Did you notice all those cutesy Valentine Facebook pregnancy announcements for babies due in July and August this past week? I sure did. We were supposed to be one of those. We were supposed to have a baby in July. We were supposed to have a baby in August.
One of my professors in college was going through a miscarriage. She told the room of young nursing students with tears in her eyes, "If anyone ever tells you that they had a miscarriage, you just give them a hug and tell them that that really sucks." Those words have stuck always in my mind.
Normally I wouldn't throw around the word "sucks." But miscarriage sucks. And two miscarriages in two and half months really sucks. And that's where life is right now.
And that's all I have to say about that.
Sunday, February 17, 2019
Tuesday, January 1, 2019
"Learning Experiences" of 2018: Part 3: Dogs, MSPI, and Fires
2018 is officially over and I'm not too sad to see it go. I've said before it wasn't the best year for us for many reasons. I've already written about a couple failures of 2018, and I was going to write separate posts for all of these, but let's just get over them and move on.
2018 was a year of life lessons and here are a few more things that we learned this year:
1. Dogs have more legal rights than humans.
We have had a terrible time with neighbor dogs ever since we moved in. This summer it culminated in us fearing for our lives whenever we ventured down the driveway. Our very aggressive neighbor dog would charge at us, even breaking through his invisible fence, while we stood frozen in fear. The kids and I regularly got trapped at the end of the driveway, (a quarter mile from our house), trying to inch our way home . Meanwhile, we've had trouble for years with another neighbor's dogs coming over and terrorizing our chickens and scaring our children, which continues to happen (we don't have reason to believe that these dogs would harm people, but they're scary anyway). Then, this fall I got bit twice by another neighbor's dog while out for a run (we didn't even let the kids know about that because they are already so terrified of dogs). We have called the dog warden countless times and all he can do is talk to the owners. We've talked to the neighbors, but they don't care. We've threatened to shoot the dogs and we have shot at the dogs. We considered getting a lawyer, but the most that could possibly happen if we could prove to a court that the dog was on our property was the neighbor's would get a small fine. If we shoot a dog that is not, at the moment we shoot it, menacing people or livestock, the law sides with the dog. Even if we take the dog to the shelter, we could be charged with abducting the dog. The neighbors of the very aggressive dog have told us several times he wouldn't be a problem anymore, and even have told us that they had him put down, only to have us be surprised by the dog coming at us again a few days later. This fall it was bad enough I was very seriously considering moving. The whole situation has left us all with a lot of unease and anxiety.
2. Dairy and soy (and dyes and preservatives) are in EVERYTHING.
My 1-year-old daughter is extremely intolerant of all dairy and soy (Milk and Soy Protein Intolerant = MSPI), including soybean oil and soy lecithan (in which the soy proteins are so broken down the FDA doesn't even consider those a soy allergen on food labels). This includes soy and dairy passed through breastmilk. I have been soy- and dairy-free for 21 months now, which has been tolerable. However, trying to feed an MSPI toddler is a challenge. In addition, my second son is sensitive to yellow dye and TBHQ. This all had me pretty down for awhile this year, as it is difficult for our family to eat anywhere, and we have to make a lot of our food from scratch. Most restaurants use soybean oil in all their foods, and yellow dye is hidden in everything in restaurants. Most common toddler foods have soy and dairy, so we've had to get creative and do some searching to feed my daughter. On the positive side of things though, this has been a great learning experience for the family. My husband and I have learned how to cook and bake soy- and dairy- free, and I honestly don't even miss it anymore (except I would really like be able to eat at Olive Garden and Coldstone). We have researched substitutions and come up with our own and scoured the internet and grocery store shelves for "safe" food. We have found restaurants that we can eat some things at. My boys are very watchful of their sister when there's food around. And my son, just three-years-old, is so good and accepting about watching what he eats and asking "Is this safe for me?" if something is new. He remembers how the dye and preservatives make him feel and his is so willing to avoid foods that will make him sick. All the dietary changes has made the whole family much healthier and conscious about what we eat. My daughter is still very reactive to soy and dairy and, although most children grow out of this intolerance, her pediatrician is not sure she ever will, and if she does it won't be anytime soon. I'm hoping to turn our experiences and what we've learned into a blog to help other families make food elimination, but that is currently just in the starting phase.
3. House fires can happen to anyone.
This one is the biggie.
If this didn't happen, I don't think I would have such a negative attitude about 2018. I probably wouldn't have even thought of this other stuff in a negative light. But August 26, 2018, was kind of the deal-breaker. Ever since then I've kind of been on "What's going to happen next?" watch.
I will probably write out the whole story in the future, as it was such a significant event, but it's still fermenting and, even though it was several months ago, I'm slightly embarrassed to say I'm still dealing with it.
Very early in the morning on that day, we were awoken by a storm, followed by the fire alarm. What transpired over the next hour was the most terrifying experience in any of our lives. And although no one was physically injured and there was barely any damage to speak of, the situation surrounding the event was pretty traumatic (i.e., sitting out in the car in driveway been pounded by a raging storm with two crying toddlers and a very terrified, yet stoic, 6 year old waiting for our house to blow up with my husband in it). We now have 14 fire extinguishers in our house, along with a two-story escape ladder in each bedroom, a fire plan, and anxiety that will haunt us for the rest of our lives.
