survive and nose dive friday: slow and quick plant deaths and a whole beef miscalculation

(from despair.com)

Today I have several unfortunate incidents to report.


#1) We were initially ecstatic about the high germination rate and quick growth of the plants in our container garden. Our enthusiasm turned to confusion when nearly all the basil and cilantro grew up weak and spindly, dozens of wispy little stems that bent over to form toy train tunnels. Our confusion ended in dismay when we learned that those are symptoms of too little sunlight and that our best bet was to pull them up and start over. The plants had grown so quickly to find light; placing them at a window and supplementing with a full spectrum light bulb were obviously not enough this time of year. (We have a real grow light we should use.)

#2) Aside from the herbs, it appeared that our three or four tomato plants were growing at a more sure and steady rate and developing thicker bases. "Yippee!" we thought, and took care that the light was lovingly and disproportionately focused toward them versus the decorative pea plants and some other random edible leaf thing Jason had planted (which are also faring well). Yesterday morning, while Ziah was taking a leisurely early morning bath at an hour that no other children in the entire earth were awake, I decided to water our container garden. It's in the middle of the bathroom, the warmest room with the best light. When the container's reservoir was full, water began to trickle out the side hole - that's the way we know it's full - so I grabbed for a towel. It came off the door rack hard, and its opposite edge, with the precision of a judo chop, flung backwards toward the container and snapped every one of those tomato plants off at the base. None of the other plants was affected. Just the tomatoes. My jaw was agape. Then it was clenched as I reached for the cell phone to inform my dear husband by text message what I had done. He texted back, "Hmmm." and then, "Oh well." He's a good man, that one. A good man who, should North Dakota be the focus of a nuclear threat in the next month and our family be confined to the house, will sit with us and look over at that container of decorative pea plants, then look over at me, who will shrug my shoulders as we die of starvation, and he won't say two words of meanness.

#3) Late last summer, we got in touch with a local guy who raises and sells grass-fed, hormone-free beef. I talked with him by phone several times, often at length about how the cow is raised, butchered, processed, etc. The term he always used for calculating what we'd pay him and the butcher was "hanging weight." The cow's hanging weight was estimated to be about 750 pounds, so the meat would be around $2.69 a pound - hamburger, steaks, roasts, ribs. How excited was I? I called a couple girlfriends and talked them into the deal, and they likewise talked a couple more people into it. After all, you can't even get cheap-o crap-o hamburger for that price. So we all went in together on a whole cow and placed our order to the butcher for how we wanted it wrapped - how much hamburger per package, how thick of steaks. Then we waited several months until our cow was ready for butcher. Fast forward to a couple weeks ago when we got the call that the beef was available for pickup. One of my friends took four boxes in to pick up her meat, and they filled up two boxes 3/4 of the way full. After some phone calls and google searches, we realized our (MY) mistake: hanging weight and take home weight are two different things. So, any of you who plan to buy a half beef or something, figure on taking home about 60% of the hanging weight.

In the end, the beef cost us just under $5 a pound. That's expensive for hamburger (though currently, the cheap-o hamburger at Wal-mart is just under $4 per pound), but it's a good deal for roasts and steaks and ribs. Plus, we all got several packages of liver, tongue, and other delectables. heh heh. I don't know if I really want to google cow tongue recipes.

Lesson learned on that one was to not rope your friends into something unless you're darn well sure of yourself. We did offer to buy the meat from anyone who wanted out of the deal, but everyone decided to stay in.

Storycorps stories

Have you seen any of these Storycorps stories? I saw one at Matt's blog, and the kids and I have been clicking from one to the next for the last half hour. They're audio recordings of anecdotes from around the country, set to animation.


Here's a great one called "Miss Devine..."



And another that makes me want to submit audio recordings of Aunt Sue's stories to Storycorps.

love is alive

I've been humming a song from childhood for a couple months: "Love is Alive," by the Judds. These three people who share a home with me - I love them. I love them with an exhaustive (and exhausting), living love. And I am loved too. There is nothing better; I am very, very grateful. 

