2012, a year for growing roots

I love the New Year. It is fresh. It is new. It is full of opportunity. You start the year with a clean slate, except you get to build on the past; lessons learned, accomplishments made. I know creating goals are a tradition often kept at this time of year, even though these same goals are often broken before the year has gotten well under way, but I still like to create an outline of sorts that helps me to figure out what I want to do with myself for the year. As our family grows, this has also become a convenient time of year to review where our family is at and where we want to see ourselves this time next year. Without creating unrealistic goals, this has been a helpful way to guide us as we move forward.

For starters, I updated our Who We Are, Q&A, Favorite Reads, First Time Here pages, and even our welcome note. No longer are we in the middle of a move, or unemployment, and our progressive changes in lifestyle ought to be reflected in the background we have provided for you, so please check them out!

It has been a while since I gave you an update on where we are with the foreclosure process. Not intentional, I assure you; there are just too many things to write about! So, in a nutshell, this is what’s going on. While Papa’s new job has enabled us to bring home a little more mula, it is still far too little to pay our mortgage as well as take care of our family, so we cannot pick up the mortgage payments and attempt to get back to where we were in May 2011 when we stopped paying them. We are, however, still paying on the home equity loan we had, at least until our mortgage company and bank decide this is not necessary.

Foreclosure, we’ve discovered, is not as simple as handing in the keys and avoiding the payments. Papa has filled out countless forms, mostly repeating the same information over and over, as to why we are unable to make the payments, etc. In early December we were finally handed a notice of foreclosure by the local court house, saying that the mortgage company is threatening to repossess the house. We have not been issued an eviction notice, but because we told the mortgage company we’re not living there, they have winterized the house.

In the meantime, the mortgage company, and the bank who owns our home equity loan are arguing over whether or not the lien on the property for the secondary loan can be dropped in order to make the house available for short sale. At this point that doesn’t look like it’s going to happen. Politics.

However, with all that said, a relative of one of our neighbors, as the property used to be in the ownership of their family, has recently made an offer of $25,000 to buy the place. Our realtor agrees with us that it would be stupid for the mortgage company not to accept the offer, but again, it will be mountains of paperwork and countless phone calls, and who knows how many weeks before it is decided whether they can purchase the place for that little or not. We don’t know exactly how a sale would impact the foreclosure process or our relationship with the mortgage company or the bank, but it appears that one way or the other, the house will no longer be in our possession by the end of 2012. Time will tell.

Not entirely a nutshell I guess…

On the home front, our addition to the camper is closed in. Papa has installed windows, a temporary door, and closed in the edges of the exposed side above and to the sides of the camper so that it is protected from the elements. When we are able to save up enough money, insulating the porch will be the next project. We may begin heating with the woodstove anyway, to help thaw out the 50 gallon barrels of filtered and bleached well water, but we’re taking it one day at a time.

While we intend to have the porch complete in preparation for winter next year, Papa and I have been toying with the idea of (once summer comes) attempting to move the camper out from the porch, selling it, and using the income to build an additional room on the opposite side of the porch (where the camper was) to basically create a small home. The sale of the camper would more than cover the cost, and it would give us more freedom to create a furniture layout that works while we save up for our forever home. The downside: having to figure out a new water system if we aren’t using what’s in the camper. However, this is all in the talk stage right now. It may or may not happen.

Sometime before Chickie/Chap arrives, we also need to purchase a family car. Right now we are still using Papa’s truck and a borrowed car. I was hoping to cover the expense of a car with my herbal remedy sales, but the transition from unemployment to employment left us with no income for three weeks and the herbal money was pretty much what we lived off during that time. Now, we hope that the income tax return we get in February will cover not only our midwife expenses, but a used car as well. Something will work out.

I do want to stop here and point out something I know I’ve mentioned before, that while each of the difficulties we’ve faced are disappointing, there have been blessings throughout: we may be without a car of our own, but we have family who have lent us one to use in the meantime; we weren’t able to use the herbal sales as a jump start for a car fund, but it bought our groceries when we didn’t have an income; we weren’t able to finish the addition before winter, but we have a place to store water and we’re staying warm. There are just so many ways that God has provided for us and we are so thankful, because we know we don’t deserve it.

Moving on into the year – sometime in March we will welcome our fourth baby into the world, here at home with our midwife team. During and after this time we’ll be taking a break from homeschooling. I suppose that may sound funny to be thinking about considering Buddy is only in PreK, but I do like to keep track of all our projects and activities, and I don’t want to commit to that during my babymoon. I am also working on scheduling about eight weeks worth of guest posts during that time frame. This part I’m really excited about because there are so many bloggers who I know would be able to make a wonderful contribution to this blog. More info on this will be coming soon I expect.

