Tuesday, March 12, 2013

Finally.

Photo Credit: Will Clayton

No more children's birthdays until October. I can stop having mini nervous breakdowns about how old my children are getting, until then.

Yesterday I worked a lot in the house, and on my household notebook. With planting season coming soon and parent teacher conferences and baby chicks coming soon and kids working and volunteering for the summer and, well, you get the picture...I needed to be more organized, so I spent some hard core time working on the notebook.

I got five more pounds of apples into the dehydrator. I'll be making some granola with these and maybe rehydrating some for apple sauce. Once they are done, I have some spinach and green onions to do.

My order from herbalcom came in yesterday. I got part of it packaged up and into the herb shed, and I'll finish that today. The cats are going batshit crazy over the box-catnip was in there.

Wednesday, March 6, 2013

Photo Credit: Ken_Mayer

I'm sitting here in the living room, having accomplished absolutely nothing except getting the kids fed, dressed, and out the door for school, and a single load of laundry into the washer. There's a fire going in the wood stove, the dogs are sleeping, and the cats are mostly being lazy, and trying to get to the remains of the cornbread we had with breakfast.

Well, the lazy won't last for long. I'll enjoy it while it's here.

Our warm weather continues. High 50s today. I'm hoping to get dirty outside this afternoon, although, by the looks of things, it's still pretty chilly outside. It looks cold and gray right now. I'm hoping that improves quickly, as it's almost time to feed the chickens and take the dogs outside.

Yesterday the three youngest and I got a new bale of straw put into the chicken coop. The kids had a blast spreading the straw around, finding themselves covered in it. There was much giggling and grinning. Perfect way to spend a late winter afternoon, if you ask me. We threw some scratch down and let the chickens go at it, to get the straw a little more spread out.

We also got strawberries and apples into the dehydrator. I'll be checking the strawberries in a bit, they should be done at this point. I have about twelve more pounds of apples to do, so there will be lots of time spent in the kitchen today! I'm also planning on making granola, so it will be awesome to be able to do some batches with the dried fruit.

Monday, March 4, 2013

I hate Mondays.

Photo Credit: DeusXFlorida

Between being gone most of the day on Sunday for grocery shopping, and the results of said grocery shopping, I always have a lot to do on Mondays. Add to that, I didn't have hot water on Saturday. For some reason, the pilot light on my hot water heater randomly decides to go out, and I can never manage to get it relit.

Today's list includes seventeen loads of laundry (not really), twelve pounds of cheese to grate (really) and freeze, six pounds of strawberries to do something with, and twenty pounds of apples to core and slice for the dehydrator. The chickens will be happy today, with all of the scraps.

We're getting about six eggs a day now.

I bought bins this weekend to get all of the chicken stuff, except feed, stored in, and the materials to build the hanging chicken feeder. We lost a lot of feed this winter because the feed bowl is down on the ground in the coop, so the chickens walk in it, and poop in it. We have the same issue with the water, but I ordered these waterers, and I'm hoping that solves the poop  problem entirely. While we're not losing anything with the poopy water, it's a giant PITA to bleach out the water bowl when it's 17 degrees outside.

Today I will also be adding a bale of straw to the chicken coop. I do the deep litter method, so I add a bale every 3-4 weeks. I may be adding more often in summer, depending on the smell and bug count. I'll be buying twenty or so bales next week to have on hand. That should get me through the next year, depending on how much I end up adding over the summer.

Dinner tonight is carnitas. I love it when I can put almost everything for dinner into the crockpot and leave it all day.

Tuesday, February 12, 2013

It's been cold, so I've been cleaning.

Everyone was sick with a nasty cold. My seven year old had croup. So I decided it was time for some old fashioned Spring Cleaning.

Taking apart every single room. Cleaning top to bottom. Exhausting. I went through almost a gallon and a half of vinegar last week, although, to be honest, some of it went to pickle cucumbers and onions. That's one of Mr. S.'s favorite treats, and I always pickle some right away when the cucumbers first go on sale in late winter.

I'm still not done with the cleaning. The boys' room is proving problematic. The carpet in there is nasty, but with cold and snow it's hard to shampoo. I got part of it done, but it needs to be redone, and it's simply been too cold to get it done. Then I tried to move the bed so I could at least clean and vacuum under it, and the leg bent, so I ordered a new bed. We've needed to replace it anyway, but still. Because I can't move it until the new one gets here, I'm kind of stuck. Today I'll be treating the one part with baking soda, and then vinegar. We will be replacing it this spring, but it stinks and I want that fixed, even temporarily.

