Freshly Brewed

Normally, of course, if I am talking about something being freshly brewed, it is beer. Not today. I had seen this advertised in a magazine, on ways to be eco-friendly, and had to try it as our coffee pot had kicked the can (faint rim shot anyone?). It is a Toddy Cafe and it cold brews your coffee. You put a pound of coffee in there, let it soak for 24 hours, and then let it drain into the carafe below. It produces a smoother coffee that also has, or so the claim goes, 67% less acidity (this is a BIG one for me!) than regularly brewed coffee, and uses no electricity up to this point. To get hot coffee, use 1/3 concentrate to 2/3 boiling water. I must say, so far, I am in love.

Check it out for yourself: http://www.toddycafe.com/

Failures & Successes

Failures and Successes, today has been full of both of them. We did make the soap. We rendered the cattle fat into tallow and used it, along with olive oil, to make an oatmeal, honey, and cinnamon soap. Today I was able to take it out of the molds. Taste tests to test the ph balance proved the lye was too strong, so the soap is a failure. But really, it isn't. We can use it for laundry detergent, so we will still be saving ourselves a lot of money and it is still a step towards greater self-sufficeincy. And, most importantly, this was our first batch of soap, so it was a good learning experience, and we did learn from it.
And the successes? Shannon has been the epitome of them today, though Tristan is quickly trying to follow along as well. Justin found a "cloth" bag under the couch that a pop-up Thomas the Train tent had come in. Shannon has taken to carrying around his trains in, and then hanging the bag on door-knobs ... just like I hang our cloth grocery bags on some cabinet knobs in the kitchen. They are both pretty taken with recycling, but Shannon is of course much more aware of it. He gets very upset when he sees litter and he runs to pick it up so that "Mother Earth will feel better." He points it out when he sees it and can't get to it and says how it makes Mother Earth feel bad. It's really quite sweet.
Maybe there really haven't been any failures today, just varying degrees of successes. Success as a parent, as a person, as an enviromentalist, as a teacher, as a homemaker, as a homesteader. That's good enough for me.

What I did on my weekend

What a weekend this has been, and it isn't even over yet! Yesterday we went out to Lowe's and bought all of our supplies for the chicken tractor. Well, all of the supplies needed to BUILD the tractor, accessories such as a hanging waterer and such have been purchased or are still waiting to be purchased. The total cost for supplies came out to $70. Not too bad. This would get our chicks through summer, though we intend to go ahead and build a coop sooner rather than later. I was reading about how fast they will eat grass down and how often you need to move the tractor and it dawned on me that if all that holds true another unforseen bonus has come to light: the diminished need to mow. So we'll see. Justin began cutting the boards yesterday, but has had to hold off today due to rain.
Last night we lost a pet: Anypig, aka: GuineaPig, our (obviously) guinea pig. We think he was older than he was sold to us as. And we found out today that we keep our house colder than they can really tolerate (big whoops there), so we're going with the conclusion that there were several things that led to his demise. We buried him outside, wrapped in a brown paper bag. Shannon was sad this morning when he found out and asked why GuineaPig couldn't come back in to his cage. It was tender and bittersweet. So, of course, we did what all stupid, sappy-hearted parents do, got new ones. And yes, that was plural. What really tickled me though was when my mother was asking Shannon what we would name our new guinea pigs he replied that they were guinea pigs. She told him yes, but that things had names and went through all our pets' names. He replied to her "But they're guinea pigs." Making sure he keeps a realistic grasp on life and our relation to animals is something that is always on my mind, how best to teach it, etc - seems like he is learning it.
We now have two baby guinea pigs. 'Isapig' is approx. 4 months old & 'Penelope (pronounced "pee-neh-lope") Peepers' is approx. 8 or 9 wks old. Both are females. We've adjusted the temperature in the house, which will hopefully work better for them as well as us (something that we've been trying to "get straight" since we installed the new boiler). I've read that they do better when they aren't alone, so hence why we got two. We've also been doing a lot of reading on how to make sure they get a nice healthy & happy home.
That would seem to be full enough for a weekend, but it isn't. You obviously don't know me. Last night we rendered some tallow. Tallow is like lard but where lard is made from pig fat tallow is made from cattle or sheep (we used cattle) and is supposedly quite tasteless. Tonight we will be, or so the plan goes, making soap for the first time.
Also last night Justin put a new faucet on our kitchen sink, so that we would have more room for our bigger pots underneath. And this afternoon I am hoping that we can take the boys to the indoor Winter Carnival over at the Salem Civic Center. My contact at the paper has asked me to please take some photos if I go, so I would really like to be able to do that, plus it would be wonderful for the boys.
Guinea Pigs, Chicken Tractors, new faucets, rendering tallow, soap-making (and the quest for supplies & ingredients for it), photography, and some quality time with the family ... this is what I did on my weekend.
-By Mama Taney

