Get real

In an attempt to be real, even though I don't care to share my name and where I live, here's a bit about my real life.  It's messy.  Always very messy.  Having five kids and being a pretty laid back housekeeper makes for a messy house.  I do typically clean it up with the help of the kids Monday through Friday but, Monday through Friday the house is still always a mess.  I guess when you live life that's how it usually goes.  On weekends, I don't clean much.  There just isn't time or sense in it when your better half is a tornado.

Yesterday I showed you some of my mess and I did get it all spic and span including doing two full loads of dishes and then being left with another sink full after dinner.  Here's how it all looks this morning.

This is taken from the hall.  The kitchen, dinning, and living area is about 22' by 20' total.  It certainly doesn't sound ideal for a family of seven but it works for us.  It makes cleaning pretty easy too.  We have a rule that says no toys downstairs (except for the baby and toddlers toys...they only have a few.)  That helps more than any other thing we've ever tried.  This area is a bit of a mess right now but I bet I could get it tip top including dishes in about 30 minutes. 

Here's a view from the other side by the fridge.

I'd love to cover the couches and chair in a lighter colored fabric (white!) to lighten up the place, but that won't work with my family due to the cost of such a project and having children who live outside in the dirt all day every day.  I'd have to make a no playing outside rule and that just wouldn't be any fun.  Plus they'd be inside all day bugging me.  Ha!  I love my kids and I love having them around me everyday, but mine talk a LOT (nonstop...to me) and it's not usually about anything I'm real interested in, plus, they make messes.  I really enjoy my quiet time while they're outside.

As I said yesterday, we're building this house with cash so it's far from finished because we don't have and abundance of the green stuff laying around or an abundance of time to work on it.  We just do what we can when we can.  That ladder will eventually be replaced with a ship style ladder and it leads up the the kids room.  Right now the entire second floor is unfinished, the walls and ceiling are even paper backed insulation but some day it will be two bedrooms and a half bath...hopefully. 

Once the baby wakes up from her nap, I'll clean the house real quick.  My bedroom is already done and the laundry is all washed and waiting to be folded and put away so hopefully I can keep it fairly clean this weekend.  My two youngest girls are sharing a birthday party this weekend which is good motivation for me to stay on top of things.

We homeschool too and this year my one and only boy will be starting kindergarten so I'll have three in school.  I'm looking forward to it.  We plan to start on Tuesday, I like to stretch summer vacation out as long as I can.  As far as curriculum goes, I don't use any particular one.  I just mix and match and use what I have and that has worked for us so far just fine.  My oldest is starting sixth grade.  I'm not sure what I'll do once she gets into the harder math but so far I've found lots of resources online as well as some pretty good work books from places like Mardel's book store.  Wal-mart carries some good work books on several subjects for kids up to grade four (I think...can't remember for sure what grade.)

I hear the baby babbling in bed, so it's back to work I go!

Before and after

I didn't do any housework yesterday so I'm a bit backed up.  It rained all day and I just had zero motivation.  Today, however, I'm rebounding so I'll give you a little before and after.  I must preface these pictures with this:  Hubs and I are building our home from scratch with cash and we're a one income household and we sit right on the poverty line of annual income.  We're pretty thrifty and have very little debt (grrrr...I wish we had NO debt) so we don't feel poor but these pictures probably paint a very different picture to plenty of other people who live more "normal" lives.

Kitchen with a day and a half worth of mess:

This is the skeleton of our future kitchen cabinets and counters which are, for now, covered in contact paper.  I used one entire role that was $5.00 or maybe it $5 and some change...I don't remember.  Not the prettiest, but functional.  Back to the mess, scary, I know.

After:

I didn't notice that water bottle on the floor until I added the picture to blogger, but it's put away now.  The dishwasher is full and running and I have a little better than a half of a load left in the sink but things are looking a whole lot better.  Since I don't have cabinet drawers and doors, I've covered a couple of the holes with a dish towel and a small embroidered table cloth that used to belong to my grandma.  It's better looking than the junk behind the towels.  I also don't have a pantry right now but have plans to add doors to a book case that's just out of sight and to the right of the dishwasher.  I use it to hold my everyday dishes for now and keep the food on the temporary open shelves and lower cabinets.

