shoes, and a long-sleeved tee; S got 4 pairs of pants (two of them brand new), and 3 shirts...all for $44.
It feels good to not only save loads of money, but also to buy very decent used stuff and giving it all a longer life.
I'm not a Never-New saint though. We ended up at Target getting S a pair of much-wanted Chuck Taylors and getting Little E some new socks and underwear. This Mama also splurged and got herself a packet of lovely soft cotton underwear too. Nothing like the 3rd trimester to make you ditch your by-now dingy pre-pregnancy underpants in favor of something a little bigger and softer. Ahhh.

So there ya go. Not as many food updates as I'd like to give. My garden/food work list for the weekend goes as follows:
cilantro ice cubes
basil pesto
zucchini bread
shred and freeze extra zucchini
harvest and preserve turnips
freeze small tomatoes
make loaf of regular sandwich bread

We'll see what time, my kids, and pending babies have in store for me though.

What are your food rules?

2009-07-19T11:22:00.003-04:00

Check out this article from the New york Times back in March. Michael Pollan, author of, In Defense of Food, wants to know your personal food rules.
He points out the importance of how a culture views food and reacts to it.

Michael Pollan writes:

I’d like your help gathering some rules for eating well. My premise is that culture has a lot to teach us about how to choose, prepare and eat food, and that this wisdom is worth collecting and preserving before it disappears.

I love this. The comments section is amazing.

One of my favorites on there by a Mr. Daniel Freedman:

Food shouldn’t CONTAIN ingredients; food should BE ingredients.

I agree!

Here are some of the food rules we try to stick to and teach our children. Granted, we're not perfect, but here's some general issues of importance to our family:

Eat simply and know where your food came from (hopefully as close to home as possible).

Eat lots of whole grains and legumes.

Grow as much of your own food as possible, even if it's only a pot of herbs on the windowsill.

Stock up for the winter by preserving what you can during the abundant summer months. You can do this without having a garden! Buy in bulk from your local farmers and can or freeze or dehydrate!

Eat fermented foods.

Know where your meat/eggs/dairy comes from if you eat those things. Make sure those animals are treated well and eat the food they're SUPPOSED to eat. Cows should be grass-fed and allowed to pasture. Chickens should be able to walk and forage for grubby things. Pigs should be allowed to root and eat all the crazy things they love to eat! Etc! Avoid stockyard meat and factory farming.

Support local brewers if you drink beer and wine.

Many, many people go without food the world over. Be thankful for every morsel of food that goes into your mouth and teach your children to do the same.

Support fair trade.

Turnips Thursday

2009-07-16T14:53:00.003-04:00

It's Food Roots Thursday! Go to nourishingdays.com to learn more!

Today, my daughter and I set out to pick the last of the peas. Most of them were well dried, but we did find a handful of plump green ones. We also realized the turnips had really plumped up in the last couple weeks, so we harvested those as well. There are still a lot more out there. S helped me out tons by watering the garden. As she did, she found two more cukes!

A family friend has been buying eggs from us. This week he bartered two big yellow squash and two cucumbers in exchange for a dozen eggs from the Ladies.

Here's little E who spends quite a bit of time each evening hanging out in the garden by himself. He likes to wait for the lightening bugs to come out, but his cranky mama can't stand the mosquitoes. E was the first to find this summer's first cucumbers a few nights ago. He was so excited. This is the time of year to get the kids outside to "hunt" for veggies as if they were Easter eggs!

So for dinner this evening, I will make a turnip, potato, garlic (from our garden) soup with rosemary chicken broth (from last fall's meat birds) soup with a salad made from cucumbers and matchstick turnips in a vinaigrette dressing. I'm trying to resist stealing any early harvest from the potato plants. They're doing well out there, but they're supposed to be for winter storage.

And that is where our food has come from today.

Illinois Prisoners Sick from Soy

2009-07-15T18:36:00.003-04:00

Amazing... check out this post from Nourished Kitchen. It's an article detailing how the Illinois government has been feeding their prisoners up to 100 grams of soy daily because it's cheaper and stretches farther than real food. As a result of this insane amount of soy, the prisoners not surprisingly, became afflicted with a number of health issues.
Also not surprisingly, this came about largely due to politicians and money lining pockets. Check it out, it's a great post.

Another View

2009-07-11T20:31:00.003-04:00

My sweet neighbor took this from her upstairs window. It's two of our 5 garden areas. We have a small bit on the other side of the garage, the small plot in the other neighbor's yard, and a small raised bed in the front. I like how it encompasses the hops, the coop, and the gardens. It's so cool to see your regular view from someone else's perspective.

