Four year anniversary!

Four years ago today, we moved into our partially completed house. It's still not done, but that's a post for another day. You see, we built this house ourselves. We only hired three contractors: the basement guy (because he had a backhoe and forms to make concrete walls), the insulation guy (because he had this cool pulverized newspaper to blow into the walls), and the concrete people who poured the light-weight concrete over our in-floor heating tubes. Mike did 95% of everything else, and the kids and I helped out when he needed a few more hands. No, he's not a professional carpenter; he's an electronics engineering professor. My main contribution was keeping him well-fed with four meals a day as he worked 18-hour days all summer. Our big joke was that he lost 20 pounds eating my cheesecake and creme brulee pie daily.

"Everyone" told us not to move in until the house was finished, but when someone walks up and asks to buy the mobile home where you're living, it is hard to say no. We only seriously regretted that decision for about six months. When we first moved in, we were all sleeping in one bedroom, and we only had one bathroom operating. To get the occupancy permit, we only needed to have a working bathroom and a working kitchen. That's about all we had.

Even though I've been getting up to go the bathroom every night since the first time I got pregnant, I foolishly suggested that the first working bathroom should be on the main floor, since that's where we'd be spending our days. Ha! In addition to having to traipse downstairs in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, I was hoofing it up and down the stairs all day too, because guess which room I wanted to get finished first? My bedroom!

How far have we come in four years? Well, when we first moved in, we had no floor coverings, which means that we were walking on this light-weight concrete, which created a LOT of dust. You had to wash your dishes before you used them, even if they'd just been washed a few hours earlier. It was disgusting. Rooms were not painted. Most didn't even have drywall. There was no trim on any doors. In fact, there were very few doors -- there wasn't even a door on the bathroom. We had a sheet hanging over the opening for privacy. For more details on the construction, you can visit our website.

Where are we today? We still need a lot of baseboards, crown molding, some door trim, and all the window trim. We need to finish the stairwell, and Mike is working on the bookcases for the library over the Christmas break. We thought we would be able to finish the library completely, but the power outage really messed up those plans.

Here are a couple of tidbits we have only recently learned -- but wish we'd have known sooner. Windows that slide (double hung) are not very airtight. The best ones are casement or awning style windows. That's what they're using in all the most energy-efficient homes now. As much as I love our in-floor heating, there is an issue with the house being too air-tight. Yes, I know I just said the double-hung windows are not very air-tight, but they're air-tight enough that we have a problem with mold growth in the winter. [sigh] I'm not sure we can do much about that now.

Plans for the future: I want to add on a dining room, so when our kids are married and coming home for the holidays, we'll have a big dining room for those holiday dinners. I also want to add a master suite for the first floor, because I'm not sure that my knees will last a lifetime. (More on that in a couple days.) And we really need a garage! During the summer, I actually enjoy having the cars in the driveway because they get washed when it rains. In the winter, however, the doors have frozen shut on more than one occasion. Usually, a door on the south side will melt, and I can get in there and crawl over to the driver side. A couple weeks ago, however, a friend broke off her car door handle trying to open a frozen door. So, a garage is definitely at the top of the list of upcoming building projects. I'm not sure if we'll be able to afford it in 2009 though.

Am I smart, trendy, or nuts?

When people meet me and learn that we live on 32 acres and grow a good portion of our food, their reaction tends to fall into one of two categories: we must be really smart or nuts. Although they are not quite so blunt, it is obvious how they feel. If they think we're really smart, they get excited and start asking all sorts of questions. If they think we're nuts, they just raise their eyebrows, nod, and say something like, "Oh."

But lately I've been getting a third reaction, and I've been reading about it too. It is now the "in" thing to be sustainable and a locavore and to have a vegetable garden. Just Google "sustainability" and discover that everyone -- fishermen, cities, schools, even Coca-Cola talk about moving towards sustainability. I don't think I even used the word "sustainable" seven years ago. The word, "locavore," had not been coined yet when we moved out here in 2002. I just wanted organic food and was sick of trying to navigate corporate America's definitions in the grocery store -- what's the difference between regular eggs, cage-free, and organic? And how much time does an organic cow really spend outside? The sustainable movement was well on its way a year ago when "locavore" was declared the word of 2007, then the bottom fell out of the economy, and now growing your own is the thing to do to save money. Or, as Business Week put it,

The message seems to be: If you buy organic, you care about your own body; if you buy local, you care about your body and the environment.

