My Path to Freedom

Independence Days - 2/17

2012-02-17T12:39:00.000-06:00

Well, like a lot of places, we are bizarrely warm here in NW Iowa.
I've got my seeds in from Seed Savers, but there are still seeds I haven't cleaned from last fall. Namely basil because I couldn't stand to be around it, and some lettuce because I just haven't got to it yet.

Plant something: I haven't actually planted anything yet. The plan this weekend is to get my little cold frame squared up, weeded and seeded with something cold hardy. Perhaps spinach or chard.

Harvest something: Freakishly warm, it may be. Harvest season it is not. Nothing to harvest. I am still curious if I could get edible syrup from what I think is a Crimson Maple in our yard. Now would definitely be the time to do that.

Preserve something: Again, not much preserving going on. Although, I have some apples on their last legs that may get sauced this weekend.

Waste not: I rescued the worm bin from death. I added in some fresh organic waste and a new layer of shredded paper. We used the compost pile a lot longer this year, where normally we would have switched to the worm bin sooner, and I almost let them die of starvation.
I made some cute valentine bookmarks out of trash cardboard and scrap fabrics.

Want Not: I bought a bulk package of pork and froze about 3/4's of it. Not local or organic, but the price was right.
We bought a bag from an Army surplus store to make into a BOB for Rowen. He's about to transition out of a diaper bag and into something more suited to his status as child instead of toddler. It's small, but will be able to hold a change of clothes, a couple small toys, and some food and water.

Eat the Food: We tried a couple of new recipes this week. Dave made some tasty biscuits and brownies from scratch, as well as some Potato and leek soup. We've been eating the pears and green beans and corn that are in storage. We're running a race against time trying to eat the potatoes that are sprouting. I'm down to my last 2 heads of garlic. (Lots of dried left though.)

Build community food systems: See, this is why I like this challenge. I've been slacking off, and weekly reminders are good. I haven't even started organizing a seed swap for this year, and if it's going to happen, I have to get a move on.

Skill up: Round two of lounge pants for Dave (or am I on round three now) is going much better. They fit nicer and look nicer than the previous attempt. I think he'll like them. The quilt I'm working on is going much faster too. Yay for practice!

A slow start to the season, but it's nice to be thinking about growing and preserving. What have you done this week?

Independence Days!

2012-02-07T07:00:00.000-06:00

The Independence Days challenge is back! Yay! This is one of my favorite challenges, hosted by Sharon of The Chatelalaine's Keys and Casaubon's Book.

The whole idea is to get the positive sense of your accomplishments – it is easy to think we haven’t done anything to move forward, but in fact, we all do, almost every day. We just think of accomplishment as a big thing – a whole day spent putting up applesauce or a hundred tomato plants. The Independence Day project makes us count our little accomplishments and see that we are moving forward. So for each week, tell us what you have done in the following categories:
Plant something: A lot of us were trained to think of planting as done once a year, but if you start seeds, do season extension and succession plant, you’ll get much, much more out of your garden, so I try and plant something every day from February into September.
Harvest something: Everything counts – from the milk and eggs you get from your animals to the first dandelions from your yard to 50 bushels of tomatoes – it all counts.
Preserve something: Again, I find preserving is most productive if I try and do a little every day that there is anything, from the first dried raspberry leaves and jarred rhubarb to the last squashes at the end of the season.
Waste not: Reducing food waste, composting everything or feeding it to animals, reducing your use of disposables and creation of garbage, reusing things that would otherwise go to waste, making sure your preserved and stored foods are kept in good shape – all of these count.
Want Not: Adding to your food storage or stash of goods for emergencies, building up resources that will be useful in the long term.
Eat the Food: Making full and good use of what you have, making sure that you are getting everything you can from your food, trying new recipes and new cooking ideas, eating out of your storage!
Build community food systems: What have you done to help other people have better food access or to make your local food system more resilient?
And a new one: Skill up: What did you learn this week that will help you in the future – could be as simple as fixing the faucet or as hard as building a shed, as simple as a new way of keeping records or as complicated as making shoes. Whatever you are learning, you get a merit badge for it – this is important stuff.

I really need the reminders right now of all the things I do that don't feel worthless wastes of time, so I intend to participate. Y'all might get bored with the Friday updates, but at least they'll be a bit more cheerful than my doomer posts. :-D Join in if you feel like it.

Letting Go of Middleclass

2012-01-23T21:30:00.000-06:00

Historic abnormality. That's what one of my favorite bloggers calls the modern day middle class. Anthropologically speaking, how do societies organize? Labor at the bottom, with a ruling class at the top supported by the excesses generated by the laborers. Modern man managed to tap in to a vast payload of ancient excess, enough to glut even the most ravenous of ruling classes, thus letting enough dribble through that a percentage of the laborers get to experience some of the perks of ruling class lifestyle. It's near impossible to convince any of those enjoying the experience that what they are living is an abnormality. It's gone on for generations now, (at least in the global North) long enough to convince all of them of it's permanence. Like fruit flies, the memory span of the species is only so long. They've forgotten what is normal. "Oh, those norms don't apply any more, for Pete's sake, we've been to the moon, there's nothing we can't do." You know what we can't do? Make more oil. I know what else we can't do. Run anything more than a fraction of our current lifestyle on renewables and muscle power. The math just doesn't work out. Not without a huge population die off, and that would create it's own problems. Math is hard to argue against, but of course the hopeful fruit flies still try. The Archdruid says it best, as usual.

"In 1929, America was still an expanding society, with an economy that was still producing something other than fiscal hallucinations, and a standard of living that had been moving raggedly upward for a good long time. ... Most Americans could reasonably expect that with hard work and prudence, they could expect to have a better standard of living in the future than they had in the past, and their children could expect to do better still.

Those days are long past. For the great majority of Americans, living standards have been declining since the early 1970s, upward mobility is increasingly a nostalgic dream, and it’s becoming harder even for government flacks to keep pretending that training people for jobs that don’t exist will make those jobs miraculously appear. Ours is a contracting society, and outside of the narrowing circle of privilege—itself facing, a little further down the road, a far more drastic form of downward mobility—most people realize that hard work and prudence, the road to a better future in past generations, are merely a slightly slower road to impoverishment than the one everyone else seems to be taking.
...
A great many Americans, for example, think that being hopeful in the face of the depletion of fossil fuels means assuming against all the evidence that some ample replacement will be found in time to allow us to keep our energy-intensive lifestyles running. A great many of us more generally think that being hopeful in the face of the limits to growth means trying to convince ourselves that those limits don’t apply to us, or that there will turn out to be some way around them, or that somebody or other will bail us out before our refusal to deal with those limits lands us in consequences harsher than we want to think about.
...
The only way out of the trap, as I’ve argued here rather more than once, is to accept a steep cut in your standard of living before it becomes necessary, as a deliberate choice, and to use the resources freed up by that choice to get rid of any debts you have, get settled in a location that has a fair chance of keeping a viable degree of community life going, and get the tools and learn the skills that you will need to manage a decent life in an age of spiraling decline. To those who cling to the idea that they can maintain their present lifestyles, admittedly, it’s hard to think of any advice less welcome, but the universe is in no way obligated to give us the future we want" - Archdruid

The universe is in no way obligated to give us the future we want. I can't get those words out of my head. Most days are a battle against bitterness. Don't get me wrong, I'm a generally happy person, I love my family and all that jazz, but there's a kernel of bitterness that wasn't there a decade ago. I know why it's there. What I do for a living is not what I wanted to do with my life. I have a job, a good job. I don't discount the benefits that bestows on my life. My family eats good food, often, in a cozy house in a low crime neighborhood. I have all the securities of the ruling class, but none of the freedom. The engineering degree that was the ticket for my grandfather to live a stable life free of debt, has become a millstone around the neck, not only for me, but for most of my generation. Our debts are rising far faster than our expected income gains. We are financial serfs. My private loans from college won't be paid off until I'm 50. You can imagine what that does for my ability to take risks and try new things. An entire generation, crippled by debt. There go your job creators. We're all so debt ridden we want only to occupy a job, and send large chunks of the pay towards the loan companies in a desperate attempt to deal with them. This is what it looks like when a historical abnormality is coming to a close. You work as hard as you can, but there's not quite enough to satisfy the demands of the elite to be supported and to raise your own standard of living.

Middle class is no longer an option. The rich are getting richer. The poor are getting poorer. Most days I feel like I'm doing alright if I'm managing our descent gracefully. That's all I aim to do. I can no longer forget the historical abnormality. It stares at me in the face every day. I go to work and I make sure I have enough supplies to get home if today is the day it all collapses. I don't plan on my kids going to college, I hope I can teach them enough to get them accepted as apprentices in a craft they can support themselves in. I don't plan to ever have my debts paid off, the most I aim for is to be somewhere safe when I can't pay them anymore. I highly doubt I'll ever have a retirement savings account to speak of. Perhaps I'll get some social security if that's still around in 50 years, perhaps not. At this point, the safe place to land includes a bit of land to grow food on since only 2% of our population is growing our food, and those guys are all approaching their 70's. (Another historical abnormality) I grow and can food now, not because I really have to, but because I want the practice for the time I know is coming, the time when it won't be an option. I sew my clothing and diapers and blankets, we could afford to buy them, but I might as well get the practice now. I'm pretty sure my children will not have the excess energy to manufacture diapers and blankets or the money to ship them in from China.

The work I do at home helps me deal with the dichotomy of going to my job everyday. I automate factories. The very same automation in the very same factories that deep down inside I don't believe will be running in another 20 years. I don't believe we'll have the power grid to support it, I don't believe we'll have the distribution to sustain it. The economies of scaling up and centralizing and automating are all based on the excess energy and materials that we had back in the halcyon days of oil gushers and steel exports. Putting more holes in the ground and sticking more straws down them are not going to magically create more oil, no matter how much ground water we ruin with the latest technology. Creating demand for more iron is not going to make it come out of the ground. I can already see the signs, the cracks. Projects that get delayed because the iron has to come from China, and it takes twice as long to arrive as original estimates. Parts and equipment with months of lead times (the time between ordering the part and arrival) because of components that use rare earth metals that are becoming harder and harder to source. Plants that used to run full tilt 24/7, content with the knowledge that it didn't matter how much energy it took, product out the door always equaled profit, now have to scale back and monitor energy use and look at energy efficient ways of producing that same product, with materials that require more processing to get them up to snuff.

I can't really be the only one seeing the cracks. Some are much more obvious and not at all metaphorical. The American Society of Civil Engineers lists the total unpaid/undone infrastructure repairs in this country as around 2.2 Trillion. Not one single aspect of our infrastructure got higher than a C grade. I can't believe that these failing systems are going to support even a faint facsimile of the middle class lifestyle, that historical abnormality that so many think of as a permanent. I just can't.

Middle class is an endangered species. You can’t save yourself, nor can you return to it. Don’t try to hold on until the bitter end. Just let go while you have some control.
Lord Bison

Homemade Toys

2012-01-17T07:00:00.000-06:00

I love making toys for Rowen and Boy #2. (No, we don't have a name chosen yet, and probably won't until he's actually breathing air, it's just the way we are.) I love that I can use scraps and little bits of "trash" and come up with fun educational toys for them.
I'm not shy about my opinion that we're on the downside of Hubberts curve. As we progress down I think more and more of us are going to need to rediscover the lost art of making and crafting.
These toys were made from some trash cardboard, construction paper, left over yarn, and scraps of flannel left over from making crib sheets and butt wipes. The only things I really bought were the little plastic needles and the stuffing for the blocks, since I used up the last of what I had halfway through the big block.

I got the idea for the sewing cards from a blog I stumbled across. I totally copied her design idea, but I just free-handed the 3 designs I liked onto the cardboard and cut them out. I traced the construction paper from those cardboard cutouts so they'd match, and the middles are the circumference of an oatmeal container. Then I glued them together and drew some faces and details on. I chose a thin cardboard, so my handheld hole punch was capable of punching through. Then I threaded yarn through all the holes so I could guesstimate the length needed, and tied a bead on. The bead does double duty, it keeps the kids from having to knot anything, and it keeps the needle trapped on the yarn. The yarn can be used for any of the 3 cards, without any rethreading of needles or picking apart knots. (Well, less picking apart of knots, I'm sure they'll manage to knot things somehow.) The first evening of play went over well, Rowen's been begging to help with the sewing for a few weeks now. He sees me quilting or sewing buttons or whatever, and he's sure he can help with that. Hopefully these will give him a way to channel that that doesn't slow me down as much. He caught on to the holes and the needle and how those work, he didn't have a nice clean stitch when he ran out of yarn, but he got the gist and did 3 cards worth before I put things away for bed. Not bad for a 2 year old.

The squishy stacking blocks came from an idea I had when Rowen was still gestating. The large block got cut out but never sewn together, and was sitting in my WIP pile. So, I finished it, stuffed it and made a second smaller block after I cut out a bunch of wipes this weekend. One WIP finished, scraps used up, total win.

Of course, doing-what-Daddy's-doing is still top of Rowen's list of fun.

And much fun is had.

Take that Angry Birds! I strike a blow for low-key entertainment.

Organizing and Getting Stuff Done

2012-01-10T07:00:00.000-06:00

I had a huge push to get sewing projects done and out of my sewing room the past few weeks. Some went as presents for Yule, others are hanging in my living room, yea, I'm looking at you big blue. Others went straight on Rowen's butt. hahahah

Show and tell time. :-D First up were Becky's curtains. She loves purple, and fairies, so I used some Fairy Frost and Flower Fairy fabric. Her window is large, so it was hard to get a good picture of this once it was done. She really liked it though.

Next up was Willie's flag for his fort that Becky built in the backyard for him. He requested a red and black flag with a spider on it. So of course that's what he got. I free-handed the whole thing in an afternoon.

While cleaning the sewing room I dug up some old projects that never got completed when Rowen was a newborn. A couple of bibs made with some yellow terry cloth and blue fishes, and a green froggie bib that my mother started and only needed velcro attached to finish. Those are finished and will be put to good use I think. Next to the bibs is a random Mama Pad that was cut out and ready to go. I think that green dot pattern was what I used for Sarah's set last X-mas. I think I'll probably keep this random one, since I'd bet good money she's not used the pads. It sewed up quickly, and reminded me that I need to find time to remake some postpartum pads.

Under the Mama Pad is the last of the prefolds that I finished up. These were cut out during the sewing weekend with my mother back in Nov? Dec? I made a set of 6 and I really liked how they turned out. Sadly, in spite of prewashing, the birds-eye fabric shrunk a lot more in the first few washes, so they are already a little small for Rowen. Grrrr. So, memo to self, add a couple of inches to allow for that shrinkage when dealing with this nice birds-eye. Another project started at that sewing weekend was a set of swaddle blankets. Purple, Blue and Green, (chosen before I knew the gender on baby #2 lol) flannel with some cute jungle animals cut from a fat quarter and appliqued on to a corner for interest. We really liked swaddling Rowen, and never seemed to have enough light weight blankets of the right size to do it.

Next up, and again, started at the sewing weekend, was a set of 4 fitted diapers for Rowen. I have 2 done, and 2 left to complete, hopefully this week. I used bamboo velour for the inner layer, with a soaker layer of hemp terry cloth (4 thick) and Ooga Booga cotton velour for the outer layer. Velcro closures. It took about half a diaper to remember the tricks of the elastic and such with these, so the left leg on the left diaper isn't as stretchy as it could be. I'm a terrible seamstress and didn't rip it out and fix it. :-P

After getting all that goodness done, I spent some time returning the sewing room to a state of order. My spools of ribbon went up on the wall. There they are contained, easy to use, and out of reach of both babies and kitty. I threaded them onto a couple lengths of random yarn and ribbon and tied the ends to two tacks. I put some fabric on the mini-bolts that I bought at the quilting show in Des Moines. I don't have nearly enough of those to put all my cotton interlock on them, but it is nice to have a few projects worth of the especially pretty stuff organized and out where I can enjoy them. The rest of my fabrics live in Rubbermaid totes and I went through those as well. They are now organized by type of fabric, and LABELED so that if someone other than myself wanted to find something, they could conceivably do that. All of my patterns got a going through, and they are organized in an old hanging shoe organizer.

The last piece of organizing took the longest. I had put the mail sorting baskets in the sewing room, just due to lack of any other place. It was clearly not well thought out. Mail was just piling up on the kitchen table. So, I dug it all out of the sewing room, and off the table, organized the 2011 mail and filed it away. Then I moved an unused TV hutch out of the sewing room and into the dining room where it now holds all the sorted mail from years past, and the mail sorting baskets for this coming year. It looks much nicer, and gives me more room to work in the sewing room.

There's still a bit more work to do before I call it good. My mother sent me some yarn that needs going through, and I need to rearrange now that the TV hutch is gone. I'm pretty happy with the progress though.

Women Should be Taught More Self Defense, Earlier

2011-12-29T17:00:00.000-06:00

A word of caution, this post contains an adult discussion of rape, of both men and women, and may contain triggers for those of you suffering from PTSD. This post will build upon an earlier post of mine, "Should Girls Wrestle" which, a year later continues to get comments.

For those that haven't read that post, I'll recap: High Schools should not only allow girls to wrestle, they should encourage it. A recent report from the CDC on the widespread instances of rape and abuse in this country grabbed headlines for a day, and then of course, vanished from the the collective conversation. The newscasters tsk-tsked the results and then quickly went on to other, less depressing news. Why no discussion about how to stop or mitigate these findings? Oh, that's right, it's just women, they are weak, and men who get raped, well they are like women right, weak, so who cares. As you might can guess, I care.

On average, 24 people per minute are victims of rape, physical violence, or stalking by an intimate partner in the United States, based on a survey conducted in 2010. Over the course of a year, that equals more than 12 million women and men. Those numbers only tell part of the story—more than 1 million women are raped in a year and over 6 million women and men are victims of stalking in a year. These findings emphasize that sexual violence, stalking, and intimate partner violence are important and widespread public health problems in the United States.

1 MILLION women, in the US alone, EVERY YEAR. So, no, I don't want to hear about how uncomfortable it makes high school boys to have to fight with or wrestle with girls. I don't want to hear about how they are taught not to hurt girls, so they are at a disadvantage with a female partner. That's clearly Bullshit. While I don't doubt that there are boys being taught that lesson, clearly, as men, they either forget it, or the numbers that never learn that social nicety are far too large.

Women are disproportionally affected by sexual violence, intimate partner violence and stalking.
• 1.3 million women were raped during the year preceding the survey.
• Nearly 1 in 5 women have been raped in their lifetime while 1 in 71 men have been raped in their lifetime.

The majority of this victimization starts early in life.
• Approximately 80% of female victims experienced their first rape before the age of 25 and almost half experienced the first rape before age 18 (30% between 11-17 years old and 12% at or before the age of 10).
• About 35% of women who were raped as minors were also raped as adults compared to 14% of women without an early rape history.
• 28% of male victims of rape were first raped when they were 10 years old or younger.

HALF of women rape victims are younger than 18. That means that there are as many as 500,000 girls a year that could be learning valuable self defense lessons in JR HIGH and HIGH SCHOOL that might help them in escaping a rape attempt before they head for college.

Pushing them out of wrestling clubs, or sparring groups is short sighted and harmful. Jr High Schools and High Schools on that path should do an immediate about face, and not only allow them in but encourage it. Even if it means forming female only leagues. Even if it means making male wrestlers uncomfortable. Help these girls find ways to fight back against being one of these statistics. Don't just shuffle them through Home Ec, Sex Ed and Gym and delude yourself into thinking you're sending them out into the world prepared.

Sadly, I have no daughters, and no connections with the local Jr High and High Schools. (Yet.) If any of my readers do, please feel free to use this post in it's entirety to start conversations with your school district about this issue. The CDC report is linked at the top and again HERE if you want to print out some of the facts and figures. Please PLEASE teach your daughters about the realities that face them. Ignoring it or hoping it won't happen to them are terrible ways to deal with this issue. If you daughters are old enough, enroll them in a self defense class, not one of those hour long once a year sessions, but something on a weekly basis, learning hands on grappling, breaks, throws and disables. While you pray they won't need it, someday they may thank you. Send your boys too of course, the need isn't as dire in a personal protection sense, but they'll get other very useful benefits from it.

New Resolutions

2011-12-29T07:00:00.000-06:00

:-) I actually like New Year Resolutions. I do. So far I have a pretty good track record with them. I write them down, I make concrete plans and goals, and then in a year, reevaluate.

Resolutions for 2011
1) Finish the scarf, learn a second stitch, Purl maybe, and use that in a second project.
Done! I finished that first scarf, it's a lovely camo-like variegated green. I learned the purl stitch and I'm 3/4s of the way through a project that has a purl/knit ribbing. I went with a headband/ear cover instead of a hat. But, I'm using that black wool that I bought, and I'm still resisting the allure of oh-so-pretty yarn. Mostly. I did buy 2 skeins at the quilt show in Des Moines, for my next project.

1b) Do some darning, with the wool socks I love so much.
This one I tried, but apparently store bought wool socks are not as darnable as the home-made versions. I researched how to darn, and got my great-grandma to send me a darning egg, but after the research I decided it wasn't worth my time to try and darn the store bought socks. This goal will have to wait until I make homemade socks, and wear them enough to get holes.

2) Sew more clothing, focusing on work clothing for me and play wear for Rowen.
This one went well. I did get one new shirt done, and some play pants for Rowen. He loved his pants, and just outgrew them a month ago, I need to make him some more. I stopped sewing for me, due to pregnancy, it's not worth my time when I'm only guessing at what my measurements will be from week to week. I may end up having to sew a cloak or something to stay warm this spring, but we'll see.

3) $2000 in savings by Samhain.
This one we came pretty close, and it's a good thing I was focused on this, because we'll need every penny of it to pay for the birth of Baby Boy. We didn't quite hit the 2000 mark, there were some car repairs that had to come out of savings, and that's what it's there for, so I still count this one as a win.

4) Finish the Blue Quilt, (Quilt #2) by mid January. Do some actual quilting on this one!

Well, I did finish Blue Quilt, but it only got done a couple of weeks ago. I missed the Jan deadline, and then I lost all focus on it and sewed other things for the summer. I brought it back out this fall and finished it. It's hanging in the living room window, looking very pretty, if I do say so myself. I did some actual hand quilting, nothing fancy, and I think I may take it down someday and do some more, but I'll count this one a win.It's doing a great job of blocking drafts, and it looks soo cool. I brought those fabric panels home with me from India, and I'm happy to finally have them displayed nicely.

5) Start Quilt #3. At least Queen sized, 85x85" or bigger, so that it can replace the 15 year old quilt from my grandmother that needs to be honorably retired.
Total fail. I was too focused on Blue quilt, and this one hasn't even been started yet. It's top of my quilting goals for 2012.

6) Make progress with getting a Community Garden started in my new town. The first step here is to organize a seed swap I think.
This one went well. I did the seed swap, and kept talking to people about the goal. Fate conspired to put me in the right place, and a church group that was looking to start a garden had my name dropped in their ear, and I was able to help them start a Community Garden. It's small, only 8 plots, but all were full all summer, and we got some great produce out of it.

7) Regain my pre-baby muscles. I miss my leg muscles and ab muscles. I never had much arm muscles, but maybe I could work on those while I'm at it.
I don't know how well I did on muscle, I know I got my leg muscles back, but maybe not so much on the arm and ab muscles. I did get down to my high school weight, and that made me ecstatic. I was pregnant 2 weeks after that, and it's all gone down hill from there. :-D I kid, in all truthfulness, I'm feeling healthier this pregnancy, I think in no small part because of the work I did to lose the last of that baby weight.

8) Finish seed saving attempt for turnips. Try again with potatoes maybe. Try parsnips too possibly.
Total fail. The turnips I tried to overwinter, died. I didn't save seed from the potatoes, and I dug up (and ate! Mmmm) all the parsnips.   Maybe next year? Maybe not too, we'll see if I can find space for it, with another mouth to feed and neighbors to keep happy, there may be a line I can't cross, and biennial seed production may be that line. :-D

9) Continue food storage, work on improving grain storage.
This one was a semi-win. We have a steady rotation of flour in storage, and a lot of rice. We didn't get a grinder, we got a large mortar and pestle instead. More useful on a day-to-day basis, and it can moonlight as a grain grinder if we ever get to that point of TEOTWAWKI. We did look at buckets to hold wheat berries in, but it just never materialized.

I'll give myself a score of 7/10 for 2011.

New Resolutions for 2012

1) Make a new quilt for the main bed. 85"x85" at least. We're currently using a 15 year old quilt that my grandmother made me, and it needs to be honorably retired. I want to machine quilt this one, as it will be the biggest quilt yet, and put to the hardest use. I'm signed up for a class in town to learn machine quilting, next month. I have a lot of the fabric I need, although I'll need to run some numbers to see if I have enough to make the large size that's needed.

2) Transition Rowen to his own bed AND get him going on a bedtime routine.   He's 2 and a half, and we've been content until now to largely let him set his own sleeping patterns. With co-sleeping and a stay at home parent, there wasn't a huge need for him to have a set bedtime or sleeping place. Now that baby #2 is on the way, we need the big bed space for that one and we need Rowen to start sleeping more regularly in his own bed. My preference here is to spend Jan/Feb working on the bedtime routine and ending co-sleeping. Then in March when he turns 3 I'd like to transition him to a "Big Boy Bed" (i.e. the old twin mattress with little-boy-friendly bedding) and turn the toddler bed back into it's crib formation well in advance of the new baby's arrival. March and April we can continue the Big Boy Bed routine, and that way (hopefully) he won't associate the new baby with the loss of his co-sleeping/toddler bed/etc.

3) Stick to our budget for the year. We have a tough year coming up financially. We're on an HSA plan for health insurance, which means we pay all medical costs until we hit $4000. Baby Boy is going to be $3000 worth of hospital expenses and that's assuming a natural vaginal birth with no complications. I'm not resting on my laurels as far as that's concerned. Baby and I are super healthy, weight, blood pressure, nutrition and activity levels are all as good as or better than they were with Rowen's fetal period. Plus, we're with a midwife, who is totally committed to natural births. We're paying all that we can in advance, and sending money hand over fist directly from my paycheck to the Health Savings Account. By my calculations we'll have $3000 paid to the midwife by April. In April I'll modify my weekly contributions to the Savings account, to a much lower amount in preparation for my maternity leave. Anything that's not paid by then, will wait until after I go back to work in August.
All the money we have budgeted for medical payments means we're $50 short for January and February bills, even with the "fun" and "savings" columns zeroed out on the budget sheet. March will have 5 paychecks instead of the usual 4, so that will help, then in April I'll put less towards the HSA and I'll have more take home pay.   That brief respite will have to buffer us for the May/June/July maternity leave. I'll get 60% pay for 6 of those weeks, but that's it. Hopefully Dave can find a temp job to fill in the gaps that will leave in the budget. None of us can get sick or injured until August. :-D
Plans to help with Resolution 3:
3a) Eat out of the pantry, maybe a challenge to eat 1 week a month completely out of the stored foods? I store for emergencies, and medical bills count as that, even if it's a "planned" emergency.
3b) Limit monetary input for the garden while simultaneously expanding it, I have started planning the garden, and I think I'll only need a few packets of seeds, mostly carrots, cucumbers and parsnips, maybe some spinach. Potato and sweet potato slips as well. I don't have any money budgeted for it right now, so it will have to come out of the food budget or X-mas money.

4) Put my maternity time to good use. Of course, birthing a baby and feeding a baby are the most important things I'll be doing, but with almost 3 months off, I bet I can do something else productive. Start that book I've been meaning to write, or brush up on my Spanish.

5) Hunt something new in 2012. Not that there's anything wrong with pheasant, but I'd like to expand my horizons to deer or turkey. Or Wild Hogs!!!! Ok, this might not be the year for wild hogs, but a gal can dream right?

6) Finish the ribbed headband and work on some knitted booties for baby. Booties will push me into the 3rd dimension with my knitting, so far I've only done flat rectangular pieces. (The headband is knitted as a strip then the short ends sewn together.) They are small which is good, and common enough for free patterns and youtube videos.

7) Make a rocket stove. Something that can be moved with us and won't infringe on our rental agreement. Most of the wood I have on hand is dead fall from our trees, and while we burn some of it in our fire pit, I'd really like a rocket stove for more efficient use during emergencies.

I'm really excited for 2012, yes we'll have challenges, but there's a new life on the way, and new seeds to plant. A presidential election will spice things up in November and then of course the world will end on Dec 21st. hahahaha

Awww little baby shoes

Hope your New Year is cheery and warm. Share your resolutions in the comments if you like.

