April Homestead Update

As for life in the country and efforts to be self-sufficient, we are kicking into high gear this month.  Unfortunately, I sometimes feel like, while we keep moving forward, we also fall back.  We might be learning how to make better use of our space, getting a greenhouse and hoop-houses built, learning more and more about beekeeping, and enjoying an increasingly established garden, but there is so much to maintain!  Garden gates are sagging, paint is peeling, weeds find new places to push through, and our barn walls are rotting into nothing.

This is our goat barn.  We've been ignoring the problem for too long.  But the solution is daunting!

We finally, after YEARS of working at it, have the pasture fenced for the goats.  (It was finished in 2007, but two winters of severe flooding took it all down.)  Now, the pasture is a short walk down a hill via a switchback, but the goats have all become very comfortable in a fenced area close to the house.  They love to graze just outside of their enclosure, but they get nervous when I take them down to the pasture, and they panic if I put them inside of the fence and leave.  So far, they have always found a way out, and will work their way back up to our driveway, sometimes limping as if they went to desperate measures to escape.  Yesterday, I believe I secured all exit points by stretching chicken wire across any slightly wide openings and putting concrete blocks under the gates.  They stayed put, bleating as if their hearts were broken, for a couple of hours.  The goal is to have them grazing down there during the day, reducing our need to buy feed by about 90%.  (It's about time!)

This is just a small area of the pasture; a giant goat buffet.

This is part of our effort to make sense of having goats.  Until now, they have been expensive weed-composting machines and sweet pets.  We recently bought a baby boy goat named Thorin.  In a few months, he'll be old enough to impregnate our 3 does.  We plan to sell the offspring when they are weaned (we have enough goats) and milk the does.  Yes, we have had goats for 10 years without successfully milking them.  It's a long story.  So, if we can cut cost of feed and have fresh goat milk, it will justify my choice to keep goats.

Introducing Thorin.  He is very shy and nervous around people.  He sure is adorable, though.

We lost 2 ducks in early spring to raccoons.  But the remaining 3 include a female, and I'm still hoping she'll hatch some babies.  So far, she has no interest.  I find her cold eggs scattered all over the place.  But, they wander around all day and through the night munching slugs.  Tomorrow, I will be picking up a pair of baby geese to live in the veggie garden.  Ducks and geese are excellent slug control.  We also have 2 teenage Buff Orpington chicks and 2 baby Polish chicks living in the greenhouse with Blind Chicken.

Blind chicken was attacked by our cute little lap dog last year and, while she recovered her health, she can't see.  I put her in front of food and water every day.  The other chickens are incredibly cruel to her, so she lives in the greenhouse for now.  We have a new coop in progress, which needs to be completed soon so that we can put plants into the dirt in the greenhouse without them being eaten by the chicks.  Blind chicken will live in the old coop with the ducks and geese.

We spend all of our spare time trying to keep up with weeds, failing gates that are tied together with bungee cords, seed planting, and general cleaning.  As usual, we are late getting the garden tilled and planted, but Mike is advisor for his school's horticulture club, so we get starts from them each year at the plant sale, and that helps us catch up.  Then, Mike has a couple of months during summer to spend working the garden and taking care of all of these huge projects.

This is a section of the perennial garden, which is interspersed with herbs, hops, grapes, strawberries and raspberries.

Sometimes, I think I should keep two blogs: one for homesteading and one for art.  I'm not very good at writing about why they are inherently connected.  But, I use each to support the other, if that makes sense.  I earn shockingly little income from my mosaic at this point.  My daughter is still young enough, and we are so remote and lacking a support system, that the cost of getting a job outweighs the benefit.  Through my efforts  splitting my time between homesteading activities and trying to grow the business, we are able to squeak by on Mike's income.  Plus, we get fresh, homegrown food and best of all, a really great lifestyle.  Our daughter has grown up with a mom who creates almost every day and she has been by my side at art shows and festivals since she was a baby.  She is very proud when people come to see my work, or when I make an appearance in a newspaper or magazine.  She has also helped harvest a lot of our food, and she helps herself to food straight from the garden, happily snacking on kale and fennel and using chives as straws.  So, I am considering starting a separate blog just for art, but I don't know if it's necessary.  I would be curious to know what my nine followers think.