The tomato plants are huge and jungle-like now. All the rain we've had made them pop up. They're loaded with tomatoes, but at this time, they're still all green.

Cucumber plants just starting to flower now that we've had more consistent hot weather. There are wee little cukes just beginning to grow.

I'm a bad, bad blogger these days. :) I'm a bit more tired and cranky these days by the time my time rolls around to be on the computer. Also busy with the pregnant ladies, and try to get into bed by 9pm in case I get called out at 2am. The garden is doing well all the same. I made my first batch of basil pesto tonight for freezing. Got two good-sized quart bags of the stuff. I adore basil. So nice to eat in the dead of winter, reminds me of fresh, summery herbs.

Finding a Use for Turnips and Radishes

2009-07-01T17:11:00.003-04:00

Thanks to the good book, Joy of Pickling, by Linda Ziedrich, I found a kimchi type of fermenting for turnips.
It's Korean name is Sunmukimchi, or brined turnips. I added a few bigger radishes to make it a full pound as needed.

Peeled, sliced, and sitting in pickling salt for 3 hours.

Processed the turnip greens to use later.

Water, more salt, lots of garlic, a little sugar and hot pepper and a week of waiting for them to ferment. We'll see if any of us like them! They already smell lovely and vinegary after one day of sitting in the pantry. Will let you know the end results!

I've Been Awarded! Woo hoo!

2009-06-30T09:20:00.002-04:00

Mo, over at Green Desert awarded me this fine Honest Scrap Award. What a nice lady!
Apparently, I now need to divulge ten honest things about myself and then pass the award on to "a fellow blogger whose blog’s content or design is, in the giver’s opinion, brilliant.”

I'm not very good at these things, but I will give it a whirl...

1. I have a really hard time warming up to a person who doesn't give any details about their life, how they're feeling, their opinions, etc. I try to be compassionate, but ultimately, end up not trusting them much. Honesty lends to much better communication.

2. I really, really love food. I love growing it, cooking it, preserving it, and eating it. I swear I feel endorphins flow as I eat something really wonderful. I also love going out to eat and honestly think that's my biggest vice aside from my love for Dansko shoes.

3. I love getting my hands dirty. I love planning and planting the garden, the canning, the food preparation, the harvests. Being in the air or on the water brings with it a high level of stress. The ground is a fine place to be. Working with the earth brings me a kind of peace I never knew existed.

4. I don't weigh myself when pregnant. Or much at all when not pregnant. Makes for a much better mind-set. Instead I try to eat well, not get sick, and exercise. I'm annoyed that scale numbers affect me so, but there you have it.

5. I have a really hard time falling asleep at night if I can't read for a bit first, even if I've not had sleep for 2 days. Reading takes me out of my head, away from my own worries before slipping off to sleep. Oh, and it must be fiction. No non-fiction before bed.

6. I love getting new cook books. I can read them like novels.

7. I feel incredibly blessed to be called to midwifery. I love my job; the women, the families, the new little babies. It is such an absolute honor to be able to attend births. I pray I will be able to do this work for a long, long time with an open mind and a humble heart.

8. My best and favorite "alone time" consists of driving alone in my car listening to my favorite podcasts without interruption.

9. It's very hard for me to sit through an entire movie, especially if I'm at home. There's always 20 different things I could be doing, and I usually stop the movie or leave the room so that I can do a few other things. Movie theaters would be much more appealing if I could bring a few loads of laundry to fold during the show.

10. I was a punk rock girl for years, and I love music. I miss that old feeling of going to shows and being filled with incredibly loud music in a sea of sweaty bodies. I miss dancing for hours to ska, oi, soul, and reggae. That era ended long ago, and I'm fine with it. I'm content to prepare dinner or clean the house or drive kids to school with all the same old songs quietly chiming away on my iPod in the background. Music calms me (but I've got to be in charge of the play list!).

All right, now I'm supposed to award 10 other bloggers whom I love and read regularly (and there will be some repeat awards b/c Mo and I read a lot of the same blogs!)...

1. Kate at Wading Thru My Head
2. Leaner at Three Snakes and a Rooster
3. Shannon at Nourishing Days
4. Connie at Eat Your Vegetables
5. Grace at Blue Cloud Cloth
6. The folks at Eight of an Acre Bounty
7. Michelle at Sugar Creek Stuff

okay, I have to stop here. My kids need breakfast.... congrats fellow bloggers! I'm so happy you are out there, sharing your life and your adventures!

