Analytical Mom

James Baldwin's Collision

2018-01-08T08:00:00.000-07:00

Weeds, Clutter, and Cultivating a BETTER 2018

2018-01-06T13:27:00.000-07:00

So, the kids and I bought a last-minute birthday gift at Walmart yesterday, and the first thing I noticed when we walked in was the big display of work-out clothes. It was the same at Costco last Sunday - all the weights and treadmills and healthy-smoothie-making blenders are front and center, ready for us to buy them with great intentions as New Year's Day rolls around again.

Do you make New Year's Resolutions?

Do you keep them?

Or have you ever said, "This is the year!" only to watch your enthusiasm shrink and shrink until it's completely gone by February?

You're not alone - studies show that while 77% of people can keep up their resolutions for a week, after two years, that number is down to 14% - and this is among people who know they are going to be interviewed by psychologists about their resolutions!

New Year's is a perfect time to step back for a moment so that we can see the broad scope of our lives - the trends and patterns, the successes and failures.

We can see what is flourishing and what needs to be weeded out.

There's this big idea among gardeners: if you are having trouble with weeds, there's a good chance it's because you're giving them too much opportunity to grow.

More specifically, if weeds are causing you trouble, you need to check and see what kind of conditions you've created that are allowing them to get so out of control.

Photo credit: Awkward Botany

Maybe you need to apply a nice, thick layer of bark mulch over the bare soil so the weeds won't have a chance to reach the sunlight. Or maybe you need to plant something nice and big and shady in their place, like a ground cover.

The most important thing for you to do is to make sure you don't have any bare soil exposed - because that's just what weed seeds like to germinate in. Get rid of that bare ground, and you'll likely get rid of your weed problem (and you might gain a lovely plant in its place!)

Photo Credit: Hawaii Horticulture

Now, if you're really into tedious, back-breaking work, you can ignore this advice. You can carry on weeding the old fashioned way and spend time every day hunched over your garden, pulling those darn weeds. It will make you tired, bored, and possibly sunburned, but it'll work.

Well, kind of. It'll work well for as long as you can keep up with it. And then a week will come when you are really busy with other things and you don't have time or energy to weed - and then all those pesty little weeds will come back with a vengeance, because you've done nothing to take care of their root cause.

Photo Credit: weirdcombinations

I read this pretty tragic article today in the Boston Globe. It describes how our consumeristic culture has robbed the joy from peoples' lives - they are so busy accumulating possessions, stressing about their clutter, and running around from activity to activity that they don't have time or space to do simple things like have a family dinner together at the table or relax in their own backyards.

And my first thought was to blame the clutter, blame the commercials and marketers, and even to blame the people (myself included) that have let themselves become inundated by that clutter. If all those frustrated parents could just get to work donating toys, clearing unnecessary activities from their calendars, turning off the television, they'd have some healthy margin in their lives! They'd be able to enjoy life again if they could just get rid of all those pesky, pernicious weeds. All it would take would be hard work and constant vigilance, embracing the daily grind of saying "no" to unhealthy convenience foods or junky toys or time-wasting activities.

But wait a second - maybe what we are seeing in our culture today is not a problem that just needs to be constantly weeded away.

All the willpower in the world will only provide us with temporary respite.

We need to take a step back so we can see what underlying conditions exist that are us to fill our lives up so, so full with clutter.

I don't know about you, but I've been noticing some definite trends in my own day-to-day life: those times when I'm most tempted to overindulge in unhealthy things are when my basic needs aren't being met in healthy ways. It's when I'm running on fumes: when I haven't had a good night's sleep all week, when I haven't really connected with my spouse or a good friend in days, when I've been too busy to eat healthy, nourishing food. That's when I am most likely to try to satisfy my needs with quick fixes.

But when I am intentional about filling the "bare soil" of my body and heart with good, good things, I find that those unhealthy quick fixes aren't even appealing anymore.

When I've set aside time to meet a friend for tea and a chat while our kids play, I don't feel any need to mindlessly scroll Facebook looking for connection.

When I come home after a busy day to the smell of a delicious dinner in the crockpot, I don't impulsively reach for the kids' Halloween candy.

When I'm in the middle of a delightful novel or an engaging miniseries, all the clickbait and cat videos in the world can't compete for my attention.

When my kids are totally absorbed in creating something with construction paper, glue, scissors, and googly eyes, asking to turn on a TV show is the farthest thing from their minds.

It's not that the weeds aren't there, it's just that there's not really any room left for them to take hold. The soil of our lives has been filled up with things that are more beautiful, more desirable, and more productive.

So that's my challenge for you as you think about this coming year - if you can see that there are some things in your life that need to go, maybe go about it in a gentler, more intentional way. What needs are you trying to fill, and what is a healthier way to meet those needs?

I can't wait to see what beautiful things will flourish in my family's life this year. What new habits or routines do you hope to grow in your life or home?

For When You Need A Little Refresh

2018-01-05T09:00:00.000-07:00

Is January kind of hard for anybody else?

All the beautiful lights and decorations came down at my house two days ago, and things are looking a little bare.

If you're anything like me, I bet you spent the holiday season planning. And anticipating. And sometimes having a huge adrenaline rush when you realized that those last minute Christmas presents WEREN'T ACTUALLY WRAPPED YET!

In fact, it's possible you hustled so much during the holiday season that you're not even sure how you felt about it, because you were too busy to stop and wonder. I've been there.

But each year, as the children grow older, I'm gaining the courage to say "no" to the holiday traditions that don't bring us joy. And that gives us time to slow down and delight in the things we love - the candles, the lights, the carols and smells of the season.

Even the most ordinary moments seem guilded with a warm glow of firelight.

For just a few short weeks, all those special traditions we've been anticipating for 12 months are front and center in our lives. I find myself saying "yes, let's!" so much more often than normal, instead of "not right now," or "I'm too busy."

And then, in the blink of an eye, all the fun is over, the party guests have gone home, and you're left with piles and piles of clean-up. And maybe a stomach ache from all those treats.

No wonder January can feel a little blue. A little cold. A little dreary.

But in this season of endings and new beginnings, can you feel the forward motion toward spring? The days are lengthening, the sun is showing its bright face (sometimes), and putting away Christmas decorations and obligations gives us a fresh start, a kind of blank canvas in our homes that we can either fill or leave blissfully empty.

And after several years of quiet, I'm quite excited to give this blog a fresh start.

In the coming months, I'm excited to share with you the things that I'm learning and the things that are inspiring me. It would be a sad thing indeed if I were the same person I was three years ago, and I think the blog needs to reflect that. I'm looking forward to sharing more inspiration, more encouragement, and a little bit less "eat only real food or you're a pathetic schmuck"-type judginess.

Now, what about you?

What are you looking forward to this year? What are you struggling with? What is getting you excited? And what would you like to see more of here on ye ole blog?

But the Lees of My Better Being

2018-01-03T13:44:00.000-07:00

How to Flash Freeze Fruits and Vegetables

2016-10-04T08:48:00.002-06:00

Everybody knows real food is a great idea, but one of the biggest obstacles most people face is that processed food is SO convenient - it's always there, no matter the season, predictable and never-changing. But real food comes in seasons. You can't (or maybe shouldn't) eat fresh strawberries in December.

That's why I love my freezer! If you opened my freezer right now (it's October), you would find containers full of strawberries and blueberries that I picked this summer. They are obviously not as fun as fresh, but there's something decadent about a strawberry in the middle of the winter. *

But you can't just throw a bowl of strawberries in the freezer and hope for good results!