Next up, the stove. 
Before:

Aaahhhhh!  Of coarse, it isn't original to the house being that the house is less than a year old and the stove is from the fifties.  It's a shame any time it gets this messy because it is such a cool looking stove.  We bought it for $70 and hubs refurbished it with new wiring, burners and insulation as well as a good scrubbing.  Eventually, we'll have a half wall behind the stove (right now a love seat backs right up to it but don't worry, it's not a fire hazard) and we'll build lower cabinets on either side.  For now, I have a small white credenza on one side that is being used for food storage and a small white sewing table on the other side, so I do have some extra works space around it, but I actually do ALL of my cooking and prep work right on the stove.  It's HUGE!  It has a lot of space in the center between the burners.

After:

Pretty stove, huh?  The door on the right is the oven and all the others are drawers, so there's lots of storage for my cookware and bakeware.  (The living area's a mess too, but I'll do a quick touch up as soon as I'm done here.)

Last, but not least, the table.
Before:

We're a family of seven and the table comfortably seats everyone for now (baby goes in the high chair.)  There's a bench next to the window that three kids can and often do sit at and four chairs, a couple of which are strewn about the house, sigh.  I'd love to paint it white and paint all the chairs and bench a soft accent color or strip them down to bare wood.  Put that on the to do list too.

After:

Bad picture, but I'm in a hurry.  Sorry.  It's clean and two year old is having a little snack.  I still need to round up the other chairs though.

In other news, hubs and I (by far, mostly hubs) finished the electric fence for the goats and we even bought a calf from one of the neighbors the other day and tossed him in with the goats too.  Yipee!  I didn't think that would happen this year.  We've experienced a lot of losses with the chicks (seven so far) and have twelve left...probably all roosters.  Oh well, Saturday is chick days at one of the local farm stores so we're going to get a half a dozen or so more then.  The laying hens laying strike is over and production is better than ever because the younger hens have also started laying.  We now get 10 to 15 eggs a day!  We love eggs!

There's  a mole in my garden ransacking the place.  It's tearing right through my turnips and radishes that were looking so good!  Gotta dig through the barn and find the mole trap.

Back to work I go!

Have a good one!

Life in August

It's been a while since I last posted, kind of.  My last post got was very long with lots of info and pics and it got deleted because of some kind of Internet error.  That was frustrating.  Since then, my mom has had a stroke (last week) but has been blessed to make what appears to be a full recovery.  It was minor and she caught on to what was happening very quickly so she only had to stay in the hospital for four days while they tried out different blood pressure medicines to find a combination that works for her.  This all most likely could have been avoided if it weren't for some troubles she's had with her insurance and her doctor but then, it's always too easy to point fingers and play the blame game.  I just have to remember that God is fully in control.  It reminds me of something my mother told me several years ago, "If God wants to kill you in a tornado, there's no place you can hide to keep it from happening."  Now, strange as it may sound, for some reason that's actually very comforting to me.  I tend to be a worrier and try to control and prepare for every possible crisis and that just isn't always possible and everytime I start to worry, I remind myself of what she said because only God is fully in control and I would want it any other way.  It doesn't keep me from trying to prepare though...it's just in me to keep working without giving up until I'm exhausted.  I really enjoy the process most of the time too, it isn't just fear that motivates me...thankfully.

The chicks are growing like weeds and are no longer little fuzz balls and have a good start on their adult feathers.  They're outgrowing their tote too.

I plan to make caged outdoor area for them inside my garden fence.

I have unused space in there and it would be pretty easy to put some stakes and chicken wire in a section of it for them.

This will most likely become our new chicken coop this fall.  Our friend who loaned us his incubator has this on his land and doesn't use it for anything and wants to get rid of it.  I'd really love to make a cabana or fun little guest quarters out of it, but I don't know that that would be the financially responsible thing to do right now.  I think it's super cute!

The goats are finally pretty much fenced in.  Hubs put up an electric fence around an area in the back that's about an acre or so except it's only currently three sided.  The goats are finally afraid of the fence after running through it a few times but every now and then they manage to wonder off to the side that isn't fenced yet (they don't usually go over there) and then they're free.  They stay pretty close to the house though.  In fact, before they were fenced off, they would spend every night sleeping on the front steps leaning against the front door and just poop the night away.  I'm pretty sick of goat poop.

I made shampoo bars which are all natural but they turned out to leave a strange kind of heavy, waxy like residue in my hair that made it unmanageable.  The baking soda and vinegar didn't work either so I'm back to using my toxic shampoo until I can figure out something else that works.  I might try making a soap from just coconut oil and see if it leaves my hair cleaner.  This one will make a great body bar because it's very gentle and moisturizing...too moisturizing.  I do love homemade soaps.  They're the best.

I have a laundry basket full of green apples waiting to be turned into applesauce and apple butter.  Hopefully I'll be getting to that in just a little while.

Hatch day!