News From My Womb

2011-12-27T15:00:00.000-06:00

This is a personal blog, I'll be back to politics, peak oil and TEOTWAWKI soon enough, but allow me a slight detour.
We found out last week that baby #2 will be a boy. He's healthy and happy, which are blessings, I know. I can't stop mourning though.
Let me explain, I can pinpoint the exact moment I realized I wanted children. I had always been lukewarm about the idea as a child and teenager. I knew I wanted a career, I knew I wanted travel, and love and all those things, but I wasn't sure about bearing children. At most I thought perhaps I would adopt a couple when that time came. I had a dream when I was 21, that changed my mind completely.
Dreams, I know, very illogical. Trust me, I don't spend a lot of time thinking about my dreams, they are usually vivid, and I always remember them in the morning, but I know they are mostly brain dumps and subconscious thoughts.
This dream was different. Very short and to the point, for me. I held my daughter in my arms. She was new, tiny, a nursling. She had dark hair. She spoke to me, and said, "Mommy, I love you." I explained that she couldn't be talking to me, she was too young to be talking. She said, "Mommy, I know you needed to hear it."

That was it.

In my heart I always hoped I'd get to hold that little girl.
Maybe it's egotistical, but I think I'm a pretty unique woman. I hoped I'd be able to pass that on in some way. Whether it's hunting or fighting or logic problems, I wanted another female to bond with and send into the ranks of Strong Women Battling the Hordes of Injustice. Lately that's mellowed to include cooking and sewing and dances and cute dresses with flowers in our hair.

Maybe this is better though. I've never gotten along well with most women. I don't seem to have much in common with a lot of them, and I have little patience for the bizarre things they find compelling. Even with my own mother, it took awhile to find common ground. We've found it, with sewing, and of course mutual love, but even so I know we don't look on things the same way. Maybe that daughter would never have been the woman I wanted. Maybe we would have been just as estranged as I find myself from most other females. That would have been hard, so maybe this is kinder.

Maybe I can use that energy to take care of myself, and make pretty dresses for me. Maybe I can mentor or foster or adopt. Maybe there are girls out there that will need that space in my heart. I can't know, there's no way to know.

I do know 2 biological children is all I want. We could try again and again, but there's no guarantees, and it would probably ruin us financially. We'll do one of those more or less permanent birth control options as soon as he joins us. We will be happy with our boys, and I will love them fiercely. If I shed a few tears over their Y chromosome, they'll never need to know that.

A-caucusing we will go

2011-12-13T16:59:00.000-06:00

So, tis the season here in Iowa. The season that seems to move up a little every year, just to keep us as "First in the Nation." I'm talking of course about caucuses.

First off, I'm not sure I agree with the "First in the Nation" as a constant static thing. I've lived in a bunch of other states, and while I really do think Iowans are some of the most balanced, fair minded people I've met, I'm not sure it's beneficial for our nation to have the "First" be the same 2 states every year.

That said, our caucuses are pretty awesome. I participated last go 'round and really enjoyed it. Here's the run down on how it works, for those interested in such things.

First thing to know is that the caucuses are divided up into R and D. That was the first big downside as I saw it. I'm a registered Independent. Always have been. It is easy to change registration the night of the caucus though, you just show up to which ever side you wanted to caucus for, register that night for that side, then a few weeks later re-register as your preferred affiliation.   Those that have read this blog at all can probably guess which side I registered for in '08. I went to the Democratic side. I can't for the life of me remember who all was running for the GOP nomination, (Wikipedia to the rescue, McCain, Huckabee and Romney were the 3 big players) I didn't care for any of them. I did like a couple of the Democratic runners though, Dodd and Gravel for anyone who really cares. Of course, neither of those candidates made it very far. But, I'm getting ahead of myself.

So, we get info on where our precinct will be meeting, show up, register if needed, and in my case, go sit in the gymnasium of the local Jr High and watch the other 200 or so file in. After the doors are shut, the fun begins. Usually a district or precinct lead stands up and says a few words about the process and procedures. Then there is time for speeches. Anyone can stand to speak. A few words or a prepared speech, doesn't matter. I think there were some people who said a few words for Obama, and some for Clinton. I wasn't convinced, but it was interesting. After everyone spoke that wanted to, they taped up big signs all around the gym, one sign for each nominee, there were a lot too, they didn't leave out the little guys. Round 1 started, and everyone was invited to stand under the sign of the candidate that they most supported.   I believe I was the only person under Gravel's sign, but I remember being proud to stand there and support him.   Everyone was counted, and totals were tallied. A cut off point was decided, and everyone supporting a candidate with fewer than the required bodies was invited to go stand at their second choice. The non-viable candidates had their signs taken down, and Round 2 started. I shuffled down to join the Dodd supporters, swelling their numbers to a grand total of 4. At the end of Round 2, Dodd was no longer on the viable list. At this point we had Obama supporters and Clinton supporters talking with us almost one on one, asking what we liked about Dodd, and had we heard about this plan or that from their candidate? I don't remember being rushed at this point. There were people milling about, arguing, debating, and trying to wrangle every last body they could for the final Round 3. The speaker announced that we needed to wrap it up, and that the final round would consist of Clinton/Obama/Edwards and that if we wanted to throw our support behind one of those candidates, now was the time to do that. I walked over the Obama sign. The final round was tallied, and our district went to Obama. The caucus continued with Democratic party business, planks, platforms, delegate nomination, the whole shebang. I think I lasted through about 30 minutes of that before getting bored and leaving.

That's the gist of the process, rinse and repeat for all the districts in our 99 counties. One of the most democratic things I've ever seen here in our beloved Republic.

Fast forward, it's 2012. With Obama running for reelection, there won't be a Democratic caucus. There will be a GOP caucus though. As the fair minded Independent that I try to be, I have the caucus on my calendar and I've really made an effort to get to know the the candidates.   I know you're interested in my take on them, so here they are, in no particular order.

Bachman - To be blunt here, she's an idiot. She's anti-science, and poorly educated in anything other than fundamentalist christian dogma. She doesn't support LGBT rights, her argument is just “OMG, people have sex in ways I don’t approve of. We must punish gay people.” Tamara Scott, co-chair of Bachmann’s Iowa campaign, was caught on tape saying if we don’t stop same-sex marriage it will lead down a slippery slope not only to polygamy but to women marrying inanimate objects, like the Eiffel Tower. Idiots.

Paul - I'll admit, I've been attracted to Paul in the past. He's consistent, which isn't a bad thing, and doesn't say as much stupid crap as some of the other nominees. I like his stance on ending the drug war. Sadly, that's about as far as I ever get with him. None of his other positions appeal to me. He's constantly re-iterated his preference to do away with Roe-v-Wade, and he would love to have blastocysts declared as people, with equal rights to the woman who happens to be carrying said lump of cells. I think that's ludicrous and I have no intention of supporting anyone who furthers that notion. He has also sought to amend the Clean Air Act, repeal the Soil and Water Conservation Act of 1977, and to amend the Federal Water Pollution Control Act to “restrict the jurisdiction of the United States over the discharge of dredged or fill material to discharges into waters”. A direct quote from the HR7955 reads like a textbook on bigotry, “Prohibits the expenditure of Federal funds to any organization which presents male or female homosexuality as an acceptable alternative life style or which suggest that it can be an acceptable life style.” (links to various HR bills he's put forward) Needless to say, it's a bit too much to overlook, even if he could end the drug war.

The Newt. Again, those who read this blog probably already know my views on this guy. He can't seem to respect marriage vows. He left the Speaker of the House position shortly after being charged with eighty-four ethics violations. (After extensive investigation and negotiation by the House Ethics Committee, Gingrich was sanctioned US$300,000.) During 2010 and the hubbub about the mosque being built in downtown NYC, his jingoistic demagoguery made Sarah Palinseem calm and nuanced. Gingrich demanded governmentaction to stop the building, saying "weshould not tolerate" what the First Amendment requires us totolerate. Further more, he has NO concept of geological realities, and encourages the "Drill baby drill" crowd with terrible untruths. In the Nov 23rd debate he stated that the United States could discover and produce enough oil in 2012 to cause a worldwide oil price collapse, if we were, "Serious." *facepalm*

The U.S. would have to increase field production by more than double current production to become oil independent by increasing domestic production to 14.8 Mbopd. Even peak production in 1970 of 10,000 bopd would only meet 68% of current crude oil consumption. To bring about a collapse in world oil prices, as Mr. Gingrich suggests, would mean increasing U.S. production by substantially more than this.
Maximum daily production from Prudhoe Bay Field, the largest in the United States, was 2.0 million bopd in 1988 (http://www.aspo-usa.com/archives/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&...). Mr. Gingrich suggests that we can find more than six additional Prudhoe Bay-sized fields in one year. Prudhoe Bay was discovered in 1968, did not begin production for 11 years, and did not reach peak production until 20 years after its discovery. But Mr. Gingrich thinks that there are many Prudhoe Bay fields waiting to be found that can be explored, developed and brought to peak production in one year. source

So, no, not someone I'm going to go out on a cold Jan night in support of.

Cain, his 9-9-9 plan would have raised my taxes significantly. I was willing to overlook that in favor of simplifying the tax code. It seemed like he had a good head on his shoulders. Makes no difference now, he's out of the race.

Romney - He wants to repeal the Affordable Health Care Act (obamacare), in spite of the fact that the Mass health care overhaul has been popular. Not wildly popular, but polling shows a majority in favor of it. I'm fine with making changes to it, no legislation is perfect, but scrapping it and starting over? Good grief, we'll never get anything done at that rate. And of course, like a broken record around here, he's not in favor of equal rights for gay and lesbian couples.

Perry - Again, an anti-science idiot. His mantra seems to be "Cut taxes and regulation." Like cutting banking regulation led to a good end, yea, they do a great job of self policing. I like clean air and clean water, I'm just not in favor of cutting regulations. He likes to brag about all the jobs he has in Texas. You know what else he has? He has the most children who are sick and obese and poorly educated. He has schools suing him for lack of funding, so low they are claiming it's unconstitutional. He insists that peace can only come through "strength" and would probably allow the Defense budget to remain bloated and obscenely large. And of course, he's not in favor of women's reproductive rights or gay and lesbian rights.

Did I miss anyone? I think that's most of the crop. Not a single one of them is worth my time on a cold Jan night. I will probably sit this caucus out.

I'd forgotten what it feels like

2011-12-01T14:12:00.001-06:00

Well, patient blog readers, I'm back. Many apologies for the hiatus. I had vague memories of being nauseous with Rowen's 1st trimester, but either hormones and time had erased some of the misery, or something about my 45-55 hour work week makes it worse. Probably (as with most things) a combination of both.
I'll spare you the gory details, but to say I've been sick and exhausted for most of the past 2 months, would not be an understatement.
But! We are moving past that stage of pregnancy and roaring into the second trimester with a healthy appetite, high energy levels and aching joints. :-D
Dave and I settled on a midwife for care. We interviewed a home-birthing midwife, but she was based in the next state over, battling anti-midwifery there and in Iowa, and was very very Christian. I'm fine with my care providers having personal views I don't agree with. But, after a discussion about all the things she can't legally do during a homebirth, (stitching my tears, anything with IV's, antibiotics or anti-hemorraging meds) it makes me very uncomfortable to hear talk of "praying for guidance and leaving things in god's hands." I knew I wouldn't have the trust in her that I would need to have to birth at home. The midwife Dave and I finally clicked with is based out of the hospital in the town I work in. (20 miles north of where we live) She has been delivering babies for a long time, has an excellent relationship with the Obstetricians in the hospital and they in turn give her tons of freedom to birth babies how she wants. Which all translates into freedom for ME to birth how I need to, but with the safety net of a hospital ready if needed. She has no requirements for positions during labor, is very much a non-intervention believer, and even Rowen liked her better. Care is already night and day different from that horrible group Ob/Gyn practice that I ended up with when I was on Medicare with Rowen. She talks to me, and listens to me, and doesn't give me lectures about the decisions I make regarding my body.
Baby and I are healthy and happy and growing at a nice pace. I'm more excited than scared for the delivery, and really looking forward to the 2nd trimester.

In other news, Dave has been culling the spotty apples out of our storage box this week, and is currently making a big batch of tasty applesauce. This is an important step with stored apples, as the old saying is true, one bad apple will spoil the lot. Spotty apples make a great applesauce, or cider and will keep much longer in that form, simultaneously sparing the good apples that rotten fate.

I've harvested those little cabbage heads, and dried the last big bunch of chard. All the beds are cozy in their leafy covers, and we're as ready as we can be for the harsh winter ahead.

No time to mourn the end of this year's season, I got my Seed Savers catalog in the mail yesterday, and I'm researching sweet potato production and slip providers in Iowa. My favorite local farmer is not going to be growing sweet potatoes next year, so if I don't grow them, I'll have to travel 30 minutes south to the big city to find local ones.

I'll be recapping my 2011 goals soon, and making new ones for 2012, should be fun. Yule and X-mas celebrations are happening at our house this year, which is a first. It'll be a bit of a challenge, but as always, I think we're up for it. I've got Iowa caucuses coming up right after the holidays, so politics aren't far from my mind either.

Y'all stay warm, finish up that turkey, and settle in.

Fall harvests

2011-11-04T17:00:00.000-05:00

I'm a pumpkin carving master.

We have a few hardy crops in the ground that are continuing to produce tasty fresh food.
The pumpkins of course have been a fun harvest. They are indeed edible, I found that really the texture is the only thing that's different between my random pumpkins and the nice "pie pumpkin" I got from the store. And texture can be amended with judicious applications of the immersion blender. So, two thumbs up for the random pumpkin experiment. We got a few carving pumpkins out of the deal and more pumpkins than we'll be able to eat. They are sitting on the porch looking festive right now. Snow is forecasted for next week though, so I need to bring them in if we intend to try and eat any this winter.

Dave is a pumpkin pie master.

I tried something last night that was pretty tasty. I roasted the usual sweet potatoes for Rowen, with some of the pumpkin flesh I had saved from carving, and then mashed them together with the usual butter/milk/spices. Pretty good. Hard to tell that it was sweet potatoes and pumpkin mixed together. Considering the lack of sweet potatoes to be found this fall, that will help stretch them a little bit. On a related note, I'll be figuring out how to grow sweet potatoes this winter. :-D

The first of three pumpkin harvests.

The swiss chard is still doing fine, nights below freezing don't bother it much. It's the brightest green you can imagine, my community garden folks are jealous, I can tell. They're envious of my tasty greens as they hoe under their sad bedraggled tomato vines. :-D

The turnips are still going. I have those buffered with piles of leaves and covered with row cover, just to help keep the ground from freezing around them. Now, if I could just find a way of cooking/preserving them that the boys like. One of my friends tried a turnip pickle that turned out ok...

Rowen and I picked the last of the carrots yesterday. He was eating them dirt and all, before we even left the garden. He usually doesn't like carrots, so that was a win. Yay for frost sweetened carrots.We only pulled a half a pound or so out, but that's not bad considering the complete lack of attention I gave these things. I do that every year. Carrots take sooo long to germinate, and then they are hard to keep alive, and then they grow sooooo slowly, that I'm always sure they're going to kick the bucket before making any roots, so I give up on them. Then along comes November and I'm digging up the tastiest carrots I've ever eaten, and wondering why I didn't try just a little harder in July to get the carrot bed weeded and watered.

Kohlrabi is also still producing. They definitely slow down once we get past fall equinox, but they withstand quite a bit of cold without much fuss from me. Plus, they look like alien saucers, which I love.

I found a bit of oregano under the leaves in the summer herb patch, doing well enough that I harvested a handful and put it in some water in the kitchen. We ate some on the roasted veggies last night. Mmmm fresh herbs in November. Not too shabby.

Still to come: 3 small heads of purple cabbage, that I'm giving every last day I can before harvesting them. They were the heads buried under the pumpkin vines. They are still alive because I made a bridge for the vines to climb, but they were definitely slowed because of the shade. I'm more likely to eat them in Nov than I was in July when the other cabbages matured, so it's a good thing I think.

Home

2011-10-21T12:01:00.000-05:00

Soundtrack for today's post:

Coming home - My little brother came home this week from Afghanistan. It's good to have him home again. This was his second deployment. Last time he was in Iraq, and I was living in India for a good portion of that deployment, so it was nice to be in the states for this deployment. I was able to send him dried fruits and baked goods and occasional summer sausages. Of course, he flew home to the other side of the state, so I wasn't able to make the 6 hour drive to see him land. But, I was able to take down the star from the window.

Home year round - We're getting ready for another long winter. Window quilts are going up, plastic on the outside, the whole nine yards. We've got the heater on, but just barely. I think it's at like 69 right now. The basement is nice and cool and has a good selection of potatoes, onions and garlic. With my free apple tree not producing this summer, I don't have any apples stored. But, I'm feeling like we're pretty prepared for winter.
The summer bounty is all canned and pickled. Yay for being done with the canner for the year! lol I have 3 butternuts, and dozens of pumpkins from my winter squash vines. Awesome! The Swiss Chard, kohlrabi and the turnips are still unperturbed by the frosty mornings, so I'm continuing to harvest fresh food.

Home for the holidays - We'll have much loved guests for Yule this year, so we've already started planning for that. What food we want to cook, what presents we want to make. What we want for decorations. I've fallen behind on my sew along for the Tree Pants, but it's ok. I'm still plugging along, and I fell behind to make Rowen the cutest costume. I went to my local fabric store and bought 1 yard of red cotton, a quarter yard of white, and I free handed a big circle and a little 'm'. I backed the red circles with some fleece so he stays warm enough after the sun goes down, plus it helps to keep the shape. Rowen was so happy with his M&M costume, and he got lots of complements during it's inaugural run last weekend. We all went out to the Trick or Treating at the local county park. It was a great night and we had a blast.

My first star!

Anyway, here's a shot of the first star I completed. I didn't like it 100%, so I went to the fabric store and bought some cream to mix in with the cream/flower print. Those stars look awesome. I have several of those done, I'll try and snap a picture of those this weekend. (While I'm frantically trying to catch up with the other sewers ... lol)
It's not to late to join in the sew along. You can follow the action at the Happy Zombie blog. Or at Sew Mama Sew.

Home for one more - I'm finishing up my 10th week with the tadpole. Basil is still a no go, but the nausea in general is slowly starting to decrease. We're moving on the eating-every-three-hours stage. :-D Dave took some pictures of me this last weekend, but we'll keep this post family friendly. :-D You're welcome mother. We'll snap some PG ones soon and I'll share some belly bump.
Here's a candid shot of the tadpole.

Fall harvests

2011-10-10T12:45:00.000-05:00

Well in spite of the frost a couple of weeks ago, my tomatoes are finally ripening. :-D
The row cover protected them from the cold, and the wind, and we've had just enough warm sunny weather to ripen a couple dozen nice fruits. So, I spent the weekend canning, a rainbow of deliciousness. I did something fun this time and canned red tomatoes together, and canned yellow tomatoes together and one small jar of Green Zebra tomatoes. The Green Zebras don't look so hot. That nice sunny yellow and light green stripe that they get when ripe, all that disappeared in the canner, so they look like unripe blotchy green tomatoes. lol

Red, Yellow and Green goodness

I still have a small pile of tomatoes on the counter. Not sure what we'll do with them, it's still being discussed. We've got plenty of jars, (Thanks Mom!!) so we may roast and can another batch of basil-less sauce for me. (The zygote has decided basil is nasty and not to be eaten, seen or smelled, and is willing to upchuck food in order to enforce that opinion. This is very annoying as I've had an awesome year for basil production.)

Dave has finished the chair he was making for Rowen. We took some birthday money that Grandma DeeDee sent for him, and we bought some wood and a few hand tools and Dave made him a chair, just his size! We got some stain, so that still needs to go on, but it looks pretty good.

As the days darken and the garden bounty wanes, I'm once again drawn to my sewing room. I have a massive window quilt that was supposed to be finished earlier in the spring, and is still patiently waiting to be finished with the hand quilting. I have a vest for Rowen made out of fleece, with a zipper and hoodie. I ordered the zipper this weekend, and I've sewn as far as I can go without it. While I'm waiting on the zipper, I have started tree pants for the yule tree I'm determined to have this year. (Tree pants, because not all trees like to wear skirts. hahaha) I'm making crimson stars on a cream flowered background. I've not done any stars yet, this will be my first attempt, I'm following the Happy Zombie sew along to help me through the bumps. Thankfully her pattern is a square tree pants, because round things are yet another aspect of quilting I've not got to. :-D I'll try to put together a star or two and post the results in a day or two. Wish me luck!


Crimson stars on the cream/flowers.

National Sewing Month Wrap Up

2011-09-28T17:29:00.000-05:00

Yes indeed, September was National Sewing Month. So, I'll show off some home-made goodies.

Here is the new curtain I made for the bathroom. This is a window that used to be covered with just the blue checked fabric, donated by my mother and tacked to the wall. I thought to myself, "Self, we can do better than that." So, I designed this little piece to cover the window and use the donated fabric, plus some remnants that were languishing in the fabric pile. The bottom third is unquilted, because in the summer the bottom of this window is often open for airflow. So, I wanted to keep that part of the window covering light enough to allow for that. The butterflies are my first attempt with iron on embellishment. Not bad. I'll probably never do it again. :giggle: I'll spare you the list of goof-ups, you can see them yourself if you look. :-D All in all, I'm rather pleased with how it turned out.

Mom made Rowen the cutest little train bag to hold all of his Thomas the Train pieces and cars. Utterly adorable. Super sturdy, and he loves it already. Thanks Mom!

The two of us are headed to the AQS show in Des Moines this weekend. She's headed that way right now, and I'll be joining her this Friday. Can't wait! It's so much fun to see all the new quilts and buy pretty materials from the vendors. A weekend with my mom is icing on the cake.

I've almost got an apron done for my cousin in Texas - Hi JoBeth! - all I'm lacking is the final bit of rick-rack. This was my first time working with rick-rack and I totally messed it up. Not enough to redo it, just enough that I had to go back and re-read everything and look at all the pictures to figure out what I really need to do with this stuff. C'est la vie. But, I have to say, I hate it when patterns tell you to buy 2 packages of something, and that's NOT enough. Have packages of rick-rack gotten smaller in the past few years? What's the deal with that?

I got in some more diaper fabric from my buying co-op, so as soon as I get all the existing diapers inventoried I'll be starting on new baby diapers. :-D If you do a lot of sewing, and you haven't looked into fabric buying co-ops you absolutely should. They are wonderful. Warning: they are also enablers, if you have trouble saying no to good buys, DON'T JOIN. lol

I hope your September was full of sewing, and your October is too!

Fall Begins

2011-09-28T07:03:00.000-05:00

I drive to work with the sun rising over the golden corn fields. The tractors are already at work in the early light. An occasional pheasant or hawk can be seen taking their morning sun. I'm sure there's beauty to be had in places like NYC, but to me, nothing beats the views I enjoy here in NW Iowa, especially on a sunny fall morning.

The entertainment isn't terrible either. We took the boy to the corn maze again last night. He had fun last year, but this year he was much more interested in the playground and the kids than he was in pumpkins or corn. And of course we had to discuss all the animal sounds that the petting zoo animals made.

I asked the pumpkin grower what she thought about my volunteer pumpkin patch and how edible the fruit are likely to be. She thought I had a great chance of having edible fruit, and a likely chance that they are edible but not fantastic-tasting. That makes me excited to try them and see. We picked up a couple of squashed for decorating and 1 pie pumpkin just to compare against my volunteers.

The garden is limping along, tomatoes are gamely ripening, one at a time, so I'm hopeful I'll get one last batch of something made with them. Seeds are setting and drying. Squash are hardening.

"Though the fields lay golden;
Something whispered, snow."

Family=Family++

2011-09-16T12:01:00.000-05:00

For my code-impaired readers, the title means basically Add 1 to Family. :-D

I'm happy to announce that Dave and I are expecting a little podling around May 20th. I'm happy to have a warm little proto-human nestled inside for the long cold winter ahead. And I'm happy that most of the ice and snow will be gone when I hit the huge-and-clumsy stage at 8+ months. It'll mean another year of spring planting with nursling in tow, and winter garden planning to include another baby's worth of peas and squash. Love it. :-)

We had our first frost yesterday, so the gardening heyday is definitely done. I've got my blankets and such out, trying to extend the season, Rowen helped me wrap the tomatoes up. It kept them from freezing, but they are definitely stressed, I can see signs of blight and I just don't know if all the green tomatoes will ripen or not.

The squash vines are slowly dieing, revealing their fruit goodness. I think I'll have a few butternuts and a dozen or so little green acorns and 6 at least pumpkins. Whether they are all edible, remains to be seen, since most of those are volunteers.

The squash has been a fun experiment

We have large quantities of goodness stashed away in jars. Green beans did really well this year, as did the herbs and onions and garlic. Potatoes did well enough, and I might get one more head of cabbage before the end of the year. So, while I'm not ready to see it end for the year, I am happy with the bounty we got for our efforts.

Rowen helping pick the green beans

Kindergardens - The edges of the day

2011-08-31T06:35:00.001-05:00

Dawn, and dusk. Something about those times creates magic in the garden. Dawn still retains some of the darkness and mystery of night. Fog and mist twine around the growing produce, especially here in zone 4 as we ease into chilly September. There's so much promise to the day, what will be new? A new tomato? A new squash blossom?
Dusk brings an easing of the day's heat. Dew gathers as the coolness of night spreads. The fading sunlight and the twinkling of the first stars. Yea, there's definitely something about the edges of the day.

August has been a productive garden month. We've had a steller run of the bush green beans and purple beans. I've got the first pumpkin, and we've harvested at least a dozen summer squash. Potatoes and onions and garlic are nestled in their storage locations. Rows of jars are full of August bounty. Little bits of summer, ready for the long winter ahead.

Rowen quickly learned the joys of green bean picking. After he tired of plucking at random parts of the patch, he decided to help move the piles of beans from one place to a "better" place. Then he decided that the green beans and the purple beans should be in different piles. lol
He's also really intrigued by the watering process. Mostly I think he just likes to play in the water, but often he'll fill the can up and lug it around and water plants that interest him. It doesn't seem to be plants that necessarily need water, one time he spent 5 minutes watering one especially large squash leaf.

We have some amazing volunteer squash that have literally taken over the yard this month. (And the tree, and the garden and the compost pile....) Behold, the elusive tree squash. A delicacy, or so I'm hoping.

Stay tuned for an exciting child related announcement later this week. :-)

Projects getting done

2011-08-29T07:26:00.001-05:00

Well, in spite of the busy garden season, I am finding time to finish up some projects. Sewing projects first, since I've been garden heavy on this blog lately.

I've finished my first knitted scarf! It's really basic, with an easy to wash yarn and a pretty variegated green color that should match well with my camo parka. That's right, camo matching tips, right here on My Path to Freedom. hahaha Seriously though, I wasn't sure I'd like knitting. It seemed complicated and I thought for sure the 2 year old would unravel everything at least once, but to my surprise, it was a nice project for those evenings when I didn't want to read, and it was really nice to travel with. I think I must have knitted half of it on planes traveling for work. Yes, you can get on a plane with knitting needles in the US. I have done it multiple times since the increases in security after 9/11.

I've already started project #2, it's a headband/ear cover in a plain black wool, with nice ribbing. The ribbing was tricky at first, but I feel like I'm really starting to get a handle on multiple stitches and patterns. The ribbing makes the headband stretchy, but in a firm sort of way, so I think it will stay on nicely.

I finished a wall hanging for my mother's birthday! A bit belated, but I think she likes it. I'm usually not big on fancy sewing for hanging on a wall. But, she's my mother and she deserves it.

I made a big bag for Rowen to put his Little People playset in. It's one of those sets that has a dozen little people, with little cars and a farm house with little animals... cute, but annoyingly easy to spread around the house like little bits of chaos. So, a big soft bag, with drawstrings was in order. I used Minky, strong seam techniques and some tie line from Dave for a free drawstring. Love it.

With the ever patient help of my husband, we got the curtains up in the basement food storage room. This means I can get the potatoes out of the kitchen and down there and hopefully have fewer of them sprout this spring. We also got gifted my Dad's hand-me-down shop vac, so the basement can get a much needed cleaning. Cleaning is important for more than just superficial looks, it means fewer attractions for vermin and fewer things for mold/mildew to hangout on.

Curing has finished for the garlic and onions, and I'm doing a bit of cleaning and sorting and trying to get them in their proper places. I have over 60 onions and about 25 garlic heads. I still need to find more of both, in order to store sufficient quantities to see us through till next spring. The cleaning isn't an involved process, I'm just trimming up the dried roots and trimming off the dried tops. (I don't braid them, if you are braiding, you'll want to do that while they are still green and pliable.) The garlic usually has an outer layer of the paper-skins that's dirty, and I'll gently thumb that off, mostly for appearance, partially to keep dirt out of the garlic storage bags.

