Fall Gardening

     Gardens can produce food nearly all year!  This may not be news to many people but I grew up in the Texas panhandle where we were lucky to get things to grow during the spring. Growing things at any other time in a semi-desert region was unimaginable.
     I started suspecting that growing seasons drastically varied with location a few months after we moved to Oregon.  My son came home from a first grade field trip in April with a tomato plant.  Of course he insisted we plant it immediately.  I spent the next few months convinced there was something wrong with the plant.  By the first of July it was still only about 12 inches tall.  It was mid-July before the thing started growing and by the first of August it was producing ripe tomatoes.  It continued pro ducting them until the first hard freeze of winter.  My mind was blown because in Texas tomato plants are dried up and turning to dust by August.
    As I started looking into what it would take to grow enough food to feed our family, I kept seeing the terms "fall garden" and "fall harvest".  A little more research lead me to discover that there are actually a lot of things that can be planted in early fall and harvested before winter sets in. Some of these versatile veggies are carrots, lettuce, onion, cabbage and broccoli.
    In early September, Paul and I decided to see if this really works so he hoed out a section of our garden space and I planted 6 broccoli plants.  As you can see in the picture, they are 4 weeks old and all doing well.  I will let you know if we actually get broccoli though.  This Texas girl is still a little suspicious of "fall gardening".

Chicken House Dilemma (part 2)

   Having decided that a chicken tractor was not for us, we have moved on to looking at coops.  There are several things that you must consider, before choosing a permanent house for you chickens.
     First,  there is the cost.  Apparently chickens can live just about anywhere and people have designed coops from just about everything.  The prices range from "practically free", provided you have an abundance of power tools, hardware, and scrap lumber around, to "my car was cheaper than that!".  Because I am a natural cheapskate, the practically free side appeals, especially since in the world of chicken coops "practically free" means less than $300.  However this side is also the build it yourself side and practically free can easily become twice the price of a mid-level manufactured coop before it is done.
    Second, there is the design.  Each chicken needs 2 sq. ft. of floor space and 1 foot of roost space.  From this determining the size of coop you need is really easy.  The hard part, especially for someone with no experience, is wading through all the opinions and marketing propaganda to determine what is best for your situation.  First thing to consider is what kind of access you need.  You have to get the eggs out every day, put feed and water in, be able to tend to sick or injured chickens, and clean it out occasionally.  However, every access point increases the cost and gives predators more access.  We also need an easy way securely to close it off at night and open it each morning.  I will not be crawling through a 3ft tall chicken run in the rain to close and lock their door every night.  Just saying, we have to be real here.
    Third, there is the location.  If we put the coop close to the deck then we have easy access to power, so we can put in a heat lamp or a light lamp if the chickens need either. (They need 12 hours of light to lay eggs so once they start laying they will need a light on a timer in the coop.) The other advantage to this location is that we don't have to go far to feed them or collect eggs.  However, this location gets less sunlight than any other part of the yard.  It is also very close to the deck and house, which means the smell of chickens will be very close to the deck and house.  So do I sacrifice outside entertainment for convenience?  Do we put them in the garden area, where they will be happiest and run extension cords out to them when they need it?
     I never dreamed this was going to be so complicated.

Chicken House Dilemma (part 1)

      Now that we have names for our future chickens, we have to decide where exactly they will live and acquire appropriate housing for them.  That is the only logical next step.  I have also determined that is probably the step that prevents most people from owning chickens.  There is just way too much conflicting information out there. Honestly I don't think it is as much conflicting as it is confusing.
     The first thing we decided on was a chicken tractor.  This is an ingenious contraption that allows you to move your chickens all around the yard so that no one area becomes a barren, stinky chicken zone.  Everyday you go out and move the tractor to a new area.  The chickens spend the day feasting on the bugs in that area and happily fertilizing it.  Imagine a lush green pest free yard and reducing the cost of feeding the chickens by 50%.
     Then reality came crashing down on my perfect vision.  Our dog treed 5 raccoons last year, and raccoons love chickens.  A friend of mine that lives a few streets over told me that our chicken coop must have a solid wood floor and lock at night or the raccoons would get the chickens.  Then I read on the internet that you need to use hardware cloth instead of chicken wire when constructing a coop because raccoons can reach in through the wire and pull the chickens out piece by piece.  Not a pretty scene, and since I will probably be making my kids go out in the mornings to tend the chickens this is something to avoid at all costs.  Thus I had to alter my idea of a chicken tractor to include a fully enclosed coop.  The second dose of reality came with the fall rains.  Over half our back yard is a swamp for half of the year.  I have been assured that the chickens won't mind living in a spongy, mossy mess, however I can barely get the lawn mower through it there is no way I am going to go our everyday in the rain and drag a chicken coop/tracker through it.  That is just reality.
      We have now decided that we must have a traditional stays-in-one-place coop.  So where to put it...

Organic Gardening

     For many years there has been a move towards organic produce.  I understand that many people believe that this food is healthier than all the other stuff.  It does make sense that if you are spraying plants with chemicals that those chemicals could easily get into the food supply.  Personally, I have done my best to completely ignore this debate.  My concern was purely financial in that we can barely make our budget work with the cheap stuff, and there is no way we could survive on all organic food.  Many people will point out that we could adjust the budget to make more room in the grocery category.  Whereas that may be true, it would require lifestyle changes that our family is just not ready for.
     As I was working out in the garden this afternoon, I realized that all of our produce is organic.  This means that for the entire summer my kids only ate organic fruit.  Even though I have never followed or participated in the debate over the benefits of eating organic, it makes me really proud to say that everything I grow is organic.  In the spirit of full discloser, I must point out that my decision to use all natural garden was strictly financial.  All the fertilizers and critter control products are expensive.  Having all three children out picking caterpillars off the broccoli plants this afternoon was completely free.