To freeze fruits and veggies quickly and easily, do these 4 things:

1. Find a cookie sheet or quarter sheet-pan that will fit in your freezer.

2. Line the cookie sheet with parchment or waxed paper

3. Spread fruit or vegetable in a SINGLE LAYER on the waxed paper.

4. Place in freezer for a few hours.

Yes. It really is that easy. But it's magical: the SINGLE LAYER of fruit or veggie means when it's time to transfer your produce to more permanent freezer storage, each berry or grape or carrot slice will come off the pan without sticking to all the others! This way, you don't end up with a giant boulder of frozen fruit that you have to break before using!

Storage Tip: in the past I've used Zip-type bags, but since I'm trying to move away from so much disposable plastic, I now use inexpensive lidded plastic pitchers.

Long Term Storage Tip: Some veggies contain enzymes that may make the produce mushy or discolored if it is going to be frozen for a long time. For example, if you flash freeze corn as described above, after a few weeks, they will become softer. But I have never had this problem with berries! If you are planning on keeping frozen vegetables in the freezer for many months, you may want to steam blanch them first to deactivate those pesky enzymes. Then you can use this single-layer flash-freezing method just as described!

* I know some hard-core preppers or even permaculturists might call me out on this: "Freezers use so much energy." "If you can those strawberries, you can keep them at room temperature." "If the SHTF, your frozen strawberries won't last long," sniggering behind their hands as they stockpile fake dried cheese.

And you know what? They're right. People have been living happily without frozen strawberries for thousands of years. But I'm a big proponent of Jack Spirko's "Law of Prepping:" Everything you do to prepare for the future should benefit you in the future, but it should also benefit you RIGHT NOW!

And right now, I want to pick lots of local organic strawberries in June, and I want to have some to give to my kids in October when the skies are gray and cloudy and we all need a little Vitamin C. Our current lifestyle provides us with a freezer, so I'm going to darn well use it. A full freezer is an efficient freezer anyway.

7 Homesteading Mistakes I Made So You Don't Have To

2016-09-06T09:32:00.000-06:00

You know you've thought about it - you see pictures of these gorgeous, sun-dappled country properties, with barefoot, white-organic-cotton-clad children dancing through fields of flowers, holding baskets of fresh eggs, and you're like,

"Yes. I can do that. It will be all sunsets and harvests, I know it! Very little manure or sweat. NO spiders."

Well, you're not alone. It seems that homesteading is the Millenial generation's version of the American Dream. Everywhere I look, people under 30 are getting dirt under their fingernails, making compost bins, and hightailing it to their own little patch of heaven outside of town.

Maybe we're interested in providing fresh, organic food for our children. Maybe we're fed up with a long commute and sitting in traffic. Or maybe we are just super enticed by the gorgeous pictures on Pinterest of all things made with reclaimed barn wood (guilty!).

I mean, look at it: is this not the place to raise a family?

Well, I have a confession to make: I'm a suburb kid. I grew up in a neighborhood with paved sidewalks, dogs on leashes, and a 7-Eleven within walking distance. When we moved to the country and started our little homestead, I had NOT a FREAKING CLUE about what it took to make it out here.

I have a feeling I'm not the only one from my generation who thought that homestead would be a little easier, a little cushier, and a little rosier than it really turned out to be.

So I started making mistakes quickly, and trust me, the axiom that Failure is the Best Teacher is 100% true.

So here are a few of the things I learned those first few years, when the learning curve was steepest. I'd love for you to learn from my mistakes!

1. If you don't know how old your eggs are, crack them into a separate bowl first.

Homegrown food is an adventure all by itself, isn't it? Most of us grew up having the luxury of a produce manager inspecting our apples and an assembly-line worker candling our eggs, but this is not the case when you grow your own!

I finally understood where the idea for Easter egg hunts came from the first year we let our chickens free-range...they laid in the strangest, most hidden places, and sometimes we'd find a huge cache of eggs that had been out in the weather for several weeks! There's nothing worse than making an omelette and realizing that the egg you've just added to the pan has been sitting out in the rain for days and is totally bad.

This tip could also include: Check your peach pits for earwigs. Check your apples for worms. Check your babies for ticks. And always, always check your feet before you walk in the front door (right?? I know, gross!).

2. If you leave the hose trickling all night, on well water, in the dry season, there won't be water for showers in the morning.

On city water, the worst this would do is spike your water bill for the month. Sure, that's a pain. But when it's only 6 a.m., the dishes are in the sink, there are no clean diapers left, and the well's already run dry? This is not a recipe for a happy day.

3. The outside will come indoors if you don't have a place to leave it.

This was a huge, HUGE struggle for me! I grew up in a fairly pristine home that we cleaned, top to bottom, once a week. As soon as I moved to the country, I realized that once a week cleaning would NEVER cut it if people (ahem, husband!) tracked their muddy work boots around the house!

Having a mud room or a big, washable rug with a bench nearby or a covered front porch is your First Line of Defense to keep all things dirty, stinky, and oozy from making it into your home. There are no sidewalks here. Dog paws can be toweled, shoes can be kicked off, and jackets can be corralled immediately upon entering, and if they aren't, you will pay later!

4. The fox will come on the night you forget to close up the chicken coop.

It's true. It happens, and it sucks. But living with many little beings (plant or animal) under your care provides so, so many opportunities for small heartbreaks. There is no "I'll get to it tomorrow" when a helpless creature is depending on you.

That may mean you're going to be bringing baby chicks into the bathroom at 11:30 at night to clean up their pasty-butt (by the way, warm running water is the way to go, followed by a quick dry-off with a hair dryer). Or it might mean you're slogging out in the pouring rain to fix a fence, close a gate, or drag a water tank when you'd SO much rather cozy up by the fire.

But the standard we live by is this: We must provide our animals with a BETTER life than they would have in the wild.

5. Growing food doesn't do you any good if you don't eat what you grow.

Is there anything sadder than a beautiful, home-grown tomato getting chucked in the compost because you didn't have time to eat it before it went bad?

My first year of gardening, the only thing that grew well for me was radishes. Seriously, that's it. And I hate radishes. So I figured out a way to make them palatable, and we chowed down, sometimes for breakfast, sometimes for lunch, and sometimes for dinner!

It's so much easier to just run to Costco and buy all the familiar things to make all the comfortable meals that everybody definitely likes.

But that's not what we signed up for; we signed up to change our own little corners of the world.

That means being creative, finding ways to help your kids (or husband) actually like veggies.

It means eating weird assortments and combinations of things at times, things that you would NOT find in a fancy restaurant or on the pages of your favorite food magazine.

It means getting used to cutting up itty bitty potatoes or weird-shaped carrots or super bitter lettuce, and just making do and making it work!

It means not caring if the other kids get a fruit-roll-up and a Go-gurt while your kids are eating dehydrated apple slices and homemade muffins, because you are committing to helping your kids appreciate the way they eat instead of coveting their neighbors' snacks!

Yeah, I'm still looking, but I have yet to find the Goldfish Cracker seeds at the feed store...

6. Running into town for take-out is no longer an option.

I was so used to a life of convenient food that it took me a while to realize that, well, that's not the way it works in the country.

Wasting all your gas money to dash in to Taco Bell or the quick mart makes zero sense...wouldn't you rather spend that money on a new perennial?

You've got to have a plan. It might not mean every single meal is scheduled on a color-coded calendar, but it means you have to know what is in your pantry, what you can make with it, and what you need to get when you're in town anyway.

And really, isn't it kind of fun finding creative ways to use up, make do, and improvise in the kitchen?