Well, on that happy note.....
Let's welcome in 2019! I know it will be better (and I'll write about the good stuff of 2018 soon too).
2018 was a year of life lessons and here are a few more things that we learned this year:
1. Dogs have more legal rights than humans.
We have had a terrible time with neighbor dogs ever since we moved in. This summer it culminated in us fearing for our lives whenever we ventured down the driveway. Our very aggressive neighbor dog would charge at us, even breaking through his invisible fence, while we stood frozen in fear. The kids and I regularly got trapped at the end of the driveway, (a quarter mile from our house), trying to inch our way home . Meanwhile, we've had trouble for years with another neighbor's dogs coming over and terrorizing our chickens and scaring our children, which continues to happen (we don't have reason to believe that these dogs would harm people, but they're scary anyway). Then, this fall I got bit twice by another neighbor's dog while out for a run (we didn't even let the kids know about that because they are already so terrified of dogs). We have called the dog warden countless times and all he can do is talk to the owners. We've talked to the neighbors, but they don't care. We've threatened to shoot the dogs and we have shot at the dogs. We considered getting a lawyer, but the most that could possibly happen if we could prove to a court that the dog was on our property was the neighbor's would get a small fine. If we shoot a dog that is not, at the moment we shoot it, menacing people or livestock, the law sides with the dog. Even if we take the dog to the shelter, we could be charged with abducting the dog. The neighbors of the very aggressive dog have told us several times he wouldn't be a problem anymore, and even have told us that they had him put down, only to have us be surprised by the dog coming at us again a few days later. This fall it was bad enough I was very seriously considering moving. The whole situation has left us all with a lot of unease and anxiety.
2. Dairy and soy (and dyes and preservatives) are in EVERYTHING.
My 1-year-old daughter is extremely intolerant of all dairy and soy (Milk and Soy Protein Intolerant = MSPI), including soybean oil and soy lecithan (in which the soy proteins are so broken down the FDA doesn't even consider those a soy allergen on food labels). This includes soy and dairy passed through breastmilk. I have been soy- and dairy-free for 21 months now, which has been tolerable. However, trying to feed an MSPI toddler is a challenge. In addition, my second son is sensitive to yellow dye and TBHQ. This all had me pretty down for awhile this year, as it is difficult for our family to eat anywhere, and we have to make a lot of our food from scratch. Most restaurants use soybean oil in all their foods, and yellow dye is hidden in everything in restaurants. Most common toddler foods have soy and dairy, so we've had to get creative and do some searching to feed my daughter. On the positive side of things though, this has been a great learning experience for the family. My husband and I have learned how to cook and bake soy- and dairy- free, and I honestly don't even miss it anymore (except I would really like be able to eat at Olive Garden and Coldstone). We have researched substitutions and come up with our own and scoured the internet and grocery store shelves for "safe" food. We have found restaurants that we can eat some things at. My boys are very watchful of their sister when there's food around. And my son, just three-years-old, is so good and accepting about watching what he eats and asking "Is this safe for me?" if something is new. He remembers how the dye and preservatives make him feel and his is so willing to avoid foods that will make him sick. All the dietary changes has made the whole family much healthier and conscious about what we eat. My daughter is still very reactive to soy and dairy and, although most children grow out of this intolerance, her pediatrician is not sure she ever will, and if she does it won't be anytime soon. I'm hoping to turn our experiences and what we've learned into a blog to help other families make food elimination, but that is currently just in the starting phase.
3. House fires can happen to anyone.
This one is the biggie.
If this didn't happen, I don't think I would have such a negative attitude about 2018. I probably wouldn't have even thought of this other stuff in a negative light. But August 26, 2018, was kind of the deal-breaker. Ever since then I've kind of been on "What's going to happen next?" watch.
I will probably write out the whole story in the future, as it was such a significant event, but it's still fermenting and, even though it was several months ago, I'm slightly embarrassed to say I'm still dealing with it.
Very early in the morning on that day, we were awoken by a storm, followed by the fire alarm. What transpired over the next hour was the most terrifying experience in any of our lives. And although no one was physically injured and there was barely any damage to speak of, the situation surrounding the event was pretty traumatic (i.e., sitting out in the car in driveway been pounded by a raging storm with two crying toddlers and a very terrified, yet stoic, 6 year old waiting for our house to blow up with my husband in it). We now have 14 fire extinguishers in our house, along with a two-story escape ladder in each bedroom, a fire plan, and anxiety that will haunt us for the rest of our lives.
Well, on that happy note.....
Let's welcome in 2019! I know it will be better (and I'll write about the good stuff of 2018 soon too).
Wednesday, November 28, 2018
"Learning Experiences" of 2018: Part 2: The Chickens
We are chicken people. We just love our chickens. We really don't care about the eggs, the chickens are our pets.
