I've got me a 3 year old and a 6 monther

These pictures are from a couple weeks ago, but they get across the two coinciding points that I've got fast-growing children and that time waits for no mama. We're on vacation to visit Jason's family on the east coast, so I've got a lot to post when we get home. Meanwhile, Zoralee turned three the second day of our trip and Ziah turned six months today! Ziah weighs 17 pounds on Nana's scale. I'd have to look back at my extensively well-organized records,* but if memory serves me right, Zoralee was like 18 pounds at the age of 2. Don't quote me on that. Point is, these two are built differently, and it shows - - in the thighs, among other places.

Gosh, I wish I could tell you the things each of them are doing, but we've got zoos and Christmas lights and cousins to see, and cookies and cakes and other piles of carbohydrates to consume, so I'm not in a good position to bloggity-blog-blog all the live long day.

Except, that last sentence reminds me of one of Zoralee's quotes from a couple weeks ago. I told her not to sass me (can't remember the context), and she said, "I AM gonna be sassy all the live long day to you!" So, how 'bout them apples.


* scraps of paper tossed with care into a pretty, plaid bag

survive and thrive friday: first deer with the bow (!), deadfall trap, bowdrill fire-making

physical training

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Our biggest news is that Jason got his first bow-and-arrowed deer this week! It was a saga, a battle between man and beast that spanned the course of three days. Each night, as the sun went down, the man returned home, head hung low. He took off his leafy, scentless, silhouette-breaking clothes, not sure he would be able to track and finish off his chosen deer. And the deer bedded down in the tall grasses, thankful he'd escaped death for one more day but alert for when that weird bush would show up again and shoot sharp things toward him. When it was all over and Jason drug his 4x4 buck down the valley toward home, a squirrel ran along through the trees, watching him. There's a teepee ring on the hill right near the house here, so Jason wondered how many times this scene had played out in this same place over time - the squirrels watching as braves brought meat home for their families.


The meat is hanging in the barn now, waiting for us to get to it - hopefully tomorrow. I grew up on deer meat, and we always got together as an extended family to process whatever game we had. But this will be our first time to process a deer just the two of us. It feels a really grown up thing to do, maybe too grown up (!); I honestly don't know if I'll recognize which chunks should be cut into steaks or roasts or ground into hamburger.  I'm thinking we may end up with some roasts the shape of Texas or West Virginia rather than, say, Colorado. Wish us luck.

Deer-hunting season is a reminder to me of many good things: trips into the woods with my dad, grandpas, aunts and uncles, thermoses of hot chocolate, lumpy fanny packs of matches, flashlights, hand warmers, and other emergency supplies, roads and hills named after family hunting events, "you go this way, I'll go that way, and we'll meet at the bottom of this draw...," and back home, counter tops and tables cluttered with maps and binoculars, and piles on the floor of warm long johns and blindingly bright orange hats and jackets. And stories, always stories. In my family, when you turned 12, you represented the potential for two more deer tags, so off you went to a hunter's safety class to get certified. It felt pretty hard-core to contribute to the family's meat supply, and I am really grateful for that experience.

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This is a small trap Jason has been experimenting with "to work out the kinks in the comfort and safety of our home," because you never know when you might need to give a major headache to a sweet, curious little squirrel out in the wild. Actually, of course, the idea would be to eat what you catch. I'm glad Jason is thinking along these lines, should all hell break loose and we're forced to eat weasels, because I sure as spit ain't.

The log is held up precariously by these three sticks.
Crazy enough, only one stick is touching the ground! It's like a magic trick that
baffles and entertains the onlookers and simultaneously kills small animals.
Here, a curious, colorful, miniature alligator nibbles at the bait.

The onlookers' eyes close as the sticks come loose and log crashes down.

"Gopher, Everett?"

Jason got his deadfall trap inspiration from this book.

 Here's a website that has instructions with photos.

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Finally, a couple shots of bow-drill fire-making. In this particular experiment, all we got was smoke and no fire, but Jason subsequently figured out that your wood types have to be the same (at least for some of the components). Maybe another day we'll have pictures of fire to show. Also, it's getting pretty late, and I don't feel like explaining how this works, so maybe you should google it if you're interested. Or else just use a match and paper.

Let's survive!

Let's thrive!

Unless we're a deer or a rodent in the crosshairs of Jason!

scenes of winter

diving off a to-do list into winter

thumb

Who's freezing - show of hands?