Late Wednesday evening, one of our chicks began the hatching process and by Thursday morning several others followed.  Thursday was day 20 in the process and today, day 21, we've had several more hatch.  So far we have ten and another chick that's working on hatching.  That's from the first clutch of fourteen eggs.  If you remember, I started originally with 25 eggs but I took out eleven eggs that I presumed to be duds only to find upon cracking them open to investigate that three of them were alive and well...if only for a short while longer.  The second clutch that I put in the incubator to replace those should be hatching this same time next week.  There are eleven of them.  I've thought about getting another twenty or so going as soon as the incubator is available again.  If I have a 60 percent hatch rate and half of them are roosters than I could end up with 13 or 14 new hens.  That's about what we need to be able to eat as many eggs as we would like to.  The most eggs we ever ate in one week was NINE dozen.  That's back when I was pregnant with number five and the only thing I could eat was eggs.  Still, we eat a dozen per meal and would like to have them for breakfast just about every morning.  I don't get tired of eggs.

Right now, we have ten "hens a laying" ♫♪ and five up and coming layers that should start laying in the next month or so.  They're free range range so other than the up front expenses of a coop and the supplies needed for the chicks, they are free.  The goats are always eating the hens feed so we haven't feed them any for a while and they seem to be doing fine.  We get six or eight eggs a day and, so far, that hasn't gone down.

We'll soon be building a larger coop to house all these hens at night out of a metal grain bin that our incubator friend is giving us for free.  It's fourteen feet in diameter so it ought to be big enough for a good number of chickens.  I'd also like to start raising our own meat birds soon and in the name of keeping it simple, I imagine we'll house them all together.  We'll see though, hubs may get other ideas.

Now, I haven't read this recommendation anywhere, but I figure if I didn't interfere and let nature run it's course, these little chicks would be outside 24/7, so, we took them outside for a little while this morning when it was already in the nineties to meet the other animals and what did they do?  They all huddled up under oldest daughter who was squatting on the ground next to them.  Momma.  heh.

Here's what was going on this morning...chicks, chickens, goats, cats, kittens, dogs and kids (human variety.)  A few of the hens were curious about the chicks (a.k.a. THEIR children) and they acted afraid of them when we'd try to show a chick to them up close.  Silly chickens.

We just checked the incubator and we have two chicks hatched and another one just starting (and it's the BIG one ☺.)  That will make twelve.  Woohoo!

Oh, and just a note...There is at least one egg that I now know for sure from regular candling that's a dud and it's from the first clutch of eggs so it's been in the incubator for 21 days now and up to a week in a bowl on the kitchen counter prior to that and it has not exploded.  Myth?  I don't intend to keep it or any other duds longer than 25 days in the incubator so we'll see what happens.  It makes me think of when Templeton the rat took the gooses rotten egg off her hands, I mean wings, for her in Charlotte's Web.  P.U.

Cardiopulminary Resuscitation aka CPR

Yesterday, hubs and our 5 year old son went to Lowe's to look at weed eaters and when they left the store they heard a woman in the parking lot screaming, "He's gone!  He's gone!"  She was in the car next to them so hubs ran over to help her.  There were already a couple of employees standing around her car calling 911.  Her husband was in the drivers seat of the parked car unconscious.  He wasn't breathing and hubs couldn't find a pulse so he said, "We need to lay him on the ground and start CPR."  The employees were just looking on and one replied, "I'd do it, but my certificate just expired."  Fortunately (I guess) hubs knew CPR and had been a volunteer and part time fighter fighter for a couple towns we've lived in and while his certification was also "expired" he didn't let that stop him from preforming CPR.  The man would occasionally gasp for air even while he had no pulse they could find.  Hubs thinks he was dead before anyone ever got to him and as awful as this sounds, he's had a lot of experience with the death of animals via hunting and butchering our own animals as well as his experiences as a fire fighter and had seen similar gasping behavior after they were clearly dead.  None the less, he continued CPR, taking turns with a woman who volunteered to jump in after a few minutes in case hubs was tired.  When the ambulance arrived, hubs and son went back into the store to wash up and give me a call to tell me what had just happened.  When they went back out to the truck, the ambulance and fire fighters were still there and the man was on a gurney and it looked as if they had used the defibrillator on him but they didn't appear to be in a hurry to get him to the hospital.  At some point, hubs talked to his wife and found out that he was 54 and had already had some open heart surgery and when hubs suggested that she call her family she said, "I can't, they're all mad at me."  The women was heartbroken and kept crying to her husband, "Don't leave me." while hubs was previously doing CPR.  So sad.

