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.

A new walkway

This is a recent project I have done to home’ify the homestead. Our total cost was about $20.00. I used three bags of mulch and some exterior paint I bought at Walmart at .5 the original cost. Hopeful this will induce more creativity in our garden layout.

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!

Our garden in July

Buddy and I finished reading Little House on the Prairie this week, the second book in the Laura Ingalls Wilder series. I know I’ve read at least some of them before, but for some reason I had completely forgotten the ending of this one. After a whole year of building their new home and sowing their first garden, the Ingalls family was forced to move out of indian territory and leave the homestead behind.

Despite their courage to move on and not look back, I felt their pain. Their whole livelihood was based on that homestead, how could they have moved with less than 24 hours notice? I can’t imagine how incredibly hard that must have been.

Our own little garden is doing quite well, despite the late start to the season. Actually, we haven’t even started most of our vegetables, a late start indeed! What we have planted of herbs, fruits, and flowers are just loving the good mix of sun and rain we’ve had. I find it so relaxing tending to them, and look foward to harvesting. Buddy has begun helping me weed, and most of the sprouts have escaped the dangers of the chickens.

This week we did harvest some mint leaves and comfrey, and tested out Papa’s homemade solar dehydrator. Of course, they are drying nicely, and now we can drink homegrown mint tea and make more comfrey ice packs for kid-size boo boos. Today Buddy and Girlie helped me prepare comfrey oil infusions for future use with our salves.

I know everything is working out well right now, things that may not have worked out so well a few years ago, but the progress we have seen thus far has made me think we should have done this years ago! Perhaps I shouldn’t speak so soon, since most of the crops are far from ready  to be harvested, but still, it’s exciting to be a part of new growth, teaching our children about sustainable living, and providing healthy food and medicine for our family.

Seven weeks later

Seven weeks ago we packed up our home and moved our family to the little house in the woods, a.k.a. our home-on-wheels. And this week, with the help of Papa’s Papa, we moved the camper to its final resting place, a platform we could level it on. No more baths with a 3” difference in water from one end to the other!

The new view from our dining room window is much more pleasant, I think, since it rewards us with the sight of our ever-growing garden. While Papa has been busy helping his brother for the past couple weeks, he has still managed to develop the garden yet more. And with some of his birthday money he bought more blueberry bushes and a cherry tree!

What else have we been up to on the homestead recently? Living in the camper for several weeks has given us time to figure out what works and what doesn’t for the little things. For example, Papa rewired some electronics inside the camper to connect the battery inverter in the cupboard closest to the fridge. That enabled us to take the extension cord out of our bedroom window. He hopes to connect the inverter to the wall outlets so with a flip of a switch we can use either the generator or the solar panel to power the outlets.

Nothing new to report on the foreclosure front. Still more paperwork going back and forth before they will even say they are foreclosing on us, which we anticipate will happen this month, since it has been approximately three months since we made a mortgage payment.

In the meantime, Papa is applying for grants to pay for classes to get his class A driver’s license and get a part time job truck driving. This will only be possible if he can get financial assistance, but if it works out would prove to be one of the few viable alternatives to his established career in carpentry. The goal is to take classes in the fall after harvesting all the veggies and he is done helping his brother, but it’s all up in the air right now. One thing is for sure, no carpentry jobs exist in this area. Papa has called every construction company within an hour’s drive from our home and NO ONE is hiring.

our new fire pit

The family is doing well. The kids have been quite patient to play indoors due to the cool, rainy weather we’ve had, although Girlie has been throwing a wrench into my well-laid plans of the spirited child series. Ugh. And me, well, after nursing three babies for a total of 50 months, I’ve finally developed my first case of mastitis. If you really care to know more about that, click here to visit my birth blog.

And for the most exciting news, next week Papa and I are going on our first date in five years that will not involve a pregnant belly, a nursing baby, or rushing home to nurse a baby. All three of the kids will be sleeping over at my mom’s and we’re going to watch the fireworks. Just the two of us. Only 8 days left!! Not that I’m counting or anything. Hehe.

Garden Designing

With the yard sale over and much of the moving done, Papa has been able to focus on the garden. Our starters have been sitting uncovered in the field, and we’ve been getting anxious to get them in the ground. While life on the homestead is more “simple”, we are certainly not bored! So many projects to do, and an order for getting them all done. The starters just haven’t been on the top of the list, but now that Papa has been able to start working the land, we’re finally able to put them in their new home.

