Running the Changes

Chicken mortality

2009-06-08T05:49:00.000-07:00

Well, we lost a chick. We don't know why, so obviously we were more than a little worried about disease and so on, but so far two more days have passed without incident and I'm feeling hopeful. Certainly there's nothing particularly unusual about one out of 27 chicks dying. It was one of the phoenixes, though, and they are a very beautiful bird, so that's too bad. On the up side, I was pleased to note that while I was worried and a little upset by the loss, I wasn't at all what you'd call sad about it. No "oh, the poor little baby!" It was alive, and now it is not, and the other chicks clearly don't give a damn, so that's pretty much that. Which is obviously reassuring if you're in the process of raising birds for meat.

I think that this is actually a pretty big advantage of just diving right in and getting a lot of chicks like we did. It would be difficult, to say the least, to make pets out of 27 chickens. I know that another woman who got six female chicks just for laying at the same time as we got our chicks has already named them and clearly regards them as pets. I'm not saying there's a dang thing wrong with that, but it was not our intention at all, and so far we're obviously on track. Killing them--that I expect to be difficult to do, emotionally. The actual killing, I mean. But I don't expect to have any lingering emotional trouble afterwards, and no guilt unless we botch it and one suffers.

I know that a vegetarian would doubt me on this, but I have thought about this a great deal, and I'm quite confident in my decisions on this point. I intend to let me chickens live as their nature suggests, as safe and "happy" as a chicken can be, and then to kill them in such a way that they won't ever know what hit them. I have read many reports that it is entirely possible to do so. The other chickens won't miss the goners (the dead chick, in fact, was trampled into the litter by its fellows, who regarded it much as they would any rock in their path), and frankly, I just don't see the advantage to growing old for a chicken. Chickens don't make plans for the future and they don't dream of raising a family (indeed, most modern chickens are not broody and would never "raise a family" given all the time and opportunity in the world). They have a choice between living a while and then dying quickly and painlessly, or living longer and dying of disease or injury. They live day to day, and I really can't grok how it could matter to them how many days they live.

Actually, I have to say that most vegan comments on chicken and egg eating just seem poorly informed to me. That is, they're well-versed in the horrors of factory farming, but apparently haven't gotten past that. A lot of them don't seem to grasp, for example, that cows readily make more milk than their calves need, and that being milked is not inherently unpleasant at all (a fact I can personally testify to, having been milked mere minutes ago). They're not clear on whether chickens lay eggs without fertilization or other outside encouragement (they do). They attribute emotions to animals that, in most cases, are simply not there. They don't seem to understand that well-managed livestock can perfectly well be content and provide useful product at the same time. The honey bee is a great example--beekeeping, ideally, consists pretty much entirely of giving the honey bees a dream setup, protecting them from negative outside influences, and, with a little careful management, harvesting the plentiful surplus they create. The bees are of course completely incapable of emotion, but properly managed, they are unstressed and free to live as their nature dictates. Personally, I think that this sort of livestock management is completely ethical and that animal products are a valuable part of a health diet and a sustainable society.

I don't eat factory farmed foods--I'm quite in agreement with the vegetarians and vegans on that. But I really think that the leap from "no factory farming" to "no animal products" is usually logically immature and/or ignorant, and when it's well-thought-out, it's just based on basic premises about the rights and nature of livestock animals that I just plain don't agree with. For example, the oft-heard complaint about the "exploitation" of animals just really goes over my head. For one thing, we created chickens. They are what they are because of literally millenia of human tinkering. Same goes for the modern dairy cow, the sheep, etc. Some animals are closer to their wild roots than others, but the livestock animal that could successfully revert to the wild is a rare beast. If we stop raising them, they will stop existing. That's not hypothetical--it's already happened to a lot of breeds. Frankly, I don't think the chickens care either way, but I, for one, think that would be a great pity. I also don't think that the chickens care or indeed even know whether we benefit from their lives. For another thing, I think it's pretty self-evident that human beings have evolved to consume animal protein, and I believe that it makes us healthier to do so, although obviously opinion varies on this subject. Healthier or no, people have been consuming animal products since before we were "people", as far as anyone can tell, so whether you think god or nature made us the way we are, I'd think that should carry some weight.

I personally feel that by eating only ethically-raised meat, I'm delivering a double-whammy to the factory farms--not only am I depriving them of revenue directly by not buying from them, but I'm supporting and encouraging their competition. or, in the case of chickens, I guess I actually am their competition. So much the better.

I do feel that it's important that people face these issues head-on, each person for themselves, and make decisions based on complete information. If I thought I couldn't kill a chicken, I'd have to stop eating them--it would definitely be unethical to just pass my moral burden to someone else out of sight. So far, though, I think that my theorizing is correct, and I'm happy to recieve confirmation, however small, in the form of my unfortunate dead chick. Put another way, I love squirrels--they're a totem of sorts for me, and I call myself Squrrl online sometimes. But I have sat right next to a hawk messily devouring a dead squirrel and had a conversation, and had no problems with it--both hawk and squirrel were living (so to speak) in accordance with their natures. I think all animals have the right to do so, including humans.

Feeling optimistic

2009-06-04T07:41:00.001-07:00

Not about the state of affairs at large, let me hasten to add. That looks more terrible by the day. But I am feeling optimistic about our little homestead and our family preparations.

To sum up: The garden is on schedule and in good shape--just harvested my first kohlrabi bulb last night and enjoyed it in salad. The front herb garden is doing well, and I'm excited at the prospect of selecting and learning to use new culinary herbs now that I have space. Our chicks are now 4 1/2 weeks old, and all 27 are still alive and apparently healthy. Our food stores could use some work, but they're a whole lot better than nothing. Our medical stores are, I think, pretty durn good. Our durable goods could, no doubt, use re-upping here and there, but are on the whole pretty well-thought-out and taken care of. The chicken coop is really only one good weekend away from done...I can't wait to paint it; it'll be SO darn cute.

Now I'm daydreaming...I hope the chickens will keep the mid-yard area under control without denuding it completely. I think we've given them enough space that I have cause to be hopeful. Be pretty awesome to have that much less to mow...between digging up the back yard and digging up the front yard, that'd leave not very much at all to mow.

I wish we'd kept closer track of expenses with the chickens, but honestly, I could probably go back and record everything we've bought. A great deal of stuff has been scavenged, from the brooder box to almost all of the chicken coop materials (indeed, the only exceptions I can think of are some hardware cloth to cover the droppings pit and a single sheet of plywood). Between that, free ranging, and at least attempting to grow some food for them, I think we can at least keep the chickens at the break-even point, assuming the cost of free-range eggs and meat (which is fair, since that's all we buy).

This may seem funny, but I daydream Jacob's shop, too, even though I personally spend hardly any time there and don't plan to. I do love a nice clean, organized shop, and that's just the sort of shop Jacob would run if he had half a chance. He's very tidy-minded. I love the potentiality of it all, and the smells of oil and lingering coal smoke, and the wonderful Jacob-ness of it. I love to think that by the end of summer he'll finally have a shop he can be proud of, after all the careful thought and hard work he's put into it. And it's not just idle hobbying, either...that shop is a potentially very important source of future income and productivity for us.

I'm dreaming of jars full of beautiful dry heirloom beans, rare-breed chickens in the yard, dinners flavored with new and wonderful herbs, and that wonderful glow of security and accomplishment...

Ludicrous speed

2009-06-02T08:30:00.000-07:00

This spring, as Jacob and I hoe away in the garden, we've discussed an idea that his mother gave me. We were whinging on about all of the rocks we've had to chisel out of the ground in order to make a viable garden, and she commented that she was proud of us; that we were breaking ground just like our pioneer ancestors. First of all, obviously that's very flattering, but it got me thinking, too.

Let us compare two different basic types of people who "live off the land". There are peasants, and there are pioneers. This isn't meant as a comprehensive list, just the categories that are relevant to the moment.

Peasants are sort of the ultimate in sustainability--that's what they do. They sustain. They keep going. What level of existence they sustain at, what quality of life, etc., varies by time and place, but either way, it's a generally stable state. Peasants live a basically cyclical life, with the same fashions, the same holidays, the same foods and the same tasks, for potentially hundreds of years at a go, disturbed only by outside forces. Ambition is not a common trait, nor is it necessarily considered a virtue. All you have to do is maintain. Work the fields your grandfather worked. Wear the clothes suited to your station. It may not be an easy life, but by definition it should never exceed that which is physically sustainable over the long term.

Pioneers are pretty much the complete opposite. They're making history, and they know it. They are cut off, sometimes almost completely, from the known and the familiar. They are creating something new in the world, and often they have to seriously bust their butts just to survive. When you couldn't start the trip 'til May because of mud, traveled for two months, and now must secure food, water, and shelter before winter, you push yourself as hard as you physically can, and worry about paying the piper later.

Part of the reason that the work Jacob and I (and others like us) are doing is so punishing is that we are, in essence, pioneers. Obviously we're not exactly living in a soddy and burning cow pats for heat, but we are breaking new ground, figuratively and literally. We are creating our personal culture and values anew, creating fertile soil where, believe me, there was none, and pushing ourselves as hard as we can ahead of the threat of scarcity and adversity.

Of course, we are not cut off from the known and familiar, and its lure is a constant mental drag on our efforts. We are children of our time; we like steak and Bruce Willis and vegging out playing video games. We have to constantly remind ourselves that these feelings and the culture we grew up in are likely not to serve us well in the future we forsee, and it makes all that frenetic pioneer-speed hoeing bite just a little harder when we're tired and the baby is crying to go back inside.

So now we joke about pioneer-speed and peasant-speed. Some days, especially when the sun is brutal, peasant speed is all we can manage, and the hoe rises and falls and the feet tread to a steady, deliberate beat that I can imagine singing to, if only I were in better shape. Other days, though, we move as if a demon snapped at our heels, and collapse at the end of the day nursing aching backs and icing strained joints.

This weekend, we went to plaid. I really don't know how we kept going. We harvested and froze the last of the bolting bok choy. We planted cucumbers, potatoes, zucchini, watermelons, winter squash, and spaghetti squash. We dug up a large chunk of the front yard, worked it smooth, and planted four types of basil, sage, parsley, rosemary, and french tarragon (there's still space for more, I just don't know what yet). We turned and began to hoe a huge chunk of the far-back yard, preparatory to planting buckwheat and millet (for the chickens). We weeded and prepared a roughly, I dunno, 15x20 chunk between the parking lot and chicken coop and planted it with millet, rapeseed, and mustard to provide a nice nutritive patch of greens in the chicken yard. We picked maybe 5 quarts of strawberries. We potted leftover pepper and tomato seedlings. We weed-whacked a large portion of the overgrown back yard. We completely stripped the grass off of a strip 2 feet wide and maybe 60 feet long along the fence preparatory to planting beans there. We hilled up a row of potatoes. We changed out the chicks' litter. We went to the farmer's market, the grocery store, and the feed-n-seed. And we had the kid with us the whole time. And mind, this was a two-day weekend, no Friday off.

This weekend, I can honestly say that we did everything we could. I am very proud of us.

Update at last

2009-05-27T07:09:00.000-07:00

Hello...been a loooong time. I really, really wish I got to write more. It does me so much good.

Sigh...well, we have the chickens, in the living room dusting the place up. They're 3 1/2 weeks old now, no longer cute fluff balls, now half-feathered-out and distinctly untidy looking. The coop is making progress, not done. Soon, though, all the "spring" stuff will be planted in the garden (should already be, but at least we're close), and the focus will shift more to the coop. I feel comfortable with where we are, anyway. The things I'm not comfortable with are how little I can get done when I'm alone with Evelyn and what a pit the house is. "Spring cleaning"--are you kidding? It sounds great, but I'm too busy breaking my back in the garden.

Right now I'm in a good mood--nothing like a project yielding results to start a decent morning. On Saturday, I and a couple of others set up a booth at the Maryland Heartland Sustainable Living Fair for our little sustainable living group. Last night I took the signup sheet we put out and sent out invitations to join our Yahoo group...and this morning there are already three new members! Now I'm planning strawberry picking for this weekend, trying to get people to come out and share a picnic, and hoping to goodness they don't run out of berries before we get there. And that's entirely possible, since several of us are involved in the farmer's market, so we can't very well go first thing Saturday. Argh. Well, there's always next weekend.

So, as Evelyn's miraculously still sleeping, I've been catching up on the news. Always a depressing activity, and at the moment, it always makes me once again want to yank Jacob's 401K, take the penalties, and put the money to work. I have no faith in savings in the current climate, and that is saying something, because Jacob and I are both very play-it-straight, pinch-penny, savings kinda people. But with the global economy disassociating themselves from the dollar as fast as they can, and the gov't printing money as fast as it can, forclosures still going crazy and predicted to hit another "wave" this summer, etc., etc., etc., I am thinking I can come up with better uses for our money than watching it burn. We still need to replace the gutters and a piece of siding that blew off now over a year ago, we'd love to blow in some more insulation, a home energy audit seems like a great idea, and I for one would like to see a small solar array, if only to keep the chest freezer and maybe one or two other things running. That freezer is a really valuable part of our food storage system.