First Steps into a Sustainable Life

     Yesterday we took the kids out to Heart2Heart farms.  We have been discussing what it would take to live more sustainably for a while and thought it would be good for them to see a real farm before we actually dive into this.  The result is that they were coming up with names for our chickens during dinner.  We don’t have chickens or even a coop yet, but when we get them they will already be named.

     The idea of living sustainably first occurred to us over the summer.  This year all the factors lined up just right and our cherries and blue berries exploded with produce.  We only have 4 blueberry bushes but I was spending over 8 hours a week picking berries and not keeping up with them.  This lead to a discussion of what it would take to grow enough to feed our family of 5.  That question spring boarded our research into sustainable living.  Apparently there is a whole movement to live more sustainably going on.

     The reality of life is that we are currently renting a house in suburbia.  Since we are renting, we are limited in the changes to landscape we can make and the amount of livestock we can have.  Currently we are looking into what it would take to purchase a house on at least 2 acres of land.  If that comes together the adventure will truly begin.

For now we will confine our efforts to gaining knowledge. Although since we already have names for 4 chickens, I doubt it will be long before we are adding those to the family.

Heart2Heart farms is an incredible resource for anyone wanting to live more sustainably.

You can check them out at http://heart2heartfarms.com

My Mission

     "Everyone wants to save the world, but no one wants to help Mom with the dishes." I often find that I struggle with my identity since I became a stay-at-home mom.  When I was working I had a sense of purpose and accomplishment that I have not been able to find at home.  Several months ago a friend of mine shared the blog post Motherhood as a Mission Field by Rachel Jankovic with me.  I have read this post many times as I try to adjust my thinking and accept what God has for me during this time.
     I have included the last section of her article below.  Reading this helps me refocus on what is important and develop a new understanding of who I am in the role God has given me.

Gain What You Cannot Lose in Them

So, if mothers are strategically situated to impact missions so greatly, why do we see so little coming from it?  I think the answer to this is quite simple: sin. Discontent, pettiness, selfishness, resentment. Christians often feel like the right thing to do is to be ashamed about what we have. We hear that quote of Jim Elliot’s and think that we ought to sell our homes and move to some place where they need the gospel.

But I’d like to challenge you to look at it differently. Giving up what you cannot keep does not mean giving up your home, or your job so you can go serve somewhere else. It is giving up yourself. Lay yourself down. Sacrifice yourself here, now. Cheerfully wipe the nose for the fiftieth time today. Make dinner again for the people who don’t like the green beans. Laugh when your plans are thwarted by a vomiting child. Lay yourself down for the people here with you, the people who annoy you, the people who get in your way, the people who take up so much of your time that you can’t read anymore. Rejoice in them. Sacrifice for them. Gain that which you cannot lose in them.

It is easy to think you have a heart for orphans on the other side of the world, but if you spend your time at home resenting the imposition your children are on you, you do not. You cannot have a heart for the gospel and a fussiness about your life at the same time. You will never make any difference there if you cannot be at peace here. You cannot have a heart for missions, but not for the people around you. A true love of the gospel overflows and overpowers. It will be in everything you do, however drab, however simple, however repetitive.

The Decision

     From the time my oldest daughter was born, people have asked me if I was going to homeschool her.  It seemed that many people believe the primary reason for becoming a teacher is to get the skills necessary to homeschool your kids.  I became a teacher because I love the teaching, science.  I couldn't imagine sitting on my couch day after day, hour after hour and patiently helping my kid sound out the same word we just sounded out on the previous page.  Was I planning to homeschool? NO!
     Ten years later I am expecting our homeschool curriculum to arrive in the mail tomorrow.  It may appear that I have had a change of heart, but that is not the case.  This path is one of the scariest I have ever walked down in faith.  I fully believe that the public school system in most places can provide students with excellent teachers and provide them to a variety of resources to help students.  When I taught school, I worked through the summer to write curriculum for the school district.  Every year a team of 3-5 teachers for each grade level would work together to evaluate the curriculum and assessments from the previous year and make changes to address the weaknesses.  I know what it takes to have a strong curriculum.  I know what it takes to have an engaging lesson that meets the needs of a variety of learners.  I know how hard it was to do that for a single subject in a single grade.  I know it is not humanly possible for one person to do it for every subject in multiple grades.
     However, we recently moved to Oregon, where the school system is vastly different from Texas.  My kids were in classes of 18 in Texas and each put in classes of 28 here.  The teachers were wonderful in assisting with the transition but with huge classes it is impossible to keep up with the individual needs of students.  My kids were in a gifted program where they were pulled out of class and a G/T teacher supplemented their curriculum.  Here modifications for G/T are left up to the classroom teacher (the one with 28 kids).   Due to shorter student days and a shorter school year, students here attend school 210 few hours per year than their Texas peers, that is an equivalent of 6 weeks.  The tipping point for me was this spring when the district began discussing budget cuts.  For the coming school year they are increasing class sizes, making the music teachers part-time, and eliminating all librarians.  I know enough about teaching to know that the more kids you put in a class the less the students at the top learn.  Instruction is done to those in the middle with tutoring for those that are low and the ones at the top are virtually ignored until they cause enough trouble to be sent out of the room.  Without a librarian, teachers are even further limited in dealing with the needs of diverse learners.  They can't work on special projects in the library or even be sent to check out an extra book.  It is an impossible situation that has lead me to homeschooling.

And so the journey begins...