Unseen Parts of Our Garden

There are quite a few plants in our garden that I've not posted before now because I found them boring.  Most of what I've been showing was planted from seed and I found it exciting how they changed so quickly.  These plants were put in the ground as plants and they just looked the same for so long.  Now they are starting to produce.

T

This is one of our broccoli plants. We really like broccoli in our family and are happy to see it doing so well.

Here is a lettuce plant.

More lettuce of a different variety. We are already eating this in salads. We did plant this from seed but I've never posted it here before.

Do you find particular plants more exciting to watch than others?

Entitlement vs. Simplicity

The economy is down and it seems to be affecting just about everyone. We are actually doing well and I believe that our life style has a little to do with that and admittedly a lot of it is the Lord giving us a little sunshine for a season. One of the best things that the Lord did for us was having us live out of our comfort zone by necessity for the first several years we were married (and a few in the middle). We didn’t appreciate it at the time. Looking back, what a great gift it was.

I have had numerous friends and family speak to me about their money issues in the last 6 months. I would say at least 10 or so and that’s just a ball park figure as I haven’t been tallying marks every time I finish a conversation. I do believe that you should be able to turn to your friends when you have something on your mind so there is no criticism there.

The part that I am frustrated with during many of these conversations is the lack of willingness to change their life style to cut costs. When your income gets slashed, the time to change your life style is immediately, rather than when you run out of money. One reason that change needs to be made immediately is that change takes time. I’ve had many conversations where people tell me “but I shouldn’t have to live like that.” I haven’t made any suggestions that my family hasn’t done at one point or another. Most of them we still do. After a few times of having the same conversation with the same person, I start to feel like they think their family “deserves” more than mine. I know that’s probably not how they mean it, but it does start to feel like that. It cuts especially deep, when these people ask for money after they have run out due to refusing to make any cost cutting changes. To me, it takes guts to ask for money when the askers are still dong things that my family can’t afford to do or at the very least finds extravagant.

I believe part of the problem lies in how we Americans view “necessities”. I know the above is preaching to the choir as most of you have already made your life style changes or are in the process of doing so. I also know that there are a lot of people who cut their costs to the bone and it’s still not enough. I know there were a lot of innocent people who got caught in the housing crisis with a house they could afford at the time of purchase that they were unable to sell when they lost their job. I really do feel for those.

How do you handle conversations with people who seem to have a sense of entitlement? Does the way you handle the conversations change when they are with the people that you love?

This post was not inspired any one person or situation. If all of the people who inspired this post read my blog, I’d have an angry mob of (former?) friends and family standing outside my house within 24 hours of posting.

A Family Affair

When I started this blog, I told MrLivingOurWay about it sort of as a way to ask permission to record our lives for anyone to see.  He is a very private person so I wasn't sure he was going to approve..  He told me I was welcome to create the blog.  I promptly began to take pictures of our activities around the house and follow him around with the camera.  I figured this might bother him but he never complained.  After a few weeks, he did ask for the address and looked over a few pages. When he was done, he told me it looked like a blog.  He's really been indifferent about the whole thing.  Eventually, I would like to have the whole family in on the action with the kids writing some posts as part of their schooling and having MrLivingOurWay write some posts to share his knowlege first hand. For now, I don't have a lot of confident writers jumping at the opportunity to makes posts.  MrLivingOurWay and the oldest FindingOurWay are both mathematically minded which may explain their lack of interest in writing. 

Yesterday, MrLivingOurWay showed some definate interest in the blog when he came running into the house telling me to grab the camera and come outside!  I grabbed my camera and asked what was so important.  He informed me that he had planted kiwis and I needed to get a picture for our blog.  We had actually planted kiwis  at the same time that we planted blueberries this year but they didn't live. So this is take two.

So, here are the pictures that I took of our kiwis. These kiwis are not the fuzzy kind that we usually see in the store. They will be much smaller. We did find out that there is a way to grow the larger fuzzy ones in our climate but it takes a lot of work to prepare them for winter.

The female kiwi plant which must be planted 12-15 feet from a male kiwi

The Kiwi male plant.

Look what the mail man brought....