So Much Spinach Cooks Down to Nothing

2009-06-27T09:39:00.004-04:00

This year I grew spinach in two long rows, maybe 28 feet long. Seeing as how we can't keep up with it by eating enough fresh salads, and it was beginning to get bolty, I decided to process it. I left a 4 four section of the row in place, so I could still eat a little of it fresh in the next week or so.
You can't tell by this picture, but there really was a lot of greens here.

Again, the picture does no justice, but this is a HUGE bowl. This is the same bowl my grandma and mom would use when canning or making huge batches of food for some wedding or shower.

Here's me in my not-so-fabulous maternity swimsuit blanching, chilling, bagging. G had said, "We've only got 3 freezer bags left. You want me to run to the store?" My answer, all of this spinach will only just fill two bags.

Chilling. And I was right, we only filled two bags. That's fine. I've got loads of chard and collards getting ready for the same.

I'm actually going to try some seed saving this year. I saved a load of coriander from last summer, and that's growing now. If I can stand it, I'll let more things go to seed. It's hard when you have such limited growing space. Instead of pulling out a plant to plant something else, you leave it be for weeks. That feels so wasteful! Now I have to decide what will replace the spinach space...

Garden Update

2009-06-19T09:43:00.002-04:00

Lovely radishes. Not too hot, delicious on greens (of which there are oodles).

Dee Dee, Dexter, Dotty, and Spot enjoying their dappled sunlight, and various grubby things.

Turnips and collards growing well.

Swiss chard just beginning to fill out and grow taller. So pretty.

The hops beginning their travels across the twine to the big tree. They're already beginning to flower! I don't know if it's all the rain we're having or what. Seems they usually flower in late July or so.

New Doucmentary: Food, Inc

2009-06-12T08:03:00.002-04:00

Check out this trailer for Food, Inc. Looks like a good one, folks!

Gardening When It Counts- A Brief Book Review

2009-06-12T07:02:00.006-04:00

Gardening When It Counts- Growing Food in Hard Times
by Steve Solomon

I borrowed this book back in April from our library. I found the title interesting. In the beginning, Steve Solomon talks about how we need to get back to growing our own food as the world slowly runs out of fossil fuels and the world of Cheap Food Fast will inevitably start to crumble and fade. I get it. However, the book never again really touches on that aspect of things apart from the first chapter.

It's okay though. The next impression one gets is that this dude is cocky. Well not cocky maybe, but like he's your old, sometimes abrasive Grandpa telling you to get your head out of the clouds to "get back to work!" That was a little off-putting at first, but you soon learn that this man has earned the right to speak so. I've been wishing for a farm apprenticeship for years--this is as close to one as I can find time for right now. Apprenticeships can be difficult because you're learning what comes as second-nature to your instructor. You have to deal with their personal opinions and biases and figure out what is useful to you and the way you are in the world. I found this book to be a lot like the apprenticeship process: difficult at times, but always worthwhile.

Steve Solomon has been a farmer for years. He started (and has since sold) his own seed company, has gardened in many different environments (he currently resides in Tasmania), and has followed nearly every garden trend possible over the last 30 years or so. Even though he gives his opinions in a nearly cranky way, he does explain well why he does or doesn't like something, leaving you to at least respect his opinion even if you don't agree. After all these many years, he's come down to this: plants need space to grow well.

Ta-da! But wait, I like this bit and I'm not being sarcastic! After spending the last 5 years or so reading books and trying out various forms of urban gardening, square-foot gardening, intensive gardening, etc. this made sense to me. Plants need space to grow well. They need adequate space to establish a good, deep root system. Without this, they don't produce as much fruit. Plants need water, and not just a little bit to get the top soil wet (he's turned me off from my previously much-coveted drip irrigation system). Plants get more when they're properly spaced and don't have to fight for water and much-needed soil nutrients. This was validating. The old-school way of gardening: rows, plants spaced far enough, the way I've been composting, and my watering system has worked far better for our garden output as opposed to the times I've tried intensive planting or square-footing it. And believe me, I loved Gaia's Garden as much as anyone else. It just didn't work as well for me.

I learned loads more about composting, fertilizing, manure, and soil microbes from Gardening When It Counts. The book gets a bit in-depth about soil nutrient ratios. I admit to eventually skimming this bit because I stopped absorbing things myself by this point. G however, loved this part of the book and understood it well. (I love it when he agrees to read a book I've read. It's so nice to have another person to bounce things off of.)

