I'll be back

The past week has been hectic to say the least, there is so much that needs to happen between now and our move on the 18th that blogging isn't a priority right now. The kids have been having a grand time with the empty boxes. They've made tunnels and towers.

Club houses and look out places.

Which has really done nothing except keep them busy. Making messes and not helping in the least.

Homeschooling is near impossible seeing as the house is a wreck and what's not a mess is being packed up or on it's way out to the trash or donation bin.

It's pretty much driving me batty.

But it's also funny. Especially since the boxes all came from either Dell or the liquor store and the kids can read now. Makes for interesting conversation when Alex says something like "So you're packing up the kitchen stuff in the Vodka box?" or when he asks specifically for the Samuel Adams box for his books.

So, between packing and addressing holiday cards, homeschooling and cooking up the last of the stuff in the freezer, my next few weeks are going to be a bit busy but don't worry (I'm pretending you are) I'll be back before the Holidays.

Unless I die in a freak packing box accident. Then I guess this is good-bye.

Productivity Reins

Yesterday was quite a busy day. First, we woke up at seven...I mean eight. I haven't caught up to Daylight Savings yet*. Rob put together the bike trailer and hooked it up to my new bike. Did I mention we bought bikes on Saturday? Cordi got a new one for her birthday and we picked up a brand new two seater trailer at Target a few months ago for 90% off. All that was left was getting bikes for the rest of us.

The kids were excitedly donning their helmets as they raced impatiently around the yard. Emmy couldn't stay out of her "carriage". It was nine -no that would be ten- before Max got up. We rode a half mile down back streets over to the local highschool where, once a month, they have a farmers market. The day was gorgeous; blue skys, puffy clouds, a high of 70 and a cool breeze. Perfection. Or as close as we can get in Florida. It's days like this that make me long for more moderate climates where these pitifully few days we have down South stretch weeks long. But then we remeber that it usually snows in those places and how much we really actually do hate the cold.

The small turn out of last month's market left me sorely unprepared for this one. The small lawn of the highschool was packed with people, kids and pets. The number of booths grew, practically spilling into the street with local vendors. It was marvelous.

We got a nice bunch of organic veggies and fruits. A head of cabbage for making the sauerkraut in the Nourishing Traditions cookbook that should be here today. Crisp lettuce and perfectly red plum tomatos for a salad. A huge ripe papaya for Duncan's wool block issue. Heavenly organic oranges and local strawberries. We got fresh squeezed orange juice (that we watched the see-through machine squeeze into our cup, mystifying our techie kids) and real brick fired pizzas that were cooked in a portable handmade oven, mystifying me.

My bike trailer trunk was loaded with goodies as we headed home after loosing Emmy for about 5 minutes, alterting the band to make an announcement and being emotionally reunited with my precious wayward daughter. Loosing a kid for any amount of time is terrifing. My heart thumped in my stomach and nausea soured in my throat. It happens, though. Especially, in highly crowded places. A kid walks around a corner, across an asile in a busy place, or follows a new "friend" (meaning some other kid) away from you when your attention isn't laser beamed on them. They're not really "gone" but try and tell it to a parent's kick-drum beating heart. If it hasn't happened to you yet, it probably will at some point. Thankfully, it worked out positively today.

After getting home and gorging on oranges we set out for the yard. Rob "tilled" the beds I was having trouble clearing, using the motorized edger. I made the fourth, and last, bed frame. Now there are two four by eight foot beds, separated in the middle to make four 4x4' beds. Cordi and I bonded over weed pulling. She's my little garden girl. She loves the work, the dirt and the rewards of the harvest. We weeded and added more dirt to the bed, manure mixture and top soil. We planted two fruited pepper plants, seven sprouted romaine, and one lonely basil.

my garden and my girl

We hung the ladybug house and read the instructions on how to release them, which we'll do later this evening. I added a trellis to the zucchini that are growing quite rapidly. The aphids aren't as plentiful as they once were, I don't know it that was because of the two ladybugs I saw (and possibly more hidden ones) or if they just flew away. I don't really care as long as they leave me the hell alone. The broccoli is indeed flowering and I think the carrots are sprouting.

While I was working on the beds, Rob was putting together a wooden picnic table so we can eat outside more and enjoy the work we're doing in the yard (and bonus, not have to have the kids eating in the house for every meal). Maybe we can all fit on this table too so we can enjoy the same meal at the same time. Wouldn't that just be a thing.