Basic status right now is that in some ways I'm really proud of us--picture perfect garden, decent food stores, good collection of tools, coop's coming along nicely, and in general we've done a truly monumental amount of work all while raising a very high-spirited baby into a remarkably thoughtful, intelligent, and loving toddler. In other ways, I am completely overwhelmed by the work still to do and dismayed by how much trouble I have with, say, housekeeping, or keeping in touch with people. And, of course, by how much of my time Evelyn still demands (and demands is exactly the right term; you should hear her) and how little able I seem to be able to do anything about that, like, say, do a few dishes without her screaming and trying to push me away from the sink.

Meanwhile, it's fairly clear that the world I grew up in is crumbling around my ears. People naturally expect "the end of the world as we know it" to be some big, dramatic event, but the fact is, history usually takes place over the course of months and years, and when you sum them up history-book style, the crises of the past and coming months and years would probably look pretty dramatic. So of course I feel pressured to be the best I can, to do as much as I can and then some, and when I inevitably fall short, it's hard on the self-confidence. And, of course, frightening. It's all so very frightening.

Cognitive dissonance

2009-03-24T13:44:00.000-07:00

Am I happy or miserable or terrified? I really do not know. Consider:

We ordered chickens last night, after talking about it for two and a half years. The coop is still in need of some serious work, and the fence is only partly done, but, eh, we have two months before they're needed. Momentary euphoria.

Jacob worked his butt off at his blacksmithing class and came home with a very creditable dragon head to show for it.

It rained all day and I couldn't get squat done in the garden, which is about two weeks behind schedule right now.

My neighbor started seed for the one pepper I wanted most and didn't start seed for (lemon drop), and will share. Whoohooo, yellow hot sauce here we come!

My daughter is pretty much over the vomiting/diarrhea tummy bug she got from the neighbors.

My husband is just getting it with an agonising vengeance, and has been in and out of the bathroom for going on two hours now, and since he can't even face the thought of peppermint tea, I really have dick to offer. Wish I could nurse him like I did the baby. I don't even know what he could possibly be throwing up at this point, but let me just say, it sounds positively epic.

Jacob did the taxes (yeah, we procrastinated all hell outta that) and we'll get a decent return, so, something in the bank again after dwindling our savings down to zip over the Christmas season.

The Obamas are planting a garden on the White House front lawn, and gardening, knitting, and chickens are all gaining wildly in popularity. And Freecycling and Craigslist and consignment sales. How awesome is all that?

Soul-crushingly horrifying prospects for the immediate and not-so-immediate future economically, socially, environmentally...yeah. Four horsemen, here we come! The complete collapse of society is rapidly moving from seeming totally impossible even to those of us who know better to seeming all but inescapable. Go us.

But, on the other hand, chickens...

Hopeful January

2009-01-21T13:03:00.000-08:00

Well, the pump is installed, and it works great. Glee! Joy! As if that weren't enough joy, Jacob and Mamma also fixed the library and living room doors so that they actually close and installed my coat rack after two years of it sitting in a corner of the bathroom. I am so inspired by my house's new awesomeness that I actually picked up the office floor. Incredible, no?

So, Obama's in the White House now. I am very hopeful. I'll tell you what would be awesome, would be if he actually listened to the people who are petitioning him to put an organic food garden on the White House front lawn. He read Michael Pollan...now's his chance to show he really got it. And hell, what'd it cost him? He's got gardeners. If he did that, I would be very, very hopeful. Of course, if gardening gained ground as the new national fad as it would from such a thing, then there really would be a seed shortage. Well, so much better that than a food shortage. Just have to be sure to start saving seed this year!

Actually, I don't seem to have much to say.

Shiny!!

2009-01-06T09:31:00.001-08:00

Yup, my husband rocks. For Christmas this year, he made the calls, he did the thinking, he made the measurements and calculations, and he got me the best goddamn hand deep well pump on the market, so far as he or I can tell. $1800 for a solid stainless pump from Bison. By far the most either of us has ever spent on a gift, and he's still reeling, but I consider it's well worth it. How utterly absurd to be cut off from one's own water in a power outage or blackout! And if you're going to spend the money, do it right. There were, of course, other, cheaper pumps, but Jacob didn't feel that they were cheaper enough to really compensate for the loss in quality, so he bit the bullet. That's a philosophy the two of us share, obviously, but even so, $1800 takes a bit of getting used to. He's allowed to be a bit shocky.

Me, I'm amused, because I was utterly delighted and astonished and, well, so relieved to have him take all the worry and figuring off my hands and just DO it, and the pump head, it really is beautiful...every weld is smooth as butter, and the whole thing has a lovely burnished gloss...but of course most people would not find a well pump to be a romantic or exciting gift. So gushing about my wonderful present is a little funny, as most people greet the whole thing with something akin to incomprehension. For example, a dear friends' parents, who have just finished spending who knows how much on another big screen HD TV, think that spending $1800 on a well pump when, uhhhh, it already comes out of the tap?, to be thoroughly odd. And who can blame them? I am preparing for something that we all hope will never happen. I'm just not in the least willing to gamble that blackouts and the like will never happen, and not having non-electric access to one's water strikes me as a pretty big gamble.

Anyway, there it is. I can't wait to get it installed, gleaming subtly in the center of my herb garden.

Two steps forward...

2008-11-08T07:33:00.000-08:00

Most of next year's seeds are on their way! I dithered over whether to buy seeds early, because it seemed sort of...alarmist, but then I realized that there was no reason on earth not to, and it made a lot of sense. First off, it's the same dang seed whether I order it now or in the spring; it's not like I'll get fresher seed in the spring. And second, well, next year's garden seeds are a critical part of my food storage plan, so why on earth would I leave them to chance? As an added bonus, I'll know exactly what I have to work with all winter, which, one would like to think, should assist in the planning process. One would think. Besides, it's absolutely true that a lot of seed companies saw hugely increased demand last year, and I'd expect this year to see even more, so even if things proceed more or less as normal, it's entirely feasible that the slowpokes won't get everything they want next spring.

On a similar note, my delightfully cracked neighbor went on an heirloom bean kick and just bought multiple packs of maybe 20 varieties of heirloom beans. She wants to grow them to use in dry soup mixes to sell at the farmer's market, which is a fine idea, but she bought enough seed to go into business as an heirloom bean farmer, and we're reasonably sure that she has basically no idea what she's getting into. Where we're going to plant them all is a great mystery, but once those beans mature, boy, we'll be safe from starvation, anyhow. I love love love beans, and really can't justify the expense of heirloom beans at anything more than the rare treat level, so I'm as happy as a clam...which is good, because I'll have to be pretty involved to make sure this whole process actually happens in an effective manner. The world is full of wonderfully unique and special people, my neighbor not least among them.

I can hear Jacob out back shredding our brush pile and the (other) neighbors', which we'll use as mulch. I feel rather badly about destroying these brush-pile habitats right at the beginning of cold weather, but our yards just aren't so big that we can afford to leave parts of them wild. Meanwhile, we can certainly use the mulch. When Evelyn's done napping, I'll go out to join him, and we'll work on planting garlic and finishing the kill-mulching of the garden expansion. Jacob could, of course, be working on those things now, but through a logic all his own, he is usually able to look at my to-do list, agree that it's an excellent list, and then spend the entire weekend working on other things. Worthy things, no doubt, but I guess we're prioritizing somewhat differently. It's like my mother-in-law, who once complained that if she asked my father-in-law to help clean the house in preparation for company, he was liable to decide that the most important thing he could do would be to clean the light switches. But if I go out, then we (or at least whichever one of us isn't chasing the baby) will reliably work on the garlic and garden beds...which, apparently, are "my" projects now or something. Which is unkind and discouraging, because we both know perfectly well that "my" projects never get done, if they even get started, largely due to things like naptime and teething.

We're also in discussions over whether to get a solar oven, or, really, which one to get. Of course, November is kinda a stupid time to be buying a solar oven, since in order to cook dinner in one, I'd have to start at noon and eat before Jacob got home for the night (well after dark). On the other hand, of course, a solar oven is a nigh-miraculous device which might be a great boon in the future, and the fear, as always, is that come spring we won't be able to buy one. Besides, one could always pre-cook and bake bread. You know, if one did bake bread, theoretically. The two major choices seem to be the Tulsi sun oven (advantages--power backup and a broad enough chamber to make pizza) and the Global sun oven (advantages--seems to be the better actual solar oven, easier to get hot, slightly deeper chamber for pots).

Progress is being made, however, on the health front. Because, having grown up below the poverty line, let me tell you: Being poor and healthy really isn't that bad. Being poor and unhealthy is misery. With that in mind, I've prioritized getting our health needs taken care of. Jacob and I have both had dentist's appointments, and he has another to get some work done (I, in defiance of all standards of dental hygiene, needed no work, just to stop clenching my jaw all the time). I have an optometrist's appointment later this month to get new glasses for the first time since middle school. And, most excitingly, next Tuesday I have an appointment with the naturopath who has worked such wonders on my mother. Damn, I want the vitality she has these days. I would like to be actually healthy for the first time in my life. I'm hoping that next Tuesday will be the beginning of my journey to health, and I am REALLLLLY excited. I consider taking care of all outstanding health problems to be a really critical part of disaster/poverty preparedness. Being unhealthy in any way reduces your ability to cope with circumstances and poisons everything you have to do.

I just hope that we can get Mamma's cancer cleared completely before TSHTF, if it does. She continues to progress incredibly, and my happiness over that is rendered very bittersweet by thinking of all the suffering of people who could have benefitted from these same therapies if only our medical system weren't so fucking in love with itself. She's got a rare form of cancer, considered highly intractable and untreatable via chemotherapy--surgery and radiation were the only route offered by the conventional doctors. And here it's in full retreat, shrunk to less than a third of its initial size, using only lifestyle changes, homeopathics, herbs, and a couple high-quality supplements. And not only is the cancer going away, but Mamma is radiantly healthy, more so than I ever remember her. How many cancer patients can say that? If she'd listened to the allopathic doctors, she'd be very ill now, permanently so, and her chances of beating the cancer would still be very slim statistically. If she hadn't been willing to try an alternative, I might be losing my mother right now. Please, if anyone you know has cancer, encourage them to look up a naturopathic oncologist. I'm not saying they're all as amazing as the one we got, but it could only be to the good.

Anyway...so, yeah. The pantry made progress today, and I should actually be able to put things away in my new cabinets now, which is SUPER exciting. We ordered a LOT of buckets and gamma seals for food storage purposes, and I mean a lot--24 buckets and 32 seals (we ordered bulk for the best prices). We'll keep about a dozen for ourselves and sell the rest at cost to whoever wants them. I have a lead on getting bulk wheat, finally. The kill-mulching of the garden expansion is maybe half done all told, but about 1/2 of what's left can be done over time. Progress.

On the other hand, I stuck my neck out and tried to tell my mother-in-law about Peak Oil to get her to prepare a little, and she smiled amusedly the whole time and told me that I didn't need to worry, she didn't think Mad Max or Waterworld or whatever was going to happen too soon. Gag, gag, gag... Oh well. I expressed myself cogently and calmly. I don't feel that I failed in my duty in any way. I sent her a link to Chris Martenson's Crash Course, and hopefully she'll watch it, if just to be polite. And if she chooses to ignore my warning, then hopefully we'll be able to help them later on. I am running out of patience with people who can actually hear a warning and ignore it at this point, though, since we're no longer warning about future events so much as trying to point out just how bad current events could get. Its happening NOW, people, and the evidence is thick on the ground.

Okay, enough babble for now. I have work to do.

If you're not outraged...

2008-10-16T08:19:00.000-07:00

...you're not paying attention. This classic bumper-sticker nugget has long been a bone of contention between my mother and me...I think it's quite accurate, and she--well, I suppose she thinks it's accurate too, at base, since her argument is essentially that, since she can't function in a constant state of outrage, she's rather just not pay attention.

I can see her point. Right now I'm definitely pushing my threshold when it comes to functionality...it's gone well past outrage into sickened horror, really. Probably, since I already don't eat fast food or industrial meat, I could safely have forgone the additional emotional burden of reading Fast Food Nation right now. Too bad Jacob gleaned it out of a box at the Thursday night auction and now I'm stuck reading it, sucked in and tangled up as it unveils new highs of awful.

Of course, I would have had plenty on my mind without worrying about schoolchildren eating the shit of diseased cattle processed by exploited illiterate illegal aliens and whatnot. Thanks to the wonders of the internet and a certain amount of (hopefully benign) parental neglect, I am finally beginning to feel like I actually understand the basics of the US economy and the banking system. Unfortunately, it's even more criminal, short-sighted, moronic, and, well, fucked than I suspected it was, only now I have the joy of understanding the mechanisms by which I and my loved ones in perpetuity have been fucked up the ass. My understanding has not yet, however, reached a level where I actually feel like I know what, if anything, I can do to protect myself and said loved ones from the clusterfuck, and so I feel obligated to persevere.

Because, you know, it wasn't enough that my mom has cancer, I haven't slept for more than four hours in a row (and usually much less) in well over a year, half my house is completely disarranged due to remodeling, I haven't been able to breathe through my nose at night in over a week, there's nearly a bushel worth of apples rapidly decomposing on the kitchen counter, and the check engine light just came on in the Subaru AGAIN (we just spent over a grand getting the other car back up to snuff, mind).

