A "newer" normal.

Beginning of July

I haven't really looked back a pictures yet from this summer. I came across this one the other day. Alfred was about a week old and we headed down to Nisqually to walk the trail. Oh how quickly things change.







September

These last 8 months have possibly been the hardest- emotionally, physically and in every other way possible for everyone in our family. Well, except maybe for Alfred. Minus a few bad weeks in the hospital, he has pretty much had my full attention and arms for the last six months.  So many folks have told me there "must have been a reason" or "life was trying to tell you something" or "why did it happen" and on and on. I think I'll take Forrest Gump's approach and simply say, shit happens.

So here I sit, almost 8 months post break and I'm still recovering. My kids don't actually remember a time when I walked unassisted.  This has been bothering me a lot lately. So, I think it's about time to write some things down. Some things I hope to learn from this time so when shit happens again, I hopefully won't have to relearn it.


January at NW Trek

Slowly, and oh so painfully I'm learning:

• Mobility is awesome. We don't often think about sitting, standing, walking or moving about. I'd like to think that I've learned just how important it is to stay active. I'd also like to think I've learned to deeply respect and honor people like my mom and others who have disabilities. It's amazing how not being able to do something makes the simplest of tasks challenging. I will also remember to always look at people with disabilities in the eye. It's completely disturbing how people avoid eye contact with me when I'm in a wheelchair.
• Oh, and another thing about mobility. When you see someone walking with a cane or crutch, don't laugh. Even if she looks silly. It isn't cool to laugh. Ever.

End of February

• We forget. We forget how hard things were. So among many other things, maybe I'll forget how hard it is to walk and I won't have to think so carefully of each step. Along those same lines, maybe my kids will someday forget that I couldn't walk, or play, or care for them as I wanted.
• To ask for help. I've gotten to be an expert at this, and hopefully I will ask nicely more than I demand (So sorry Eric and to my parents).
• Life goes on. Weeks and months go by, kids grow way too quickly, and there will always be stuff to do. Way too much stuff to do.

And bit by bit every day I'm going to be thankful that:

• My wonderfully lovely husband and partner will be here to remind me of how I want to walk through this life, parent our children, and be as a family. So on those days when I'm not lovely, patient, kind, or hopeful he'll be here to pull me up by the boot straps and I'll get back on track to how I want to be.
• My children are young and forgiving. Even though I haven't been the most fun and haven't been able to play with them as I would like, or always be the parent I want to be, they still think I'm the best. They are awesome at giving people chances for getting it better the next time. This time will hopefully be a small blip on their lifetime of memories.
• My parents have been able to put their retirement on hold. They have allowed my kids to "carry on as usual" allowing them to partake in their normal routines with their weekly visits. They had the chance to become parents of young children again when the accident first happened. I think it's safe to say they cherish their role of grandparents way more now. They were both born to spoil them.
• Friends are amazing. I am so extremely lucky to have the friends that I do. I pretty much can and have asked everything of them and they are always willing to be here to support me and our family. I hope they think of me the same way.
• Slowly, but surely I'm getting better. I may not recognize the person staring back at me in the photos, but this really is small potatoes in the big scheme of things.

Enough for now. Thinking back over these last months is painful. However, had I not broken my leg, there is no way we would be buying a farm right now. So maybe that's it. I broke my leg so we could buy a farm. Crazy? Nope. Not any crazier than what we have all been through these last few months.

You just know.

A few people have asked me how we knew that this was "the farm".  The short answer is that we just knew. We both just said, "Yep, this is it. Let's try to get it."

The long answer is that we have been looking and dreaming of this for a while. We've read countless books, magazines, and blogs about homesteading. We've gone to the Mother Earth News Fair for the last few years and we have begun to do many of the activities that we will do on our homestead. Some of the more specific considerations were:

Location:
We knew that we would be moving closer to my parents. We started looking in the Centralia/Chehalis/Toledo area as it was a lot closer to them and Eric is still able to go up to Bellevue twice a week.  For the last year we have been driving down to the area to get familiar with it and see exactly where we would like to live.