Although we do care about our body and the environment, when we first decided to move out here, it was because we didn't trust big business to be honest with us about what they were doing. We'd been eating organic since the late 1980s, but as organic became trendy, BigAg got involved and started splitting hairs. The ink wasn't even dry on the organic food legislation when businesses starting looking for exemptions -- can we call our product organic if we want to use organic grain, but none is available for 100 miles?

I don't think I'm particularly smart or nuts, and I am definitely not trendy, since I chose to live and eat naturally more than 20 years ago. So, what's my point? I don't think you have to be smart or nuts or trendy to eat healthier, have a vegetable garden, and shop at a farmer's market or join a CSA. As humans, we are teachable. We can learn new habits and skills. When we hear that our diet is not good for our bodies or our planet, we don't have to wring out hands and declare, "Woe is us! We are doomed!" Without any sort of extraordinary intelligence or rabid enthusiasm, we can:

• shop at a farmer's market
• find local farmers through Local Harvest and join a CSA
  
• start a garden
• grow a tomato plant on the patio
• grow herbs on the window sill above the kitchen sink
• grow alfalfa sprouts on your kitchen counter
• or grow tulips in your living room (see photo)
  

When I say, "Anyone can do this," I'm not being preachy, I'm being humble. I seriously mean that if I can do this, anyone can do this. I know ladies 10 or 20 years older than me who live a similar lifestyle. When I first moved out here, I couldn't lift a 50-pound bag of grain, and I would only fill water buckets half full, because they were too heavy for me full.

As for brains . . . well, no one is born knowing how to grow tomatoes, incubate chicken eggs, milk a goat, or birth a lamb. I've read lots of books and found mentors over the Internet. Without the mentors, I'd have made a lot more mistakes than I did, and that's why I'm always willing to help new people.

So, if you find yourself saying, "I wish I could do that," stop wishing and start doing something. Just because you don't have sheep for wool to make an afghan doesn't mean that you can't start with something as small as a pot of herbs. Figure out exactly what you want to do and decide how you can start to make it a reality. If you only have a small apartment, you can start growing alfalfa sprouts, herbs, and tomatoes. If you have a yard, you can start planning a small garden for 2009. And if you have more land, start looking into what it would take for you to have a small flock of chickens or a couple of goats for milk. It's really not that hard -- really.

A gift of Joy

In the midst of our hotel stay, I mentioned getting a new dog, but life has been so hectic around here, I haven't had a chance to tell you about her until now. After Addy my standard poodle died in March, I didn't think I'd ever want another dog. Losing her to bone cancer was just too painful. But after a couple of months, I started to look at poodles and bichons and wish I had one again. But then I had to decide which one I wanted.

Addy had been my dream dog. I'd wanted a standard poodle forever, because I'd admired their regal beauty from the first time I laid eyes on one. Before my six years with Addy, I had a bichon named Nicky, who was also lost to cancer. Nicky was a saint, much too sweet for his own good. We got him when Katherine was a toddler, and she would hold his ears as if they were a leash and walk him around the living room. I once caught her sticking a cotton swab in his nose, and he just laid there, not doing anything to stop her.

After thinking about it for several months, I finally decided I wanted another bichon, mostly because I wanted a lap dog. Then the search began. I'd check Petfinder at least weekly, sometimes more often, searching for bichons near me. After a few weeks of searching, I was briefly excited to see that a shelter only 25 miles from me had a female bichon, but then I saw the little heart next to her name, meaning she had special needs, and I noticed she was 11 years old. Too bad, I thought, and kept scrolling down the list. I contacted several rescues with young adults and realized that healthy, young bichons are in demand and quickly find homes, so I might have to be willing to drive to another state to adopt one.

But search results on Petfinder are listed starting with the dog closest to your zip code, so this little old dog named BJ was always at the top of the list. I read her description a couple of times and learned that she was in the early stages of kidney failure. It's too bad she's so old and sick, I always thought when I saw her picture. Who would ever want to adopt a dog like that? Then one day when I was searching, I read an essay written by a woman who provided a foster home for a dog that was blind. She talked about what a great dog he was and how he wound up spending the rest of his life with her because no one wanted a dog that was blind. I started thinking about that little old bichon again and decided to call the shelter to ask them about her.