7. There will always be a "next year."

I think this was my hardest lesson. I learned it when the fox came, when I didn't water and all my seedlings died, when my dog dug up the garden (again!), and most recently (and most tragically), when I forgot to take the cap off the chicken waterer, and I lost 3 new hens on one horrible hot day.

We are taught in our culture to avoid failure, to aim for perfection, and to limit our room for error, and all of those sentiments can come in useful on a homestead.

But there has to be a huge, huge reserve of grace and self-forgiveness if you're going to stick with this kind of lifestyle. That day when I took a bowl of table scraps down to the chicken coop and spotted 3 of my 4 new chicks laying dead in the grass, then realized that my own dumb mistake had caused their deaths was a giving up kind of day.

I cried. I blamed myself and my flighty, distracted brain. I was pretty sure I should throw in the towel and hang up my boots, because I clearly wasn't responsible enough, compassionate enough, or clear-minded enough to care for small, helpless creatures.

But that's not what we do on a homestead.

We are tough. We are brave. We dry our tears, get down in the mud and mess, set things straight, and try again.

We know why we're out here, and we know why it's worth it. There is no promise of success, but there is always the promise that tomorrow, the sun will rise, and we will work hard at work worth doing.

We're old school and love blog link-ups. This post has appeared at Giving Up On Perfect, The Charm of Home, and Mitten State Sheep and Wool.

What I've Learned After 8 Years of Eating Real Food

2016-09-02T13:48:00.000-06:00

Do you ever feel like real food is just exhausting? I'll admit, I sometimes go to the grocery store and just want to pile random stuff in my cart that makes me happy, that I used to eat when I was a child! Or I scan the grocery ads and think, "Man, I sure wish all the sales weren't for processed food."

Living a real food life in a processed-food world takes serious mental adjustment.

Wouldn't you think that after 8 years of a real food lifestyle, I would've gotten used to all this by now? Well, maybe not.

My family has, for a long time, enjoyed the benefits of raw milk. We have had raw milk farm shares (what's a farm share?) with a few different family farms here in Oregon, and right now, we're loyal patrons of Helios Farms, which is "out Yoncalla," (rural Oregon slang for "in the Yoncalla zip code, but so far out of town you'd barely guess it.")

I really respect Theo's dedication to his farm, his family-friendly philosophy, and his quest for constant improvement.

However, I also...you know, like to actually drink milk. And give it to my kids.

But sometimes, that doesn't happen as often as I would like. So many little things can make small farm food production unpredictable: the sow goes on a rampage, and the farmers are up all night hunting it down, or the cow gets into the garden and everything tastes like tomatoes!

And the next thing I know, my 4-year-old is in the kitchen, tugging on my pant leg and crying because he can't have milk with his dinner!

This is the trade-off when you start pursuing real food: You gain your health. But you lose the convenience and predictability of the American food system that is based on speed and uniformity.

Is it a bad thing?

I don't know. I think it's more of a hard transition, away from food being an afterthought. Once upon a time, I could go through my whole day barely thinking about where my meal would come from. No dinner plan? No problem, we'll go through the drive through! No lunch plan? No biggie, I'll grab a granola bar from the vending machine.

But when, in the history of the world, has food been an afterthought? Most people on earth even now spend much more of their time, income, and intention on feeding their families than the average American.

Here are a few of the main changes I've had to make in my thinking as we've adopted a slow-food lifestyle:

1. It's ok for food to make up a significant portion of our budget.

We are not trying to win an award for lowest grocery budget here. Not that that's a bad goal! We've been there! Super-low prices have been very important to us in years past, but as our goals and priorities and opportunities have changed, so has our budget. We are nourishing tiny bodies, bodies that are growing so fast, and literally laying down the foundation for a lifetime of health. And did you know that Americans spend much less on food now than we used to? My grocery budget gets put in perspective when I look at that graph and realize how much more my grandparents spent on food, comparatively!

I've had to become ok with food being more important to me than other things I could spend my money on. Will we buy all new school clothes this year? Nope. Will the kids wear hand-me-downs and use their same tired backpacks from last year? Yep. Will they be able to participate in every activity they'd love to do? Probably not. But some things that used to be important to me have become more peripheral. And good food has not.

2. It's ok for food to take up a significant part of my day.

Making yogurt, sprouting beans, chopping veg, shaking the milk before pouring it into cups, washing so.many.dishes, these little things add up to make food prep more of a time commitment than it used to be. I have to schedule time into my day to prep, eat, wash, repeat, and it can sometimes interfere with the other things I would like to be doing instead. But it's worth it, both for the nutritional value of the food, and for the values it instills in my children and myself: patience as they wait for lunch to bake, diligence as they help me in the kitchen, and (let's be real here) independence when the control freak part of me is fed up with kids in the kitchen and tells them, "Just go play! I need to finish in the kitchen by myself!"

3. It's ok for food to be an adventure.

Sometimes we have milk to drink. Sometimes we don't. You can't set your watch by it. But isn't that what an adventure is?

Has eating real food been a big mental adjustment for you? What are the hardest things about the change?

Introducing: Learn and Grow!

2016-01-29T19:27:00.003-07:00

I have a super exciting announcement!

After a (long) hiatus here at Analytical Mom, this blog train is a-rolling once again. If you've been around for a while, you might remember back in the day when I decided to call it quits on mommy blogging. It was absolutely, 100% the right decision at that time - life was busy, my kiddos were tiny, and I truly needed to devote my undivided attention to my home.

But times change. As my children grow and become more independent, I am delighted to find that I now have a few moments during the day when I can actually hear myself think. And I'm discovering that as my family grows, we are all healthier when I can devote some of my attention to things OTHER THAN meeting my children's immediate needs. They gain independence. I gain sanity. We all win.

And you win too. Because not only do you get to partake in my over-analytical ramblings here, I've also started up a little Word Press site that will be more child-centered, with a focus on holistic, intentional family life. So the nerdy mom chatter will still be present here, while the kid-focused stuff will be shifted over there.

The site is new and fairly empty and unexciting right now, but be sure to check out the intro post at Learn and Grow (learnandgrowonline.com) and keep an eye on the site as it develops in the upcoming weeks!

The Dirty Secret at the Heart of My Mommy Blog

2013-10-20T08:34:00.002-06:00

People blog for all kinds of reasons:

To keep faraway family and friends updated on their lives
To share their brilliant ideas with others
To make some money to support their families

I have, at various times, blogged for all of those reasons. When I first started this blog, I thought I could take a unique stance on typical mom issues, or look at domestic issues from a nerdy point of view (the only one I had at the time).

However, I quickly realized that "the rest" of the blogs out there like mine were drawing traffic with recipes, gorgeous pictures of food, and DIY tutorials. Big, fat, long posts full of numbers and mathematical symbols were not exactly a selling point. So I started doing what everyone else was doing: taking food pictures of my new recipes, writing DIY "how-to's," and recording my new discoveries for the benefit of others.

But here's what I gradually learned: I found that (what?!) actually living my life, being fully immersed in it with no camera in my pocket, was so much more fulfilling than constantly blogging about it. I hate dragging a camera down to the garden all the time, and I especially hate making my family wait to eat dinner so I can take a picture of their food first!

But here's the most important thing I discovered during those months: I was blogging because I felt like I was doing so much around the house that was of value, that was significant, and that I wanted SOMEONE, ANYONE to see and admire.

Do you see the problem here? I think this is secretly at the heart of so much of the current mommy blog obsession. We work so hard in our homes, we pour out our hearts in the things we are doing, but who recognizes our hard work?

So here we are, working our tails off, and who is there to notice but God? And I found myself thinking, "I better take a picture of this so it can go into a blog post, because otherwise, it's just extra work, unnoticed and wasted."

