gardens done-ish!

As you may recall, this is the Before of the "Corner Garden"

And this is the After!!

Imagine it with these flowers (cuz the roots have been planted in there!): Cote d'Azur Pinks

Also, the blackberries are starting to turn!

Whatcha got growin'?

Much Love,
Able-Bodied Girl


  

canning planning

Sheesh, I guess time has gotten away from me...

Not much new on the home front. I've been working on a sewing project that is finally completed and should be posted soon (completely for showing off :) ), with a thousand more sewing projects planned.  Able-Bodied Boy has already been mowing the lawn and planting seedlings. Looks like beans, peppers, swiss chard, carrots, and beets this year.

We have a list on the fridge of things we'd like to make/preserve this year. Many of these involve dozens of pounds of tomatoes, and yet we are not growing any ourselves until at least next year. Looks like the CSA and neighborhood farm stands will suffice. In any case, our list this year includes hot sauce (although we are not growing hot peppers), ketchup, salsas, strawberry-rhubarb preserves, drying mint, pepper jelly (thanks to my SIL's sister), canned tomatoes (if there are any left in the county after we make salsa and ketchup), and salsa zucchina. A tall order, but Able-Bodied Boy has PROMISED to help with canning this year. Especially for those items he is begging me for (most of them).

Over at Two Frog Home, I read a neat little post about her grandmother's cookbook (The Modern Encyclopedia of Cooking, 1953) and the Food Preserver's Creed she found therein. She posted it and I'm hoping she doesn't mind that I share it with you here.

  
How beautiful is this? How amazing that we have all forgotten these simple principles? To feed our family year-round from the bounty that surrounds us? To take joy in the process, learning and developing the skills necessary to provide safe, nutritious foods?

I would love to be able to can/freeze/dry all the foods we would need for the year during the times in which they are in season, but I know I'm not quite ready for that. I think it was an old post from Sharon over at The Chatelaine's Keys (who has a wealth of knowledge!) that prompted me to starting thinking of food preservation for beginners. The suggestion was to take your top few meals for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and start there...

Dinners... We already freeze homemade lasagnas, although the ingredients therein are not always seasonal. We buy and freeze lamb seasonally. We freeze batches of cilantro pesto, not seasonally. We freeze some veggies. We put together a tomato/zucchini sauce base. We could/should probably do more for seasonal preservation of dinners, like tomato-based sauces, stored/grown root cellar vegetables,

Lunches/snacks/condiments.... We have (or will have) pickles, salsa, fruit spreads, frozen fruits. We freeze soups (some seasonal, some not). We eat a lot of frozen "burgers" (mostly veggie, salmon, or turkey) and most of those are store bought, but could be seasonally put together and frozen. We can make our own bread/rolls, but don't always. We could make our own mayo as needed, but don't (yet).

Breakfast... We now have the option of freezing blended eggs and greens as fritatta ingredients. We are stocked with smoked breakfast meat for a year. We do breads on occasion, including a wonderful English Muffin recipe (and homemade Hollandaise which IMO tasted like heaven - mostly because I made it from scratch perfectly on my first try). I know how to make homemade butter, buttermilk, and fresh cheeses.

I'm sure I'm missing a few ideas and/or pantry items we already have, but you get the idea. Start with what you eat, and see what you can do to do it for yourself. Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life is a wonderful book if you're at all interested in learning what it takes to do it full force (she and her family resolved to only eat what they could produce/obtain locally for one year).

I would love to be there, but I'm not. But what is life if not the striving for better...?


What are you striving for these days?

Much Love,
Able-Bodied Girl


  

novemb-a-what/personal hygi-nx

Holy crap, it's the holiday season.

I'm starting to feel uber-guilty about not accomplishing more clean-hippie goals for the year. But, there's always next year :)

I'm getting near the end of my Costco pack of Dove bar soap, and each of my deodorants (am I the only one who has three open at any given time, in three different locations?). So I'm starting to consider the replacements.

At some point, I had found a really interested deodorant paste recipe. Of course, I can't find it now. And I used to use a liquid baking soda mixture, which I gave up. But I found a nice little summary post at the Green Phone Booth about several recipes, and I'm intrigued by Jenn's all-powder mix. I always have all of the ingredients at home (hmmm... I assume my BS is aluminum-free...), which is the biggest bonus of all. First-run testing to come soon (can't say for sure until it makes it through summer :-P)!