Love is alive and at our breakfast table every day of the week.

Love is alive, and it grows every day and night, even in our sleep.

Love is alive, and it's made a happy woman out of me.

(after Zoralee's birth)

Oh, love is alive
And here by me.

visit to the new house

Last weekend while we were in town, we decided to drive out to the new house. Too bad we hadn't brought the new key, but it allowed us to walk around and see the property from lots of angles without that backbrain drive to get inside the house. Gorgeous day.

We've owned this place for a solid month now but haven't done much with it on account of J's schedule. That has changed now, and he'll have better times available to start work on the main level - several window replacements, back-filling insulation into the walls, replacing the floor, and painting the walls! He wants to do that before we move, then do the upstairs renovations as we live along. We've got a bunch of boxes packed up and ready for transport, so we're itchy itchy itchy.

See the low spots on that top photo, where water has accumulated and frozen? Jason is thinking of how to work with the natural contours of the land in a Sepp Holtzer kind of way, i.e.; pond-building. And yes, we are going to consider any elevation change of six inches or more a contour. Hmm. Better make that three inches.    

We love the trees!

What, if any, of the big main barn is useable?
It looks like it could slide off the foundation at any moment.
There's something decidedly unromantic about sending the children
out in their hard hats to gather eggs.

our precious Viking child

This is a "garage." Rrrrrrrright.
It will be made into a pile of aged barn wood
that we can maybe incorporate into the house
or make oodles of picture frames from.

saturday's frost and fog

wishing she'd come out walking with Ziah and me

tuesday's frost

survive and thrive friday: getting rid of stuff, container garden, fresh food, deer meat wrap-up

There's a lot to sum up this time around for my remarkably popular (hi, Mom!) "Survive and Thrive" series. I know some of this stuff is as boring as all git-out, so if you make it to the bottom of the post, you are a real patriot. Of whatever country you choose.

Looming largest before us, both in our minds' eyes and in our basement, are our mountains of crap. Down-sizing possessions has been an ongoing process for the last, I don't know, 7 or 8 years. But this time we're serious. We no longer want to keep anything that's not on the slimmed down list of our truest interests. Moving into our first real home is the impetus for this newest manifestation of an old resolve. We lived in a one room cabin in Alaska for a couple years and a pickup camper in Maryland for a few months, but sadly, though we had the appearance and scent of minimalists, we always still owned our stuff; it was out of sight - in storage, or at Mom and Dad's house. This time, we're whittling down the piles in every single category, including the sacred cow of books. It's really something for us to get rid of books. We love books. Our collection is our history, our identity, in a form you can hold in your hands. But you know what? Any books we haven't referenced for years and that are readily available at the library, why haul them around? They make for very heavy shelf decor. We'll keep the practical, how-to books for when/if the internet isn't available. And a few sentimental books. And maybe a joke book or two for when we're super bored not owning any possessions. And some classic series' that we want the kids to read. And a few that are signed. And maybe some we wouldn't want to bother hunting down at the library. Dangit. This is hard.

One of my proudest sorting feats was getting the kids' clothes down to three cat litter boxes or roasting pans apiece. Give me a break, those are the only cheap containers that would fit into this weird closet thingy. Anyway, pride. And then I read the account of my friend, Kim, who lives in a hut in Sudan. She showed lovely pictures of the villagers in their new Christmas outfits. Very colorful, sturdy outfits (lucky, right?)....which they'll wear nearly exclusively until next Christmas, when they each get one new outfit to wear all year. Doh.

By the way, is this not the cutest dress on God's green earth?
Rachel made it for Z for Christmas. It's reversible.
Don't be distracted by one pink and one gray sock.