The hilarious part of all this is that I'm so used to being, as I put it to Mamma, "Six feet under and sinking" that at the moment my mood is predominantly hopeful--the remodeling didn't make enough progress for things to get cleaner, but it did make progress, the cancer is retreating rapidly without any of the standard, harmful allopathic "therapies", Evelyn's sleep habits are once again shifting from ludicrously awful to merely bad, and, most importantly for a dork like me, I'M LEARNING. Oh boy, upgrade me to "six feet under and rising"!

I really like learning, and I particularly like learning that promises to actually improve my life. I get really, really pissy when my access to said learning is blocked, which has been one of my biggest problems as a parent--reduced time means a reduction in time I can spend reading and dicking around on the internet learning new things. Last night was a really pissy time. Then Evelyn went to sleep and miraculously let me get up, and I proceeded to spend the next two hours watching this video series, which I highly recommend you also watch. I'm still working through it, mostly because of my utterly assy cable internet.

So, to sum up, watch the videos, including the video I linked to a few posts back, and read the news with a critical eye, and if you start to get completely dysfunctional thinking about a world full of malnourished children, old people freezing to death in their own homes because they couldn't afford to heat, families rendered homeless by foreclosure, etc., etc., then do what I do: remind yourself that, failing all else, it sure isn't boring.

Yay fall

2008-10-01T09:43:00.001-07:00

God, I love fall weather. And fall food. And that giddy pre-holiday, busting out the cool-weather wardrobe, starting to think about cocoa feeling.

Yesterday we started a 3-cabbage batch of plain red cabbage sauerkraut. We still have more cabbage though (by the time we're done, god only knows how much sauerkraut we'll have made, but we love it, and other people turn out to love it too when it's real and crisp and not canned or chemicalized), and I want to try some of the stuff from my deeelightful new book Wild Fermentation, by Sandor Ellix Katz. So the next batch will have dill weed and celery seed. Not caraway, though. After 25 years of disliking rye bread, last year I finally figured out that I like rye just fine, thanks, but I really don't like caraway. Which makes it one of the very, very few flavors I don't like...usually I dislike a food based on texture, and very little even at that.

So anyway, yay sauerkraut. And also I wanna make kimchee, so on Thursday at the swap I'll try and get a couple heads of bok choy off of a friend who's an organic farmer. Need ginger, though. I want to try freezing ginger...I hear it works well, and I love ginger, but generally don't use it often enough to keep fresh on hand, which has been very frustrating. And also also I wanna make some other fermented veggie, though I vascillate between a turnip and carrot mix vs. a beet and carrot mix. The beets sound lovely, but--and I know this is a bit silly--they'd dye the carrots red too and then the mix wouldn't be as pretty. Also, the author said that a batch of fermented turnips he made was one of his more popular experiments.

Obviously, this book has me...haha...all in a ferment. It's a really wonderful book...exciting, practical, readable, personable, and with a huge heart. What other book would start a section on winemaking with a recipe for "hooch", guest-written by a guy who spent 18 years in prison making booze on the sly? (Hint: it involves fruit cocktail and trash bags). Sandor wanted to make it clear that you don't need fancy equipment.

Also fall-ey is the fact that we've got fun stuff to go to every weekend of October...harvest fests big and small, mostly. I've actually lost track. Dang, do we ever need a calendar. I really, really meant us to have one this year, but we never actually bought one, so my list never got transfered and never made it past June...though I tell ya what, even what I did was enormously helpful and got referred to often. I just can't find a calendar that's everything I want. Which, considering the huge number of calendars out there, is pretty deeply lame.

Jacob magically made a drawer in the kitchen out of what used to be a fake drawer and some hardware he collected off the side of the road. Genius! So now we have a drawer for our maglite, LED headlamp, and batteries (and matches and candles once I get them in there). Happiness. Also, now that they're put together enough, I have confirmed that all of our gallon and half-gallon jars fit upright in the bottom drawers of the new cabinets. That revelation got an enthusiastic round of the Halleluia Chorus from me, much to Evelyn's amusement.

Eeee, I feel positively chirpy today. I swear I get Seasonal Affective Disorder in summer. I love fall so much. On the downside, chirpy doesn't make for coherent reading. So I'm'a gonna stop now.

Putting food by--how much?

2008-09-23T14:18:00.001-07:00

Several days ago I had a useful thought about food storage and preservation, and I'm finally getting around to putting it down here. I'm sure it's not revolutionary or anything, but I hadn't heard it expressly articulated anywhere else, and it's really helping me think about things, so here it is.

Fruits and vegetables constitute the bulk of what we must put away in summer for winter, at least in most households. Most of us tend just to buy our dry goods, and dairy and eggs are more of a year-round proposition, at least with modern, relatively affluent farming practices that allow for, say, winter grain feeding and lighted chicken coops. So this thought is mostly about fruits and veggies, though the same thinking could of course be applied to other stuff if it were relevant to you. (If, for example, you were dependent on your own dairy or eggs--you lucky dog you--then of course there are ways of preserving milk and eggs).

The USDA (leaving aside any doubts we might have about the general validity of their dietary guidelines, let's assume this one's reasonable enough) recommends 3-5 servings of fruits and vegetables per day. I think it's reasonable to say that a seasonal diet would look more like five (or more) servings of fruits and vegetables during the growing season, and three servings the rest of the time. Simply put, then, for every day of summer, you need to average roughly 3 servings of fruits or vegetables per person in the household going into winter storage.

Another useful way of thinking about it would be to multiply 3 by the number of household members by seven to get your weekly average. Or whatever seems appropriate. For example, our household: if I calculate Evelyn in for one adult serving per day for now, and three each for Jacob and me, then in a given summer week we need to put up 49 servings of fruits and/or vegetables.

At first, that struck me as pretty intimidating, but later, as I sliced dozens and dozens of tomatoes for drying, it didn't seem so bad. After all, a lot of preserving projects work best on the large scale anyway, and a serving is not as big as we tend to imagine it. That round of tomatoes probably accounted for nearly our week's total. A quart of apple sauce is, say, five or six servings, and last year we put up twelve quarts: 72 servings. Sauerkraut is another project where you end up with a lot pretty quickly, and for relatively little effort, and of course this sort of thing is where root cellaring really shines--think of the food value:time ratio of properly storing a pumpkin or a few pounds of carrots.

Obviously there's a lot to be said for estimating on the high side--there are going to be losses both small and large (a few nutrients destroyed by heat or time here, a squash rotted before you caught it there), and you never know when you're going to end up feeding more than the usual number of people. One of the joys of a well-stocked pantry has always been being able to feed guests without worrying. And you could just as well estimate for 4 servings per day or whatever, depending on how you prefer to eat. It's just a simple, obvious way of thinking about the question of how much is enough.

The good news and the weird news

2008-09-22T14:42:00.000-07:00

Well, I had my first dentist's appointment in six years or so this morning. I've been experiencing some pretty serious, quality-of-life-reducing jaw pain for quite a while now, and since at first some of it seemed to originate in a spot where I was once told I had a "soft spot" developing, I had assumed that I was looking at some pretty advanced tooth decay.

So the good news is no tooth decay. The weird news is that instead I have a disorder. Namely, bruxism, more commonly known as tooth grinding.

The first two people who heard the news said, "Well, that's good right? No root canals!" Fortunately for me, Jacob and I share a brain (I have been known to refer to "our head"), so he understands. Sure, it's nice to be able to say that I still haven't got a single cavity in my head despite, by conventional standards, abominable dental hygiene. But, well, when we thought it was cavities, I could just be knocked out for a while and someone would FIX IT. Now, though, the problem is just as serious as ever, but, not to be punny or anything, it's in my head. And it's going to be a journey to fix it, and not just a doctor's appointment.

The diagnosis completely blindsided me--I would not have suspected it at all. Now that I've read and thought a little more, I do have a few thoughts, though. First off, I'm pretty sure that I don't actually grind my teeth at all, not even in sleep...I'm pretty sure I'm clenching them, as I've caught myself doing it several times since the appointment and it felt pretty--well, normal. Which leads to my second observation, which is that I'm not at all convinced that the problem is entirely or even primarily nocturnal--in which case the dentist's recommended treatment (the standard treatment) of a night-guard won't really solve it. I also feel like I need to know more, to see to what extent the temporal-mandibular joint might be involved/affected, since I have had ear problems wrapped up with this too.

So far, what this really makes me want to do is hurry up and get an appointment with my mom's naturopath, which I wanted to anyway. I really trust her, and I feel like she could give me a better picture of the full range of options and treatments, plus helping me with other problems that I would really like to resolve.

Basically, I've been trying to clear up my health and get things straight because, well, for one there are obvious quality of life issues. Also, though, my next pregnancy can't afford to be like my first one, not with a toddler running around. There were entire months of my first pregnancy when I found sitting up exhausting and barely had the energy to read--and mind you, I had no actual medical problems. And last, but not least, there is nothing more worth investing in than one's health when it comes to preparing for an uncertain future. I cannot afford to be less than my best if things come to a crisis, and currently I'm a whole lot short of "my best", whatever that may be--I'm confident that I've never approached it even in childhood, actually, since I've always had pretty poor health.

Well, now is the time to end that. Evelyn needs a capable, awake mother and Jacob needs a functional mate. I need to be able to do things without the additional burdens of pain and malaise.

It's just frustrating, because I don't know how much I can realistically do to reduce stress...our life is about as simple as it could reasonably be, we don't take on a lot of commitments, and there's just not really ANYTHING that I feel could beneficially be cut from our schedule. The very few things we do go to outside the home are really important for our mental/emotional wellbeing, just by virtue of their being so rare. Evelyn is what she is and I can't change that any faster than it's changing, and that's the primary source of stress in my life now. And, well, the world is a scary place right now and I really don't think that not thinking about that is a safe or productive answer.

Sigh.

Criticism of Montessori

2008-09-19T03:05:00.000-07:00

My stomach hurts and I can't sleep, so I might as well sit here and work out my Montessori gripes. Sitting in the dark in the middle of the night seems, somehow, like an appropriate time and place to do this, since as far as I can tell, critiquing Montessori is somehow taboo--internet searches on the subject yield pretty much two things--complaints about specific schools and articles about this one professor in the early days of Montessori who for some reason took major exception to the philosophy. Which is funny, because I feel like there's a lot more to say than that.

First of all, I want to make it clear that overall, I like Montessori. In my experience and judgment, there is no better system generally available to the American public for the intellectual development of children. It certainly beats the ever-livin' pants off public school, and public schools would be/have been improved in direct proportion to the number of Montessori concepts they employ. I went to part-day Montessori preschool for one session (my mother worked there as a janitor in order to afford it), and didn't learn anything new 'til second grade. One of my dear friends is a Montessori teacher.

All that said, I do have some significant complaints.

First of all, all I've read about Montessori attitudes and expectations in infancy is seriously flawed. Some examples:

Infants sleep best on their own, and are capable from birth of regulating themselves through the stages of sleep. No and no. This does not reflect either the most current research (infants need practice regulating their physical state during sleep transitions and can benefit significantly, even life-savingly from the presence of an attuned adult) or my personal experience ("Are you serious? AHAHAHAHAHAHA!")
Babies should be weaned from the breast at around one year of age, or they'll get an oral fixation. Uhmmm, NO. The scientific research shows that breastfeeding is beneficial for as long as it continues, and the anthropological research suggests that natural weaning age for humans is somewhere between three and five years old. As for whatever Freudian bullshit an oral fixation is supposed to be, it can't be too crippling, seeing as how the vast majority of humans ever have apparently had one. Personally, I can say that Evelyn now nurses at least as much as she ever did, it's a lifesaver when she's sick or teething, and it really takes a load off my mind to know that whatever solid food she eats, she's still getting good nutrition so long as I'm eating decently.
You should put a young baby on a rug or fleece on the floor so that s/he can watch what the rest of the family is doing and be interested. Yeah, this isn't going to happen with a lot of babies. Certainly not mine. She would not be put down, not even when asleep. My clear understanding is that this is quite common. I suppose this idea is intended as an alternative to sequestering the baby in a crib, though, in which case it's certainly an improvement. What would be far better, even for the easy-going baby who would lie calmly on the floor, would be to wear the baby so that s/he could actually be at the level of the action and in physical contact with a caregiver. The many benefits of babywearing are demonstrable both anthropologically and scientifically (as well as, believe me, experientially), but Montessori philosophy also disapproves of "too much" babywearing on the grounds that it limits physical exploration and hinders gross motor skills. The evidence suggests that this is totally unfounded, and that, indeed, babies who are worn extensively actually gain gross motor skills more easily and sometimes earlier than babies who are not.
Children are naturally ready for and interested in potty training between a year and 15 months or so. This one's funny, because it's one of the more frequently complained about tenets of Montessori, and usually people are complaining that it's just unrealistically early. I'm going to complain that it's just like the conventional opinion, only earlier. The Montessori attitude is that neurological and physical development doesn't allow for the voluntary control of the sphincters and other muscles involved until a year, whereas standard doctrine puts it at around 18 months. I have firsthand experience that this is utter bullshit, since my daughter has been voluntarily peeing and pooping at appropriate times and in set situations since she was, oh, two or three months old? She now often goes to the potty completely of her own volition if we leave her diaper off, and this morning she yelled at the bathroom door to be let into the potty when she had to pee. To any mama practicing Elimination Communication (by whatever name) this attitude is just as wrongheaded as the conventional take...maybe even a little more, since it is generally agreed in the ECing community that after your child becomes mobile it is more difficult to get him/her to sit on the potty.