Communication Glitch

I am writing offline today, and will need to post when I can either get to a hotspot, or when Centurylink finally restores my internet service.  Last week, our area was hit by a record-breaking snowstorm.  Having grown up in Michigan, I still have a hard time taking our “snowstorms” seriously, but it really is amazing how a foot of snow here is completely debilitating.

The heavy snow and ice weighed down trees, so that the landscape is littered with huge broken branches, and many trees are split right down the middle.  Many smaller trees are permanently bowed, and you can almost hear them muttering, “Oh, my aching back!”  Power was lost all over Western Washington.  At first, people were heading to hotels and spending time at the mall and cafes.  But then, even those businesses lost power.  We spoke to a waitress with a disabled child who reported having hauled her son and his equipment from her home to those of family members, but each location lost power.  She finally booked a hotel room, but the hotel lost power, and the whole experience had been very stressful for her.

As for us, we were snowed in and our electricity turned on and off over the course of two days.  It went out for several hours both evenings, so we had to make dinner and find ways to entertain ourselves in the dark, but we were safe at home with plenty of food and the woodstove.  In fact, we each had charged handheld electronic devices, so we could read and play games in the candlelight.

Our friends in the city were not so lucky.  One family of 5 described how they stayed huddled under blankets for warmth.  A friend was desperately trying to contact her elderly grandmother, who lives alone and was without heat or phone.  Grocery stores had to donate much of their stock before it spoiled, and a lot of income was lost as nearly all business activity came to a halt for about a week.

And then a warm front came through, and the snow started melting fast.  Now we are approaching flood stage in many areas, and the rain keeps coming.  Additionally, we had high winds yesterday, further damaging trees and blowing broken branches onto power lines.

Since the blackouts, our internet has been constantly going on and off.  We could check email, but often replies were lost because the signal vanished while we were sending.  I had a technician come out yesterday, who replaced my router and modem and was re-wiring connections when he received a call with some bad news.  He went to lunch, saying he could finish the job from outside, as I needed to leave.  When we came home, we found that we had no internet signal at all, plus, NO PHONE.

I can handle power outages, but I can’t stand this inability to communicate with the outside world.  We had another blackout last night, so no clocks, no alarm to get us up on time, no way for Mike to call work.  Plus, they are doing state testing today, so it would be a very bad day for a teacher to be late.  We kept waking up to check my Nook for the time, and then the power came back on, gratefully.  (Getting ready for school and work in the dark would have been difficult.)  I sent Mike and Anouk off to work and school knowing that neither of them would be able to contact me today.  Mike has a long, rural commute in the dark, through pelting hail, after a night of high winds that undoubtedly left many obstructions on the roads.

Last night, I drove 1.5 miles to a cell phone signal and called Centurylink.  It took about a month’s-worth of minutes, many transfers, and frustrating conversations with two indifferent customer service reps and one recorded voice system to submit a request for repair.  Unfortunately, no one can contact me to set up a time, so I just have to hope someone comes before I need to leave this afternoon.

All of this has reinforced my commitment to living the way we do.  We have piles of  wood and  3 different buildings with woodstoves on our property.  We have a pantry and extra freezer full of food, plus fresh eggs.  We have a drawer full of batteries, a selection of flashlights, and a stash of candles (which we need to re-stock now.)  Anouk has a little flashlight that doesn’t require batteries, and while it is a pain to use, it sure came in handy when the power first went out and we needed to find other light sources.  We have 3 lights that stay in outlets, but when the power goes out, they turn on.  One then becomes a flashlight, holding its charge for a long time (at least, it never ran out during our outages.)  I am thinking of picking up more of these emergency lights.  The ones that stay plugged only last about an hour, but I put one over the kitchen counter and one in the bathroom, and they were invaluable.  I also keep several gallons of water for when we run out, though we didn’t need them this time.

I also remembered that Mike had an old transistor am radio from his childhood, and I was surprised to find that it was in perfect working order!  There was something very comforting in being able to listen to the news, including descriptions of people skiing and snowboarding in the streets of Olympia.