Our homeschool year begins June 1^st and ends May 31^st. This year Buddy will begin Kindergarten and Girlie will begin PreK. Their education is largely based on experience – applying early reading, math, science, and social studies to family conversation, farm work, home duties, baby care, art and craft projects, etc. I have a few ideas for basic “book work”, but will be avoiding textbooks, fill-in-the-blank or rote work pages, and tests for a few years at least. I have ideas for posts on our homeschooling practices, which I expect to be sharing in the next month or two, so I won’t go into too much detail here, but I’m very excited about our early education plans!

In 2011 I took my five years of backyard herbal growing and home remedy making to selling them. It was on a very small scale, using herbal parties among family as our platform. Based on the performance of the sales, I do believe it is worth pursuing this as a home business. However, it is a lot of work, for which I am not entirely prepared to do with a new baby this year. Instead I want to focus on preparing more tea to sell to past customers, and researching business development for herbal sales in 2013.

Papa and I do want to expand our vegetable and flower gardens this year. Last year we produced enough food to have more than we needed to eat fresh veggies for the summer, but not quite enough to make preserving them worthwhile. This year we want to produce enough to can for winter eating. We also found a more local heritage seed company that we want to support when we’re ready to begin.

As for the chickens, we are pleased with the production we’ve had this year. On a good day we collect 10 eggs and a duck egg, on a bad day we find 5 or 6 eggs and no duck eggs. What we don’t use we sell to family and friends for $2 a dozen (with donated egg cartons). We have had to keep the birds in the coop for a couple days at a time to ensure they are laying the eggs where we want them, but they are mostly free ranging. This year we are planning to experiment with raising chickens – incubating a small number of eggs and seeing if we can get them to hatch. If we can, raising chickens for meat and eggs will probably become a long term project for us. And, believe it or not, meat rabbits have also been discussed around here.

Another change that I will try not to spill too much about because I want to devote it to another post has to do with a sudden jump in readership here at AFN. As I will share with you soon, it has been a surprise and a joy to see that not only are we attracting readers with similar views, but they are actively pursuing similar lifestyles, and apparently, we are helping them to accomplish their goals! I had a vision for this blog, but I honestly did not expect for it to take root as quickly as it has. Because of this, Papa and I are researching development of this blog to keep up with the growing needs of our readers. I am absolutely in over my head here, but excited all the same! Stay tuned to hear how you can help, and to learn what ideas we have in mind for the future of American Family Now.

Midsummer homestead, a video update

With all the events and changes to report recently, we’ve gotten behind on telling you about our homestead projects. Enjoy this video (in part one and two) Papa made to keep you all in the loop. And yes, our vegetable garden was started VERY late, but the veggies we’re getting taste SO good!

A rooster (or two)

It all started one recent early morning. I awoke to a strange, whiny cry. I listened from bed, trying to decipher whether this was just Atlas starting to wake up, when it became obvious that was no child. We had a baby rooster!

 

I jumped out of bed and looked out at the chicken run through my window. I couldn’t tell which of the three-month-old chicks it was (some of them were not sexed), but after watching them later that day Papa and I determined it was this young guy.

Look how proud he is of his new crow.

We may actually have two roos; the one that crowed looks an awful lot like the other chick we have of his breed (don’t ask me what breed they are), but that one may be a hen, time will tell. Either way we are excited because now we could raise chicks next year!

We just couldn’t help it!

There just too darn cute!

Papa brought home six more chicks today. After losing both runts from the last batch, we started thinking it might not be a bad idea to buy a few more to make sure we’ll produce enough eggs for us and to sell to family.

The only problem was, if we were going to buy more we had to do it soon because it will be harder to keep chicks warm once we move. It’s not like we can keep a big tub of chicks in the camper with a generator-run heat lamp over them!

Being a now-or-never decision we made up our minds to buy six more, and now we have four hens, four one-week-old pullets, and now six couple-day-old chicks that may have a rooster among them. This time Papa picked two each of three different breeds, but we have no idea what they are.

So what do you think? Aren’t they cute?!

DIY BIG chicken feeder

God Provides

God is the Great Provider. The greatest example of His provision is of course when He sacrificed His son, Jesus Christ, to pay the price for our sins which spared us from eternal damnation and enabled us to renew our eternal relationship with Him.

On a day-to-day basis God also promised to provide for the material and spiritual needs of those who trust in Jesus Christ for their salvation (Phil 4:10-20). The thing that bothers us is that we live in a culture which believes we are entitled to have all of our wants met, as well as our needs. Today, many people cannot tell the difference between needing a warm home and a luxery four-bedroom, four-bathroom house, or the difference between food for sustenance and a four-course meal three times a day, or the difference between transportation to work and the latest model of their favorite car on loan.