Land/house:
Eric wanted at least 20 acres. Some wooded, some pasture would be ideal, but we were also looking a forest land. The reality is that we are going to transform any land that we get to become a permaculture homestead. We'll be able to change it into what we want it to be. One option was putting a yurt on a piece of recently cut forest property. The land is very cheap, but it wouldn't have any services and we would have had to live in a yurt for two years. Eric thought this would be great. I, on the other hand, thought this would be hell. My ideal was to find a property that had a house and property that had been worked before.

When:
Eric's move date was 2014. He was actually "banned" from looking at property. He was banned because when he found a great property while I was pregnant with Alfred, he said it would be okay to move before Alfred was born. That comment sent me into a "You are not going to look until it is much closer" rant. So Eric stopped looking. He actually told me a few months ago that we should probably set the move date to 2015 because of my broken leg.  So what did I do once he was banned? I started looking. It started off easily as I had hours upon hours of computer time while I was stuck in bed for a few months. Then it just became habit to look every few weeks.

Routine:
After finding way too many properties that were wrong for many reasons, we figured out a system to find out if it was even worth looking at. Parcel maps, soil maps, elevation grids, it is amazing what you can find out about a property just from the internet.

Then we found the add for the 32 acre tree farm. There was just the one picture of the house attached to it. We decided we should drive out to see it.

Even before we toured the inside of it, we knew it would be ours just by walking around a bit.  Here are a few of the highlights:

* It is in a town called Dryad. Dryad is a female tree spirit. Need I say more?

*The homestead sits right on the Wilapia Hills trail. It is a trail that starts in Chehalis and goes to the ocean. I can totally envision us having a farm stand on the trail to sell fruits, veggies, crafts, canned goods.

*There is a house on the property. While it is a lot smaller than what we have, it is a mansion compared to a yurt. It will be a lovely place to call home while we build our earth bag home.

*Although it is plenty of land, we still have neighbors. I won't feel totally isolated.

Now that we are in the final steps to buy it, we love it even more. We love the story behind it. One of our new neighbors is the great grandson of the original owners. His family has been there before WA was a state. He knows the land like the back of his hand. He is willing to share with us. Be still my sentimental heart.

There it is. We just knew. And when you know, it all just seems to fall into place and all work out.

Now the hardest part is trying to figure out what to call it. We thought picking out baby names was hard, boy were we wrong! This could take a while.

A dream deferred

What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore--
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over--
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
                                    Or does it explode?  - Langston Hughes    

On our first date, Eric mentioned his dream. Now that I am fully involved with the dream, I know that he totally glossed over it to lessen the shock value. As we were eating dinner he told me of his dream to one day live in the country and have 20 acres. It was the first, but certainly not the last time I heard of his "20 acre" dream.  

 

Everyone who knows Eric could tell you about his dream. He's been thinking and dreaming and planning about it for decades. Maybe since high school. It's one of those Langston Hughes dreams like the poem above is talking about. I have learned exactly what happens to a dream deferred over the last 6 years. In our case, at least, the dream has crept into every fabric of our being, every aspect of our lives and how we choose to pass time on this Earth.

 

Eric's dream has always been more than just "20 acres".  Twenty acres in the country seems like a totally rational and easy thing to accomplish. His dream is much more involved than that. Eric's dream, and how and when did it change from Eric's dream to our dream I'll never know, but somewhere over the last 6 years it did. So really "our dream" is to be energy and food independent. The goal (long term of course) is to build a house out of earth bags, grow our own food, and produce enough energy to supply our needs.

 

How could this turn into my dream? I'm a once Nordstrom loving, high heel wearing, everything except the country type of person. Well, it happened slowly. It started with having our first baby. We slowly started transitioning from there. We changed to only eating organic food, then local organic food, then growing our own food, and so on. Pretty soon I woke up and discovered that we were now canning a lot of our food, raising chickens and appalled at what was going on around our property as neighbors sprayed chemicals. What's a family to do?