This was my dirty secret: I felt unappreciated, unnoticed, unpraised. And I wanted someone to tell me, "Great job! You've done something that matters! Society's only message to me was, "you are of value only if you make money to buy nice things." And so blogging became my source of recognition, of pride, of value.

But that is not my true source of value. My worth doesn't come from other people recognizing my hard work. It doesn't come from doing the work. It doesn't even come from the character that is gradually built up in me as I put my own desires on the shelf to provide for my family. Nope. My value is deeper than that.

I am loved, cherished, valued by the One who made me.

Always, forever, and regardless of what I accomplish during the day.

That is the truth I needed to fill up the empty discontent in my soul. And when it is filled up, daily, by knowing who I am and Who He Is, then instead of striving and working to fill myself up, the things I do are an overflow of the love that is full to the top within me.

Controlling Asthma Naturally Update - What Works for Me

2013-10-07T11:28:00.000-06:00

When we moved from Oregon to Colorado 2 years ago, one of the first things I noticed was that my asthma started acting up. Switching to Real Food years ago had gotten it under control for about 3 years without prescription meds, but when we got here, the humidity, pollen, whatever, made it really flare up again.

Especially during the spring and fall, even if I didn't have "classic" allergy symptoms like runny nose or itchy eyes, I would have shortness of breath, wheezing, coughing, and all the old asthma symptoms returned with a vengeance!

So, as I shared 2 years ago, I've been exploring different natural options to control my asthma without prescription medications.

Here is what works for me:

A foundation of healthy fats.

They keep me full and drastically reduce blood-sugar swings. By healthy, I mean fats from real foods, like butter, coconut oil, lard, olive oil, fatty fish. I absolutely avoid ALL cheap, processed oils like canola, soy, vegetable, sunflower, etc. These oils come from factories, not food!

Plenty of (safe) starches and carbs.

For me, this means potatoes, white rice, sweet potatoes, starchy/carby vegetables, and occasional non-gluten grains. If I don't eat them, I don't feel full, and I have low energy. But I make sure I eat them with plenty of fat, or else they do spike my blood sugar.
Avoiding (most) gluten.

Some people do fine with a little wheat. I generally don't, and many other asthmatics are in the same boat. If I eat it, I have asthma symptoms, period. I still occasionally do, like in social settings where it would be rude or awkward to refuse (after all, it doesn't make me hurt...just wheeze), or on a special occasion, like my kid's birthday cake (give me a break, those bean cakes on Pinterest are NOT good enough to give to guests). I have noticed that good sourdough white bread bothers me the least of all wheat products, so if we do have wheat, we try to have it in that form.
Avoiding pasteurized dairy.

We still drink raw milk and eat yogurt, cheese, kefir, and sour cream with no problems. Also, I have no trouble at all with pasteurized heavy whipping cream - I drink it in my tea every morning. But milk from the store is out, as are ice cream, hot cocoa mixes, etc. If I do have to eat these things, or just really, really need a little scoop of ice cream to make me feel human, I try to eat it with some raw milk or fermented dairy to help it digest more easily. For me, this is almost as big a trigger as gluten.
Plenty of Fat Soluble Vitamins.

We take Cod Liver Oil somewhat regularly (a molecularly distilled type with synthetic Vitamins A and D added), eat high-vitamin foods like egg yolks, liver and oily fish, and I've started taking a D3 supplement. I know some experts are against supplementing, but, honestly, I just can't feed my kids sardines at every meal when we go to a play date and they are offered PB&J's. We already eat weird food, I don't want them to have complexes. So we supplement a little bit to help cover those dietary gaps that come from being socially graceful. For me, I've noticed a pretty big improvement in my asthma since adding in the Vitamin D supplement.
Good Bacteria.

I try pretty hard to eat something fermented every day, whether that is yogurt or kombucha or homemade fermented veggies or Bubbie's pickles, or whatever. Also, we spend a TON of time outside playing in the dirt, working in the garden, petting the filthy dog even after he swims in the muddy pond, mucking the chicken coop, and we are NOT fastidious about washing our hands. My 1-year-old has eaten more dirt than I thought possible this summer. Permaculture has reminded me (sorry, I had to throw in at least one reference to it), that the microbial health of the soil is what supports the health of plants, and in turn, of bugs and larger animals that eat those plants. The closer we are to our healthy soil, eating produce from it and exposing ourselves directly to it, I think the healthier we will be.
Careful Exercise.

When I was younger and had time to jog, I noticed that regular running helped my asthma stay under control. Basically, if my cardiovascular health was good, then "normal" life exercise didn't make me breath hard, so didn't bother me. However, going for an hour run everyday made me tired and really made one of my hips hurt. So my exercise now consists of working hard around the yard, doing jobs around the house, hefting kids/feed bags/tools around, and doing body-weight exercise like squats, push-ups, core, and yoga poses. And if I feel like sprinting after my kids, dashing up to the garage to grab a shovel, or flying down a particularly tempting hill, I go for it. When I listen to my body and run when it feels like running, I get some great sprints in, I have no trouble with my asthma, plus I enjoy every minute! I feel invigorated and think, "I love sprinting places!" instead of feeling like a dead dog and thinking "Jogging is necessary torture." Mark Sisson's 5 Essential Movements and Primal Blueprint Fitness E-book gave me a good start, although I take it more easy than he suggests, since I'm still nursing and notice a milk shortage when I overdo it.
Natural Remedies.

I will preface this by saying, I still use my albuterol (rescue inhaler) occasionally, sometimes in the thick of allergy season when working in the garden or if I have a bad cold. Also, if I have eaten dairy or wheat, I tend to be wheezy by evening. Breathing is important, not something to mess around with, and you don't want to end up in the emergency room or morgue, so don't hesitate to take action if you (or your kid!) are about to asphyxiate! However, when I'm just feeling a little wheezy or tight in my lungs, I often try some natural remedies instead of reaching for the inhaler. A hot shower with plenty of steam helps relax my lungs. Also, if I have annoying wheezing and can't sleep, but it's not bad enough to really cause distress, often a cup of hot tea helps ease the wheezing enough for me to drift off. Along with that, eating cold foods sometimes makes wheezing worse, so I try to avoid that if I'm having a rough time of it. I have heard everything from garlic to ginger to turmeric to lemon juice can help ease symptoms, but if you are eating tons of trigger foods and filling your body with inflammation-causing crud, a spoonful of turmeric is not an adequate long-term solution! These remedies work best if you are already doing the hard work of changing your diet and improving your health.

A Little More Background About How I Got Here:

I considered putting myself on the GAPS diet, which is a gut-healing regimen that basically (as I understand it) tries to repair micro-holes in the large intestine by only allowing foods which digest in the small intestine. This means most starchy foods are eliminated, like grains, uncultured/pasteurized dairy, most beans, all refined sugar. And probiotics are gradually introduced, so that good bacteria can replace bad bacteria in the gut, further healing any damage.

There are many things I love about the idea of the GAPS diet:

It is all real food. Made in your own kitchen.
It emphasizes healthy fats (saturated from pastured animals).
It uses traditional cooking methods, like long simmering of bones to make nutrient-rich broth.
It eliminates many of the "problem foods" that I had noticed were aggravating to my asthma, like pasteurized milk and wheat.

However, since the GAPS diet has been so widely used in the past few years, I started finding many testimonials from people who had tried it and had issues with it. According to these people, it really is amazing at doing what it claims - improving those "Leak Gut Syndrome" symptoms. But it can also lead to fatigue, thyroid issues, and low body temperatures for some people. In particular, one of my favorite bloggers, Sarah at Nourished and Nurtured, recorded her family's GAPS journey in detail. She eventually decided that if she could do it over again, she would not have started the GAPS diet with her family, partly because of the problems it caused, and partly because it is just so much work for what it accomplishes.