On Friday afternoon, there was a horn honking in our driveway.  Usually that means that someone wants to buy eggs but our sign isn't up yet. Occasionally, it is the mailman with a package too big for the mailbox.  This time it was the mailman.  Our new chicks were here!  This batch had 26 red broilers (straight run) and 8 buff orpington pullets.  This is in addition to the ones that were purchased at the hardware store last week.

This is the box that has chicks inside.

The chicks still inside the box.  One extra was included as a "packing peanut" which often happens when ordering chicks because there need to be a certain number inside the box.

Here the chicks are in there new home and MrLivingOurWay is counting them to make sure that they are all there.

The chicks are now all settled into their temprorary new home on our back porch. I was promised that they would only stay there for a few weeks and none of them would be able to get out onto the porch (they've created quite  a mess in the past) but I walked outside this weekend and there was one of the chicks purchased last week already walking around outside his container.  In a few weeks, we will move them to a chicken tractor with a light.

Possom Living: How to Live Well Without a Job and With (Almost) No Money

This is one of my favorite books.  Dolly Freed and her father lived for four years on $5,800 (today's dollars) per year.  Her family worked for several years and purchased a fixer-up house with cash.  They had chickens and rabbits in their basement, their own garden, and employeed some creative techniques to provide everything else.  I have been in love with the book ever since I read the .pdf format that was circulating the web several years ago.

Since I am recommending the book, you can assume that I agree with a lot of what is in it.  I am going to list some of the things that are not feasible for my family.  The author herself has also spoken against the last two bulleted items below either in her afterword in the book or in her blog

• I still believe that you need homeowners insurance and medical insurance of some type.  Read today's post in the UltimateMoneyBlog   for an alternative to medical insurance. You can also read as Leigh and I discuss the insurance dilemma in the comments of  A Farm?
• I will never eat a cat or dog that has been killed on the side of the road (or otherwise).
• Most everything in the "Law" and "Necessities of Life" chapters.

One thing that stands out to me in the her book and her blog is that she was unschooled from the seventh grade on.  She went to the library and read books that she was interested in. She learned skills that were useful around the house.  She kept a journal which, I'm sure, is what made her such a good writer. She went on to become a NASA aerospace engineer, a business owner, and a college professor.

In my opinion, this is not a book for children to read but it is an excellent resource for adults who are striving towards self sufficiency.  There are several versions of the book and if you can get a new copy, the afterword is worth it. Old copies may still be at various libraries but I've heard that prior to January the old copies were about five to ten times the cost of a new copy.

Have you read this book? What do you think? What are some of the things that you agree with or disagree with?

First Homegrown Meal of the Season

There is no greater feeling than knowing that you grew or raised every part of the meal that your family is eating.  This first happened for us about two years ago.  We had a roasted chicken and vegetables that night. We like knowing that our food supply is safe and hormone free.

Tonight, we had our first homegrown meal of the season.  We had a soup made our of bone broth and meat from our chickens, radishes including greens, green onions, beat leaves, cabbage collards, and lettuce all from our garden.  We hope that this will be the first of many homegrown meals this season.

I know that many of you are also having your first homegrown meal of the season.  What was your first homegrown meal this season?  What will it be? Is this something that you look forward to as much as we do?

First Harvest of the Season

Yesterday, was our first harvest of the season.  We pulled four radishes.  We each had one for lunch and they weren't bad!  They have done well and I believe we will continue to use radishes in our garden along with the peas which did well last year.

Here is a picture. Aren't they beautiful?

Are you harvesting out of your garden yet? What did you harvest this week?

Latest Additions to our Flock

On Monday, MrLivingOurWay informed me that we were going to go purchase some chicks. We loaded the FindingOurWays into the car and we all went to pick out our new chicks. We purchased 6 Buff Orpingtons, 6 Barred Rocks, and 6 Araucanas. We've never had Araucana's before and are looking forward to some blue eggs. In addition, to these we are expecting a total of 79 more chicks that we have on order. We've never had so many so little before. MrLivingOurWay is going to start being more intentional with breeding and this is why we are ordering so many at one time. A "rooster complex" is in the works. Each rooster will have it's own pen and the hens will come visit.

Here are some pictures of the chicks. They are currrently on our back porch in a big tub under the light.

More chicks are scheduled to arrive today. We are busy around here. Thank goodness it's raining so we don't have to worry about watering the garden today.