There are other things. For example, while there are very valid reasons for avoiding plastic toys, the reasons generally given by proponents of Montessori generally sound disingenuous and more like a reflection of their own distaste for the material. It's "cold"--yes, well, so is metal, and my daughter loves to play with metal things and has from the start. "Natural materials are interestingly varied whereas plastic always feels the same"--well, no, actually. Plastic is a highly versatile material, and can be hard or soft, shiny, satiny, or bumpy, etc., and is usually brightly colored, which children love. "Children prefer natural materials"--well, I sincerely wish this were true, but my experience has not borne this out. I have quite a collection of lovely, carefully selected wooden toys, most of which have been played with very little, and a few plastic toys from yardsales, which see at least as much play, though frankly Evelyn can smell a phony from a mile away and largely ignores "toys" altogether. If you're going to choose not to buy your child plastic, do it because it leaches toxic chemicals and will sit in a landfill for hundreds of years before finally breaking down into millions of bits of persistent toxic pollution. That seems like a sufficient reason to me.

The next complaint I see as unfortunate, because I really think that modern Montessori is a privilege of the affluent, and after all it started out with inner city kids. Hand-crafted hardwood shelving units made in the US are wonderful, no doubt, but even we cannot afford to spend $300 on a single set of shelves, much less most of the world. Entire play areas, even rooms, set aside specifically for the child I disagree with in principle as well, because I feel like they create segregation, but they are also an impossibility for many apartment dwellers or people in small (read, reasonable-sized) houses. The focus on beautiful, carefully made toys and materials is laudable in some ways, but even for those of us who can afford an $80 shape sorter, we have to ask if this is actually a wise allocation of money in a world where millions of people don't even have safe drinking water. So no, I don't think that Montessori principles are accesible only to the affluent, but I do think that in practice, the world of Montessori has become populated almost entirely by people with significant disposable income. Certainly the tuition for Montessori schools, however much they might be a reasonable reflection of the schools' costs, is far beyond the reach of many if not most.

And lastly, damn, is it just me or is Montessori anal!? We must be calm, neat, tidy, organized, polite! Teach your child not to splash! Don't let the toys get spread all over the floor! Children love order! Well, yes, some children do have a fierce need for ritual and predictability...and some don't...but I think we should own our own needs and realize that, very often, kids don't give a damn if the house is a mess, and it's really our problem. Anyway, yeah, wow is Montessori ever anal. Like a lot.

Okay, it's no longer the middle of the night and I probably have better things to do than bitch. I would love to hear other people's thoughts, though, if anyone reading has experience with Montessori.

One cubicle wall from disaster

2008-09-18T08:49:00.000-07:00

That's about how I'm feeling right now. Right now, Jacob's company is still booming, and so long as he has his job, we have quite a comfortable cash-flow. We even have savings, which, as noted, is part of the problem, since our bank is among those on shaky footing. I actually have no idea (how sad is that?) what would happen to our money if Wachovia went under in any of the various possible (likely?) ways. But just as there are any number of possible events that could push the US/the world from "badly infected cut" to "systemic illness" status, there just isn't that much between us and a very scary situation.

Say Obama wins the election--an event we would welcome--and starts pulling back troops and decreasing defense spending. Or just say that the economy keeps worsening, which I think we can take for granted. Jacob is a versatile guy, but largely unappreciated, and far from the most senior engineer at work. We calculate that we need over $30K a year just to pay the bills in this, our very modest old house in farm country, with no cable, no cell phones, and old cars. Where is Jacob going to pick up another job with money like that? How far would he have to drive? We live fifteen minutes from the nearest grocery store and 25 from his job as it is. How on earth would I contribute? I might be able to leave the wee one with the neighbor--though it'd kill me to have to--but all I have on offer is an incomplete Associate's degree and a resumé of food and customer service jobs I despised. Not promising.

And yet we keep living like we always have, which is to say frugally but more or less normally (although plenty of people consider it pretty stinkin' abnormal for us to not have cellphones, I guess). Heck, we just spent all that on a kitchen remodel. And I don't regret it, but I do feel tense.

Jacob...I don't quite know how to explain Jacob, or to get through to him. I grew up very poor, so I started from the viewpoint that hard work and perseverance sometimes just get you walked all over (certainly the case for my mother), but Jacob grew up very middle class and I think part of him still believes that poor people are poor through lack of effort, etc., and that basically things will be as they always have been for him. Intellectually, he agrees that the system is fucked, but I don't think that he accepts that it's really, really FUCKED, and that he could be too. He agrees, at least superficially, with the things I read to him from various peak oil blogs and articles, and has started paying attention to the news more closely and so on, and he's a complete partner when it comes to homesteading, etc., but still there's a strong tendency to make a joke of everything and to resist any action that really commits us to the future I forsee as opposed to "normalcy".

For example, he was quite in agreement with me when we reduced his 401K contributions to a very low level, because we had more critical use for the money and considered it an extremely dubious investment anyway. But when I now say that I think it incredibly unlikely that any of that money would be there for us to retire on anyway, or that "retirement" will even have the same meaning by the time we're sixty, and that we might consider just taking the penalties and yanking our money while it's still there, he dismisses the idea. He's there with me most of the way, but he still holds back from full belief.

It's hard to complain...I know a lot of people have much larger disconnects with their spouses than this when it comes to their take on the future. But still...I'm feeling so tense and really wanting to commit to action, and he's hanging back and joking. Maybe I'm just being a whiny punk because wahhh wahhh he's minimizing my worries...but dammit, he IS.

Of course, part of the problem is that I can hardly believe in it at all, and it takes active effort to "live the reality" of what's happening to our world. Mostly I fail. Witness the kitchen: $2K to make the kitchen work better? Sure, totally worthwhile. A few hundred to make sure we have access to the well in case of a power outage? I dunnoh....

Well, anyway, small crabby infant calls.

Money makes me feel stupid

2008-09-16T13:02:00.000-07:00

I have been striving off and on to reach a better understanding of how money works. And it's amazing how hard this is given that I'm a fairly highly intelligent person. I'm not bothered by my initial state of ignorance, or rather, not on a personal level, because we're basically all profoundly ignorant on the subject, and there really are vested interests that wish to keep us that way. THAT is, needless to say, extremely bothersome, but at least it's not because I'm a dumbass or because I snoozed through civics (I did). It does make me feel stupid, though, when I'm actively seeking to understand things--like, say, my mortgage--and am completely boondoggled.

Actually, I think this is because basically I can't bring myself to believe the bullshit that makes the system run. I come from a few thousand years worth of farmers, same as pretty much anyone else, and have the basic agrarian distrust for merchants and money. In feudal Japan merchants were considered the lowest class of people--parasites who created nothing useful. Other cultures, certainly my own, have held similar attitudes. Now, mind, I'm not saying that these attitudes are appropriate--actually, I think they're about as ignorant and counterproductive as the current habit of believing that the people handling our money are basically trustworthy and benevolent and we don't need to worry so long as we play by the rules. What I'm saying is that probably my problem is that I keep expecting this stuff to make sense, and by my sights, it just doesn't. That is, it really is smoke and mirrors without substance.

I keep persevering, though, and I'm making some progress. I feel like I need to, because we still need to make the money system as it exists work for us so long as it does exist. Very little of what we're trying to do around here will matter at all if we can't keep our home, and that, for the forseeable future, means paying our mortgage, which means money and banks.

Right now, I'm finding this video to be enormously helpful. Watch it.

Ugh

2008-09-15T07:00:00.000-07:00

Pretty low on posts here, coming into the toddler years I'm spending more time standing behind my daughter as she goes up and down (and up and down and upanddownupdownup) the stairs than I am read and writing (and thinking). I just really needed to purge a little angst though, because DEAR GOD things are getting scary. Climate is turning nasty in a big way and financial markets are--well, teetering would be a nice way to put it, no?--and I begin to feel like Jacob and I are in a three-legged race against professional sprinters who aren't actually tied. We move at a snail's pace (upanddownandupanddown the stairs), and feel good if we manage to do one preserving project a week and zero other preparedness, and the world we still depend pretty heavily on to function is racing manically towards some invisible but certain tiger pit. Where? When? How long do we have?

We're still critically dependent on electricity for the basic functions of our house--heating, water, food storage, light. We're still fonged without Jacob's high-tech defense industry job. We're still shitty gardeners, as the garden attests too depressingly. Still no rainwater collection. Still no chicken coop. No sun oven, no rocket stove, shit, we haven't even got a solar wax melter slapped together, which is probably the easiest solar project short of a soda bottle on the dash board, and we have dozens of frames of used wax literally molding in the basement. Well, actually, a LOT of things are molding in the basement, including any vegetables we try to store there.

We did make progress this weekend, and good progress too, though as preparedness goes, it's sort of a move sideways, and a gamble on a few more years of relative normalcy and affluence. We bought (most) of the materials for a partial kitchen remodel, so that a) more stuff can be put away, out of the way of good cooking, inquisitive fingers, and weekday evening preserving, b) I can spend the time I would normally have to spend doing the dishes by hand instead making bread or hanging laundry (or standing on the stairs, but ya know). So we're ripping out some really space-wasting installments and an old leaky washing machine we couldn't use and replacing them with better-designed cabinets and a new washer. When we're done, the kitchen will still pretty much look like 1984, but it will be more organized and less cluttered (and, okay, I'm very happy about the oak coutertops), which will be a Good Thing.

For a long time I resisted getting a new dishwasher, because it seemed like a step in the wrong direction to buy a new electric appliance. I was finally persuaded (Jacob thought it was a good idea all along, and only hesitated on the point of repair or replacement) for a variety of reasons. First of all, we have no time and our lives feel out of control and something's got to give, and nothing gets done in the kitchen when first you have to clear every flat surface of dirty dishes. Second, I have a major mental block about washing dishes in still water--I grew up with washing dishes that way, but as soon as it was up to me I switched to running water and I can't seem to make myself do it any other way. I have to steel myself just to reach in and pull the plug on used water after someone else washes dishes...yuckyuckyuck! So anyway, that's the long way of saying that a dishwasher would almost certainly use less water than me. And last but not least, it's not as if turning the dishes over to a machine for now has any long-term repercussions...I'm not gonna forget how to do dishes. It presumably will use a bit more power than the current method, but we've only considered energy star washers, and, well, basically, the cost-benefit analysis came out in favor of the washer. The new washer instead of the repair is because, well, even if we could get it repaired reasonably, the one we have would still be builder-grade crap from 1984. It's been trash for years, and that isn't our fault...it just hasn't been thrown away.

There...is that enough justifications and rationalizations for not getting our butts in gear? Truly, we're trying, but sometimes the news makes me feel panicky that we're not trying hard enough or moving fast enough. And always it makes me hurt hurt hurt for all the people who no longer have our options and opportunities (or never did).

Yard Sale Bonanza

2008-08-18T08:44:00.000-07:00

Boy, we didn't really set out to, but we did a helluva lot of yardsaling this weekend. It was a Friday off day, and I was feeling half-crazed by recent events, the state of the house, etc., so I basically demanded that we drive up to Gettysburg to do some outlet shopping--summer clearance for the baby, some shirts without stains all over them, that sort of thing. Well, we never got as far as the outlets, because Littlestown, which we have to drive through to get there, was revving up for a giant yard sale weekend. We shopped 'til we were exhausted and the baby was howling, and spent over $70--at yard sales, for pete's sake--and filled the car pretty solid. At the very first yard sale, we spent $35, and not a single item more than $1. I loaded up on new-condition textbooks for Evelyn--4 sequential math texts for grades 3-6, sequential readers for grades 1-5 and several other readers, a sixth grade science text, and a children's text-book style book about Europe and Russia, as well as some cookbooks and a volume about Echinacea. Also, a good-condition game of Memory and assorted playdough toys, and some rusty metal bits for Jacob. Over the course of the day we picked up assorted baby clothing, 7 all-wool sweaters, over 100 books, mostly but not entirely children's books, and various other things.

Then Saturday morning we headed out for the farmer's market, and ended up stopping at half a dozen yard sales on the way there, too. Didn't pick up too much, but we did get some more baby clothing, most notably a super soft and super sweet fuzzy brown jacket with, as we term them, "Ewok ears" on the hood. Also a book with attached color-coded laces to help Wyatt learn to tie his shoes, an AC/DC shirt for me so that I can wear it when Evelyn wears her AB/CD shirt, and a couple of Schleich knights and horses (which we are jokingly referring to as Evelyn's My Little Ponies). Also a complete-in-box beginner's wine brewing kit, much like the beer brewing kit we already had, and valued by us as much for the big food-safe bucket as anything else. Also, already operating out in the shop, a dehumidifier. And last, but not least, a blue plastic rocking boat for Evelyn--you know, the Step 2 molded plastic yard toy stuff.