So, my next question was, "If not GAPS, then what?" I gradually stumbled across Matt Stone and Chris Kresser and their "revolutionary" advice to listen to your body, experiment, and see what works for you and what your body is really craving (from more carbs to more sleep to less exercise!). I also have really enjoyed the Perfect Health Diet, which is kind of a Paleo spin-off (like Chris Kresser) that encourages eating plenty of "safe starches."

So, that's the run-down of what has helped me, every day, to control my asthma naturally, without prescription medicine. I still keep a rescue inhaler handy, but I have been able to avoid using preventative prescription medicines for 5 years now and counting!

Note: I'm not a doctor or nutritionist or anything licensed. Please don't interpret my personal experiences to be medical advice, and check with your doctor before discontinuing any medicine, blah blah blah legal jargon.

Do you know anyone who suffers from asthma? Have they had any luck trying to control it with natural methods? What has been helpful for them? Leave a comment and share your experiences and thoughts!

Posted at Small Footprint Friday and Fat Tuesday

Easy Garden Changes Tip #7: Use More Layers

2013-09-27T04:00:00.000-06:00

This post is part of a series of Easy Changes to Make Your Garden Act More Like Nature. For the full story, start at the beginning with Tip #1, Get Rid of Bare Earth.

Tip #7: Use More Layers

This gorgeous cherry tree "guild," which here means

"a bunch of things planted together to their mutual benefit"

is in the garden of Brenda Groth, a Michigan permaculturist.

This one is pretty self-explanatory. I think the average veggie garden uses three layers: the "herb" layer, or typical veggie-sized plants, the vine layer (climbing beans or squash), and the root layer, like potatoes, carrots, and turnips. But thinking outside the "veggie garden" box allows you to grow in all plant sizes, and use trees, shrubs, "herb" sized-plants, ground covers, roots, and vines together. I am just getting started with this in my own garden, but I dream happily of the day when my strawberries grow in the part-shade of a zucchini plant, which has a bean vine growing up it, while blackberries happily clamber up the trunk of an apple tree. You get the idea. If you don't get the idea, here is a great visual at the Permaculture Research Institute website.

This type of gardening is idyllically called a "forest garden" by many permaculture-type people. It also extends into silviculture where forests are managed for their produce, or in conjunction with raising animals.

My favorite example of using multiple layers is Mark Sheppard's book "Restoration Agriculture," which describes his savannah-type farm, where productive nut trees grow between fertile grassy areas, and cows, chickens, and hogs range, living entirely off the produce of the forests. It is like a Joel Salatin style grass-based farm, plus huge, awesome trees to create shade for animals and food for both animals and people.

So, those are all the incredible, life-changing tips I have to offer you at this time. I hope at least one of them has been as helpful to you as it has to me!

I saw the tagline "recreating agriculture in nature's image" somewhere, and I like it so much, especially as opposed to the opposite, which would be, I guess, "recreating nature into our plan for agriculture." Even better, I find that the more I follow nature's example, instead of fighting it, the less work I have to do!

Easy Garden Changes Tip #6: Rethink Tilling

2013-09-25T04:00:00.000-06:00

This post is part of a series of Easy Changes to Make Your Garden Act More Like Nature. For the full story, start at the beginning with Tip #1, Get Rid of Bare Earth.

Tip #6: Rethink Tilling

photo:http://www.expressvegetablegardens.com/products/garden-tilling-service

Why do we till the ground? To break up hard soil clumps, to displace weeds or grass, to give the soil a flush of nitrogen from the air to encourage rapid plant growth, or to establish nice, straight lines to plant? Or maybe just because that's what most of the garden books say to do, and that's what "everybody" does in the spring. After all, if you can rent a rototiller, you should, right?

Interestingly, nature doesn't generally till. Sure, some pigs root around in the forest, some birds scratch at the surface, but in general, the surface of the earth doesn't get overturned once or twice a year, and yet it does a mighty fine job of growing plants. It also does a mighty fine job of building soil, while modern agriculture is destroying soil at a remarkable pace.

There are many smarter and more experienced people than me who think that tilling should be a thing of the past, so I won't reinvent the wheel. Instead, check out this summary statement of why tilling is harmful to the soil, or this how-to for reducing weeds by eliminating tilling.

Besides saving me plenty of time, not tilling has helped me to reduce weeds, keep my soil biome healthy, and keep my mulch on the surface, where it belongs!

One more tip left: #7: Use More Layers

Homemade Hash Browns in 20 Minutes

2013-09-23T23:03:00.000-06:00

I am so excited with how popular my old post "How to Make Homemade Frozen Hashbrowns" has been! Wow - Pinterest is an amazing thing for bloggers!

Here is the original post, in case you missed it the first time around:

But what if you haven't planned way ahead to have frozen hashbrowns in the freezer, ready to go?

I want to make sure everyone has a chance to enjoy the crispy, safe-starchy goodness of real hash browns, so here is how I prepare hash brown potatoes when I have NOT planned ahead! This method takes about 20 minutes from start to finish, so it's perfect for dinner when I've forgotten to plan a side dish.

Ingredients:
Whole raw potatoes (3 average potatoes fit well in my medium skillet)
Butter (at least 2 Tbsp.)
Salt
Pepper

Directions:
1. Shred potatoes. I use a box grater, but a food processor is even quicker.
2. Put shredded potatoes in a clean kitchen towel and firmly squeeze out any extra moisture into the sink. This is like wringing out a washcloth - you have to squeeze the potatoes pretty hard.
3. Melt 1 Tbsp. of butter in the skillet over medium heat.
4. Place potatoes in skillet and cover tightly with lid.
5. Allow potatoes to steam for about 10 minutes with the lid on (check after 5 to make sure they're not browning too fast on the bottom)
6. Carefully flip potatoes (I usually divide them into a few sections in the pan to flip them one half at a time) As you flip, put the rest of the butter in the bottom of the pan.
7. Cook potatoes an additional 5-10 minutes, with the lid OFF the pan. Potatoes should not steam, but should get cooked and crispy on the bottom.
8. Add salt and pepper to taste. Remove from pan as soon as bottom of hash browns reach desired crispness. Serve immediately.

Do you eat potatoes regularly? What's your favorite way to prepare them? Do you have any quick go-to sides that you can whip up in a pinch? Leave a comment and share your ideas!

Posted at Fat Tuesday

Easy Garden Changes Tip #5: Create Some Edge

2013-09-23T04:00:00.000-06:00

This post is part of a series of Easy Changes to Make Your Garden Act More Like Nature. For the full story, start at the beginning with Tip #1, Get Rid of Bare Earth.

Tip #5: Create some edge

This is something I never would have thought of on my own. We are so used to planting things in nice, straight lines, just because that's how it's always been. But you can fit more in a smaller space with more creative planting arrangements, and the plants also have more "edge" space that way. For example, check out these two different ways you can plant 10 plants:

When plantings are staggered, plants still have the room they need, but space is conserved, there is less bare dirt to cover in between rows, and those little plants in back get to peek at the sun between the heads of the plants in front of them.

Also, "ecological gardening" type smarties tell us that the edge, between two different types of environments, is where the most biological activity is concentrated. For example, more tigers live in the "edge" area between the jungle and the river banks, because there is food and water in one area, shelter and protection in another. In the same way, little things like birds, spiders, pollinators, even earthworms or good bacteria, tend to gather at the edges between different areas in a garden.