That brings me to the thing I do regret about living out here in emergencies; community.  We just hunker down in the quiet and darkness at these times.  We rely only on our own resources.  Mike hates the isolation, and becomes claustrophobic and short tempered.  I envy our friends who probably bundled up and went for walks in the silent streets of the city, joined with nearby friends, played in the snow, and made the best of a bad situation as a group.  Where there’s power, there are cafes and grocery stores, accessible by foot if not by car.  Today, I am tempted to leave home, just so I can find wi-fi and use my cell phone to be in touch with the rest of the world.  I have not been without a phone since severe Michigan weather as a child and I hate it.

So, I have written all of this out on my laptop, but I can’t post it.  I should probably just go to work in the studio, though I feel anxious and unsettled.  I hope someone from Centurylink shows up soon.

Experiments in homemade cleaning products

The other day, I played with a shampoo recipe I found in a book.  It called for 1/4 cup herbal tea, 8 oz. liquid castille soap, and 2 tsp. light oil.  I used green tea and mint for the tea portion, added some honey, and I happened to have calendula-infused olive oil (heavier, but infused after all.)  The recipe said to simmer the combination over heat, which I did not do.  This may be the problem.

The shampoo smells great, but it's runny.  I added salt, which has thickened my castille soap products nicely in the past, but it didn't have any effect on this mixture.  I have it in a squirt-bottle, which allows me to apply it directly to my hair.  I was disappointed in my initial shampooing experience.  I felt like I needed shampoo to rinse out my shampoo.  There was a light stickiness while my hair was still wet, which is probably from the honey.

Once my hair was dry, it was fine.  In fact, it felt thicker and more controllable than usual.   I will try heating the mixture now and see if I can thicken it, plus I should add glycerin for moisture retention and easier rinsability and some tea tree oil for extra cleaning power.  I'll report back.  All in all, it was a good first attempt, but it needs some adjusting.

Yesterday, I followed a recipe for homemade dishwasher detergent.  This called for a 1-to-1 ratio of citric acid and washing powder, plus essential oils.  That's all.  I had citric acid, which I ordered online to make bath fizzies.  Washing powder can be found in the detergent section at any grocery store, and is useful for many cleaning products.  I added lavender and tea tree oils, which smell clean and fresh.  Both have antiseptic properties - good for cleaning, no?

My first load of dishes came out as clean as when I use any store-bought detergent.  The downside is that, when I went to use the mix this morning, it had stiffened.  I had to bust up the powder with a metal spoon, and it was flying all over the kitchen.  I suppose there is some chemical they add to commercial detergents to maintain the powdery consistency, and I'm hoping to figure out a solution.

Today, I need to make liquid dish soap, because I'm plum out.

"Why are you doing all of this, rather than simply buying it pre-made from a store?"  one might wonder.  Part of it is my stubborn urge for self-sufficiency.  Part is the fun of mixing stuff up, adding nice smells, and seeing what happens (reminds me of being a kid.)  My biggest goal has been to reduce the number of plastic containers we have to recycle or toss out.  Even if we manage to recycle all of our bottles, we send a ton of caps and dispensers to the landfill.  However, I have had to face the fact that all of the ingredients I use come in plastic containers with caps.  Eventually, I hope to find a source that will allow me to refill my containers.

I'll try to keep updating my progress as I play with these recipes and let you know what works and what doesn't.

Making balms

A variety of herbs still growing in our garden in October.

 I can't believe I'm still able to harvest a handful of lavender, yarrow, calendula, and lots of other herbs this late in the season.  These get separated into paper bags, or bundled and hung to dry.  When they are nice and crispy, I pack them into jars and fill the rest with olive or almond oils.  After about 3 weeks, I strain the oil for use in the products I've been making.  It is a very time-consuming process (Mike recently asked my why I can't seem to do anything that is actually cost-effective) but it is rewarding.  Every step is relaxing and aromatic, and it feels good to know I'm using organically grown plants right out of my own yard.

The down side is that the pantry is small, and there really isn't room for my new enterprise.  A table just inside our front entryway is piled high with containers of oils, beeswax, honey, essential oils, and tools.  I bring what I need to the kitchen for each project, then pile it all back on the table, with no organization at all.  The kitchen floor is spackled with cocoa butter and wax, which doesn't mop up.  I need to use a straight-edge to scrape it up, and it never seems clean.  I still haven't figured out how to clean the waxy residue off of the bowls, spatulas, sieves and mixers I use to make lotion and balm.