Anyway, that got my shopping yen out safely, and we had loads of fun, and even got more than a few things that we would have bought sooner or later anyway. At this point, Evelyn is set for winter clothes and not too bad for summer clothes for years to come, mostly from yard sales. It's the way to go!

Swapperific

2008-08-14T02:15:00.000-07:00

The latest outgrowth of the excellent local natural/AP parenting group I'm part of is a semi-separate group created for the express purpose of getting together and trading around goods and services; mostly, at this point, produce. In other words, for getting rid of zucchini. ;-) We've met twice so far, and I've nigh-miraculously made both meets (the first time, my mother was in the hospital--up here--and the second time I had to beg a ride AND was getting a cold, so really shouldn't have gone). The first time, I swapped/sold honey, dried peaches, and cucumbers to the tune of about $40 in goods and cash, and today I made something over twenty (again, goods and cash combined) on dried peaches and cucumbers again, a strawberry jam, fresh ground wholemeal flour, and some dried cayenne. I took home tomatoes, fig-raspberry preserves, an orange playsilk for Evelyn, peaches, and some beets. In fact, that's two weeks or so now that I've kept us supplied with tomatoes without actually purchasing any, and our tomatoes aren't in yet. Not half bad!

Next week the swap meet is here, actually, so that's rather exciting and excellent incentive to clean up the yard a bit, at least to cut down on the rusty nail and poison ivy factors (we've been doing this outside, and of course there are small children present). I hope to have more flour, maybe some pickles...ooh, I should do some fruit leather!... a bit more honey, and we'll see what else I come up with. Also, I've invited Nicole to haul some of her stuff over, and she's agreed, so hopefully I can pull her into the fun, too.

I'm very excited about the whole thing, because it represents 1. a way to make money offa surplus stuff, obviously, 2. an excellent development and practice in the informal economy for everyone involved, which I think will be invaluable in the depression to come, and 3. a return to productivity for yards and people largely excluded from the formal economy (at the moment, most of us are stay at home moms). Personally, my garden isn't actually producing much surplus at the moment...the cucumbers are about it and quite possibly will continue that way...so I see my "product line" as being mostly value-added goods like dried fruit, pickles, etc. So far, I've also thought of possibly making some fresh pasta, knitting dish towels and matching cloths around the holidays, making felt balls for the kids, and naturally, loads and loads of sauerkraut. Well, I assume that the audience for sauerkraut will be a little limited, but we'd make tons anyway after last year's excellent experience. Also possibly bean spreads, hummus, cheese spreads, and other prepared dishes. And I hope to create a bit of a regular audience for fresh-milled flour and dried goods. I figure that's a great way to make back some of the money spent on those toys.

So that's my big enthusiasm right now, aside from Evelyn, who is awesome at the moment. I guess about three weeks ago now she took her first independent steps, and by now she's all but dumped crawling and is getting faster and more confident all the time. She's babbling more and showing more receptive language skills, too, which is very nice because I was beginning to think that she was falling rather behind the curve in that department and, of all the places to be a little slow, language is not the one I would have picked. It's been a crazy three weeks with Mamma sick and here nearly three times as long as she meant to be and yadda yadda I won't get into it except to say that it's created a pretty intensive environment for Evelyn, with many more loving adults than usual talking to her and playing with her. Usually, I mostly leave her alone when she's happy, which I feel has value too, but I should probably set aside time on a more regular basis to work/play with her. She likes her new shape sorter and investigates it most satisfyingly. I think she spent a good 15 minutes straight yesterday doing exactly what she was supposed to do, trying pieces in various holes, etc. My acquisitive nature is very eager to see what people will get her for her birthday. We got her a cute wooden tongue drum, which I think she'll like, but whether she does or not, I guarantee the neighbor boys will. Technically the sorter was for her birthday too, but I sorta just opened it when it came and gave it to her...oops. It's not like it makes any difference to her, but I did think that I'd save some things for an actual celebration so that people would know that, in fact, we got her more than one fairly cheap thing. Whatever.

I've also been doing quite well at yard sales the last few weeks. I've picked up more clothing for Evelyn, piles more books for her (I've been reading the "young adult" selections for myself, and so far they're excellent), a manual breast pump to play with, some cute puddle-jumper boots for when she's older and some warm and comfy Robeez boots for this winter (pink, but for 1/7th the original cost I think I can stomach it), and other miscellany. A particularly excellent find is a child's lap harp complete with a stack of tune-sheets that slip under the strings and graph for you what notes to play for only $1.75, presumably because it was out of tune and they lost the tuning key (a wrench worked dandy, but I have hopes of finding a tuning key someday, too). We turned this over to Wyatt on Tuesday, and with a little help he was able to play through about half the songs and put on a concert for Nicole when she came back. He loved it. As far as I know, that was his first experience with making music, so I feel really good about that.

Well, anyway, it's actually the middle of the night. I just woke up to get a snack and pee, and I felt better than I did all day, so stayed up far longer than I should have. I should get my sick butt back in bed.

Cucumbers! And other things

2008-07-23T08:15:00.000-07:00

Last year, our most depressing crop failure (there were several, but such is the price of learning) in the garden was cucumbers. They were insufficiently thinned and parched, despite a fair bit of watering, by the drought. The plants yielded a few bitter, pithy efforts and then died. About the only good thing about that is that they were done early enough that we could pull them out and replace them with a fair crop of turnips.

This year, we were careful to thin rigorously, give the cukes more space, and water obsessively (unfortunately, still from the well, as the rain barrels are still sitting in the driveway mocking us). The other day, we spotted the first fruits of our efforts hiding plumply under the leaves, and picked them and brought them in, with greatest trepidation. Later in the day, my neighbor sent me home from a chat with a cupful of dip made from a spice-mix she was trying out, and my reticence was broken. I cut a good portion of the end off in case on the ends were bitter. I cut off a slice. I admired the fine texture...promising...and finally, I put it in my mouth.

Squeeeeeeeeee! Bestest cucumber EVAR!! No, seriously. It was sweet and flavorful and crisp and cool and delicious, and I do not remember ever in my life eating one that compared, including the one last week from my neighbor's garden. We have had several since, and they've all been up to the mark the first one set. And mind, this is supposed to be a pickling variety! The "eating" variety is less vigorous and hasn't got anything up to size yet.

Currently holding the record for this year's most dismal crop failure are the beets...which is depressing, because the greens looked absolutely lovely, I was very good about thinning them, and it was all very exciting until they completely failed to ever plump out and were thoroughly woody. We have no idea why, which is the main reason it's upsetting. The obvious answer is that we need to get a proper soil test one of these days, instead of just arbitrarily throwing amendments in.

The garden, after several weeks of lull in harvest (and, shamefully, consequent neglect), is recapturing my attention. The tomatoes needed to have been staked a couple of weeks ago at least, and now several are already all gnarly and laid over. The weeds were rank, but I am beating them back most satisfyingly with my newest garden toy--a stirrup hoe. I've wanted one for a while, so we got a cheap-o one to try while we were out on Saturday, and I am delighted. It feels like "scrubbing" the garden like a kitchen floor (not that that's an experience I have nearly as often as I should). You scuffle the hoe (with great effort, if your garden, like ours, is rapidly becoming a meadow) back and forth, then sort of sweep the weeds towards you for collection, and, ta da!, a clean spot! It's terribly satisfying, and much more efficient than any other means we would previously have used. I've gotten about half the garden cleared again, but I badly want to finish clearing the tomatoes before we leave town Thursday night.

Other recent harvests have included some of the onions and all of the garlic. The garlic is lovely, with good-sized heads and all of the spicy, aromatic delight of its farmer's market progenitor. We planted onions in two batches...one as seedlings grown by an organic farmer friend of ours, and the other bought as sets from a big box store by Jacob's sister (the onion seeds we actually bought ourselves never got big enough to bother with). The sets are drooping right and left, and don't seem to be getting very big, but they're crisp and mild, and it's still pretty cool. The seedlings are a bit behind, of course (not least because they were, naturally, planted late), so we haven't pulled any of them. We shall see.

Anyway, yay, the garden proceeds apace. The latest is that I've got the tomatoes half weeded, stakes driven though not yet tied up, and the ground cherries are weeded. Looks like I'll have a good fistful of cukes to take down to my mom's this evening!

a couple addenda

2008-07-20T07:44:00.000-07:00

My clever husband made a couple of good points re: the list which I thought I should mention.

First, as regards canisters of propane fuel: he pointed out that with an adapter and a bit of hose, anything that runs off little Coleman canisters can be run off the big boys, which are 1. cheaper, 2. more convenient because you don't have to switch them out midway through dinner, and 3. exchangeable and therefore more environmentally friendly. Suiting actions to words, we bought said adapter, which should be easy to find, since ours came from Walmart on the Coleman shelves.

Second, he added WD-40 to the handy-man section of the list. That's a pretty solid addition.

I'm feeling pretty good, because after a little shopping yesterday we now have a good stock in hand of most of the list. Since the vast majority of that is stuff we use anyway, the main effect is that we've saved money by buying the value-sized packaging and saved hassle by not having to go to the store for any of this stuff any time soon. If that's all this round of "stocking up" ever comes to, then I am well satisfied.

Stocking Up

2008-07-17T08:52:00.000-07:00

So I've renewed my interest in setting things by thanks to Sharon's post here, and I've been trying to come up with a list of things. We already do grab up whatever we see that's good of most of the things Sharon mentioned, though I haven't yet gotten into the habit of buying up future sizes of shoes (partly because I'm so fussy about the quality/utility of shoes and partly just because Evelyn doesn't even actually wear shoes yet, so I'm not in the habit.) There's a fair bit she hasn't gone into detail on yet, though I hope she will. In trying to come up with my own very specific "shopping list", I also referred to the list mentioned in the comments, which I had seen before.

As before, mostly what strikes me about this second list is how much of it I don't really give a damn about, or don't consider an issue. Shaving supplies? No one really shaves around here anyway, but even if we did, I don't know that we'd consider it critical in an emergency situation. I mean, I'm not faulting the list per se...at the end it talks about retaining your humanity, and probably for some people that includes shaving. But for us? Not so much, unless you consider that we're already pretty much barbarians anyway. A generator is not on our list either, for all of the reasons mentioned. They're noisy, smelly, and nasty, they don't do jack if you don't have fuel anyway, and as some Katrina survivors can attest, they attract...ummm...an unwelcome element.

Baby supplies are another interesting area. Well, yes, I suppose I have stocked up on baby supplies, in that with any luck I already possess every diaper any child of mine will ever need up to about a year old or more. Which would take a lot of space if they weren't cloth. And the only external thing I need to keep us in salve is olive oil. Basically, I already buy absolutely nothing from the baby aisle, so stocking up on stuff I don't use would be a bit odd, unless I meant it for barter. On the other hand, it has seriously occurred to me to deliberately lactate for as long as I can keep it up, just in case. Feminine hygiene products are the same...so long as I have a good stash of both cloth pads and cloth wound dressings, I don't need to stock up on the disposables.

Again, I'm not bashing the list (at least, for anything but being thoroughly disorganized). On the contrary, I'm finding it useful. It's just that, ultimately, everyone has to make their own list. Which is annoying, I know. I do like to see what other people have thought of, though, so I thought I might put down what I've come up with so far.

It's a big subject, and now that I'm thinking about it, there are a lot of lists to be made. That's okay...I'm a list person. I like lists. This first list is probably best termed "household expendables". It's not emergency-oriented, and it doesn't include tools and other large, one-time purchases. It also doesn't include food--that's a whole 'nother topic.

Speaking of which, one last thing before the list. Some people always have various objections to stocking up, or hoarding, as it may be.

The first is that "hoarding" deprives other people of needed resources. Which it does, in times of scarcity. Which, happily, we haven't hit yet. Right now it's still a "just in time" economy, and demand mostly dictates supply. If I buy something now and then save it, the result is rather that someone else might have it that would otherwise not, if I choose to share. Also, most of the things on Sharon's list, for example, and my analogous list that hasn't yet been made, are things that people are already getting rid of. A good deal of what Jacob and I have set by for hard times is stuff that people were actually throwing away. With that stuff, we save everything that opportunity affords, and we most certainly will share it if people need it.

Another argument is that if society really collapses, then we're going to have to find alternatives anyway, so why not begin that way? That's a dumb enough argument that I think it's probably just a cover for avoidance, but consider: do you want to learn how to grow your own food and make your own shoes and brush your teeth with twigs and wipe your butt with leaves and cook over wood and make twine from weeds all at once, or would you like to be able to delay some of those projects a while? Besides, for all we know, there'll only be a temporary disruption in supply. Or none. Maybe we'll just be too broke to buy this shit. I tell you what: if nothing happens worse than Jacob losing his job, I'll still be mighty fucking glad I stocked up.

And for those of you with a minimalist aesthetic, well, all I can say is 1. Suck it up. Minimalism is pretty clearly a reaction to an affluent society, and while it's a reasonable one, it probably has no place in a poor society. 2. Get yourself some nice built-in storage so you can have it all organized and out of sight. Also, remember...the point is that this IS the minimum you need--just a lot of it at once. I am still a firm believer in “Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.”

