What a difference a summer can make?!

When we started this summer, we had a couple of key projects we wanted to get done... first and foremost preserve our family time with trips to the zoo, a stay-cation and visits with family and friends we don't see much. Thankfully, all of that happened. After that, we wanted to build the kids a sandbox, build a compost system and re-do the playroom. Our sandbox and compost bins did get done as well! The playroom.... well that is another story. It is still a work in progress. This first trimester preggo with "helpful" toddlers underfoot is just not as productive as usual. We are chipping away at it and no longer just trying to "get it done!".

A couple of very interesting things happened along the journey. The more the playroom came together the more we began to see something in it we had never even thought of before - a classroom.... a real space for learning and creativity. The more we worked on it and talked out loud, the more we realized how anguished we felt about sending Michael to school. We had already decided that he would have his pre-school experience at home, but the idea of genuinely homeschooling him snuck up on us from behind and captured our hearts and imagination.

Some may wonder what in the world we are thinking. Some may wonder why in the world I would take on this stress. I know that some wonder if I could even do as good a job as a school could for my son. But here is my reality. God made me a voracious reader and researcher - he also made my husband and I teachers. God makes all of us the first and foremost teachers of our children anyway. Our fortune is that Michael is extremely extroverted and easily enjoys and interacts with his peers and others. Formal school for Michael would be more about socialization than anything else and we feel that that is something that we can easily supplement through VBS, playgroup, scouts, other home-school families, etc. For years I have owned a treasury of resources on the education of character, good literature and ways to teach your children to be curious and industrious. It has always broken my heart that I would send Michael to school and let someone else get the joy of opening his mind. I want to do it. I want to guide him and nurture him. I want to observe his interests and his growth and tailor his education to his needs and his natural inclinations. I want to guide him as he walks towards the calling that his Father in Heaven has for him. At least, I want to do it now. Maybe not forever. Maybe for just a few years, but each journey does begin with a single step and our first is to hang the black board. The next will be to try this on for size.

I have not felt so invigorated as a mom - ever. Leaving the classroom and coming home to be a stay at home mom always felt like the right decision - but an impossible one. Now, I feel like it is coming together. I feel as though this is why He designed me with such a love for education. I am humbled, scared but most exhilarated. This journey is going to be an interesting one.

Is it August already?

As I said in an earlier post... June is the resting month. Once the 4th of July is behind us, things start happening and fast. Today is August 9th and I haven't had time to think about much of anything! We used June and July to build the kids a sandbox, the garden a 3 bin compost system and do a remodel of our playroom in the basement. All while harvesting herbs, some early peppers, some leeks and green beans. Yes... we did get some green beans this year - despite the rabbits.

Did you know that purple beans turn green when blanched and cooked? We didn't... what a bummer! I guess that I am much less impressed with purple beans now that I know that they will not retain any of their color. Regardless, we have several freezer bags of beans (better than we expected when we saw how much the rabbits were eating) waiting to be made into soup when the need arises in the winter months.

More to write... too many interruptions with the little ones underfoot.

Homemade Baby Food Class

I am "teaching" a class for new moms at one of the local clinics. Since I love growing food and making it into meals for our entire family, this one was a natural for me. I am excited about getting to use my mommy brain in a creative way. Most of the work on home made baby food 101 has been done by great women already. I am just going to steal from them (referencing them of course) and be the conduit between them and moms who are eager to learn about something that seems so big, technical and overwhelming. Thanks to www.wholesomebabyfood.com and "First Meals" by Annabelle Karmel, all I am doing is sharing my enthusiasm and their expertise.

What to do while it grows...

So I have been asked what we do while we wait for everything to grow. Sure, we have some early harvest, but in NE Wisconsin, the growing season is pretty short and "early" is relative. June is often a resting month. February and March are the seed starting months. April is the month of exhilaration when the herbs are shooting up through the snow promising spring mud and tilling. As soon as the ground is worked, some early plants go in and then the real work begins in May. A lot of hurry up and wait from May 1st - June 15th as we hurry to put some things in and then wait to put the others. June is the calm before the storm.

What does grow very well in June are herbs and strawberries. Basil in particular. That being said, June is our soup, stock, strawberries and pesto month. We roast several chickens per week, piece them, eat some for dinner and then freeze the rest in 2c bags for winter soup. The bones and scraps also get frozen into 13c containers and when we have 2 or 3, we pick a bunch of herbs, some carrots, celery and onions and make stock. Our stock pot renders 6-7 quarts of stock per batch. When we are bored with the chicken task, we switch gears to picking 5c of basil every 10 days or so to make batches of freezable pesto. Around Father's Day, we go to Pick Your Own strawberry fields and enjoy watching our kids eat more than they pick. 3 trays of strawberries, a couple of hours in the kitchen and freezer jars render us a freezer full of jam. Last year's uneaten blueberries need to leave the freezer to make room for the jam and pesto and so they also become freezer jam. By then end of the month, we have a freezer full of strawberry and blueberry jam, stock, soup meat and pesto.

So, stock is piling up with more on the stove and I cannot wait to switch into tomato season!

Bunnies are so cute.... until they are eating your green beans!

It has been far too long since I updated this. Life with toddlers, a dog and a big garden seems to leave little time for much else. I am grateful and glad that my life is so full.