We got 5 pints of salsa canned this weekend. Sssshhh, don't tell Rowen that we don't need the food mill to make salsa. He does love to help.

Sharing the Canning Fun

2011-08-25T12:01:00.000-05:00

We've been doing lots of canning the past few years. I've gotten better at gardening, and at finding local veggies and fruit when they are in season. I've also been gifted boxes of jars regularly which helps immensely. I have bought some too, but I've been amazed at how many jars found their way to me when I started to tell people that I was a canner. Out of basements and attics of people who are passed their canning hey-day. (Thanks Grandma Dee Dee!)

I have to give credit where credit is due. I can't do it all. Dave has stepped up and has helped a lot with the processing and preserving this year. I couldn't do it without him. Between 2 jobs, volunteer work and the garden I just don't have time to salt cucumbers for 3 hours for tasty Bread & Butter pickles, not if I want to sleep too. :-D Asking for help has never been a strong suit, and there are hiccups when we do things differently than the other would, but overall I think we do a pretty good job of working together. Often a job will start with me in the morning, then pass to Dave in the afternoon, then be completed by me in the evening. The drawbacks to this arrangement are obvious, more chances for something to get missed. We've found that lists and lots of notes help with communication. The benefit is that even with the miss-steps, we get a lot more done, things that neither of us could do alone.

I have found the time to teach my canning skills to a friend here. She promised to take me out bow hunting in exchange for a canning lesson or two. (Yay barter!) I invited her over for the whole tomatoes, which are easy because I like to raw pack them, but at the same time we got to go through the pressure canning process which was really intimidating to her. She was pleasantly surprised by how easy things were, and how straightforward the instructions were in the little canning booklet. I told her about the tools I like to have, and which instructions are more important than others. (Spices can be tweaked, PH can not. )

Keeping in touch with experienced canners has helped too. This is a bit of a challenge since I live half a continent away from my grandmothers. I have canned a few times with my mother, and that's always a joy. My neighbor is a canner, and I'm using her salsa recipe right now. But, mostly I rely on the internet to keep me in touch with other canners, to swap recipes and get inspiration.
Food in Jars
Punk Domestics
Local Kitchen

There's always new things to try. New recipes and new tools. It's hard work, but I enjoy most of it. I really enjoy the home canned goodness in the long winters.

Totals so far:
4 pints of sweet corn (there's still a lot left from last year)
5 quarts of applesauce
7 quarts of whole tomatoes
5 pints of garlic dill pickles
6 pints of Bread & Butter pickles

We have a box of tomatoes/peppers and a large bag of green beans waiting patiently for their turn in the canner.

It's my birthday!

2011-08-15T12:36:00.001-05:00

Yup, August has always been my favorite month. Enough sunshine that I'm finally warm. Tan lines, and tomatoes. Parties for my favorite people. (August babies are the best, and not just because I'm an August baby.) The days are still long, the nights are clear, and everything is growing. This post is a bit of an amalgamation, as things are busy, and I have stuff to share, but not enough time to flesh them all out into their own posts.

Rowen and I invited a co-worker and his daughter over for the potato harvest. We all dug in the dirt and came up with a big pot full of potatoes and a wide array of bugs, spiders, rocks and weeds. I swear the kids were just as excited over the bugs. :-D The potatoes yielded a good amount of well formed tubers. They didn't have the scab problem that I noticed last year. I was hoping for that, because I had read that a first-year-from-sod garden would grow out of that problem the second year. I know others nearby that don't seem to have my success with potatoes. I would swear I'm not doing anything special. But, I'll write down some of my practices, in the chance that something will work for those attempting to grow potatoes.

First, I put them in the ground early. Here in zone 4, that means a week or two before the last frost date. I'll protect them with a quilt or something if there's going to be a hard freeze, but they are otherwise able to handle the cold temps and frosty mornings. I dig a trench, and put the potatoes in there, mounding up the dirt to one side. I cover with part of the dirt, and a small layer of straw. As the vines grow, every 6 or 8 inches, I put more of the dirt on top, and more straw. New potatoes will be formed above the seed potato that you planted, so you have to give them room to do that. Loose soil, with the straw to keep things airy, but at the same time, light is no good, and will turn them poisonous, so the layers have to be as sunlight blocking as possible.

I don't do anything to the seed potatoes. I'll let them get some good budding on the eyes, and then I just plant them. I don't cut them, I don't dust them with anything... I'm very laissez-faire about it. I have had good luck buying seed potatoes from an Iowa source, Seed Savers, and I've had good luck buying seed potatoes from the bins at the farm store in town.

That all I do. :-D I watered them a couple of times, during really dry weeks, but not very much. For those struggling with golf ball sized potatoes, maybe some of this could help. You could try asking your local ag people too. Here in Iowa the people to ask are the ISU extension offices, they have all sorts of good info on local growing environments and what grows well and how to do that.

My coworker's daughter had a great time, and hopefully enjoyed the potatoes I gave them. Rowen loved having a little friend to play with. Total win-win.

In other news, the plum tree and the apple tree that I gleaned from last year, are both a bust this year. The plum tree has no fruit set, and my neighbors report that the apple tree is sparse and wormy. I'll do my own recon of the apple tree, perhaps some higher branches have something worth picking. This compounds the problem of the raspberry canes not producing much this spring. So, it's looking like this weekend I'll have to do a serious search for some local fruit and spend some money to get my fruit preserving done. I hear there's an apple orchard on the south side of town. This is ok. We're much better off financially than we were last year at this time, and if I have to spend money on something, at least it can be local fruit. It's too bad about the plums though, those spiced plums were freaking delicious.

I'm doing some canning outreach. As a twenty-something I'm well aware of the skills my generation is missing. One of these is How To Can. So, when a local gal mentioned she'd love to learn, I took note. I have 20 pounds of tomatoes to process this week and I've invited her over to help and learn the basics. She's a great bow hunter, so I'm hoping she'll return the favor and teach me a bit about turkey and deer hunting, since all I have experience with is birds.

So, summer wanes, the toddler grows, and I'm trying to get my community more prepared for the unraveling. I love it, but there's always work to do. :-) That's about as profound as I can be today. As always, I love hearing from y'all, so chime in if there's something you're dying to talk about.

Food Waste Reduction

2011-07-29T07:00:00.000-05:00

Americans in general waste a LOT of food. Usually the waste is in kitchens and homes of everyday folks. It's a big deal, and something where action by individuals can improve the situation immensely. Unlike other huge problems I won't mention.

The biggest challenge we face in my house is gracefully handling the fresh produce coming out of the garden every summer. It comes in waves, in bunches and, often it seems, right before a big trip. :-D Squash and green beans tend to be the worst, with lettuce close behind. We did lose some lettuce this spring, I had a gal at the farmers market who was desparate to get rid of lettuce and I took more than we could eat.

But, I'm happy to say, we've not let any green beans die in the fridge. Hubby can take some well deserved credit for that, as he stepped up to the canning plate and canned 4 quarts of green beans out of the garden. So far we've only had one of the summer squash go bad, and that one I think I harvested poorly and shortened it's little life. There's still a lot of summer left, but I'm really hopeful that we can keep up this streak and take full advantage of the bounty. I'm getting better about just getting it cooked, instead of waiting for that perfect recipe. We're both getting better about saying, "No, let's eat in and use up that bag of green beans."

It's not earth shattering, it's not going to save the world. But, when I know there are starving people in Africa, at least I can face myself in the mirror every morning knowing that I didn't leave perfectly good food to die in the fridge.

In related news, Riot 4 Austerity should be starting up August 1st. Sharon over at Casaubon's Book is leading the charge. I'm waiting anxiously for word on where the Riot will be living online.

Solar Dehydrator

2011-07-28T12:30:00.000-05:00

Calamity Jane over at SHTF blog is doing a solar dehydrator build. I am soo in on that!

I've got a window, and I'm thinking I'll build something along these lines, but smaller.

Join in the build if you're interested, either here or over on SHTF. Should be a lot of fun, and who doesn't want to keep the hot air outside this summer for our drying needs? I dry a ton of fruit and herbs, and often my little plug in garage sale dehydrator just can't keep up. It doesn't do any good at all with jerky and fruit leathers.

Some of the comments there suggested old cars as DIY dehydrators. I guess I'm unusual in that I don't have any old cars sitting around. I've only ever owned one car, and that's the car that's still in use as the only vehicle for our family. Using it as a dehydrator would be an inefficient use of resources I think.

If I make it right, I'm hopeful it can double as a base for a solar oven. *cross fingers*

American Redoubt

2011-07-22T12:16:00.000-05:00

I hang out in some prepper/survivalist groups. Let me say upfront, I don't think end times are coming, I don't think One World order is about to declare martial law, and I don't think the gubment is about to put us all in camps. There has been a growing movement lately that just gets my dander up. It seems like a bad idea all the way around, and I have NO desire to participate. I'm speaking of Rawles "American Redoubt" movement.

Believers gush about the concept, "it is time for freedom-loving Christians to relocate to something analogous to 'Galts Gulch' on a grand scale."

Early proponent and settler Chuck Baldwin, "I read the letters and emails from people all over America who feel the divine urge to come to the Mountain States. And many are coming to Kalispell, Montana, specifically to be part of Liberty Fellowship and the band of patriot Christian brothers that are assembled here." Did you notice the militant language in use? "Bands of patriot Christian brothers," I wonder what SS members called themselves? Further reading brings up mention of building bunkers and prepping to repulse attackers if needed. Who are they planning to be fighting? Answer: other Americans.

These Christian nut-bags hate anyone who isn't the right type of Christian or the right type of prepper. Putting their persecution complex in high gear, this movement encourages like-minded families to move to a select few states in the western part of the US. "If you aren't in agreement with most of those precepts, then I don't recommend that you relocate to the Redoubt--you probably won't fit in." and "In calamitous times, with a few exceptions, it will only be the God fearing that will continue to be law abiding." Fear mongering isolationist twaddle. Millions of Americans are good without god. Millions more manage to remain decent human beings using an amalgamation of spiritual beliefs.

Are hard times coming, yes I think that's unavoidable. Is it time to circle the wagons and give up on society at large, no. This is the time to knock on your neighbor's door and ask how they're handling the heat wave. This is the time to review your personal safety nets, and keep a close eye on your financial well being. This is the time to start community gardens and food gleaning programs to improve the food security of your hometown. This is the time to brush up on your making/repairing skills and sharpen your tools. Abondoning your community/town to relocate to an undisclosed location out in the middle of nowhere, that's just foolish and shortsighted. What happens when the utopia doesn't pan out or your fellow Christian soldiers decide, for whatever reason, that you are not the right kind of kindred? Don't kid yourselves, any group that starts out with a long list of people they don't like, will only find ways to make that list longer. To those individuals who already happen to live in the Redoubt area, you have my sympathies.

Jobs - The Plural Form of Job

2011-07-18T07:30:00.000-05:00

It's been quiet here on the blog front. The reason is 2-fold. Firstly, the garden is going gangbusters and I've got a lot of work keeping up with it.
Secondly my primary-paycheck job has been busy. And I've finally rounded up a secondary job in this new town. Which brings me to today's musing.

I've been working two jobs since I was legal to work. When I was in high school, I wanted to go on an honor choir tour of Europe. I worked at a Maidrite and at a PakMail in addition to school and extracurriculars to earn the ticket fare and program costs. In college I worked at another sandwich shop, plus did campus tours for prospective students. That transitioned into sandwich shop/modeling, and so on.
As with the other plurals in my life, there is a primary and secondary. The primary job pays most of the bills/food/rent/savings. The secondary job pays for fun things, hobbies, and entertainment. For the past 5 years my second job has been very different from my first job. I find it's more interesting that way. But, there is something to be said for secondary jobs that occasionally add value to the primary job.
Really, I think it doesn't matter so much, *what* the job is, as much as it matters that you *have* a second job. If you're like me, you primary job makes a fairly set amount of money. You can count on x dollars every week, balanced out by (hopefully) less than x in bills. There's savings in there, of course, (you do save, right?) but what if you need 2x one week for car repair or dental bills? That's where a second job can come in handy, something that you can schedule a few more hours with and pull in some more cash. This could be work out of your home, sewing clothing or work at the nearby minimum wage shop. Anything that can flex to accommodate the primary job, and if it brings in freebies that's even better. (The sandwich shop would give us a free sandwich for shifts over 5 hours in length, the modeling gigs would get me occasional free passes into art exhibit openings.) Online work can be nice, as that isn't bound by location and can help ease the transition when moving long distances for the primary job.

I know I can't live off of the secondary job, but I know they can expand to fill gaps, which often can't be said of my primary job. By diversifying I keep more options open. Options that are important when unemployment rates are skyrocketing and government safety nets are being slashed.

I find that organization is key when you enter the realm of multiple jobs. Most people can handle it, we organize more than that on a daily basis. But, I find that calendars and planners (I'm a paper sort of gal, but go digital if that's better for you) are essential. I have to keep track of my work load and manage expectations from multiple bosses, including myself and my spouse. It's worth keeping in mind how you'll deal with the job come April 15th. Is it a contractor/independent worker type of thing where you'll be on the hook for all the taxes? Or is it a paycheck type gig where the employer takes care of withholding every week?

I know people that can't even keep 1 job. I don't understand that at all. Jobs that I could hold down in my free time with one hand tied behind my back, are routinely walked away from because the person in question found an aspect of it not to their liking. I get anxious when I'm only working 1 job, I can't imagine being totally without. I imagine I'd start a home based business that day and carry on from there. I think it's just not in my nature to sit around and wait for the safety net to catch me. I don't have any answers for those of you dealing with a no-job situation. My belief is that everyone has the tools and the abilities to do *something.* If you can't "find" a job, quit looking for one, and just do your work from home, and find someone who's interested in paying you for it.

If you're intrigued, and want to try a secondary job, take stock of what time you have available, be realistic, and start putting out feelers. Whether it's 2 hours a week of home daycare or weekend dog walking, it can add up and it can make a difference. Don't put too many pre-suppositions on the search, be open to new opportunities, even if it's something very different from what you normally do. It may surprise you!

"I live to fulfill my purpose in life, it is a daily struggle."

Little Man, Big World

2011-07-01T12:02:00.000-05:00

Another Kindergarden post. If you want in on the fun, hop over to Inadvertent Farmer.

I let Rowen have the camera this past week. At just over 2 years old, he's not real good with keeping steady while pushing the button. Plus, he kept crawling into the bike trailer, instead of clicking away in the garden. Here's the view from inside his trailer, looking up at my legs. lol

After that, we settled for a walking tour of the beds around the house, and I let him point at what we should take pictures of. That worked a little better. :-D We have some really pretty lilies open right now. Next to lilacs, lilies are my favorite. These guys don't have as much sun as they'd prefer to have. So, they are leaning over and a little leggy. Still really pretty though.

We saw a big moth on our large ash tree. Can you spot him? I hesitantly identified him as a catocala. If someone thinks otherwise, let me know! :-)We had a playdate Weds with Sue (the gal from the community garden) and her grandson who is 4. Rowen enjoyed having another small person around. We all sat outside and let the kids play in the wading pool. Sue, of course, would love to see us join her church and dropped hints whenever she could politely fit it in the conversation. :-D I, of course, was frazzled from a long day of remote startup support with a plant in Ohio, and was in no mood to be preached at. She never took it that far, and even said at one point how, "unique" she finds our family to be. lol But, we enjoyed the visit anyway, and the kiddo's sure loved that pool. And so, the collaboration continues, politely and at time tentatively, but it's worth it to see that garden full of veggies for people in my community. Does anyone else find that kids can ease socially awkward situations?

40+ mpg

2011-06-30T20:37:00.000-05:00

The little Honda ticked in at 40.8 mpg with this last tank of gas. This car is 8+ years old, and gets better gas mileage than any of the 2011 line up from Ford or GM (excepting plug in electric Volt.) I drive a mix of highway and city, and rarely go over 65mph. This is not rocket science. Why can't US auto makers get it through their heads, that their decades old technology for 30mpg cars and 15 mpg trucks is sad, and pathetic, and not something I want to invest money in? Yes, the civic is a little cramped for my 6 foot tall husband, and yes there are times I wish we had something with 4 doors and more trunk space. But, when gas is tickling the 4$ mark, I Love the Honda Civic. The few days a year when something bigger would be nice, hardly compare to the weeks and weeks of gas sipping efficiency.
Husband and I share this one car. We also have the bikes and trailer for in town errands. We manage multiple jobs, week long camping trips and Iowa winters, with very little hassle or problem. Square bales fit in the trunk, and if I pop a seat down I can fit 8ft lumber in. Granted I only need to do those things a few times a year, but it's always awesome to watch the truck driving people as I load up everything they're loading up , but in a car half the size of their gas guzzling behemoth. And don't even get me started on how awesome it is to get groceries or visit the community garden on the bike. Even with just our cheap pull behind trailer, it's really enjoyable for the whole family. Rowen gets some fresh air, Dave and I get exercise, it's a win-win.
All that aside, I recognize that our family may need to get another car in the next few years. While I can cram one man in there, Rowen's not going to stay small forever, and cramming two leggy guys into the Civic would be torture. We're not about to compromise on fuel efficiency, just to buy an "American" car, not when we can so easily meet all of our needs without compromising. Detroit, are you listening? I wouldn't have bailed you out, I'm certainly not going to give you money for gas guzzling crap cars. Is it so much to ask for a 4 door car with at least 35mpg and price under 20k? Honda doesn't think so.

Kindergarden - What's new?

2011-06-27T07:27:00.001-05:00

What's new in my garden this summer? The green onions were new this year. The spring round of them is done now, to much success. I am going to try a fall round, which will be planted in another couple of weeks. The other new thing is the amount of vine crops I'm trying to grow this year. In the past I have only had the room for a couple vines of squash goodness. This year, due to lawn space and the community garden plot I have all of the following planted.
Black Beauty Zucchini
Gold Zucchini
Parade Cucumbers
Butternut Squash
In addition to those varieties, I have a couple of vines sprouting from the compost pile, where several acorn squashes met a moldy end over the winter. So, I'm hopeful that I'll get some locally adapted acorn squashes from those.

Rowen's interest continues to wax and wane. I can usually get him interested for a few minutes if there's something related to bugs, mud, or piles of things. :-D He did pull a few leaves off a weed last week, as his contribution to the weeding task.

I wish veggies made noises. :-D Rowen is learning words right now, and is fascinated by the noises that other things make. I'm sure if veggies went, "Ding" or "Woooo wooo" he would be much more excited by them. The last few thunderstorms have been gold mines for noises that need names and repeated mimicry. :-D Thankfully they've barely made any damage in the garden. We had a beautiful lily get knocked down last night, and some branches from our big tree. Storms like that remind me of yet another positive benefits of root crops, they are unperturbed by wind.

If you are wondering about the Kindergarden blogging, check out Inadvertent Gardener for the details.

Summer Solstice - 2011

2011-06-20T12:32:00.002-05:00

Tomorrow is the Summer Solstice for those of us in the Northern Hemisphere. It marks the point of the year with the longest day length. For gardeners, this means anything planted after that day will have less sunlight every day. So, I try to have everything in before the solstice, and then I shift into harvest/weed mode for a month or so until it's time to plant for fall/winter.

This spring has been pretty good, in spite of the wind and rain I've got everything in that I needed to get in, and a few extras.

Rowen helped me plant the community garden plot. (And by help I mean he napped for the first hour, then blew some bubbles, and then followed me around like a little duckling making his quack quack noise.) We put straw around the squash hills, which have sprouted and grown real leaves. We put seeds in for some more purple green beans, (because you can never have too many) kohlrabi, (sorry dear, I couldn't resist) two different basils, a red and a green, and some swiss chard. We also rescued some sad looking onion transplants and put them in the ground, I don't know if they'll make it, but I'm not worried about it either way. While we were there we met our garden plot neighbor, Ms Linda. She was very nice.

The home garden is also bursting at the seams with freshly planted warm weather crops and lush well grown cool weather crops. Garlic scapes were harvested this past weekend. Bulb production is looking good. Onions are bulbing nicely too. Cabbages have started to head. Lettuces are sending up seed stalks. Peas are covered in pea pods, but due to the herbicide spray from last year, I'm hesitant to eat them. I'll likely save them all for seed. Beans are looking good and are about to flower, as are potatoes. I got 10 tomato plants planted, with organic egg shells crumbled into each hole to stave off blossom end rot. (I'm hearing reports of blight in the NE again, keep an eye on tomatoes again this year.) I also got three pepper plants in and a few herbs. :-) We should be good on tomatoes and peppers, if they produce well. *cross fingers* Rowen wasn't able to help with the tomato planting as the mosquitoes were about to carry me away, and it was decided he should stay inside with Dave. They both helped slather me with anti-itch creme as soon as I was done. Such nice boys.

Speaking of the men-folk. Rowen did get to help with the card we made for Father's Day. I put some cut out letters in a ziplock with a few dabs of paint and let Rowen squish it all around. (I think there was some hammering involved too.) Once a nice tie-dye look had been achieved on the letters I took them out and let them dry. We then colored a nice background on a construction paper card and I glued the letters onto that. :-) Yay crafts!

Happy Solstice everyone, enjoy summer!

Renting + Gardening

2011-06-17T17:32:00.000-05:00

I'm a gardener. I quit fighting the impulses 6 years ago with my first veggie plot. Every year since I've put some seeds in the ground, and most years see an increase in my total area of cultivated ground. The amount I harvest is pretty substantial as well, my estimates are in the hundreds of pounds, for the past couple of years. I use a variety of spaces, right now those include my front lawn, flower beds in the side lawn, a dozen containers, and a community garden plot.

With all that, some people are surprised when they learn that I'm a renter. I've been renting for longer than I've been gardening, so the gardening habit has formed around that constant. (If you can call moving every year a constant.)

The year with the highest amount of harvest was during the year when we lived in a 1 bedroom basement efficiency with newborn Rowen. I had 3 different community garden plots and planted everything in those. 1 was within walking distance, and the other 2 I drove to once a week. Lack of yard space has never held me back. (Yes, I do realize how lucky I am to live in Iowa where growing things and green spaces and good soil are still the norm.)

Fast forward to this year, and I've dug up large swathes of the yard, put lots of love and attention and perennials into the flower beds and started a community garden that I may never see grow up.

Yea, I am putting in a lot of work for the rental house and our (probably) temporary home town. We're in a stable position right now, we've been here for almost a year and a half now and will likely stay for 3-4 total. I know my family will see some benefit from it. Things like the rhubarb and chives and sage planted last year are already producing tons. I like the thought of leaving a place better than I found it. It's a common philosophy, from Boy Scouts to Burners, (don't go off on tangent about boy scouts, don't go off on tangent about boy scouts...) Somehow, it still surprises people when they see it in practice.

The way I figure it, just because I won't live here forever doesn't mean I should limit my gardening. I was clear about my gardening intentions from the first time we came to look at the house. The landlady is not very garden saavy herself, but has given me pretty free reign to dig as I please. I return that trust by making sure that the flower beds not only look waaay better than how I found them, they will remain pretty long after I leave. (Perennials.)

The habit puts me on good footing with neighbors. Usually with rental places the neighbors are tired of the blighted conditions and respond really well to seeing some work put into making the place nice looking. It's not perfect, I'm not going to buy the expensive perennials or craft a year round blooming masterpiece of a bed, but it looks better. Our house isn't the blight of the neighborhood anymore. The neighbors don't have to cringe when they walk by. That is better PR than anything else I do. They'll forgive our pagan-hippy ways if it means I'll keep fixing up the yard and garden beds.

So, all you renters out there, give it a shot. Call up your landlord or landlady. Invite them over for cookies or tea and explain what you want to plant, where you want to plant it and how you'll handle the transition when you leave. That tiny bit of communication is usually all it takes. Once you start, other gardeners will notice, and bring by thinnings/cuttings from their plants to fill in gaps. I planted 4 of my own plants and was gifted another 6 or 7 in that manner.

Apartment dwellers, don't despair. How much does your manager pay to have the greenspace mowed? Can you reduce that cost for them if you take a quarter of the space and turn it into an apt garden? Make it worth their while in a monetary sense and you'll have a strong ally.

This country has a lot of renters. The numbers are growing. We need to feed themselves just as much as homeowners. If we don't start somewhere, who will?

Community Garden Success!

2011-06-10T12:18:00.000-05:00

I'm happy to announce that the LeMars Garden has officially opened for planting. :-D A little late in the season, but 1st year hiccups are going to happen.
The effort was started by a group of women at the LeMars Bible Church here in town. Led by a great gal named Sue, they coaxed a bit of land from the church and got it disked. They got in touch with the Garden Coordinator in the city just north of us, and since I too had been in touch with her, she pointed them in my direction. Yay for networking!
It is a great match, (even if they do tsk-tsk over my pagan-athiest status.) They need someone with energy to spare and experience in community garden startups, I need more planting room and really want to get a community garden started.
We only have 8 plots this year, and so far 7 are taken. If the last one doesn't have a gardener we're thinking we may do a communal plot of corn.
I'm excited to finally have something concrete to work on/with. I knew as soon as I moved here that I wouldn't feel like a member of the community until I had given something back. I knew that I wanted that to be a community garden. Finding the time to make it to the Tuesday 11am city council meetings was proving impossible, so teaming up with the church has been a welcome windfall. I know others out there who are trying to get similar projects started, so in the interest of passing along info, I'd like to talk about some of the how/when/where's of the project to date.

8 plots makes it, by far, the smallest community garden I've ever worked with. :-) Which is both a positive and a negative. On the plus side, for novices to the community garden system, (which most of these ladies are) smaller makes it easier to keep track of what's going on, and who's doing what. Smaller does mean there are fewer people doing the work though. With the gardens in Des Moines, we knew we could count on 15-30 people who were serious and would show up for work days and meetings and such, here we have 4 or 5 people.

I'm trying to offer my help, insight and experience, without turning this into a Des Moines community garden. I love and miss them, but this garden is not going to be anything like them. Sue had browsed through dozens of garden applications, and pulled the parts she liked from them into the application and guidelines that she presented to the garden board. I did have a lot of suggestions for her, some of which she took and incorporated in, some of which may get incorporated in later and some of which she left on the table. :-) Mostly it was little things, like instead of saying, "If your plot is untended for too long, the garden board will reassign it," I suggested she put a discrete time frame on it, so gardeners know they can't leave it for more than 2 or 3 weeks, but an absence of a few days isn't an issue. Other topics included a fee for the plots, work days, garden monitors (this one was new to me, but I generally liked the idea,) perennials and compost.

There's the gist of the thing. It's been fun meeting more ladies in town. Rowen of course, being his usual charming self made friends with all of them. I have one of the plots, and I have squash vines planted already. My plan is to bike the mile there once a week or so to weed/water. So everything that goes into that plot has to be hardy enough to handle the mild neglect. Hopefully it works out well.

I'll leave y'all today with a recent bit of writing by Aaron Newton, a response to the question, "What is the peak oil community NOT talking enough about?" I feel his words capture my feelings towards local involvement and making changes happen close to home.

AARON NEWTON

“I have set aside any hope of a meaningful response to energy descent or climate change in the United States at the federal or state level, which means international action will continue to be ineffectual as well. I feel this sentiment has set in among many of those who keep up with these issues. I now follow the developments of peak oil in the same way I follow baseball, as a pastime. I am interested in whether or not monthly total liquids production has in fact eclipsed the all time high of July 2008 in the same way I occasionally check to see if the Phillies are still leading the NL East.

I now spend very little time on awareness in regards to people that have no idea about these issues; turning down invitations to speak to such groups and avoiding the topic at cocktail parties. Instead I spend time with those people working on plans for regional and local responses to the future in a world with less of everything available to us. I’m telling people that sure, it is interesting and somewhat useful to continue to follow the saga of peak oil and climate change but that they should spend the lion’s share of their time on actionable projects with a bullseye mentality of home, community and region and not to worry too much about what happens outside a 25 mile radius of their home.”

Growin' Rowen

2011-06-02T16:31:00.000-05:00

:-) I amuse myself with titles for these posts sometimes. :-)

The garden is coming along nicely. Dave and I are quickly ramping up our salad eating to keep up with the lettuce, spinach and green onions that are in full production. Speaking of, the green onions are a BIG success. They are so sweet and good, and haven't required any additional work on my part. The spacing seems right, they aren't looking too crowded, and I was able to pull out individual green onions without a whole row coming up. I was aiming for about an inch between them in the rows, and a couple of inches between rows. Tight spacing means we have a LOT of green onions, for a very small outlay of space. I will definitely be doing this again. I might even try it this fall if my leftover sets are still good.Above is what the garlic looked like a week ago, it's a bit more bedraggled looking now, as the wind has been gusting above 20mph almost every day since I took this picture. Garlic is pretty sturdy though, so I'm trusting it to handle the abuse.