We ended up checking out this book from the library 3 consecutive times. I can't say I absolutely loved it, but I did gain a lot from it. Steve Solomon is definitely a little prickly as a writer. I can see folks not liking this book at all for that. But if you can overlook his curmudgeonly attitude and are serious about producing food for your family, this book will leave you with more than one or two nuggets of gardening brilliance.

Taller Green Things Update

2009-06-09T18:59:00.002-04:00

Beans finally showing themselves.

The potatoes have loved the rain lately and have bolted right up. (You can see the compost pile spuds going nuts in the upper right background.)

Plants definitely standing out a bit more. We've got spinach and lettuce coming out our ears. Hey neighbors, stop by for some salad fixings!

Fresh eggs and a couple radishes to top the lunchtime salad!

And most exciting of all, the wee peach tree has peaches on it this year! I'm sooo happy we cut down those three mangy maples to give us more sunlight. This dwarf peach tree is planted in the area where the maples used to stand.

This is the last week of school for S. Last week I chaperoned a 3 day camping trip with her school. I took little E along too. It was fun, tho cold at night. Today we had the FINAL (finally!) Girl Scout shindig after school today. Yet another potluck... I was a bad mom. After working all day I picked up two Little Caesar $5 pizzas and brought them to the potluck. Since they were ravaged before I had a chance to even smell them, I picked up two more to bring home for dinner. Some days I'm just too darn tired and hungry come the end of the day to provide a lovely home-cooked meal. However, I did eat a lovely salad for lunch today with our own greens and hard boiled eggs.

Things are going well here. Not a whole lot to do in the garden except watch things grow, continue to hill up the potatoes, and weed occasionally.
It is strawberry season though. Maybe I can get to the strawberry farm this week...

Awesome!

2009-06-01T13:40:00.002-04:00

I was just laying in bed last night thinking how we could creatively make some extra money while the auto industry crashes down around us. This is exactly what I pictured G doing! Anyone want a coop? ;)

Food, where did you come from?

2009-05-28T20:48:00.002-04:00

Okay, so I didn't have a day of super local foods. Our daughter is sick with a nasty bug and the day was cold, rainy and frankly, uninspiring.
Yesterday was better. Warm and sunny. We ate fried egg sandwiches (eggs from the ladies), bread from Zingerman's. Also had sauteed spinach and onions, both from the garden (the few leftover onions from last summer) and steamed fingerling potatoes from Shannon's gifted CSA share of the week (thank you, Shannon!), topped with Calder Dairy butter and chives from the back door! Very yummy!

Today I made a scrap-together sort of casserole consisting of onions, potatoes, sweet potatoes, carrots, corn, and red lentils. After cooking all of the above, I put it into a casserole dish and topped it with a cup of fresh bread crumbs mixed with a 1/2 cup cheddar cheese shreds and chives. Baked at 350* for 30 minutes and had a lovely, filling dish that makes for good leftovers.
The bread crumbs came from the end of a home made loaf, flour from Westwind.

Also made scones with raisins today. Topped with a coffee glaze-- one tablespoon of incredibly strong hot coffee mixed with 1 cup powdered sugar. Made a lovely stripey glaze on the scones. Ate only one, the rest I took to the Ypsi Food Co-op's Community Meeting potluck. Unfortunately, I was too stuffed from my own dinner to partake in the potluck action. Such a shame! I live for potlucks!

At any rate, things are taking off in the garden thanks to all the rain. It's so lush and crazy out there. I hard boiled eggs today to enjoy with tomorrow's salad from the backyard! Can't wait!

Wet Garden and New Awning

2009-05-27T16:29:00.007-04:00

Getting excited over small sprouting things. It's so nice when plants out-grow weeds. The teepees have just the beginning of pole beans. In front of those are 3 rows of Vermont Cranberry beans. To the right of that are 6 rows of potatoes. In the very back are our two compost piles. They've very small now due to plentiful rain and warm weather shrinking them down. The compost on the left is full of potato sprouts. We put the freakish end-of-the-year root cellar spuds in the compost and now they're doing their thing. The plan is to leave that pile undisturbed and let it grow as it will. Who knows what kind of potatoes we'll get out of there!

Again, wee growing things. Tomaotes, greens and very wee seedlings. The garlic and the caraway are the largest things out there right now.

Chicken condo awning. Frame was originally supposed to be about 6-8 feet long. G (as usual) got super ambitious and made it 16 feet long. The wood is ripped 2X4s and the cover is old vinyl wall covering (think institutional 1970s decor) that we scored at the Recycle Reuse center, only $3 for 20 yards.

The completely covered awning. It felt like a Wright Brothers original when we carried it out back.