We have live traps. Two of them. Thanks to my friends Brian and Cheryl, the bunnies are going to be part of the 3915 Hasenfeffer Relocation Program. Every year that we have lived here bunnies have overrun our perimeter. Our faithful feline, however, made it clear that they were not welcome in the garden unless they were throwing themselves on his altar. Unfortunately, Casper's nine lives ran out this spring and our golden retriever hasn't figured out how to intimidate the cuddly little varmits. I have planted 4 rows of green beans - 3 times! I have a sparse crop of pathetic bean bushes and on Jul 2nd no hope of a harvest any time soon. Armed with live traps, some of Brian's expertise and the eventual addition of chicken wire, however, those little guys are going to find a nice country life for themselves starting tomorrow morning. Fingers crossed. My beans are in need of some relief!

(BTW... what is up with rabbits that eat green beans but not my gourmet salad garden... really?!)

And it nearly was May when the real planting began

My leek sets arrived from Jung Seeds in late April and got parked in the garage for nearly a week while I waited for the tilling to get done and the rain to stop. On 28th of April they got planted into 3 rows (about 20 per row) in the center of our garden. Tiny little things it is amazing that they can not only survive in this weather but enjoy it. Unfortunately, my helpers got bored with the repetition of planting (not pulling out) leeks and so when that task was finished, we retired from planting for the day. So... the rains came again, the fierce wind and a nearby tornado. Some of my perennials just didn't fare well, but the leeks stood still. When our riding lawnmower was finally fixed we were able to cut the grass and dump the grass clippings around the plantings which will feed them and shelter them from the elements and hinder weed growth.


On May 1st, the next task was to get our first planting of radishes, carrots and spinach in. I have always been tempted to purchase seed tape for these tiny little seeds to make the rows more tidy and the plantings more accurate. My friend Cheryl, however, fed me a link to a "homemade seed tape" idea. I have since lost the link, but here is what we did.

Michael and I took a roll of toilet paper and laid it out on sheet trays. We (er, he) spritzed (read: soaked) the paper with fresh water. Next we carefully laid the seeds in 1/2" spacing, alternating between a radish and then a carrot, radish, carrot, etc. After the seeds were laid out, we carefully folded the tp onto itself a couple of times until we had strips of seeds. Next, we took those strips out to the garden where we had prepared our rows. To prepare the row, we dug a small trench 7 feet long and about 6" wide. We filled the trench with rich compost and then laid the seed strips on top of the compost. Michael assumed that they needed to be re-spritzed and I wasn't about to argue with the budding gardener when he making a sincere effort to be helpful. Windy as it was, the re-spritzing was a good idea because it helped the seed tape to stick to the compost while we finished laying the row. When we had finished the row, we gently covered the seed tape about 1" with more delicious compost. And, of course, Michael re-spritzed the newly covered rows. When we were done with the radishes and carrots, we did a row of spinach in the same way.

Our plan is to 3 successive plantings of spinach, radishes and carrots. For now, the garden is going to look silly because these crops are being planted between rows of green beans that cannot go into the soil until June. Because of the seeming randomness of the rows (with so many things not yet ready to be planted), it was important that Michael and I mark off every 12" in the garden. Taking a tape measure and straws, we sunk a straw every foot on the border of the garden. As long as the baby girl doesn't pull any more straws out, we shouldn't have too much trouble keeping our spacing even.

Oh my aching back!

I am currently reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver. I love it. I truly, utterly love it. Something about it makes me feel inspired and connected. A few days ago, I enjoyed a section that perfectly describes my day today:

"Every gardener I know is a junkie for the experience of being out there in the mud and fresh green growth... we love our gardens so much it hurts. For their sake we will bend over till our backs ache, yanking out fistfuls of quackgrass by the roots as if we are tearing out the hair of the world. We lead our favorite hoe like a dance partner down one long row and up the next, in a dance marathon that leaves us exhausted... we spend hours bent to our crops as if enslaved, only now and then straightening our backs and wiping a hand across our sweaty brow, leaving it striped with mud like some child's idea of war paint. What is it about gardening that is so addicting?" (Chapter 12: Zucchini Larceny)

Today Michael and I planted all of the ground cover and flowers in the mailbox/thorn apple bed. It was a messy bed still suffering from it's past life of weed infested river rock. We dug and dug and dug (until the dog ran into the street and we had to haul him to the back yard) and then started sinking these tender little plants. They are such pretty little treasures that, hopefully, if fed enough fish tank water will grow and stretch and cover the patch of ground in which they rest. It was nearly two hours in the fresh Spring air and it left us feeling motivated to move to the much bigger and more daunting grass beds. As we planted, Michael named many of the anchors "this one is Pickle!" and "that one is Grandma". All counted, we had named a "Grandma" (alyssum), 2 "Grandpa's" (a dianthus and a sweet woodruff), a "pickle" (sweet woodruff), a "Little Guy" and "Baby Girl" (astible red sentry) and "Greta Girl" (aquilegia biedermeie). We planted more than that, but naming them started to loose it's appeal.

After Greta woke up, we came back outside to plant a series of gladiolas, more dianthus and 2 clematis that will be beautiful if we planted them correctly. All of those found homes in the grass beds. During their afternoon naps, I finished the digging and planting.

It was a back breaking but addicting day. Heavy rain is forecasted for the next 4 days. Looks like my leeks, carrots, radishes, spinach and salad greens are going to wait until May to get into the ground.