There's one thing we've learned over the past 3.5 years of raising chickens, and that is they make lousy pets. Especially for sensitive young children. Never choose an animal at the bottom of the food chain as a pet. Especially one as unintelligent as a chicken.
At the beginning of 2018 we had 6 chickens. I received 7 chicks for my birthday and G also brought home 3 Silkies this spring.
One of the chickens wandered off in April. I'm assuming she got snatched while the chickens were free-ranging.
My birthday chicks, which I have written about before, were very loved by the kids who each had their own special chicken. We kept very good care of them and were very protective of them after the previous chicken massacres of 2017.
(This next part is really sad, grab a box of tissues.)
GE had a very special chick named Green Layer Like Gecko Is Green. He held and fed Green Layer every day. He made sure Green Layer got special grass to eat. He watched Green Layer the entire time she was outside and always locked her up tight. He would talk about how he couldn't wait to go out and get her green eggs every day when she started laying. He was so excited for his special green eggs.
One night, despite the coop being shut up tight, a raccoon pulled a board off the coop and killed three chicks, including GE's Green Layer.
When he found out, he cried out, "Not my Green Layer! I need my Green Layer!"
GE is a very compassionate, sensitive little boy. He mourned deeply for the next several days. He wouldn't eat. He would just lay on the floor and sometimes fall asleep in the middle of the day. It was so sad.
G searched and searched for a replacement for this special breed of chicken. G can find anything on Craigslist and came home one day with not one replacement, but five. GE loves these Green Layers and he came out of his mourning period, but he has not been able to bring himself to get too close to these new chicks, which is sad considering how attached my boys used to get to the chicks.
At first GE named all the chicks "Green Layer." Finally he started to differentiate them. We now have Green Layer the New Real Green Layer, Green Layer Like Tractors Are Green, Santa (formerly known as Fluffy), and he gave two of the chicks to his siblings and GD named his Turbo and KM named hers Flower.
The other two chicks that were killed in that incident were my special chick Sunshine and one of the Silkies Josephine. Henrietta was also chicken-napped but managed to wander back later that day.
KM became very attached to Henrietta after that but a few weeks later Henrietta disappeared while free-ranging. We couldn't keep her in either of the coops because she was getting picked on. We later have concluded that the 3 Silkies were blind. None of them survived the summer.
Meanwhile, we tried putting the birthday chicks in with the big chickens and my Buff Orpington Watermelon, the one chicken I had specifically requested that I had plans to let become a mother, was killed by way of fear of the head chicken Blaze.
So, now our chickens no longer free-range, our children no longer forge strong attachments to our livestock, we lock the Green Layers in the workshop every night, and emotionally no one is up to raising chicks next year.
Also, if you're ever talking to one of the kids about the chickens, they think that Henrietta wandered off to find her sister Josephine and they are living a happy life together somewhere and we never mentioned Watermelon and let the memory of that chicken fade away.
(I really wish I could have made this post more enjoyable to read or funny or something, but really we're pretty bummed about our chickens and I felt like there needed to be some closure on the original Green Layer.)
There's one thing we've learned over the past 3.5 years of raising chickens, and that is they make lousy pets. Especially for sensitive young children. Never choose an animal at the bottom of the food chain as a pet. Especially one as unintelligent as a chicken.
At the beginning of 2018 we had 6 chickens. I received 7 chicks for my birthday and G also brought home 3 Silkies this spring.
One of the chickens wandered off in April. I'm assuming she got snatched while the chickens were free-ranging.
My birthday chicks, which I have written about before, were very loved by the kids who each had their own special chicken. We kept very good care of them and were very protective of them after the previous chicken massacres of 2017.
(This next part is really sad, grab a box of tissues.)
GE had a very special chick named Green Layer Like Gecko Is Green. He held and fed Green Layer every day. He made sure Green Layer got special grass to eat. He watched Green Layer the entire time she was outside and always locked her up tight. He would talk about how he couldn't wait to go out and get her green eggs every day when she started laying. He was so excited for his special green eggs.
One night, despite the coop being shut up tight, a raccoon pulled a board off the coop and killed three chicks, including GE's Green Layer.
When he found out, he cried out, "Not my Green Layer! I need my Green Layer!"
GE is a very compassionate, sensitive little boy. He mourned deeply for the next several days. He wouldn't eat. He would just lay on the floor and sometimes fall asleep in the middle of the day. It was so sad.
G searched and searched for a replacement for this special breed of chicken. G can find anything on Craigslist and came home one day with not one replacement, but five. GE loves these Green Layers and he came out of his mourning period, but he has not been able to bring himself to get too close to these new chicks, which is sad considering how attached my boys used to get to the chicks.
At first GE named all the chicks "Green Layer." Finally he started to differentiate them. We now have Green Layer the New Real Green Layer, Green Layer Like Tractors Are Green, Santa (formerly known as Fluffy), and he gave two of the chicks to his siblings and GD named his Turbo and KM named hers Flower.
The other two chicks that were killed in that incident were my special chick Sunshine and one of the Silkies Josephine. Henrietta was also chicken-napped but managed to wander back later that day.