The finished project, providing shade and partial shelter from the elements. Special thanks to my brother who came over to help us lift it and screw it to the garage. It was too much for this lone pregnant chick to hold overhead! And a very special thanks to G, for putting so much time and love into this project!

I really want to get some sort of tiki lamps to string along the edge of this awning! I swear it looks like one of those massive roll out awnings you see on campers in RV parks. Next week, the chicken shuffle board deck installation!

Life in the Backyard

2009-05-21T18:11:00.004-04:00

Last year's potatoes (the few we must have missed), are showing themselves in various places around the garden. Here's the lettuce that is not quite big enough yet. My fierce desire for green things these days make me feel like a goat. Even the grass looks tasty.

As we were stringing the hops today, we found this cute little bat hanging out on the south side of the garage.

Food Roots Thursday...
what did we eat today?
We ate our very local eggs, foccacia from the River Street bakery, and salad greens from the Tuesday farmer's market that were topped with fresh, local goat cheese. Later we ate tortilla chips and salsa from Hamtramck, with locally made cottage cheese and sour cream.

I am anxiously waiting for our pipsqueak plants to get large enough to eat from, tho I know that time will be here soon enough. The basement shelves are full of the ever-growing population of canning jars of all sizes-- all but 12 or so are empty. The jars that still contain something are there for a reason. They hold the things we'll probably not make again. So if any of you want some "Chow Chow Relish" ala the Ball canning book (like a picalilly, if you know what that is) and a few jars of "Summer Salsa", from the same book, just let me know. The summer salsa is your typical tomato, onion, garlic, cilantro deal, but with mint, pears, and peaches thrown in. It would've been fine except for the mint. I like the fruit with the salsa, but the mint over-powers it all. Live and learn, right?

Little Green Things Heal

2009-05-19T23:00:00.003-04:00

Comfrey
Amazing healing herb

Once you plant seeds in the garden, you walk around every day scrutinizing every green thing that pushes up from the earth.
I've been doing this for the past 3-4 weeks. Today, it seems I can finally differentiate seedlings from weeds, grass and wiley Creeping Charley. The potatoes are popping up, the broccoli, collards, turnips, carrots and beets are showing themselves to be just a little taller than their invasive neighbors that I am now gleefully stripping away. The thinning process has begun!

I had this feeling today in the sun, as I took two large loads of laundry off the line (and realized I wan't internally grumbling about it), that regardless of the little stressors in our current life, here is where I want to be. Here is where I've wanted to be for a long, long time. Things feel right. I'm at peace.

And it feels really good.

The Ladies Have Arrived

2009-05-17T20:49:00.005-04:00

Here are the four ladies new to our backyard. Hopefully they'll like their digs and spacious living quarters. These birds are nearly 2 years old. I couldn't deal with raising wee chicks this spring. Maybe next year.

We completed the run this morning. Stretching flimsy chicken wire as tight as possible is not fun. The twine strung along the top portion of the picture is to support the hops that are just beginning to grow toward the garage.

The number 34 ramp. Again, all wood is re-purposed. Only the hardware, chicken wire, feeder and waterer are new. So far, a very thrifty process.

The boudoir, complete with the chicken equivalent of silk sheets.

More Chicken Coop Updates

2009-05-15T18:54:00.005-04:00

Blurry pic of the new gate installed yesterday. Will add chicken wire to gate and run this weekend.

This is the door within a door for the hens to enter/exit the coop. Tomorrow we'll probably build their little gangplank leading up to it. It has a Patrick (of Sponge Bob) knob on it.

Higher up on the big door we now have a vent of sorts. This is the material G used when he built a radiator box earlier this year for the upstairs radiator.

G doing the hard work of digging post holes. It really livens up when you hit the clay!

Small boy trapped in post hole.

Mama and boy hard at work watching the guy with the post hole digger.

Thanks to the complete Who the Heck Knows nature of The Big 3 (or Big 2, or Big 1 1/2), G has been off all week! It has started sooner than we anticipated, but fortunately, the call was made to Unenjoyment today to start the process. In the meantime, G has been crazy busy tweaking the coop process. If all goes well tomorrow, we may be able to bring some lady hens home by Sunday. Essentially all that is left is the run enclosure. We have the wire for that and I will definitely be home all weekend now that the last May mama had her baby Wednesday afternoon. I have a small break of being off-call--- which feels wonderful!

More pics to come!

Getting Ready for the Ladies

2009-05-12T09:38:00.006-04:00

First, cut an enormous hole in the back of your garage.

Prop open the hole and create a big box insert (on an angle to muck the chicken shite from).

Long piano hinge for the top of big door ($8.42-Lowe's).