The greenhouse will have to wait though, and we are actually rethinking the purpose of the greenhouse to make sure we don’t overdo ourselves. For now we have nice raised beds. Papa found part of a rock wall that wasn’t being used as a property marker anymore, and he’s been using the kids’ wagon to bring them to the garden area. From there he has built up the outside of the smaller beds with the rocks. The idea being that as the pine rots the frame will be replaced with the stones. While he has a lot on his to-do list, Papa has been having fun taking the time to make these beds look nice.

The larger beds are made from bowling alley material that we picked up off the side of the road. They will never rot and are plenty sturdy! We can build four of them, but we may end up only building two and then the rest of the tilled area will be used for a “regular” garden. Perennial herbs are planted by the side of the chicken run, walled off by small stones, and we’ll have more small gardens for the rest of the perennial herbs, along with sunflowers and other flowers.

While Papa has been building stone walls, I’ve been transplanting most of the starters; all but the tomatoes, peppers, strawberries, blueberries, and some onions that will have to wait until we have ground ready for them (not including all the seeds still to plant!).

I’m amazed how much I’ve been able to accomplish while taking care of the kids! Actually, the kids have had a blast playing in the dirt. Buddy has been finding wild flower seeds and planting them in his own little garden.

Our camper is not currently where we plan to leave it. The place I was standing when I took the first picture at the top of this post is the basically the view from where our front door will be. It will be facing the alcove at the top of our little hill, behind the trees. Other than the power lines, it is nicely tucked into the corner, out of view, and sort feels like The Little House in the Woods.

My biggest frustration in the planting process has been our three hens. As they are free-rangers, they like to dig for grubs, and they’ve been scratching up some of my freshly transplanted herbs, herbs that were already having a hard time germinating. I can only hope they will root themselves into the ground and survive long enough that the chickens will leave them alone.

In the picture below, you can see my drawing of the garden layout. Beware, this is completely inaccurate in scale. It simply gives an idea of what boxes are where. The camper is not drawn in, but will be in the bottom right hand side, at an angle, facing the chicken run and gardens. It also does not include future patches for perennials and flowers, and I have not listed all the vegetables we have yet to plant. This is still a work in process!

Cleaning out my favorites list…

I can’t believe we only have two days left until we move. We’re feeling kinda strange around here and looking forward to finding the new normal. In the meantime my grandparents have been getting as much grandchild-time as they can, and my mom brought us some supper tonight. Thank you.

It’s cleaning house, packing, organizing, and trying not to forget anything. For instance, we are keeping our desktop computer, but not planning to use it much. Instead we’re moving everything we want to use over to the laptop.

So that means, in addition to backing everything up, I’ve had to copy down all the addresses I’ve saved in my favorites list. Instead of copying these down though, I decided to share the links I’ve had waiting for a blog post. No better time then now I guess!

• I appreciated Kelly’s thoughts on living through financially difficult times and yet still enjoying life with your family.
• “Do you avoid foods that contain artificial colors and sweeteners, and stick to whole, unprocessed foods instead? If so, you just might have orthorexia, an imaginary “disease” created in 1997 by Dr. Steven Bratman.” Click here to learn more.
• Osama Bin Laden must have evolved from the cat family. Hasn’t he already died like eight times??

• And for a good laugh…

And more pictures…

This used to be a blind, but it was in the way of Buddy's view of the trains going by...

I see Julia Child in the future.

 I doubt I’ll be posting anything else until after we move. See you in a few days!

Building starter trays

Ah, yes it is time to start getting our garden stuff out and into action. This time we will be going full bore as if our lives depended on it. Recently we made an eBay purchase for 300 4″ plastic pots and plastic trays with 480 individual cells, and it was delivered to us all neatly stacked together taking up maybe a couple square feet. I sat proudly and thought to myself “Yeah…..we are gearing up for this homstead project” as I gazed upon our growing arsenal of self-relient STUFF. Yet, there was a nagging thought barking in my left ear saying “What are you going to do about getting these seeds started in time when you don’t have any trays to put the planters in, no money to buy them, and really have not a decent location to put it all at this point?”. To get this clear it was not Mama barking in my left ear but a reality check smacking me around!

So after kicking a few ideas around in my head I came up with a solution that would not cost more than $30.00 and hold 680 individual starter pot/cells. I, being king of cheap, decided to use a sheet of luan plywood , 1×4 #4 grade pine (my favorite solution for everything duct tape won’t fix), a few 1 1/4″ screws, and six trash bags to build my six waterproof trays. The day was 4-4-11 and I remembered, “ahh haa!” I had a Lowe’s coupon to get $10 off a purchase of $50 or more expiring that day. However, I did not want to spend an extra $20 just to get $10 off because it seemed too….something or other. Needing to start a fire I went outside to split some wood while pondering what I could do and still be finacially prudent, when “CRACK” the head of my splitting maul fell right off and into a slushy puddle. “Oops! That sucks!” I yelled, and looking up I saw Buddy staring through our door at me with this cunfused gitty look on his face. I went back inside only to have Buddy, trying very hard not laugh, start muttering some alien words describing what just happened. Agreeing with his laugh I too started laughing and said, “well I’m gonna be going to lowe’s. Who wants to go with me?”. It really didn’t matter who wanted to go because it was Girlie’s turn to ride with Papa anyways, so off we went.