Leeloo seems to be a bit better today so her issue might have been the food change. Duncan gobbled up the papaya and is drinking water so maybe his wool block isn't such an issue. Maybe he's just "off feed" because of the climate change.

I made my first bunny poo harvest and generously fed the surviving single tomato and distributing the remainder over the already formed beds. I also drew out some worm tea and gave everyone in the garden a good splash (the plants, not the kids).

We're ate pizza again for dinner, leftovers from our visit to Rob's aunt Saturday night on a new stoneware pizza pan. I've been drooling over switching out our teflon coated ones for the stoneware equivalents but the price is holding me back. What a wonderful woman for giving me a brand new one! We also were gifted her upright full-size freezer (see the big white rectangle on the porch in the photo with Rob and the table?) All that and I still uploaded photos from the visit and got in a few rounds of Mafia Wars. I'm excited with the days' happenings, thankful for the opportunities -and gifts- we've been given and optimistic after a bad day of worry.

*It's stupid and I hate it and it will take me until a week before the time changes again to get used to it...and change all the clocks in my surrounding area to the correct time.  

Constant Reminder

Farm Name

I've posted on our farm blog about our quest for the perfect farm name. If you've been reading the blog here, you know a bit about us.

We're taking suggestions and have been told when the perfect name comes along we'll know it. It's just coming up with names to begin with that's posing the problem.

I'll be waiting anxiously to read your ideas in the comments!

Solar to Sustain Us?

One of my favorite They Might Be Giants kids songs is "The Sun" (quoted in italics below). It's actually a song I can listen to without wanting to stab someone for it's idiotic repetitiveness  quite catchy tune and is about science. So, its basically awesome.

The sun is a mass of incandescent gas,

A gigantic nuclear furnace,


Where hydrogen is built into helium,


At a temperature of millions of degrees.

This homesteading thing isn't about us building a spec home on a large sodded lot. It's about changing our lifestyle and reducing our needs outside what we can harvest and grow outselves. Harvesting the sun for energy is just one of those ideas. Looking at our recent electric bill...well, lets just say it looks to be a daunting task. Can seven people live without the lines of The Electric Company hanging over us?

We need its light,



We need its heat,


The sunlight that we see,


The sunlight comes from our own suns,


Atomic energy
 
I'd like to think we could. But I'm not sure. We're reading about it, researching, pricing out panels. That's what this whole huge life is about: learning. Last month we used on average 81 kwhpd. Oh. My. God. It fluxuated over $125 from December. Ouch. Granted, we're sitting in a house built in 1922 that literally had holes in it where you could see daylight. We have no insulation besides the minimum in the attic. There are places the only barrier between us and the outside is an almost a century old panel of wood. The AC/electric heat unit put it has one single duct to the downstairs which makes us need multiple space heaters running constantly to keep the chill down. I wore gloves to type during the freeze snap we had. Even with the heaters running full.
 
The sun is hot,



The sun is not,


A place where we could live,


But here on Earth there'd be no life,


Without the light it gives.

It's hard to determine what our energy consumption would be if we lived in a house that didn't have these flaws. I love my old house but I do not love anything at all about owing the electric company exorbitant amounts of money each month and the overhanging threat of being turned off if we can't make the payment. Even with the insulation we'd still need to climitize the house, see for homeschool, cook, wash laundry and heat water. On average I estimated we spend between $3000-5000 a year on electric usage. That's a lot of green for being very un-green.We're learning though. I really want to do this right from the beginning. Not go back and redo work because it was easier to hook up to the main line for power. I want independence and freedom from monthly bills and non-renewable energies be them my own works or burning fossil fuels. We'd have to piece-meal the system together based on our needs. Building an off grid house we don't get the luxury of walking in and plugging in. But that's okay. That's what I want...if we can figure it out.

The sun is far away,



About 93 million miles away!


And thats why it looks so small,


But even when its out of sight,


The sun shines night and day.

I love the Tax Man

The sentiment isn't well shared though and I accept that. We love him now but my not like him so much later when the five little tax credits aren't claimable. This year, though, he's a welcomed visitor. This year he's going to help me get closer to my farm.