What about alternating days of each?

survive and thrive friday: snot sucker, buying a house, and PERMACULTURE

In case anyone was under the ridiculous impression that every single Friday I would reveal a "Survive and Thrive Friday" post, ohhhhh, ha ha ha! No, no, no, no. It's just that when I ever do post about surviving and thriving (things we're trying in the pursuit of self-reliance, self-sustainability, and more wholistic living), heh heh, it'll be on Fridays, see. Yeah, that's right. That's right. Or Saturdays. And not necessarily the same Friday or Saturday every month. No way, man.

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Let's start right in with no more ado but with lots of snot. Rachel showed us a Nosefrida snot sucker over the Skype, and I was instantly sold on it. We've all been sick for a couple weeks, and nights are 134% worse than usual because babies keep waking up irritated at having to mouth breathe. Come to find out, you know what's even cooler than sucking a tiny dab of snot at a time out of a baby's nostril? Sucking a tube full.


After dropping into casual conversation a couple of times the fact that I was gonna go out and buy a Nosefrida for $25, Jason brought home a 30 cent length of tube from an auto store. He cut the end off one of our nasal aspirators and stuck it on the tube. Tuh-duhhhh. Works like a frickin' charm. The actual Nosefrida has a couple filters interspersed, but in our experience so far, the snot doesn't even come two inches up our homemade tube, so there's no way it could reach the sucker's mouth. I would advise to be careful and not suck too hard or for very long, because there's a tiny set of lungs on the other end!! I was so excited about better sleep that I was a little vigorous at first, and Jason had to put the Whoa Nellie on me. Good old Ziah didn't seem to care one ounce. For the first couple days, he just laid there when I sucked the snot out of him, literally. I love this kid. Pretty soon he wised up and got wiggly over it, but it was a nice snot sucker honeymoon while it lasted.

You know, in this whole survive and thrive thing, I feel like I could write a lot every week, but most of the time it would be about conversations we're having, inspired by the survival podcast I keep mentioning. And that could get old, talk being cheap and all, so I'm gonna try to limit my mentionings to things we're actually trying / doing. No guarantees though, because some of these concepts are way too earth-shattering to not mention before we've verified for ourselves that they're true. Er...right!

The biggest news is that we put an offer on a 100+ year old farm house two Fridays ago, and it was accepted! It was a rather quick situation, and we're still in the throes of getting financed, having it inspected, blah blah blah. In general, we've been hesitant to get into housing debt, but when we saw this one listed and then viewed it a couple days later, we knew it was enough of a fixer upper that we could for sure come out ahead. And North Dakota is one place we feel confident investing in real estate. We still have the heebie jeebies about the debt, and about being part of the U.S. banking system at all, but we'll see. How home-ownership plays into surviving and thriving is thus and so: 1) building equity that we can turn into the cold, hard cash we need to be closer to "the dream," and 2) having our own space in which to practice permaculture concepts.

What the heck is permaculture, right?! Well, it is a crazy EXCITING concept - in my own words, it's creating little ecosystems that are as close to self-sustaining as possible (just like nature does it), but with the results / outflow / products being things that are useful to you, the creator. It's like a garden that you put a lot more initial intention into so that, while it's operating, the least amount of your energy is required to reap big rewards. A key word is efficiency, and permaculture-esque ideas apply to the running of a household or any human endeavor, really. You could have a little greenhouse in which to grow produce year round - Jason is working on a design for one now - with your chickens located right inside the greenhouse so that their poo is instant fertilizer and their heat helps keep it warm. They would also provide CO2 for the plants, which would provide oxygen for them. Permaculture is such a huge topic, and I don't even have it all worked out in my own head, that I'd better refer y'all to a couple of websites we've been visiting and learning from.

"An incredible example of permaculture in action can be seen in any of the short youtube documentaries about Sepp Holzer in Austria. Amazing stuff." - Jason

Here's one that gives you a quick overview of Sepp and his wife's homestead, and how they've basically thrown away all modern, conventional farming and gardening wisdom and instead watched nature itself for how to grow things without degrading the landscape.




Jason downloaded FOR FREE this permaculture designer's manual; we have yet to delve into it, but the writer, Bill Mollison, is the guy who came up with the permaculture term and the concept as it is envisioned in modern society. You have GOT to start with this interview of Bill Mollison from 1991. I think it'll inspire you to start the manual, like it has me.

