Books I'm currently reading

"And the skylark sings with me. Adventures in Homeschooling and Community-Based Education" by David H. Albert

"Christian Unschooling, Growing Your Children in the Freedom of Christ" by Teri J. Brown

"Micro Eco-Farming. Prospering from Backyard to Small Acreage In Partnership with the Earth." by Barbara Berst Adams

Edible plants

The kids and I had quite a fun and busy weekend.

Saturday I had seven kids over playing all day. Of course I made them all play outside, I was busy painting the mudroom most of the day (pictures to come). We went through a lot of food and a box of band aids. The daily activities included trampoline, sprinkler, roller blading, skateboarding, nail painting, chalk drawings on the road, blanket playing, cars, dolls, tag, hide-and-seek, and the list goes on and on.

Sunday after church we came home and I planned on finishing the painting of the mudroom, but my plans were cut short as soon as I opened the "new" can of white paint and discovered it was actually neon green. Well, that wasn't going to work, and I didn't want to drive to the store, so we just changed directions.

Instead the kids decided they wanted matching shorts. So as I was busy sewing away, the kids were making necklaces and crafting with me down in the craft room. Luckily shorts are easy and go quickly. Then we were off to playing catch in the backyard, trampoline jumping, and then later in the evening packing up to get ready for Idaho. (Leaving on Tuesday evening) We're all excited to get away for a bit and get outdoors. Luckily we have great neighbors who will help water our garden.

The best part of our day was our research on wild edible plants, via YouTube, and the Internet. Then off we went to our backyard to discover what we could eat and try out some new greens. We tried dandelion, plantain, rose petal, and chickweed. I would really like to try eating stinging nettle, I've read some great information on the benefits of the stinging nettle tea or as a green in the blender with fruits. picking them is the fun part.

Off to bed for me now.

The Raw Mom summit

Go to http://www.rawmomsummit.com/ to sign up for the audio conferences in the next few days. It's not just for RAW food eating people, or just for moms, it's chalk full for good information. It's three days in already, but there's still good health information coming.

There is some push to upgrade, but you don't have to, just ignore it. The only catch is that each day you only have 24 yours to hear it, then the new round starts.
I just started listening today, good stuff.

Brigitte Mars has good stuff to say about natural herbal remedies.
Daniel Vitalis has excellent/interesting water information, how the vegan diet is not the best, raw milk, etc.
And I haven't heard the other one yet.

Enjoy! and let me know if you liked them or not.

I was trying to be nice to others...but it wasn't nice to myself

Last Tuesday I had my Lion's Club officer installation. And since I was an up coming officer I had to attend. Usually two times a month we all meet and eat dinner together at the retirement home and then we have our meeting. I usually skip the dinner portion for a few reasons 1) I don't have an extra 30 minutes to spare 2) I don't like the food they serve (it's all cooked) and 3) it costs $8 and I'm cheap. Most of the members are retired and it's very fun for them to eat out and visit together.

Some of the members jokingly give me a hard time about not eating dinner with them. I normally just ignore it. But, for some odd reason I thought it would mean something to them and be more respectful if I were to eat with them on this "special occasion". So on Tuesday I went, brought Keith along, and we had dinner with the group and attended the installation ceremony. The food was pretty good, corn with spices, salad, canned fruit of some sort, rice and fish.

I did ok during the dinner, but didn't finish it all. The next day my stomach was very upset and didn't agree with me at all. Then........wait........hear it comes.............a fibro flare up. Imagine that. Did I say I enjoy torturing myself, some would thing I do because I ate the food. The next few days were spent in pain, sleeping when I could, being in a somewhat dazed and exhausted state, and unable to work on stuff around the house. Not much fun.

I've come to realize how important it is for my body to eat only good, preservative free, natural things. The things God intended us to consume, not some man made junk. I also realize that my body does ok with steamed fresh veggies, etc, but NOT canned store stuff that has chemicals and preservatives in it.

So 100% RAW I go again. I seem to slide between 75% and 100%. The corn chips taste so good, and then other things creep back in. But I always feel so much better at 100%. I'm just a sensitive soul I guess!!