Rowen has been learning the finer points of "stay on the path," a tough request when his crazy Momma only leaves about 8 inches for said path, then meanders it around corners to better accommodate the plants instead of the walker. :-D He's getting pretty good at it though.

The potatoes have sprouted, most of them. Yay! I'm anxiously waiting for signs of life from the middle row, but the front and back rows are mostly - partially up, so I'm hopeful that I didn't kill them all by putting them in before the last snow.

The beans have sprouted, including some of the runner beans that Rowen "helped" plant. The runner beans are entirely for the local pollinators. I'm rehabilitating some areas of the backyard from the damage the last owner left. The landlady didn't like the natural methods I was employing last year. (i.e. weeds, the neighbors complained, there was poison involved, it wasn't a good day.) So, this year I've planted tons of peas and beans in those places and I'm hoping that a bit of compost and some healthy growing things, will help them along. Next year, (if this year goes well) I'll think about planting food for us in those spots.

The cabbages are filling out nicely. We'll have 7 good sized plants this year, which makes me happy. True to my word, I gave them their own bed, with lots of space and light, so they'll hopefully do better than last year. I failed again at growing them from seed. All my little cabbage babies died in the trays. Oh well, there's always next year.

I have cucumber and black zuchinni seeds sprouted in hills on the East side of the garden. As well as a whole host of squash babies sprouting in the compost pile. :-D I may let a few of the volunteers there live, if only out of curiosity. Even though Dave might kill me. :-D

Right now Rowen doesn't seem to be interested in the the sprouted plant babies. I'm not sure he comprehends that those tiny green leaves are from the seeds that he helped put in the ground. It's a tough concept, and 2 is probably a bit early for it. So, we'll keep trying. Right now I mostly try to keep him from walking on them. He is very interested in tools. He sees me and Dave use tools, and we have a set of small plastic ones that he can use, but he totally knows the difference and it's increasingly hard to get him interested in the small plastic ones, when he knows that he wants the big serious ones. To this end, I'll usually let him help with the hoeing, which usually consists of me helping to hold the weight of it, while he furiously works to make it go up and down. He also gets to help push the mower over shorter grass, again with me or Dave doing most of the work. (It's a push-reel mower, don't call DHS on us.) Usually a few minutes of this and he'll decide he's helped enough and will let us take control back. I sometime have to catch myself, when I start to get irritated with the delays and interruptions, and I have to remind myself that this is early training and NOT a waste of my time. In ten years no one will remember if I got the side lawn totally mowed on Friday night, but Rowen will remember getting to help with the mowing, and it'll make transitioning that chore to his responsibility a bit easier.

Out With the Old

2011-05-23T17:46:00.002-05:00

I have been sewing a lot lately, Rowen needed some new diapers, and wetbags to replace some that were wearing out. (None of the handmade diapers are wearing out, we inherited a set of used prefolds from my best friend. They were well used when we got them, and we've put quite a few more miles on them since.)
This is round three for the diaper supplies, and I've changed some things from the original set. Most of the modifications have been with the design of the wetbags. I've made them bigger, my very first bag was something like 12x14" and these last two bags have been 13x19". I've also changed the zippers that I use. Instead of the really common (and pretty colored) polyester zippers, I am using the molded zippers. The teeth are bigger and tougher, which is good for the heavy duty use these bags get. We had problems with the polyester zippers wearing out before the rest of the wet bag. The molded zippers don't come in as many colors, but it's worth it for the increased durability. I've gone from two velcro hanging loops to just one. We never used both velcro loops, we always hung the bags with just one, so why waste the velcro. I've also stopped putting in the scrap of terry cloth that some people use to put essential oil on. Again, we never found a need to do that, so I just don't waste my time putting it in.
In terms of construction, I've changed how I put the layers together. I have two layers in my wetbags, one of the PUL material, and one of a cute outer print, usually cotton. (Some wetbags use a cute polyester material that has the PUL laminate on the backsisde already, I'm not that fancy.) I used to sew the two layers together at all the seams, thinking that would make them sturdier. Sturdier indeed, but it was also a direct pathway for seepage through to the cotton outside, which is not desirable. So, now I sew the two separately, joining them only at the top where they both meet the zipper. This limits the seepage through, it also allows the inner lining to totally flip out if needed for cleaning/drying.Don't be fooled by the weird perspective here, the wetbags are rectangular, this one just looks smaller at the bottom in this picture.
Future modifications, should there be a round 4: Dave has requested that the zipper open around one of the top corners. Sometimes, having a wider opening to get the dirties out would improve the laundry experience. With the old zippers I could match the size pretty closely, so this wasn't an option, with the new zippers, I am more limited in my sizes and so the zippers I chose are bigger than the top of the bag warrants. With all that extra zipper hanging out in the top corner, Dave thought it might be possible. (It is, I'll just need to figure out how to best arrange the seams.)

Other changes, include a lessening of the inner layer on the prefolds. Instead of 3 or 4 layers of terry cloth for the soaker layer, now I just use 2. I also felt more comfortable switching up the outer fabric, and I did a knit for a couple of the diapers, (teal and green) and a velour with a printed design on it for the others (blue Ooga Booga.) It's a little cuter than the plain, off white, velour. (Everyone knows cuter is better.) I still use the plain velour on the layer that's closest to Rowen's bottom, just to make sun bleaching easy.
Another recently complete project - a nice carry bag for traveling with a bit of sewing. I was going on a long work trip and I wanted a way to take my kniting and a small bit of handsewing. This fabric was one of those impulse buys, and I didn't have a plan for it, so I took the whole cut, (probably a half a yard) and folded it until I had a nice shape. A few quick seams, then a quick bit of yarn for a drawstring, and Voila! I love quick projects.

Storms and lessons learned

2011-05-22T17:04:00.001-05:00

This past week hubby and I went to an adults only, burning man inspired, regional burn, (Interfuse).
This is not a post about drunken escapades or drug induced visions of utopia. (I say that because I have relatives who think that's the only thing we do at these events. Hi Grandma!) This is a post about lessons learned from an extended outdoor - no vending - no cabins - camping experience.

To set the stage for this tale, let's start at the beginning. We got to the campgrounds Weds afternoon. Immediately we realized the bag with the hand tools didn't get into the car. So, no mallet for the stakes, and no hatchet. We were coming in from out of state, so we didn't pack wood, our plan was to buy it once we got close to our destination. This didn't turn out as planned, either it was too early in the season or we were looking in the wrong places. So, we had no wood. (With no hand ax, it's probably best we didn't waste money on it.) Now, some of you are probably surprised we didn't turn around at this point and try again another weekend, but that's not how these events work. It's very communal. Both Dave and I were doing multiple volunteer shifts, so we knew we could easily skim wood from those. Also, at it's heart, the event is a burn, there's always lots of fires and lots of wood. We figured we could find a neighbor with fire and do our cooking with them, when we weren't being fed from the volunteer kitchen.
So, weds evening we were both fed from the volunteer kitchen, we got our camp set up and enjoyed a bit of sunlight and a pleasant evening. Thursday was the first official day of the event, and again we both had volunteer shifts, welcoming the new arrivals and making sure that infrastructure was in place to make the event go smoothly. We had cold breakfast, but a warm lunch from the volunteer kitchen and we scavenged wood to make a tasty taco dinner. Thursday evening started with some showers and drizzle, we cleaned up dinner, put out the fire and started to prep for an evening full of old friends and new friends and music and art. Most years the evening entertainment is best observed in wild skimpy outfits, (preferably homemade,) and cold beer in hand. As it was already cold and drizzly, we both opted instead for street clothes and jackets. We did get in some visiting and watched some fire spinners before things really got crazy.
We were halfway around the campground inner circle and the drizzle was picking up, so we cut across the burn space and started to head to our tent, thinking we'd take a break and evaluate whether we wanted to call an early night or find a cozy dome to party in for a little while longer. (Dome refers to the geodesic domes that are common at these types of events.) The decision was made for us when the storm slammed into the campground. We were still a ways away from our tent, but close enough that we kept to that heading instead of branching off to one of the more stable structures. We were both soaked in a couple of seconds. Still calm though, it was just a little wind and rain, right? We were almost to the tent when the worst hit. Crazy wind, almost knocked us off our feet. We were close enough to watch the wind snap poles on the carport that I had help erect for the gate greeters. These were not tent poles, these were aluminum poles a couple inches in diameter, with welded joints, fully staked down with ropes tied to rebar that had been pounded into the ground. The wind then picked up the fire, out of the burn barrel that was stationed at that greeter station, and sent the flaming wood and embers down the road, and straight towards Dave and I!! We turned our backs just in time and luckily escaped injury. We were less than a dozen yards from our tent then and we picked up the pace, passing by our neighbors who were desperately trying to keep their campsite together. We got back to our camp, we could barely see for the rain and wind, we grabbed our camp chairs and went to the tent, to find it had partially collapsed.
Of course, I had left my flashlight and headlamp in the tent, (I didn't want to get them wet) but Dave had his. So, I secured the camp chairs, while Dave went to look at the tent. After stowing them in a corner where they could drip safely, I went to help Dave. Basically, the side that was getting the brunt of the wind had collapsed. (In retrospect, after seeing the damage done to the carport, perhaps collapse was a better thing to do than breaking.) Dave took the lead, and re-staked things while I lent my weight to the lines to try and keep the walls upright while he staked. Teamwork prevailed and the tent was re-staked and held against the wind.
We then spent the next hour holding that side of the tent (from the inside) during strong gusts while simultaneously getting dry and warm and sopping up the puddles as best we could. We sleep on an air mattress, so most of the bedding stayed dry, except where leaks dripped down from the top of the tent. Those were easily dealt with, and we went to bed when the storm calmed, listening to the rain and wind, and relieved to have survived unscathed.
We woke the next morning, with new trouble. Most of our warm gear was soaking wet. We hung up everything in the eaves of the pop-up and put on layers of whatever was dry. Thankfully we had known the chance for rain was high and had packed 4 jackets between the two of us. It was barely adequate though and we resorted to draping our blankets over our shoulders to visit friends. We did make it through the day, although we lost a few of our neighbors who hadn't made it through the storm as well as we did. (Our corner got a lot of the wind as we were at the top of a hill with fewer trees between us and the storm due to the parking lot.) There were others who had to abandon their tents, and got adopted into other camps, because that's how burners roll.
The rest of the event passed without incident. Our soaked jackets eventually dried and we were nice and toasty warm for the effigy burn.

Lessons learned:
-Don't leave all the packing to someone who is also wrangling a 2 year old. This is not to put blame on Dave, this is to say that it's too much to ask of someone, especially when it all has to fit in a tiny car and demands a few repacks to get it all to fit. Another pair of hands and another pair of eyes would probably have caught things like the hand tools.
-Stake down everything. We would have been a lot worse off if we hadn't taken the time to stake down our tent, our rainflap and our pop-up. The carport that collapsed at the gate would have been a bigger disaster if we hadn't secured it to rebar stakes.
- Bring more blankets than you think you'll need.
- Be cautious of fires during a really windy storm. Even if the fire is a dozen yards away.
- Know your gear. Can you put it up in the dark? In the wind? With rain in your eyes? :-D Is your tent better in summer or does it work best in blustery spring and fall? We have a tent that's great in summer, but it leaks a little in heavy rain and doesn't hold in enough heat when it's cold out. We work around those things with layers and blankets and the air mattress to keep us out of drip puddles.
-Know who you're camping with. We would have been a lot more miserable, (and home early) if we hadn't been camping with a group of people who consider us family. Whether it was fire, wood, beer or a warm place to hangout for a few hours, it was awesome to know that our burner family had our back.

Spring Planting

2011-05-11T09:23:00.001-05:00

Well, spring continues it's warm and welcome march. We've had a windy and stormy one so far. Thankfully the hardneck garlic that is a foot tall can handle the abuse. The onions are hanging in there, as are the cabbages and lettuces. Peas are up, and would be doing better if we could get some rain. There's lots of rain forecasted for this weekend, so hopefully they'll take advantage of that.
I've been planting seeds, as often as I can. Most of the beans are in, my usual mix of Empress and Purple Podded bush beans. I also have a lot of Runner beans planted, in an effort to tempt pollinators into my garden, and shade some weeds out of a trouble spot.
Potatoes are in the ground and hopefully going to sprout soon. (If I didn't kill them by putting them in too early.)
I have parsnips, beets, bok choi, radishes and swiss chard planted as well.
The tomatoes and peppers are still happy in the greenhouse. They won't go out for another couple of weeks.
I don't do all my planting at once. I never have the time for it. So, I'll plant one or two things a day, and somehow it all still gets done. I make sure I'm working in order of cold tolerance, so I spend the blustery early days planting peas, and then when things warm up I choose according to season length. (Things that need every last day of our short season get priority over those that only need half the season.) Sometimes I'm better at this than others, but that's my general plan every year.

Jess mentioned in a previous post how much she enjoyed my winter storage experiment, and how nice it will be to see it from the beginning. There is a lot of truth to that statement. Winter storage planning does start now with these small seeds. Really, it started last fall. I planted my hardneck garlics last October, and that's what I'll eat this winter. I do keep my storage numbers in mind when I'm planning the year's garden. I know, for example, that I want at least 50 garlic heads to get me through the year. I can't physically grow that many, but I easily have the room for 2 rows of 15, which gives me 3/5ths of my yearly garlic needs, from my front lawn. Leaving only 20 that I'll need to buy from a local farmer. Knowing that number makes it easy for me to buy all at once, when the price is right, instead of 1 or 2 at a time every week. To continue the example, I know that I have some jars of tomatoes left, but no jars of green beans. So, this spring I'm devoting more space to green beans and a little less to tomato vines. I always end up buying a bunch of tomatoes anyway to do things like sauce and maybe this way I won't have to buy any green beans. (And maybe my potatoes are dead and I can plant tomatoes in that spot! hahaha) Parsnips handled winter so well that of course I have another row of those planted in the garden. Beets though I'm pretty sure I won't store, I just want some for variety, so those are in a container, where I'll (hopefully) remember to harvest them nice and small and tasty.

You can certainly get by with just throwing seeds in the ground, and if you're just starting your garden adventure, there's no better place to start. But, if you want the most bang for your buck, and return on your time, put some thought into how you want to use the veggies, when, and in what amounts. :-)

200!

2011-05-10T05:59:00.000-05:00

Hard to believe this is the 200th post.
To celebrate, this post will be a rundown of the hippy causes, celebrations and events that I'm looking forward to this year.

I'm excited to report that Sharon is reviving the Riot for Austerity. Older readers will perhaps remember my posts with monthly updates on our family's austerity measures. (A search of the tag "Riot 4 Austerity" will bring them up if you're curious.) Here's Sharon on the start of the movement and a bit of the why behind it.

Almost exactly four years ago, my friend Miranda Edel and I were discussing the recent IPCC report on Climate Change and George Monbiot's book _Heat_ and the reactions that we got when we talked about about the sheer depth of the reductions in climate emissions that would be needed to stabilize the climate. Whenever we began to discuss emissions reductions on the order of 80 or 90% the universal reaction we got was that it was impossible - impossible to imagine living in the developed world on so much less. So impossible there was no point in even discussing or imagining it.

Miranda and I disagreed. We felt that this critical inability to conceive of what was necessary was something that we had to - and have to - overcome. Both of us were aware of material limits on a renewable energy build out, and the time frame for such a transition, and we knew that the evidence at the time increasingly suggested that we had to make our changes sooner than we could possibly imagine such an energy transition. Moreover, both of us looked at this through the lens of energy and resource depletion as well as climate change, recognizing that there were forces driving us towards a life with less whether we like it or not.

Someone, we agreed, had to take the very first steps to conquering the underlying doubt that we can change. Someone had to do the basic work of establishing a vision of a life in the Global North that doesn't include conspicuous consumption of energy. More importantly even, as long as we felt that our response to climate change and energy depletion had to wait on policy measures - to wait for the high speed rail lines and superinsulated new homes, to wait for carbon credits or whatever, we would not act. We needed to find a way to show that you can act right now - and make not a little tiny difference by carrying your cloth bag, but a big and measurable one - a change that nobody else thought was possible.

We stole from George Monbiot the wonderful line "Nobody ever rioted for austerity!" He was right - no population in human history has marched and demonstrated to have less. We figured we'd be the first.
Miranda and I set out to document our project and spend a year reducing our energy consumption by 90% over the average American's. What we didn't expect was that first dozens, then hundreds, and by the end, several thousand people joined us. We had expected to struggle. We hadn't expected to find community, and most of all, to have fun.

It's not yet up and running, there's talk of moving the group from the original Yahoo-group to something like a Facebook group. And of course, I'm still talking with my darling husband about how far we'd like to participate and what our personal goals will be. Watch for more updates, I'm excited!

World Naked Gardening Day is once again happening. This is year 6! May 14th, 2011.

Why garden naked? First of all, it's fun! Second only to swimming, gardening is at the top of the list of family-friendly activities people are most ready to consider doing nude. Moreover, our culture needs to move toward a healthy sense of both body acceptance and our relation to the natural environment. Gardening naked is not only a simple joy, it reminds us--even if only for those few sunkissed minutes--that we can be honest with who we are as humans and as part of this planet.

I'll be participating, but sadly not in my own garden. My garden is in the front lawn, on a semi-busy corner quite close to a catholic church and school. :-D :-D So, I'm sure I'd get a visit from the sheriff if i tried. Very unfortunate, but there's reality for you. So, I'll be participating, while at one of my other favorite celebrations, Interfuse!

Interfuse will be happening from May 12-14th, with Dave and I volunteering to help with the setup before hand, making it a really loong weekend of burner fun. 800+ burners, hippies and circus folk. With principles such as Leave No Trace, Radical Inclusion, Radical Self-Reliance, Radical Self Expression, Decommodification and Gifting it is a welcome retreat for this hippy. Leave no trace means when we're gone we don't leave behind trash, cigarette butts, damage to the environment, etc. Radical inclusion and self reliance means everyone is welcome, no matter how weird, but all are responsible for their own happiness and well being. There is no party planner, the fun is what we make on our own. Which ties into the radical self expression; art, costumes, shows are all encouraged and are given free reign. Nudity, burnable art, dancing, music, food, you name it, you'll see it at Interfuse. Decommodification means no money exchanges hands during the event, instead gifting is practiced, true gifts that have no requirements for equal exchange, or reciprocation.
In many ways Interfuse, (and other burner events) are like the Riot in that they strive to be an example, to prove that there are alternatives to the consumerist patterns that we live every day in the global north. To prove that there are other ways to organize and live peacefully.
Ticket sales are closed for Interfuse this year, but all are welcome to join the group and next year will be here soon. There are also other regional burns, if you don't happen to live in the Midwest.

World wide marijuana marches take place this month too.

The Global Marijuana March is an annual rally held at different locations across the planet. It refers to cannabis legalization related events that occur on the first Saturday in May, or thereabouts, and may include marches, meetings, rallies, raves, concerts, festivals and information tables.

A lot of them happened last Saturday, the 7th, but there are a few happening this weekend yet. As well as follow up events. Check it out!

This year will be another big push for the Friends of Iowa Midwives, we'll be trying once again to get legislation through the state legislature to certify midwives in our state. It's still too early to list events, but I'm looking forward to spending some time on it this year.

I'm excited to see how NW Iowa local foods expand this year. There seems to be a lot of energy bubbling around and I'm really hoping it coalesces into something meaningful. There's a school in the county north of us that's exploring local foods for kids lunches. And I'm still working (slowly) on getting a community garden in my own town. Expect to see updates on some of that.

Well, 200 posts seems like a small milestone, but I'm excited to share it with y'all.
Big shout out to my family, both near and far. And to my friends, I wouldn't be who I am without you guys. I love you all.
To my readers and followers, I don't know what to say. I hope you get as much pleasure and information from this blog as I do. I can't believe other people are willing to read my babbling, but I'm not going to stop, so hopefully it keeps on being interesting.

Kindergardens!

2011-05-06T12:23:00.002-05:00

The Inadvertent Farmer is sponsoring another year of Kindergardens! The basic premise is to encourage youth to get in the garden, be it planning, planting, watering, weeding, harvesting or eating. :-D We do a lot of those things, and Rowen loves to be involved with all of it.

He's 2 now, and helps more and more every day. He's slowly learning how to stay on the path. He's a pro at watering. And loves helping to move piles of things into other piles of things. Sometimes those piles of things are of the same type, sometimes not. :-D

The other member of our family is my hubby Dave. He likes the food that comes out of the garden, but isn't as heavily involved in the day-to-day operations. Partly because I like it so much, and he knows it's my stress relief , as well as something I really enjoy doing with Rowen. He does heroically take over when I'm out of town for work travel. That always happens at least once a summer, if not more, so he keeps up to date with what's going in and what's coming out and always does a great job of stepping up to help out.

This will be my 9th year gardening my own plots, so I consider myself fairly knowledgeable about what's going on and what to expect. I love helping other gardeners, so if you're new here or new to the garden thing, feel free to hit me up for advice. I am in zone 4, so my knowledge does tend to lean towards short season problems and tricks, and I know less about heat/drought problems. But, some advice is universal.

This year we'll be gardening the main plot in the front yard. It's roughly 8 feet x 16 feet I think. We also have small gardens on the South and East sides of the house, and one on the South side of the shed. The smaller gardens have more of the flowers and perennials in them. I also keep a multitude of containers in production. Flowers, herbs, greens, veggies, whatever strikes my fancy and has a root system amiable to the container size I have available.

We don't have much that's specifically for Rowen to garden, he has a few pots that he can play with, and some tools, but usually he just helps with whatever I'm doing. He loves to help hoe and loves to steal my spade. :-D Mommy's tools are always cooler than his tools.

Join us for this year's Kindergarden blogroll. If nothing else you can get a weekly dose of cute kids outside.

People pedal power

2011-04-29T08:19:00.003-05:00

I am an ardent supporter of people powered transportation. Walking and biking are great exercise, plus they are easy on the planet.
I've been biking seriously since college. I got through the 5 years of my engineering degree with just a bike for personal transportation. Ames, IA had a great bus system, which made the decision even easier.
Now, I'm excited to share that passion with my family.
We bought Dave a bike with some of our tax return monies. A trailer for Rowen was also picked out. Helmets and water bottles too, of course.

I'd like to say that health and exercise and green living aided Dave in his decision, he maintains that he got a bike because I'm cute. :-D I guess I'll take what I get and not complain.
Thankfully everyone enjoyed our first family ride. Rowen really enjoyed helping to put the trailer together. He loves running around the house in his helmet, and while the first time getting in the trailer was a bit scary, by the time we'd gone a half a block, he was giggling maniacally. :-D Dave likes the freedom that the bike and trailer give him and Rowen. They can now easily make it to all corners of our small town, and can run some of the household errands without having to walk miles carrying Rowen and everything else.

Our little rural town is fairly bike friendly. There are some bike paths, not enough in my opinion, but some. Most are on one of the busier roads in town, and it's not a wide road to begin with, so sometimes it's just more pleasant to forgo the bike path and bike in the road one or two streets over. That's a fairly common problem though, and nothing I haven't dealt with before. Bike racks can be found at places like Walmart and the library, but not many can be found downtown. Again, a common failing, and nothing that's insurmountable.

There is a bike club in town. They meet weekly in the summer for a group ride and social hour following. It was a good place to meet new people last year, and I'm excited to introduce Dave and Rowen to the weekly ride. Hopefully they'll continue to enjoy the bikes, I know this Momma is enjoying having her family out with her for rides. :-)

Winter Food Storage Wrap Up

2011-04-22T17:02:00.001-05:00

Recap: I was aiming to store veggies from November through the end of March.

Onions - I cut up my last storage onion on the 1st of April. So, that worked out really well.
Apples were also done by the 1st of April. As were Sweet Potatoes, and regular Potatoes. And by done, I mean, the last remnants were shriveled and not very edible, or in the case of the potatoes, ridiculously sprouted. I'll finish the garlic by the end of this month.

Lessons learned:
1) I have a pretty good handle on how much we currently eat of certain things. I wasn't way off on any of my figures.
2) We supplemented a lot with fresh citrus, from TX and FL. If that supply was ever cut off, for economic or weather or other reasons, I would need to increase the storage of the more local apples and preserved fruit.
3) I need to get black out curtains in that cellar. No question. The small amount of daylight through the windows was too much and potato sprouting was a huge problem. We lost 10 pounds of our red potatoes due to early sprouting.
4) Wrapping apples individually in newspaper worked well to stave off spoilage. Paper disappeared into the compost pile readily, and was free to begin with, so no wasted money there.
5) 1st of April worked for this experiment, but next year I should try to go to May, as we still had snow on the 1st of April, and there was nothing local to buy.
6) I still need to get more squash worked into our winter diet. We had a couple go bad before I got them cooked.
7) If I want to try for carrots I need to increase the humidity down in that room.
8) It never made it down the recommended 40 degrees F, it hovered around mid 50's, and that still seemed to be ok.
9) In ground storage of parsnips worked REALLY well.

In terms of money, I think we probably saved a bit of cash. Storing the free apples, free garlic, cheap onions, cheap potatoes and cheap squash certainly saved us a lot of money, but that was offset by the loss of 10 pounds of store bought potatoes that sprouted before we could eat them.

Overall, as a starting foray into the world of winter cold storage, I thought this experiment was a success. I have some areas to improve in, I had some successes and I learned a bit.

Anybody else have any lessons learned from this winter?

Snow tonight

2011-04-15T17:07:00.000-05:00

Well, I finally finished the previous post. It took me 10 days, so I hope y'all like it. There was a lot of slogging through agriculture reports and organizing it into something (hopefully) coherent. For posts like that one I do try to include sources as much as possible. One thing the internet excels at is providing a platform for anybody to write anything they want, and sometimes it's hard to filter out the nut-job opinions from the fact-based theories. So, if you are curious about any of the statements in that post, feel free to follow the links and make your own opinions. I do try to make the post sturdy enough to stand on it's own without the reader having to review all of the source material first. It's hard to gauge that sometimes, so if you have feedback, I'm very receptive to that.

Looking ahead in blog land, spring is usually a hectic time for me and this year is no exception. But, I've got a couple of hefty posts like the last one I'm slowing working on, as well as a wrap up of the winter food storage experiment that's a bit overdue. Mixed in will be my 200th post!!!! As well as updates for my extended family who probably only read my blog for those posted pictures of the cute grandbaby.

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As the title suggests, we have snow forecasted for tonight. boooooo. The Dakotas have a foot of the white stuff in some places, and parts of Nebraska are under a blizzard warning. I've got seeds in the ground (peas and greens so far,) as well as potatoes and onions. The garlic is 4 inches tall! I'll review my books this evening and drape my garden blanket over part of the garden tonight. Right now I'm thinking the potatoes will be most in need of snow protection, as the greens are in the cold frame and the garlic can take the cold. If I change my mind, I'll let y'all know. :-D

Easter frosts are a grower's worst nightmare. A few years ago we suffered through an Easter Blizzard here in Iowa. These hard late frosts can do a lot of damage, not only to tender sprouting seedlings, but to fruit trees and perennials as well. So, it's always a tricky dance to get seeds in early enough that they have time to mature properly, but not so early as to be damaged by hard late frosts. Tricks and tools like my cold frame, and garden blanket, as well as mulches and floating row cover can help mitigate a lot of the damage. They do take some trial and error, but I find they are very useful.

I'm hopeful that we're spared the worst of this storm, but there's no way to tell. Spring weather here in NW Iowa is very active. We had 70's last week, which brewed up quite the storm, and spawned tornadoes just 30 minutes SE of us. We had the wind and the hail, but thankfully no tornadoes. Lots more wind and rain this week, and now snow. Gardening here is not for the faint of heart. Really, even living here keeps us on our toes. I was in bed fully dressed, listening to that hail last weekend. I knew exactly what a storm like that could produce and I had the baby in bed with me, and the emergency kits ready for a dash to the basement. I knew we were prepared though, which spared me the worst of the worrying.

Pictures out of the tornado flattened town, just serve to remind me of the very stark realities that my emergency prepping is designed to handle. Mapleton residents had 10 minutes warning before the tornado flattened 50% of their town.

This snow storm that's headed our way is full of the heavy wet snow that loves to collect on tree branches and bring down power lines. Just West of us in Nebraska, power went down in several place overnight. That could just as easily be us, and we're certainly not out of the woods yet.

Anyway. Back to the happy spring gardening news.
My flat of tomatoes and peppers has pretty little sprouts up in most of the cells. A promising beginning, hopefully I'll keep enough of them alive to donate some seedlings to the plant sale that my Garden Club hosts. I'd also like to have enough on hand to donate to neighborhood children that want a plant to grow. There are a few who have a small green thumb, and their parents are kind enough to let them grow a little patch garden.