Homesteading Blog Carnival

I am going to take a break from blogging today. Tomorrow, I should have pictures of some of our new addtions. For now, enjoy the Homesteading Blog Carnival by clicking on the icon below.

News From the Garden

Our garden is doing quite well despite the fact that we were unable to water it for two weeks and the chickens almost destroyed it this weekend. The nozzle on our garden hose broke and we were so busy with other things that we never seemed to be able to get out and get another one.


On Saturday, I finally had the new nozzle and was watering the garden when I heard the youngest FindingOurWay screaming. She was doing a "trick" on the swing and had landed on the ground rather than the swing. I dropped the hose and ran to her. I scooped her up and sat on the porch swing with her while I checked her out to make sure she was ok. She was fine but a little shaken up. During this time, the oldest FindingOurWay was asking if she could water the garden. I told her that was fine and continued to calm the youngest one. After awhile, the FindingOurWay announces that the garden is watered and I didn't give it a second thought....until I came back from running an errand later that day and the garden was filled with chickens perched on the raised beds eating out of it! The fence had been left open earlier. I should have checked it. Really...if I hadn't been so worried about all the hard work I'd put in...it would have made a beautiful picture of some mischievous chickens. However, my first thought was not to run inside our house and grab the camera.

Later that night, we also realized that the hose had been left on. No big deal, the new nozzle was keeping a lot of the water from running out all over the place, but water conservation is definitely an area that we need work on.

Our Garden did survive.  Here are some recent pictures:
 

The radishes are about ready to harvest!

 
The peas are getting taller!
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

The Greens continue to be leafy.

Look what MrLivingOurWay found in the peas yesterday.  This is what is left of a birds nest that was built in this exact spot.  What an odd place to build a nest. Have you seen such a thing before?

What Do We Eat?

When I tell people of our family's food intolerances which totaled currently include: gluten, soy, lactose, tomatoes, peppers, and potatoes, they seem to be amazed and ask the same question. What do you eat?

Most of our meals consist of a meat and vegetables. The meal may just be steaks (from a locally purchased steer) or chicken (homegrown) and vegetables or they may be cooked in a cassorole or stir fry. This is the easiest way to start. Many of our recipes that I've posted have been for quick meals. I didn't want anyone to think we only eat junk because most of the time, we just eat meat and vegetables along with plenty of cheese which is okay for the FindingOurWay with a lactose intolerance to have. We will also have fruit for desert. Humans can survive without grains as long as they are eating enough of other foods.

We do use alternitive grains (and rice!) and I'm not advocating that anyone give up grains unless they have a medical reason to do so. I'm just saying it is possible.

Some ways that we've adapted when we want a food we used to have:

• garbanzo bean flour with salt and pepper is used to bread anything we choose to fry
• steamed cabbage works as a great substitute as does spaghetti squash to use with your favorite marinara recipe. (sometimes we purchase rice noodles)
• We use lettuce as a bun for hamburgers and instead of bread for sandwiches.
• sorghum flour along with a starch (corn, potato, or starch) and either guar gum or xanthum gum (for binding) can replace regular flours in baking. Look up online recipes for a better idea of ratios.
• Coconut pacakes are one of my favorite new foods and as a bonus, it uses lots of eggs.

There have been several benefits for us as we have followed this diet.

• The FindingOurWays complain a lot less about eating good food and I believe it tastes better to them.  I know food tastes better to me now. I think this has something to do with the things that happen to your body you are eating things it is allergic to.
• It is almost impossible for us to go out to eat. It is very possible when it's only gluten but throw soy in there too and it gets a lot harder. For this reason, our food bill for the month may actually be lower than it was before.

 http://www.texasgrassfedbeef.com/corn__it_s_what_s_bad_for_you.htm

The American Chestnut

When MrLivingOurWay and I were planning out what we wanted to do with our land and what we wanted to plant, I was talking to my brother. He suggested that we plant American Chestnut trees which have been bred for blight resistance. The original American Chestnut is very close to being extinct due to blight. The American Chestnut trees are currently being crossed with the Chinese Chestnut to make it more blight resistant. The trees are 15/16 American Chestnut and 1/16 Chinese Chestnut.