 

Buy a Farm!

 

So, what became of the "20 acre" dream? Well, it became a 32 acre reality. We are in the final steps to buying our dream.

 

 

A huge thanks to Kristine for making me write this down. By the look of my last post, if I post anywhere in the next 2 years, I'll call it good!  My hope is to document this, so I will be able to remember that this is my dream when we are in the thick of it.

   

One Proud Mama!

Today was one of those amazingly awesome days that I will remember forever. I told Jasper that Daddy's birthday was coming up and we needed to get ready. Jasper immediately asked what we were going to make him. I totally love the fact that he believes all gifts are handmade ones.

We set about making our present for Daddy. I traced their hand prints onto fabric and then I am going to embroider around the hands for Eric. I love giving hand print gifts, especially when they are so young. So I traced their hands and set about getting the fabric ready and the hoop out to start the project.

Jasper ran over to get his "sewing board" (I had peg board cut at Lowe's). We have had it for at least 6 months now. When we first got it, he wanted nothing to do with it. We have pulled it out about once a week since then to sew.



Jasper sewing on his peg board.



"It's heavy Mama. I want one like yours!"













As he was sewing he started saying that his board was heavy and he wanted one like mine. I could not run up to my craft room fast enough to get him his own materials! I have been patiently waiting for this day for a very long time!

When I came down with the materials (a hoop, some burlap, real embroidery needles, and all kinds of yarn) his eyes got so wide with excitement. He immediately said, "I'm making a present for Daddy!"

He almost didn't let me help him thread the needle. He started working. He worked for almost an hour. In and out and back and forth. I have never seen such concentration in his work. He asked for different textures of thread, yarn and ribbon. He made a wonderful present for his Daddy!

I got to work on my project sitting right beside him. It was wonderful. He was so deep in his work that he wasn't talking (a rare thing around here). It was a special moment I hope to repeat often.

I bet you were wondering where Miss Tabitha was during this crafting time. She played. By herself. The whole time. It was a great day!

Tabitha played with the balls for most of the hour.
She would hold stuff up for us to see and then get back to playing.



Oh, and if I haven't told you, Tabitha is crawling now too!



Fresh Peas Please!



Our Pea Patch: Garden goodness at its finest!

 Fresh peas. Need I say more? Although I would love to write about my children and the fun we are having this summer, I first must write about the peas. We have a pretty large garden and yet we never seem to have enough peas to eat. This year we tried to plant enough to satisfy our growing family. I planted about 75 peas. Not all of them came up, but a lot did. Everyone thought we would have enough. Little did they know that my love of peas goes way back!


Picking peas when we were little.
Very few made it into the house.



Showing off my treasure.













I don't remember a time when I didn't love peas. I could seriously eat them all day. Sugar snap peas are my favorite. When we were little, our favorite way to eat them was to let the pods get really fat and then eat the peas inside. It still is my favorite way to eat them!

We try very hard to eat local and organic foods as much as possible. Most of  our vegetable eating during the summer is from our garden (except carrots and onions-we can't grow enough of them!). Throughout the rest of the year we try to eat what we have preserved or what we can get from our local food co-op from local farmers. 

In the past, I would often purchase those ever-so-tempting bags of peas at the grocery store. They always look so appealing in the market and then I'd get them home and they are just not quite right. Anyone who has ever eaten a fresh pea knows what the deal is. You just can't replicate fresh peas. They even don't taste as great an hour after picking, let alone sealed in a bag pumped up with who knows what type of chemicals. So, just like I vowed not to purchase out of season strawberries, I haven't been purchasing out of season peas.

You would think 75 pea plants would be enough. My dad thought for sure I would have enough to freeze for the winter. Our last peas are hanging on the vines as I type. Not one frozen. Almost all of them were eaten fresh or grilled.

Grilled peas and onions--yum!