I'm having a bit of a problem with damping off in my new little greenhouse. Mostly I think, because of the restricted airflow in there. Once all the little seeds sprout, I think I'll try rolling up the door to allow more airflow. Hopefully the baby and cat won't take that as an invitation to create havoc in there.

As soon as the weather calms down I'll be putting the flats outside in the hardening off area that Dave and Rowen put together for me. (It's a big window from my parents, propped against the house in the sun.) That will help keep the damping off to a minimum I think.

Big O, little o, What begins with O?

2011-04-15T07:38:00.000-05:00

Organic starts with O. But what kinds of things get sold under that label? Does is mean what consumers want it to mean? In short, no.

It has come to my attention lately that there are two different organics in today's marketplace. The big O Organics, and the small o organics. I would like to address the habit of using the word organic to discuss both of them, and how different the two really are. I'll also touch on the debate between organics and industrial farming feeding the world.

You walk into Trader Joes, you buy some fair trade coffee, some frozen organic pizzas and a couple of pounds of organic apples. Big O or little o? Definitely Big O.

Trader Joe's is a supermarket chain specializing in organic, vegetarian, and alternative foods with hundreds of locations throughout the United States, centered in organic-happy Southern California. Shoppers appreciate its image of healthful food in a small-business family atmosphere. Really? In 2005 alone, Trader Joe's racked up sales estimated at $4.5 billion. The company is owned by a family trust set up by German billionaire Theo Albrecht, ranked the 22nd richest man in the world by Forbes in 2004. He's the co-founder and CEO of German multi-national ALDI, with global revenue in grocery sales at $37 billion. -Skeptoid **

There are a lot of big names vying for the organic dollars, Organic Valley Co-op, Stonyfield Farms, Horizon milk, and Whole Foods Market are just some of them. Buyer beware, they are big corporations, with big corporation interests and they may not share your ideals about food or food safety.

It's mid-winter, you're craving strawberries and your grocery store has organic strawberries in the produce aisle. Organic how? Grown, more than likely, in a greenhouse, supplemented with light and heat, then trucked in. Or flown in possibly from South America. Neither of these is in any way better for the planet. This is another big O product.

So what's a little o product? What makes something organic, in the way that most people want? Organics that enrich our planet, organics that help small farmers and foster local food growth. That type of organic is much closer in definition to words like "sustainable" and "local." To find (and eat) that kind of organic, you can't fall for the corporate green washing. You can't take the shortcuts. You have to become the kind of consumer that carves time out of their week to shop at farmers markets. Making things from scratch and buying the scratch from local producers, or growing it yourself, are the best ways to make sure you're eating real organic food that nourishes your family and the planet.

Oh, but Jennie, you're being an idealistic hippy again, there's no way we can feed the planet with organic methods, we need to keep pushing the Green Revolution and monocrops or people will starve. (Sorry, Dad, but yea, this is me parroting you.)

The Green Revolution seems like a good idea. Let's grow corn in Iowa where it grows well, let's grow 80% of the veggies in California where they have the cheap labor to harvest it and mild weather to grow it year round, and wheat in Kansas, then we'll just ship all of it around the country to where it needs to be after harvest. Yea, that model worked really really well, with one caveat. It worked well with cheap oil. Surely I don't have to spell out what's changing now. Surely I don't have to convince you that cheap oil is never coming back. Let's look at how much oil that "ship it around the country" part uses. (The pic is a little small, but oil is the big green line. Click on the source link to see it in full glory.)

source

Let's look at what the Green Revolution promises, " the spread of modern farming, plant research and food processing in poor countries." I know, it sounds like a great idea, but the part they don't mention is that modern farming techniques include a delightful array of poisons, and petroleum derived fertilizers. (Petroleum being that oil thing that keeps getting so expensive.) Modern farming techniques do a few things really well. They destroy soils. They contaminate water ways. They keep petroleum companies flush with cash, as well as the big boys in seed genetics. None of those is something poor countries in need of food should be importing to their agriculture traditions.

Since the start of the Green Revolution the US has lost around 1/3rd of it's top soil. Iowa alone loses 10-15 tons/acre/year. (Where does it go? Hint, the soil, along with the fertilizers it contains, go straight to the Gulf of Mexico where they contributes to the Dead Zone.)
Those pesticide poisons are no picnic either, did you know 300,000 farm workers are poisoned every year in the US from pesticide exposure? These pesticides keep growing stronger, because insects evolve to resist, and we keep applying more and more, AND YET crop losses from insects continue to rise. Herbicides create the exact same problem with superweeds evolving to resist the poisons, requiring higher and higher application rates.
(sources: "World Hunger - Twelve Myths" Frances Lappe. I know, how old fashioned, a book.
Rodale report last year)

Let's explore the other side of this for a minute. Organic methods (little o here, we're talking manure fertilizer and diverse crop rotations) actually build soil by retaining organic matter and soil nitrogen. This better soil then goes on to provide increased protection against drought. This is not hippy wishful thinking either. This is a 27 year study. Side by side field trials, often in collaboration with the USDA. (check it out.) Solid scientific data that clearly says we need to quit with the short sighted Green Revolution and move to methods that perform better, with less inputs. The UN even agrees, (for what that's worth.) In a recent report, they conclude,

Organic agriculture can increase agricultural productivity and can raise incomes with low-cost, locally available and appropriate technologies, without causing environmental damage. Furthermore, evidence shows that organic agriculture can build up natural resources, strengthen communities and improve human capacity, thus improving food security by addressing many different causal factors simultaneously ... Organic and near-organic agricultural methods and technologies are ideally suited for many poor, marginalized smallholder farmers in Africa, as they require minimal or no external inputs, use locally and naturally available materials to produce high-quality products, and encourage a whole systemic approach to farming that is more diverse and resistant to stress.

And just last month that same agency released an advance copy of a report called "Agriculture: Investing in Natural Capital." It amounts to a blistering assault on the agribusiness-as-usual model. It succinctly names the main problems with the goal of spreading U.S.-style industrial agriculture to the global south:

Conventional/industrial agriculture is energy- and input-intensive. Its high productivity relies on the extensive use of petrochemical fertilizers, herbicides, pesticides, fuel, water, and continuous new investment (e.g. in advanced seed varieties and machinery).

In place of the industrial model, the report calls for what it terms "green agriculture," characterized by low-tech, high-skilled methods like "restoring and enhancing soil fertility through the increased use of naturally and sustainably produced nutrient inputs; diversified crop rotations; and livestock and crop integration."

It's time we stopped supporting the Green Revolution, it's time for ag subsidies to end. It's time for small o producers to get the support and recognition they deserve. Most of all it's time to stop falling for the big O green washing. Organic doesn't have to mean expensive, it doesn't have to mean increased deforestation and it certainly doesn't have to mean switching one poisonous chemical for another slightly less poisonous one. Little o organics are cheap as dirt, bursting with local flavor, low in petroleum costs and great for the environment.

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**More on that skeptoid article. First off, it's a little old, it's more than 4 years old, which is a bit too out of date for my tastes, I reference it only because someone I respect emailed it to me. Further more, I completely disagree with some of the statement contained in it. Namely the following bit;

Some supporters of organic growing claim that the danger of non-organic food lies in the residues of chemical pesticides. This claim is even more ridiculous: Since the organic pesticides and fungicides are less efficient than their modern synthetic counterparts, up to seven times as much of it must be used. Organic pesticides include rotenone, which has been shown to cause the symptoms of Parkinson's Disease and is a natural poison used in hunting by some native tribes; pyrethrum, which is carcinogenic; sabadilla, which is highly toxic to honeybees; and fermented urine, which I don't want on my food whether it causes any diseases or not.

The authors squeamishness over humanure as a fertilizer is laughable considering he spent considerable time lambasting the logical absurdities of others and pointing towards solutions that have decades of study to back them up. Urine is sterile, very few diseases can transmit through urine. The few that can, are not going to survive fermentation. He talks about solutions with decades of track record, urine has been used as a fertilizer since ANCIENT times. That's a heck of a track record. Why on earth do we flush perfectly good liquid ammonia down the pipes, then turn around and pay out the nose for synthetic versions of it? Utter foolishness. Further more, small o organic farming uses complex systems to minimize the need for inputs. Chemicals like rotenone and sbadilla, while possibly organic in the big O use of the word, are not used by any of the organic growers I know. Those could be held up as a sign, "Organic, you're doing it wrong."

More from that skeptoid article

Organic farming produces less food, and requires more acreage. Many so-called environmentalists generally favor organic farming, at the same time that they protest deforestation to make room for more agriculture. How do they reconcile these directly conflicting views? If you want to feed a growing population, you cannot do both, and soon won't be able to do either.

Here I feel the out-of-date is showing clearly. You can't take a monocropped field of something, switch the type of chemicals you use (to organic versions) and then make claims about production. That's the big O way of looking at things. The little o way of looking at things is to grow a variety of locally adapted crops that coexist harmoniously and in some case help one another out. This decrease the amount of land and the amount of intervention (chemicals) that you have to use. Additional tools in the little o belt are things like varieties that are adapted to local pressures, planting practices that are hand based rather than machine based and selling to markets that are local. Local varieties that are adapted to local pests/diseases will lower the chemical/petroleum-based inputs needed. Marketing to locals means the crops don't have to survive a long commute, or survive a long display in a grocery store, meaning more freedom for the aforementioned variety selection.

Planting and growing and harvesting practices that are human based instead of machine based is how we "so-called environmentalists" reconcile those views. But wait, isn't that inefficient? Well, it depends on what you're measuring. In terms of human-hours, sure, maybe. But let's look at the realities of modern times, petroleum prices are rising fast, and so are the numbers of unemployed. In my mind it makes more sense to use the solutions that could put more people to work and put less money in the hands of OPEC. Giant fields of one vegetable harvested by a guy in a large machine (powered by petroleum), is not the way to go anymore.

And more over, a lot of the slash and burn ag that goes on is for things like palm oil production, which is used heavily in big O processed foods and beauty products. Or to grow corn for animal feed. Very rarely is rainforest cut down to grow food that locals will be eating.

Syrup thoughts

2011-04-07T12:17:00.000-05:00

I have 3 or 4 posts that are sitting half-written in my blogger dashboard. :-) Too many thoughts all trying to escape at once. Hopefully this weekend will yield some time where I can sit down and hammer a couple of those into completion. Hopefully they're worth the wait. :-D

To keep my readers amused, here's a fluffy post full of spring thoughts and kids and cake.
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Rowen turned two last week. TWO. Man is that weird. I'm sure my mother is laughing at me, but it's weird. Here's the mandatory toddler + cake picture.We went down to Des Moines, blessed by friends that were willing to open their house to us and my parents and a whole gaggle of friends. Thanks Brian and Mel! (Pictures are in the mail for y'all.) New friendships were made. The picture below is my niece, (my brother's daughter) and my best friend Becky's son, those two were inseparable.
And a group shot of all the kiddos. I remember holding all of them as babies, and they're all growing up so fast. These shots were from the Botanical Center. They all had a blast running around in the sunshine and warmth, looking at the plants and fishes and turtles.

I have happy news on the garden front! The garlic chives that I was worrying about have put up strong spring shoots. Yay!!! I'm glad I gave them another couple of weeks. The rhubarb had leaves out of their protective covers this morning. Looking all squished and brainy, I love rhubarb, even when it's a baby plant.
Garlic bulbs are coming up in full force. I've got 3 of the 4 rows showing strong shoots, I'm anxiously awaiting signs from the lagging bulbs. There's rain and warmth forecasted for the next few days, hopefully that will spur some on.
Potatoes are all planted, snugly in their hills. We're trying a new variety this year, Kenebec. And an old favorite, Yukon Gold. Hopefully I'll have the time to try again with the True Potato Seed experiment.

Spring in our new place. I'm struck by the urge to tap our Crimson Maple tree for syrup. I read this month that Sugar Maples aren't the only tree you can make syrup from. People make syrup from all kinds of maple trees as well as Birch trees. So, my goal for this year is to confidently identify all the trees in our yard and research their saps. We eat a lot of maple syrup, and it would be awesome to get some from our own trees.

I hope spring is blooming where you are. :-)

The Garden Season Begins

2011-03-22T12:32:00.001-05:00

Well, it's officially spring. The Vernal Equinox was this past weekend, we had gorgeous weather and a bright full moon. That was enough to get this gardener out in the dirt, with my little helper of course.(Big thanks to Dave for the awesome picture!)
I got the whole plot hoed, and then Rowen helped me get 50 onion sets in the ground. Those were all the yellow onions I grow as bulbs to store. We have another 50 or so white onions that I want to plant in a smaller space for green onions. Typically green onions are grown from bunching onions, but my research leads me to believe that it can be done with bulbing onions if they are grown close together (1" spacing vs the 3-4" spacing for bulbs) and picked early. This is a bit of an experiment.

The garlic I planted last fall is peeking up through the mulch. Some peeked through a little too early and got a bit of frost damage. Shouldn't set them back too far though. Maybe next weekend I'll take a few inches off that mulch so they don't rot in the damp spring weather. There were also a few garlics sprouting from the row I grew last year. They were so small I missed them during harvest. I'll let them grow a second year and see if they bulk up a bit. Worst case scenario, they don't and I toss them, but at least they can help repel some pests until then.

The turnips I overwintered in hopes of growing out for seed all look dead. :-( I covered them in mulch, but it's looking like none made it. I'll give them another couple of weeks to put on some growth or otherwise look alive, but it's not looking promising. This isn't a huge setback. It's not like there's a shortage of turnip seed. I'm just a little disappointed that I failed in my quest for biennial seed production. I'll probably try again this winter, and do something different. Maybe I'll get one of those windows from my Dad turned into a little cold frame and devote it to overwintering a couple of biennials; or try deeper mulch.

Another disappointment is the Garlic Chive plant that I transplanted from my MIL's garden. She lives in East Missouri, and last summer when we visited we dug up and potted some of her large clump of garlic chives for me to transplant to my garden. It's quite a change from there to NW Iowa, and even though I had them in the ground for most of the summer and fall, and even though I put some mulch on them at the end of fall, it's looking like I didn't do enough. Again, I'll give them another couple of weeks, but initial investigation looked not too promising. Sorry Pat! :-(

The Irises are coming up, and the Russian sage and Rhubarb I transplanted from Des Moines are both showing signs of life. With every day now something new shows some green, and it cheers me immensely.

With the start of the garden season, it's time to bring my winter storage experiment to some sort of close. I'll try and wrap it up and have something meaningful gleaned from it in the next couple of weeks.

Parnips in the Springtime

2011-03-18T14:06:00.000-05:00

As some of you may remember, I miss-timed the digging of my parsnips last fall. I left them in too long and the ground froze. I had heard that parsnips taste better after a winter of cold, and that most will survive without any coddling. So, I left them, and vowed to dig them up this spring and call it an experiment.

True to my word, I was out there a couple of weeks ago during a brief thaw. It didn't quite take a pickax to dig them up, but the ground was pretty icy. I dug up about half the row.

Wow. These things are huge! I broke the first couple because I'd underestimated their size. These parsnips are 14-16 inches long and a couple of them were 2 or 3 inches in diameter at their tops.

After digging and cleaning, my new worry was that they were so big and they might be tough. Well, I chopped up a couple into a soup, and that turned out really great. I chopped some into a stir fry and that was great too! A beef stew last week had some in it, also tasty. I'll go ahead and say it, SUCCESS!

This is one of those practices that traditionally supplements the cold storage of veggies. Ground storage of really hardy roots, through the winter with the intention of digging them up during the lean time of early spring. Different veggies will handle this with varying amounts of grace. Parsnips, celeriac and carrots are some of the veggies most often stored this way, but gardeners in slightly warmer climes than my zone 4, could get away with others, especially with a little bit of season extending, (think covers or mulch.) Cold hardy choices for this technique include most of the root veggies, parsnips, carrots, celeriac, beets and turnips, as well as leeks. Less hardy, but still doable, try radishes, cabbages and kale.

For those that care about such things, these were "All American" parsnips, direct seeded in early spring 2010. None were really ready for harvest in the fall. It's possible some were ready for harvest in early winter. They overwintered with absolutely no mulch or covering or anything, and came out in February tasting good. I'll harvest the last of them this month I think. (I only planted a 4 foot row of them.)

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Blogger update: Sorry for the blog silence the past couple of weeks. The family flu had me down for a week, and put me way behind at work and at home. Things are finally calming down. Expect a small flurry of posts as I purge the backlog of Jennie-thoughts. :-)

Flowers are blooming

2011-03-12T15:06:00.003-06:00

I have Amaryllis blooming on my table this week!

Lots of seedlings popping up in my greenhouse.

We're all wearing green, an unconscious plea for spring maybe?

Spring Seed thoughts

2011-03-03T20:51:00.001-06:00

Oops! Flu knocked me out for a few days. This post was supposed to go up last weekend. :-D Enjoy, I'll just tack an update on the end and call it good for this one.
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Yup! It's that time of year. (Finally!) Time for seed starting up here in zone 4. Only certain seeds though. I started brassicas, some onions and herbs. All with my little helper, and using the new "Mini-Greenhouse" sent to me by my loving grandparents.

So far, I have to say I'm loving the mini greenhouse. I don't have "mini" lights, I have the full sized fluorescent "plant" bulbs in standard 48" housings. So, I improvised a little bit, and I'm hoping that the sunny south window will help make up for the improvisation.
My trusty little warmer mat made it through yet another move and summer storage. I worry every year about that mat, because I've heard from other seed savers that they have a high failure rate. I've never had a problem with mine. *knocks on wood*
Right now, I'm only running the lights/warmer mat 4 hours a day, from 4pm till 8 to supplement the warmth and light from the sunny window. Once sufficient quantities of seedlings appear I'll probably turn off the mat as the seedlings won't need the extra heat. Then, in another month or so when I start my warm weather crops I'll plug the mat back in and put it under that seed tray.
I'm starting veggies: green cabbage, red cabbage, bok choi, broccoli, artichoke and broccoli raab.
And I'm starting some herbs; Mint, basil, thai basil, green sage, catnip and thyme.

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So, it's been almost a week since I planted those seeds. A lot of them have sprouted. All of the veggies, plus Basil, Thai Basil, Thyme and Green sage are up. :-D

Some of these seeds were old, so it's nice to see them still sprout.

More posts soon, after I recover a bit from this flu. Hope all your seeds are sprouting!

Dried Fruit Thoughts

2011-02-21T19:56:00.001-06:00

I dried a lot of new fruits this past summer. New to me anyway. I figured maybe some readers would be interested in how they turned out, and what we'll be doing different next year.

Apples - This one wasn't new. We dried a bag or two of crisp tasty apples. The only thing we'll do different next time is to dip them in some citrus juice to avoid the browning that occurs naturally. (Although, I think I say this every year, and every year I'm always just too stinking busy to mess with the extra step.)

Pineapples - I forget how we ended up with excess pineapple. There's a price point above which I won't buy them, and that means we usually only have a couple of pineapples a year. Must have been a fire sale or something. Because one got dried last year. It turned out really good. I'd never had any before, and they looked odd, so hubby had to push me a little to try it. I'm glad he did. I was pleasantly surprised. We dried them as chunks.

Plums - one of the new ones. I really like dried plums. Yes, they are also called prunes. Prunes just had terrible PR, and dried plums sounds much nicer. These were a wild plum. So they dried smaller and tarter than any prunes you'll ever buy. I really like them like that. Hubby has a bit more trouble with them and has demanded that we marinate them in sugar before we dry another batch. :-D

Raspberries - A neighbor has a long row of raspberries. She was nice enough to gift us several pickings from them. We ate plenty of them fresh and made a bit of jelly. There were still enough to dry a batch, so I did. They dried all crunchy and tart. I love putting them in oatmeal. I had to use the herb screens I made for the dehydrator, as once they are dry, most are small enough to fall through the wide grid of the trays. Those screens are nothing but window screen material, cut in a circle a little smaller than the trays.

Blue Berries - These are like the pineapples in that we usually only get them 1 week a year when the price drops below my limit. We eat plenty fresh for that week, but I always buy enough to dry some. Again, oatmeal and pancakes are livened up by these little gems.

To round out our supply of dried fruit, I buy large quantities of raisins and in smaller quantities I buy dried apricots and cranberries.

Besides my favorite applications in oatmeal and pancakes, there are a couple other things we do with our dried fruit.

Yummy 7 layer bars. Choc, coconut, dried fruit (chopped small), evaporated milk, all layered on a graham cracker crust. Mmmm

Stewed fruit. Or fruit compotes. This has the benefit of being a good use for both the dried fruits and the storage apples that are past their prime.

Dried fruit sampler snacks. :-) Instead of a piece of fruit for snack, we occasionally mix things up and have a cup of various dried fruits. Rowen eats raisins like there's no tomorrow, and little else. Hubby and I like the variety though. Add in some cheese chunks, and a bit of hummus with bread and you end up with a reasonably well rounded quick meal.

Hubby made some "garbage" cookies that had bits of several dried fruits in the dough.

There's a pork chop dish I occasionally cook that calls for dried apples and raisins.

Anybody have something new for me to try? :-) Chime in with a comment!

The Cause behind the Symptoms

2011-02-21T17:45:00.002-06:00

Grow and Resist had a post about the Urban Homestead blow up, that I really liked.

She points out that until we fight and change the patent laws, this problem will come back again and again. Whether it's Monsanto grabbing corn genes from remote plateau villi ages in Peru, who never see any profits from that theft. Or multi-national companies stealing local herbal remedies to patent and profit from. Or companies patenting human genes. Or random bloggers trying to trademark common language. The symptoms all point to a patent system that is broken.

Yes, people need a way to protect their property, protect their designs and protect their investments in research. But does throwing two words together really make them "your property?" Do we really want living things protected as "property?" Do we really want to condone theft of ideas from those less powerful than us?

My answer is no. I'm not sure how to go about this fight. Except to encourage civil disobedience and pirate/steal that which is improperly defined as "property." I'm open to suggestions though!

Should Girls Wrestle

2011-02-18T17:19:00.004-06:00

This has been an odd week. Multiple social circles have been embroiled in debate over matters of gender and the relations between the two.

The atheist community is dealing with low participation rates of women. My state is questioning the appropriateness of girl wrestlers.

I want to focus on the girl wrestlers right now, as I have something clear I want to say on that one. Something I want to say, as an Iowan, as a fighter and as a woman.

Girls absolutely should be allowed to wrestle in school, against boys. If a girl is interested enough, talented enough, tough enough to train and practice, then absolutely let her compete in tournaments and absolutely encourage the boys to wrestle her.

Women need to know how to fight. Think how many hurts and abuses could be avoided if more women had adequate knowledge of defensive fighting. How dare you tell girls they shouldn't wrestle, that they shouldn't fight boys. Nearly 1 in 3 American women will be physically abused in their lifetimes. Do you have a wife, a mother and a daughter? Chances are one of them will face it. I'd argue we should be teaching wrestling in every high school to every girl that will learn. AND teaching them to use it against both genders.

Women can be good at fighting. I've had a Judo instructor teach me how to use my naturally lower weight distribution to good advantage in a hand to hand fight. There were sparring moves in Tae Kwon Do that I always did better with than the guys I regularly fought against, including my brother. So don't try to tell me that girls can't handle fights, that they aren't as good, I'm quite ready to prove you wrong on that one.

High school boys can handle it. Yes. They Can. I sparred against boys all the way through high school. I danced with boys in show choir, often changing clothes in the same room, and doing close dance moves wearing skirts and low cut sequined outfits. No one ever lost control in a fit of lust. And I think the few times I ever even heard about a whiff of trouble IT WAS HANDLED. That's why there's adult supervision. That's why there is parental involvement in the activity. Fighting, wrestling, dancing, building theatre stages into the late hours of the night, there are ways to do them with dignity, with behavior towards one another as human beings, as equals, that even in high school we understood. These behaviors should be encouraged and taught, not avoided. The real world isn't gender segregated. Learning to deal with the opposite sex in a profession, equal, respectful manner is a life skill that will get high schoolers much further than complete protection from temptation or learning.

Should there be separate competitions for girls, sure why not, it can be fun to fight other women, it gets boring just fighting men all the time, in my opinion. But I see no reason at all why girls and boys can't fight together in co-ed competitions either. Because right now, that's all we have. There doesn't exist a girl's wrestling, so if you say she can't wrestle the boys, then you're in effect saying she can't wrestle. That argument has gone on long enough and the only way to get to the point where we can create a girls wrestling community is if we encourage, teach and wrestle with the girls who try to take the first steps.

Keep fighting girls!

Edited to add link: http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/news/story?id=6136707
I liked their take on it too.

My Urban Homestead

2011-02-17T12:05:00.000-06:00

For those unaware of the hub-bub in the urban-food-growing-blogosphere this week, check out this post from Madame Crunchy. (I won't bless the DerV's with web traffic.)

I'm a non-rural food grower. I grow and save seed and store food, all on my urban plot of land, just like those Pasadena folks. Doesn't that make me an urban homestead? Apparently the DerV's think not. They've decided they have rights to multiple phrases and in the interest of "the protection of the term and concept" they have triggered a tsunami of ill will by trying to enforce their ownership. Protection from what? I'm sure they think they are protecting it from green-washing large corps. Somehow they think sending cease and desist letters to other small urban homesteaders who use the term, is serving that purpose.

There's a facebook page that's sprung up in response.

One of the phrases they own now is "Path to Freedom," which is kinda close to my own blog title of "My Path to Freedom." Hopefully they don't send me one of those C&D letters, as I'm pretty sure I'd not go willingly.

Naturally, when I started this blog, with the title I chose, I was aware of the DerV's site. I did some searches with my short list of site names, and did stumble across their site. I also found many others with similar names and themes and decided that the phrases I had settled on were not owned and I wouldn't be stepping on toes.

I didn't follow the DerV's site very closely, as they seemed a little weird, plus they're growing season is radically different from mine, and they have systems that I couldn't dream of doing with just myself and hubby and baby. (They have 4 adults and no kids, that's a lot more man power.) So, I've not really been back to their site since I started this blog.

Since the eruption of this drama I have found more of the DerV's writings, and it only confirms my suspicions. Weird cultist stuff. I don't want to throw stones, I'm not exactly normal or vanilla. But, some of it is just weird. They've been deleting massive amounts of data over the past couple of days, shutting down sites, pages and contact means. Circling the wagons if you will. Not a very neighborly way to handle the outcry. Sad to see the community in these straits. I'm hopeful that we can pull through this stronger.

Not sure if this will change my blog here. I'm not certain I want to relinquish my title, I'm fond of it. I'm also not sure if I want to be associated, however loosely with the DerV's.

Melting Away

2011-02-15T12:26:00.000-06:00

Spring is humming it's warm up tune here in NW Iowa. We had temps in the 40's this past weekend and there was a lot of melting. Much to Rowen's delight, as that meant wonderful puddles and mud holes. :-D We lots about half of the snow cover, and almost all of the ice. Yay!

The warm temps, combined with the seed organizing for the seed swap, combined to create the perfect excuse to get my trusty cold frame into the spring action. I repaired a bit of the winter damage, chucked out the failed experiments of cabbage heads, (they were from the same batch of cabbage heads that did so little in the rest of the garden, after I pulled them I did a little dissection and the root systems never managed to get past their root bound start. ) and got arugula and swiss chard seeds sown, with melting snow to moisten things.

A first for me this year, I think I'm going to get my garden planted, and have no need for a seed order. :-D This is exciting, because seed prices are nothing to sneeze at, and some of my favorite companies are running low due to increased demand. I have excess seeds from past years, plus seeds I've saved myself, plus seeds from trades and swaps; all that seed is exceeding my storage capacity, so the goal of planting the garden entirely from what I have on hand will serve multiple purposes. One, to get my seed levels to something manageable in size, and two, a chance to prove to myself and hubby that the time and space and mess involved in seed saving is worth it. Three, it's always good to grow out and get fresh seed, and some of mine are 3 years old and in need of that.

Speaking of the seed swap, I think it went well. I had 5 people show up, plus myself and Laura the extension gal. I got some good tips on ways to advertise next year, (local radio station) good tips on local food producers, and some interesting new seeds. I also got some advice on people and places to contact about my interest in starting a community garden. I was sad we didn't get any new gardeners, but I can try again next year.

Also melting away is the last bit of my baby weight. :-) I've started a Zumba class at a local gym, and the 2-3 hours/week of fast tempo aerobics has boosted my energy and weight loss. I'm to the point where I need to work on my muscle tone. :-D I'm not interested in paying money to go push heavy things around in a gym, so I'm thinking I'll rely on my yoga DVD, and maybe a bit of boot-camp style workouts just to get me through till spring chores. Come on spring! Mama needs to hoe!