But, it's all worth it.  I spent the better part of yesterday making a balm from beeswax, shea butter, cocoa butter, honey, vitamin E, glycerine, olive oil, and essential oils that will make a nice gift for a friend's baby shower this weekend.  The wax makes it a barrier cream, to prevent baby rash, while all of the other ingredients are nourishing and soothing.  It would also work well for gardeners, crafters, and anyone needing extra protection and moisturizing for hands, feet, elbows, etc. (It would be great for mosaic artists and those working with cement.) I am very pleased with the outcome.  Here is a photo of the balm in the tins:

Today, I finally have a working printer, so I will be experimenting with creating a label.  I've been researching companies that print labels, but for a small line of products like this, nothing is really affordable.  So, at least for now, I have to figure out how to make them myself.  I really want my products to look homemade, but pretty and professional.  Presentation has never been my strong point.

Part of our squash/pumpkin crop.

We have pulled in almost all of our pumpkins, so there isn't much left to do in the garden.  Mike has been mulching on the weekends, and I plan to start putting chickens in the veggie garden to turn the soil.  I have a pile of tomatoes and zucchini to freeze, and the rest is finally done.  We butchered the turkeys last week and our freezer is packed full.  We traded one turkey to Barnyard Gardens for some chickens, plus they always do the butchering for us.  We have decided not to raise turkeys next year.  It is far too expensive, and quite a bit of extra work. 

Well, that's the homestead report for October.  The misty-rainy season is in full swing and the hard work is over.  It's a good time to make art, soap, balm, lotion, and today I'm making bath bombs, and nursing a month-long cold. 

Autumn Homestead Update

Fall tends to be one of the busier times here on the little farm.  I am usually scrambling to prepare for art exhibits, starting to create some smaller items for holiday sales, and dealing with the harvest, all while my husband and daughter are getting back to their school/work schedules and all of the extracurricular activities that come with it.

By now, our tomatoes are dwindling, and I've been removing the spent plants from the greenhouse, making room for a fall crop of greens.  We planted winter broccoli and cauliflower, plus salad greens.  We've never done a fall planting before, mainly because it has always been so much work just getting the harvest finished, let alone dealing with replanting.  I thought planting in the greenhouse would mean the veggies were protected from predators (all of the greens in the raised beds have now been munched away by deer) but I have been fighting a whole gang of caterpillars instead. 

The deer have been very audacious, coming into the fenced garden surrounding our house, eating our raspberries and grapes.  The other morning, I was wholly entertained watching Mike chasing a deer around out there in his underwear and t-shirt, barefoot, waving a plastic yellow softball bat.  These are the memories we will cherish forever.

We have a lot of grapes (though less each time the deer break in), and I have no idea what I'll do with them.  I'd love to make wine, but I'm not up to buying equipment and taking that on this year.  We could vitamix them, but what about seeds?

Our first hive was invaded by yellow jackets.  Within about a week, the yellow jackets drove out the honey bees and ate almost all of the honey.  The hive never did produce much honey, so I don't think it was healthy to begin with, but we were very upset by the loss.  We are just hoping the other two hives are safe - they look ok.  I've been trying to salvage beeswax from the dead hive, but it's full of brood, and a bit papery.

Now and then, I find time to make lotions.  I infused almond oil with lavender for my most recent recipe.  I didn't use any essential oils, so the lotion is subtle and simple.  I'll give you a little rundown:

First, I melted beeswax and the lavender-infused almond oil, while letting some borax powder dissolve in water:

Then I mixed them together while both were hot.  I put the mixture in a blender I use only for lotions.

Once it was nicely whipped, I poured the mixture into jars and let it cool:

The hardest part about making lotion is planning ahead.  The infusion takes a few weeks, and then it's just a matter of having the materials on hand and the right tools.  The rest is very simple.  It has a nice, mild lavender smell, and the beeswax/almond oil texture feels luxurious on my hands.

My printer has broken down, so I need to get a new one.  Then I can print some labels and get my new products ready for the holidays.  Even if I can't sell them, they will make great gifts.  I helped
Anouk and her friend make melt & pour glycerine soap the other day.  We added our honey and some sage oil.  I used one to wash my face this morning, and it is the best facial soap I've ever used.  Anouk is going to make her own products and call them "Little Tendrils."

My last day alone on the farm...

