Urban Homesteading

The Homestead Resolutions for 2012

Posted on December 28, 2011 by Anisa

I hope you all have enjoyed the holidays so far.  Our family has agreed that this was ones of the best Christmases we’ve had in a long time.  Health-wise, we are in a holding pattern and I’ll keep the blog updated if anything changes on that front.  In the mean time…

The other night, my Hard-Working Hubster looked at me and said, we need to set some goals for the new year.  Yeeah… I’m not so into New Years resolutions, and I sort of figured he was hinting at setting financial goals, which are my least favorite, so I was not really excited about what I figured he was about to say.  But, it turns out that’s not what he meant at all.  He was referring a bit to my 101 in 1001 list and some other personal goals, as well as to some things we’d like to do together.

Something that I’ve been working on in 2011 and really want to continue to work on in 2012 is building community.  I loved that last year our next-door neighbor enlisted our help to put in a garden and then shared his harvest with us.  He’s up for round two this year and I want to keep the momentum going on things like that.  I’d really like to strengthen the community between our neighbors on our block.  I also want to increase community between other friends that live nearby but are further out than our immediate neighborhood.

One thing I really want is to increase our self-sufficiency on the homestead.  I want to grow more food and process our own chickens for meat.  But by “self-sufficiency” I don’t mean by ourselves.  I mean, “not relying on the grocery store.”  And, I really want to make a fun special place for the kids in the garden… something they can look forward to, play in or around, and take care of.

So with those things in mind, here are my top five goals for the Schell Urban Homestead for 2012.

  1. Grow a giant pumpkin.  The neighbor has already volunteered a spot in his yard for this.  We’re scouring seed catalogs for the biggest one we can find.  It’ll be a pet project, but out in his front yard for the whole neighborhood to see and monitor.  And the kids can really get in on this one (I’m hoping).  Maybe in the fall, when it’s time to harvest we can do something cool with the results!  
  2. Grow enough in our own neighborhood gardens to feed ourselves for the summer.  I’d like it to be our own garden in our own yard, but I’ve realized this just isn’t realistic.  We eat a lot of veggies and have a lot of people to feed and not much garden space.  So instead of setting our sights on the impossible, I’m hoping to make it possible between our place, the next-door neighbors and the neighbors across the street.  I think they are all open to this.
  3. Process chickens.  We wanted to do this last year – order meat birds or a straight run of chicks and then process them for the table.  It didn’t work out in 2011, but I’m hoping we can work it out for 2012.  This will include culling any hens that are eating eggs and getting egg production numbers to where they should be.  Yay homegrown protein!
  4. Harvest Honey.  Our bees are still here, doing well, and we’re hoping to get a good harvest this coming year.  We even have a neighborhood contact to help us with the first go-round. 
  5. Start a monthly potluck circle involving neighbors and homegrown or locally raised foods.  I really, really want to do this.  I’ve mentioned it to a few friends here and there, but gotten no real commitments.  I might just have to jump in for it to take off.  ??

What about you?  Any gardening goals for the new year?  Is community a part of the goals you are making?  How do you plan to get others involved?

Categories: Beekeeping, Chickens, Community, Food, Garden, Top 5, Urban Homesteading | Tags: , , , , , | 11 Comments

Still Here

Posted on December 14, 2011 by Anisa

Thanks for all your  loving and supportive comments!  I have a few posts in the works but busy right now.  Dave seems to be doing well with the feeding tube placement – he even snuck away to play with our kiddos the other night.

Just wanted to let you know I’m still here.  I have a couple posts in the works, but it’s been taking me a long time to get things done around here these days.

Categories: Urban Homesteading | 1 Comment

A Season for Family

Posted on December 5, 2011 by Anisa

I’ve realized from about October to February, is our season of family.  Hunting alone facilitates a great portion of this, and then the holidays manage to cement the rest.  We just don’t have time to spend with many friends, as much as we’d like to.  Family really takes priority.