The box coming together.

Nesting box and two roosts.

Yesterday, G worked on the chicken coop. Using the back corner of our garage, he cleared a space and cut a big door in the back wall. This huge door hinges open to clean out the coop when necessary. We will be putting in a smaller hen door with a ramp for everyday use of letting the ladies in and out. The inside of the box will get a few coats of weather sealant with plenty of time to air before we bring the hens home. The chicken run itself will run most of the length of the garage, about 20 feet by 4-5 feet wide. We will be able to access the nesting box from inside the garage with another lifting door/hatch (sort of visible in the fourth picture).
So far, we have been fortunate enough to get a lot of scrap wood from my brother. We bought the piano hinge, chicken wire ($60), and posts ($18). The weather sealant we inherited a few years back when G's dad passed away. So all in all, an inexpensive project.
We can pick up the hens whenever we are ready. Good stuff.

G also made 3 wooden teepees for our pole beans. I usually plant bush beans, but after reading so many gardening books and seed catalogs that told me I was eating inferior beans, I decided to try pole beans this year. The bottom of the teepees are visible in the second picture. I'm excited to see those grow. They make really bright, pretty flowers and will look nice contrasted with the insane hops growing behind them.

Yesterday my Girl Scout co-conspirator and I took the girls on their last big field trip of the year- horse back riding. I forgot what a Little Lexington South Lyon is. There are dozens of horse farms. We went to Great Escape Stables. The women and girls there were sweet and great with our girls. We had a good time and it was judged best field trip of the year. Walking out of the barn, we spotted this enormous pile of horse manure. "You're sitting on a gold mine!" I told the woman. She said they were actually building a holding box of sorts for the manure, as they were selling it to a company that will somehow convert it into energy. Apparently, they need 4 months worth at a time before they come pick it up, which is why they need to house it somewhere.
I told her she should start selling it as compost too. She said I could come back and haul away as much as I wanted, whenever I wanted.
Never even thought of it, but I'm sure any one of those horse farms would happily give you their manure.
I probably won't take her up on it though. Soon enough, we'll have enough chicken manure to see us through. :)
More pics to follow as it comes together.

Food Roots Thursday

2009-05-07T10:27:00.004-04:00

embarking on something new here...
my pal, S over at Nourishing Days has started Foots Roots Thursday where food/gardening bloggers are encouraged to write about the roots of their food. Or rather, where you food has come from.

Being that it's May and things are just beginning to sprout in our gardens again, we don't have anything fresh to eat from our plots except for chives and dandelion greens!
Eating Local Last Year, What a Blessing
Being self-employed, my financial life is typically made up of feast or famine periods. It's all good and we get through both just fine with money savvy and lots of faith that it will all work out. Last year was a feast year, albeit, unintentionally. While I have always kept a good-sized garden, I never took on growing all that I could until last year. We took the Eat Local Challenge, although it ended prematurely when I was completely sick with first trimester nausea in February and desperately craved Cheerios and Lay's Potato Chips. :) We made it 8 months.
We learned a lot in those 8 months. We canned a ton of food and also invested in a 1/4 cow, 1/2 a pig, 1/2 a lamb and our typical 25 chickens, plus our year-round eggs. It worked out great. The freezer was full of meat and a ton of vegetables and frozen fruit.
In March, I had to go full-on grocery shopping for the first time since May of last year. I spent $150 and nearly cried walking out of the store. I used to spend that much nearly every week before we started the uber growing. Not long after that, I finally did our taxes. Since both my husband and I have radically changing paychecks (me because of my self-employed status and he because he works within the auto industry-ack), I never can depend on an average amount coming in from week to week. I was shocked to see that he had actually made $20K less than he usually does and I made a little more than I did last year. If someone had told me at the beginning of last year that we would have such a huge income flux, I would've had months of anxiety and probably would have rushed out and found 3 part time jobs. Instead, I was blissfully unaware. I can only contribute this to growing as much of our own food as possible. Outside of our mortgage, our biggest source of money going out would typically be food.

The only thing I didn't like last year was the sudden increase in the amount of meat our family was eating. I had been a vegetarian for 7 years. Our daughter didn't have meat until she was nearly 6 years old. I started off slowly with eating meat again. We would have the occasional chicken, or sometimes turkey sausage. Last spring we jumped into having a deep freezer full of animal, which we ended up using nearly every day. So strange and also something I didn't feel totally comfortable with.

This spring, as our freezer empties day to day, we've decided to return to more of our former vegetarian ways. Both for health and financial reasons. There will be no 1/4 cow this spring. There will be chickens to be processed at the end of summer once again.