I have picked and frozen 8 gallon bags of raspberries so far, and they keep coming!

Mike and Anouk are staying with a friend in Northern CA and will leave there this afternoon for the last leg of their trip, stopping for the night in Oregon.  I expect to see them early in the day tomorrow.  I am very excited to have them home, but also fully enjoying the last day of solitude.

I feel that I've done a good job of subsisting on existing food, though I haven't been hard core.  There were many things in the cupboards and fridge to supplement my meals, like salad dressing, spices, coffee, a can of tuna, etc.  But, I made a huge pot of chili from scratch that provided many meals during the first week and ate a lot of salad with boiled eggs sliced over them.  I'm no longer quite as excited about cucumbers.  I often sautee beets and zucchini with balsamic vinegar and oil, which is delicious.  I think I've lost about 5 lbs, and I'm not craving carbs any more at all, though I do feel like I need more protein.

Yesterday I was in town and I bought tofu, rice milk, chocolate, and a bottle of wine.  We'll go and buy a carload of groceries this weekend, but I feel like I've reset my appetite to a different standard, and I'll try to keep eating this healthfully as long as I have access to fresh veggies.

Last night, deer ravaged my garden.  Someone ate the tops off of most of the carrots, munched the 3 broccoli plants, and chewed the top layer off of all of my cabbage.  The deer are beautiful animals, and I love how tame they are around here, but I am not growing a buffet for the wildlife.  I suppose we will need to put up electric wire or something this year. 

I found two baby eggs in the coop yesterday, which means my young hens are starting to lay!  We will soon have enough eggs to share.

My garden is still very weedy, but with two of us at home, we should be able to get that under control this month.  I have a commission, and I've been able to make significant progress on it with all of this uninterrupted time.  Now there is a bench waiting for me to pick up and paint for the City of Olympia, if I can just borrow a truck and someone else to help me load and unload it.  So, between projects and family, I'm sure I will be posting a lot less after this.  (I've spent way too much time on the computer in my alone time.)  Harvest time is upon us, so I'll be extra busy picking, chopping, freezing and drying during this, most beautiful time of year in my favorite place on Earth.

Late July on the Farm

In early June, Mike was putting together a drip irrigation system in our garden.  Sadly, his mom passed away before it was finished, so he gave me a quick tutorial before he flew to California.  We wanted to have it ready for someone to easily water in our absence.  Now, drip lines pinned to the soil feed mini sprayers and drip spouts throughout the perennial garden when the spigots are turned on.  In the veggie garden, we have timers for drip lines to the pumpkins and sprinklers for the raised beds.  The greenhouse needs to be watered by hand every couple of days.  This whole system saves hours of time and many gallons of water.

I drove down to join Mike in California, and we have only been home a few days since mid-June.  The gardens are full of weeds and many of our veggies were ravaged by slugs, but it's still flourishing.

From this view, you can see a bed of beets on the left, which we will freeze and use throughout the winter.  The bed to the right has a zucchini in the foreground and the rest is carrots.  Beyond that are raised beds with cabbage, broccoli, fennel, potatoes, kale, spinach, and salad greens.  On the far end is a huge winter squash patch, and there is a bee hive in the far right corner.

Inside the greenhouse (it was hard to shoot a full view), the left side is full of tomatoes and there are snap peas beyond them.  There are cucumbers on the right, training up twine suspended from the roof.  Calendula and basil are planted in between everything else.  So far, I've only been able to eat one ripe cherry tomato, but there are many green tomatoes that will be ripe soon.  I eat the snap peas straight off the vines, and I have more cukes than I can eat on my own right now.  They are delicious!

The turkeys are growing fast, and are always famished.  You can see the ducks peeking out from behind them.  The black rouens are absolutely gorgeous.

Most of these chickens were babies only a few months ago.  They have finally gotten through their awkward teenage phase and are coming into their own.  I am only getting about one egg per day right now, so I look forward to these hens beginning to lay.

And the goats are sweet as ever, though Pan has been getting abrasions of some kind on his face, and Isabel currently has a similar injury on her face.  I have no idea what could be causing them.

In addition to the veggie garden, we have berries and fruit growing all over the property.  I've frozen 5 gallons of raspberries, and I've been snacking on blueberries and strawberries.  I'm trying to spend some time harvesting lavender each day, and the herbs are just going to seed.  Our grape vines are huge, and little grape bunches are just starting to grow from them. 