During the harvest season, I think it is easy to start feeling like you are drowning in the work of a homestead.  I generally feel like I tread water pretty steadily around here, but after a spastic comment on the Apron Stringz blog, when both CJ and Erica of NWEdible reached out to me to make sure that I was alright, I realized my Shiny-Happy exterior was cracking a bit.  While I’m afraid that the comment I left came across way crazier than I intended, the truth is, I have been somewhat overwhelmed.

In April, Rick’s dad was diagnosed with ALS  (aka Lou Gehrig’s disease).  I’ve sort of kept this under my hat, since Rick wasn’t keen on talking about it with anyone, even in person.  He got pretty tetchy when I mentioned it to our neighbor (who is getting to be like family) and to our midwives while I was still pregnant with C.  So I’ve kept it off the blog all this time.  But I started bracing myself.  I’ve seen diseases before.

I’ve had the unfortunate experience of watching my own father pass away.  He was diagnosed with lung cancer when I was fifteen.  Lung cancer has a 15% survival rate and a lot of people treat you as if you deserve to get it.  But my dad hadn’t smoked in over 20 years before he was diagnosed.  The cause of it was more likely asbestos from being a mechanic or possibly having the polio vaccine tested on him while he served in the Air Force.  Or seeing as he had lost a sister to lung cancer, had a brother that got (and beat!) prostate cancer and a father that died of multiple myeloma at 58, maybe cancer was just in his genes.

But my dad was determined to live.  He had surgery, most of one of his lungs removed, chemo and radiation.  He beat the cancer.  He was cancer free for 8 years before his body, racked by the treatments he received, gave up on him.  I was so grateful that my dad lived to walk me down the aisle, to know Rick.  It was hard to watch my dad, superman in my eyes, go from 6 foot tall to 5′-1″.  To see him lose weight.  For me to never sleep in peace, afraid that his oxygen machine would sound an alarm in the next room if my dad quit breathing, even for a moment.  To see his big, strong mechanic’s hands turn soft and thin.  He died at home in 2004, the day before my 23rd birthday.

ALS makes cancer look like the freakin’ flu.

With cancer, there are treatments, even cures for some.  Hope.  With ALS, there is nothing.  Just waiting, watching, making your loved one feel comfortable as they lose the ability to make their muscles work.  The prognosis for ALS is more than bleak.  Stats vary, but we’ve been told that up to 70% of people diagnosed with it die within 18 months.  It is always fatal.  Less than 10% live longer than five years.

Rick’s dad was beginning to show symptoms last October, though we didn’t recognize them.  He’d been feeling weaker for a while longer before that, but just chalked it up to being tired.  He just turned 51 last month.  Because of my experiences with my own dad, I keep expecting to see things plateau with him, but the disease has not slowed at all.  In April, his words were slurred, by May he was hard to understand.  By June or July, he would only answer yes or no questions out loud.  Now it’s even hard to tell the yeses apart from the nos.  His hands and arms are atrophied pretty severely, so he can’t write.  This past weekend, they gave him a feeding tube.

Through this, my, uh… “greenisim” is wavering.  I’m feeling the urge more an more to take the easy way out.  To throw the proverbial grey water down the drain instead of out the window.  (Here’s where the crazy comment on the Apron Stringz blog comes in).  Part of me doesn’t want to care anymore where my food comes from.  I want to turn the heat up to 69° from 67° and not feel any guilt.  Bag the whole Riot for Austerity.  Throwing in the towel looks appealing.  Part of me is wondering why I should care about organically grown green beans when my father-in-law is struggling to swallow.  I’m wondering if  we can sustain our sustainable life style?  And is it worth it?

The truth is, I know in my heart that it is worth it.  But I need to find a way to be ok with what I can do right now.  Maybe the Riot is beyond my reach at this point in our family’s journey.  Maybe CJ’s Quiet Riot, or even just tracking our energy use is good enough for right now.  Maybe I need to be ok with the things we are doing and hold the space while our family gets ready to walk through the coming grief.

I’ve known somewhat more loss than anyone in Rick’s family (all his grandparents are still living), and I know my strengths can be quite helpful in hard times like these.  The loss of his dad is going to be a devastating blow.  And I’m grateful to have this time with family right now.