Last but not least, there's the "how will you protect your stash" argument. Well, hell, how do you protect anything? First choice would be to not give away that you have anything to steal. Are people going to know that I have a couple gallons of vodka in my upstairs bathroom cabinet? Only if I put out a sign. Meanwhile, I don't have much patience with the idea of just not getting anything because someone might try to take it away. Just, uhh, try not to look too prosperous or something. Shouldn't be too hard for us...we look like hobos most of the time.

Okay, anyway, now I'm just procrastinating having to organize the list. Again, this list doesn't include any of the "big stuff", tools, etc. This list consists entirely of what, in shop talk, are known as "expendables"--i.e., you use them up. Well, or in some cases substitutes for expendables, as in cloth diapers. Also, this is MY list. You, obviously, may not need diapers or contact solution. Anyway, enough quibbling, here we go:

Personal hygiene:

Toothbrushes
toothpaste
floss
soap
witch hazel (for blending w/ var. herbs)
rubbing alcohol
baking soda
vinegar
soap
extra contacts
extra glasses
contact solution
toilet paper
hand sanitizer
baby wipes (not for baby...I use cloth for that. In case of water scarcity.)
Menstrual supplies (cloth for preference, since we have every reasonable expectation of a steady water supply)
Diapers (see above)
mineral salt deodorant

Handyman stuff:

duct tape
zip ties
Misc. hardware: screws, nails, bolts, etc. (whatever you find free or cheap. Jacob almost never has to purpose-buy hardware because he scrounges it whenever he finds it.)
tarps
twine
rope
Sharpies
sand paper

Kitchen (not food):

Canning jars and extra lids
cleaning rags
propane canisters (assuming you have a camp stove that uses them)
cheese cloth
dish soap
scrubbies

Cleaning:

baking soda
washing soda
borax (I make our laundry soap w/ washing soda, borax, and bar soap)
white vinegar
lye (for soapmaking, assuming you have any interest in that)
any cleaning products you don't really want to be parted with (in my case, Dirtex for the hardcore dirt and Goo Gone for the sticky messes).
Rags
Paper towels (for some things they really are easier than cloth)

Clothing:

Socks
Underwear
extra work clothes (Jacob destroys jeans and t-shirts like you wouldn't believe)
work gloves
extra pair sturdy work boots (again, you wouldn't think these were expendables if you didn't know a man like Jacob)

(I started to list a lot more stuff and then remembered that this is supposed to be expendables...so just remember, there's a lot more here).

Medical:

small bandages
sterile cloth or gauze bandages
Ibuprophen
vodka (for making tinctures)
rubbing alcohol
antiseptic (we make our own--Kloss' Herbal Liniment)
general-purpose salve (again, homemade in our case)
echinacea
herbal expectorant syrup (we should make our own...get back to me on that)
vitamin C
arnica gel (for bruises and strains)
throat lozenges
Benadryl
sunblock
aloe (a good healthy plant by preference)
surgical tape
q-tips
other stuff I'm not thinking of now cuz this should probably be its own list dear god.

General household:

sewing needles
thread
buttons
trash bags
safety pins
candle wicking (we have shitloads of scrap candles for wax, bought dirt cheap)
flashlight batteries
aluminum foil
ziploc bags
paper
pens
pencils

Okay, that's it for now, I've had enough punishment. Now the figuring out a reasonable schedule for getting what we don't have. Jacob'll have a twitch.

Oh, right...whoops. Wooden matches and condoms.

A thought

2008-07-15T19:48:00.000-07:00

I just realized that when I describe Evelyn as "willful" (which, being extremely willful myself, I for one don't mean as a negative) I am referring to exactly the same traits that I refer to when I call her "independent". And, of course, people want their children to be independent and castigate them for being willful.

It's nothing new...I recognized long ago that I love Jacob for his intense practicality and thrift, and have to accept his matching complete lack of romance and tendency to stinginess. I just grok the concept that little bit better now.

Little Trekker

2008-07-14T13:45:00.000-07:00

Evelyn and I are on better terms after naps all 'round. We're upstairs again by her choice....I was cleaning up the living room in preparation for tomorrow's weekly assault by the neighbor boys, and went to see what Evelyn was shredding in the library only to find that she wasn't in the library at all, but 1/3 of the way up the stairs! (Bad Mama, bad Mama.) So I cheered her on, and she trucked right up the whole way smooth as you please.

It's funny...I'm starting to think of her as a toddler, even though she's neither one nor walking. She's just changed so much and become so capable in the last couple of weeks...I can't quite explain it. We can play games with her, like rolling/tossing a ball back and forth. She can climb all over the couch. She can get into the kitchen cabinets. She can walk with her walker wagon and cruise along furniture without even seeming like she's trying. She just hasn't worked up the interest to try walking on her own!

Of course, this means that her preference is to be busybusybusy, and already we have struggles over her wanting to do things herself and explore everything and that just not being possible all the time. Today we had multiple meltdowns over her wanting my lunch, which she couldn't have chewed. She loves yogurt, also, but wants to feed it to herself and can't, wants more yogurt but won't give the spoon back, etc. I need some better baby dishes. I'd really like something like the Baby Björn dish and spoon set, but 1. I can't quite wrap my head around paying $20 for a plastic dish, and 2. I'd have to pay shipping on top of that, since I don't think anyone local carries them. But I do need to get the small one some more spoons. Her pretty silver ones from her aunt are AWOL and have been for weeks.

Basically, I need to work some more on her being able to do for herself, because she is an independent little soul. The misconception that attachment and dependence are the same thing is stubborn--I assure you, such is NOT the case. When she wants to do a thing, she will brook no interference...no matter how far beyond her her selected task may be. And, to be fair, once she decides she wants to do a thing, it's only a matter of time, even if it seems developmentally wildly beyond her. When she started trying to take the tiny (yes, like choking hazard tiny...mama gives her the best things) press-fit lid off the baby oil bottle and put it back on, I figured it was an exercise in frustration...a few days later, she could do it almost without trying. So the lesson is that if she wants the damn spoon, I need to give her the yogurt and a spoon she can handle and stand back (way back).

And she smiles and laughs more these days. Can't complain. ;-)

Squeeeee

2008-07-14T06:52:00.000-07:00

My birthday present from Jacob is a Country Living grain mill!!

It should be here Wednesday, so yesterday we went to the co-op and got hard wheat and soft wheat and buckwheat (the only thing I've ever made with it is pancakes, but Jacob has an interest in it because he wants to grow it as a cover crop and for the bees) and oat groats. I am terribly, terribly excited. The Country Living is supposed to be pretty much the best hand mill out there. Clever Jacob even called the company (he made a phone call....that's how you can tell he cares. We HATE calling people.) to see if they had any seconds, and they had one with a powder coating flaw, which, you know, who really cares?, and so he got it for $50 off plus a free "Power bar" extension handle that makes turning easier! So that's an $80 savings because I probably would have wanted the handle. Eventually we'll get it set up in the basement with the exercise bike to power it (see, we knew that stupid thing would be useful someday), but at first I expect I'll want to admire it in the kitchen a bit.

My plan for the first batch of wheat is chocolate chip cookies. That's rather more likely of success first off. I'll also have to make a re-run of the blueberry muffins I made yesterday, for a direct comparison to storebought flour. Then I can work on learning to make bread....though, considering I never find time to even do something as simple as making yogurt, which takes a tiny fraction of the time of bread, I have some....uhh...time-management groundwork to do.

On a very similar note, last week I grew some balls and finally went and got a pressure cooker...I spent the money to get a decent one, so it's stainless with a laminate bottom and handles on both sides, etc. I've used it twice so far and I'm in love. I made swiss steak and chicken broth. The chicken broth I did in 35 minutes and the meat fell off the bone like I'd cooked it for hours and hours. What a fabulous way to save time, heat, and energy! And nutrition, too, since it's cooked for shorter times and much less escapes as steam. Next dish should be beans of some sort. I still have to remember to soak them, but I could put them to soak in the morning and then after only a little cooking have them for dinner. Should be GREAT! The swiss steak was good, though since I'm still getting the hang of the pressure cooker thing I just used the recipe straight, whereas normally I would have modified some seasonings and such. For me, the main thing I learned from that was that cooking the meat and veggies together worked better than I feared. The veggies were as cooked as I could be happy with, and the meat could have been more cooked and it would have been okay, but overall it worked fine. Next time I'll be experimenting with depressuring and adding stuff partway.

Alright, I'm'a gonna go now, because Evelyn and I are just NOT on the same page today.

Food Daze

2008-06-26T15:36:00.000-07:00

Making major dietary changes is such a huge challenge. Jacob and I have, historically, preferred to make such changes slowly, and so far we've had a fair bit of luck with that. I no longer object to whole wheat sandwich bread, for example, and we now drink copious amounts of water. We go through eggs a lot faster than we used to, but still not as fast as we'd like to given their sheer excellence as a food and our plans to have chickens. I now make and use bone broth at least occasionally, and it's starting to seem pretty easy and straightforward. And eating a lot of local and seasonal food--though we are certainly not as rigorous about this as we would ultimately like to be--is becoming more and more automatic for us.

So much for credit where credit is due. Sometimes, though, a body gets to feeling guilty for taking the slow and lazy way, or starts to wonder how much better it'd feel with a truly good diet (as opposed to a better-than-average diet, which, given the benchmark, might still be quite bad). Or, of course, there's always good old-fashioned mother guilt OhgodwhatifI'mstuntingmybabyforlife. Goldfish, while convenient, probably do not qualify as the height of infant nutrition.

The guilt, for me, mostly originates with the fact that I am more or less completely in control of what we eat in this family. Jacob is quite happy to just be fed, with fairly minimal input in exactly what he's eating, and he would have no problem eating any of the things I would consider trying to feed us. Evelyn, so far, is similarly obliging, and generally gums down whatever she's given, the only significant exception so far being potatoes. And for me, the limiting factors are, quite simply, time and ingenuity. Mostly time, although even for me ingenuity is not at its high point at 9 pm, which is often when we get around to dinner these days.

Well, and even that's not honest...I stay at home. I have all the time in the world. It's the freedom to do something constructive with said time that I lack. In one word, Evelyn. Things are getting better, though. She's more prone to getting busy playing with things for long stretches now. It's still risky, because you never know when she's going to be done playing and want Mama NOW, but it's an improvement.

But I've spent the bulk of the last two days brushing up on my nutrition, and I've got a couple of books I want to order, and I want to dig in. What's called for more than anything else is time management and good planning. For example, that broth has to be started hours or even days in advance, and the same goes for beans. Vegetables must be harvested/bought and then used in a timely fashion. You need to keep track of what you have and what you need, and make the best use of it you can, while keeping things tasty and varied. It'd be unfair to beat myself up about this too much...it's difficult stuff when it's still all new to you. And inserting something into your schedule where it didn't used to be (like the few minutes to make yogurt, and then the few to maintain it) is tricky, especially when, well, you haven't GOT a schedule.

Okay, this is not a useful post. It's only a disorganized purging of my many feelings about improving our household diet, which I'm excited about. Wish me luck!

Raaaaaaa

2008-06-25T13:54:00.000-07:00

aaaaaaaaaah!

I HATE being so isolated. I hate my mother being all alone five hours away and crying because she can only see her granddaughter every month and a half-two months. I hate being alone with Evelyn all day. I hate Evelyn being bored because she's alone with ME all day. I hate never getting anything done all day because I can't seem to balance working and coping with her needs. I hate Jacob coming home at 8-9 at night every day. I hate hardly ever seeing my friends, and feeling guilty when I DO see them because of the gas consumed. This is STUPID, and I don't see a way around it.

When there are multiple people around for her to watch, Evelyn is so much happier. When there are multiple people around to watch HER, I'm so much happier, and so much more gets done. I would honestly be perfectly glad to share living space with multiple other adults, but the world just doesn't work that way any more!

Living in ones and twos is inefficient, emotionally unstable, socially detrimental, wasteful, and supremely inconvenient. It's STUPID. How did we get so trapped? I've felt like this for years and never seen a way clear to do anything about it.

Thank goodness we at least have one set of neighbors we're very close to...without that, I'm not sure the situation would even be bearable.

Jacob, of course, doesn't see things quite the same way, since he's around lots of people most days, and almost never home alone, and even if he were, he's a true hermit...he sincerely wouldn't mind. And, of course, he's never stuck alone with the baby for more than an hour or so.

Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid...

Fuck moneygrubbing doctors

2008-06-20T00:17:00.000-07:00

There, is that a clear enough start to my post?

The issue, laid out pretty clearly here (and elsewhere, I'm sure, but I'm lazy) is that the American Medical Association has joined forces with ACOG to oppose homebirth, and, get this, is saying they're going to try and obtain legislation making homebirth illegal. This is totally a reactionary move, and one that I'm pretty confident is sure to fail, since the whole reason for the white-coats (sheesh, I need to improve my command of offensive slang for doctors) getting up in arms is that, well, homebirth is gaining ground pretty rapidly. Which is fair, because it totally kicks the ass of hospital birth, statistically and anecdotally and any way you wanna look at it.

