Frost

The frost was finally real. We had a couple of frosts that were light and didn't kill anything 5 inches above the ground, but last week was for real. The next door neighbor and I picked tons of raspberries the night before the frost. Now it's time to cut everything back and clean up. I love the Fall. It's a lot of hard work.

It's been a long time.

Garden is almost done and I'm cleaning it out. I should plant garlic. We don't have wood yet and I haven't even begun to make applesauce. Yikes! More later hopefully with pictures.

Latest Reading List

Harry Potter (finished)
Maxed Out (not started yet)
Four-Season Harvest (in the middle)
Barbara Kingsolver's new book about local eating(I'm on the list at the library.)
Food Not Lawns (Again, waiting to hear from the library.)

Why we do this

I want my son to grow up appreciating hard work and even enjoying it.

It's been too long

I finally have pictures of the garden to post. They are at least a month old now. The peas have all been sheared off and died, the beans (once I got the bean poles to stay up) have just fizzled, the corn looks a little bit suspect, I have Japanese Beetles in the raspberries and voles keep eating my tiny cucumbers. I do have summer squash and beets (they taste like corn). The tomatoes look good but only the cherry tomatoes are ripening so far.

I'm doing well with flowers. Japanese Beetles like zinnias.

Finally some progress

I finally got the peas planted. Also lettuce, spinach, radishes and tatsoi. I weeded the worst out of the still vacant beds and put together the flower beds. In the flower beds we have Sunflowers(Lemon Queen), Cosmos (Sensation Mix) and Zinnias (California Giant). I have Snapdragons to put in that I started in the house. Pictures to come soon.

Stress of working outside the home

Some days it just doesn't pay to go to work.

It's been an awful Winter for illnesses. No one seems to be exempt. My child is sick again. He's been sick every other week since December. I have burned through all my sick and personal time and I'm using vacation time now. After the cost of daycare I am still making money. We need the money to pay bills. I'm constantly trying to figure out a way to make it cost effective to stay home. The numbers don't add up.

I know that it is most important to take care of my child, but I feel guilt for missing work.

What we really need

So, I've been thinking about what we really need. For survival we need food, clothing and shelter. I'm guessing that all the other stuff we aquire is supposed to help us get and keep these things.

I've been decluttering. It's a mission to get rid of the things that I don't need. When possible I try to pass on stuff to people who can use it. In the end I just don't want to accumulate more stuff to reclutter my home. That's when it becomes frugal. I always wonder about being a poseur when it come to frugality. I don't buy lots of stuff, at least I don't think I do. I stay out of stores all the time. I look at catalogs and recycle them the same day. I have been known to make silly purchases though. I buy new shoes for my son. I have friends who probably think I am cheap. I'd like to think that is not the case. I don't go out to dinner very often, I can make most stuff at home just as well. Good food is important to me. We don't eat organic, but we eat mostly whole foods. I buy good clothes, but not many of them.

Just so it's clear, my frugality/decluttering kick is pretty recent. There is nothing like bringing a child into the world to change your perceptions about "stuff".

Global climate change

So, on my friend Sharon's blog (see my links) someone suggested a Peak Oil party. It's like this, instead of having a party to buy stuff (Pampered Chef, Tupperware, etc.) have a party, with wine, where you can trade seeds or clothes or household items that you don't need and drink and eat yummy food. I love this idea.

Peak oil and global climate change are linked and I tend to think of them as one and the same issue. Now if I could just scrape up a few friends to do this with. I've got seeds and probably some household stuff to start.

February 14th and the aftermath

I turned 41 on February 14th. We had our first snowstorm of the Winter and it was a good one. We had 2 feet of blowing and drifting snow. I stayed home partly because the weather was so awful and partly because my son was sick. He ended up being sick most of the next week too. I'm glad the snowstorm and my birthday are over. Other than the cards I received, and some gifts, I tried to ignore getting older.

I've been letting go of "stuff". It's very freeing. My kitchen if starting to contain only tools that I use. The more I let go of the more I want to get rid of.

The chickens are letting me know that the days are getting longer. Suddenly they are laying lots of eggs. They really did not like January and February.

Global warming

I finally saw "An Inconvienient Truth". It was good. Really good. It inspired me to get better at my gardening. Work towards staying at home sooner.

The next day I saw "March of the Penguins". It's really sad. You can see how the penguins are so endangered. Just like the polar bears. The two movies go together but not in a good way.

We are in a deep freeze here. Not much snow. Supposedly Spring is coming early this year. So says the groundhog.

Yesterday was Sunday...

and I kicked ass cleaning and decluttering. I got up at my normal time, showered, dressed, cooked pancakes and cleaned. After I watched CBS Sunday Morning. The boy helped out in his way. He pretends to vacuum. He also took a really long morning nap. That is more helpful than anything. I decluttered my closet, the cedar chest and my dresser. I can't believe how many articles of clothing I was hanging on to for no reason. I can close my dresser drawers easily now. I cleaned off the top of the piano. Things were starting to accumulate. It changed the whole look of the livingroom (to me anyway).

Sunday afternoons

I'm really wondering what is up with me. The last 2 Sundays I have been sluggish and mopey. It's like I'm 12 again and dreading school on Monday. I hated Sundays as a kid.

Some days I feel the need to DO something. Clean, cook, de-clutter. If things weren't frozen solid I could be making up garden beds. I guess, based on this little exercise, that my problem is cabin fever. I'm between projects and feeling restless. I'm not getting enough exercise.

Next month I'm going to visit my friend Sharon. Hopefully I'll get some inspiration from her. She doesn't get everything done but she seems content to let the little stuff go. She is way busier than I am. Every now and again I need to get reinvigorated and inspired about the things I feel are important (my child, growing food, wasting less, our health).

I usually fizzle

Every year I start out in January with big plans. I want to expand my fruit production. Last year I had raspberries and they were very successful. This year I want to do blueberries. Plants are expensive but the county will have them for the plant sale.

I try to draw out where things are going to go in the garden. Then a nice day appears in March or April and I plant lettuce and peas. Then I totally forget about my plan. I try and squeeze in one more tomato plant. I plant kale and never eat it or freeze it. The rabbits eat it. I SHOULD plant kale. It's easy to grow. I SHOULD eat kale. It's really good for me.

This year the goal is to not over do. I'll use my space efficiently. I'll do succession planting and I won't expand by more than one bed.

Watch me fizzle!

2007

I don't make resolutions but, I do start planning for the garden. The seed catalogs are arriving and the vegetables are all sounding so good. The trick is to actually eat what you sow, and keep the rabbits away. I am all about good intentions and eating more vegetables. I really look forward to tomatoes and corn (I buy it, don't grow it). Lettuce and snow peas are the first veggies we have and they are a great treat. I'm liking summer squash more and more.

If the winter stays mild I might even start the landscaping around the house.

We are the proud owners of a paid-for John Deere tractor. Unfortunately it is not a real tractor, it's a garden tractor, but, it's all ours and we do a lot of different stuff with it. We mow the lawn(weekly), the pasture(annually) and the loop around the pasture(quarterly). We haul wood in from the woods. We scrape the horse paddock and push all the manure into a great big compost pile. We move the compost to the garden. The driveway gets plowed. I'm sure there is other stuff we do with it but it's enough to say that it's a pretty useful tool. In a perfect world I would be doing stuff with fewer steps and with horse power. However the tractor only needs a little bit of gas run through it in the winter to keep it in good working order. A horse eats a lot even when not doing anything.