So here I am, holding the space.  And turning up my thermostat to 68°.

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Categories: Community, Sustainability | Tags: , , , , , | 10 Comments

Getting Kids to Eat Their Veggies

Posted on November 23, 2011 by Anisa

This weekend our boys, once again, amazed friends by eating vegetables.  And it wasn’t even pizza. They ate winter squash, green beans, salad (with garlic, cilantro and cabbage), sliced kolhrabi, beets…

We always get comments on this, apparent, oddity.  Our five-year old and two-year old beg us for carrots and green beans.  I’ve been known to complain to my sister that H ate all  the carrots and now I don’t have enough for tonight’s dinner.  And I’ve had to hide tomatoes from them.

People always ask how we got them to be this way.  My number one rule is that I’m not a short order cook.  What I make for dinner is what we all eat together.  No exceptions.  Besides that, here are my tips on how to get your kids to eat their vegetables:

  1. Grow Veggies.  It is cool to see something go from seed to plant to fruit to table.  Let them plant.  Let them water.  Let them harvest.  I betcha they’ll eat it.  If I ask H which vegetables taste the best, the ones from the garden or those from the store, his answer is not surprising… the garden!
  2. Let Them Shop.  After the garden, H likes vegetables in this order:  “The Farm” (our CSA), the farmer’s market, then the store.  He loves knowing where his food comes from.  Our dinner conversation typically involves some, “where is this from” Q & A.  He is more invested in the farm vegetables, because he has seen the ground it was grown in.  The farm is fun.  He like the farmers market because we talk it up, and because he usually gets to pick something out to take home.  But even at the grocery store, he gets to weigh in on choices.  “Would you rather have kale or broccoli for dinner this week?”  Making a choice, gives them an investment in eating the vegetable later.
  3. Let them cook. Even little kids can pull up a step stool and wash carrots and potatoes.  Older kids can stir the onions as they sauté.  If they’ve helped make it, they are more likely to want to help eat it.  Putting work into it makes it more appealing.
  4. Eat YOUR Veggies.  Kids don’t buy the “do as I say, not as I do” garbage.  They will do what you do.  If I hear my kids saying something I don’t like, chances are they heard it from me first.  Same goes for food.  If you don’t like something, only eat a bite or two.  But eat some, and eat it with a happy face.  This applies to your partner too.  If Dad doesn’t want to eat the green stuff, you kids probably won’t either.
  5. Offer Veggies.  I know that I’ve already grown tired of hearing “Can we have a snack?”  But I know I can grab the bag of green beans from the ice box and they can go to town.  This is because I say, “Sure, would you guys like green beans or carrots?”  They usually say yes to both.  If I offered green beans or bunny crackers, they’re going to pick the crackers.  So I don’t offer the crackers.
  6. Remember, Tastes Change. Remind them of that too.  Just because they didn’t like it last time, doesn’t mean they won’t like it this time.  Babies and children need to try foods several times before they really know if they like them or not.  At every meal, they have to at least try every thing that is served.  This is good practice as adults too, and it’s great for teaching good manners as a dinner guest – just because you don’t like Mom’s potato salad, doesn’t mean you won’t like Mrs. Dickinson’s.  You need to at least try a bite.  It’s polite, and you might be surprised.
  7. Don’t Buy Junk.  Just don’t.  If potato chips aren’t available, they’ll eat an apple instead.  You will too.  😉

The recurring theme here is investment.  The more work they put into their food, the more they will want to get out of it.  And you can’t argue with delicious results.  We don’t draw battle lines with food, but we do negotiate.  This summer, the only vegetable H really didn’t like was zucchini.  That was tough at first.  I still made lots of zucchini.  But at every meal, I told him, he didn’t have to eat all of it, but he had to try it.  By the end of the summer, he had no problem with it.  It still wasn’t his favorite.  I put one into a late ratatouille, and when he asked for seconds, he said, “but no zucchini, please.”  I’m ok with him picking it out, especially on seconds.   Especially because he ate some with his first serving.