"We were just talking about her," the woman said. "We were wondering which dogs would still be here by Christmas." After asking her a number of questions about the dog and then Googling "canine kidney failure," I decided that I'd rather give a home to a dog that no one wanted, than to stand in line for a young, healthy dog that would find a home even if I weren't around.

The woman at the shelter told me that BJ belonged to an old lady who died. She had no relatives, and her caregivers called the shelter because they liked the dog and didn't want to see her euthanized. After going into rescue on November 1, she was spayed and had two mammary tumors removed. Her blood work showed that her kidneys were not working at 100% anymore, so she is on a prescription diet that is easy on kidneys. She also had fleas, which is why she doesn't have much hair on her back.

After getting her home, I realized that she had no training at all. She didn't understand "come," and she didn't even come when you called her name. I don't normally change a dog's name, but BJ just did not fit her at all. She was this little feminine lady that made us all smile every time we saw her, which didn't seem like a BJ to me. After she had been here for a couple of days, and we had all fallen in love with her, it clicked -- Joy! She makes all of us so happy when we look at her or when she sits on our laps. When I announced to the family that I was naming her Joy, Mike asked if it was because I got her at Christmas. No, I said, but it sounded like another good reason to name her Joy.

If they hadn't told me that she was 11 years old, I would not have guessed it. She's a bouncy little thing and has really come out of her shell since moving here. She is the perfect lap dog and has been sitting in my lap since I sat down at the computer this morning. When I take her outside though, she practically drags me around the yard, and I will get out of breath if I try to keep up with her!

Although I started searching for a dog that would be my Christmas gift to myself, I wound up with so much more. She makes everyone in the family smile and laugh, and she gets bouncier and less shy by the day. I've given her the gift of a real home for Christmas, and I gave the shelter the space to take in another dog that needs a home.

No use crying over flooded pastures

Although we didn't get everything done, yesterday was a productive day. We started with a very messy barn . . .

and we wound up with three pens that will hopefully make 2009 kidding easier than ever. The small pen on the left is the kidding pen. The pen in the middle is about 16 X 16 feet, and that's where the moms and babies will be staying once the babies are a couple days old. The pen on the right is where the pregnant does will stay during the last month before kidding. They need their own separate area because we start feeding grain in the last month of pregnancy. The advantage of the new pens is that they are in a barn that has a heated office with windows that look out into the area with the pens. In the top picture, you can see the office window on the left behind the wire crate.

When I first started writing this post, I said yesterday was a "good" day but quickly changed that to "productive" because it was really a pretty lousy day, although we got some good work done. The temperature jumped into the 60s, which means all the snow melted and had nowhere to go, since the ground has been frozen for several weeks already. That means the creek flooded. As if that were not bad enough, we had rain almost all day, so it was really disgusting around here. Since the creek had already frozen, the rushing flood waters lifted some rather large pieces of ice and moved them onto land. What can I say other than, it looks interesting?

Storm refugee
Katherine discovered this little guy huddling in a tree above a flooded pasture.

Suggestions, anyone?
While I have your attention, perhaps you could suggest a solution to this problem. This is the view from our front door after we have rain. We built our house behind a mobile home, which was sitting on a concrete pad. Now that the mobile is gone, the concrete pad fills up with water every time it rains. The concrete blocks are our bridge to civilization, and after a really hard rain, the water is at the top of those blocks! Ripping up the concrete would be expensive and/or difficult. Putting dirt on top of it wouldn't help much unless we put in drain tiles; otherwise, the dirt wouldn't be able to drain, and we'd have a muddy front yard. Any thoughts on what we can do with our moat?

Homesteader's work is never done

This is probably why so many of our ancestors viewed farm life as a second-class existence. It's tough to take a vacation of a few days, and you can forget about the idea of taking off a week or two. You're working 365 days a year, although the work can be streamlined on some days. But it never goes away. It is there, waiting for you the next day.

A lot has been piling up the past few weeks as the temperatures have been below freezing, and we've been dealing with storms of all sorts, from thunderstorms, ice storms, wind storms, and snow storms. Yesterday had its own nasty weather, although of a different sort, so I was hopeful about catching up on things outside. The forecast was for temperatures in the low 50s, so I was hoping we could work on cleaning out the barns and starting to work on those new kidding pens in the smaller barn. It didn't happen.