KM became very attached to Henrietta after that but a few weeks later Henrietta disappeared while free-ranging. We couldn't keep her in either of the coops because she was getting picked on. We later have concluded that the 3 Silkies were blind. None of them survived the summer.
Meanwhile, we tried putting the birthday chicks in with the big chickens and my Buff Orpington Watermelon, the one chicken I had specifically requested that I had plans to let become a mother, was killed by way of fear of the head chicken Blaze.
So, now our chickens no longer free-range, our children no longer forge strong attachments to our livestock, we lock the Green Layers in the workshop every night, and emotionally no one is up to raising chicks next year.
Also, if you're ever talking to one of the kids about the chickens, they think that Henrietta wandered off to find her sister Josephine and they are living a happy life together somewhere and we never mentioned Watermelon and let the memory of that chicken fade away.
(I really wish I could have made this post more enjoyable to read or funny or something, but really we're pretty bummed about our chickens and I felt like there needed to be some closure on the original Green Layer.)
Thursday, November 15, 2018
"Learning Experiences" of 2018: Part 1: The Gardens
I previously titled this post "Failures of 2018" but decided to take a more positive approach. As my former manager used to say, "We have areas for improvement."
It's been awhile since I have written. It's not that I haven't had much to write about, it's just that when we take down our 2018 calendar I'm pretty sure we'll just have to write FAIL with a big black Sharpie across the front.
Now I don't like to be a pessimist...a killjoy...a Debbie downer...but I've been pretty bummed out about the past year lately. Of course 2018 wasn't all bad, we are all happy and healthy, the kids are great, and only one thing that I would label as terrible happened. But it's been a year a growing up for everyone, a year to reset our goals and priorities, and a year to lower--or change--our expectations.
Let's review some of our failures of 2018, shall we?
The Gardens
We started out the year with BIG BIG homesteading plans. G and I have never set out to be "homesteaders," that was never our goal or our dream, we just like to grow and raise things and do things ourselves. We would really rather not be dependent on anyone else, and we're pretty stubborn. And we also thought it was being more "efficient" to use our soil and time to grow food. Somehow we got stuck in our heads that we had to spend our time productively, and somehow this equated to growing all our own food. As our efforts grew we realized we were starting to fall under the category of "homesteaders," which, honestly, was way too trendy of a title for us anyway, but we embraced the idea of homesteading and ran with it.
Included in our plans of a fruitful homestead this year were a couple acres of gardens. We wanted to produce enough sweet corn and pumpkins to sell at a farmers market. We wanted to can at least a year's worth of tomato sauce for our family. We wanted to freeze at least a year's worth of vegetables--beans, broccoli, cauliflower, snap peas, squash--for our family. We hoped to have enough leftover to sell. The boys were so excited to be planning for a farmer's market.
The whole family worked hard to meet our goals. We found a little garden center and were thrilled with the plants we bought. We ordered seeds online. We got everything in the ground early. We planted over 500 hills of pumpkins, a big corn patch, another big corn patch, and a big garden. We worked hard to weed and water the gardens. We fertilized everything.
AND.....
Pretty much nothing grew.
It was all pretty sad and ridiculous and discouraging. We wanted to teach our kids about working hard and to appreciate where their food came from, but all they were learning was how to waste time and be disappointed.
The best we can figure is 1) we have really poor soil and 2) we got some over-spray from the field around us spraying Round-Up (our corn was doing good until the field was sprayed).
We were able to get a few meals worth of beans and not very tasty broccoli frozen. It was during the couple hours that G and I spent prepping the vegetables and blanching them that we were struck with the realization--WOW! WE ARE REALLY WASTING OUR TIME! WALMART HAS BAGS OF FROZEN VEGETABLES FOR 99 CENTS!
In our effort to be efficient we were being terribly inefficient. How many more worthwhile things were on our to-do list than freezing spindly broccoli? Not to mention that this spindly broccoli was still ending up costing us more per ounce than the stuff we could find in the freezers at Walmart, not even accounting for our time
It was that evening that we decided to throw our full support behind America's vegetable farmers, as well as Walmart's empire, and allow ourselves to use our time for more worthwhile things. We kind of completely gave up on the garden at that point. There was really nothing left growing in it anyway. We had wasted enough time and money on it and were ready to move on. I didn't even like gardening anymore. We had a few pumpkins to pick and GD's sunflowers had actually grown, but as soon as those were done and the ground was dry enough we tilled up the garden area and are going to plant grass there in the spring. Our gardening efforts are done for now.
Although I did enjoy not having the tasks of weeding and picking and prepping and freezing looming on my to-do list all summer, the loss of the garden hit me hard. Gardening has been a life-long hobby for me and it's been hard to admit that I failed at it and to give it up for the time being. I remember loving helping in the garden from a very young age. I remember my dad making me stop hoeing the corn rows because he thought I was going to be sore the next day. I remember going out to the garden every morning in the summer to see what was ready to pick. I had my own garden from the time I was about 10. And now I can't even get green beans to grow or keep my flower beds looking nice.
It's a big change of thinking to move away from gardening for me, but I think we're all a bit relieved to embrace the 21st century and the convenience of mass-grown genetically-modified frozen vegetables.