It’s not automatic.  We still have to remind them to try things.  Sometimes although I offer two veggies, they ask for crackers.  But generally, it works.  You too can amaze your friends!  😉

Moms, what are your tips for getting the greens into your kids?

Categories: CSA, Food, Garden, Top 5 | Tags: , , , , , | 8 Comments

Top Five Reasons We Hunt

Posted on November 14, 2011 by Anisa

Rick is home from 10 days straight of hunting in the Uncompahgre national forest, north of the San Juan mountains with his uncle.  When he planned this trip, I sort of imagined that since I’d be alone in the evenings, after the kids went to bed, I’d have plenty of quiet, uninterrupted time to sit and write blog posts.  Boy was I wrong.  By the time I got dinner made (and to tell the truth I ordered both a pizza and Chinese take-out this week), got the boys in bed and the dishes done each night, I was wiped out.  I played single mom to three kids, and I don’t know how the military wives and real single mothers do it.  Hats off to all of you!

I had started this post before Rick left, and since this trip concludes four straight weekends of hunting for our family, I had planned to do some hunting themed posts.  I wanted to give updates on Rick’s trip as it happened, our hopes for the year’s meat and what strategies he used on the mountain.  But in all honesty I didn’t have the gumption to get on the computer and type.

Now that Rick’s home, I hope to get back on track.  You might even get some hunting morsels here and there as we process the game this week, if I can organize my thoughts to type it.  In the mean time, here are the top five reasons (in no particular order) our family chooses game meat.

  1. Sustainability.  In comparison to conventionally raised meat, wild game and the way it is harvested has very little impact on the earth.  You don’t get venison or elk from a CAFO.  Game is not polluting the land and waterways.  It is unlawful to hunt with lead bullets, so there is not a concern of lead in the meat or on the land from hunters.  Of course, it uses some gasoline to get up in the mountains, and we use plastic and paper or aluminum foil to package the meat in the freezer, but all of this is pretty much nothing compared to what it takes in those resources to get the same amount of commercially raised meat.
  2. Health.  Game meat is lean and high in protein.  It is antibiotic and hormone free.  It’s organic and needs no certification.  We know where it came from, how it was processed, what went into the sausage.  Plus it’s tasty.
  3. Cost.  Where else can you get 400 – 600 pounds of organic, grass-fed meat for the cost of a license, a tank of gas and two .30/06 bullets?  We can eat very well for a year from one successful hunting trip.  Butchering the meat ourselves saves us even more, and we get the cuts we want.
  4. Tradition.  Rick and his brothers were taught to hunt by his grandfather and his uncles.  He learned how to walk in the woods.  How to track a deer.  How to handle is gun safely.  How to shoot an animal so he wouldn’t ruin the meat.  How to skin it and butcher it.  And he is teaching these things to his own sons.
  5. Connection.  With the animal we’re consuming, the food chain, the earth, our creator, and each other. When we hike in the mountains, we feel a spiritual connection to the earth and God.  As we walk logging roads looking for Dusky grouse with our boys, or when they watch us cut an elk into steaks, they understand where our food comes from.  When Rick sits in a duck blind with his uncle or hikes a mountain with his brother, they grow closer. 

There are more reasons.  Rick would probably modify this list, but this is what is important to me.  Do you hunt?  Why or why not?  What value do you see in it?

Categories: Food, Hunting, Top 5 | Tags: , , , | 11 Comments

reCAP Mason Jar Caps

Posted on November 3, 2011 by Anisa

Sorry for the lack of posts this week and only minimal last week.  We’ve been ridiculously busy between hunting and H’s birthday and such.  I’ve got a couple of posts in the works that should hopefully be up soon.  But in the mean time, I had to share this.  Thanks to Erica for pointing me in this direction.

I had to share about this project – the reCAP Mason Jar Cap and the cool site, kickstarter.com, that is helping the reCAP’s inventor get funding.

