SuperMom!

 Allow me a moment of confession.  There are times, after the rare occurrence of making it to the end of the day with a 95% crossed-off to-do list, my temper fully intact, the floor visible, and dinner ready, that I feel like I should wear a shiny cape and maybe even a mask.

Then Dulcinea shows me up.

On February 6, she effortlessly birthed 4 remarkably healthy babies for the second year in a row.

And makes enough milk to more than feed them all.

And yes, she does appear as though she's pulled her hair out, but its coming back in now and she moves with as much grace and dignity as ever.

She did choose a rather frigid day to birth these babies though.  Thankfully it was the first day of our "Spring Break #1" and having the morning interrupted with four furry babies in the dining room didn't cause a distraction in our education.

I brought them in as they were born, washed them off in warm water and allowed the girl child to use the blow drier and the boys to rub them down with a towel.  We have a new foster baby who squealed with delight then squealed in frustration at not being able to grab them with her own 2 little hands.  Once they were clean and dry I put them in the kennel and milked Dulci.  Normally we allow the moms to clean them off, but since it was so cold and she had them right in a major sand pit, she would have had to consume a large amount of sand to actually clean 4 babies.  And the temperature of low 40s made me nervous to leave them out for long.

Then came to naming.  True to Copper's record... boys.  ALL boys.  And since we had just finished studying the Renaissance and Farmer Boy 1 has recently discovered the joys of the Ninja Turtles, we named them Leonardo, Michelangelo,  Donatello, and Raphael.  Then they got neckerchiefs that coordinate them with their Ninja Turtle namesake.

The things I do to make a boy smile.  Or outright bellow with a hearty belly laugh.

I'm a sucker for my kids.

My Petunia Miracle

Its been a rough few weeks.  I'm unable to give details, but suffice to say parenting isn't for sissies.  I've been short on patience, shorter on grace and often ready with a double-barreled, fully-loaded tongue ready to fire my furious frustrations out at anyone who happens to step in my path.

And all I could think is that I just can't go on like this.  I can't.  I can't do it.  I can't parent this child.  I don't have a clue what to do and everything I do appears to be the wrong thing.  I'm tired.  I'm burned out and I'm ready to just give up.

Now change gears with me.

I'm in the running for an award at the county fair called "Homemaker of the Year."  There are 5 different categories that I must enter something in and points are awarded for each item, depending on their quality.  The contestant with the most points wins.  So, true to my competitive nature, I decide to max out every single category so I have as many opportunities for point accumulation as possible.  Four ornamental plants are permitted for entry so on my entry form (which was due at the end of August, but I submitted in July to be sure my place was secure) I listed petunias.  You must have a plant for 5 months or propagate it yourself to be eligible.  No worries.  I can have petunias from seed by October, right?

I submit my form and THEN check my seed stash.  I know, cart before the horse... story of my life.  I had NO petunia seeds.  So I look in every local seed source for petunias.  Nothing.

I didn't spend much time fretting over it.  I didn't have time.  It was now or nothing and the "nothing" was apparently chosen for me.  Oh well.  That's a few points I'll miss out on.  I don't exactly expect to win anyway.

This morning was a pretty bad morning.  Literally, it was pretty crappy if I may be so crass.  My husband was taking one for the team and allowing me time outside to myself while he wrangled the young-uns.  I began setting aside plants that I'd chosen for the fair: repotting, pruning, selecting, fertilizing, etc.  A few weeks ago I noticed a rogue plant growing among some lettuce.  I didn't pull it out because it didn't look like one of my common weeds.  And the kids help me plant seeds so to have a bok choy among the dill or a calendula among the mustard greens is really no rare thing.  I just let this plant grow and figured soon enough it would show its true colors.

Never did I expect those colors to be those of a deep purple petunia.

So this morning, when I was taking my frustrations out on my weeds, tears streaming down my face, I find this petunia.

Now, travel through time with me.  The last time I planted petunias would have been a year ago.  I recycle the dirt in my seed boxes, but it always gets mixed up, added to, turned around, shuffled here and there.  This dirt must have grown 15-20 different types of seedlings by now and has remained continuously warm and moist.  Petunias don't survive our summers.  Petunia seed should definitely not. Yet, NOW, 10 days before I submit all my entries, I have a blooming petunia.