I'm so glad to be home for the summer, and enjoying the beginning of the harvest season.

Farm Update for late May

Each year, we face some kind of delay getting our garden planted and projects started, but it seems to always come together.  This spring has been very cold and dreary.  I even had to scrape my car windows on Monday morning!  My early attempts to seed greens resulted in no sprouts at all, so I tried again a few weeks later and got a few little starts, and now I feel pretty confident that the seeds I planted last weekend will be successful.

Luckily for us, Mike runs the Horticulture program at his school, so there are always plenty of starts available if we can't pull it together.  Also, our best friends own a nursery, (www.BarnyardGardens.com) so we lean on them when our luck runs out.

Right now, I'm working most days while Anouk is in school, so I'm up by 6am to get all of us ready and off to school, then I drive the long commute to the job site, and put in about 4 hours of work before I race back to her school to pick her up.  After school, we run errands and I try to accomplish some important task at home, like cleaning, bill paying, and garden maintenance, before cooking dinner and putting her to bed.  I usually fall asleep during that process and I'm toast after that.

Two Black Rouen & Two Swedish Blue

In between those tasks, I tend to our animals.  Our ducklings grew to nearly full-size within a month, and they now live where our turkeys have lived in past years.  I failed to socialize them, so they run from me, but they are very easy to take care of, and we have been supplementing their feed with a steady supply of slugs.  They are gorgeous and fun to watch.

Our chicks are now about half grown, so I moved them to the main coop just the other day.  First, I put them in an adjacent enclosure for the afternoon so that they could introduce themselves to the established flock through the fence.

That evening, all of the chickens retired to the coop as usual.  The rooster was particularly loud, but not aggressive, and they have been happily cohabitating for three days now.  (Chickens will become very territorial if you put new in with old during the day, and they sometimes kill the newbies.)

When we get baby poultry, they spend the first couple of weeks in a plastic tub in a closet with a heat lamp.  Then I move them out to our original chicken coop, close to the house, in our old rabbit cage for extra security.  When they are ready, I move them out of the cage to have full range of the brooding coop until they are big enough to be out in a yard.  When I moved the chickens, I was able to release the baby turkeys from the hutch, so they now have a big coop to play in.  We did not go with a heritage breed this year, but I would have to write another long blog to explain why.  Next time I get a day to myself...

It has been a beautiful week, and today is predicted to be the best weather yet this spring, so I had better get off my butt and enjoy the sunshine.  I have plants to water, bees to check, and a car to pack full for the POSSCA Artist's Garage Sale taking place tomorrow.

Tomato and basil starts in the greenhouse, with cukes waiting in the tray.

Broccoli and cauliflower bed.

Waste Not

One of the things I enjoy about raising chickens and goats is their role as instant-composters.  We have a small compost pile, but I use it only for moldy food and manure.  Almost all of our food waste is used to supplement our animal feed.  Though we try to eat what we grow and buy from local sources, there are definitely some exceptions that we make, like bananas and avocados.  So, in addtion to any leftover greens, our goats LOVE to eat our banana and avocado peels, along with tamale husks.  The chickens eat all grain-based leftovers, cheese, potatoes, legumes and cooked veggies.  We give them leftover cooked eggs and crushed eggshells, and if I ever drop an egg in the coop, they rush over to devour it because it is full of nutrition.

As for any meat scraps, the dogs and cats are happy to take care of those.  Whenever I cook a chicken (purchased from Barnyard Gardens in Shelton, WA www.barnyardgardens.com) I usually use the white meat as a main dish the first night, the dark meat incorporated into a dish the second night, then I boil the rest to make broth and peel every bit of the yucky meat from the bones as treats for our indoor pets.

When we tend the garden, we toss the weeds over the fence to the goats and chickens to munch on.  By the time they finish processing all of this waste, it is well on it's way to nutrient-rich compost.  We cut down on feed costs, the animals enjoy a yummier, more nutritious diet, and we don't send any of it to the dump.

Harvest time again!

Last year by this time, I was harvesting and storing as fast as I could go, listening to "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle" on cd to keep motivated, and delivering bags of fresh produce to the local food bank every week.  But, if you read my spring posts, you know we had delays and frustration, and the weather was very cold during early summer.  So, we are definitely eating lots of yummy fresh food these days, but not giving much away. 