We don't know what happened or if he lived, it was quite an experience for hubs though.  Life is short and fragile, don't waste it.

As for our son, he's fine.  He sat in our truck next to them and could only see his daddy pulling the man out of the car.  Hubs did talk with him about it on the way home and so did I and he seems fine.  We've never sheltered our children from death with the exception of Hollywood's versions of it which only desensitize us so this wasn't his first experience, although it's never been quite so up close and graphic before.  That makes it sound like if our son hasn't been desensitized by Hollywood than he should have a very strong reaction to what he witnessed, but again, that's Hollywood's interpretation of what our response should be.  His attitude is what it is.  For me, I'm saddened for the wife and family left behind and hate to think of him suffering alone in the car while his wife, unaware of what was happening, was doing a little shopping in the store.  That's very sad.  I do have the hope of Christ and we teach our children that as well.  Hopefully this teaches our children that we MUST help care for everyone we possibly can, even strangers.  We must cherish every life, particularly human life and recognize that God is the giver and taker of life.  We also try to pass these lessons along to our children through our animals and the sacrifice they some of them have to make in order to feed us.  Even though we're raising animals for food, we still must take great care of them while they're alive because all life is precious and if an animals life is precious, how much more is a humans life whether we personally get something from them or not?

My husband was "fine" while it was going on and a bit shook up afterwards when he called me, but overall, it's a valuable life experience that I'm sure he wouldn't erase for himself if he could.

I hope the man lived.

Tough lessons

It's been a rough few days.  I mentioned before that we "threw out" the dud eggs from our incubator, or at least what we thought were duds and when my daughter and I cracked them open to learn about them, we found that three of them had living chicken fetus kicking around in them.  It was very sad and my poor daughter put them down so they didn't have to suffer anymore.  Well two days later, our two oldest girls were outside playing with our kittens in the grass (they're around 4 weeks old) when our nine year old tripped and landed on one of them.  It was very severely injured and very obviously going to die so my oldest came and got me and asked me to put it down for her.  When I got out to the yard, Petunia was licking her injured baby.  It was heartbreaking!  I did what I had to do and hope I never have to do that ever again, then I buried it.  I wouldn't allow the kids to be anywhere near while I did all this.  It was too much.  On the other hand though, the way my oldest came running and screaming into the house, I thought that one of my own children had to be dead which just about scared the poop out of me.  So, it could have been something far worse.

"Tiger"

Hubs is clearing the fence line around the back of the property and plans to take down some of the already existing 4 foot fence to use around the goat pen that never seems to be penning any goats.  They are more curious than cats and almost as destructive as children.  That's quite a combination.

We're thinking about leasing the land behind us that's about 60 wooded acres, to raise goats on.  It could be what gets us through the coming depression.  Even if we're wrong about the depression, I'd still like to get into goat farming.  While beef is my meat of choice, goats just make sense for us and the land around us.  They're also in higher demand than what's available, so I hope it's a win win situation.

The kids and I harvested and shelled our cowpeas today and we've all learned that we love raw ochre.  I have avoided planting ochre because I hate the mess of preparing fried ochre from scratch even though that's one of hubs all time favorite foods and he practically begged me to plant some.  While at the store back in June, I found ochre plants for just a couple of dollars for a pot containing ten plants, so I thought, why not.  Now we're starting to harvest some and when they're about finger length (3 inches) they are super delicious.  I love the way the seeds taste and I even like that weird, somewhat slimy, texture they have.  I also passed on planting any cucumbers, although I did buy seeds, because they aren't one of my favorite veggies since they instantly give me the worst indigestion ever in the history of indigestion.  Some friends, however, gave us a few of they're cucumbers and I made refrigerator pickles out of them and they are AWESOME!  They're a lot like bread and butter pickles with more crunch.  They make a good side dish as well as a sandwich topper or snack.

So, I'm learning what I need to plant in the future and I'm learning a lot of other lessons that might come in handy if times really get hard.  For example, I think I'll put peas near the bottom of the list for a while because they just don't seem to be very prolific or hardy.  I definitely need to start my garden sooner for things like my beets.  Mid summer harvested beets = yucky beets.  I need to plant a LOT of beans.  LOTS. 
And, I need to learn about squashes.  Last year was my first year gardening and I didn't have any trouble with most of the things I planted, especially the squashes.  This year my squash plants are dropping like flies!  They aren't producing much either.  I have two measly spaghetti squashes out of 4 or 5 plants, two pumpkins out of 3 or 4 seeds and one of them is almost dead from bugs.  Zero butternut and acorn squashes...plants all died and while the watermelon and cantaloupe plants are alive, zero melons developing.  I don't want to use any chemicals and I'm pretty ignorant still about gardening, so I have a lot left to learn.  Trial and error teach me better than anything but I think I need to put more effort into the books if I'm ever going to get the hang of clean gardening.