As a culture we have lost sight of reality, and we have become greedy, selfish brats who feel we need the latest whats-it to be comfortable. Now, I have no problem with money or things it can buy! I enjoy shopping just as much as the next person. Yet, Christians who tell us they will remain unaffected by the coming depression because “God will provide” are going to come crashing to their knees when the seemingly sudden lack of work or food prices slap them in the face. God provides, but He doesn’t promise comfort.

While punishing the Israelites for their sinfulness, God allowed them to feel hunger and then provided them with strange food to eat. He let them wander in the desert for fourty years, but He kept their clothes from wearing out all that time. They had to walk, day in and day out, but God kept their feet from swelling on their long journey. Does that sound like provision we ask of God today? Or are we expecting Him to save us from the journey through the desert altogether? Does God owe us that? I should say not!

In Pilippians 4:10-20, Paul shares how God allowed him to experience both need and abundance, hunger and fullness, but in all God provided for him and Paul learned contentment.

God has not promised that you will be spared job loss. He has not promised to keep your house from the bank. He has not even promised that you will be able to afford a car, new clothes, or a good school for your kids.

Yet God provides, and often in unexpected, amazing ways. The Bible teaches us that Christians are never in the grip of blind fortune, chance, fate, or luck. Everything that happens is divinely planned and is an opportunity to trust God, rejoice in His providence, and recognize that it is all for God’s glory and our spiritual and eternal good.

Reading a library book about St. Patrick with Buddy recently, I saw yet another example of God’s providence. After God helped Patrick escape from slavery, Patrick and the people he was with became hungry. They complained to Patrick saying, “if your God is so good, why don’t you pray to Him for food?” So he did, and what happened next? Did they stumble across a tavern or home with people ready to cook them a hot full course dinner? No. God sent a herd of pigs across their path, and that night they feasted on pigs roasted over the fire. Their bellies were full and their strength returned.

Some people after reading this may think we’re not hoping or trusting enough, or we’re just pessimistic. To the contrary, we have great hope and peace, but we’re also realistic. Instead of whining to God that Papa can’t find a job, we are praising Him for all the wonderful little miracles we see Him working in our lives on a regular basis. Here are a few examples:

•  God has been timing everyday events in our lives so that everything fits perfectly together. Last year we were unable to resell the well-maintained truck we bought for an extremely good deal and then family members we had borrowed money from to buy the truck forgave our debt. Now we have a good truck, for free, to pull our camper.
• Another blessing in timing. We have been looking at campers since last fall and “just happened” to find one that would fit our needs that was also within our budget. Just after our tax return came, the snow in our driveway melted enough that we could park the camper where we needed to. The following day ice fell off our roof, blocking the camper in. If the ice had fallen just a day before, it would have prevented us from bring the camper home.

• Our chickens were pooping on the neighbor’s yard so were giving eggs to them to thank them for their patience. A friendship grew, and the neighbor generously offered to give us his truck cap this July because he wouldn’t be needing it anymore. Its design would fit our truck perfectly, but we didn’t expect to get it because we’ll be moving in May. His truck broke down last month and we got it early as a result.

• We haven’t had to use our food storage.
• At this point all our bills are paid.
• I have more clients and I’m teaching more classes than usual.

• Some of our appliances have been breaking down the past month or two (coffee maker, toaster oven, etc.) If it had happened earlier we would have had to spend money to replace them, so the timing is again, a blessing!
• Papa’s ex-boss and his wife stopped in recently. He said he wished he could give Papa his job back, but wanted to help how he could, so they gave us a gas card that will last a while.
• We’ve been wanting to purchase sleeping bags for each member of our family. Papa has been shopping around for good prices and found a clearance at Cabella’s. His dad works close to the nearest outlet and stopped in to pick up five of them for us. He went with a coworker who just happened to notice as they were leaving with the sleeping bags that there was a sticker on one of them which had an even deeper discount. They took the sleeping bags back in and we received a refund for the difference on all of them!

Isn’t God so good?! He provides for our needs just as He promised, and even some of our want, and we are very thankful for all He has done for us, despite the fact He owes us nothing and we could never repay Him. It just goes to show how merciful, gracious, and how great a provider He is.

Tell us! How has God been providing for your family in these troubled times?

Camper update

Although having a job is very nice, Glen has been enjoying his time off from work… Until he ran out of easy projects to do, and then he started pacing the house. What does a man do who has no projects to keep him busy? When the camper arrived he set to work and immediately began producing some nice things to make the camper more like home. Which is good, since we’ll be living in it!