The End of January

January comes to a close and I am lost in thought. The past couple of days I have felt unable to do anything, though motivated to do everything. Sometimes I feel locked inside myself. Perhaps I am in deep hibernation, but it is my body that is asleep and my mind that is awake.
I watched Stranger than Fiction the other night and was really impressed by it. It was much better than the fluff piece I thought it would be. I was particularly moved by a line one of the characters says. She says that she decided if she was going to change the world that she would do it through cookies. She has been a student at Harvard and had impressed them with her essay on wanting to change the world. She began baking cookies for her study groups - the result being the number of study partners in the groups got larger and her recipe collection grew and grew ... and she ended the semester with a D-. So she dropped out and opened a bakery. I loved that. Perhaps it is the stay-at-home mom in me who once went the Hollins, but it has struck a chord and remained lodged within me. Ever since watching that movie I have had the urge to bake, but find myself lacking the direction.
Thoughts of food have been consuming me lately (an ironic turn of table?). I'm yearning for more vegetarian meals. Not because I want to become vegetarian, far from it, but because I see how long our meat lasts us now that it isn't something we simply buy at the store. When we run out of beef we will be out until next fall. I worry we will run out. We haven't had the luck of having a deer this year. Since we aren't really buying chicken at all, there is another meat that is mostly lacking from our diet - a meat that used to be a staple. So, I'm longing for good vegetarian meals to help us get through. We, as a people, don't need the amount of meat (nutritionally and wellness speaking) that we are taught to think we do. So I see this as nothing negative, but an oppurtunity to really round out our meal-times.
It is amazing when one day you open your eyes and the world around you is different. When you see it all through new eyes. When you can recognize pivitol moments and be in them. Could this be a sign of the end of hibernation perhaps?

The Good, the Bad, the Sad

Time to fess up, I've completely failed so far at one of my homesteading goals. I had been planning on hanging my laundry out to dry all winter long (unless it was wet out). That hasn't really panned out like I had planned. The call of the dryer has been too strong. For the holidays I even found a way to make our clothes smell like peppermint (and it was all natural, so brownie point there). True, it has been an unpredictably wet winter thus far, but still the main fault is mine. One day perhaps. Still washing my clothes in cold water (unless warm or hot is specifically needed for that load), still using homemade laundry soap, and vinegar as softner. So, I suppose it isn't a complete fall off of the horse, is it?
On another note, we have recently acquired an mini-RV. It is a 1972 GMC Minnie Winnie. It's old, it needs some loving. The engine supposedly runs fine though. We've begun painting it and working on fixing it up some, making it our own. A process that is proving to be slower than we would like with the kids around. We're hoping to be able to use it to go on long-distance camping trips with the kids (we have tents for local trips) and also to be able to see festivals and visit breweries.
Justin brewed our first batch of brown ale the other day. I'm so eager to try it. It should be an Imperial Brown Ale (lots of bang for your buck!). We also are getting closer and closer by the day, it seems, to all-mash brewing. Exciting times.
There has also been some drama here lately. I do not wish to dwell on it really, but felt it only fair to mention. I don't like the all-happy Christmas letters, and life isn't always rosy. I'm nursing some very hurt feelings at the moment. I'm disappointed in some of my loved ones in that, if what occured was a simple misunderstanding, they haven't the courtesy to call and say so ... and in the gut wrenching feeling that if it wasn't all a misunderstanding, then it was done without care, with intent, with malice. The longer that goes by without hearing from them the more it seems, sad to say, that that must be the case. Hopefully this will all remedy itself out.
Until then, we will keep taking the steps we need to take for our lives. To work towards our own goals. Baby steps. But if you want to lay a proper foundation, you gotta give it time to settle.

Preserving Mountain Homesteads

I was doing some research last night and stumbled across a website. http://www.appalachianhomesteadfarm.org/ A woman named Vera Guise has been able to buy back some of her family's original homestead in the North Carolina mountains. Not only are they working at returning the land to a mountain homestead (non-profit) but they are also working to teach others. Here is a quote from their site:
A board of trustees provides guidance and support in crafting a 21st Century vision for this 19th century mountain farmstead, a vision that includes:
· Outdoor education and heritage/cultural arts experiences for mountain youth. Look for information coming soon about summer youth opportunities and cultural events you don’t want to miss this!
· A farm and folk-life center featuring an authentic living history farmstead, raising organic heirloom fruits and vegetables, and demonstrating such early farm and home tasks as churning butter, making molasses, canning fruits & vegetables, spinning, quilting, splitting shakes, and keeping bees for honey.
· A Spirit of Appalachia Farm & Folk School where mountain families can learn those forgotten skills the world, now at our door, yearns for-- a bit of the past when the pace of life was slower, the trees greener, the air cleaner, and the people friendly and authentic. It is time local people, old and young, had the opportunities and the resources to regain these lost skills and knowledge, arming themselves to succeed in today’s economy— now called agri-tourism and heritage-tourism. Yes, it’s way past time that mountain youth could keep and practice the unique features of their heritate with pride, AND advance themselves academically AND hold onto the family farm, and using those special sets of skills and knowledge to support themselves and their families. THIS would be mountain living at its best!