The trays I built are 25″ by 33″ and 2 1/2″ deep and have a separated trash bag liner which is secured using staples. I dumped a gallon of water into one and found that it has about a 5/16″ water table height. This good to know for watering purposes. The tray also held water without a problem, even as I sloshed it around during the trip to the drain. Eventually I will most likely build some sort of greenhouse rack system for the trays, but for now we have something to start with.

40ish Days Left

The days are closing in to April, which means we’re only a little over a month away until we move into our camper on the property. Thankfully I can say that I’m getting very close to finishing up certain projects that have to be done before we leave. I have finished making curtains for the camper, I’ve only got about 10 pages left in Pal’s scrapbook to complete, and I’m ordering the proof of my manuscript on Monday!

Yesterday also marked the final wash day of our cloth diapers. I’ve already sold 10, and I put the remaining 11 on eBay (Click here to visit our eBay store and support our blog by purchasing your cloth diapers and wipes from us! Thank you!)

We haven’t packed anything we’re still using, but I feel better about the progress we’ve made in prepwork. This week we boughts sheets for our camper bed, and added the final parent picture, a clock, and an indoor/outdoor temperature gauge. And for the past couple days, Glen has been ripping down boards to make a picket fence with. Other things I consider progress are using up food in the freezer, and training myself to wash sheets and put them back on the beds in the same day so I can get used to using only one set per bed.

He doesn't look guilty, does he?

We still don’t know exactly how we’ll fit all that we want in the camper. Going from 700sq ft of living area plus storage to less than 250sq ft and less storage area will be interesting, especially since we won’t be able to close in the decking until we have the cash to put on a roof. But there is qute a bit of room under the camper, in the storage space that’s under the kids’ beds, so if we’re creative I know we can do it.

nothing says boyhood like a homemade robot!

Our seeds arrived this week! I’ve packed a list of them along with a few herbal books in my labor bag so I may be able to pick out a few recipes while I’m assisting my next client for my summer/fall herbal parties. Some of the herbs and veggies do need to be started indoors soon, and it will be tricky balancing that with the move, but Papa and I are excited to get started with gardening! I love seeing little plants sprouting. Oh, and look what my grandparents (who used to own bees) gave me recently! Nothing like four and a half pounds of beeswax to get an up and coming herbalist excited!

Speaking of which, Papa and I were talking over our cups of coffee yesterday morning about all the work we have lined up for the summer. As my friend Jessica@FarmFresh pointed out, we should be creating a life we enjoy, instead of one we need a vacation from. That’s how Papa and I view this transition to homesteading. We will have work to do, but it’s healthy work we want to do. We want it to be fun, rewarding, educational, and enriching.

The days are counting down, but we’re more and more ready every day!

Goings On

What could I write about today? My book cover being finished? Nemo playing out in the blizzard we had? The materials prepared for the braided rug? The Amish friendship bread I made today? Glen drawing out plans for our cottage? Reaching the halfway mark for my goal of getting 6 doula clients already? Or all of it?? So much happening, and much of it worth writing about, but for now I think pictures and a recipe will have to suffice, as there is also much housework to be done. Piles of laundry all over the house, toys, dishes, and who knows what else!

But enough about housework, here’s the recipe I used for the friendship sourdough starter I received from a friend at mom’s group. It’s a fun family project - Nemo and Daphney both enjoyed squishing it in the plastic bag every day, and feeding it every few days. Today Daphney helped me make the first two loaves of bread!

If you want to start your own sourdough or friendship bread, here’s a recipe I found using just flour and water! The starter I have also had milk in it, but I’m not sure what the original recipe looked like. Yeast is also a common ingredient used in sourdough starters. The only variation I made to the Amish recipe was using 2 mashed bananas instead of the vanilla pudding.

In other food news, I ground up sage and thyme that friends of ours grew and shared. After adding it to the store-bought herbs we had, I was surprised to find that homegrown herbs look much different than store-bought. I showed this to Glen and asked, “doesn’t this make you want to have an herbal garden?” My goodness what do they do to destroy the beautiful color (and nutrition I assume) of herbs?! I really am looking forward to starting another garden this summer…

Okay, now I’m done. Anybody local want some sourdough starter?