First up was this spice rack, made from oak wood he salvaged from flooring on jobsite. He started this the night before he picked up the camper, and finished it off later. He hung it up on the wall above the kitchen counter, but we’ve had to take it down temporarily so we can paint behind it.

Next were the ladders for the kids’ beds and the mirror to go beside the couch. Again, the oak was salvaged from staircases, one was ours and the other was a jobsite he worked on. They came out very nice and the kids have already broken in the ladders. Well, not broken them, but you know what I mean.

Right after we shot the video you’ll find at the bottom of this post, I set to work on sanitizing the kids’ bedroom. I took the mattresses out, which I plan to spray with bleach water because at least one of the them has a little mildew on the bottom. Then I sprayed the WHOLE room with lysol. That includes the ceiling, because, we all know kids have to put their mouths on everything. But, if you’re ever faced with this situation, remember that washing a literally freezing cold window will result in snow on the inside. And, if you leave the bucket of water, it will freeze. 

Thankfully, we don’t have to do any “major” work to the camper, it’s only superficial stuff we’re working on. Glen did take the table up to make it easier to sand the walls and paint them, but he plans to replace it since it is a bit wobbly. Instead, he’ll use a nice thick table top he saved from another jobsite. I have to admit, I’m not one for storing stuff you might never use, but saving junk does come in handy… sometimes.

So, here it is, all torn apart, the messiest it will hopefully ever look. We’re excited about making it feel more like ours, and sharing pictures and video with you all as it changes.

Inside the house, we’re still sorting through one box or shelf at a time, I’m still working on the rugs (one is almost done!), and other life-as-usual stuff. One really cool thing that’s been happening, I’ve been getting more calls than usual from women looking for doulas. I’m almost at my 2011 goal for number of clients already! It really couldn’t have happened at a better time, with Atlas beginning to wean, and Glen not having a full time job. God does provide, even if it’s not how we expect!

Sometimes though, you do have to make life a bit more interesting. Take these two pictures for example; who needs a dog to eat the kids’ crumbs under the table when you can just let a chicken in the house!

Be assured, though, it is a VERY special treat for her which she doesn’t get very often. We don’t live with our chickens :0)

Enjoy the video – and share your thoughts! And, don’t forget to visit our store where you can buy our homemade herbal salve, good for what ails ya!

Snow, chickens, and other stuff

I come up with the most boring post titles. Anyway. Winter does strange things to chickens. At least ours anyway. We’ve been keeping them cooped up (ha ha) in their little house most of the time, being that it’s been about zero degrees for the past couple weeks. Even with the heat lamp and hay in their coop their water has still been freezing over night!

Well, a couple days ago it was warmer than usual, so Glen let them out for the day. Two of them stuck around but the other three decided to take a hike, and didn’t come back that night. Glen left the door to the coop open just in case, but it wasn’t till the next morning that he found two out front of the house shivering in the snow, and the third, well, she didn’t fare so well.

From what we can tell she was probably sitting in the road and during the night one of the neighbors backed over her. I’ll spare you the details but let’s just say it didn’t look like she suffered for very long. Bummer, one more down and only four left. We’re looking forward to getting more chickens in the Spring, but at least we’re still getting about four eggs a day.

In more pleasant news, we’ve all been quite productive. Glen has come up with an estimate for work needed on another family member’s house and expects to have a materials list for our own cottage by the end of the day.

The kids have been bouncing back and forth between playing nicely together and being at each other’s throats, but have still managed to create some nice artwork and pick up some toys. Atlas stood up by himself for about ten seconds this morning!

And I’ve been scrapbooking for Atlas’ first year album, and purging the kid’s clothes drawers, which have been more than full, much of which was clothes they couldn’t fit into well anymore. Two more boxes for the yard sale pile.

On that note, if any of my friends are reading this, I’m on the lookout for boys clothes size 5, I’ve got smaller sizes if you want to trade!

Moving Day

The chickens moved into their new coop yesterday. We’ve upgraded from the urban yard coop to the small farmstead coop, with room for more chickens next year.

It’s made from pine boards we salvaged from a house when I was eight months pregnant with Nemo. One of the benefits of being a carpenter is that you are able to bring home unwanted yet useful building materials.

 

For the roof Glen used shingles that he found in the garage when we moved in. Roof guard he saved from the dumpster at work was used to paper the walls and roof.

In the spring we’ll use siding we had for the house to finish of the outside. Oh yes, the base of the coop is an old section of dock Glen scavenged off a job site, as well as the window. If you ever buy a fixer-upper, it wouldn’t hurt to get a part time job as a grunt at least, you never know what you’ll be able to bring home!