WOW ~ I am so utterly blown away!! I was moved to near tears to find this site and to see what they're doing (they offer youth camps among other things). Truly I can not accurately express how happy finding this site has made me.
The stigmatism of the mountain homestead and Appalachian way of life (hillbillies) is actually laughable. I say this because if you were really to know anything about that way of life you'd be able to see the wisdom of it, the beauty of it. It is a stigmatism based in ignorance and "outsider" mentality, those too busy thinking they're better than everyone else, that they know more than everyone else, to take the time to experience things that are foreign, different, or new to them. It's easier to dismiss it all and put it down that to take the time to learn about it a little bit.
Justin and I are dedicated to raising our boys to know the Earth and the world around them. To approach things with open eyes and open minds. To not worry about dirty "hippie" feet. We are blessed to have friends with similar missions in life. Here is a favorite picture of mine: Shannon playing in the Doyen's chicken coop with Max & Sam. The chicken they're holding is a flock favorite, and a big inspiration for us in deciding to acquire our own chickens. We're hoping to breed one of our hens with this particular chicken.
Here is a picture that Vera just sent me today. It is one of several, but it moved me beyond belief to see. I LOVE this photo!! It says so much without saying a thing (a mountain trait I suppose):

My Mother (and also the rest of my parents)

My mother drives me nuts. She is a drama-queen, she is nosy, and she is also my best friend, whom I love so dearly. No, she isn't dying, or dead for those of you whose heads will jump to morbid conclusions. She just is deserving of some out-loud lovin' right now.
Without her I wouldn't have grown up believing that women are capable of doing anything they damn well want without needing a man around. Of course, it was my father who taught me I can be as strong as a man, so he'll be needing the credit for that one. But, watching my mother be a single parent, watching her juggle life and its many, many hardships taught me .. well I suppose how to juggle. It taught me that things never are quite the way you want them to be and even if they get that way life has a way of tossing them all back up in the air again, so you better learn to juggle.
My parents haven't always believed in me like I wish they would've. If they did, they didn't show it to me well enough or convincingly enough that I knew and felt it. I'm not writing this to condemn them, though it is something I'm trying to take into account in the raising of my own children, because it taught me a lot. It taught me that I really had to believe in myself, because if I didn't there certainly was no guarantee that anyone else would. That in turn taught me to trust my gut and my intuition. My mother used to like to tell me "that's reality, deal with it," to which I would tell her I couldn't. And I couldn't, I can't, I can't live her reality. I had to learn that reality can be different for different people. You must be able to see your own path, know your own reality, and then try to find a way to coexist with others (and their realities) in this world. In every way it was their lack of belief in me, their inability to see my reality, to trust that I knew what I was doing that made me strong. And I am strong. I will never doubt my strength for one minute and I trust in my intuition. I trust in it and myself even if others don't, though when they do it is certainly a great deal of comfort and support.
I'm sure in reading this it doesn't sound like a compliment, but that is what it is meant as. I am so grateful for my mother, and also the rest of my parents. I am lucky enough to now have double the usual number of parents. But it is my mother I am closest to. We fight and we bicker, but we're always "back to baking brownies" before you know it (a term coined by my stepfather). My mother is a very active and involved grandmother in my sons' lives ... even if at times I think she forgets that they aren't actually her own children. But I would much rather it this way than the other way.
Even if they haven't always shown it the best way, or if they haven't done it the way I would prefer, I know my parents will always support me. I know they will always be there for me. I am grown up enough now to know that some things that came across as a lack of faith were more likely a showing of fear. No-one tells you about the fear that comes with parenting. That constant fear that something bad will happen to your children and you won't be able to do anything about it. Ok, maybe they do tell you, but it never sinks in, because it can't until you have your own children and you feel that terrible, terrible, gut-wrenching, heart-stopping fear. I am grown enough now to be able to see that perhaps what I was seeing all along was their fear that something bad would happen to me. Of course, that is the other side of the coin: if nothing bad ever happens to you, how can you really live and be alive?
So this is my thank you to my mom, as well as the rest of my parents. My ode to them, to let them know how much I love them, how grateful I am for everything that they have done, and continue to do, for me and for my own family. ~ Namaste ~