So instead of a basically straight line between dirt and garden plants, or grass and garden plants, or pond and garden plants, like in the first set, if you stagger your plantings, you can create a much longer, wavy line of "edge space." The more edge space, the more nature's little beneficial creatures will be able to help your garden along.

Next up is Tip #6: Rethink Tilling

Posted at Small Footprint Friday and Homestead Barn Hop

Easy Garden Changes Tip #4: Don't Make It Easy for Pests

2013-09-20T04:00:00.000-06:00

This post is part of a series of Easy Changes to Make Your Garden Act More Like Nature. For the full story, start at the beginning with Tip #1, Get Rid of Bare Earth.

Tip #4: Don't make it easy for pests

This one is pretty basic: if you plant all your tomatoes in one row, how easy will it be for pests to wipe them all out? Straight, identical rows are for tractors and large-scale production. They don't necessarily make sense in a backyard. Mix up your plants a little and see what happens. Maybe put a basil between your tomatoes, and a few of those pests might get confused or sidetracked on their way to cause garden mayhem.

Brace yourself for Tip #5: Create Some Edge

Easy Garden Changes Tip #3: Compost In Place

2013-09-18T04:00:00.000-06:00

This post is part of a series of Easy Changes to Make Your Garden Act More Like Nature. For the full story, start at the beginning with Tip #1, Get Rid of Bare Earth.

Tip #3. Compost In Place

This is one of my favorite time-savers in the garden. Instead of hauling everything compost-able to my bin, letting it sit for a few months, turning it, watering it, and then digging it out and putting it on the garden, I just chop it up a little and toss it right on the garden in the first place.

Allow me to wow you with my artwork:

Composting in place means all the microbial activity involved in turning the organic matter into compost happens right there in my garden, instead of across the yard at the compost bin. So instead of having all the earthworms, beneficial bacteria, and fungi hang out under the compost bin, they are hanging out in my garden soil! Also, did you know that many of the nutrients (nitrogen/phosphorus/calcium/whatever) in compost-able materials actually leach out after just a few rains? This way, all those good things end up in my garden soil, where I want them, instead of in the earth around my compost bin.

Another bonus of composting in place is that it helps eliminate bare earth. For example, when my spring lettuce started to bolt in the summer heat, I cut it, chopped it roughly, and used it to mulch the zucchini, beans, and carrots that needed more time in the earth. This is a tiny example of how nature teaches us to "stack functions," or use the same thing to do more than one job. My lettuce provided me with food, covered bare earth, and composted in place, adding nutrients back to the soil. A 3-for-1 deal!

Check out this more detailed description of Pat Ruggiero and Howard Markham's garden, which uses the idea of chop-and-drop composting.

Next up is Tip #4: Don't Make It Easy for Pests

Posted at Frugal Days, Sustainable Ways and Homestead Barn Hop

Easy Garden Changes Tip #2: Embrace (some) weeds

2013-09-16T08:25:00.000-06:00

This post is part of a series of Easy Changes to Make Your Garden Act More Like Nature. For the full story, start at the beginning with Tip #1, Get Rid of Bare Earth.

Tip #2. Embrace (some) weeds

photo: http://www.water.ca.gov/suisun/photos/plants.cfm

Okay, you might not want to have huge thistles shading out your carrots. But a few "weeds" can be great helpers in the garden. Many weed species are "pioneer plants" that are perfect at thriving in, and improving, bare earth. Others may attract beneficial insects. As you learn to recognize the various "weeds" in your yard, you may find that some are actually helping. For example, if I find clover in my garden, I leave it alone or just chop it off and toss it on the soil, instead of pulling it from the roots. It's a nitrogen-fixing plant which is helping improve the garden soil, and it's helping shade the garden to retain moisture. Other "weeds" have medicinal or culinary uses, and can be harvested instead of disposed of.

Here are some more great uses for common "weeds."

Next up will be Tip #3, Compost In Place (one of my favorites).

Do you "embrace" any weeds? Have you ever eaten something considered a weed, or left it alone in the garden instead of pulling it?

Posted at Homestead Bog Hop and Frugal Days, Sustainable Ways

Easy Changes to Make Your Garden Act More Like Nature

2013-09-14T12:07:00.000-06:00

Gardening is a ton of work, back-breaking, tedious, sweaty work. Right? Actually, I am learning that the more I cooperate with nature, the less work I have to do!

I've been working on our little patch of land lately, and doing a ton of reading and dreaming about ways I can produce some food, improve the soil, and create some beauty here. During this process, I have stumbled across permaculture, which is "permanent agriculture," designing self-sufficient, sustainable landscapes that can feed people, too!

There is so much wisdom in permaculture that goes against what conventional farming/gardening says. And there is SO much that WORKS for me in my garden, that I have never read in a "gardening book". So, although I am still a beginner, and I don't have an incredible, self-sufficient garden yet, I thought I'd share some of these new-to-me ideas that have been helpful already. Maybe they will be helpful to you, too!

Tip #1: Get rid of bare earth

There is a very good reason people spend half their summers out in the hot sun, pulling weeds! Nature abhors a vacuum. If you have bare dirt hanging out in your garden, nature will try to fill it with whatever is handy. Usually weeds.

So cover that bare dirt. Traditional mulches like bark chips are effective. If you really want to act natural, try growing some "living mulches" around your plants, like low-growing clovers (which supply nitrogen to the soil while they grow) or vetches. Or try "composting in place" to mulch easily with spent plants (see #3). Whatever you choose, most weed seeds won't be able to germinate and sprout as well if they are covered with an nice layer of organic matter.

Your soil will benefit from a nice mulch covering as well, if you choose an organic mulch (like bark chips, leaves, or straw) instead of an inorganic one (like rubber mulch, rocks, or landscape fabric). All that organic matter on the surface will gradually decompose, adding nutrients to the soil below. And all the little decomposition critters, like bacteria, fungi, and earthworms, will be attracted to your garden soil to help in the process.

Check out what "Mother Goose" at the Permaculture Visions Online Institute is doing with living mulch:

I originally created an uber-long post full of great tips, but it was a pain to read. So I broke it up into more bite-size chunks. The next tip will be Tip #2: Embrace (Some) Weeds.

Do you mulch your garden? If so, have you noticed fewer weeds, or better moisture retention in the soil? If you don't mulch, why not?

Waiting on Nature

2013-08-27T09:10:00.001-06:00

My family is in the kind of weird situation of living, long-term, on land that we do not own, but that we can do whatever we want with (within reason). Because of this, I am trying to do some gardening and some home-making without spending much money.

My pet project this summer has been growing some grape vines out by our back porch. The porch faces south, and it has no shade at all in the summer. In the middle of July, it is scorching hot, so hot the kids don't even want to play out there. But it's our only area with decent, play-worthy grass for the kids, so I've been brainstorming low-cost ways to get some shade out there.

Please don't judge me by the nasty mess that is my back porch - it is a work in progress.

As you can see from the picture, there is a huge trellis-y thing over the porch, that goes all the way down the hill and connects with a door to the garage. Clearly, somebody had big plans for this structure, or maybe they were even going to roof it (the slats that go across are about 18" apart, which maybe indicates plans for further construction). Either way, it is currently rather useless.

So my master plan is to grow huge, glorious grape vines on this thing to provide summer shade.

See how huge and glorious they were when I started them this summer?