It's been awhile since I have written. It's not that I haven't had much to write about, it's just that when we take down our 2018 calendar I'm pretty sure we'll just have to write FAIL with a big black Sharpie across the front.
Now I don't like to be a pessimist...a killjoy...a Debbie downer...but I've been pretty bummed out about the past year lately. Of course 2018 wasn't all bad, we are all happy and healthy, the kids are great, and only one thing that I would label as terrible happened. But it's been a year a growing up for everyone, a year to reset our goals and priorities, and a year to lower--or change--our expectations.
Let's review some of our failures of 2018, shall we?
The Gardens
We started out the year with BIG BIG homesteading plans. G and I have never set out to be "homesteaders," that was never our goal or our dream, we just like to grow and raise things and do things ourselves. We would really rather not be dependent on anyone else, and we're pretty stubborn. And we also thought it was being more "efficient" to use our soil and time to grow food. Somehow we got stuck in our heads that we had to spend our time productively, and somehow this equated to growing all our own food. As our efforts grew we realized we were starting to fall under the category of "homesteaders," which, honestly, was way too trendy of a title for us anyway, but we embraced the idea of homesteading and ran with it.
Included in our plans of a fruitful homestead this year were a couple acres of gardens. We wanted to produce enough sweet corn and pumpkins to sell at a farmers market. We wanted to can at least a year's worth of tomato sauce for our family. We wanted to freeze at least a year's worth of vegetables--beans, broccoli, cauliflower, snap peas, squash--for our family. We hoped to have enough leftover to sell. The boys were so excited to be planning for a farmer's market.
The whole family worked hard to meet our goals. We found a little garden center and were thrilled with the plants we bought. We ordered seeds online. We got everything in the ground early. We planted over 500 hills of pumpkins, a big corn patch, another big corn patch, and a big garden. We worked hard to weed and water the gardens. We fertilized everything.
AND.....
Pretty much nothing grew.
It was all pretty sad and ridiculous and discouraging. We wanted to teach our kids about working hard and to appreciate where their food came from, but all they were learning was how to waste time and be disappointed.
The best we can figure is 1) we have really poor soil and 2) we got some over-spray from the field around us spraying Round-Up (our corn was doing good until the field was sprayed).
We were able to get a few meals worth of beans and not very tasty broccoli frozen. It was during the couple hours that G and I spent prepping the vegetables and blanching them that we were struck with the realization--WOW! WE ARE REALLY WASTING OUR TIME! WALMART HAS BAGS OF FROZEN VEGETABLES FOR 99 CENTS!
In our effort to be efficient we were being terribly inefficient. How many more worthwhile things were on our to-do list than freezing spindly broccoli? Not to mention that this spindly broccoli was still ending up costing us more per ounce than the stuff we could find in the freezers at Walmart, not even accounting for our time
It was that evening that we decided to throw our full support behind America's vegetable farmers, as well as Walmart's empire, and allow ourselves to use our time for more worthwhile things. We kind of completely gave up on the garden at that point. There was really nothing left growing in it anyway. We had wasted enough time and money on it and were ready to move on. I didn't even like gardening anymore. We had a few pumpkins to pick and GD's sunflowers had actually grown, but as soon as those were done and the ground was dry enough we tilled up the garden area and are going to plant grass there in the spring. Our gardening efforts are done for now.
Although I did enjoy not having the tasks of weeding and picking and prepping and freezing looming on my to-do list all summer, the loss of the garden hit me hard. Gardening has been a life-long hobby for me and it's been hard to admit that I failed at it and to give it up for the time being. I remember loving helping in the garden from a very young age. I remember my dad making me stop hoeing the corn rows because he thought I was going to be sore the next day. I remember going out to the garden every morning in the summer to see what was ready to pick. I had my own garden from the time I was about 10. And now I can't even get green beans to grow or keep my flower beds looking nice.
It's a big change of thinking to move away from gardening for me, but I think we're all a bit relieved to embrace the 21st century and the convenience of mass-grown genetically-modified frozen vegetables.
Saturday, July 7, 2018
It's Not Freeloading, It's Foraging
Last summer both the garden and animals on our little homestead weren't very productive, and we decided to join our livestock in their free-loading fun and picked about 100 pounds of apples out of a ditch down the road. It was pretty much the only produce we had, besides the several buckets of mulberries we picked, also from a tree down the road.
At least we think they're mulberries. I kind of let my kids eat them last year without knowing what they were and figured if there were poisonous berries growing in our area I would have heard about it. Everyone survived.
Anyway, this year we are trying a lot harder at this whole homesteading thing and actually,
1) Identified what we were eating. We used Google's Pictoral Field Guide to Native Plants (known more commonly simply as "Google Images") and are fairly certain it's a mulberry tree. Incidentally, ingesting unripe mulberries or their stems or parts of the tree can cause stomach upset and hallucinations.
and
2) Watched a YouTube video about the proper way to harvest mulberries.
So, this year instead of hand picking each mulberry we put a tarp on the ground and shook the branches and got a rain shower of mulberries (and purple stains on our clothes).