As for soap, there are so many out there that say they are "natural" that I really feel I need to do more research. Everyone keeps recommending Lush, but I'm not really a heavily-scented-soap person and the main thing I hear is "it smells so good!". And they are just so damned expensive!

Hair, I'm still working on. I tried one solution, which was highly amusing and deserves a post of it's own (and only worked somewhat). I'm testing another and will update shortly.

Household cleaning products haven't come up again recently, mostly because we haven't been keeping up with cleaning :-P  However, our post-holiday winter project involves a hell of a lot of cleaning (basement *TACKLE*) but that might just be more trash bags and vaccuming, so who knows.

One last thing, we have a HUGE aloe plant which I am considering harvesting entirely to give room to grow one of the new babies (still owe the other one to a friend). I think I can jar and/or freeze the aloe for later use, but I need to look into that more. Would be a good ingredient for other personal care products too, so we'll see if I can harvest it for future use!
Any last-minute projects you're trying to get done before 2011 is completely gone?

Much Love,
Able-Bodied Girl


  

chicken commitments

Well, it's official. Able-Bodied Boy bought a chicken coop. We're getting chickens!

I'm not altogether upset that we went the easy route and purchased a pre-made one online. Sure, I would have loved to have had the time and know-how and ability to build our own, reusing wood and making it eco-friendly/sustainable. But really, that wasn't feasible and would have pushed this off for many many months.

In the end, I think that getting closer to our food sources is a much bigger step than building it ourselves. As food corporations get larger and more influential, I fear that comsumers - not the corporations or governments - will have to become more accountable for the food choices they make. Which is why having chickens, joining a CSA, preserving our harvested goods for later consumption, buying local meat & dairy products, learning how to garden, and generally have a self-sustaining lifestyle are all really important to me.

Yes, we're going to defy the local ordinances that dictate we can't have chickens. First, we believe the ordinances to be a residential protection for the smell and sound (roosters). Our planned coop location is 100 yards from our neighbors across the street, and not within line-of-sight of their homes (brush and trees block the view). We don't plan to have any roosters. Our other reason for not requesting a variance is the cost... it's a $300 gamble as to whether or not they'll approve us. And since we don't believe there would be any fee (just the lost investment) if we were to be asked to remove the coop and chickens, it's an added cost we want to avoid.

Once we get the coop, assemble it, and place it, we will dig a 6-inch wide trench of sod out from around the coop. We'll get some additional chicken wire, tie it to the coop fencing, drop it down to the soil and then bent 90-degrees out along that 6-inch trench, then replace the sod. With that, any animals trying to dig under the fence will immediately hit chicken wire and be halted. There is some concern about the latches being too easy for raccoons, but we have never had a raccoon problem in our area so we're crossing our fingers about that.

We've opted to not raise chicks and go for the purchase of pullets (teenagers), three birds to be exact. I think Able-Bodied Boy told me that the next shipping date is in May, so I guess we'd better be ready by then! I'll keep you posted :)

So, who wants to barter for eggs?

Much Love,
Able-Bodied Girl


 ps. next up.... a dog? 

it's a baby!

As I putter around the kitchen this morning, I noticed that my aloe plant has a new shoot! Grandma is having another baby!

Yes that is a foil-lined pot. Don't ask. I'll be repotting Grandma after the baby is given her own pot.

Any little moments of joy in your life lately?

Much Love,
Able-Bodied Girl


  

green - growing - life - living

I heard someone say once that plants make a home feel lived-in and loving. That, in order for the plants to be there at all, there must be someone present to nurture them. I've never looked at a household the same since then.

Can't you just feel the difference??

What grows in our home?

• 1 syngonium on the butcher cart in the kitchen. Very happy. In a beautiful mosaic pot, given to me by Able-Bodied Boy.
• 1 aloe plant on the window sill in the kitchen. Looking worse for the good wear of use, but happy. I'm hoping I can convince the old girl to sprout some new babies this year.
• 1 philodendron (I believe) on a shelf in the master bathroom window. Currently unhappy. My first attempt at a water-only growth, and I'm thinking it might be time to find a pretty pot with some good soil. It's a south-facing window, with a thin white curtain blocking direct sunlight, so I think that's a good thing.
• 6 baby spider plants in the upstairs spare room, south-facing window. Looking meh. Pretty soon I'll transplant these into a couple pots for throughout the house. Hoping for more life that is hearty (ie, I can't easily kill it)
• Countless baby worms and soon-to-hatch eggs. I just made another bed in the vermicomposter and pulled out the semi-mature compost, and found them while transferring everything around. While some of the eggs and young worms made it into the fresh bed, I'm sure plenty are going into the garden soon. Which will make for a very happy garden!