Winter Storage, let's do the numbers

2011-02-09T18:11:00.002-06:00

Initial rate predictions:
Apples --5/week x 20 weeks = 100
Onions -- 4/week x 20 weeks = 80
Garlic -- 1 head/week x 20 weeks = 20 heads
Potatoes -- 4/week x 20 weeks = 80
Sweet Potatoes -- 2/week x 20 weeks = 40

I started the experiment on the first of November, with the goal of tracking through the end of March, so I'm 14 weeks in on the roughly 20 week challenge.

Apples, I wanted 100 to see us through, I only had 60. Of those, only 24 are left. So, we've used 40 apples in 14 weeks. Which puts our useage closer to 3 apples per week. This makes sense, I had jars of applesauce and plums and dried fruit that we've been eating on. Plus, we have been buying citrus fruits as some of our favorites come into season from FL and TX. If we keep this pace, we could last the last 6 weeks of the experiment. Usage rates aside, the apples that remain are starting to get soft and wrinkly. Dave has trouble overcoming an aversion to apples that look wrinkly. (Whether this aversion is from a lifetime of store bought apples or some wrinkly-apple-trauma in his past I don't know.) So, I might make a few apple crisps this month and use the last of the stored apples.
In lower energy times, supplementing with citrus fruits from FL and TX is not as cheap and convenient as it is today. So if I'm planning for times like that, I'll probably stick to the 5 a week rate.

Onions, this one got a little tricky to track. I buy onions by weight, but I was tracking them by numbers here. So, counting got a little tricky after the first 20 pounds of onions and there is some wiggle in these numbers because of that. I have 27 left of the original 80, so we've used 53 onions in 14 weeks. That's really close (3.8) to the 4 per week usage rates I guessed at for the beginning of this experiment. We should have enough to see us through Mid-March, which will be nice, but in reality I can't get more local onions until June or July, so I'll have to figure out what to do for the gap.

Garlic, I thought 1 head a week, which has turned out to be spot on, we've used 14 heads in the first 14 weeks of the experiment. We're eating a little more than that because of the garlic that went into jars of salsa and roasted tomato sauce. This part of the experiment is the only one that came completely out of my own garden. So, it's awesome to see it go well. I replanted the biggest and best of the bulbs this past fall. I have 10 more heads, and that should last us through the end of March. I have some garlic powder and dried garlic pieces from my favorite spice store, and I will revert to those for the 3 months between when we run out and when I can harvest the first scapes from the garden.

Sweet Potatoes, 10 of the original 25 are left, plus there's 12 left of the 20 from my southern relatives. We've used 23 in the first 14 weeks, which is about 1.5 per week. So, I was close with my usage rate guesstimate of 2 per week. We have 22 left I think, so we should last through the end of the experiment, and maybe into April if they don't rot.

Potatoes, 20 pounds left of the original 56. This part suffered the same problem as the onions. Potatoes are bought by pounds, and I'm trying to track them individually. It's not working out so well, and I quit trying with the potatoes. So, I'm going to say that my original usage rate of 4 per week is roughly equal to 2 pounds per week. (I know I know, bad engineer, let's move on.) We've used 36 pounds in 14 weeks, which is about 2.5 pounds per week. So, at that rate, our last 20 pounds should last us 8 weeks, which puts us at the end of March. This is assuming that they don't all sprout and rot, which is a very real concern, especially as we're past Imbolc now and rapidly gaining more light every day.

Losses to rot have been minimal so far, (not counting those darned carrots) with a half a dozen onions, and apples getting tossed into the worm bin. Potatoes have probably lost closer to a dozen since Nov, and will probably lose a lot more before this month is out. There are small windows in my food storage room. I thought they were small enough to not cause any problems, but it's turned out that even that small amount of light is enough to cause my potatoes to sprout. I have some heavy duty black material, I'll be making some black out curtains for those windows to avoid this problem for next year.

Squashes, this category got added a little late in the experiment, so I didn't have initial guesses at our usage rates. It turns out we are using about one a week on average. The reality of that figure is that every other week I make us a dinner with squash, and I'll use 2 squashes so that there's enough for all 3 of us to eat. The other reality to that number is we're still experimenting with squash. For one thing, I only remember eating zucchinis as a child, if Mom ever cooked winter squash, I don't remember it. So, I don't have a repertoire of recipes in my family's cooking tradition that deal with these wonderful veggies. Winter squash is cheap and good and stores well and grows really well in our area; I knew I wanted to expand our usage of it. My little family has tried a number of recipes this winter; soups, baked, roasted, sauteed. We're still not where I'd like to be, I think once a week for squash meals would be a better rate. But, until we find a recipe that we all really like, I'm still searching, and I'll be patient. Stay tuned for the Hubbard squash battle that's coming soon. :-) This thing is huge and I've been saving it for last.

Interesting information has come out of the first half of this experiment. I'm excited about what I'll learn as it winds down.

----------------------------------------Edited ----------------------------------
Hornblower brings up a good point. I should clarify the number of people this is for. 1 adult male, 1 adult female and one <2.

Seed Swap, thoughts on leadership

2011-02-09T07:17:00.001-06:00

Well, the seed swap is gaining momentum!
A local ISU Extension gal, Laura, is on board and helping a lot with getting the word out.
I've got fliers up around town, some hand delivered invites out to gardeners I know in my neighborhood, and emails out to all the local gardening groups I'm aware of. I went to the Garden Club meeting last night to extend an invitation to their members personally. Whew! Now all I can do is get my seeds in order and see who shows up.

As I was talking with Laura this past weekend, I realized that even though I don't consider myself an expert or a leader for seed saving and gardening, I keep putting myself in positions so that others see me in that light. As I realized this, my mind drifted back to my first forays into leadership positions. I was in Jr. High, myself and a dozen others had been chosen for a leadership group, the main purpose it seemed was to plan the Red Ribbon Week dance. I remember thinking at the time, what does this have to do with leadership? Why don't they just call us the dance planning committee? This repeated many time through High School, and into college, where again it seemed like for all the meetings and bills written, the main things I did revolved around planning events and organizing meetings.

Is that all leadership is? Knowing how to coordinate a group of people with a desired event? Setting up tables and chairs? Getting the word out so people attend? Sure, part of it is picking the battles to fight. I know I have no chance of convincing local farmers to stop feed lots or monocropping. I know I have little chance of convincing everybody in my town to grow and store food. But, the other side of that coin is that I know there are battles that can be fought and perhaps I can help with those. The arena of seed saving and local gardening is one that I'm familiar with, even if I don't consider myself an expert. So, I organize these events, all the while thinking it's no big deal, I'm not one of those leaders. Little by little though, I'm starting to realize I am one of those leaders.

Maybe just by default. :-) Certainly not by myself. But, a leader none the less. I think I'm ok with that.

Wild Women Weekend 2

2011-02-04T18:01:00.002-06:00

Saturday was the second in the outdoor series at the local state park. The weather was a little cloudy, but it was not too windy and a nice 25 degrees.
We met at 10 at the park office. (Well ladies who were on time were there at 10, I was fashionably tardy...) There were a lot more women this time. Instead of 8 there were more than two dozen of us. This necessitated splitting the group into two. My group went cross country skiing first. The other half was snowshoeing first.
We got all the skis and boots and poles organized and into the van, then we walked to the start of the trail, where the van met us. Amid much laughter, we all managed to get clicked into the skis and down the first couple of hills. In spite of a couple of falls, I ended up close to the front, with some of the ladies who had cross country skied before. The 5 of us soon pulled away from the others, and we went quite a long ways before turning back to head back to the van and lunch.
I have to say, I really liked the skiing. The skis attach to the boots under the ball of the foot. This meant that a lot of the muscles in use are the ones that I exercise when I salsa dance. It was also the beginning of the day, and I was fresh and excited to be out. So, I caught on to the motion pretty quickly and was able to keep a good pace for most of the hour. Tricky parts included learning how to get back up after falling, learning how to get up hills and learning how to slow down. I'm still not really good at most of those, but by the end I was getting better. I think I fell down 6 times on the way out and only once on the way back in.

So, after an hour of skiing, we were all very ready for lunch, me included. Victoria, the conservationist, had once again made us a dutch oven feast. Last time was the dutch oven pizza, which was delicious, and she didn't disappoint with the Hungarian Goulash this time.

After lunch we spent some time learning about dog sledding, from a couple that do it for fun. They have a few Siberian Huskies and a little sled, which they brought to show us. After a discussion about safety and the realities of the sport and the dogs, they hooked the huskys to the sled and a few ladies got to try it out.

Fully rested, we split up again and I got my chance to try snowshoeing. Now, I don't know about you, but when I think snowshoeing, I think this:

But in reality, modern snowshoes have evolved a bit. They look a bit more like this:
I got really tired, really quick. :-) The snowshoes were great, don't get me wrong. I liked them. It was fun and pretty easy. I was at the end of my stamina though, having spent all week down with a cold, and all month hiding in the house to stay warm.
I pushed through for most of the hour, lagging a bit, huffing and puffing a bit, but still having too much fun to stop.

I called it a day after the snowshoeing. There was another hour scheduled of winter shelter building but I was done in. I didn't want to risk relapsing back into sick, so I bowed out of shelter making.

With both the skiing and the shoeing I couldn't help but think about how much harder it would be with 40 pounds of gear on my back. Or a gun on my shoulder or anything else really. Much more practice would be necessary to be able to do feats like that I think. Mad respect for those that can.

Gear Report: I invested in some long underwear for this event. Justin Charles merino wool pants to be specific. They come in men's sizes, but I found that a small fit me really well. (For the record ladies, I'm a curvy size 12.) If you're a smaller woman, and looking for wool base layer, this maker won't work for you, because Small is as small as they go. Which is too bad, because I really liked them. They fit well, they feel GREAT, and temperature regulation has been wonderful from the first day outside, through a week sitting at the office. (Yes, I've been wearing them every day since buying them. I have a 30 minute drive to and from work on a country highway, I prefer to wear clothing that will handle any kind of emergency, and with -30 windchills this week, I wasn't messing around.) I got them on sale for 40$, down from the original 120$ the big box store wanted. They are definitely worth the 40, I'm not sure I would say they are worth 120. The manufacturer sells them for 60 online, I would say yes to that too.

I realized I need some sunglasses. I like the sun, I've never felt the need to own sunglasses, but even with the cloudy day we had Saturday, I was still dealing with a bit of snow-glare and I would have really had trouble on a sunny day.

All in all, a great weekend. I'll be doing more of those sports I bet.

Winter Storage Update

2011-01-31T17:15:00.003-06:00

We're a couple months into the Winter food storage experiment. Almost exactly halfway so I wanted to try and update on where things are at.
Things that have been nice: watching the price of onions, garlic, winter squash and potatoes climb and knowing that I don't need any, making quick meals out of cheap good supplies, watching the snow fall and knowing I don't need to go anywhere.

Meals I've been making out of our storage food
-Pasta and white sauce; this one doesn't get mentioned much, but pasta is one of those things I store a lot of. I'm trying to keep 2 months worth, (or about 25 pounds) of various types and shapes. I stock up when I find some well below the 1.20 average price per pound.
-Roasted root veggies; I've posted this one before and it's still great. With or without meat, it always gets rave reviews from the men-folk.
-Roasted Squash; just the basics, cut it in half, put it cut side down in some water and roast it for 40 minutes. I do this with acorn squash, then add butter and a little brown sugar and spices. Mmmm. Easy meal, literally 1 minute of prep, then I have 40 minutes to clean or play with Rowen, which ever seems most pressing. :-)
- Potato Soup, nothing more than stock, onions, potatoes, carrot, garlic and spices. I add in some condensed milk and cheese at the end, salt and pepper to taste. Reeeeally good.

State of the Storage
- Apples 24 left of the original 60.
- Onions 27 left, (15 pounds) of the original 80ish that I started with. (35ish pounds)
- Squashes, all 3 of the zucchinis are gone. 2 of the 6 Acorns are left , 1 of the 3 Butternuts is left. I think I still have 1 pie pumpkin left too. (I should eat that soon, it won't last much longer.) I also have that giant hubbard to do battle with. It'll probably deserve a blog post of it's own. :-D
- Carrots, as I suspected were very unhappy in my dry basement and didn't last even a couple of weeks. We did eat a dozen or so, but most became worm food.
- Garlic, 10 of the 24 remain.
- Sweet potatoes, 12 of the original 25 are left, plus my southern relatives sent us up another 20 little ones that are quite tasty.
- Red Potatoes, I think there's about 12 pounds left of the original 36 lbs. This is a guesstimate.
- Russets - 8 of the original 20 pounds remain, again an estimate.

So, with everything but sweet potatoes, I'm more than half-way through the stores. That's ok. I'll still get good information about our usage rates, and I'm learning good stuff about storage.
I'll post some of my thoughts on that as I get things organized in my own mind. I'm still crunching some numbers for the useage rates and estimated dates for "shortages." (In quotations, because I want to assure my readers, I can and will be going to the store to replenish our stocks when I run out. In past times those dates would be when shortages would start, leading into the traditionally lean time of early spring.)

Anybody else storing food this winter? How's it going?

Still here, not (quite) frozen

2011-01-30T15:53:00.001-06:00

Greetings. January has flown by, and I've been neglecting my poor blog. It's bitterly cold here, with ice and snow keeping all of us in the house more often than not. So, not much going on, thus not many posts. Contributing to the problem is the camera running low on batteries. I had to go buy some more to get pictures taken for this post.

The house bound time has contributed to a couple of projects getting done . I got curtains made for the kitchen, and they look really cute. I kept them really really simple, as the window quilts I'm making for the living room are going slower than I'd like. (Slower than Dave would like too, "You know we'll be in a new house before you finish that.") :-D So simple was the motto, and I wanted to get something done to boost morale. Cheery blue and white curtains, using large blocks of fabric, they sewed up really quick and were a big hit. It was a one day project from the cutting to the final iron and hang. Love it.

Some pantry de-clutter has also happened lately. A busy holiday season, full of baking, had reduced our pantry to a cluttered mess and no one could find anything. So, I spent a few hours sorting out, combining remnants, tossing the expired and generally bring some order to the chaos. I find a large supply of canning jars makes a task like this a lot easier. Easy to label, easy to stack, plus they're air tight.

Freezing our buns off challenge has been going well. We are consistently keeping the thermostat set at 67 or 65 during the day and 63 at night. No one has any frost bite, and we've all been pretty healthy so far. (Dave and I are fighting colds right now, but that's the first illness any of us have had this winter.)

I'll have an update on the Winter Storage project soon.

Seed Swap 2.0

2011-01-06T07:02:00.000-06:00

Well, a new town, a new year, so it's time for a new seed swap.

My first go at seed swapping was last year while I was still living in Des Moines. I had a ready-made set of people to recruit from, in the form of the community gardens. Turn out was respectable and I think everyone really enjoyed it.

This year things are different (like that's ever not true!) and that will create some interesting challenges. First off, my new little town doesn't have a community garden. Secondly, I don't have a large cohort of friends here yet. What I do have is seeds, and the willingness to plan something and risk that nobody shows up. :-D

I've gotten the local extension office in on the fun. I think they'll help some with getting the word out to those who might be interested. I'm meeting with the local gardening club on Tuesday, and I'm hopeful that some of them will be interested in the event too.

I'm going to rely on those two groups to hit a lot of the potential audience, but I'm also printing some flyers to advertise in grocery stores/library/etc, and I'm going to go the old fashioned route and knock on the doors of gardeners I've seen in my neighborhood.

If you've never been to a seed swap, the general idea is to get a bunch of geographically local gardeners together in a room to swap seeds (duh), swap advice, recruit hands for pet projects, combine seed orders to save money on shipping, learn how to save seed from something new, etc. All you need is a room big enough for the (hopefully) couple dozen people, tables and chairs to comfortably sort through the seed bounty, and a couple of people willing to talk about local varieties, seed saving techniques and the like.

In my case I've decided to use the local library's meeting room, (meetings in churches always give me the willies) I'll do a short bit on seed saving if people are interested, (I've got some lettuce, basil and radish seed still on the stalk and needing cleaned that will make good props) I've got donated seed from Seed Savers Exchange out of Decorah, IA, (so noone will leave empty handed) and a bunch of clear little envelopes for those that forget to bring such things. Easy-peasey!

The hard part of course will be getting people interested in coming to such a thing. Most people, of the increasingly rare subset that actually garden, just buy their seeds every year from their favorite glossy catalog and that's all the thought that goes into their seed. The problem with that model is that often times the seed is coming from far away. Sometimes the variety is not suitable for the micro-climate the gardeners wants to plant it in. Other times seed growers can make mistakes and the seed shipped to the gardener isn't quite what was advertised. As oil becomes more and more expensive, growing seed crops and shipping them around the nation will grow more expensive, perhaps at some point prohibitively so. For these reasons, and more, knowing how to save seed is something I consider crucial for gardeners.

Getting together with local gardeners to swap seeds can yield bounty beyond just seeds. In times of hardship, knowing other food growers in your neighborhood can make the difference between having enough to eat and not. Those connections, those friendships, don't just grow out of thin air. Like the vegetables in my garden, they must be sown, nurtured and cared for to bear fruit.

So, I'm sowing. Come join us if you'll be in the neighborhood!

Feb 12th, 1-3pm, LeMars Public Library.

Resolutions, old and new

2010-12-30T07:24:00.001-06:00

Tis that time of year. I resolve to do something new, grow in some way, (or shrink :-D ).

The other side of that coin means it's time to review the resolutions from last year.

For some reason, (I was in the middle of a job hunt) I never got around to writing my resolutions down for this year. Usually that's a recipe for disaster with me. I'm a visual person, and if an idea doesn't get written down it usually gets lost in the ether. I must have been really motivated about these though, as not only do I remember them, but they all had pretty good success.

2010 Resolution wrap up:
1) Finish my purple quilt. Bind and tie it. -- This one did get done! It only took 5 years to get that quilt finished. But, that's to be expected with a first quilt, right? :-P I was really worried about the quality of the quilt, as the first couple dozen blocks didn't have a single point line up right and I was sure the whole thing would look stupid, but it was surprisingly forgiving and it really looks great.

2) Sew more clothing. -- I polished my sewing skills on baby gear. Before my pregnancy I would have put my sewing skills at the Confident Beginner stage. After the diapers and wetbags and diaper bag and blankets, I really felt like I had kicked it up a notch to Solid Intermediate. I knew a weak point was clothing though. I needed to move beyond baby gear into clothing for me, and Dave and a growing boy. This went well I think. The first set of pants for Dave had some hiccups, and the first set of pj's for Rowen had some hiccups, but both were salvageable in my opinion. I made a couple of really cute shirts for me, and those both turned out really great. I even made a dress for a summer wedding and that (with some last minute assistance from Mom) turned out really pretty. Rowen has a set of lounge wear in the Solstice present pile. No hiccups and they turned out really cute. I have material and patterns for some more work clothes for me, and material for lounge pants for all of us. :-) I'm really happy I pushed past my nervousness on this one.

3) Repair more clothing. -- This might have made it into a post at some point. I wanted to try my hand at mending. This can be tough with clothing that's factory made, as I don't own a heavy duty machine, or a serger. But, I repaired some shorts for Dave, and repaired a t-shirt for baby boy. There's more in the repair pile, expect to see another push in this area as I finish up winter sewing projects.

4) Learn to knit -- I'll be honest, this resolution was entirely based on a desire to buy lots of pretty yarn. I have heroically suppressed this desire, and I have only bought 3 balls of yarn, 1 to tie the purple quit, 1 for my first knitting project, (a scarf,) and 1 plain black wool that's waiting in the wings for my 2nd knitting project. So, I bought the yarn, I bought a little pamphlet-like book on Learn to Knit, and 1 set of needles. (size 10 bamboo) Hubby learned to knit from his mother at some point in his childhood, so between him and the book and the internet I figured out how to cast on and do the knit stitch. I'm about halfway done with the scarf I think. Not too shabby.

5) Try to save some new seeds. I've gotten pretty good at my annual veggie seed saving. With things like lettuce, basil and tomatoes, the saving seed is second nature. I wanted to try this year to save something a little different. At first I thought I would try potatoes, but I never got around to processing the seeds, so that one will have to wait. Then I decided to try my hands at turnips. They are biennial, which means they won't make seed until next year. I left 4 turnips in the row and mulched them well. I'm hoping at least one makes it through until spring and decides to make some seed.

It was a busy year, but I'm really happy with my personal growth. I think I accomplished a lot of what I was aiming for and I'll continue to build on that growth with this year's Resolutions.

Resolutions for 2011
1) Finish the scarf, learn a second stitch, Purl maybe, and use that in a second project. (Right now I'm leaning towards a hat using the black wool.)

1b) Do some darning, with the wool socks I love so much.

2) Sew more clothing, focusing on work clothing for me and play wear for Rowen.

3) $2000 in savings by Samhain. The date is arbitrary, I just do better with concrete time lines. 10 months means we need to put 200 away every month. This would be double what we have been putting away this year. I think it's doable though because we're no longer playing catch-up from our period of Jennie-unemployment. Attainable, but still a bit of stretch to push us.

4) Finish the Blue Quilt, (Quilt #2) by mid January. Do some actual quilting on this one! Nothing fancy, but something more than the cheater method of yarn knotting. The top is together, (picture above) and I think it's going to look great.

5) Start Quilt #3. At least Queen sized, 85x85" or bigger, so that it can replace the 15 year old quilt from my grandmother that needs to be honorably retired.

6) Make progress with getting a Community Garden started in my new town. I need to find a group of people, find a good spot, and find time to go to a city council meeting. It would be nice to get some of that done this winter. The first step here is to organize a seed swap I think.

7) Regain my pre-baby muscles. I miss my leg muscles and ab muscles. I never had much arm muscles, but maybe I could work on those while I'm at it. Bike riding all season, with some yoga/belly dance would do the trick. Setting and sticking to the schedule is the missing link here I think.

8) Finish seed saving attempt for turnips. Try again with potatoes maybe. Try parsnips too possibly.

9) Continue food storage, work on improving grain storage. That means we need a grain mill, and probably some whole wheat.

Parsnip thoughts

2010-12-29T12:26:00.000-06:00

Ok, so I tried parsnips this year in my garden. In the interest of garden note-taking, I'm posting about my experience this year and my thoughts to do differently for next year.

First, my little 3 foot row was about right, at least for now. We don't eat a ton of parsnips, when they are big and sweet we'll roast them with other root veggies. Smaller tougher ones will be snuck into soups and such occasionally, but that's about it.

They looked like they were growing well. Which is good, because it's incredibly hard to find any other variety than the "All American" or whatever it's called. I don't know what I would have done if that one variety didn't do well here. :-D

Astute readers will have noticed my use of the word, "looked." I haven't actually managed to harvest one yet. :-D Yea, I'm special. My plan, such as it was, included a digging up a couple after the first of the frost. I totally missed my window though. I went out this weekend to take a stab at getting a few out of the ground and was totally defeated. The ground is frozen solid, I chipped my way down to the top of one of the parsnips, and it looked like a good sized top, but I couldn't dig down enough to get the root out. I reburied the top with dirt and snow and we're now working with plan B.

Plan B is me digging them up in early Spring. Early early spring, like as soon as the ground unfreezes I'm going to be out there. My gardening book says early spring is a valid harvest time for Parsnips. I'm hoping that holds true in Zone 4. The sad part of Plan B is that I can't munch on parsnips with all of the potatoes we're eating right now. The nice part is there will be even fewer fresh veggies in the early spring, so maybe they'll be a bit of a treat. I've even read that the extra cold time will make them sweeter. We'll see.

Next year, I need to space them out a bit more, I crowded them too close to my carrot row, and between the parsnips and the kale, (which was also too close) I lost my carrot crop. Next year it might be nice to dig at least half before the ground freezes shut.

If I'm feeling really adventurous I might try keeping one or two in the ground this spring and see if they'll re-sprout and put on some seed. We'll see how much space I have to play with.

Hunkering Down for Winter

2010-12-06T16:48:00.000-06:00

I was chatting with a friend on Facebook last week and I mentioned we were, "hunkering down for winter." He replied with amazement that people still hunkered. "Sounds like something people did in the 1900's," he said.
Well, we live in a big house in Iowa, where winter temps can get down to -30 without windchill, and since we're in the far NW, winds coming in out of the Dakotas is something that has to be taken into consideration. We hunker. Probably in a lot of the same ways they did it in the early 1900's.
We put quilts over windows. Not every window gets a quilt, it's decided based on direction, age and room use. This is a picture of our North facing living room window, it got a quilt on it because it faces North, it's old and it's in the living room which is heavily used. (Tangent, that is my very first quilt, recently completed, 5 years in the making.)

We put plastic on the exterior of windows. Again, not all of them, but the old windows in heavily used rooms get the treatment. I won't post a picture, it's just plastic. :-D Our view out of the plastic-ed windows gets a little blurry, but with the increased darkness and icky weather, there's not much to look at anyway.

We seal off doors that we won't be using during winter. We have 4 exterior doors, (stoopid house) and we have sealed off two of them, nothing too fancy, just filled cracks and put a blanket at the bottom to stop drafts.

We also pay attention to which heater vents are open, and which are closed. Right now we have most of the heat directed into the living room and kitchen, with a little bit going to the bedrooms upstairs. I like cold bedrooms for sleeping, so I constantly lobby for less heat upstairs. :-D

Finally we don't aim for summer temps. It's winter out, it's cold, faking our bodies into thinking it's 80 degrees is not going to do any favors to our immune system. So, we keep the heater at 67 during the day and 63 at night. I'm hoping we can whittle that down to 65/60 by the end of winter, but it will depend on how well the heat stays where we want it.

Other things we do, (or might do in the future) include leaving the door to the oven open after baking, I figure why vent that heat out, just crack the door and let the oven warm your kitchen while it cools. I want to look into venting the dryer into the house too. Not in the basement, it won't do us any good down there, but venting it into the heating ducts could be nice. (It's an electric dryer.)

And of course, the last layer of defense is layers. We all try to wear heavy socks, and layers of clothing and we keep blankets out in the living room for tv/reading time. Warm drinks work wonders, as does a bit of exercise.

Beyond the basics of heating, we keep enough food in the house to get us through any amount of snow. Historically speaking this part of Iowa would shut down after enough snow fell. With the budget shortfalls we have looming over most cities, I don't think it's too Doomer to keep a supply of food in the house in case clearing the roads gets too expensive for a week or two.

Thus do we hunker down like our ancestors before us did. It worked then, it works now. It may be a little unfashionable, but I feel like the trade-off in heating bill savings is worth it. I say feel, because there's no way I'm going to NOT do this stuff for a year just so I can have a comparison. :-D My need for concrete proof is not that great. We do consistently come in below average for electricity and gas use. That's all the proof I need.

Fresh Tomatoes in December

2010-12-04T11:34:00.003-06:00

I love love love the veggies provided by the garden. Even though we're in zone 4, I still managed to extend my tomato season through December this year. :-)

The plants were pulled months ago, but the bag full of green tomatoes I picked on Samhain ripened beautifully (with only a 10-15% loss) and we've been eating on them for the past month. The last half dozen of those are in the fridge and will be gone in another week I bet. It's amazing to look out at the snow and ice and then eat homegrown tomatoes for dinner. Slightly shriveled and not as tasty as the ripened on the vine, they are still delicious and free.

Other veggies trickling in this month include a couple of kohlrabis and the parsnips that I'm "storing" in the ground. :-D Storing in the ground is a valid storage technique for parsnips, but really I'm just being lazy. I should dig up at least a few to have on hand for cooking and evaluation.

My cabbages didn't do so great this fall. I blame the root-bound, sad looking seedlings that I got at the local plant sale. They didn't make good heads, and they all kicked the bucket at the first frost. Total fail. I will probably try to grow my own cabbage seedlings this year. While the timing is always tricky for me, (they take a long time to grow) the quality will be worth it. Starting seedlings early enough for cabbages means I might try again with onion seedlings. I only tried those once, and when it was time to plant out all I had was onion flavored grass. :-) We'll hope for better timing this go-round. Although, really, I shouldn't put all the blame on the sub-par seedlings. My garden was a little small this year and instead of expanding, or finding another place for them, I crammed the cabbage seedlings into small nooks and crannies, and that's not the best way to treat them. I also forgot to side dress them with compost. (If I'm remembering correctly they need some mid-season love.) So, next year I'll try again. Unless we move again I imagine I'll make the garden bigger next spring, and I'll add in enough room for the cabbages to have their own row so I won't neglect them.

The cold frame is in use again this year. I found myself 4 bricks short for some reason, and sadly unable to find 4 bricks at any of the local hardware stores. (Not even at the Lowes in the big city south of us!) So, the poor thing has gaps in the construction, but I have some lettuce bravely holding it's own in there, as well as a small cabbage that's mostly just hanging out. I'm not expecting a lot from the frame this year, it's the first year this far north, and once again it's mostly in try-and-see mode. Plus, I have plans for bigger and better ones, just waiting on time/money/wood. :-D Isn't that always the truth.