For my readers:
Remember to always eat at least something RAW at every meal, and don't forget the kids. Buy grapes or seeds instead of chips. Large lettuce leaves instead of tortillas. Skip the cheese. Raw or at least freshly ground peanutbutter sandwhiches instead of meat and cheese.

Water consumption in the city..........

For the sake of time we've been watering the gardens with a sprinkler. Well, our bill tripled this month. "Something has got to change!" The previous months ran somewhere between 450 and 550 watts, this month 1850 watts, yikes! And don't forget the add in the price we have to pay for sewer, which they base off of water consumption. Go figure.

After 30 minutes of hand pumping water up from the river in order to save a buck, we were left even more frustrated and bothered. The next step was to read the water meter to get a baseline, hand water with the hose and sprayer, check the water meter again and compare. We did this for the canning garden, the regular garden, including the new raised beds and berries. Both chunks of watering took about 2 watts each. Which altogether equates to about $20 a month.

I had many frustrations thinking......how are we supposed to be saving money by growing our own food, when it's going to cost us an extra $200 per month to water it using city water? Is that frugal? Might as well join a CSA for that price.

If we lived out in the country and had a well, then we wouldn't have to spend so much money watering. There must be a way to save money and grow good healthy food in order to rely less on stores. Any suggestions would be helpful at this point. We do live on a river, but it's very time consuming to haul buckets of water up from the river. I am waiting for the order to come in for the rain barrels, then we can do some gravity feed watering, WHEN there's rain.

The reusable bags I forgot to post a picture of

I found some great light weight mesh drawstring bags at the dollar store. There were four in each pack, so 25 cents per bag. The bags are a great alternative to the plastic produce bags, light, see through, and easy to throw into your cloth grocery bag. They won't work well for small bulk items though.

Tomato cages

Most of the tomato cages are finished.

We sold one today and we traded a neighbor some good dirt for a custom tomato cage.

So far, so good!

Tomatoes in the "small" garden

Tomatoes in the canning garden, with volunteer sunflowers growing here and there.

*******The back door is finally in ******

We were up until 10pm working on the backdoor last night. But it was well worth it, it's finally in. We still need to do some trim work and weather stripping, but it's in, it works, and it locks. Yippy!

The old door from the outside

The old door from the inside. Notice the lack of a door knob, the old carpet acting as a draft shield, and overall shabbiness.

We found the solid wood exterior door at the Re-store run by Habitat for Humanity. We had to cut it to size because of the unique shape of the door opening and slanting ceiling. The door didn't come with any holes for a doorknob or deadbolt, so we had to drill them in also. We did all the recessing and hinge work with a 1/2 inch chisel and hammer.

Check out that work!

The door is hung and mama is happy, now onto installing the knobs.

The finished door from the outside.

Yes, re-doing the deck and railings are on the list to do!

The door can be painted to match the house when we get to that project.

Yes, we're not only dorks that take pictures of doors, but proud to be doing our work ourselves and saving a bundle on labor costs. Plus we get to learn as we go.

Today's fun and yesterday's boxes

After church and the church potluck today we were busy building the tomato cages (you'll have to wait a few days to get pics of them) and the kids wanted to build something too. So here they are punding away at something. Sometimes it's just as fun to hammer nails into a board as it is actually creating something.

Yesterday we put in two of the 16 raised beds, 4'x4'. I was (and still am) a bit giddy at the idea of having so much more garden space! We decided to go with a 4'x4' bed because of shear convenience, the wood came at a great price, free. And the neighbor had half a yard of garden mix soil to give away. We're not one's to turn anything down.

Hailey planting her bed of carrots

Bread, re-useable bags and other inspirations!

First off I want to say how lucky and blessed I am to have other family members that have a love for the same things I do. So often I feel like there aren't a lot of other women around that think or do the same things I do. I'm so lucky to have my mom and sister to bounce ideas off of and to inspire each other on our endeavours, whether it's motherhood, gardening, dumpster diving, cooking, books, living simply, and being frugal.

