Monthly Archives: August 2010

If You Ask Your Mom to Help You Get Dressed….

If you ask a mom to help you get dressed, she will come into your room and notice that it is VERY messy.

She will decide it is time to make you share a room with your brother and completely re-organize and clean the room including moving furniture and putting all the toys in your brother’s room, to later become the playroom with a LOCKED DOOR.

While she is cleaning your room, she will realize it is 3 o’clock and she has not fed you lunch. She will go to the kitchen and begin to pull things out of the fridge to make lunch. She will realize that the fridge is gross and decide it needs cleaned so she’ll take some cleaner to the bath tub and begin soaking and scrubbing all the fridge shelves and drawers.

While she is scrubbing away, she will remember that the fridge in the garage is ten times worse than the upstairs fridge and rope your oldest brother into carrying the shelves and drawers back and forth while she scrubs.

While she is scrubbing shelves and drawers, she will realize that the toilet also needs scrubbed and while she is running clean water in the tub, she will scrub the toilet also.

After she is done with all of that scrubbing she will realize she needs a shower, but that there is NO WAY she is setting foot inside that tub until it is clean, so she will scrub it also even though it was just done two days ago…..

While she is returning the cleaners to the kitchen she will remember that she never had lunch and find the ham you put in the butter dish and on the counter. While she is cleaning that up and munching on a handful of blackberries she will remember that she needs to put up the green beans, so she starts boiling water.

While she is blanching green beans and waiting to transfer the beans to ice water she will see that her vitamin container is empty and she will fill it. Then she will see the tomatoes that still need to be put up, and transfer them all to bowls in the newly cleaned fridge.

While she is putting the tomatoes in the fridge the timer will go off and she will continue working on draining the beans, blanching, and cooling them down with more ice.

While she is getting ice from the freezer she will see her secret hidden candy bar and eat “just one square” for a treat.

While she is concentrating on green beans she will be scared by her husband coming home from working overtime because she has no idea where she left her phone and didn’t hear it ring when he called.

While talking to her husband she will realize it is dinner time and she has nothing started and nothing planned, but two fridges, the boy’s bed room, the bathtub and toilet are all spotless. She will still need a shower and she will still be hungry from not having lunch. She will think ordering pizza for dinner sounds good…….and YOU will have a clothes for the day, a clean bedroom and pizza for dinner…….

Evolution of our Suburban Homestead

We have lived in this house for five years now. The first year (2005) we moved in we had an 8 year old, a 3 year old and a four month old. We moved in during the Summer and got ourselves settled. The second year (2006) our boys were 9, 4 and 1. We struggled to keep them from running wild and paid very little attention to the house and concentrated on our coffee business. The third year (2007) the kids were 10, 5 and 2. We were busy with work and life and continued to ignore our little piece of land. The fourth year (2008) we had an 11 year old, a 6 year old and a 3 year old. We started a very very small square foot garden from scrap wood.

2 of 3 boxes built in 2008

Our fifth Summer here we expanded our garden and got serious about growing our own food. We added four more boxes in addition to an asparagus box.

two boxes added next to the house

two new boxes added down the middle

asparagus box

our 2009 garden

Next we expanded into the front yard (raspberries, blueberries, sage, lavender, wild blackberries and a thornless blackberry) and onto the deck with herb boxes and grapes to grow on our trellis.

 

raspberry bed in the front yard flower bed

herb box right next to the kitchen door

grapes on the back porch

We also started preserving our harvest last year. We froze lots of shredded zucchini and made green tomato salsa when our tomatoes didn’t ripen. We also learned to make jams and can green beans from produce we picked at a local community garden and bought from the Farmers Market. You can visit our garden here if you would like to see all of the 2009 pictures.

This year (2010) we have taken our suburban homestead to the next level by adding garden gate, four new boxes, a rain barrel, irrigation system, (to keep the dogs out) backyard chickens, one more blueberry bush and a compost bin (one more left to build this year.

garden gate

three new boxes in a new row and one more box in the middle row

rain barrel

irrigation

our girls in the backyard

compost bin with more pallets to build another

our 2010 garden

Next year we plan to level out the garden area and replace all the grass with pea gravel. (the carpet on the ground is to kill the grass) We also plan to expand more into the front yard flower beds with edible landscaping and add fruit trees in the back yard. If I could just figure out how to raise some meat chickens…..I’d be in homestead heaven. 🙂