Photo Credit: emilydicksonridesabmx

We have gotten a LOT of trash out of the house. It's amazing how much trash builds up over the cold winter! You get lazy in front of a warm fire, I think! Of course, cleaning out all the nooks and crannies and under the beds and behind the couches is also a contributing factor!

Two of our chickens are laying now. There are six eggs in the fridge, waiting for us to get enough to have a celebratory breakfast for dinner with our fresh eggs.

We bought fence posts this weekend to build a small yard for the dogs. There's a dog run at the back of the property but the gate is broken and I don't see the point of having the dog run way back there. We were planning to enclose a portion around the front and north side of the house, that is already partially enclosed. Then, yesterday, my 14 year old had the dogs in the dog run so they could play off the leash, while he held the gate closed, and they jumped the fence to chase dogs that had gotten on to our property. So there goes the yard idea.

Today I'm tired and crabby and sick. But the cleaning needs to be finished. The kids are on the mend, but with the schizophrenic weather we've been having, the cleaner the house is, the less sinus and allergy issues we'll have in the coming days.

I also have some onion bottoms to plant. Hopefully I will get that done today too.

Last night, we had tacos for dinner. I made refried beans to go with them using this recipe, and they turned out great. My neighbor, who is from Mexico, swears by adding lard to her beans to make them creamy, so I did add some lard, but it didn't make them creamier. So I'll be skipping that step next time. I doubled the recipe thinking that I would have some left over to freeze, but I ended up just having enough for some leftovers. Maybe we'll have burritos for lunch later this week.

Friday, February 1, 2013

Yesterday was warmer still. We've gone from lots of snow in the yard to lots of mud. Still have sick kids home with a cough. I'm hoping it will be warm enough and not windy enough that we can go outside and let them get some warmth and sunlight to help.

Some days seem like I move in a circle from kitchen to laundry room to living room to outisde for something, and yesterday was one of those days. I do enjoy it, though. Some days, I'm in the kitchen for six hours or more a day. But it's all in the name of providing the healthiest food I can for my family.

Photo Credit: La.Catholique

This is radical homemaking. Perhaps we could even call it retro homemaking. Maybe our grandmothers did it. For sure, in most cases, our great grandmothers did it. For centuries, farmwives have been tending the garden, preserving the food, tending the livestock, at least those for home use. They have known animal husbandry, seasonal eating, planting by the signs of the moon, how to make lard, soap, and the best feed for their animals.

As technology advanced, women began to move out of the kitchen and off the homestead. Workplaces became open to them, either by choice or by necessity. And a few generations or so ago, women began actively fighting for their rights to do things like vote and own property of their own and work. Whatever you think of feminism, the be all end all of it is that women have a choice. A plethora of choices, if you will. You choices are based on your wants and needs, as are mine.

So I am proudly a radical homemaker.

We have better technology now, and can do more, faster. It's not that I want to undo any of that. It's that I want to know that I can do it. It's that I need that connection, that touchstone, to the past. It's that our food supply is full of artificial that and GMO'd this and frankly, I want to move away from that. But mostly, it's that I want to give my children a legacy, and past full of memories and skills they can hold on to as they grow. Sure, dance lessons or soccer would give them the same thing, but those things aren't available here, and if we lived in the city, we probably wouldn't be able to afford them. This love for the earth, respect for the food, knowledge of where their food comes from-that I can give them.

And some days, being a radical homemaker means I spend six hours in the kitchen. Yesterday's circuit went something like this

Dishes
Laundry
Check the fire
Clean in some room
Check the fire
Sprouts
Dishes
Check the fire
Sit for ten minutes
Lather, rinse, repeat

That's all in a normal day here.

We did go by our little local market. We don't shop there often because their prices are generally higher, but I found myself in dire need of something or other (yes, it was probably chocolate) so we went. I stumbled onto a bounty of fresh vegetables on sale. I bought some cucumbers, which I will pickle with onions in vinegar in the fridge for Mr. S., and some carrots that will go into the dehydrator. I found a package of marked down tomatoes that won't last long, but Mr. S. will enjoy them sliced with dinner for the next few days. He's the only one that will eat tomatoes like that.

Since we had carrots and cucumbers I decided to buy a head of lettuce, and made some ranch dressing mix when we got home. I used this recipe and while I'll have to agree that it made phenomenal ranch, the mix itself did not fit into a quart sized canning jar. I have it sitting in a baggie until I can use more and then I will move it into a jar.

Dinner last night was the aforementioned salad, and spaghetti and garlic bread. It was fantastic!