I woke up with muscle spasms in my back, which lasted all day, in spite of my attempts at getting them to subside. I used my TENS unit, then heat, then stretching. After sweeping and mopping the first floor and having lunch, I went back to the heating pads and more stretching. By then, Mike needed to head into town to run errands. And then the sun went down.

Forecast for today is rain and temperatures in the 60s. There are lots of things to complain about -- like the inevitable flooding that will occur, but aside from that and the obvious drawback of getting wet between the house and barn, this is a great day for working on goat stuff. Kids start arriving around January 11, so we need to get moving!

Here's my list of work to be done today:

• Pen open does (unbred) with bucks, which will require three different pens or stalls. This requires cleaning stalls, catching goats (not hard, just stinky with the bucks), finding water buckets and hay feeders for each stall, etc.
  
• Give copper boluses to goats that look like they need it.
• Create new kidding pens in smaller barn, which means cleaning up a lot of "stuff" and putting together pens using sections of stalls that were taken out of my sister-in-law's barn. (No, she doesn't have animals, which is why she gave us the disassembled stalls.)
  

The first two things on the list should not take more than an hour, but the final thing could easily take all day. In fact, it's really optimistic to think that we'll finish in one day, but the temperature will be falling back down to freezing again after tomorrow, so it's an opportunity that we can't miss. I'll be putting a pot of soup on the stove to cook for lunch (along with bread in the breadmaker) and a casserole to put in the oven for dinner, so that I won't be interrupted with cooking chores after I get started out there.

Homespun Christmas

We made a lot of our gifts this year. We gave people homemade soap and garments that we made ourselves by knitting and crocheting. Margaret made tea cozies for her aunt (my sister-in-law) and me. The mostly white one is for me, and the mostly purple one is for the sister-in-law. If you're not a tea drinker, a tea cozy is placed over the pot to keep it warm. She is also crocheting a table runner for me that will match my china, but it's not done quite yet.

Margaret knitted mittens and a hat for Mike, I knitted a scarf for another relative, and we're making 100% cotton washcloths for other family members to go along with their homemade goat milk soap.

Christmas dinner consisted of our homegrown turkey and green beans. Ingredients for everything else was store bought and side dishes were made from scratch. If you've been reading for a while, you can see that as we move into winter, we are using up our stored food fairly quickly. Next year, we definitely need to grow winter squash, since they last for many months with no special storage. Squash bugs are the reason we rarely have winter squash. We are also hoping to get a greenhouse built and operational in 2009, which will extend the harvest.

Home for Christmas!

The electricity was restored on Tuesday, just in time for another winter storm, so the kids and I stayed in our hotel, rather than attempting a possibly dangerous drive. Yesterday, the weather was completely opposite the ice-snow-wind that was being forecast, so we hurried home before it had a chance to get nasty again. After arriving at home, we saw just how cold it was in the house. That's frozen condensation on the inside of the windows.

Losing electricity was quite a learning experience, and although there are some things I like about life in the 19th century, the lack of electricity would not be one of those things. My favorite part of the whole ordeal was how we spent the evening after 24 hours without our modern appliances. Since we had no television or computer to keep us occupied after dinner, we played cards and Monopoly. We should do that more often. In fact, tonight, we're talking about playing dominoes after dinner.

Lesson #2: When my oldest (now 21) was six years old, I canceled cable television. After spending two days in a hotel with a television, I can still say that it was an excellent decision. It only took about three hours of viewing for me to ask, how do people spend hours every day watching this? We do own a television, and we have a Netflix subscription, and every Friday we have movie night with homemade pizza (using our homemade mozarella), so I don't completely eschew television, but I don't understand how people can blindly flip through channels looking for something to entertain them hour after hour, day after day.

Lesson #3: Plumbing was the greatest invention of modern society. If I had to choose between living without electricity and living without plumbing, I'd give up the electricity. Since our well pump is electric, we lose both when we lose electricity. As much as I missed lights, I really missed being able to wash my hands, shower, and flush the toilet. Mike, who wound up carrying buckets of water from the creek to the animals, really missed having a working well and faucets.

Lesson #4: Having a wood stove is a great supplemental source of heat. I'm glad Mike was so insistent about the in-floor heating when we built the house. Being in a hotel for two days with forced air has made me remember how much I dislike it and how unevenly it heats a room. The in-floor heating and the wood stove work very well together, along with our passive solar design. Having a wood stove as your sole source of heat is time-consuming, stressful and difficult. Someone had to add wood every hour and a half, even overnight. Of course, some stoves are made to last longer, so if your goal is total wood heat, you definitely need to buy a wood furnace, rather than a stove. A possible problem with that, however, is if you have an electric blower, you would lose it when you lose electricity.