Meanwhile, the baby girl kept herself occupied by stuffing her face with berries she picked up off the ground.
After three evenings shaking berries off the tree we totaled about 5 gallons of mulberries.
The thing about mulberries though is that they really don't taste that great. (Especially the ones you pick up off the ground. Those just taste like dirt. But my baby likes dirt. Her three favorite foods are meatballs, dirty mulberries, and sand.) And their stems are near impossible to remove in a reasonable amount of time without making a purple sticky mess. So my kids don't really eat them once we get them home (while we're picking them off the tree they think the berries are the most delicious thing ever, it's all in the novelty of standing in the ditch eating free berries).
So we had 5 gallons of mulberries, minus several small purple-stained handfuls. Which got me searching on Pinterest for uses for the mulberries, which is where I learned the proper terminology for "free-loading from trees in a ditch down the road." It's actually called 'foraging,' and it's all the rage on Pinterest. There are people that are "expert foragers," and you can even hire a "foraging guide."
Meanwhile, our distant ancestors are scratching their heads wondering why they even bothered to invent agriculture.
Real homesteading and foraging bloggers need catchy titles with numbers in them to get traffic to their posts, which means there are all sorts of blog posts about "5 Uses for Mulberries," or "8 Recipes Using Mulberries," or "12 Health Benefits of Mulberries," or "83 Reasons You Should Forage for Mulberries." But I really question these bloggers' expertise because I really don't want to serve a pie or a three-layer trifle with hallucinogenic berry stems in it to my children. And I don't think my children should be drinking mead either.
So we ended up putting the berries through the food grinder to juice them. Diluted with water and a little bit of sugar added, it makes a tasty, fairly healthy drink (after all there are 12 health benefits of mulberries, some random blogger said so).
The juice is fairly easy to make. My six-year-old did most of the work grinding the berries down. It's the cleaning up afterwards that makes you rethink this whole foraging trend.
Let's just say that G came home from work the other day to a very purple kitchen, and that we will need to re-paint some portions of our recently-painted cabinets. Unless some some homesteading blogger has pinned a post on "6 Ways to Remove Purple Berry Stains from Your Cabinets."
At least we think they're mulberries. I kind of let my kids eat them last year without knowing what they were and figured if there were poisonous berries growing in our area I would have heard about it. Everyone survived.
Anyway, this year we are trying a lot harder at this whole homesteading thing and actually,
1) Identified what we were eating. We used Google's Pictoral Field Guide to Native Plants (known more commonly simply as "Google Images") and are fairly certain it's a mulberry tree. Incidentally, ingesting unripe mulberries or their stems or parts of the tree can cause stomach upset and hallucinations.
2) Watched a YouTube video about the proper way to harvest mulberries.
So, this year instead of hand picking each mulberry we put a tarp on the ground and shook the branches and got a rain shower of mulberries (and purple stains on our clothes).
Meanwhile, the baby girl kept herself occupied by stuffing her face with berries she picked up off the ground.
After three evenings shaking berries off the tree we totaled about 5 gallons of mulberries.
The thing about mulberries though is that they really don't taste that great. (Especially the ones you pick up off the ground. Those just taste like dirt. But my baby likes dirt. Her three favorite foods are meatballs, dirty mulberries, and sand.) And their stems are near impossible to remove in a reasonable amount of time without making a purple sticky mess. So my kids don't really eat them once we get them home (while we're picking them off the tree they think the berries are the most delicious thing ever, it's all in the novelty of standing in the ditch eating free berries).
So we had 5 gallons of mulberries, minus several small purple-stained handfuls. Which got me searching on Pinterest for uses for the mulberries, which is where I learned the proper terminology for "free-loading from trees in a ditch down the road." It's actually called 'foraging,' and it's all the rage on Pinterest. There are people that are "expert foragers," and you can even hire a "foraging guide."
Meanwhile, our distant ancestors are scratching their heads wondering why they even bothered to invent agriculture.
Real homesteading and foraging bloggers need catchy titles with numbers in them to get traffic to their posts, which means there are all sorts of blog posts about "5 Uses for Mulberries," or "8 Recipes Using Mulberries," or "12 Health Benefits of Mulberries," or "83 Reasons You Should Forage for Mulberries." But I really question these bloggers' expertise because I really don't want to serve a pie or a three-layer trifle with hallucinogenic berry stems in it to my children. And I don't think my children should be drinking mead either.
So we ended up putting the berries through the food grinder to juice them. Diluted with water and a little bit of sugar added, it makes a tasty, fairly healthy drink (after all there are 12 health benefits of mulberries, some random blogger said so).
The juice is fairly easy to make. My six-year-old did most of the work grinding the berries down. It's the cleaning up afterwards that makes you rethink this whole foraging trend.
Let's just say that G came home from work the other day to a very purple kitchen, and that we will need to re-paint some portions of our recently-painted cabinets. Unless some some homesteading blogger has pinned a post on "6 Ways to Remove Purple Berry Stains from Your Cabinets."