  
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Jason is trying his hand at this particular style of container garden. (Resource: this PFD instruction link at www.seattleoil.com.) Jason and Zoralee planted tomatoes, peppers, peas, basil, and cilantro, and I think maybe a little flower that fixes nitrogen in the soil. I can't recall exactly, but we should know soon enough! This container is pretty neat. You keep water in the bottom reservoir, and then the soil pulls it up as it needs it, through the column of soil that sits down into the water. 

Jason cut the edges off of the bin's lid so it would sit down inside the bin,
making a floor or shelf for the soil. He cut a hole in the center for a small bucket.
Dirt will fill the bin, including the bucket, making a column of dirt that pulls water up
by capillary action. (I remembered that term off hand. Kidding. Thank you, google.)

The soil floor is held solid by four legs of PVC pipe.
They, and the bucket bottom, sit on the bin's actual bottom.

Holes are poked throughout the bucket! Muy importante, so the water can come through.
They are poked into the floor/shelf too for soil aeration.
Once the bucket is foil of soil, you fill the lower reservoir by pouring water into the pipe.

They laid down cheesecloth so the soil wouldn't fall out of the holes and into the water,
but the water could still come in to the soil.
How useful you are, oh cheesecloth, despite your name being really awkward
when there is no cheese involved.

Day 1: January 16

We started getting some sprouts within a few days. It was fabulously rewarding! (no pics of those little guys)

Day 14: January 29

Day 18: February 2
Jason will do another round of thinning out those foreground herbs.
The germination rate on our seeds was super high.

We've had a couple of casualties. One pea plant was voted off the container garden by a certain young girl when she wondered what would happen if she picked the leaves, the only two tiny leaves by which the dear plant could obtain light and grow. A couple of herbs won't make it because a baby dropped a ball into the bin and it rolled all over the delicate sprouts. Oh, what the heck. I'll just tell you - it was Zoralee and Ziah, those rascals.

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In food news, Jason was on a week + long vegetable and fruit juice fast, after watching the documentary, "Sick, Fat, and Nearly Dead." Every concoction was different than the next, some in very pretty colors. This was my favorite:

The kids and I go through the yogurt and fruit smoothies anyway,
but I started to add more veggies when Jason took up juicing.
I'm gonna say go easy on the sprouts. If you overdo them,
you've got what essentially tastes like a sprout smoothie.
And, there's nothing wrong with it, if a sprout smoothie is what you set out to make.

Oh. This is JUST dawning on me as I type: Zoralee, the child who has always said things like, "Yay!! Broccoli!" has recently stopped wanting vegetables. I know that it weirded her out to have spinach in the smoothies, but oh my. What have we done?!? I hope it's an unrelated phase, I hope it's an unrelated phase, I hope.... 


Anyway, since we started eating a more "Paleo" style diet a few months ago, we have really cut down on wheat and other grain products. The kids and I still eat a lot of dairy, but Jason, not so much. And yes, fresh produce is expensive, but I really think good health is worth that cost - especially when it coincides with spending very little money on chips, crackers, pop, and every manner of pre-packaged food. It is so freeing to not have to run down every aisle at the grocery store. We stick almost exclusively to the edges for the fresh and refrigerated stuff. As time goes on and our gardening and canning skills improve, we'll be able to cut out buying canned goods too! 
  

Granola Doll in fresh produce ecstasy

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I'll close by showing a few shots of wrapping the deer Jason shot a couple of months ago. More details of his hunt are available upon request. :)

Always, always, always, we're learning lessons! Now what we've got to work on is trying the same experiments twice in a row so that we can apply those lessons.  

from the prairie's edge - our life as told by our stack of books

This recent stack of books gives a pretty good indication of what we've been doing, discussing, and preparing to do...