Yes, one sad leaf. That is where the "free" part of this project comes in. I cut dormant vines from some grapes in the garden and rooted them this winter. I planted them in June (with lots of protection from deer and chickens), and now they have grown to this size:

Okay, it may not look like much, but it has outgrown the chicken wire! Just imagine how glorious it will look in 2? 3? 5 years? It's gonna be spectacular. If only Mother Nature knew how much I want this thing to grow...but the joy is in the process, not the product, right? I will keep telling myself that.

Posted at Homestead Barn Hop

Does Location Determine Eating Habits?

2013-05-25T17:49:00.001-06:00

I am absolutely blown away by how productive my little raised bed garden is so far. Since the kids helped (over)plant tons of greens, yesterday it was my mission to clear out a little of the bounty. You know, so the other plants could actually get a little sunlight! I headed to the garden, pulled a little bit of this and a little bit of that, and left with the garden looking barely touched.

And I harvested a huge basket of green abundance:

You may have heard me mention before (like 10 or 15 times...) how easy it is to grow things here in Oregon. If you will, compare the above basket of overflowing greens with the puny radishes below:

Those radishes, plus about 4 little lettuce leaves, were my harvest in Colorado. All of it. For a whole year. They represented hours of building, hauling soil, and watering. And I was so, so proud of them! My harvest the year before consisted of three carrots about as large as my pinky.

So what made the difference? Yes, I learned a lot in the intervening years about soil, deer, water, etc. But for me, the biggest difference was just location. Even knowing all that I know today, the thought of trying to garden at 9000 ft. in the Rockies if we ever move back fills me with absolute dread. To use my best Old English, I have seen the goodness of this land, and I am loth to depart from it.

The amazing fertility of this area makes it so much easier to find local food to make up a high quality diet. Grass-fed cows roam every hillside, wild salmon teem in the river (and peoples' freezers), half my friends keep chickens for eggs, and I can get pastured poultry from the little town where we go to the library. It is just SO easy to eat well here, and it was SO much harder in the area where we used to live.

When we were first getting started in our real food journey and discovering things like grass-fed meats, raw milk, and locally grown produce, I was often so overwhelmed and discouraged by how hard it was for me to find the things I wanted to be able to eat! Raw milk meant a 2-hour drive every week, the only grass-fed poultry I could find was 150 miles away, and even our local farmer's market had to import produce and pastured meat from over a hundred miles away. There was no local cheese, no local butter, no delicious local bacon to be had in grocery stores. I don't think I ever saw a cow laying down contentedly on a hillside in my area...the few I saw were always roaming voraciously, trying to find enough growing stuff to stay alive!

I remember reading other peoples' experiences of buying all their quality animal products in one place at a cute little local farm, or finding amazing produce at roadside stands in the summer, and I felt like the odds were stacked against me because of my location! I even once, in frustration, asked a blogger how I could be "expected" to eat anything but grocery store meat without spending a fortune, and was basically told, "thousands of families are making it work, surely you can too, if you just try a little harder."

Okay, I may be writing this to let off long-suppressed frustration (hey, you are the one still reading this, don't blame me...), but also to remind others in the real food community that just because they live in a place where real food is easy to come by, does not mean it is just as easy for everyone!

When you get all wrapped up in and sold on this real food thing, it's sometimes easy to think, "Once you know that it'll make you feel so much better, why in the world wouldn't you eat well? What could be holding you back?" My frustrated voice is calling from 2 years ago, saying, "Keep encouraging me! Don't judge me! It's frickin' hard to find good food where I live!"

If you are frustrated by the local food situation where you are, I so understand, and I encourage you to keep seeking, keep asking store owners to stock good things, and keep instigating positive change in your community! Or just move to Oregon.

What is the food environment like where you live? Are you ever frustrated because you can't access the things you'd like to be able to eat? Or are there a lot of like-minded real food eaters in your community? What can people stuck in relative "food deserts" do to find what they need?

Posted at Fight Back Friday, Real Food Wednesday, Fat Tuesday

Hugelkultur and Huhns

2013-05-22T05:02:00.000-06:00

I am so excited about two new developments at our little "homestead."

The first is the Huhns - I mean, hens (I just wanted to say it in German to sound cool with "hugelkulture" in the title). Ours have taken to nesting in the daffodils (cute!), pooping on the patio (nasty!), and producing amazingly delicious eggs (amazing!). Every time I go to the grocery store, I rejoice a little bit because I don't have to buy eggs!

In other news (since I know you've all been waiting eagerly to hear), the "dead sticks in a bucket" that my husband has been patiently enduring are starting to turn into baby grapevines in a bucket (only 2 of the 5...the rest may have been planted upside down!). These will soon be planted at the base of our huge trellis. I don't know how many years it will take for them to become a huge, shady vine over the porch and walkway, but we have to start sometime!

Here is where my other German word comes into play: hugelkultur. In this case, I had a really good reason to use the German word, since the English translation is roughly "A bunch of rotting wood buried in the ground, with lots of organic matter mixed in and a garden growing on top." I've tried to also incorporate a swale-and-berm combination, so this hugelbeet (the name for one such buried-wood-mound-garden) will hopefully take advantage of rain water coming down the hill in the garden, too.

Here are some stolen pictures of hugelkultur and swales-and-berms so you can see what the heck I'm talking about:

First, a hugelkultur hugelbeet:

picture credit: FuoriBorgo

And second, a series of swales and berms built on a slope:

picture credit: GardeningInHell

In the photo below, you are looking roughly downhill (the berm is built as close to on-contour or level as I could eyeball it), so see how the water will go right in the little depression? It will work perfectly...I hope.

I've been saving my pennies by doing crappy-looking things like growing my grapevines in ugly buckets, and have saved up for my first ever blueberry bush (on the right) and comfrey (the weedy-looking thing in front of the bush). Apparently, comfrey is like the holy grail of nutrient-collecting plants, and lots of permaculture-type gardeners love it. There are also two rhubarbs in that mess of potatoes and radishes, which I hope will be a good start toward more perennial edibles to round out all the annual veggies.

Posted at Simple Lives Thursday, Common Sense, Small Footprint Fridays, Homestead Barn Hop, From the Farm

$15 DIY Garden Makeover and Permaculture Baby-Steps

2013-05-20T06:42:00.000-06:00

Once upon a time, there was an ugly corner of yard that held a giant pile of dead nursery plants in their original, now broken, plastic pots. It was weird and useless.

So I dumped approximately a million baby plants out of their planters (hey, I didn't want to waste good dirt! and it's not recyclable with the plastic pots anyway...) and started to envision something new.

Some digging, hauling, and compost adding ensued, and the ugly corner has been transformed! Into basically salad. To be fair, there's also a cabbage and a broccoli, and a few big herbs, but most of that green mess is lettuces, radishes, carrots, and spinach. Enough for many, many salads or green smoothies.

The best part about this garden is the price: about $15.00. The cinder blocks were just lying around the property, so all we spent money on were seeds and a few bags of purchased compost (I know...purchased! But my homemade compost is not ready yet). And we are indeed hauling buckets of water down to the garden until we see if an existing water conduit works. It is a fantastic workout.

My mom and I are teaming up on this garden, and I think she was a little horrified when I announced my planting strategy: "Let's plant everything all together, so the fast-growing greens make a 'living mulch' for the slower plants. Then when we eat the greens, they will let in sun for what remains." She has been gardening for quite a while, and her veggie gardens are usually very organized, with little charts drawn up of what's planted where, neat little squares of various things (square-foot-garden style), and not much chaos. So thanks, mom, for playing along and embracing the chaos with me! I am quite sure in one corner she gave my 3- and 4-year-old a handful of seeds and let them toss them wherever they wanted.

Now our big job is to figure out what everything is in that huge delicious mess - and to keep the toddler from yanking it all out.