You can see the doctors' point...after all, it's their jobs at stake. And fundamentally, ACOG and the AMA are unions. Unions which apparently are okay with jeopardizing the lives and health of mothers and babies and criminalizing new mothers in order to protect their livelihoods.

I have no inclination to try and treat this subject in a "balanced" way, and honestly I can't think of what I might say in support of the doctors anyway. Scientifically, they haven't got a leg to stand on when they say that all babies should be born in hospital, and socially, I think the boat's already left the harbor and they are, for once, overestimating their political clout. But just in case they try to sneak something in there, I thought I'd relay this. One more time, in case I haven't been clear: Fucking moneygrubbing doctors can fucking bite my ass, and even if they somehow make homebirth illegal I'm having my babies at home.

The End.

Money is time

2008-06-17T21:46:00.000-07:00

Well, we're trying to do so damn much these days that we've officially hit the point where we probably ought to just buy something rather than find the time to make it.

I'm not even sure how this happens. We don't engage in any weekly activities, we go out--generally to buy groceries--about once a week, we aren't part of too many clubs or anything. There's really nothing to 'simplify'. What we're doing is very simple...trying to keep up with the house and the yard. And I know that Evelyn is a big part of this, but I swear to you, we just can't do it.

At least, that's what it feels like to me, and perhaps to a lesser extent, to Jacob. Earlier this evening, I was trying to decide whether to do dishes or continue scrubbing rust off of a hand-me-down toy for Evelyn, and Jacob commented that the only sure thing was that whichever one I picked, the other one would just keep getting worse. Or, as I replied, if you're weeding, then the planting's falling behind, and if you're planting, the weeds are growing. My mother used to sing a traditional song that went, "Today is Monday, tomorrow's Tuesday, Wednesday will soon be comin' on...better get up and get moving; the week's half over and the washing ain't done."

There would be enough time, however, if I could, you know, actually get stuff done during the weekdays. But I can't, because I'm either trying to keep Evelyn happy or watching her. If we had a better prepared environment for her, chances are good that she would be happier AND I wouldn't have to watch her so closely. So what I need is a better prepared environment. But that takes large quantities of this mutable time/money stuff, in some combination. It moves from the basic, like installing cabinet locks in the kitchen and baby gates at strategic points (which is not simple either, because at least one of those spots really calls for a custom gate and we'd like to make one but there goes more time...) to the more cerebral, like Waldorf- and Montessori-inspired play areas equipped with high-quality toys ($$$). And then there's the simple and perpetual fact that a cleaner environment is a safer one, but you can't clean effectively while you're watching the kid in your not-all-that-safe house. And she doesn't like to be worn unless she's outside, of course, and then god forbid you do anything but walk around.

There's a long list of things I'd really like to have which Jacob could certainly make (rocket stove, solar ovens, collinear hoe, solar wax melter, solar dehydrator, etc., etc.) but Jacob has more than enough on his plate without any of those, never mind all of them. So at what point do we just say, ahh hell, we DO have money, let's just buy something for once? I'm there, but I think Jacob will never get there. Also, whenever I mention buying something for Evelyn, the fact is that he's not the one spending his day trying to keep her away from the bookshelves or the computer power source or the pantry or or or or and he's not the one that's desperate for a little peace and sanity, even the CHANCE of a little peace and sanity, even if it costs $150. I feel like I have to show him a powerpoint with incontrovertible proof that such-and-such item will repay its full value within the first child's worth of usage or something.

I am a firm believer in making things for oneself and making do and we DO..but dammit, I'm dancing as fast as I can.

Goddamn dirty hippies

2008-06-01T01:50:00.001-07:00

I've been meaning to write this post for a long time, but besides obviously never having any time, I keep turning back from the brink before completely alienating myself from polite society. Well, today it's friggin' 5 in the morning and my baby won't sleep or let me sleep so I'm just dumb enough right now to jump off the cliff.

Every time someone mentions conserving water by showering less often or cutting back on laundry or washing hair less and invites comments on what other people do, I always read a long string of, "Oh, I'm cutting back, I shower every other day, but I only wash my hair when it NEEDS it, like, 2 or three times a week..." sort of responses. I'm specifically thinking of this post at Crunchy Chicken's blog, but there have been others. She just straight up asked what people's habits were, and I'll give you the first response, because it is overwhelmingly representative:

"1. Shower every other day
2. Wash hair every other day
3. Brush teeth twice a day
4. Floss once a day
5. Haircut twice a year
6. Soap and toothfloss is natural, shampoo and toothpaste is conventional
7. I'm showering less"

Now, these are generally environmentally conscious people. These are the readers of a woman who uses and heavily promotes reuseable menstrual products, gardens seriously, and has buy-nothing and use-no-plastics type challenges. It's not a mainstream group. I'm kind of forced to assume that even among the water-saving set, this is the standard. It probably sounds quite reasonable to you, the theoretical reader.

Well, I've never responded before (in that case, not least because there were fricking dozens of responses before I even read the post) because clearly I am so beyond the pale that I wasn't sure what purpose responding would serve. But...

Dear fricking GOD people, why do you all spend so much time compulsively cleaning yourselves? I know it doesn't seem that way to you, but it sure as hell does to me.

Okay, okay, let's start this way. I'll just respond to the questions Crunchy asked.

1. How often do you shower/bathe?
In cool weather, maybe as little as every couple weeks. In hot weather, if I'm outside working, maybe every day. It depends on, you know, whether I got dirty, or if I smell bad, crazy stuff like that.

2. How often do you wash your hair?
Every few weeks. Seriously. At first it's really gross, but after a couple months...well, for the first week and a half or so I'm pretty sure if you handled it you'd assume I'd washed it the day before...it keeps the just-washed frizzies that long. After that it tapers off until by the end, yeah, it's pretty greasy, mostly because it is impossible to wash over three feet of hair while holding an infant, so I don't get to do it as often as I'd like, which would probably be more like every two weeks. When it's dirty, I cover it. Simple enough. My hair is much healthier and more manageable for it. My mother follows a similar regime, and she swears she gets far more compliments on her hair than she did before.

3. How often do you brush your teeth?
Depends on if I'm on a kick. I really do think that I should brush them every day--currently I do--but plenty of times I don't. 'Course, I also eat very few sweets, so presumably that makes a difference.

4. How often do you floss?
Uhhhh...wildly irregularly? When I have stuff caught in my teeth, which is to say all the time? Or next to never, if you only count a full-mouth flossing.

5. How often do you get your hair cut?
Every year and a half or so I get around to having my mom trim the dead ends.

6. Do you use "natural" products or more conventional ones?
I use that crystal deodorant stuff (in the summer, none in the winter), Tom's toothpaste (when I use any), baking soda and vinegar on my hair, handmade soaps or Dr. Bronner's pretty much exclusively, oat flour and dilute vinegar on my face.

7. Have any of these habits changed as you've tried to live a greener lifestyle? If so, which ones and how?
I started using more natural products, but it's been quite a while now. Years, in all cases.

This is me, Jacob's actually a lot grubbier than me. He gets dirty more and washes less. I wish he washed his hair more, but he can't be bothered. I like that he smells like a human being. The time I ran out of detergent hand ended up using a scented detergent, the first time I hugged him and he smelled like Whisk I flipped out. (We never used the rest of the Whisk). When I can smell him without hugging him, I tell him so and he usually washes in short order. We also re-wear clothing fairly extensively compared to most.

So here's the thing: Obviously our habits are way, waaay beyond the pale for your average North American, though not by any means for everywhere. But we get sick at roughly the usual rate. We have as many friends as we want and more than we can keep track of, and neither of us has any trouble making friends. None of our (much more conventional) friends has ever taken either of us aside to quietly comment that we might consider a moment with the deodorant, and we don't get suddenly offered mint gum. Jacob has a good, white-collar job and routinely gets an above-average merit raise. Our teeth are in average/better than average condition. Our skin is average/better than average. Am I missing any of the dire tv-ad threats?

So what benefit, exactly, is everyone else getting from the hundreds more dollars, thousands more gallons of water, and god knows how many more minutes per day they're spending on personal hygiene? I don't think they're healthier, and I sure don't think they're happier. They might be closer to godliness. Who knows.

slogging along

2008-05-27T09:22:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I feel like getting stuff done around here is like trying to push through an invisible wall of glue. This weekend (a four day weekend for our family) my mother came up, and we had a great honking huge list of things to do. Out of roughly, say, 25 list items, we accomplished around 7. Of course, as per usual, I was the only one paying much attention to the list, so several things got done that were not on the list, most of which were worthy. For example, we picked pounds and pounds of strawberries and processed quite a few of them, cut and hung to dry rather a lot of raspberry leaves, and bought and planted some very unexpected elderberry bushes. On the other hand, Mamma decided that it would be a good use of time to weed-whack, scrape, and sweep the front sidewalk, which would have gone undone indefinitely had it been left to us. All in all, though I complain, I really feel a hundred percent better than I did last week, because what we DID get done was the most important stuff...the house is once again clean enough to be functional, and all the plants that were dying in containers by the parking lot are now planted. The yard still looks a fright, the garden is still well behind and getting weedy again, and my personal project list (sewing, cooking, crafty type stuff) is, as always, utterly untouched, but things could be (have been) much worse.

Of course, the aforementioned dying plants may yet die, but at least now we've done what we can for them. We planted several golden raspberry canes, a sassafras sapling, an elder bush, and a mulberry seedling, all dug from the yard of a coworker of Jacob's. If they fail, well, at least we didn't pay for them. The raspberries should be fine, at the least. We also divided a couple of clumps of echinacea and planted a couple more seedlings, so as to fill out the sweep of echinacea that backs my front flower bed. The marigolds and calendula finally got planted in front of the vegetable garden. When we finally get around to tackling the compost heap (I'm confident that somewhere down inside there's some actual compost, despite us) I'll top dress the new trees to apologize to them for their cavalier handling and planting. It takes Jacob so long to gouge planting holes out of our rock-and-clay yard that none of the trees got more than a sprinkling of fertilizer-heavy potting soil before he had to come inside for the night.

We decided not to go to the big local Memorial Day auction, so as to have more working time, and were amply rewarded for our forbearance. Jacob's family spent the weekend sorting and distributing his grandmother's possessions (she died a year ago), and on Monday afternoon they stopped by with a load of things for us. Jacob got great piles of tools in various condition, further cluttering his uphill battle of a shop. For the house we got, among other cool things, three wool blankets and a bunch of other linens. Now, I personally think a body can never have too many blankets, because you never know, and fabric is one of the fundamental useful things, so I'm pleased as punch. Along with buckets, jars, bottles, wood, metal stock, hardware, and tools, we "hoard" whatever blankets we come across, and these are definitely nice additions. (For obvious reasons, I'm glad that this house came with ample storage space!)

Well, that's the weekend...things move slowly, but we just gotta keep slogging along.

Motherhood is...

2008-05-19T06:23:00.001-07:00

Trying to check your email and eat breakfast with a baby chewing on your knee and a cat standing in your lap. Damn cat never sits. Loves laps, doesn't get the sitting thing. And I have no idea why my knees are so tasty. Well, as a general thing, that is. Right now they're tasty due to the pizza crust residue she saved there last night.

In the interest of gender equity, I should point out that, at the moment, fatherhood is the fine art of standing outside the bathroom holding the howling baby who only wants all mama, all the time and acts as if papa has nettles for fingers.

Sigh...

I may be crazy

2008-05-03T20:18:00.000-07:00

I think I want to start carrying a couple of heavy-duty trash bags around in the back of the car in case of compostables. For example, today we went to the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival, and the field they had people parking in had been mowed, but the hay wasn't gathered, and it was pretty thick on the ground. I'm kinda nuts for compost, and it hurt my teeth to see all that good organic material going to waste. Or another example--I was just looking through old pictures on the computer, and came across our shots of the tractor-powered sawmill, giant pile of sawdust in the background. At the time, I wished after that sawdust pile, and seeing it again, I still do. I like finely textured mulch to go around my garden plants, and I'd be quite happy to experiment with sawdust. My understanding is that, so long as you put down a little nitrogenous material underneath it, sawdust is fine stuff.

Anyway, I think I will. Most people think that compostables are trash, so they're free for the taking most anywhere you go. Might as well be prepared.

La Vida Crunchy

2008-05-02T11:42:00.001-07:00

Jacob is out mowing the yard with our reel mower while wearing Evelyn in the Ergo. I'm in making cherry pie with the cherries we picked and froze last summer and drinking cold herb tea. Yeah, so the pie crust is bought...Rome wasn't built in a day.

Must write post quickly!

2008-04-30T05:43:00.001-07:00

Well, so far this writing thing isn't actually going so well, huh? Evelyn just this week has discovered that crawling is not only a means to get to that cool toy if what's around her isn't interesting enough, but also fun in and of itself. Also, usually where she wants to be is under the office chair clinging to my leg and fussing for attention. Also also, I dunno, maybe she's teething, cuz she's been a major crankypants and I swear I'm gonna get bedsores if we spend any more time dozing and nursing in bed. So this week so far has mostly been a struggle just to keep up with her--so far she's unplugged the computer and done something unfortunate with slobber to the camera's USB cable.