Don't give up on gardening, if you're someplace with snowy-death winters. Besides the season extending tricks that can lengthen your season, winter is a great time to plan for spring's busyness.

Handmade pretties

2010-11-30T20:13:00.001-06:00

I'm in the middle of making a bunch of small handmade presents for my loved ones. This is contributing to a lack of posts recently so I thought I'd take a moment and share some of what I'm making and of course, some of what I'm thinking.

More and more I find myself turning away from the massive consumerism that marks this time of the year in the US. Whether it's a dinner that includes close to 3000 calories, or a pine tree buried in paper wrapped presents, the over consumption leaves me cold and decidedly not cheery. As is my habit, I have changed the way I celebrate, to more closely align with my personal beliefs and values. This change is influenced by the Pagan/Wiccan traditions that I'm fond of, the traditions that my husband brings from his mostly pagan upbringing and what I learn as I research and rethink old habits.

Celebrating the Solstice helps to keep the focus away from the typical Christmas-how-much-stuff-did-I-get. Doing things by hand creates other helpful limits. Our decorating also helps remind us of our focus. We lean towards natural decorations like pine wreathes and garlands, and then decorate them by hand. We do put up some lights, as the Winter Solstice celebrates the return of light after the longest night. But, we don't cover the house with them in a vain attempt to outshine that light. Stockings and paper snowflakes and a live poinsettia round out the decorations. I think it has a nice holiday vibe, without being offensive or out of place in our uber-Christian neighborhood.

I've learned a lot the past few years as I switched to handmade for the holidays. First off, making presents by hand requires a LOT more foresight than most store bought presents. What I give is not decided in the heat of battle during a Black-Friday or Cyber-Monday sale. I keep a list under 'P' (for presents) in my planner and throughout the year when I see something cute or something I know a person could use, I write it down on the list. As a bonus side effect it makes it easier to stand strong against the incessant marketing employed by savvy corporations. As the harvest winds down for the year I immediately switch my energy over to holiday prep and start making the presents and finalizing my gifting plans. This works well enough for now, as I mostly give small things at this stage in my life. If I ever get to the point where I want to give a quilt or a complicated piece of clothing I'll either need to start holiday preps in the middle of summer or train up Rowen to help. :-D

This year is a bit lighter for gift giving, simply because we are not traveling to any of the large gatherings. So I'm making little things for the Grandma's and little things for my immediate family and a bunch of cards and that's it.

I have heard people excuse their shopping splurges because they have too many gifts to give to make them all. Look at your gift list for a moment, how many of those people have you actually talked to since last December? Will a 10$ piece of plastic snatched from a bargain bin really add value to the relationship? Will you actually see that person this holiday season? If the answer to any of those is no, why bother to buy them something? Get more emotional bang for your time/money, and whittle your list down to immediate family and those who you feel close to. If you figure another 1 or 2 to include a couple of people who you feel could use an extra bit of love during the holidays you might find your list more manageable and that time to make something for all on the list is not unattainable.

I have a lot of fabric and thread, so that's what I lean towards for gifts. I get a lot of inspiration from quilt shows and sewing blogs on the internet. The internet abounds with free patterns, and I'm blessed with a talent for guessing space/dimensions and ending up with things that are pretty close even when I don't use a pattern. (or straight edge) My mother is envious. :-D

Some of the things I'm making this year include a couple of needle books, based off of some really cute ones I saw this summer, going to a couple of lucky grandmas. A couple of cute pin cushions for other crafty grandmas. Some home-made firestarters, made with wax and wood chips and (since I have more fabric than wood) fabric scraps. Rowen has a cute outfit about half done, and some mittens that I finished last night. Then a couple more specific things that I'll refrain from mentioning here, on the off chance that those people read this and it spoils the surprise. :-D

Little things to show my love, little things made by hand.

And of course, I can't stand to wrap such things in eco-not-friendly wrapping paper. I swore off of that stuff for good last year and started making fabric gift bags. I made a set out of holiday fabric from the firesale rack in January. I'm thinking I'll make a few more this year. I might make a couple to match the gift that's inside, just to be fancy. They'll last for years and years. No trashcan full of once-used paper will leave our house on the 26th.

You too can make a difference this holiday season. Think about your traditions, is there one that stands out as particularly wasteful or joyless? Choose that one to focus on this year and make baby steps towards something better. Whatever the reason for your celebration.

Alaska Won't Save Us

2010-11-13T13:23:00.001-06:00

When this blog was still a baby blog, I mentioned a few of my beliefs.

"I don't think oil shale out West is going to save us and I don't think drilling in Alaska is going to save us. "

Last week I stumbled across this little tidbit in the Wall Street Journal..

U.S. Cuts Estimates of Untapped Alaska Reserves
The U.S. Geological Survey said Tuesday that Alaska holds less oil and natural gas onshore at the National Petroleum Reserve and in nearby state waters than previously thought.

The agency now estimates that the area, on and near land in Alaska's North Slope owned by the U.S. government, holds 896 million barrels of conventional, undiscovered oil, about 10% of the amount the agency predicted was there in 2002.

The USGS also updated its estimate for natural gas in the area to 53 trillion cubic feet, about 13% less than the agency predicted eight years ago.

"These new findings underscore the challenge of predicting whether oil or gas will be found in frontier areas," USGS Director Marcia McNutt said in a statement.

New geological data from three-dimensional seismic surveys and more than 30 exploration wells that have been drilled in the area show more gas in the area than oil, the USGS said. Many of the new wells show "an abrupt transition from oil to gas just 15 to 20 miles west" of the northeastern boundary of the petroleum reserve, the agency said.

The Interior Department's Bureau of Land Management has held five lease sales in the NPRA from 1999 through 2008. The agency currently administers more than 300 Federal oil and gas leases, according to the agency's Web site.

So, even if we could get every last drop of that oil out of Alaska, it would amount to 42 days worth of oil at our current consumption rate of 21 million barrels per day. That's it. Drill Baby Drill...?
Two and a half years after I made my predictions about Alaska, we have the BP spill illustrating how hard it is to get some of the oil that remains. We have multiple agencies reporting oil peaks in the next 5 years and even the US military forecasting massive shortfalls by 2015 and trying to make plans. That last link is the report that came out just a couple of months ago, and is well worth the time taken to skim the first few pages.

To ready America’s armed forces for tomorrow’s challenges, DOD should ensure that it can operate all of its systems on nonpetroleum fuels by 2040.

Costs of Petroleum Dependence
• Heavy dependence on large fuel supplies can
increase operational vulnerabilities and make
fuel supply infrastructure a more valuable
target.
• Every dollar increase in the price of petroleum
costs DOD up to 130 million additional dollars.
• Rising global demand, for instance in China, is
increasing the strategic importance of petroleum
in ways that could be detrimental to U.S. interests.
• Countries such as Iran and Venezuela could
have the largest remaining reserves in a few
decades if current production rates hold – and
will gain leverage as a result.
• High levels of petroleum consumption are
contributing to the changing climate, which
can bring destabilizing effects and trigger new
security challenges.

Now, they are hedging their bets on the crunch happening 30+ years from now. Some reports show that they'll have that much time, but other reports show a crunch happening much sooner than that. Even if they are working off a 30 year time line, having our military starting the move away from petroleum will be a great market motivator for the developing technologies that will help all of us transition. There are few other organizations with the sheer amount of capitol that the DoD wields.

What does all this mean? In my opinion, it means if your future plans don't include plans to deal with peak oil, they should. If not future plans for yourself, future plans for your kids and grandkids. Does your current diet have you heavily dependent on oil to transport it? What about your leisure activities and hobbies? Does your job depend on cheap oil? Is your house comfortable without a lot of AC/Heat? These types of things don't need to be oil free tomorrow, but you should start considering strategies.

Samhain thoughts

2010-10-29T17:45:00.001-05:00

A Graceful Death--------------------
Picking the last of the green tomatoes. Rowen in my arms, helping me hold the sack. We snuggle together to stay warm. Frost is definitely coming. Moonlight and streetlamp cast an eerie and dim glow into the garden. The tomatoes can be seen more by the gleam of smooth skin than by their color. Recent wind storms have turned the once well known garden path into a tricky vine covered maze, made even more impassable by the dark and cold. Occasionally a crunch underfoot lets me know when I've missed a fruit and tread on it. These tomatoes will never know a hot sun warming them into ripeness. If I leave them out the frost will turn them into black and brown mush. Perhaps I can offer them a more dignified death after a slow ripening on my counter. Seems the least I can do for these last babies of the beloved vines. Our bag is full. We brush by the vines on our way out, quietly saying goodbye, these vines contributed to our health; raised from seed with loving care, the vines have repayed the love with the gift of tomatoes. It's always a little sad to see them end. I tell them their death is not in vain. I have their seed being carefully preserved so their line will continue. Maybe it helps, I know it helps me. My way of giving back to the plants that nourish me. A graceful death. A Samhain tradition.
---------------------------------------

As those around me celebrate Halloween I try to quietly celebrate Samhain. I know some of you wonder why. What's the point? What am I hoping to achieve by calling it something different?
By calling it something different I hope to shift my family's focus. Like most of the holidays celebrated in America, I don't like the associated rituals that come with Halloween.
Spooky and scary afterlife images are trotted out, but with no mention of how those things apply to the loved ones that may have been lost this year. Death is treated like a joke, with nothing to offer those genuinely curious about that final act. That final act that's so disconnected from the way most American's live their lives, some don't even know what had to die to make their lunch today.
Sending children out begging for plastic wrapped sugar made by large corporations, while wearing costumes mass produced by other large corporations, can you guess who I think really gets the treat of Halloween? All that seems an empty waste of time and money, as there are no American children in need of candy. In fact the opposite could be argued without much trouble. Soaring obesity rates and early onset Diabetes would argue that more of us should be looking at this holiday ritual with a careful eye.

Samhain has traditions that focus more on actual death, as it occurs in the natural world, and specifically how it connects to the cycle of the year. Samhain offers rituals that celebrate the death of the crops that nourished all summer, rituals to remember loved ones who passed, decorations that are made from herbs and other natural local materials. These rituals encourage a healthy view of death, as something natural and and respectful. These rituals encourage a deeper understanding of the cycles of the seasons and how they affect the local flora and fauna. These rituals are very approachable. A bonfire serves double duty, to clean up the garden refuse and to illuminate the darkness that holds sway this time of year. The carving of faces into fall produce, (originally turnips, now pumpkins) to symbolize those that have departed this life, but linger in our thoughts. Ancestor worship as it's called by some anthropologists, is so common in other parts of the world. I sometimes wonder why it's so devoid in our society. Is it because we live longer? Is it because of our obsession with youth and beauty or the other way around, does our lack of connection with the departed lead to our obsession with youth and beauty? I don't know. I do think that if we're ever to live more honest lives, more local lives, we need to reconnect with death. We need to reclaim death as something natural and not to be feared, connected to how we get our food and how we live our lives; something as far removed from free candy as it's possible to be.

----------------------------------------------------------------
We need to reclaim death. Have you thought about your own? Crunchy is hosting a blogroll with the topic of Greening the Dead. Do you want to spend your hard earned money on chemicals to preserve your remains? How about a hermetically sealed box made of metal and plastic? That's what the average 12-15K that most Americans spend on funerals will get you. Then your body full of it's poisons, safely in it's super-fund box, gets crammed into a landfill full of other poison filled corpses. It's not cheap and it's not friendly to the environment.
There are other options of course, but most require a bit of pre-planning on your part as well as the willingness to convey your wishes to those you'll leave behind. Cremation is an option, coupled with a fabric shroud or unfinished wood box, it's not too damaging environmentally speaking. It's also an order of magnitude cheaper.
Green Burial is available in some locations. The body is buried in a manner to encourage decomposition instead of hinder. Costs are closer to those of a traditional burial but the money goes towards conservation of the land instead of fancy funeral trappings.
And then there's the old standby shovel + hole = burial. You might not think it, but 44 out of 50 states preserve families’ rights to bury their own dead, including Iowa.
Or the Tibetan Sky Burial. (Google only if you are serious, as it's not for the faint of heart.)

We're told we can't handle death. We're told we can't handle the death of our food or the death of our loved ones. We're told to let the friendly neighborhood corporation handle messy stuff like that, for the low low price of... :-\
Resist. Trust in yourself and the millions of years of instincts bred into you to successfully navigate death. And yes, I understand that the rules regarding butchering and burial have evolved to protect us. Done incorrectly these practices can result in illness to those around you. The flip side of the coin however shows that, done correctly, these practices can enrich a life. By being more honest about life and death and engaging in those things that the corporations try to claim as their own. After all, a life well lived deserves an end that matches.
---------------------------------------------------------------

As the darkness now draws near
See the cycle of the year.
As the light now goes within
Let the hallows dance begin.

Getting Stuff Done

2010-10-26T05:11:00.000-05:00

I always have a lot of irons in the fire. Projects that get started, but then have to be put on hold for one reason or another. I'll work on different ones as time and conditions allow and the order in which they get finished is pretty random. I've been told that this trait is most common among women, while men prefer to start a project and do nothing else until that one is done. This is certainly true in my house. :-D

This weekend was really busy, even after a big thing had to be canceled. (My boys always come first, and when things have to give for them, that's just the way it has to be.) Lots going on and I had a couple of successes that I wanted to share. :-D

My potato harvest is huge! I dug up the last of the red potatoes this weekend. I haven't even tried to count them, if I do anything I'll weigh them, because there's too many to count. I had 2 10 foot long rows of potatoes. The first row had about 5' of Yukon Golds, and those got harvested a couple of months ago, with a good amount that sadly didn't store well. The reds took longer to finish, but really made good use of their time. With the last of the potatoes out, I'm that much closer to having my garden wrapped up for winter. Now, I just need to watch the weather because any day now we'll have a frost that will kill the tomato vines and the last of the basil. I'll need to snatch the green tomatoes and basil bits worth saving. (With a bit of luck I can ripen those green tomatoes on my counter and extend the fresh tomato season into November.) Only at that point will I rip out the vines (and their supports) and put that last bit of the gardens to bed.

Rowen and I went to O. City (the small town just north of us) and helped the community gardens there with their winter clean up. They clear the whole garden every year, filling the rather large compost bins to the top and then hauling away anything else. They pull out all the stakes and fences and put everything neatly in the shed for winter. Rowen and I helped out by rolling up endless lengths of chicken wire. Rowen was a big help. :-D We didn't stay long as Rowen got tired quickly, but I was able to chat with some folks and get a handle on how the garden started up and a bit about how they operate it. These are important things for me to know if I'm going to have any chance at all to start a garden in my new town. (Things work a bit differently out here than they did in Des Moines.) Plus, it was nice to just be outside for awhile, as the weather was wonderful. We did score some gleanings for our troubles. A whole bunch of lettuce, some thyme, a ton of carrots and some jalapenos.

The carrots went down to the basement to join the other food storage. I hadn't included carrots in my winter food storage experiment for a couple of reasons. 1) I'm not certain I have a high enough humidity place to store them properly, 2) my crop was a failure and 3) We don't eat a large amount of carrots. I'll keep loose tabs on these carrots and maybe I'll include them in my plans for next year, depending on how this winter goes.

The jalapenos went into the batch of salsa I made up on Sunday. Mmmm... salsa. Totally worth the effort of keeping the tomato vines alive this long. I thought I had finished canning a couple of weeks ago, but this weekend the pile of tomatoes was once again bordering on ridiculous. So, maybe this is my last batch of canning, we'll see. :-D

As I was elbow deep in salsa for dinner time Sunday, I got a little creative with our dinner.
Pumpkin Pancakes was what I whipped out of my magic hat.
(I had leftover pumpkin sitting in the fridge from the cookie making, and a wheat pancake recipe)

Spiced Pumpkin Pancakes:
2 cups whole wheat flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1 Tbsp Cinnamon
1/2 tsp allspice
1 tsp nutmeg
2 cups milk
2 eggs well beaten
3 Tbsp pumpkin (cooked puree)

Mix dry ingredients, add wet and mix thoroughly. Cook on a greased griddle.
It's whole wheat, plus some pumpkin to count as veggies. That means it's a healthy dinner right? :-D

Last but not least, I got all the blocks finished for the dining room window quilt. The picture above is a sampling of 4 of the different blocks, I made close to a dozen different blocks to keep things interesting. I calculated that 128 blocks were needed to frame the two fabric panels and fill the whole window. I'm hoping that this weekend I can clear a space big enough (and out of toddler reach) to lay out everything and sew all the pieces together. My sewing time for the next few days is dedicated to finishing Rowen's Samhain costume. So, even though I'm itching to see what my quilt looks like together, it'll have to wait until Saturday.

Winter plans

2010-10-23T14:47:00.002-05:00

The last farmers market for our small town was Weds.
I picked up one last pumpkin, a small pie-pumpkin as they are called locally. (To distinguish them from the large tough pumpkins sold for carving and decorating.) I got it cooked down Thursday evening and made it into pumpkin choc. chip cookies.
I also got some more sweet potatoes. That puts us close to what I wanted for the Winter Food Storage Challenge. Which, although technically starting in a couple of weeks, really it's already started because we're eating the food and storing the food and as of now, I'm done buying. (I think)
Hopefully this weekend I can get a final count on everything, and inventory my canned goods to see where we stand on all of it. Then with those numbers I need to create an easy to use spreadsheet to post in the kitchen to make meal planning easier.

Progress is being made on the window quilts. I have 95 out of the 125 blocks needed to cover the dining room windows. Soooo close. I can't decide if I want to try and finish those this weekend or start Rowen's Samhain costume. Or both? :-D I'm hoping I convince myself to make a simpler quilt for the living room window. Just in the name of time savings, but we'll see how this dining room one ends up before I make any decisions.

His costume isn't going to be too crazy, as it's just for a small trick-or-treat thing my office is having. So I really don't need to be spending crazy amounts of time on something that's going to get worn for an hour. Although, I do want it to be cute since my co-workers will see it. :-D And, I am thinking that if I do it right I can immediately recycle it into a window quilt for his bedroom. I wasn't originally going to make one for his room, but there's something amiss with his window, and we can't figure out if it's fixable or whether it's going to just leak all winter. Anyway, no I'm not saying what his costume is, you'll just have to check back and see! :-D

The cold frame is in use. It has a small cabbage in it and some lettuce. I need to add a layer to the brick sides this weekend so it's tall enough for the window to go on it and not smash the greens.

I have about half the garden put to bed for winter. I'm still getting the last stragglers off the tomato vines and from the potato row. Hopefully next week I'll finish with the potato harvest, pop some garlic into the vacated space and get another 1/4 of the garden put to bed.

Busy busy, lots to do. I don't even have time to take pictures of everything. Hopefully I'll get some pictures taken soon so y'all can see some of the craziness. I think my potato harvest is going to have to be seen to be believed. :-D

Garden Buddies Oct

2010-10-17T21:27:00.001-05:00

Hello again garden buddies.
The joy of fall gardening is upon us, harvesting winter squashes, pumpkins and potatoes.
We had record high temps this last weekend and my tomato plants were obliging enough to ripen a whole box of tomatoes for me. Dave and I cooked up one last batch of tomato sauce, we were a little lazy though and just tossed the jars in the fridge instead of canning them. They'll last a couple of weeks, which is good enough. We had a frost scare a couple of weekends ago, and I took the time to cover my tomato babies before going to bed for 2 nights. Now, I'm glad I did. This is one of those judgment calls that gardeners have to make. Yes, you can cover your tomatoes and save them from light frosts for a couple of days, but if you find yourself out for a week or 2 doing nothing but covering and uncovering tomatoes, it might be time to let them die gracefully. Grab the nice looking green tomatoes if you have decided to let them give up the ghost. Those greens will ripen on your counter in most cases and be almost as tasty as the vine ripened ones. (almost)

Fall gardening is often a lot of prep work for spring. It's a great time to pull out or hoe under the old, dead and spent. Cover everything in a nice thick layer of compost to protect the soil from harsh winter conditions. I have 4 or 5 cabbages heading up in the random corners where I squeezed them in this summer. They spent most of the summer really cramped with their neighbors, but now that we've got a bit of frost, their neighbors are declining and the cabbages are just hitting full stride. The Kale is still going strong. I'm hoping the parsnips are sweetening a bit in their little row. (The one I dug a month ago was a little tough.)

Garlic planting time is here as well. Plant them one clove at a time, pointy side up and cover with a think layer of mulch/compost to keep them from heaving up in the spring freeze/thaw cycle. At least 4 inches, and you can't go wrong with 6. I've got about half of mine planted, and hopefully I'll get the other half planted next weekend.

If you're overwintering biennials for seed production, make sure you give them a nice warm bed of straw too. I have some turnips I'm attempting this with. They have 4inches of straw on them.

I'm also checking out my cold frame and making the little last minute adjustments to it so it can perform it's function this winter. I have a couple of little cabbages in there, and some lettuce. It won't be anything extravagant, but it'll keep me entertained. :-D I'll probably need to start putting the cover on it at night this next week.

The last farmers market day is Weds. I need to wrap up my preparations for the Winter Storage Experiment. :-D

Quilting Weekend With Mom

2010-10-15T09:13:00.000-05:00

I spent a wonderful weekend with my mother in Des Moines this past weekend.
The American Quilters Society - Quilt Show was taking place from Weds-Saturday. We got a hotel room, and both brought our sewing machines and had a weekend full of quilts and sewing.
I saw so much, and learned a lot I think. I don't want to forget any of it, so I'm going to recap some of my favorite bits here.

There were so many beautiful quilts on display. Hundreds, in multiple categories, hung on display, some with ribbons declaring their prowess. I was allowed to take pictures, but I was told the pictures could not be posted online. Which is too bad, because some were quite breathtaking. Mother and I walked through many aisles examining and enjoying the fabric artists' work. Sometimes we could figure out how certain quilts were executed, sometimes they were so complicated neither of us could figure out how they were done.

The second half of the quilt show is the vendors. Everything needed to produce blue ribbon quilts was available for sale in the vendor aisles. :-D If they were selling something new to the fabric art community they usually had demos set up for them to show or for people to try. The thing to remember about quilts is there's 3 layers to a beautiful quilt. The first part, is the piecing of the fabric. (This is the part I'm most comfortable with right now) Cutting and sewing fabric to get a front and a back for the quilt. Good quilters can use fabric colors and piece shapes to suggest pictures or make intricate patterns. The next layer is the quilting. Using thread and sewing the front, back and middle batting together, a good quilter can add depth and a bit of 3-D to the quilt design. Depending on the pattern of the stitching, the eye can be drawn to certain areas of the quilt, in some instances the quilting stitches can be the entire pattern.
The final layer that makes a blue ribbon quilt is the embellishment. As one gal put it, "If it's not embellished, it's not finished." Over the years, quilters who enjoy other fiber arts have found ways to incorporate those into quilting. Now embellishing quilts with beads, crystals, fibers, wool rovings and sparkles are just as common as the more traditional appliques. This is the layer I'm least familiar with. My sewing has tended towards sturdy and utilitarian, leaving the fabrics to speak for themselves. I've never appliqued or embellished anything. So, as I wandered through the vendor village I mostly ignored the thread shops, I bought less than a yard of fabric, but I did buy a few new embellishing items. I bought a small pattern for a wall hanging with a butterfly/flower applique picture on it. I got some Angelina fibers to try out, in shades of blue of course, and a small pack of yarn fibers to round out my initial exploration into embellishment. I'll probably try out the Angelina fibers on the small butterfly wall hanging just to get two new things into one project. The fibers are melted with an iron to form a flat sheet of shiny fiber that can then be cut and sewn onto fabric. They can be ironed with leaves/flowers/etc to give them interesting shapes, clumping or spreading the fibers before ironing can create different opacity. Sounds crazy right? Here are some videos that explain it all much better than I can.

All in all a productive weekend. Besides everything that I learned, I also got some projects done. Rowen's wall hanging that I started when he was born; :-D finally got it finished, with buttons for embellishment. I also made him a cute pillow for his new big boy bed. (Dave switched the crib to it's toddler bed configurations while I was in Des Moines.) Awww.. :-)
Last but not least, I got a good start to the window quilt I'm making for the dining room. I got it designed and 20 of the little blocks sewn together. (I think I need 120 to make the whole thing.)

Mom got a cute cushion made for a bench she gave Rowen a few months ago. She found really cute fabric that looks like the book "The Hungry Caterpillar." That's one of his favorites, and he really likes the new cushion.

My sewing list for this fall is already too much to get done. :-D So I'll be doing quite a bit of sewing as we wind our way towards Samhain.
Hope everyone is enjoying the last of the nice weather.

Women's Wilderness Weekend

2010-10-09T10:23:00.001-05:00

I love State Parks. (National Parks are cool too, I just don't get to as many of those.) The quiet and natural spaces, full of hiking trails and fishing ponds and camping spots. Dave and I were handfasted in a State park, and returned to privately renew our vows a year later.
When a local conservationist arranged a Women's Weekend at a local park I jumped at the chance to see a new park and meet a new group of ladies in my area.
We started the chilly morning at Hillview by trying out a backpacking stove to heat water for some hot beverages. These things are tiny, run off of white gas and heat a pot of water really well. It was explained to me that heating water is the extent of cooking while one is backpacking. Hot water + oatmeal and hot water + coffee/tea/cocoa for breakfast and hot water + Dehydrated meal pack for dinner.
We also did a bit of "near country" cooking, as in not the "back-country" backpacking type cooking, with some pie irons and a tasty breakfast pastry from scratch cooked quick in a fire. Pie irons, in case you don't know are the little square/round cooking gadgets common in camping supply stores. Care for them is similar to cast iron, in that you have to coat them with oil and heat them up before use. They are great for campfire cooking, and Dave and I have a couple of them. We've been using them mostly to make grilled cheese sandwiches, so it was awesome to get a new recipe.

After breakfast, as it was still pretty chilly we voted to do some backpacking. Victoria, (the county conservationist) got us all geared up to make it as realistic and informative as possible. We all had internal frame backpacks, with a tent, a sleeping bag, a sleeping mat and our water and snacks in it. We all grabbed a GPS unit and hiked around, maybe a mile or so, stopping to geocache a few times and at one point making an intentional detour up a large hill. We talked about how to properly fit a backpack for ease of wear and walking, we talked about where to spend the money on gear and where to go cheap, and we talked about all of those things as they specifically relate to women. It was wonderful!

The park we were in was beautiful, and we saw a lot of it on the hike, there's a small lake, a sledding hill, a lot of woodland, and even an enclosure with elk. Apparently elk used to live in Iowa, who knew? The bull was in rut and put on quite the show for us. :-D Well, ok probably more for his ladies than for us, but we enjoyed the bugling anyway.

The backpacking got us all warmed up. So, we took a break to make some lunch. We cooked lunch over a third source of camping heat, charcoal. We were using a dutch oven and we made some Bubble-up-pizza. It was cut up biscuit dough, coated in pizza sauce and covered in a cheese topping, but after the hike it tasted like the best pizza ever. I did learn that when you are trying to estimate a bake temp in your dutch oven, every charcoal nugget is about 10-12 degrees worth of heat. So, if you need to bake something at 350, put 15 charcoals on top and 18 on bottom for about 350 degrees. Good stuff to know.

After lunch we took 3 kayaks and a canoe down to the small lake and tried them out. As I'd done canoeing before I was able to snag a kayak to try. I really liked it, much easier than a canoe to control and steer. Less space in it for coolers, but I'm not a 6-pack drinker anyway. :-D

We ended the day with some shooting practice. (My personal favorite :-D) First Victoria set us up with a rifle, just a little .22 and some paper targets 30(ish) feet away. She had us all pick a target and we all got to take 4-5 shots. Then we walked to the targets to evaluate. It took a couple of rounds for some, but we all eventually hit paper. I only shot one round of four, I had a decent grouping, but I was right of the bullseye. (That's my paper in the picture above. the shots are a little hard to see, but there are 2 in the 8 circle.) After we put the rifle away we set up for the bows. Victoria had some (youth I think) compound bows, and we set up 18-20 feet from a big target and took some shots. I love bows; I love the feel of the stance. You can't slouch, you can't be weak through the shoulders, you have to be confident enough to keep your shoulders back and your head up and your left arm straight and strong. I've often thought that women are pressured to adopt postures and stances that minimize them. Postures of crossed legs, crossed arms, leaving the open, stronger postures to men. It's more subtle in countries with strong women's rights, but it's still there if you know to look for it. It hampers women in so many small ways, but is very noticeable when someone holds a bow for the first time. I digress though. As I had some bow training in a college class, I scooted back a bit to try and challenge myself. (It was still too close to really test me, but I enjoyed it anyway.)