In spite of the appearance of chaos, I am happy with the way the garden is progressing. The greens really are "mulching" well for the larger plants, keeping the weeds down beautifully. We are starting to harvest them now as the garden begins to mature, making room for sun to get to the things that will be there throughout the summer.

Although this garden looks pretty traditional, the planting scheme is my first attempt at a permaculture way of veggie-gardening. I'm pretty dead-set against traditional tilled rows of identical veggies being an ideal way to grow, so the no-till nature of this garden is a start. Also, I am sold on plants being mingled together with other species, both for pest confusion (like, if a bug wants to eat all the beans, it will have to search through a bunch of other stuff, rather than finding all the beans in a convenient row) and for nutrient reasons, like heavy nitrogen feeders being interspersed with less heavy ones so that they all get what they need.

I am also, for the first time, using the "chop and drop" method of composting in this garden, so that plant debris (like the bits of radish I know I'm not going to eat) gets torn/chopped into smaller bits and tossed right there on the soil to decompose, rather than being hauled to the compost bin. Aside from being "how nature composts" and, well, nice and lazy, this has the advantage of keeping all nutrients and microbial activity there in the garden, where I want them, instead of under my compost pile, where it's not doing anybody any good.

So, in spite of just looking like a badly organized raised garden bed, there has been some permaculture-y thought behind this garden. I am learning as I go, and starting small.

I have a few more pictures and permaculture projects to come, but I think they better turn into a new post, to come soon!

What have you been working on this spring?

Posted at Homestead Barn Hop, WFMW, Common Sense, Simple Lives Thursday, Small Footprint Fridays, From the Farm

Getting to Work in the Oregon Springtime!

2013-03-11T23:07:00.000-06:00

Spring is a glorious time when you are not pregnant (like I was this time last year...hugely, beluga-whale pregnant). Instead of "It is beautiful and sunny out, but I feel like laying down and sleeping... who wants to watch Curious George?," this year I can say, "It is beautiful and sunny out - let's go dig in the dirt!"

This is an important difference, since I am coming to realize that Oregonians get very little sunshine from November 'til about...now.

Here is what the precipitation looks like at the town nearest us (sorry if you don't think graphs are as fascinating as I do):

You can see that October is when we lose all hope and become depressed after a glorious summer.

So instead of staying inside and, you know, doing dishes and putting away laundry like I should be doing, I keep dragging the kids outside with me to work on stuff. Just kidding. They love it.

I am quickly learning that gardening in the Pacific Northwest (especially west of the Cascades) is about as idiot-proof as it gets, and extremely rewarding with very little effort. Case in point: I accidentally killed a potted primrose when we moved here. I put it on the back porch, it fell off and out of its pot, I didn't pick it up, and the plant magically came back to life as soon as it started raining. Here, you have to fight off nature to keep it from growing out of control, as opposed to where we used to be (9000 feet, semi-arid), where you had to nurture growing things, pray, and beg them to survive.

Anyway, here are a few of my projects for this year. If you think that all my projects look pretty redneck, please keep in mind that my monthly garden budget it $15... so I am doing everything as cheaply as possible.

Project #1: Grapevines! I am attempting to propagate some grapevine cuttings to grow along the huge trellis off my back porch. Somewhere between cutting and planting, I lost track of which ends are the...uh...root ends and which ends are the growing ends, so we will see how this goes. Note the classy 5 gallon bucket pot (with drainage holes on the bottom...my husband was thrilled that I ruined his bucket).

The poor chickens who stand in mud during the rainy season have been getting lots of downed branches in their run. It helps. It is still muddy. They now are allowed out of the run during the day to eat bugs and grass and poop all over our patio. They are happy, fat, and gloriously healthy. We are tired of stepping in poop and shooing them out of the house. We are working on that.

This is a mini, pathetic version of a sweet idea I saw somewhere, where the bottom of a chicken coop was all mesh, and things were growing underneath for the chickens to eat. Also, this way the chicken poo just falls down to fertilize the plants beneath. My version is just some rye seeds under a slightly protective mesh platform out in the chicken run. We'll see how it goes. At the very worst, the chickens will eat all the rye seeds and call it a tasty one-time snack, at the best, the seeds will sprout and grow, and the chickens will have something fun to eat in the run if we can't let them out for some reason.

Given the whole low-budget thing, I was super excited the other day when I found out that our Fish and Wildlife Department was giving away free native plants! There was originally a limit of 3 per person, but we showed up late, and they gave us as many as I could carry without jabbing plants into the face of the squirming baby. These fortress-fortified plants (chicken and husband-on-lawnmower proof) are mock orange trees and some wild roses. The mock orange supposedly smells amazing when it blooms. Right now it looks like a tiny dead stick. Come on, Oregon climate, work your magic. My husband thinks I am slightly crazy to be putting fortresses around dead sticks.

More free natives. The purplish thing in front is a wild Oregon creeping grape, then the twig behind it is a red twig dogwood. These guys are by the chicken run, and I am hoping when they mature, they will provide some bug habitat and fruit for the chickens (all the stuff I got has fruit or foliage or both that is edible for animals).

This is the last native. It is a narrow-leaf buckbrush, which apparently thrives even in drought. So it is way out in the garden where I don't water regularly during no-rain season. It is a nitrogen-fixer (my permaculture-newbie self got excited about that), and I am excited to plant things around it someday that are cooler than the current dead grass.

This is the southwest corner of our large, deer-fenced garden area. It had previously been a bizarre plant cemetery where the people who lived here before us dumped a bunch of perfectly good stuff straight from the nursery and left it to die (I guess they got busy?). Like hundreds and hundreds of baby plants. The cheapskate in me was absolutely appalled. So I dumped all the good dirt out of the pots, am reusing lots of the pots for growing seedlings, and cleared the rest out to make room for a little raised garden bed. There are a bunch of left over cinder blocks hanging around the property that will become lovely little walls around this mound of dirt. Stylish, I know. But hey, veggies don't care what their garden bed looks like! The only thing I don't like about this raised garden plan is that because of its weird placement far from the house (it's the best sunny place that is fenced), I will be lugging bucket loads of water down to it in the summer. Hopefully the little one will be walking by then?

Here is what is going on with a bunch of those salvaged plant containers. They are housing seedlings! Hooray! And yes, the seedings live on top of the trash can. That is the only place on the sunny back porch where the chickens can't eat them and the dog can't knock them down with his tail. We currently have baby tomatoes, peppers, cabbage, broccoli, and impatiens. There were nasturtiums, but they were taking over and blocking the sun from the other seedlings. I killed them. My 3-year-old cried.

This is the beginning of project number... 3 dozen? I've lost count. Leaning against the trunk of the badly-pruned tree are a bunch of branches that I pruned off the apple trees. They are going to hopefully become a little bean tipi for the kids to play in. I always knew my tipi building experience at my last job would pay off! And... is tipi building knowledge the kind of thing I can put on a resume someday if I go back to work?

Cream of Bogey Chicken Casserole

2013-02-11T20:53:00.002-07:00

Tip of the day: don't put too much arrowroot powder in your chicken casserole and serve it to your family thinking, "I'm sure they won't notice the slimy texture."

Just don't.

Feel Happy in 4 Minutes

2013-02-06T23:12:00.002-07:00

And now, to cheer you up if you recently read about how Mars, Coca Cola, and McDonald's are sponsoring the American Dietetic Association,

please, go and watch the shameless tearjerker that is "The Man Who Couldn't Walk." I promise, you will be happy and motivated after you watch it, unless your heart is made of iron ore.

Do you want to go work out now or what?!