The reCAP is a BPA free, recyclable, reusable plastic screw top cap to fit regular mason jars.  It’s a one piece design, great for pouring.  And it’s inventor is getting funding through people’s online donations on the site kickstarter.com.  I believe she has already reached her funding goal of $10,000 by November 8th, but people can still back her project  (as little as a dollar or up to $350) if they are interested.  I did, and in return I’ll get to try one of the reCAPs as soon as they are made (projected to be January).

I had to share this because I think both the reCAP and the kickstarter site are great ideas.

Check them out here:  http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1917107415/recap-mason-jar-caps

If you are an entrepreneur, check out the kickstart site.  The site collects pledges for you and if your goal is not met, nobody looses out, but if it is, you get the money you need to get started.  Fabulous!  So much better than a loan!

I can’t wait to try my reCAP!

Categories: Canning and Food Preservation, Community, Recommended Reading | Tags: | 6 Comments

Garden Layout and Crop Rotation

Posted on October 27, 2011 by Anisa

I mentioned a few posts ago that I was rearranging the garden layout again.  For those that were following along in the spring, you know that this year was the first year finally decided to make our garden beds “permanent” and we put mulch in between them.  That of course meant that I would inevitably change my mind this fall.  But it is a change for good reason.

The permanent design was three 4 foot by 20 foot long beds that ran east to west along side the south side of the house.  The layout was good, something we had been doing for the last few years, and it seemed to be working fairly well.  But there was a big flaw in this design.  For a few years now, I’ve known something in the design was amiss, but it wasn’t until this year that I was able to pinpoint what was wrong.  This year was the year of the lousy tomato bed.

Old “permanent” layout (with the neighbor’s beds shown too).

I was so disappointed.  I hand-picked 13 varieties of heirloom tomatoes for the northern most 4′ x 20′ bed.  But we only got a small handful of fruit.  Our worst tomato harvest ever.  And besides the low production, the plants started dying off prematurely at the west end of the bed.  Over the summer, the dying-off moved east.  What I suspected would one day happen finally did… we left our plants in the same area for too many years in a row.

Yep that’s right.  Despite all we knew, we didn’t rotate our tomato plantings.  Because of the layout, and because the toms are always the tallest plants in the garden, we’ve been planting the tomatoes in the same place for years now, the northern most of the three beds.  We amend the soil every fall and spring, especially in that area since we weren’t rotating, but it caught up with us any way.  We have been rotating the other crops in the other beds, but the toms have just stayed.  There was only one year when we planted them somewhere else, and they shaded out the stuff behind them.  As our neighbors joked with us, “Carrots love tomatoes.  But carrots love sunlight too.”

I’ve puzzled over this for a few seasons now, but could never figure out just what to do with the tomatoes.  Then, all at once this fall, it dawned on me that we’ve laid the beds out all wrong.  If I simply switched them to four 4 foot by 15 foot beds that ran north to south, I would still get the same square footage, but I’d be far better enabled to rotate my crops.  All the tomatoes could still go into one bed together, but could be rotated without shading out any other crops.  Head-palm!  How did it take me so long to realize this?  I don’t know, but I am excited.

New, hopefully permanent, layout.  Perhaps I can convince the neighbor to switch too?

Also this way, I can easily designate one of the four beds to be the spring/fall bed so that I won’t plant my summer crops late again like I did this year.  And, since I’m taking the time to build new “permanent” beds again, I’m going to edge them this time.  One reason is so that I can kind of keep the mulch from the paths out.  But also, and this is the bigger reason really, is so that I can better keep little feet out of the beds.  I think the edges will be beneficial for H and especially E to know where they can and can’t walk.  Also, anyone visiting (like with the chicken coop tour) will hopefully know it’s a garden and won’t tread on my baby bok choy.

My edging is not fancy.  I used what was on hand.  One bed is edged with random rocks from the yard and flower beds.  One is edged in brick that was removed to make the neighbor’s veggie garden.  Another is edged in left-over timbers that he donated to our cause.  And the fourth is edged in… well, a mish-mash of materials.  One day, I might make them prettier, but for now, I think they will do the job.  Plus I was in a hurry to get the beds made before our first snow fall, which came in yesterday!