The ladies were going to end the day with some shot gun and clay pigeon action. As I had been to the range a couple of weeks prior and shot a 19/25 I decided to take my leave and get home to my boys.

It was a great Saturday; good weather, nice ladies and a lot of fun. The eventual goal is to get a group of us ladies leveled up a bit in our backpacking and camping skills so we can plan some women only backpacking trips to places like the Badlands. There's another Saturday planned in January with topics including dog sledding and cross country skiing. If you're interested, come and join us. :-)

Maize Maze!

2010-09-30T07:30:00.002-05:00

So, I've lived in Iowa now for over 13 years and I have to admit that before yesterday I'd never been to a corn maze. (A maize maze, get it?) hahaha
Yesterday was a particularly pretty fall day and my little family took a break from our routine and went to visit one.
The farm we visited has 2 mazes, one small (free) and a bigger one that's 6$ to go through and requires at least 1 hour, sometimes 2. Needless to say, we stuck with the smaller one, and even then we only saw the first 3rd of it.
For those of you who are unfamiliar with the concept, the maze part is usually secondary to the cool picture that the maze forms when viewed from above. Even so, they are pretty easy to get turned around in, as the corn is well over 7 feet high.

To make things more fun, there are scavenger hunts inside the maze, and you can arrange to go through after dark.
This particular farm sold tons of pumpkins and squash to visitors and offered a petting zoo for kids, with goats and kittens and chickens and such. We got a pumpkin to carve and a pie pumpkin to eat and a giant Hubbard squash. I've never eaten a Hubbard, but some of my online buddies say it's pretty good. I'll report back.
Rowen ran around and had a great time.

Winter Food Storage Experiment

2010-09-29T18:12:00.000-05:00

Hmm... I need a catchier name than, "Winter Food Storage Experiment." Something like "Root Cellar Survival" or "The Art of Winter Storage." lol I'm open to reader submissions. :-D

So, I want to try an experiment. As such, the dates I choose are mostly arbitrary. In the past Americans would store from the end of their growing season to the beginning of the next. Most didn't choose to live in zone 4 Iowa though. :-D :-D If i was to use those dates for my experiment I'd need to go from Oct 11-April 20th. Waaay too long for my first trial run. (While searching for those growing season dates I stumbled across this tidbit: "Your frost-free growing season is around 148 days." Wow, so short. I've seen it though, the squash I planted didn't even have time to set fruit and it's already dieing back from the cold nights we had last week.)
So, since I'm going with arbitrary dates anyway, I've decided to run this experiment from Nov 1st through the end of March. 5 months, roughly 20 weeks.

I'm going to pick 5 items to stock in the root cellar and try to store enough of those things to last us through the winter. I will be trying to get storage conditions right so they'll last through March and amounts right so we don't run out too soon.

What's my goal here, some of you may be asking, what's the point? Well, as I hinted above, Americans used to do this as a matter of course. (Let's not be ethnocentric here, many peoples back to the dawn of time have done this; NOT storing winter food is the oddity, historically speaking.) Unless they lived in one of the more prosperous cities on the east coast, supplies came when the weather was good and very little moved during the winter. A family that didn't store enough or store it properly went hungry in the spring. Fast forward a hundred years and during WWII, victory gardens and canning/storing pushes were seen as a way to feed families back home and thus allow as much as possible to be sent to the troops fighting overseas. The prosperity following WWII saw much of that get pushed to the back burner. Cheap oil, the green revolution and just-in-time delivery networks encouraged Americans to trust their local grocer to have every possible fruit and veggie, fresh dairy and baked goods all year round. The danger is that grocers don't store food anymore either. It's now estimated that grocery stores carry an average of 3 days worth of food. If anything shuts down the JIT delivery network, lots of shelves will be bare, rather quickly. You've probably already seen this, ever tried to find milk and bread on the 2nd day of what's forecasted to be a 3 day blizzard? That's a localized example of the distribution network shutting down. Massive earthquake, flooding, blizzards, ice storms, etc, any of these could happen and cause trucks to halt delivery and then the clock starts ticking. On a national scale, it would take something like a flu pandemic or a massive spike in oil prices or some sort of attack either nuclear or biological. None of these are likely options, but at the same time, they are all possibilities.
My purpose with this experiment is to explore the food needs of my family over a winter. I realize that our needs will never be stable, kids grow and need more food, an empty nest will need less, but a rough idea will be more valuable than the complete question mark I have now. Knowing those food needs will allow me to store food every winter to cover any emergencies that halt the JIT delivery network. (In the summer my garden serves that role) Knowing our food needs will help me more accurately plan the crops that I grow, and help me invest in bulk food purchases with more precision and confidence. Practicing the storing, and approaching it in an intentional way means I can record successes and failures and learn more quickly from them, lessening the losses in subsequent years.

Here are my calculated-guesses for amounts I'd like to store. As this is my first year, I can only guess at our usage of these. Some guesses will be more accurate than others, but that's what this is about.

Apples --5/week x 20 weeks = 100

Onions -- 4/week x 20 weeks = 80

Garlic -- 1 head/week x 20 weeks = 20 heads

Potatoes -- 4/week x 20 weeks = 80

Sweet Potatoes -- 2/week x 20 weeks = 40

What I have stored as of today:
Apples: 51
Onions: 58
Garlic: 30 heads
Potatoes: 65 + 10 pounds of Reds + whatever I get from my red potato harvest
Sweet Potatoes: 8

So, I need another 50 apples, (wow) and another 20 onions and 30 more sweet potatoes. Apples I think are very doable, there are still good deals on new crops, onions are probably doable, we'll see. Sweet potatoes might be short, it's hard to find them, and we can certainly survive without them if we run out halfway through the experiment.

You can see the setup I'm working with in the picture above. (not bad if I do say so myself)
There's a little thermometer on the top shelf that still reads 60 degrees, and I need to work this weekend on getting some cool air flow down to that little room. Ideally the apples and potatoes need temperatures in the 30's. Ideally I need to seperate my apples and potatoes too, as the potatoes will give off a gas that will quicken the spoilage of my apples.

I also need to get all my jars of food counted and a list hung up in the kitchen for reference.

More on all of that as it progresses. Lots to do, but I'm please with the progress so far.

Updates on the Summer To-Do list

2010-09-28T12:30:00.000-05:00

I thought I'd take a moment to update y'all on my projects. Progress has been made on some, with all the snags and setbacks that come with the territory.
Here's the original post, in case you missed it and get confused about what I'm talking about.

GOAL: Cool storage, away from sunlight, for my canning jars full of food
A lot of progress has been made on this one. Dave and I canned a lot of great stuff this summer. There was no way all the goodness could fit in our kitchen or pantry, plus those places weren't cool enough or dark enough for ideal storage. I needed space set up in the basement. Dave came to the rescue and set up the last of the scavenged shelving, plastic but pretty heavy duty.
We got all the jars off the kitchen counter :-D and down onto shelves, organized and looking good. It was hovering around 70°, so we've been trying to blow cold air down the stairs at night. This has brought things down to 60°, but I need to work on getting it below 50°. I think the problem is that I don't have an exhaust hole for the warm air to escape out of, so the cool air isn't making it down to where I need it. Not sure how I can make a hole without destroying my rented house.

GOAL: Cold storage of veggies, like onions/turnips/carrots/garlic/apples/potatoes
The bottom shelf of the can shelving is where I'm putting my boxes of veggies right now. I don't have cool wooden crates yet, what I do have is small cardboard boxes. :-D I've been stocking up on cheap root-cellar items as I see them at farmer's markets and grocery store. Much easier than canning, the surplus items are simply placed in my chilly basement to await their tasty dinner fate.
What I have so far:
Apples: 2 dozen of little green ones, 1 dozen of assorted reds.
Squash: 4 butternut and 2 acorn
Onions: 40-50
Potatoes: roughly 10 pounds
Sweet Potatoes: roughly 3 pounds

This still isn't enough to really do my winter experiment. I still need a lot more apples and potatoes. More on that another day though. (I'm still calculating how many weeks I want to experiment for)

GOAL: Rain barrel in place and downspout adjusted accordingly.
The Rain barrel is in place, with downspout trimmed properly and it has filled with water a couple of times now! Sadly, poor construction of the tube-connection-thing has led to all the water leaking out over the course of a few days. :-( I'm hoping this winter I can fix that problem, and I'm glad I set it up this fall and found the problem. Dave thinks a clamp around the hose might fix the problem. If not, I might cut out the whole thing and install a nice new spigot with rubber rings and a proper seal. It'll be great to have 55 gallons of stored water next summer.

GOAL: organize and pile neatly the fire wood I've collected.
I'm a couple of steps closer on this goal. I bought an axe, and I took it to a neighbor's house to sharpen on his bench grinder. I'm not a stranger to fast moving equipment, but the bench grinder was a new one for me. It showered me with white-hot sparks and made a really loud noise. :-D I did find it fun though. He says I can come back to sharpen it as often as I need to. Hopefully the sunny weather this week will allow me to tame the pile and get it stored properly before winter hits.

Of course, as I make progress on this round of To-Do's a whole new round is cropping up, related to weatherizing the house for our first winter here. We're a zone colder and in a bigger house than we're used to. It's going to take a lot of work to make sure we don't spend a fortune keeping things warm enough for baby boy. I'll do a post in a few days outlining what I'm planning to do. Dave and I ordered some of the things we'll need last night, but there's a lot to do before the end of Oct.

What's on your to-do list? Did you get everything done this summer? :-D

Winter Storage

2010-09-16T17:30:00.000-05:00

I've thought of a few fun experiments I'd like to try this winter.

I've mentioned the cold frames before. I have one, but I'd like to build another 1 or 2 and try growing more variety than just greens. Sadly I think time and finances might not allow this one to happen this year, but I'll cross my fingers.

Another one I've thought of that involves less buying of wood: storing everything I'll need for my family for winter. Now, first addendum, not EVERYTHING. :-D I know, that immediately makes it less impressive, but lets be realistic here, I'd never convince hubby to do that. What I'm thinking is trying to store everything I'll need of cold cellar stuff. Apples/squash/potatoes/garlic/onions, those sorts of things. They are cheap right now and it makes sense to stock up and store properly to enjoy after the prices go back up. I'd like to try to get amounts needed right, so we don't run out halfway through winter. I'd like to try to get storage right so things last all winter. This experiment could be expanded to strategically include dry goods and canned goods, strategically meaning those that aren't financially burdensome. I will evaluate on a case by case basis. Expect to see at least a couple more planning posts on this one, :-) that's my favorite phase anyway, then a couple posts over Winter detailing progress and pitfalls, then a post or two with lessons learned in Spring. I want to define start and stop dates so I have a discrete number of weeks to plan for, list the specific things I'm storing and tracking and do some rough calculations on current consumptions.

Finally, I want to try and push hubby into drying some of our clothes on racks indoors this winter. We are just now buying a dryer after a nice summer of line drying everything. It would be tempting to use the dryer all winter for everything, but I think judicious use of our nice drying racks could cut our utility bill and maybe ease the dry air issue that plagues us when the heaters come on.

More on all of these later. I'll flesh them out some more and set some goals.

No Child Left Inside

2010-08-31T11:58:00.004-05:00

A break in temperatures has increased our outside time this past week. (yay!)
We have a flurry of camping trips to round out the year, one last weekend to celebrate my birthday and my Dad's birthday. Much fun was had by all. Bubbles and camping! That's his cousin Izzy helping out in the bubble department.Another camping trip planned for this long weekend to see Dave's family. Then for 4 days next week to hang out in our old stomping grounds with friends for a big hippy wedding.
Needless to say, I'm desperately trying to get the last of the tomatoes safely canned, and do something productive with the apples that are pouring in. As I know anything we leave behind on Friday is just going to rot over the week we'll be out and about camping.
Rowen loves helping with the tomatoes, he is quite serious about tomato transportation from garden to kitchen door and only drops a few. :-D This was our BIG tomato for the year, turned on it's side so you can't see where it split when it got dropped a little bit. :-D
Then, of course, if Mommy is stirring stuff in a big pot, he *has* to have a big pot to stir himself. Right in the middle of the kitchen. Complete with Quart jar and lid rings. He knows what to do! lol

The end of summer rush is definitely on though, with cooler nights hinting at the frost that's sure to come. Tomatoes and basil and peppers begging to be put up safely.
Cucumbers and squashes getting in one last push of goodness.
Apples everywhere.
Seed that is quite dry now, but still uncleaned. (Let's be honest, it's not getting done until winter.) :-D

Inadvertent Farmer asks how we've promoted children in the garden. Besides encouraging the local kids to help themselves to the cherry tomatoes, (planted right up against the sidewalk where they zoom past on their bikes.) I helped over the summer with a school garden, for some 3rd graders. I didn't do much, but it was nice to know I helped even a little. The No Child Left Inside campaign is really encouraging. Of course, out here in rural Iowa, it's not too hard to find a nice bit of dirt to plant some lettuce and beans for a group of school kids. And that's not a bad thing.

Not too shabby

2010-08-31T08:26:00.003-05:00

In spite of the challenges, I've been pretty happy with garden harvests this year. Here's a recap of some of the bounty.
Kale, scrawny softneck garlic that was planted in the wrong season, but was still garlicky and tasty, and the first of the green beans and tomatoes and potatoes.

The first of the potato harvest, all Yukon Gold tastiness. Canned green beans and tomatoes with homemade prunes on the far right.

Tomatoes really produced this August, I had yellow beauties from the Moonglow vines, small red from the Stupice, dark red/purple from the Cherokee Purples and large meaty Amish Pastes. My bell peppers did ok, and I got multiple waves from my purple green beans.

More tomato glut, with the first parsnip, dug up to check development. The rest I'll leave in the ground for awhile to size up some more. Basil did great, I dried 3 rounds for tastiness this winter. Carrots in the background, not actually from my garden, they are local grown from the farmers market. :-D
Peaches!! Colorado peaches, made into tasty quarts of peach halves and divine jelly jars full of Vanilla Peach Jam. I finally got a jam to set up!!!! *doin my jam dance* I used a different pot, that has firmly established itself as my new jam making pot, it's got a thicker bottom than the others and is really wide, which helps evaporate more of the water out of the jam. (at least that's my theory) I used real vanilla, right out of the pod and WOW is this jam tasty. I tried to can 7 Quarts of the peach halves, and sadly, one of the jars broke during canning, (my first ever) leaving me with only 6 Quarts of the halves, and 4 pints of jelly. Dave absconded with some of the remaining peach halves to make a hopefully tasty fruit/cream cheese dessert pastry.
Since he was a rockstar and cleaned and pitted A WHOLE LUG of peaches for his adoring wife, I was fine with him taking part of the fruit for his own culinary experiments. 6 Quarts is not enough for peach halves though, and I think I might scour our little town for some good peaches to augment this batch. And finally, the best harvest of all, time at the lake with family. :-) Here's us, eating burgers and looking dorky, but happy to be hanging with my parents and brother and sister.

Successes and Mistakes!

2010-08-24T18:35:00.000-05:00

As it is every year, this year's garden is a mash up of wild successes and failures I'd rather not talk about. :-D But, since I like pain, lets talk about it.

It's starting to look like I harvested my Yukon Golds a little too early. I've lost over 10% of them in storage to rot. While hot humid weather might be at fault too, my garden support team thinks I might not have been patient enough in my harvesting. So, my Reds are still in the ground and will remain so for at least a week AFTER the vines die back. On the positive side, harvest was really good from the Yukons, and we've really been enjoying them. Size was good, flavor was excellent, I really can't complain, as once again I found them to be an easy crop to grow. I'm excited for my True Potato Seed experiment as well.

Kale and Turnips did great, maybe too great. We are not eating anywhere near enough kale, and I only planted a 3 foot row! Turnips are still overflowing my crisper drawer, and I don't know if we'll get them all eaten. So, perhaps I'll grow less of those two next year.

Related to the Kale, I planted my spring carrots too close to the Kale, and they got shaded out and really aren't doing too great. I'm not sure if I'll harvest anything from that row. Still holding out hope, but it might be a no-go.

Green (purple) beans did great, are still doing great, and the only complaint I have is that I didn't plant enough of them. :-) Might have to dig up more lawn next spring just so I can put in more green beans. I desperately need to get out and gather the seed pods that I've left on the bushes, as they are very done and about to be lost to rot.

My tomatoes are really coming into their glory. The vines are taller than me, literally 6.5" tall, the cages are starting to strain and it's a bit of a race to keep up with the harvest. I have made 3 batches of my roasted tomato sauce this past week. We ate one, and I canned the other 2, giving me 3 pints of summer goodness. As usual I didn't have enough of my stout cages to handle all the vines I planted. As usual, I made do. Every other vine got a stout cage. Those without cages got stakes, and permission to climb their neighbor's cage. One lucky Stupice vine got my old potato cage, that never got used for the vertical potato experiment. While it is admirably holding in the Stupice vine, I realized that the holes in the chicken wire are not big enough for my hands to get through, and not even close to large enough for ripe tomatoes to come through. So, I had to dive in from the top and reach all the way down to the ripe tomatoes. A bit undignified. Perhaps I won't use it for this purpose next year. Eventually I'd like to invest in some hog panels and steel posts to contain everything neatly. That's at least a 100$ investment though, maybe twice that. I imagine I'll just buy a few more sturdy cages and make do for awhile.
The Blossom End Rot has eased. I haven't seen any in the past 2 dozen tomatoes I've harvested.
6 Moonglow
4 Cherokee purple
6 "Amish Paste"
6 Stupice
I think my Amish Paste tomato seedling is a cross with something, the fruits this year are massive, close to twice the size of what I remember them being last year. Still tasty enough, and I don't think I'm going to complain about bigger tomatoes. Interesting though.

Onions were small this year, but everyone in my zone is saying that, so I'm convinced it was nothing I did wrong, just a rough year for onions. Garlic did great again, and the best heads will be replanted this fall.

Peppers were store bought plants, but have put out a half dozen or so bells already, recouping their price 3 times over. (Why are peppers so gosh darned expensive at the grocery store?) Wish I could figure out why I'm incapable of sprouting seedlings. Maybe someday I'll get it right. At least it gives me something to strive for. :-D

Greens and Herbs have done well as usual. I've done 2 full batches of basil in the dryer and lots of dried greens for pot-herbs. My basil is a little funny looking as I routinely grow both green and purple varieties, it appears as though they've crossed a bit and I had green basil with purple stripes on a couple of my basil plants. :-D

The zucchini is doing well enough in the flower bed, sitting peacefully next to some sage and the rhubarb. Only putting out male flowers right now, this seems to be the way of it every year and I don't know why. Hopefully it get's it's act together and puts on some female flowers in time for them to ripen before first frost. We'll just have to wait and see. I'll probably do it this way again next year, it's a convenient enough place for it.

I'll definitely need to increase the garden size next year, as the garlic that was grown in DSM this year will need space and I really would like more beans. Might try to put some winter squash in the south bed.

Anyway, I'm not done yet, I have at least one more month of prime tomatoes and I'm eagerly awaiting the sprouting of my fall crops. :-) Always learning though.

End of summer rush

2010-08-17T20:02:00.004-05:00

We are definitely neck deep in the summer rush here. I know those of you in the sweltering southern climes are past this, but for my Garden Buddies in zones 4 and 5 we're just now getting to the point of overwhelming produce.
I've got tomatoes filling a quarter of my fridge, cucumbers were coming out of my ears and I really needed to figure out my fall crops. All of this in addition to my project list that never seems to end. :-D So, in spite of our little plague bearer being sick last week and passing it to me this weekend and now Dave, stuff actually had to get done.

Birthday money to the rescue!! A big thanks out to Grandma DeeDee and Papa, I took a bit of my birthday money and went to our local hardware store and got a hacksaw and a hatchet. My writing out of the project list really helped focus my hardware trip I think. Definitely an organizing tool I'll use again.

Hacksaw in hand, I quick measured the height of my rain barrel (it was about even with my belt) eyeballed how much height I would get from my flexible elbow end and started sawing the downspout off. This was surprisingly loud, which I can only attribute to the acoustics of the aluminum downspout. Not a big deal, but I almost expected my neighbors to poke their heads out and ask what all that noise was about. :-D Hacksaw did it's job and I was quickly looking at my shortened downspout. I slipped the flexible elbow on the end, and scooted the rainbarrel up to the wall. I did spend a few minutes trying to get the barrel stable and mostly level. I put the the screen on the top of the barrel, made sure the spout/hose connection was solid and called it good! One rain barrel, done. Now I just have to wait for the next rain to see how I did.

Cucumbers needed dealing with this weekend and Dave was kind enough to lend a hand to help his poor ill wife get them done. We got 6 pints of my mother's Bread and Butter pickles canned, and 5 pints of a garlic dill. I'm not real experienced with pickles, my only other experience is the zucchini relish I did last year, that turned out really great, so I have high hopes. :-D

Lastly, I got my fall garden replanted. I think my last planting was washed away by all the rain we had the past couple of weeks. Gardening reality I guess, things fail. So, take two. :-) From South to North, I've planted Carrots, Beets, Spinach, and Lettuce. We'll see if they have time to get enough growth before the sunlight disappears and the cold sets in.

Hopefully I'll get some tomatoes canned this week, or I'll start to lose them. I'm thinking maybe a couple more quarts of whole tomatoes and as many pints as I can get of my roasted veggie tomato sauce.

KinderGARDENS week 18

2010-08-13T12:30:00.002-05:00

Inadvertant Farmer asks what I've been doing with my youngster in the garden this week.

The truth is not much. We've been having heat advisories above 100 alternating with vicious thunderstorms that are spawning legions of mosquitoes. None of this is conducive to Baby in the Garden.

We did get out last night briefly right before another storm, which was cooling the temp a little bit. Rowen helped pick 2 bell peppers, 13 more Stupice tomatoes, 1 big Black from Tula and 1 Moonglow, the first of that vine to not have Blossom End Rot. His contribution was a helpful sort of whacking with 'his' spade at anything that looked like it needed a good whack. lol He's also very helpful with watering, he's figured out that Mommy likes to get water from the wading pool to water the pots with, and he dutifully dips 'his' watering can into the pool and sometimes even gets that water on a plant. :-D

We have of course been doing lots of canning, and he is very serious about his duties as collector and keeper of the rings. :-) (canning rings that is) He helped his Daddy and I set up some shelving in the basement to keep all our canned goodies in the cool dark. He was especially intrigued by the dead bugs of course, but c'est la vie. All of the filled jars are now out of the hot sunny kitchen and down where they belong. Just in time to make room for the pickles that have to be made this weekend. :-D

I can tell when he's missing the outdoors, but sometimes that's better than a baby covered in mosquito bites and heat rash. Hopefully things will cool a bit this weekend and we can all get outdoors some. I have a rain barrel that he can help install. :-D

Newt, and Why I Heart Judge Walker

2010-08-11T05:53:00.000-05:00

Newt G has put forward his view on the Judge Walker decision in CA about gay marriage.
Calling Judge Walker's decision:

"an outrageous disrespect for our Constitution and for the majority of people of the United States who believe marriage is the union of husband and wife. ...marriage is the union of one man and one woman. ... judges who oppose the American people are a growing threat to our society.”

One man and one woman, surely he jests, he's been married 3 times. Maybe he meant one woman at a time? Oh, wait, he cheated on his first two wives, so that can't be what he meant either... Hypocrites like this, trying to discriminate against Americans because of their sexual orientation make me sick. "ooooh the sanctity of marriage!!!" Give me a break, which of his 3 marriages and numerous liaisons was the sacred one? The man is slimy and gives a bad name to real newts.

Constitutional disrespect? Has he even read the 14th Amendment? Passed, per the law of the land with ratification by 3/4ths of the states back in 1868 when debates about a person's rights included the same arguments except the bigots were trying to deny personhood based on skin color. Its Equal Protection Clause requires each state to provide equal protection under the law to ALL people.

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Marriage is, at it's core, all about protection. Protection of wealth, protection of children and protection against the ravages of age/illness/hard times. A marriage, in spite of the modern religious trappings is a contract between adults. The 14th Amendment says States cannot deprive a citizen of that right, no matter how a particular faith views the arrangement that person wants to enter into. And to borrow a line from one of my 1 year old's books, a person's a person, no matter how small. (or gay)

Some points from Judge Walker's ruling that I particularly like:

9. Marriage in the United States has always been a civil matter.
Civil authorities may permit religious leaders to solemnize
marriages but not to determine who may enter or leave a civil
marriage. Religious leaders may determine independently
whether to recognize a civil marriage or divorce but that
recognition or lack thereof has no effect on the relationship
under state law.

Recap: You know that line that preachers use at the end of the ceremony, "by the power vested in me by the state of Blah, I now pronounce you.." Their power to solemnize a contract signing between two adults is granted to them by the State, not the other way around. And, because we're such a great country, we don't even require that they do ceremonies they don't agree with, they can respectfully decline to marry a couple, but that couple CAN STILL MARRY, because the power to recognize that marriage, thankfully, does not rest with one faith or church.

21. California, like every other state, has never required that
individuals entering a marriage be willing or able to
procreate.

Self explanatory, but I hate the, "oooh they can't have kids, so they shouldn't be allowed to marry" trash. Nice to see a judge slap that one on it's butt. It's offensive to anyone who's ever tried and failed to have children, it's offensive to the thousands of gays/lesbians happily raising children and, quite frankly, it's offensive to me and I'm a happily married hetero with a kid.

33. Eliminating gender and race restrictions in marriage has not
deprived the institution of marriage of its vitality.

Used to be a woman was property and not legally allowed to leave a marriage or hold her own wealth as both her and her property were owned by her husband. That particular notion thankfully no longer resides in the law books, and yet marriage survived the blow. At one point 41 states had laws restricting the marriage between different colored people. Again, that quaint bit of nonsense was overturned and yet marriage survived. There's absolutely no reason that allowing gays and lesbians to marry will in any way harm the institution of marriage.

36. States and the federal government channel benefits, rights and
responsibilities through marital status. Marital status
affects immigration and citizenship, tax policy, property and
inheritance rules and social benefit programs.

"Why don't they just get civil unions?" What on earth are people thinking when they ask that? Did the thought of a civil union go through their head when their lover got down on a knee and asked to spend the rest of their lives with them? No. Civil Unions are not the same as marriage, and that separate but equal bullsh*t doesn't fly anymore. It's never equal. Civil Unions do not grant the same benefits, nor do they adequately express the love and commitment that same sex couples wish to express.

58. Proposition 8 places the force of law behind stigmas against
gays and lesbians, including: gays and lesbians do not have
intimate relationships similar to heterosexual couples; gays
and lesbians are not as good as heterosexuals; and gay and
lesbian relationships do not deserve the full recognition of
society.

f. Tr 972:14-17 (Meyer: “Laws are perhaps the strongest of social structures that uphold and enforce stigma.”);
g. Tr 2053:8-18 (Herek: Structural stigma provides the context and identifies which members of society are devalued. It also gives a level of permission to denigrate or attack particular groups, or those who are perceived to be members of certain groups in society.);
h. Tr 2054:7-11 (Herek: Proposition 8 is an instance of structural stigma.).

59. Proposition 8 requires California to treat same-sex couples
differently from opposite-sex couples.

There it is, in not so plain English. Prop 8 REQUIRES the state to treat a set of citizens differently than the majority and is thus not only morally repugnant but illegal. It places a government stamp of approval on inequality and that is NOT what this nation was founded on. Say what you will about the rights of states and the rights of citizens to vote, but they do NOT get to vote for discriminatory treatment of other citizens and every state in the union has agreed to that.

Read the rest of his ruling, it's great. He rips apart Prop 8 piece by piece, touching on the stereotypes against gays/lesbians and enumerating the studies that find those stereotypes to be wrong, stereotypes like children raised by gay parents are less well adjusted, or that gays and lesbians recruit children to be gay. He points out the entrenched religious views on the "sinfulness" of homosexuality and how intrinsic those religious views were throughout the Prop 8 proponents. He highlights the campaign propaganda that swings between misleading and outright falsehoods, playing on people fears with phrases like,"Save our children" and "falling to Satan."

I'm sure we'll see more about this issue. It will probably be argued all the way to the Supreme Court. I firmly believe that this issue is my generation's civil rights battle. If you're one of the 52% that voted for Prop 8, or might have voted for it were you living in CA, I'm asking you to look at that view rationally. Get beyond the hatred propaganda, have a conversation with a gay couple about how the discrimination affects their lives, compare some of what's being said and done with some of the things said and done during the desegregation era or women's suffrage. This is not a nuanced issue with more than one right answer, as so many issues in politics are. This is an issue about equal rights, rights guaranteed to EVERY American.

Happily I'll be back to the regularly scheduled garden goodness for my next post. Expect to hear more about my tomato vines. :-D