Egg update:  As best I can tell of the eggs I can actually see through the shell, they're all developing (of the new bunch (clutch?) that is.)  My first group of eggs should start hatching by Friday if not sooner.  Hopefully not too soon though.  The thermometer reads 99 most of the time but occasionally gets up to 100.  I don't want to mess with the temp anymore though because I'm afraid I'll really mess things up for sure.

Rainbow and blue skies after a big storm this past week.

Homemade soap and toiletries

I'm making hot process soap today which is a lot of fun.  Ten or twelve years ago, I had a very short lived soap making business that I quit when I got pregnant with number two.  We rendered fat for tallow to use in our soaps and the smell was revolting to me.  So were all the smells of the fragrances.  I hated the smells so bad, in fact, that that's why I didn't make another batch of soap or lotion up until a couple of months ago.  The smells were still nauseating to me.  To this day, I can't stand the smell of Tommy Hilfiger cologne.  It's what hubs wore before I got pregnant with number one and it's the one thing I still haven't gotten over.  I loved it before that so it's kind of funny to me.  Anyway, I have a bunch of supplies that are still good so I've had some fun with it here recently.  I used to make cold process soap which seemed like such a huge chore looking back because the information I got all came from books which really stressed the exact timing and temperature of every single stinking step.  Now, after revisiting soap making and the wonderful Internet, I know the process isn't such exact science and there's room for errors.  I like the hot process better only because I can use the soap right away.  It does get a little harder and gentler with age, say at least another 4 weeks of cure time, but even using the soap within the first 24 hours it isn't bad soap.  I've made several recipes including cold process which is just now ready to use...finally, and I've used soapcalc.com to make them up myself.  We just finished up the first batch of hot process soap that I made roughly 2 months ago (one pound.)

I also have a fresh batch of homemade lotion.  I feel a lot better about using it over commercial products because I know exactly what's in it and that it safe.  Our skin is our biggest organ and it's very porous and absorbent.  All the toxic crap that gets absorbed goes right into our bloodstream, so I've read.  That has lead me to try using baking soda in my hair rather than shampoo.  Today was my first time using it and I was pretty impressed.  My scalp is EXTREMELY oily and needs to be washed daily to keep from looking like a total grease ball.  It's usually oily looking by the end of the day too.  It supposedly takes a couple of weeks for the scalp to adjust to the new routine and once it has, it should look just as clean and healthy as regularly shampooed hair.  Or, even better according to people who've actually tried it.  This being the first time, I was surprised at how clean it looked.  It wasn't perfect because I could see a little bit of oiliness in my hair, but it looked more like it was working its way down my hair and not so much on my scalp, which looked fine.  I pulled it into a ponytail, so you'd never know I did anything different.

Okay, I've also made and have used for years, homemade toothpaste and within the last couple of months, we've also started using homemade deodorant.  It works way, WAY better than any, ANY commercial deodorant I have ever used in my ENTIRE life!  It's safe and aluminum free too!  The key ingredient is baking soda which you have to dilute greatly or it's to harsh on the skin.  I mixed mine as 1 part baking soda and 4 parts cornstarch and it probably could still stand to be weakened further.  I also mixed it into a lotion bar formula and scented it with sweet orange essential oil.  That way I could pour it into an old deodorant bottle and apply it like usual.  Well, almost as usual.  I literally just lightly touch it to my underarm and then rub it in with my finger.  It's almost like nothings there at all but I guarantee it's there and it's working overtime on me.  I sweat way more than my husband and have always required stronger deodorant than him which needed to be reapplied every single day.  This stuff works with just one very light application for at least 48 hours...that's the longest I've gone without a shower and therefore reapplying.  It's awesome!  Hubs likes it too.

I probably sound like a crunchy granola, but if you ever ran into me in person, you'd never guess I was into such things just by looking at me.  It's nice that it all saves money, but I only do this for our health.  It's nice to know that there are so many alternatives to the chemical laden commercial products that work just as well and often better that only cost pennies to make.  And yes, I also make my own laundry detergent.  I'm happy with how well it seems to work although I have noticed a slight buildup starting to show inside my washing machine that looks like soap scum.  It may be building up in my clothes too, but I really can't tell a difference if it is.  They appear just as clean as they would with commercial brand detergents.