Monday, May 28, 2018
Poultry News
Someday when Freeloader Farms is a multi-hundred dollar corporation, we'll send out a fancy newsletter with full-color photos for all of our screaming fans to read up on the latest updates around the farm. But for now, I'll just post them here for the 3 people that read this blog to enjoy.
Flock Increases by Seven
My "chicken ticket" birthday chickens arrived about 5.5 weeks ago. They were special ordered from Meyer Hatchery (who is big enough to not only have an email newsletter but also has a very informative catalog with beautiful photos available for viewing online or by mail order). Even though they were all supposed to be my chicks, I only ended up with two of them as the others were claimed by the kids. These chicks weren't handled quite as much as last year's chicks, mainly because the boys had more concern about ending up with manure in their hair from carrying them around on their heads (not necessarily a bad thing to be concerned about). But the chicks are still very loved and still living in our kitchen.
The chicks added to our poultry roster were named:
-Eggy (GD's chick, named after a chicken in a random foreign kids' movie we found at the library that GD loves. I don't understand the movie, I've only seen about 15 minutes of it, but there's a line that references the old musical "The King and I," so it must be ok right?)
-Green Layer Like Gecko Is Green, known as simply "Green Layer" by friends and family (GE's chick, he wanted a chick that laid green eggs because chickens don't lay orange eggs and Gecko, his favorite PJ Masks character, is green.)
-Princess (KM's chick, named by her brothers because KM is the princess of the family)
-Watermelon (my Buff Orpington chick, this was one of my specific requests because Buff Orpingtons are so docile, named after our original Buff Orpington who never got to fulfill her lifelong dream to be a mother)
-Sunshine (another one of my chicks, G won't let me name our children hippy names so I might as well give the names to our livestock. For the record though, I think G was very wise to not allow me to name KM Galilee Sunshine as I had wanted).
-Miss Fritter ("The school bus of death is after me!")
-Cupcake the Fluffy Cloud (GD wanted to name her "I Am A Fluffy Cloud" and GE wanted to name her Cupcake).
Missing Chicken
Missing: one adult hen, answers to the name of Daisy
Description: breed unknown, white with black at her neck and feathers on her feet
Last seen: wandering the farm about two months ago, did not come home in the evening after a day of free-ranging
Other pertinent information: will be looking lost, lonely and confused; may have gone to the nearest chicken therapist for help working through some unresolved trauma related to last winter's chicken massacres
Obituary
I am sorry to report the Obadiah Jonahmicahnahum Habakkuk is no longer with us. He was an odd little fellow and his fear of grass and hens was simply not compatible with life as a chicken. There are many stories I could tell of his inability to cope with life, but we are all very sad about his passing and so I will save those for another time (or my first children's book). He was buried in a private ceremony in which he was, as GE says, "planted in the garden, but he's not there anymore, he went away" (not sure if that is his understanding of chicken souls of just his misunderstanding of death). Obadiah is survived by his sisters Josephine and Henrietta.
Turkey Narrowly Escapes Death
Just a few days before Tom and Frieda were scheduled for butchering, Frieda started laying eggs. It is highly unlikely that the eggs were fertile. Broad-breasted bronzes don't breed well due to their broad breasts (say that 5 times fast). But on the outside chance we could have baby turkeys, we built an incubator out of a foam cooler, struggled to keep the temperature and humidity the same conditions as a turkey's bottom, and ultimately hatched a couple of rotten eggs that made the house smell like low tide. The eggs were unfertilized. Frieda stopped laying eggs. The turkeys are back on the waiting list for our freezers.
Flock Increases by Seven
My "chicken ticket" birthday chickens arrived about 5.5 weeks ago. They were special ordered from Meyer Hatchery (who is big enough to not only have an email newsletter but also has a very informative catalog with beautiful photos available for viewing online or by mail order). Even though they were all supposed to be my chicks, I only ended up with two of them as the others were claimed by the kids. These chicks weren't handled quite as much as last year's chicks, mainly because the boys had more concern about ending up with manure in their hair from carrying them around on their heads (not necessarily a bad thing to be concerned about). But the chicks are still very loved and still living in our kitchen.
The chicks added to our poultry roster were named:
-Eggy (GD's chick, named after a chicken in a random foreign kids' movie we found at the library that GD loves. I don't understand the movie, I've only seen about 15 minutes of it, but there's a line that references the old musical "The King and I," so it must be ok right?)
-Green Layer Like Gecko Is Green, known as simply "Green Layer" by friends and family (GE's chick, he wanted a chick that laid green eggs because chickens don't lay orange eggs and Gecko, his favorite PJ Masks character, is green.)
-Princess (KM's chick, named by her brothers because KM is the princess of the family)
-Watermelon (my Buff Orpington chick, this was one of my specific requests because Buff Orpingtons are so docile, named after our original Buff Orpington who never got to fulfill her lifelong dream to be a mother)
-Sunshine (another one of my chicks, G won't let me name our children hippy names so I might as well give the names to our livestock. For the record though, I think G was very wise to not allow me to name KM Galilee Sunshine as I had wanted).
-Miss Fritter ("The school bus of death is after me!")