Have you tried grilled peas? So many people I have talked to haven't tried them. Other than fresh, they are my favorite.  I just add an onion, olive oil, thyme and salt and onto the grill they go (or oven or campfire as we found out this year).

Jasper finally learned this year how to pick peas without pulling up the whole plant. He loves them almost as much as I do. Tabitha had her fair share too. Poor Eric was the only one who didn't get very many.  Next year we will definitely have to double our pea patch. As I picked our last fresh one of the year I asked Eric if it was too late to start another crop. I think it is a chance I am willing to take in order to get more of that sweet goodness.


That's Jasper hidden among our pea patch.



Little Bits of Summer in a Jar!

There is nothing that says summer like fresh, local, organic strawberries. After I read Sharon Astyk's book about food preservation a couple of years ago I really wanted to try to dehydrate strawberries. She mentioned that when she opened the jar it was like smelling summer. She was so right!

Preparing strawberries last year.

There are so many reasons why I wanted to dehydrate strawberries for us to have throughout the year. I have to admit I used to be a person who would buy organic strawberries from Chile in January. The horrid eco-footprint, bland taste, high cost and a little nudging in the right direction from my husband made me determined not to buy them out of season again.

So, last year (2010) we decided to dehydrate enough strawberries to have a pint to open every other week for the year (that is about 28 pints).  We did a little more than that last year and we had two pints left over when we bought our first flat of strawberries this season!

I also have to mention that I made it through the whole year without buying organic strawberries! Not only did it save us money, it felt great! And you know what? I didn't miss them at all because we had our strawberries. We ate them like candy all year long.

How did I do it? Well, we have an excalibur dehydrator. We love it! It can fit 1 flat of strawberries in the dehydrator at a time.  Each full load I get about 6 1/2 pints of dried strawberries. I store them in canning jars and use our vacuum sealer to seal them shut. They stayed fresh and yummy all year!

Last year I was 8 months pregnant with Tabitha while cutting strawberries. I thought that was challenging. Ha! This year I cut most of them outside on the picnic table while trying to watch both of the kids. Because I knew how much I had to do, this year seemed to go quickly.

We have found the larger strawberries work better for dehydrating and the smaller ones for jam. Where do we get all of those strawberries? We get them from our local Farmer's Market. We have been getting them from Hayton Farms for the last two years. They are picked the morning of the market. They are so ripe and so fresh that you really have to use them that same day.

From this year on, I just have to add a few more pints as we have more "eaters" in our family. It is a great way to save money, support local farmers, and enjoy strawberries all year round. When we open a pint of strawberries it truly smells like a bit of summer in a jar!  Enjoy!


My two little strawberry helpers with our strawberries for the year!



What to do with the garlic scapes?



One lonely garlic scape left in our garlic patch!

We were first introduced to garlic scapes about 4 years ago when we got them at our Farmer's Market. They add such wonderful flavor to our stir fried dishes- especially when good garlic is hard to find early in the summer. We started growing our own garlic and had a handful of scapes at a time to use in dishes or salads.

This year we have about 40-50 garlic plants. That is a lot of scapes. I cut the first batch on Summer Solstice. I used some in a stir fry and then gave a bunch away to friends as I knew I wouldn't use them before they went bad. 

I was determined to find a use for them. When a second wave of scapes were ready, my search began. Grilled? Stir fry? Yep.  Scape pesto is supposed to be awesome.  I'm not too much into pesto, so here is what I decided to do:

Our second garlic scape harvest this season!

• Frozen Scapes-  I chopped the scapes to 1/2 inch pieces (I used all of the scape) and sealed them in a freezer bag.
• Garlic Scape Oil  I finely chopped the scapes with a food processor and then packed them into canning jars. I covered the scapes with oil and then vacuum sealed the jars before putting them into the fridge. It smells heavenly!  



My first batch of garlic scape oil!



I think my next adventure with scapes will be a garlic scape soup recipe. Sounds yummy! What do you do with garlic scapes?