 I told MrLivingOurWay about it and he responded that he’d already been considering planting these Chestnut trees. Shortly afterwards, MrLivingOurWay came home with two Chestnut trees which he was told were blight resistant. Upon further research these may actually be Dunstan Chestnuts which are much more hybrid than the American Chestnuts discussed above. They may also be second generation American Chestnut trees which are less American Chestnut than the tress described above.

Here is a picture of one of the Chestnut Trees that we planted last year. It is planted at the edge of the woods so it is a little hard to see.

For more information on what is being done to save the American Chestnut you can read this article:

http://www.hobbyfarms.com/crops-and-gardening/american-chestnut-tree-blight.aspx

For more information on the Dunstan Chestnut read

http://www.chestnuthilltreefarm.com/Chestnuts.html

Found!

When I entered Kindergarten at age 5, my mother went back to work as a teacher in our local school district. She had a time finding a babysitter to watch my little brother during the day**. Eventually, a neighbor convinced my mother to let her give it a try. I’m not convinced that she actually enjoyed watching my brother and me, but I do know that I learned quite a bit from her.


My babysitter was married to her husband at the age of 15 and stayed married until he died at a fairly old age. He repaired TVs and she made crocheted items to sell and sold apple pies made with apples from her own orchard at our town festival every fall.

She grew up during the Great Depression and some of my memories of her reflect this. I remember my brother and me standing on the ground at the local dump and watching her crawl in the dumpster to look for old Clorox bottles to make Easter baskets with. Dumpster divng  is not allowed in most places today but was mentioned by The Tightwad Gazette newsletter in the late 1990’s. I remember her apples being dried on the roof of her house to be saved until she was ready to make her “apple puffs’ for the festival. She taught me the beginnings of crocheting and quilting.

I still remember the morning she told us we were going to pick huckleberries. We walked to a neighbor's property and walked through the woods picking berries. I was reminded of these memories as we found huckleberries on our property last week. MrLivingOurWay has picked the berries from plants on our property before (during his foraging experiement)  but was surprised that they came back after our trees were cut.

**As a note. I'm pretty sure the problem wasn't my little brother so much as finding someone who would meet her requirements.

Figs

I grew up thinking that the only thing figs were good for was the middle of a Fig Newton cookie. MrLivingOurWay remembered a fig tree in his great grandmother’s yard and decided that we should grow figs. We had no idea what a healthy fruit a fig was until we ran across an article stating that figs are a significant source of calcium. Upon further research they also are a significant source of many other nutrients.


There are a host of health benefits listed on various web sites for the use of figs. If you put all of the information together, figs appear to be a cure all. I am not comfortable reprinting the information here due to finding different uses on every page with little of it repeated on another page. What do you know about the benefits of figs? Can you share your experiences?

Below is one of the fig trees that we planted last year.

http://www.foodreference.com/html/figs-nutrition-729.html

Trouble in the Chicken Coop

Within the last week, we’ve had two possums in the chicken coop. Most predators come around after midnight. Somehow, I’ve gotten very good at noticing when our chickens are disturbed at night. This is probably a good thing as once I woke up to gun shots outside. MrLivingOurWay hadn’t wanted to wake me up. I contend that I would rather have been awaken by him than by gun shots. The other alternative before I started hearing the chickens and waking up MrLivingOurWay was the time period when we had a baby monitor in the chicken coop and the receiver in our bedroom. I woke up to the chickens in stereo a few times.


Once we are awake, MrLivingOurWay grabs his gun and heads outside. I usually put on my bathrobe and shoes (if I is winter) and follow him outside and stand on the back porch. It makes me nervous when he is outside with a gun half a sleep. Once he has scared off or killed the predator, he proceeds to check on all the chickens in the coop and in various tractors to make sure they are ok.

The entire process usually takes about an hour from start to finish. This week, he managed to save the chickens though we do have a hen isolated on the back porch due to injuries from the possum. She probably wouldn’t have been hurt except that she was roosting outside of the coop instead of inside. The two possums are now buried with the stumps we are removing.

What are your nights like when you are protecting your animals? Do you have ways to prevent the predators from coming around? We’ve also had problems with foxes, raccoons, and wild dogs.

A farm?