It appears we're looking at a 3 month lay-off for my husband this summer and this new baby will be due in early October. I'm still fine to work and plan on doing so until the first contractions set in. :)Am I worried? Not so much. I am thankful that last year we learned how to do so much to change our eating and shopping habits to save a lot of money. Last year's Eat Local Challenge proved to be a hidden blessing for this year and years to come.

So what are we eating today?
Potato, lentil, onion, carrot, collards soup with bread from the River Street bakery. Only the carrots and onion are locally raised/bought, and the collards are from last fall's garden. Oh yeah, it's being cooked in turkey stock, from last Thanksgiving Day's turkey, which we raised ourselves. Not bad for early May in Michigan. Had pancakes this morning with flour from Westwind Milling Co. with homemade yogurt, last summer's frozen strawberries and local honey. If it's not grown in our backyard, then we try our best to get Michigan-grown. The closer to home, the better.

Plant Potatoes When Dandelions Bloom

2009-05-06T17:41:00.002-04:00

I've been a black-nailed beauty this past week. As I planted 6 rows of potatoes (Rose Apple Finn fingerlings and Russets this year)-thanks to my lovely Mr. Workhorse, and rows of collards, radishes, various squashes, beets, carrots, and much more, I laughed as I remembered a pregnant woman who didn't hire me as her midwife (but still I ended up assisting that birth) because as she said, "You're small and I can't imagine you ever getting your hands dirty."
One, I am not "small" and two, my hands feel like they're only clean between November and March. It still kind of makes me twitch when I think of it, but oh well. Clearly, she didn't know the hands of which she spoke.
If it's not someone else's bodily fluids (and yes I wear gloves), then it's dirt, mud, compost and more. (I do not wear gloves in the garden!)

At any rate, I feel like we've gotten a lot accomplished over the past 5 days, including a couple of babies being born. :) I told G I just might have to be pregnant every summer to get out of all the shoveling and hoeing that I've been happily handing over to him.

That blue box thing is our first raised bed in the front yard. It may be the only one this year. The box itself is actually the old trundle bed S used to have under her old day bed. Before it was a trundle, it was actually her loft bed. That box of painted blue pine has been used in so many ways, it makes me happy to see it in the front yard full of dirt (and various herb seeds and Egyptian onions).

I was looking online at Fedco's tuber information page as I was reviewing potato planting information, and liked how they described when to plant potatoes: generally, when the dandelions are in bloom.
Perfect, I'll remember that simple sentence for life. I've not quite totally wrapped my lazy self around really getting to know soil temperatures. I figure when the ground isn't sopping wet and the dandelions are in bloom seems a fine time to plant.

We shall see.

Another nice weekend

2009-04-29T12:37:00.003-04:00

This past weekend, we took S to Grand Rapids to participate in the state competition for Michigan History Day. Regionals were last month, and those who qualified moved on to state. S and her two pals did their project on Shigeru Miyamoto, a key designer for Nintendo who was largely responsible for creating Donkey Kong and Mario Brothers. There were tons of amazing presentations there, from kids ranging from ages 9 -18. S and her pals did not win to go onto the national competition, but they seemed fine with that. They were just happy to be there, to see some pals from their school and to swim in the hotel's pool Friday night! Their school did have 4 different winners though, which was really exciting for all of them.

We came home late Saturday night after sitting through rain most of the day. Sunday morning was beautiful. We unanimously decided to skip church in favor of doing garden work and being outside. G turned over the neighbor's gifted lot and turned over the last garden patch in our yard. I planted 3 blueberry bushes and 3 red currant bushes and laid the sandstone around them to protect them from future rototiller mayhem. I planted loads of onions and pruned things. The peach tree which we planted last year is blooming lovely blossoms this year!
I kind of over did it, I think. Because I was too lazy to walk around, I jumped the chain link fence between us and the neighbor. A ridiculous thing to do when wearing Dansko clogs (they don't fit in the chain link holes) and too-big maternity shorts with a nearly 5 month pregnant belly. I didn't fall, but definitely had that: I shouldn't have done that realization.
Also didn't wear sun block, so my back, neck and chest got incredibly sunburned. My butt and thighs were crazy sore after squatting in the onion patch for over an hour. I woke up Monday morning feeling like I did 6 hours of power yoga under a heat lamp.
I also woke up Monday morning being called to a birth. It was a lovely birth with a less than 3 hour labor, total. Another beautiful child born with the sunrise.
And a midwife who winced every time she squatted to help catch the baby! :)
Either I need to start working out again or I need to plant onions every day! I don't like feeling this out of shape!