A guy named Paul Wheaton at www.richsoil.com has lots of interesting permaculture-related stuff, and from there I found this link about caring for cast iron cookware. We probably use our cast iron 90% of the time, but have SO not perfected its use. Food still sticks a lot. Well, this page is chalk full of insights, and I got several tips I instantly integrated into the care of my pans. They have a forum at www.permies.com.

That's it for now, folks. Happy surviving and thriving!

halloween 2011: little lost polar bear and the herbivorous dinosaur

- guest appearance by Cinderella -

Once upon a time, there lived an energetic polar bear with a rainbow tummy.

She had been displaced from her Arctic homeland.

Polar Bear was on a search that had taken her far from her natural habitat.
It was a search for what we all crave: meaningful effort, a sense of belonging,
and candy.

Before she knew it, she was wandering the fields and highways of North Dakota.

Little Lamb was Polar Bear's trusty companion.

The trip had been hard on Little Lamb -

a broken leg, a lot of riding by the neck in the crook of Polar Bear's arm -

but he had no idea of the dangers that were just beyond the next hay bale.

Or maybe he did.

"A little patch of woods!" squealed Polar Bear with delight.

"Now this is the type of terrain I recognize!"

"Weeee! Aren't the woods fun, Little Lamb?"
Polar Bear looked around to see what other fun might be had.

She noticed something in the grass just a few trees away.

Why, it was an herbivorous dinosaur! He sure was hungry, but apparently well-fed.

And pensive.

And tricky!

Polar Bear watched the little dinosaur from her vantage point behind a tree of some sort.

He seemed friendly enough. She was about to step out and make his acquaintance, when

Oh, no! What was that in the background, approaching so deftly,

while the dinosaur sucked his thumb in oblivion?

Polar Bear wasted not a single second.

"Raaawr!" she cried ferociously, as she jumped out from her place of hiding.

But she suddenly felt weak and inadequate with her felt cloth claws.

Polar Bear grabbed two sticks from the forest floor.

The creature was all up ons the tiny herbivorous dinosaur!

He was a goner for certain unless Polar Bear could intervene!

"Oh, no you don't!" yelled Polar Bear, and she threw those two sticks far, far into the woods.

The toothy creature, inches from the herbivorous dinosaur, screeched to a halt

and ran instead toward the deep woods after the sticks.

"Oh mies, little herbivorous dinosaur! Are you okay?"

"Uh, yeah. Why?"

"Well," began Polar Bear, "I was hiding behind a tree, hugging it like this, watching you."

"Creepy, but okay," said the dinosaur. "Then what happened?"

And Polar Bear recounted to the herbivorous dinosaur the haunting events

that had taken place behind his Bumbo seat only seconds before.

"You're kidding!" said the herbivorous dinosaur, and he sucked his thumb to calm down.

"Well, Polar Bear, I owe you one! Hey, why don't you come with me tonight

to a special little event they call Trick or Treating? I'm going with my pal, Cinderella.

I'm not 100% certain what the deal is with it, but we wind up with a basket of candy."

"Are you for real?" asked Polar Bear. Was this actually happening?

Did this space cadet of an herbivorous dinosaur really know

where to find copious amounts of candy?

"I'm in!" she declared, and off they went for town.

Cinderella warmly greeted Polar Bear.

"Any friend of the herbivorous dinosaur is a friend of mine," she gushed.

And then they played it cool for a couple of minutes.

Cinderella had a little slipper trouble...

"Why does that seem familiar?" wondered Polar Bear.

And with empty candy baskets, they prepared to take Cinderella's neighborhood by cute storm.

Cinderella was the definite front man, the go-getter, the ringer of bells, the stater of phrases.

Polar Bear was not a fan of either the halloween decor or any masked children she encountered.

Before she had left Cinderella's house, two young Spidermen walked by,

and she'd jumped into the car in utter fright.

Polar Bear hung back, approaching doors just close and just long enough

to receive the blessed candies. A long trip makes a bear cautious.

But little by little, she found the bravery she had summoned in the woods,

helped along by grandmas like this, who handed out trinkets one at a time,

slowly and gently, enjoying the presence of those who visited her doorstep.

There was much glee all around.

"Let's go to another house!" Cinderella and Polar Bear exclaimed after each house.

Knowing that Polar Bear had found her place amongst the other random candy-seekers

and had exercised bravery in saving his life,

the herbivorous dinosaur quietly took it all in from his perch.

And sucked his thumb to stay calm.