Lesson #5: We still have a long way to go to be completely self-sufficient. We're doing great with food, but we have work to do in the energy department. We now own a generator, so we will be able to handle future power outages much better; however, it would be great if we were off the grid entirely. That's been a goal from the beginning, but when something like this happens, it makes you start working towards that goal a little more seriously and with more dedication.

And the final lesson . . . as Dorothy learned in The Wizard of Oz, "There's no place like home." As much as I enjoyed the whirlpool, the exercise room, the maid service, and not having to cook, I really missed home.

Wimping out

The kids and I are at a hotel taking showers, watching The Crocodile Hunter, and using the free Wi-Fi. It got down to 55 last night in our bedroom! I did not get much sleep, in spite of the long underwear and pajamas, plus two comforters, and being sandwiched between my husband and my new dog, which I haven't even had time to tell everyone about!

Mike is back home keeping the wood stove fired up so our pipes don't freeze. We know the pipe coming out of the well is frozen though, because it's in the shed, and without a fan in the pump room, the temp at ground level is freezing, even though the gas heater is keeping the room in the 50s.

Livestock water has been the biggest challenge. Yesterday we drained the water heater in the barn, which provided enough water for everyone. Today, however, the water won't come out, so we think it might be frozen. I recalled that the last time I saw the creek, there was a break in the ice at the ford, so Mike is going down there and bringing it back a bucket at a time.

Hopefully, we'll get power back soon, and I'll have time to write all about it. More nasty weather is on the way.

Roughing it

This post is brought to you by our pick-up truck. Yes, the pick-up truck is providing the power for me to blog today on my laptop, which was fully charged at the moment we lost electricity last night at 9:15. The electric company has no estimate for when it will be restored. Since some people have been without power for two days and are just now being told they can expect to get power back by 5:00 this afternoon, we're thinking it might be a couple days for us also. The original outage was caused by an ice storm, and then last night the wind kicked up and caused our current power outage.

The wood stove is keeping the house at 63 degrees, which is amazing since it is hovering around 0 degrees F today. All the water buckets were frozen, so we brought those inside to melt. Margaret went to town to get water for us, since our well pump is electric. We'll also have to give water to the animals. With all the ice around here, we'd need to use a pick ax to break it up and thaw it for water. The weather has been terrible with snow, followed by above-freezing temps, and then the ice storm on Thursday night.

Mike is cycling the frig and the freezers on the power from the pick-up, and I found some half-gallon bottles of frozen water outside that I also put in the frig to help keep everything cold in there between times that we're running the pick-up. The deep freezer is actually doing quite well. Everything in there is still frozen hard.

I am really wishing we had our own solar panels and wind turbine! At a minimum, we really should have a generator. Time to sign off for now. I'll write again once we have power restored and let you know all the fun details!

Homemade hash brown casserole

A couple days ago, out of the blue, I was craving a hash brown casserole. Like many of you, I searched online for a recipe. I checked eight recipes and all of them, unfortunately, included Campbell's cream of chicken soup. Have American cooks become incapable of cooking without Campbell's soup? It's in our green bean casseroles, broccoli casseroles, zucchini casseroles, and our hash brown casseroles! Since we don't eat commercially-grown meat, using a cream of chicken soup was out of the question, so here's what I came up with:

Antiquity Oaks Hash Brown Casserole

2 pounds of hash browns (frozen)
1 cup sour cream
3/4 cup goat milk (can substitute whole cow's milk)
8 ounces shredded cheddar cheese
1 T. dried minced onion
1 t. garlic powder (omit if you are not a garlic fan)
1 t. garlic salt
1/8 t. pepper

Mix together all of the ingredients in a large bowl and pour into a 2 quart casserole that has been liberally buttered to avoid sticking. Bake at 400 degrees F for 30 minutes or until bubbling and browned. If you use freshly shredded potatoes, it takes a lot longer to cook, so use 350 degrees F for an hour, and keep the casserole covered for the first 40 minutes. Sprinkle with bacon bits (or veggie bacon bits) before serving, if desired.