By the way – if you want to make a garden plan like I’ve shown in the above pictures, I totally ripped off Erica’s method.  Lazy garden planners unite!

Categories: Garden | Tags: , | 5 Comments

Winding Down for the Season

Posted on October 13, 2011 by Anisa

We’re playing catch up here as the harvest season comes to a close.  This is my favorite time of year, but it is one that works us the hardest.  As the weather cools off we find ourselves wanting to move inside.  We want to settle down with a cuppa and a warm blanket or cozy up to a nice bowl of hot soup.  Unfortunately, all that coziness will have to wait just a few more weeks.  Winter is the true sleepy season.  Fall is the season of work.

We have most of the harvest put away finally.  Sunflowers and corn are hanging to dry, onions and potatoes are stored, canning is finished, summer produce is put up in its various forms.  We have garlic to plant this week.  I am actually doing a little garden redesign as we are pulling plants when the freezes hit and kills them off one by one.  The tomatoes are still, unbelievably, hanging on.

I am hoping to get some of our kohlrabi to over-winter so I can get seed from it next fall.  The plants are from seed from Slovakia that was smuggled through the mail to my in-laws.  The variety is very large – 8 pounds or more without any woodiness.  Our plants are bulbing up nicely, and they might just be one of the few big successes this season, but the seed is hard to come by.

An Independence Days update is in order, I think.  I last did one in August.

Plant something – Planted a few hardy mums.  Garlic will hit the dirt this week – nothing else is on the docket though.

Harvest something – eggs, tomatoes, peppers, kale, chard, kohlrabi, over 60 gallons (maybe even 80) of compost.

Preserve something – tomatoes and corn frozen, a couple of ducks in the freezer (thanks to Rick!!), the above mentioned canning, drying, dehydrating and such.

Waste Not – compost and recycling, scraps to chickens, etc.  Reused old t-shirts for a Halloween costume.  Working on other sewing projects from the scrap box – including some napkins and even two quilts!  Been mending things, not throwing them out.

Want Not – My friend Annie gave us some cloth diapers, and I used an old flannel baby blanket to make some extra wipes.  Got some great hand-me-downs from some friends for the baby girl.

Build Community Food Systems – Participated in both the Denver Botanic Gardens and the Denver Urban Homesteading chicken coop tours.  Baby sat for some friends in exchange for a couple of pullets (we got the great end of that deal)!

Eat the Food – yes.  🙂

Although my summer garden was a huge flop this year, I am happy that I put down some bok choy seeds and some late season peas this summer.  I might get one more harvest before we put the garden to bed completely.  I actually planted some other things too, but the second round of kale, spinach and beets never came up and I didn’t get any replacements in the ground in time.  I feared for the bok choy after the chicken coop tour – it got somewhat trampled since a few people didn’t seem to realize they were standing in my garden on my baby brassicas.  But it has survived, and even if it doesn’t get huge, I might get some baby heads out of it yet.

Still, I find myself drawn indoors.  Completing sewing projects (mostly mending) that I’ve put off for months.  Starting other projects.  Getting my craft on.  A few moments of inspiration have led to some things getting done in the handiwork department.  Halloween is coming and costumes need making.

We had a family dinner last week.  I’ve been spending more time with my sister lately and I am enjoying this time with her.  We decorated sugar skulls for the Mexican Day of the Dead.  The holiday begins on November 1st, which is Henry’s birthday, and we are big Halloween fans around here, so we did our Dia de los Muertos early this year.  (More on this later, I promise).

Life these days is transitioning from the mad rush of summer to the slower pace of fall.  Rick’s big-game hunting will mark the last of the harvest here, and that is coming in the next few weeks.  In the mean time, we are quieting down.  The canning pot is back in it’s spot in the basement.  H is focusing more on indoor play and learning.  It’s funny how we naturally move in these rhythms.  From outside in the sun and mud to inside quiet games at the table.

Categories: Food, Garden, Independence Days, Simple Living, Urban Homesteading | Tags: , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

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