-Cupcake the Fluffy Cloud (GD wanted to name her "I Am A Fluffy Cloud" and GE wanted to name her Cupcake).
Missing Chicken
Missing: one adult hen, answers to the name of Daisy
Description: breed unknown, white with black at her neck and feathers on her feet
Last seen: wandering the farm about two months ago, did not come home in the evening after a day of free-ranging
Other pertinent information: will be looking lost, lonely and confused; may have gone to the nearest chicken therapist for help working through some unresolved trauma related to last winter's chicken massacres
Obituary
I am sorry to report the Obadiah Jonahmicahnahum Habakkuk is no longer with us. He was an odd little fellow and his fear of grass and hens was simply not compatible with life as a chicken. There are many stories I could tell of his inability to cope with life, but we are all very sad about his passing and so I will save those for another time (or my first children's book). He was buried in a private ceremony in which he was, as GE says, "planted in the garden, but he's not there anymore, he went away" (not sure if that is his understanding of chicken souls of just his misunderstanding of death). Obadiah is survived by his sisters Josephine and Henrietta.
Turkey Narrowly Escapes Death
Just a few days before Tom and Frieda were scheduled for butchering, Frieda started laying eggs. It is highly unlikely that the eggs were fertile. Broad-breasted bronzes don't breed well due to their broad breasts (say that 5 times fast). But on the outside chance we could have baby turkeys, we built an incubator out of a foam cooler, struggled to keep the temperature and humidity the same conditions as a turkey's bottom, and ultimately hatched a couple of rotten eggs that made the house smell like low tide. The eggs were unfertilized. Frieda stopped laying eggs. The turkeys are back on the waiting list for our freezers.
Thursday, May 17, 2018
The World's First Pig Farmers
Tens of thousands of years ago cavemen were realizing that they could domesticate animals. I wonder during those first years of animals domestication if our ancestors really had plans for the animals or if they were just making it up as they went along. Which is totally what we're doing with this whole homesteading thing. I imagine the first humans to raise pigs may have experienced something like this.
Father Caveman arrived back to the cave late from hunting and gathering one evening. Mother Cavewoman was slightly annoyed but still curious when, after he tossed the squirrels for supper on the fire he pulled out a box (chiseled laboriously from rock of course) with air holes and presented his children with two new strange animals to befriend and turn into something useful. The animals were small and pink with flat noses and curly tails.
"What are they called, Daddy?! Where did you find them?! What do we do with them?!" The Cave Children asked excitedly.
"I found them for free in an ad carved on a cliff while I stopped to eat my lunch today. I picked them up from some one named Craig after hunting and gathering. They are called piglets and I don't know what they're good for, I just thought the cave drawing of them was cute."
The Cave Children were delighted with their new pets. Mother Cavewoman did not want to keep them but Father Caveman thought she might be more agreeable once she got some squirrel and foraged roots and mushrooms in her.
"After supper we will build a pen for them."
Soon(ish) the pig pen was roughly constructed from rocks and tree limbs the Cave Children gathered while Father Caveman carved food and water barrels and Mother Cavewoman cleaned up from the lovely squirrel dinner and tried to keep the Cavebaby from climbing the cave walls and swinging from the overhead torch.
The Cave Children excitedly cared for their piglets. They tirelessly tried to train them to do....something. Even if they couldn't be work animals they could still be pets and maybe even protect the family from wild dinosaurs (the timeline for this may be a little construed). The piglets would dance little jigs when they saw the Cave Children coming, but as the pigs grew all they wanted to do was sit in the mud. The pigs grew larger than the Cave Family could have ever imagined and soon were consuming more than the family could forage. Fortunately there was bulk feed available at the elevator in the next village over (that village was much more advanced than our cave family's village, obviously). The smell of the pigs became overpowering and manure was piling up. The pigs dug and rooted and made a mess and were constantly destroying their living enclosure. They repeatedly knocked over their waterer and Father Caveman had to recarve it three times. As winter approached Father Caveman was finding it harder to keep their water thawed and had to rig up a thermostat-controlled fire to thaw their waterer. The pigs were not too smart either. Father Caveman was getting smoke signals like "Pig stuck in feed barrel" from Mother Cavewoman while he was out hunting and gathering.
Finally the family had had enough. The pigs were not earning their keep around the cave and the family could not afford to keep them. So they did what they had to do....
After several hours of huffing and puffing, Father Caveman finally loaded them into a livestock cart (this was after the wheel had been invented), to take them out and hunt them. He brought home so much meat the family had to carve another ice box to store it until meat curing could be discovered. With all that meat available, Father Caveman no longer had to devote his entire day to hunting down squirrels and could now spend time working the land and inventing agriculture.
Or something like that.
After several hours of huffing and puffing, Father Caveman finally loaded them into a livestock cart (this was after the wheel had been invented), to take them out and hunt them. He brought home so much meat the family had to carve another ice box to store it until meat curing could be discovered. With all that meat available, Father Caveman no longer had to devote his entire day to hunting down squirrels and could now spend time working the land and inventing agriculture.
Or something like that.
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