She is absolutely insistent on flipping over mid diaper-change, such that when Jacob is home we actually double-team her, with one of us holding her shoulders down and the other diapering. Doing it alone is exhausting, and I am HUGELY grateful that we do infant potty learning, because it means that I can just leave her diaper-free between naps now and not fight it. I am, however, going to contact my new seamstress friend (who is about to have a baby and is interested in infant pottying too) about little training pants like these. That and cloth pads, for when that becomes relevant again (may it be a distant day!).

All of this disorganized babbling does put me in mind of a greater truth, though--changing your lifestyle and being sustainable is an everyday, intimate, sometimes even boring thing. Here we have fine examples of both reduce (infant pottying reduces diaper use and thus water consumption) and reuse (cloth diapers, trainers, and pads). We also have a fine opportunity to support the local economy (going to a local seamstress rather than buying online). Not only is this true for our household, though, but it continues the process of inspiring other local mamas to do the same.

We just keep plugging away and doing little things, and they add up. After several days of work, Jacob has dug up the sod on a berry bed nearly as large as our current vegetable garden, and transfered gravel from the ugly tatty driveway area we don't want to the berry-patch path we do want. His bulk coal bin made entirely from scrap materials and oops paint is almost done, and will be an extraordinarily fine coal bin. My neighbor recycles now because we do. My mother-in-law got a table cloth at the thrift store and cut it up for cloth napkins at least in part because she saw us always using cloth napkins. I've started hanging out laundry again with the nice weather. When Jacob gets a moment, he'll figure out how to turn down the hot water heater, which we should have done long ago (it's very large and running very hot).

And, rather excitingly from my point of view, we just ordered a new Ergo baby carrier. The hope and expectation is that with this carrier, I will be able to wear Evelyn easily on my back and get more done. I can wear her on my back in the Mei Tai that Mamma made me, but it's a real trick getting her there on my own and she scrunches and sags and pulls on my shoulders rather badly. I am hoping (though not expecting) that the package will come by the time we leave for the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival on Saturday. If it doesn't, obviously I can use the Mei Tai, but it'd be pretty cool if it did.

Last but not least, I've just had an epiphany regarding my extremely low energy and physical weakness lately. One of those painful, stupid, but nonetheless extremely useful epiphanies. If I had to guess, I'd guess that I am currently extremely anemic. Duh. At least that's fixable, eh? Wish I could figure an easy solution like that to this cranky, cranky baby.

The elephant in the corner

2008-04-23T06:09:00.001-07:00

It's always been a bit weird preparing for a crisis that most people either have never even considered or think is hogwash (got into a conversation at the seed-n-feed yesterday with the clerk, who thought climate change was a joke), but over the last few months, as the news gets more and more uniformly awful, it's gotten much weirder. Almost every conversation I have with anyone but my husband or mother starts to feel like having a conversation about the weather while someone is unexpectedly bulldozing the neighbor's house. If I feel comfortable enough with a person, I might refer obliquely to the fact that things aren't, you know, going so well, are they?, but what I really want to do is run door to door through my neighborhood yelling "Hello! What is wrong with you people?! Wake UP while you still have a chance to do something to help yourselves!" And I don't see that being well-received.

What's really becoming uncomfortable to me is that I'm part of two local groups, one a sustainability discussion group looking to become something more, and the other an AP-natural parenting group, that both probably contain a high ration of people who would be receptive to some information...even painful information. And yet so far I've said nothing. I mean, generally these are people who know that things as they are are not things as they should be, and more to the point, are not sustainable. But I haven't piped up yet to say that not only are they not sustainable, they're going to stop "sustaining", so to speak, pretty much any minute now.

Part of it is misplaced mercy, certainly. I hesitate on the verge of posting a revealing blog link or comment to the listserv, thinking about the numbing fear I first felt when I was introduced to the ideas of peak oil, imminent climate change, and the myriad other "smaller" problems lurking just under the smooth surface of the world. Part of it, certainly, is just simply not knowing what to say. "The world is totally fucked up and we're all screwed!" is a pretty good summary, but not very useful or likely to be received well. But neither of those is a remotely good enough reason to deprive these people of a potential chance to try and shield themselves and their loved ones from the worst of what is to come, so in the end I guess it's cowardice as much as anything.

Same as everyone else, I still want to act like everything's normal. I still want to be known as friendly and easygoing, likeable, nice kitchen, makes good lentil soup. I don't want to be a Cassandra, or a leader. I like to provoke discussion without people realizing I started it. But I do think that, things being as they are, that M.O. is looking more and more like cowardice.

I think it's time to speak up...if only I could figure out how.

brevity

2008-04-21T05:12:00.001-07:00

If I'm to start writing again, I think that now is the time (long past the time, chorus my teachers of yesteryear) for me to learn a thing or two about keeping my writings short. To be fair to myself, I think I've always been fairly good at getting a lot of meaning out of my words, but there just always seems to be so much to say. So, if I can manage it, I'll aim to say one thing at a time, and say it in a reasonable amount of time.

For starters, I don't have three hours at a stretch to work out the nuances of a four-page post right now. I'm lucky to get 40 minutes, and that 40 minutes still involves periodically getting up to fish bits of paper out of Evie's mouth or right her when she gets backed into a corner and starts fussing. So it's brevity or nothing, really.

It's a good habit for other reasons, too, though. Generally, I think that plenty of people will read a longish post if they basically agree with it...people like to be agreed with. And while I'd certainly enjoy a few rounds of "Wow, you are so right! You are just awesome," what I'd really like is to provoke thought in people who maybe don't quite agree with me, or just plain hadn't thought of it. And people have a very limited appetite for ideas they find weird or disagreeable. (Well, okay, most people. I know I'm not the only one who will occasionally stumble across a new idea and then forget to, say, eat in pursuit of more information.)

Well, no time like the present!

Hello again

2008-04-17T15:00:00.000-07:00

Well, I basically haven't written an inch since my daughter was born. I don't feel guilty, because I also haven't spent much time, say, eating sitting down. Things are, probably temporarily, getting better on that front though, and I have a strong desire to get back to writing. I think if I'm organized about it and really focus in on what I want to write, I can do it. Worst thing that happens, I don't write. I have more important things to do with my time than guilt over not writing.

Meanwhile, this little family has learned a lot and done a lot (and read a lot--that's the one thing I DO get to do, thanks to my daughter's refusal to nap without the immediate presence of boob) in the time since I last wrote. Also, the news has gotten so bad that I can't help but feel a sense of real urgency in our efforts to create an ethical, sustainable lifestyle.

So, yeah...hello again!

Progress

2007-06-21T09:47:00.000-07:00

You know, it’s always easy to get bogged down in what hasn’t gotten done. We haven't finished the vegetable garden. We haven't started the root cellar or the patio or the much-needed repairs to the shed/chicken coop to be. We've barely thought about home modifications like rainwater catchment or wood heat. With the baby due at the end of August, sometimes time weighs on us most oppressively. This morning, though, as I watched Jacob check on the bees from the upstairs bathroom window, which affords a handsome view of the back yard, I thought I’d prefer to think of what we have done in the nine months since we moved in here. It’s a heck of a list, really.

We’ve painted three rooms, one of which had to be stripped of a century of wallpaper and one of which needed all the crown molding replaced. We’ve put together comfortable and attractive spaces in the living room, library, kitchen, and dining area, and our bedroom is finally really coming together, too. We’ve put in a nice washer and drier, shifted a few cable connections, insulated some water pipes, made some repairs, and replaced various wood screws. We’ve unpacked all of our things, and acquired a great many more things.

We’ve put bees in the back yard, and they’re currently going strong. Jacob’s attention is constantly being redirected elsewhere, but even so, he’s got the makings of a very nice little metalworking and blacksmithing shop coming together in the garage, with an assortment of tools that's nothing short of incredible considering that a year ago we lived in an urban apartment. We have a happy little apple tree and a lovely raspberry patch. We’ve cleared, fenced, and planted a garden, and eaten our own radishes and peas, with carrots, cucumbers, peppers, kohlrabi, cauliflower, and tomatoes on their way. We’ve improved our garden soil tremendously, and maintained a compost heap to good effect. We’ve torn out no end of weeds and grass (the difference being largely one of intention in our minds), and planted a sweet little culinary herb garden in the front yard, and various other herbs along the side bed and elsewhere, to the total tune of 31 varieties of medicinal and culinary herbs. We’ve dug up and saved for future projects a rather tremendous amount of stone. We acquired two cats, whom we love dearly.

We’ve put up apple sauce and strawberry jam and frozen strawberries, cherries, asparagus, and rhubarb sauce. We’ve experimented with making hard cider and apple cider vinegar, with varying success. We’ve made fruit leathers and jerky, cookies, breads, simple cheese, and pasta. Over time, we’ve collected an amazing number of canning jars and lids at little to no expense to ourselves, and stand ready to draw this summer’s bounty to ourselves as much as we possibly can. We’ve bought the chest freezer we dreamed of so long, and in addition to the things already mentioned, it currently contains most of a beehive, locally raised chicken, and locally raised beef.

We’ve made fast friends with the neighbors. We’ve learned how to eat whole blue crabs, which brings us one step closer to being true Marylanders. (We still don’t think all that well of crab cakes, though—but we do like us some good pit beef with horseradish. ;-) We’ve learned the art of the country auction, and gotten some great deals on things which truly enhance our home. We’ve gone to various events—SCA, herbal, blacksmithing, and sundry others—and learned and had a good time. We’ve gradually discovered some of the many wonderful places to buy local that are all around us, and explored the wider landscape of our new home. We’ve striven with notable successes to reduce our ecological impact and increase our self sufficiency. We’ve maintained good friendships, and grown much closer to Jacob’s family than we were before. We’ve gone a long way towards growing a new family member, too, and feel happy and excited and fairly well-prepared to greet him or her soon. (Plenty of days, growing said family member has been all I've gotten done). We’ve shared pain and sorrow and fear and frustration and, most of all, a deep happiness and satisfaction, and grown closer through all of it.

Oh, and we finally bought a family car, after two years of talk. So, see--even things on the "long list" eventually do get done.

Welcome

2007-05-24T10:50:00.000-07:00

Hello all! We are Amy and Jacob, a young couple about to become a family of three. We're creating this blog as part of our commitment to live more self-sufficiently and sustainably. We hope to use it as a means to talk about what we've done and what we plan to do, and to share our efforts with others who share our goals. We hope that by so doing, we'll be able to give other people inspiration to make changes in their own lives. This is a personal blog for us, and we reserve the right to gripe about our bad days or coo over our cats/baby if that's what's on our minds, but the primary intended thrust is the practical details of a shifting mindset and lifestyle.

This seems like a good time to explain some of the reasoning behind our goal-setting and our thrust for greater self-reliance and sustainability. Essentially, we believe that the world in general, and we as citizens of the US in particular, face a number of very grim challenges in the near future, many or most of which bid well to seriously disrupt, if not destroy, the lifestyle to which we have been accustomed. That is, whether because of global warming, economic failure, energy shortage, political upheaval, war, pandemic, etc., things are going to change--probably soon, definitely uncomfortably, and probably drastically. We would prefer to choose our changes while we still have that opportunity, to test things out and see what works best for us while we still have the choice. Hence the title of the blog--we are, or are trying to, "run the changes", before we have no choices left.

We don't pretend to know when any of these problems might start seriously impacting any of us, but given that several of them are already manifest and causing real trouble both here and abroad, we don't think that a "wait and see" attitude is well-advised. We are choosing, therefore, to prepare as much as possible now, or as near as can reasonably be gotten to now without overwhelming our capacity to assimilate change.

Practically speaking, this is the drive behind greater self-reliance on our part, as well as giving us reason to support local farmers, businesses, and institutions, which have a better chance of surviving and retaining their utility in the face of large-scale collapse. Ethically speaking, it is why we choose to conserve and live in a more sustainable manner, so as to help build up institutions for a more sustainable world and to hopefully soften the blow to our society and planet. In practice, though, the practical and ethical aspects of the situation are by no means clear and distinct one from the other, nor are they in any way in conflict.

For example, we are working towards buying only local and organically raised animal products. Partly, this is because supporting and strengthening our local farmers is, in the long run, a good way of protecting our own food security interests. Partly, it's a way to get animal products that you are more confident come from animals that are/were healthy, rather than riddled with dubious chemicals and, usually, diseases. On the other hand, local and organic foods have a smaller ecological footprint than industrially raised ones that have been shipped over long distances. And finally, we are ethically opposed to the abominable treatment that factory-farmed animals are subject to, and feel that we can no longer condone those practices when viable alternatives exist. Some of these reasons are practical, and some ethical, and it is not a matter of interest to us which weighs more heavily...they all lead to the same conclusion.

We have lots of projects in the works, and plans for more. We're very excited about the changes we're making to our lives and our ways of thinking, and we hope that you'll find it exciting reading about it all. We hope to get some more posts outlining our basic philosophies and ongoing projects up soon, but we've also got a pretty crazy weekend ahead of us, so don't hold your breath! ;-)

Thank you for reading!