-  the hymnal our church uses; I've taken up playing piano for worship about once a month

- Nourishing Traditions: food history, recipes, and inspiration to eat well

- Good Montana Morning: a cook book from my folks, written by the owners of a B&B in Whitefish, in the same home where I used to take piano lessons!! (some really fun recipes)

- Sepp Holzer's Permaculture - he is THE GURU on permaculture, which is possibly the most earth-shattering concept we have run into in the last five years. That seems like an extreme statement, so I might have to see if Jason agrees, but seriously, so many of the world's ills as it relates to health, food production, water and soil contamination, hunger, drought, concerns over big business, an individual's ability to care for themselves at the most basic level and not rely on any entity (including government) could be addressed by permaculture. But wait; there's more! Each family learning how to grow or raise even a little fraction of their own food (and doing it smartly, as nature does) can prepare themselves for all manner of life's unexpected curve balls. Power outages, natural disasters, and sudden income loss are some we've seen a lot of recently, right? We can thereby free ourselves from the "need" for such steady income and can choose to live how we want to live - using our time for pursuits that are meaningful to us individually and as families. Sorry I keep mentioning this, but I just think it is a rad concept that has all kinds of beneficial ramifications. And it is attainable. Even just doing a couple of raised beds in the lawn or some container gardens in the house, hey, it's a start! That's where we are.

Gaia's Garden - not sure about this one, another of Jason's. Probably permaculture related...


Last Child in the Woods - a plea to get our kids outside, interacting with nature, for their health and well-being

Family-Friendly Farming and Everything I Want to Do is Illegal - two books by Joel Salatin. This guy is another permaculture / local food guru, who strives to go beyond organic in everything he raises. Salatin describes himself as a "Christian Libertarian Environmentalist Capitalist Lunatic Farmer," and he is interesting! You might have seen him featured in the documentary, Food, Inc. He appears in all kinds of youtube clips too.

Entering The Stone - Recommend! Recommend! Barbara Hurd writes beautifully about caving, like going into actual physical caves under the earth, but also plumbing the depths of one's own emotions and experiences, dealing with loss in life, and change. The feel of this book sticks with me through the day; it's one of those.


Nurtureshock - This is the third time I've borrowed the same book from a library (twice in MT and once here), mostly because it's thick and hearty, and I was borrowing it at inopportune times. It has ten chapters about ten totally different aspects of parenting, based on solid research that looks at hundreds of studies across cultures, economic status, etc. The topics were chosen because they most strongly fly in the face of modern, conventional wisdom. There are some sobering looks at several aspects of public education, including why "gifted and talented" programs are dead wrong in who is admitted into them as much as 73% of the time. The first chapter of the book, "The Inverse Power of Praise," grabbed my attention, because the conclusion is very much in line with Montessori-inspired thought and what I've read in other books like Unconditional Parenting: that needless praise is often just the flip side of needless criticism. Nowadays, it's assumed that children need to hear how awesome they are at everything, but the truth is they need us to be engaged with them about their accomplishments and failures and to encourage them to keep trying. Kids who are told they're naturally smart give up on difficult tasks much sooner than kids who are congratulated on trying hard. Other topics in the book are why children lie, how we can help siblings to get along (though almost all of them bicker and quarrel - in fact, if they are distant and disengaged from each other, chances are that's how their adult relationship will be too), whether or not self-control can be taught and a look at a revolutionary program in schools called "Tools of the Mind", and the startling negative effects that our culture of sleep deprivation (early high school start time) has on teenagers.


Native American Ethnobotany - welllll, this lugger of a book is an amazing resource of plants used for food and medicine by native groups, but it's not a sit down and mull over type. It must be in high demand within the ND library system, because we were only allowed to have it out a week, which is barely enough time to read the introduction. Jason was wanting to get ideas about things to plant on our land.

- I forgot to add in a plumbing how-to of Jason's, which he has been reading like an action thriller. Hopefully within a week, he can really start work on the new house. Meanwhile, we will be here at the old one for another couple of months.

Good heavens!! That dog was utterly ginormous!
Did you see the size of his teeth, Florence?
Florence?

for A, and anybody else who's stuck in colder weather