Some of the latest inspirations.........

I've finally brought in bread to the office workers at OPP, and now they want more. I said it would come at a price and they asked where the sign in sheet was? So I'm going to get busy and put a flyer and sign-up sheet to bring to the office, and perhaps some of the local school staff rooms, and get some orders for bread going. Below are some of the pictures I took to post on the flyers.

Loaf bread

Focacia bread with pizza/Italian seasonings

It's actually been a little while since I made bread, trying to eat RAW and all. I must say, the temptation was to much to resist. I just HAD to have a slice of fresh hot bread out of the oven.

Ok the next inspiration rose from a few, umm, let's say, forced change of directions in life, like losing your job. My contract with the school will end the end of August. The good thing about budget cuts and a weakening economy is that it forces people, including cities and the government to think outside of the box and be creative. Which reminds that in times such as these it's even more important to buy locally and buy things from the USA and not, let's say CHINA. The choice is ours.

Ok, so back to the inspiration....I used to sell at the local farmers market, but couldn't do it anymore after I was working full time and also homeschooling the kids. But now with the location of my house and some up coming free time (and I hope to be homeschooling again by the fall) now I can just put up a stand (or part of my garage converted into a selling shop) and sell my goods.

So up springs "Creekside City Farm". (thanks sis for the help with a name)

Ok, we have the wood in the garage, we already have a 30'x30' and a 30' x 60' area as veggies, chickens on the way, and soon to have goats again (in the fall). So why not add more raised beds in the yard and convert more to garden space?

So here we go, cut, saw, nail it together. The idea is rolling, I hope I can keep up with it!! To help get inspired I've been browsing the "Path to Freedom" website, it's amazing, their goal is 10,000 pounds of food from 1/10 of an acre of gardens. I have more room then that! And then also the SOLVIVA book (thanks Mom for that recommendation.) I hope to get more great ideas from there.

Ok, I need to go, the first raised bed is ready to get screwed together and dirt in it.

I'm happiest when my hands are dirty!!

A man and a chain saw!

Need I say more.........

I guess I have a certain "fondness" for men and their chainsaws.

So I siezed the moment and snapped a shot.

Oh, and my large tree stump I've wanted out of the berry hill is finally gone, as are some small trees that were in the way on the trail to the river.

The laundry line, and what's growing

A fully "popped" poppy

Some spinach ready to pick

A pea....reaching, reaching, reaching higher every day!

Chives. I have way more then I can use, but they're so pretty when they bloom.

The finished laundry line. There's three lines and it's on the south end of the house/basement. On hot days, like today, they dry faster in the sun then they do in the dryer.

I miss my goats

Well let's see... what have we been working on.

The blueberry retaining walls are finally finished, the laundry line is finished, all the strawberries have a home in the ground, the two year old asparagus crowns are mostly all to the top of the trench so now they will be able to sprout up, the flower/veggie bed is all planted. I put kale, different types of squash, and artichoke in with the clematis, sweat peas, nasturtiums, poppies and daisies in the front flower bed.

In progress:
Making my bread (the dutch oven bread that won first place in the Mason County fair last year) for the office gals at Keith's work . Which they've been patiently waiting for.
Getting the door in place in the back room. Keeping the neighborhood cats out of the raspberry patch and garden, keeping the slugs from eating all our veggies.

Lately I've really been missing the ducks and goats. Not just because I now have to mow the yard and pick the slugs, but because I miss having them around to watch and visit with.

I had the goats since before I moved into the house I'm currently in (which has been 4 years) and I really took for granted all the work the goats did around the place. They really did earn their keep. Now my grass is out of control, all the fence lines are over grown and look messy, and the yard has an overall shabby look to it. The goats really did a great job of keeping things trimmed down and neat looking. And now we have to spend extra time out mowing, trimming, whacking, pulling, etc to do all the work the goats did naturally, and they provided free fertilizer. Well.... we'll be ready by next fall to get goats again.

And the ducks...they ate up those slugs like candy! Now I have a slug problem. I know the remedy, but I have to get ready for the chickens first, then we can get a few ducks.