Here's part of the veggie garden, looking toward the pumpkin patch.  You can see that we harvested and tilled two of the raised beds, and the last one was just planted with winter broccoli.

The bees have been working all over our garden, but the honey super is empty.  We removed the queen excluder, hoping they would start building some comb on those frames, but it seems like we might not get honey this year.

If you look carefully at this shot, you can see that our tomato plants are laden with beautful GREEN tomatoes.  If they do finally turn red, it will likely happen all at once, so I'll be trying to find ways to use and store all of them.  My fear is that they will just begin to go bad, without ever ripening.  Everyone I know has had the same tomato trouble this year, blaming it on the cool early summer temps.

One new thing we did this year was to hand-pollinate our cucumbers and squashes.  Anouk learned to do it very well, so she helps to keep on top of it.  I feel like I have a much more intimate relationship with my vegetables.  It's interesting to see the female flowers open, waiting eagerly for some action, then to look for the male flowers, with their very male anatomy, and to intervene on their behalf.  Sometimes a plant will have a ton of females, with no males in sight, and other times it's the opposite.  And it is always sad to see the withered fruit of a female that was never pollinated; a loss of potential food.  Since we started hand-pollinating, we have so many more cucumbers, it's amazing!  And they are absolutely delicious.

I thought I would end with a photo of one of our Romanesco Cauliflowers, because this has to be my favorite thing growing in the garden right now.  Isn't it fantastic?

Frozen!

I moved away from Michigan in 1988 for a reason. Well, for several reasons, but one was the frigid cold that dominated at least half the year. When I moved to the Pacific NW, it was like Fall all Winter to me. I didn't mind the Moist Season because it usually hovered around 50 degrees, so I could throw on some gortex and still bike and hike and enjoy the outdoors in relative comfort. Every 3-5 years it seemed we would get some extreme weather in December or January, and most years we would get a day or two of snowfall.

Over the past 5 years, the weather has changed dramatically around here. We've seen more winter storms, and the past two years were marked by incredible floods, high winds, and landslides. We came close to some flooding this year in November, but the rain eased just before the Chehalis River crested. I am definitely grateful for that, but over the past couple of weeks, we have had some of the coldest temperatures I can remember in WA.

I have to admit, the blue skies and sunshine on the glittery, ice-covered landscape is stunning. Along the steep roadsides, incredible ice formations decorate the rock walls. When I pass by a small local lake in the mornings, just as the sun is hitting the water, thick steam swirls up in spooky wisps, looking like a huge crowd of ghosts dancing on the surface.

But this cold is causing me a whole heap of frustration and delay. I've been rushing to meet the deadline for installing this mosaic because the clinic is scheduled to open on the 18th. Last week, I spent two days putting up an exterior mosaic in 35 degree temps. My fingers were swollen with cold and my toes were numb. Luckily, the thinset seems to have cured without problems, which was a concern. I expected it to warm up this week for grouting, but it has only gotten colder, so I haven't been able to finish the work. If the grout freezes, it will compromise the curing process.

Meanwhile, I have 3 glass-on-glass mosaic panels in my studio that were supposed to be installed in the entryway of the clinic by now. On Friday, I started grouting early because I needed to leave for the night in the late afternoon. The cold caused the epoxy grout to cure very slowly, and I was not sure it was ready for me to leave it when I finally had to go. Sure enough, there is a light haze on the glass, so I have been painstakingly buffing each piece with superfine steel wool for the past couple of days, and I'm still not finished buffing the first panel. The third panel is still waiting for grout. I'm worried also that a couple hundred dollars worth of adhesives have frozen in my studio, deeming them unsuitable for use.

Our pipes froze on Monday and we have been having a water shortage ever since, despite wrapping our pipes excessively with heat-tape and insulation. It has become clear that we somehow lost pressure in our water tank, which is something I'll be working on today. No water is always difficult, but is extra problematic when I am responsible for the care and feeding of so many animals. They are all very thirsty. I keep a container filling under my one trickling faucet, and use this source for all of our cleaning and as drinking water for the animals. Water for drinking and cooking comes from the store for now.