I think that's it. Not really the extensive list I'd like to have. We've tried other plants and they've all managed to die. Our living room is north-facing, with a covered porch over the front windows, two skylights for ambient light, and no florescent normally in use. Not the best of lighting situations, and I have yet to find anything that stays happy for very long. Of course, it's probably me :)
I'm hoping the spider plants are an exception! I want them hanging off the tops of bookshelves and on end tables and on the top of the hutch-style desk and in guest rooms and everywhere making everything look alive.

Of course, that means remembering to water plants that are out-of-sight-out-of-mind.

 Spider plants in the living room. Baby steps.

What grows in your home? What have you had great success with in low lighting?

Much Love,
Able-Bodied Girl


ps. have you signed up for email updates yet?

backyard chickens!?!?

You have no idea how surprised I was when Able-Bodied Boy mentioned a year or so ago that he might like to have some egg-layers. Sweeeeeet! My friend Barnhenge Momma has a few dozen egg-layers and meat birds, and she makes it look so easy. Which, it seems, it is pretty easy:

a Rhode Island Red

Buy/build coop and run. Raise chicks or buy pullets (teen-aged birds). Put them in the coop. Give them a hand with where to lay eggs (if it's the first set of birds you own, they need a bit of training since they don't have other birds to watch). Collect eggs and check water and feed daily. Clean the coop and run every 1- 2- 3- 4- weeks, depending who you talk to and the conditions. Overall, not really all that difficult!

We learned most of what we know from the PASA Backyard Chicken class we took on Saturday, led by the very knowledgeable and sweet Amy and Chris. They definitely made it seem very attainable for a lot of different folks. We also plan to spend a day with Barnhenge Mama (and Papa) to do a "chicken internship" :)

We have quite a list of things to consider before we make the plunge, though.

• Do local ordinances allow us to have them? Is the coop a large enough structure that it needs to follow some sort of code? (Zoning officer will be dropping off information this week!)
• Where do we put the coop and run? Will it get a mix of sun and shade, or do we need to provide some sort of shade cover (vines over the top)? Will a little smell bother you if it's close to the house, or can you combat that with fragrant flowers/herbs?
• How do we procure the coop? DIY, help from an experienced coop-builder, buy it online...?
• Do we get a rooster? They can help with protection when the birds are outside of their run. Are we letting them out of the run much? Will our neighbors care about the crowing?
• Do we get chicks or pullets? Chicks take a bit of care for 3 months to raise, but the handling will get them used to you (and kids, if you have them). Is it much more expensive to get pullets?
• Where will we get our hay/cedar chips from?
• Do we have a reliable chicken-sitter when we are both away?

Needless today, Able-Bodied Boy and I don't really see eye-to-eye on a lot of this. Tons of discussions to come. But I'm sure we'll come up with a good plan that works for both of us!

Once we have 3-4 birds laying, we'll start getting around a dozen eggs each week. Which is quite a bit for us, but I think we can use them to barter with others for garden produce or other homemade goods. We'll also have a good bit of fertilizer to use in the garden, to supplement the worm compost. And they will eat most excess foods we don't give the worms, so we can stop putting scraps in the trash or bushline (even at Thanksgiving!).

Amusingly, mentioning all this on Facebook prompted a lot of my friends to speak up about their experiences with chicken-raising. Have you had chickens? What's the best/worst thing about it?

Much Love,
Able-Bodied Girl


EDIT: We got the copy of the relevant local code; looks like this might be a problem. For any agricultural/farming uses, we need to have 5+ acres and set the structure 200ft from the property line. With only 1.5 acres, that puts the coop under our house and still 3.5 acres short. Our property is bordered by the road on one side and by one owner's horse pasture or unused land. So there would really be no residential issue, if that's the concern.
We're going to look into the feasibility of getting a variance (will ask if it's ever been done before). If we might be able to get one, we'll try to get the neighbor's support and take our tiny coop plans to see about a variance. If it doesn't look like a variance is going to happen, we may just talk to the neighbor and/or take our chances... I'll keep you posted!


   

i wanna be a farmer!

Do you have one of those completely unrealistic visions for yourself? A dream beyond dreams that seems so easy and yet completely unattainable?

I want to be a farmer. Up to my elbows in manure, sweating in the garden, birthing goats, worrying about the weather, raising chickens, cutting wood in the winter, making due. Oh it's all so romantic in my mind.