I like the eggs our chickens lay and I'm not a fan of the kind they sell in the grocery store at all.  However, after having hard boiled eggs, scrambled eggs, omlets, quiche, pound cake, and angel food cake more times that I can count, I get tired of eggs. Last Fall, I sat at my computer and went to Local Harvest  advertised that we had fresh eggs for sale.  I told MrLivingOurWay as I was doing this and we even discussed what to put in as the "farm" name. 

According to Dictionary.com the second definition of a farm is:

land or water devoted to the raising of animals, fish, plants, etc.:

According to this definition, it does appear that we could have a very small chicken farm and the other options at Local Harvest were to list our eggs as being from a CSA or a Farmers Market.  Neither of those names really fit at all.  "Budding Homestead', as MrLivingOurWay would rather refer to it, was not an option.

Fast forward to this spring when MrLivingOurWay gets a call from someone who has seen our ad on Local Harvest. 

MrsLivingOurWay, What are you writing on that blog of yours anyway?

Confused, I asked.

 What are you talking about?

He responded.

I had a lady call and asked about eggs. She wanted to know whether I would rather meet her some where or if she should come out to the farm.  We don't own a farm.

Upon talking further with the new customer, he realized that she'd found his name on Local Harvest and asked around for his phone number.   We have plenty of eggs to sell and really do want to sell these eggs. MrLivingOurWay just wants to make sure he is not misrepresenting himself.  What do you think?  Do we fit the definition for a farm? Even if techically the chickens are in our back yard?

Lessons from Day 1 of Land Clearing

I've talked about our "back five" before. We bought the land several years ago with the intent to get goats. We didn't really have enough money for fencing, so we kept putting off MrLivingOurWay's dream of getting goats. Then, we decided that we might like some fruit trees too and I remembered a conversation with a coworker about people actually paying money to log land. I called a few small loggers from Craigslist and one of them was willing to come and cut our trees. It was the worst possible time to have the trees cut as far as the price we got for them, but it probably would have been enough money to the cover the fence for the goats. We had a crazy idea that maybe we could get pigs to uproot the stumps, but then I wasn't able to eat pork for a long time and the pigs wouldn't be pulling double duty as we'd planned. All of the sudden, we were able to afford a small tractor with which MrLivingOurWay believed we would be able to pull stumps with a chain. We would then chip all the branches and stumps for mulch. That didn't work at all. He worked for hours for several days and not one stump came up. Piling up branches with front loader on the tractor wasn't as easy as we'd imagined either.


A year later, we've gotten our hands on some more equipment and I really think it's going to work this time, although not exactly how I’d imagined it. I kind of imagined a machine that would just grab the stumps and rip them out of the ground in seconds. Sort of like something you’d see a robot with long arms in a movie do.

Yesterday, during a two hour period, two stumps were removed. Yay! The first stump took a long time as MrLivingOurWay was learning how to use the equipment. The second one happened a little quicker. As I was observing the process, which required digging around each stump and then pulling the stump out of the ground, I realized that we wouldn't have to spend all that time chipping stumps if he just turned the stump on it's side and put the dirt back over it. He loved the idea and did just that with the second one. We are concerned that as the stump rots, there might be some sink holes but we will deal with that when we get there. 

This process might take a long time. Here is a picture of what the land looked like a few weeks ago. The stumps are hard to see because the land is a little grown over.

Changes

Over the last two years, as I have ventured out of a traditional office and into working at home and raising my kids, one of the most amazing things I have noticed is how plants change so quickly in spring time. Sometimes, thte girls and I will make a trip around the yard specifically to notice all the changes.  Here are some changes that have taken place this week compared to last week.

Our blueberry bushes now have lots leaves

One thing we are definately noticing this week is that what I thought was a carrot last week was actually a small pine tree coming up. Oops!  Here is a real picture of a carrot.

Our greens are slightly bigger but also much leafier

Our radishes are getting bigger

Our beets are bigger

Notice how the peas are now peaking over the top of the raised bed?

What Will You Do With Your Money During a Depression?

While we were driving recently, we heard a man on the radio predict that the country will be in a depression very soon.  I remember studying about recessions and depressions in my economics class in college.  Basically, a depression is a much larger economic decline than a recession and opinions on exact measurements seem to be a subject of disagreement. Depressions come about every 60 years.  The last one was in the 1930's so we are due for another.  Feel free to jump in here as I didn't exactly ace my economics classes.