It doesn't help that I was really sick with a stomach bug at the beginning of the week, and could barely get myself upright. I'm just now feeling almost normal.

When it gets below freezing, it seems the raccoons become really desperate for food. Last year, we had a cold spell and lost 8 chickens and 9 ducks in two weeks to raccoons. They were ambushing during the day, when the birds are free-ranging. We have interrupted a raccoon attack on our turkeys each of the past two nights. The first night, one managed to bust through the chicken wire near the top of the coop. Last night, it reached through the wire, got hold of a turkey, and chewed on its shoulder before we got there. The turkey had managed to escape from the raccoon's grasp, and had somehow climbed the wall and wedged itself in a corner of the ceiling, using its wings to brace itself there with its feet holding onto the chicken wire. She is wounded, but recovering.

Beyond these major inconveniences, there are the small annoyances. The coop doors are frozen shut, the car won't warm up in the morning, Mike had to drive to work two mornings with no heat at all (45 miles!), the eggs are frozen when I get to them, and I'm having a hard time keeping the house above 60 degrees.

All of this typing served mainly to postpone going back outside to solve these issues. I have to repressurize the water tank (wish me luck!) and try to make the turkey coop more secure. All I can say is that, despite the sunshine and absolutely stunning surroundings, I am longing for the good old days of incessant drizzle that used to be the bane of December and January.

But, I realize that we can count on our weather just getting stranger and more unpredictable in future years. I guess I just need to suck it up and be more prepared. And I'll try to enjoy the sun while it shines on the glistening ice-covered hills.

Introduction

I've been keeping an online journal through my yahoo account, and it was mainly intended to keep non-local friends and family updated, since we live so far out of the way. Eventually, it became more of a place to share my efforts at creating a sustainable life in the country, and running a home-based art business. Yahoo recently made a change, and I don't care for it. So here I am.

My husband and I bought 5 acres in the country near Olympia, WA in 2002. We couldn't afford anything close to town and wanted enough space to grow our own food and own goats. This property had a 1970 mobile home and outbuildings, a mix of forest, pasture, and wetland with a 30-foot waterfall dropping down to a little creek, and the surroundings are beautiful. It's all farms and State forest.

That fall, I became pregnant. I thought I would keep my part-time job at The Evergreen State College and that my life wouldn't change all that much. We had my daughter in the mobile home, in a birthing tub with midwives and two great friends present. It soon became clear that a return to work would not be easy. We don't have any family or friends nearby, and I could not imagine dropping my baby off at a daycare. Besides, we couldn't afford it. My husband is a teacher, and we have been scraping by until recently. I tried to take her to work, nursing her in a sling during staff meetings, pacing with her when she cried, struggling to get her to sleep (which she never did.)

When a question came up about the college budget and my position, I left. I tried to find other work at first, and did work as a Visitation Supervisor, which is a flexible job. But it was incredibly hard to find places to leave my baby at different times and different days each week, and after expenses, I found I earned about $300 per month. It wasn't worth it.

Around the same time, I was asked to to my first mosaic installation for a restaurant in Olympia. And not long after that, I was chosen by a jury to be the featured artist for Olympia's Spring ArtsWalk. I had also signed up for a business workshop offered through Enterprise 4 Equity, which is a non-profit that helps low income people create an effective business plan. Things came together, and I began working full-time as an artist.

So we have a small "hobby farm" in the country where we are learning to grow our own food. We raise chickens for eggs and turkeys for meat. We have five Nigerian Dwarf Goats that we have tried to milk, but have given up. They are sweet and they eat our weeds. We also have 2 cats, 3 dogs and a ferret. The goal for this year is to learn to preserve the food we harvest. In the past, we have just frozen what we could.

I just completed my largest commission yet, for an elementary school in Seattle. It took me 9 months, and I really got sick of doing it, but I was very happy the other day to receive payment for the job. I'm making just enough for us to do extra things, and for my daughter to take gymnastics and swim classes.

My work has an environmental focus, so I sell mainly at recycled art fairs. I use mostly salvaged materials. My reputation and skill has been steadily growing, though I am always aware that I have far to go. I now teach workshops, which brings in additional extra money now and then.

I will continue to write about being a mosaic artist, the environment, and the experience of trying to live sustainably by using less energy, growing our food, and finding innovative ways to reduce and reuse.