Raising five kids isn't easy. There are times when more than half need new shoes and I cringe looking at the bill. They need fitting shoes. I wouldn't not buy them but it's still a kick to the wallet when it happens all at once. Somehow they all need something at the same time. Shoes, clothes, doctor visits, bikes, car seats. Like Mother Nature tapped a wand on our house and everyone grew out of everything overnight. Believe me, it happens like that a lot.

We work through it though. We manage even if sometimes it's only just.

I'm sure people look at our family and wonder why we'd ever put outselves through the financial strain of raising this brood. I know they do because there are those select few -who apparently have no social filter- that say it to me. I usually say to them "Pick one I should get rid of." They usually shut up.

Money is money. It's a thing. Something to be used to better life and make living easier, freer. I truly feel we lost that when credit came around. Young, eager and naive. Our lives were ruined by it years ago. We're still recovering from our mistakes.

But as I said, it's a thing it can't take first steps or learn to say "mama". But it can buy cozy socks for walking.

This year it's buying parts of a dream. We'll be going out to the land later this month, or at the latest early March, hiring someone with a tractor and bush hog to clear the land, getting a hotel room, and having a shipping container delivered the next day. We'll us the container to hold materials we find. Be a workroom during construction, then transform it into a side of a barn or a studio for my sewing and writing. I'm looking forward to that shipping container.

We'll use some to pay off debt and some for savings. A few car repairs will be thrown in there too. We might get the house plan we're trying to make work. Possibly build a chicken coop for the urban house we have now along with a few fat speckled chicks. If we play it right, we might get a used RV to boot. Sounds like something frivilous but it's a 6 hour round trip drive to the land. We can stay in a hotel to get work done or drive our hotel with us and just walk out the front door to work.

We might never be rich in cash -hell, I don't think we were ever meant to be- but we'll try and do good when we get some.

It's been a year.

It's strawberry season again in Florida. It's been a year since we bought our five acres of land. I have to tell you folks, I'm worried.

Nothing has been done.

It's hard not to think about the time that's past. This time last year were were signing on the dotted line. Our dream was budding like the strawberry fields we pass on the highway. Bright and full of promise. We were looking forward to a full harvest.

We haven't done anything. Granted hubby was in Iraq until October, but I still feel like more should have been accomplished. Something should have gotten done.

We have no house plan. No land plan. No RV to live in while we build. No savings to build this dream of ours. The land is supposed to get cleared later this month after we drove up and discovered it coated in six foot tall brush. The land soothed me then, fed my soul, even as we walked along the road bordering one side of my future. I still felt the pang of this new set back though. Something more that needed to be done before we could ever start. We're planning on having a shipping container delivered after the land is cleared. But it hasn't happened yet.

I had hoped to have the well and septic done by now. At least have a house plan drawn up and finalized. Something tangible. Some fruit trees maturing out there so they'd be ready for us in a year or two. A year has already gone.

I've had this Barnheart for a long time but it kept getting pushed aside with day to day. New things happen to offset the need -and it is a need- that move the longing to the backburner. Not necessarily bad things, just the regular. Life. Dishes, laundry, school, illness, a car crash, well...you understand. "Stuff" gets in the way.

I get excited over things that ten years ago would have had my brows furrowed in confusion, shaking my head over the ridiculousness. Me? Smile over manure? Lay in bed unable to sleep, not from worry of work, but because I want to sketch out a coop? Long to be disconnected from the electric company? Not hardly.

But something changed those ten short years ago. Slowly building. Changing my course of action, pulling me back to roots I didn't know I had or wanted. That lazy churn isn't cutting it for me anymore. There is a shift that needs to happen. By God if it doesn't feel like a cosmic cataclysm is brewing under the surface of my skin. Boiling, rolling, waiting to get out. Never calming, never leaving, needing to be fed.  I worry ten more will go by before...No. I don't want to think about that.

I said a few months ago, in December, when the thought of resolutions peppered the air, that this was the year. We were going to get progress done. We were going to have our plans solidify and our march towards that simple little plot of land was going to begin.

I'm trying. I really, really am. We will get more done this year. Even as we're now two months into 2010 and I can practically feel the days slipping through my hands, sliding through my fingers like tears streaming down my face as I feel my Barnheart acting up. We will get more done.

Life, don't make me a liar.

It's not winter here

When the temperature here gets in the 80's a mere week before the myriad of winter celebrations begins, I get this odd feeling. Something's not right. Yesterday my daughters went to the grocery store sporting tanktop dresses and sockless shoes. It was that hot.