I read about it. Daily. A myriad of bloggers. I regularly read gardening and farming and homesteading books. I research composting and starting seeds and naturally taking care of pests and plant diseases and how-tos for everything under the farmers sun and moon. And all I've concluded is that I need some hands-on instruction. Live-in instruction, really, over the course of many many seasons. And a lot more time.

I think I could have lived very happily as a farmer's wife, birthing babies and feeding goats and slaughtering the lambs. Ha! Not at all realistic, but that's what dreams are for, eh?

I was very amused with Sharon Astyk's blog post the other day on Casaubon's Book, where she described "realistic farm tours". I was all ready to take her seriously, and she only amused me with her irony and sarcasm. And made me fall in love with the idea even more. *sigh* But I want to take these classes!!

"Pick a buttload of little tiny things." You've always dreamed of being a farmer, right. Now you can enjoy the real experience - picking a whole lot of little annoying things for 9 hours in the sun. No matter what the season from early spring (dandelion blossoms for wine) to late spring (chamomile blossoms) to high summer (currants) to late summer (beans) to autumn (every last damned cherry tomato), there is always something small that needs to be picked, and picked some more. Learn new curse words to describe the idiot who planted these things and thought it would be a great idea to sell them! Bonus activity - wash an endless number of eggs that birds pooped on!

I think it might be the learning experience, the sum of so many intricate parts that all fit together to make that sort of life work, as it has for thousands of year. The rotation of crops and of the animals in the fields and the manure into compost. Sharon, in her other blog The Chatelaine's Keys, reposted something she had written before about the diversity and interconnectedness of the animals on her farm. It intrigues me, not only that everything can be so tied together to those animal's habits, but also that there is such a body of knowledge that I have no concept of. I just amazes me.

I do have a friend, Barnhenge Momma, who lives about as close to my dream as I think I could ever acheive. I'm hoping one of these days she'll grace us with a post about her homesteading life. All the canning and pickling and growing and life at her home makes my soul come alive, and gives her this wonderful mother-earth glow.

Maybe one day, slowly but surely, I'll find a happy medium between my black thumb of plant death and the vibrancy of a life surrounded by life. But the progress is so slow, if at all, that I think this might just have to stay in the 'dream' category.


What are your dreams? Do you have any hope of achieving them?


Much Love,
Able-Bodied Girl


  

the healing miracle of aloe

During my small soiree on Saturday, I burned myself. Really badly. I'm normally pretty tolerant, but I was nearly in tears with the searing pain.

From First Aid certifications, I remembered that it's best to run a burn under warmish water... not to cold and not too hot, so I did so for about 30 seconds.

Then I grabbed the exacto-knife and lobbed off the tip of one of my aloe leaves.

Now, this little aloe plant has come a long way. Able-Bodied Boy's mom gave it to us a year or so ago. It sits on the kitchen window sill, just begging for me to kill it. But I haven't. We water it every week or so and it has already produced two babies (I had no idea they sprouted new shoots!): one went to Awesome Boss Lady; the other sat on the sill in it's own container, produced two more babies of it's own, and finally went home with Beth, Girl Explorer. The momma aloe looks a little worse for wear. She's sacrificed appendages for sunburns and crock-pot spill-overs and other minor 1st degree burns. But this was her first 2nd degree burn.

So, I lobbed off a small bit, split it open, and smeared it gently on the top pad of my ring finger. Oh the pain!!! Able-Bodied Boy got me a bandage, which he tried to apply to my finger. The pain was too much for me, so I took over, trying not to put any pressure on the finger tip.

The first aloe miracle was the end of the pain, in less than an hour. No pain. What. so. ever. I took off the bandage and fascinated myself with the painless blister. This is nifty!

Before bed, I smeared a ton more aloe on the finger and on a bandage and applied the bandage. A little bit smelly, but I knew it would help a bit.

The second aloe miracle was discovered the next morning. Still no pain, and the edges of the burn were already healing. The blister had already reduced in size by about 15%.

At this point, I stopped applying aloe.

The third aloe miracle happened yesterday, when I visibly noticed the blister reducing in size all day. And this morning, when the blister was gone entirely. The skin is still slightly red and papery, but still...

Two and a half days, from 2nd degree burn to just a slight red mark. Aloe rocks my world. And my finger.

I'll probably try more sprouting in the spring, when momma will get more light and more consistent temperatures.


Do you grow any fabulous healing plants? What plant, and how does it help?

Much Love,
Able-Bodied Girl