For nesting “boxes” we’re currently using 5 gallon pails turned on their sides, which will work until spring when we’ll need them again, and at that point Glen will build shelves of wooden boxes for nests.

Glen is currently designing the chicken run to attach to the coop so we can contain them. This will be the most interesting part because those chickens like to roam, and they won’t be happy unless they get a significant amount of room to move.

We’ve been giving away eggs to the neighbors who have been so gracious to let the ladies scavenge on their yards, but we’d like to keep them on our property now that we know they will just keep traveling down the road in daylight.

Last night the ladies spent their first night in the coop. We let them go into their old home and then Glen carried them to their new place. When he got up this morning he peeked in the window and they were still wandering around the coop, as if they hadn’t even gone to bed! The heat lamp might be confusing them as to the time of day.

I left them in there a while today, hoping that it would help them to get used to it, but they still returned to the old roost this evening. I hear it can take a while for a chicken to be trained to seek out their new coop, so we may end up covering the old one with a tarp for now. It’s so much more convenient for them to come in for the night on their own than carry each of them to their beds!

Welcome to your new home ladies!

As an interesting side note (how could I forget!), on day 2 of this operation, the power drill equiped with a screw tip slipped off the screw while Glen was trying to attatch the rafters (the drill was not on), and he managed to make a nice hole in the side of his left forefinger. But no worries, with plenty of peroxide, antibiotic cream, a popcycle stick splint, comfrey salve and lots of bandaids it is healing up quite nicely. Glen reassures me that it really didn’t hurt that bad since his hands were numb from the cold anyway, and he never lost mobility of his finger so it looks like his body is doing well in healing itself. Yay!

Just another day…

I currently have several ideas for posts I’m working on, related to home and children, among other things, but the past week has been crazy busy, and I just can’t seem to find the time to write anything that requires thought. Finishing up Christmas gifts, tying together loose ends on my book (which I’m still hoping to have published through Amazon by the end of the year, by the way), and visiting with family and friends. Sorry mom, I don’t think I’ll be doing any more mending for you till after Christmas! Oh yes, and Glen and I celebrated six years of marriage last weekend!

Needless to say, I was planning to write about goings on today, when I got a call last night from a dear friend begging me to take her four kids today (ages 11 months to 7 years) from 6am to 4pm-ish because their babysitter stepped on a manure-covered nail. And, I had also invited another friend and her three  children to come build with Lego this afternoon. So I had seven kids to watch myself, and then three more came to play… and Glen stayed home from work today to rest for a while because he was up all night with a cough. It sure was a full house! But I was impressed with how well the kids behaved and it was really quite fun, even if I am exhausted.

So, no deep thoughts or long stories to share today, just some anecdotes and random pictures of family, friends, and the last Christmas present I made for the kids. And, my sincerest kudos to all stay at home moms of large families!!

This really has no “appropriate” place for the post so I’ll just say here, that I love the cute things kids say. My friend’s 5 year old who visited today was playing with Atlas and said “He’s so cute, I just can’t stop looking at him!” I’m in the same boat, but I couldn’t help but fast forward another 10 or so years…

But, because I can’t help but give plugs for blogs I love, I have really been enjoying Handmade Home in my spare moments, a book by Soule Mama, which I won at Fun In My Back Yard. I’m looking forward to making some of her projects, and I think it’s really cool that she included some which Nemo and Daphney may be able to help me with.

I’ve also been collecting ingredients to make hand lotion with at least some of my next two quarts of herbal oils. Perhaps they would make nice Christmas gifts?

And, I also have to put a plug in for my new favorite herb, Yarrow. I’ve been growing it because I knew it had a lot of good uses, I just hadn’t found many applications for my family at this point. Until Daphney came down with another fever yesterday morning. Granted, her temp had gone from 102 to 101 when I gave her the infusion, but each of two sippy cups full she had of yarrow tea brought her temp down over the course of the afternoon and by nightfall it was hardly a fever at all. No return today! And now I’m wishing I had more than 1 small bunch of dried yarrow left :0( I guess I’ll just have to start growing it indoors over the winter.

So here are the pictures of the road map I sewed for Nemo and Daphney. It’s a little smaller than I was hoping it to be, but it’s still bigger than most of the roads we contrive out of paper and cardboard. I’m excited because it’s made out of materials I already had, it’s supposed to be a map of our town, it rolls up cute, and I know they’ll both love it. What more can you ask for?

And while I’m on a train of random thoughts, anyone want to preorder a chicken coop for spring? Check out our website at www.nopoopcoops.com!