I don't want to argue the pros and cons or tout scientific research proving the harmful effects of global warming, but all you have to do is visit Florida this December to see something's going on. Something's off kilter down here. It's winter, it should be cold and it's not.

I remember about ten years ago, doing holiday shopping the morning after Thanksgiving and freezing my ass off. Donning hat, scarf, jacket, tall socks and hot coffee. I haven't worn any of those yet this year.

Something inside me screams for cold winters huddled around a fire.  Certain things are supposed to be done according to the time of year. Taking out the sewing box to work on that quilt or gathering up the unspun wool from the season listening to my son read and smelling the rich scent of burning wood we gathered and chopped while I spin yarn into something useable. Working on those projects the summer months won't allow. Not saying that I couldn't do that here in the Sunshine State, but the cooler days (the 80's is considered cool here) are calling us out and my "winterized" garden is bursting with crops. I have probably two dozen tomatoes on the vine, the garlic, shallots and onions that were supposed to wait out until spring are proliferating. I just found two blooms on the snap peas.

Sometimes I think I was born in the wrong era. So many people I know just look for the easier way to do things. I dream of work. Farm work. Why spend countless hours making a single hat when you can go buy one in only a few minutes? They say. Because it's just not the same, I reply. I would love to sit and plan out the kids wardrobes, purchase fabrics specifically for it, take a month to sew it all out in between the other chores a household of seven requires. Raise a sheep, shear it, spin the wool and make a hat. There's some strange tingling feeling I get when I see how the world is made to work together.

That sheep will graze, it'll shit, that shit will fertilize my garden, it'll have babies to sell or add to the flock, I give to it; care, food, shelter, companionship and it gives back to me. A symbiotic relationship that makes the world turn. It's the way it's supposed to be. It's supposed to be winter though, too.

Another day, Another dollar

With the impending arrival of the New Year just a few short weeks away and the onslaught of grotesquely bright and colorful ads shouting the merits of spending my money I thought it would be a good idea (before everyone redlines the credit cards) to talk about that horrific topic of Money.

We want a farm. That's no secret and it's no small order. We've wanted one for years. Sometimes the wanting is so bad I can taste hay on my tongue. That's it over there in the right. Gorgeous, isn't it? I can see the animals mulling around, hear the kids freely racing about, feel the hot Florida sun beating down on me as I kneel in a garden, smell the tang of fat ripe tomatoes so red they look surreal. I feel like a crack addict for something I haven't even had yet, just jonesing for a hit of that virgin land sitting three hours away. If we're going to get it, changes have to be made.

Those changes have to start being made or we're never going to get there. It's all well and good to talk about change but if it's not implemented it's just hot air in an already humid wind. I think impulsiveness is the detriment to any plan. With Money you have to have a plan. The economy is so upsidown right now I don't think anyone really knows what's going on. Debt is the harbinger of failure.

While we’ve been slowly modifying life to attain our goal, I’m happy with the progress we’ve made but we backslide. Too much. This last vacation we did well, kept the spending to a minimum and cut corners where we could but that necessary budget breaking food kept getting in the way. But there’s this little voice that says all that money would have made a great down payment on the skoolie. Even now, as we shuffle into the Starbucks line that little voice in the back of my mind that says we need to stop. I know we need to. This year we will.

This coming year is going to be rough. I know it is going to be hard, especially for the kids but looking at that land and knowing what we’re going to do is heady stuff. Makes a person not care so much about those skipped overpriced lattes. Makes you think twice about a lot of things.

Even if you're tasty dream isn't a farm but some other want you long for just as bad, I think you know what I'm saying. I’m not saying anything that hasn’t been said a million times over by a hundred different people. I’m not an expert. Merely a girl with a dream she wants to see fulfilled.

I’m sending that photo over to Target today. It’s getting blown up to ridiculousness and printed out on high quality glossy paper. We’re going to post it in the house somewhere we’ll see it every day. Probably the bathroom. We’re going to bolt down a budget later this week and Gorilla Glue that sumabitch in place. I can hear the little voice cheering for us. We’re not buying groceries anymore but provisions and staples. No more spur of the moment travels or trips. If we don’t have it on hand I’m sure we can make due. We have plenty around here to keep us busy. The seed catalog is coming out and expansion for next year is underway.

Maybe one exception to the budget will be a megaphone for that little voice.