The man on the radio was advising that everyone move their money out of stocks and to sell all real estate  over the next few months and put the money into an  "investment account".  He claimed that a bank would not be a good place because he did not believe that the government would be able to back their promise of FDIC insurance when many banks are shutting down at the same time.

This got us thinking...if the bank wasn't a safe place to put your money and these investment accounts aren't FDIC insured, then what would we do?  We decided that in our case, extra money would best be thrown at our mortgage. We would get a decent return on the money (by lowering the interest that we are paying) and as long as we can make our mortgage payments we aren't losing the house.

I used to be under the impression that everything you put into your mortgage is just gone if you are forclosed on.  After some research, it does appear that there is usually nothing left after the sale of the house due to late fees and interest.  However, anything above the loan, fees and interest is actually supposed to be given back to you.  So the more equity you have in your home, the more chance you would actually get something back after the sale of your forclosed on home.  This makes us feel much better about putting extra funds into paying our mortgage off.

The question is...should we put the money into our mortgage or getting our land ready for goats? We will need to pay for clearing and fencing of the land.  At this time we are leaning towards prepping the land.  What would you do?

Homestead Blog Carnvial

We are participating in the Homestead Blog Carnival this week. You can view it here:
http://homesteadcarnival.blogspot.com/2010/04/carnival-140-glitch-in-system-edition.html

Cheaper By the Dozen

I know that it sounds like I’m going to talk about eggs in this post, but I’m really not. A friend of mine recommended that I read Cheaper By the Dozen by Frank B. Gilbreth and Ernestine Gilbreth Carey about a year and a half ago. She suggested that I read it because my stories of MrLivingOurWay quizzing our kids on math facts at age 3 reminded her of the book. We got so much more out the book though and I thought I would share. MrLivingOurWay started reading the book after he heard me laughing so much while reading it and we were both excited to read the sequel Belles on Their Toes.


Frank and Lillian Gilbreth were efficiency experts who had a total of twelve children. This was very intriguing because I’m always trying to find ways to make things more efficient. Often times, I’m trying so hard to make things more efficient that they become inefficient because I’m always looking into new ways. In both books, there are some interesting ways to save time. Some are ridiculous but some really make you think such as how your kitchen is arranged. MrLivingOurWay has tried to enforce their methods of discipline many times but with only two children it just doesn’t quite work the same way.

Belles on Their Toes begins to be more relevant to this blog as Lillian suddenly finds herself as work at home mom and the children begin to be very thrifty in order to stay together as a family. The children start a garden and pick up horse manure to make compost. They make their own soft drinks in the basement, save money on the family food budget, and show their negotiating skills.

I highly recommend these books if you have time to sit and read them. They are definitely worth the trip to your local library. Both books are currently in print.  This is actually a book written at an elementary school reading level, so read it as a family.

Have you read these books? What do you think of them? Do you recommend any other books that fit with our life style?

Chicken Tractors

We have two chicken tractors. MrLivingOurWay built them out of scrap wood and metal as well as chicken wire. He built them when we decided to get broiler chicks one year. Broilers are known to sit in their filth and not move a lot. Since we prefer that our meat move, he pulled them around in the chicken tractors all summer.  This method does make our yard nice and green but it usually just works in patches.


Since that time, we’ve found many other uses for the tractors. We frequently incubate eggs and hatch our own chicks in our incubator. In one of our tractors, we have installed a light to put small ones under. In the other one, we generally separate a mama hen and her chicks from the rest of the flock. Currently, we have roosters waiting to be butchered in one of the tractors.

Our four roosters waiting to be butchered.  The light which is used to warm young chicks is not on.

Here is a rear view of our chicken tractor.  Can you see the rope that MrLivingOurWay uses to pull the tractor around the yard?

Here is a front view of the chicken tractor.  You should be able to see another rope if you look closely.

Signs of Spring

Last week, we only had one of our daffodils which had bloomed.  This week, they are all open.

If you look very closely at this picture, you can see the blueberry bushes are starting to bud.

Raspberries.  Our raspberry vines always look great this time of year but they never seem to have any fruit later on.

What signs of spring are you noticing?