A brief note on Friday

2009-04-24T13:29:00.004-04:00

I don't have a lot to say today. Not much has changed in the garden. The kids and I are leaving this afternoon for S to compete in the Michigan History competition in Grand Rapids (their topic is about Shigeru Miyamoto, one of Nintendo's brainiac artists!). Aside from the competition, we're most looking forward to swimming in the hotel pool! We'll be home tomorrow night, so hopefully I can get a lot of garden work done on Sunday. I have blueberry bushes and red currants to plant.

I have found a blog that I love- written by a local, home birthing mama who is an absolute sweetheart. She always has great recipes, lovely photos and wise things to say. Check it out:

Nourishing Days

Dirt Farmers

2009-04-19T11:56:00.003-04:00

First of all, it's National Hanging Out Day. I realize it's supposed to rain for the next four days in our neck of the woods, but I encourage everyone to line dry whenever they can! Check out Project Laundry List to learn more.

It has been lovely and sunny and warm the past week. We've done a lot of garden prep work, lots of laundry on the line, and planting of the colder weather things like spinach, peas and chard. The yard still looks like we're glorified dirt farmers, but I like to document the slow progression from dirt to insane August jungle.

Yesterday, our awesome neighbor granted us use of part of his yard to garden in. We have to clear a little bit and till it, but there's a lot of extra space there. (K, we can probably gift you a small garden share, if you like what we grow. This might be the very smallest of CSAs!)
Unfortunately, our rototiller bit the dust on Thursday. We're unsure if we can fix it. Not bad tho, since we received it for free. G had to turn over the left over part of the garden with a shovel, which is hard work. I worked on making furrows between the rows with a hoe, which kicked my butt and gave me lovely calluses. Tho it does feel good to go to bed at night a little sore, tired and sun burned. :)

The mushrooms pictured above came from our mushroom growing kit. I looked one day and could see the very smallest pin heads of mushrooms beginning to grow. I didn't check for another 3 days and found enormous button mushrooms the size of the palm of my hand. Apparently, fungus can grow very quickly in our kitchen.

Also pictured above are the hops just beginning to grow crazy. They need to be tended to and soon, otherwise they'll totally take over. Last year they began growing inside the garage. G has an idea to string a rope very high up between two trees so that the hops can actually grow straight up to their full potential (which can be 30 feet or so) instead of their current set up which is to grow 12 feet or so before being directed to vine sideways on twine.

Another project in the works is finally building a fort/club house thing for the kids to stand where the forsythia bushes used to be. We've got a stack of library books about kid's forts that G and the kids are poring through. We'll be using primarily scrap wood, so it won't be nearly as fancy as some of the stuff we're looking at. S has ideas of a two story structure with a loft for sleeping. Her pathetic parents are thinking of a square wood building with two windows and a door. :)

Easter Day Clean Up

2009-04-12T18:15:00.004-04:00

Today was a lovely warm-ish day and we were all actually home together. I popped our ham into the oven (from my local Saline bought 1/2 a hog) along with some scalloped sweet and regular potatoes then went out to the garden with the family. (We also had Brussel sprouts, broccoli salad and challah. Good stuff! Clearly, not all local. In fact, only the bread was local.)

We attacked our insane forsythia bushes and wild grape vines and removed them all. If all goes well, that space will be used for blueberry bushes and red currants. The entire yard is coming along, though looking quite sparse in all of it's dirt wonder (except for the wee patch of garlic that's beginning to grow- pictured above). It's still too cold to plant much yet. I headed out to a birth in the wee hours of Saturday morning and was shocked to realize that it was a mere 25*.

My dad who resides in Florida for 6 months of the year, always sends the kids a new Easter outfit every year. This year S received a lovely sparkly white sun dress and E received a snappy blue suit, complete with clip-on tie. Both of the kids love dressing up. Unfortunately, their tired mother couldn't get it together to take them to church this morning, so the fabulous clothes were put on anyway and worn in the garden the entire afternoon. S got smart and traded hers for something more comfortable. E however, has worn his crazy pin-striped get-up all day with his red Crocs. It's completely filthy, but it's all good. The suit really helped him be Indiana Jones today. He's been swinging on the rope swing for a good part of the day with his toy whip. Oh, and of course digging for worms.

So it's been a good day. G and I are tired from working in the sun all day, the kids are filthy and happy and full of chocolate and Easter dinner. Soon, I'll push them into the shower and put us all to bed by 8pm. I'm totally whipped and full and content.