And then my God, my precious, sweet, always loving, always understanding Father spoke so clearly.

What you thought you didn't have and couldn't find I have always provided for you. Trust me.

If I will look through the weeds, I'll find the seed of patience.  If I'll hold fast, I'll find ever-blooming love.  He doesn't wipe away the problems, He doesn't say it's going to be easy.  He says, "We do hard things.  Its who we are.  But you can do it.  I'm with you.  Now come on.  Let's go love a child."

A year ago, He knew I was going to need a petunia.  And not for the fair.  Right now I don't give two cents for the fair.  If I did, I'd be sewing, not recording this precious memory.  But if it weren't for the fair, I never would have paid much attention to my lack of petunias and the miracle this one is.  He knew, a year ago, that I'd need to know right now that He had traveled this road ahead of me.

And what a beautiful way to communicate it to me.  I do believe the petunia has become my favorite flower. The question is will I ever be able to look at one without crying?

I wonder what seeds He's storing for me this year.

The End of an Era- Redneck Style

We had a time of sentimentality this weekend.  Time passes and it almost is like bidding a dear friend goodbye forever.

When we first moved to this house and started raising food on our single acre, we had no children but the one in my womb.  We also didn't have 2 nickles to rub together.  Money was so tight that if it wasn't redneck and hillbilly, it just wasn't.  

We got goats when I was pregnant with #2.  We put grain in a barrel in the porch (where the chicken grain was stored) and square bales of hay sat on pallets in the garage.  One, maybe 2 bales of hay was all that could be stored at a time or else Husbandman's car (who's was the only one short enough to fit at all in front of the hay) was left outside until the goats worked their way through the hay.

This all changed when we acquired a new shed.  We bought the property with two metal sheds, or shall I say two rust sheds.  One is inside the pasture and cumbersome to get to.  The other stores lawnmowers, the rototiller and other items.  So this new acquisition could be considered our barn.  First of all, its a much higher quality shed and thus has a floor and no rusty holes for mice and rats and snakes to use as private entrances.  Secondly, its spacious.  We had decided to purchase a shed and , for frugality sake, measured how small it could be and still hold all the things we wanted to store in it.  Then friends who were moving sold us their shed, which happened to be double the space for less than we had anticipated spending for the bare minimum.  So the next trip to the feed store was a big trip, with the trailer, buying 6-8 weeks worth of feed.  Previously we hauled out to the feed store every 7 to 10 days.  Its a 25 minute drive one way and I couldn't go and have room for a bale of hay with all 4 kids.  Husbandman couldn't go after work and still bring home the one child who attends preschool as he usually does.  So doing fewer trips with a trailer and storing large quantities is a very welcomed change.

But that meant disassembling the pallet rack we made for the hay.  And sweeping all the hay, for the last time, out of the garage.  And rearranging that whole area to hold bikes and kid toys.  And it was incredibly nostalgic, though you may call me nuts.

I don't think it would have affected me so much if it had only been the final removal of all things livestock from the garage.  But we also made the decision to abandon our small garden.  This was the very first garden we put it.  We had 2 very young children, the youngest just 3 months old.  We were reading a Mother Earth News to each other one May morning and came across an article about laying newspaper down right on top of grass and weeds, compost on top of that and planting straight into the compost.  We had a pile of left over pennysavers from our paper route and we had friends with horses who had offered us all the compost we wanted.  We started that very day.  I still remember the little guy sleeping in his baby bucket in the shade of a tree and our daughter using her shovel to spread compost and handing me papers to lay on the grass.

And since, like I said, we had no room in the budget for actual fencing, but had rabbits and turtles and lots of other creatures who would love to eat this garden, we had to find a fence.  So pallets again.  My husband came home with load after load of pallets from a company next door to his office.  Slowly the pallet fence grew until it stretched the entire perimeter.  But that wasn't the end of the pallets.  They kept coming and soon I had tables for planting seeds.  You see, if I plant seeds directly in the garden, ants and squirrels make off with them.  So I put them in pots which cannot be left on the ground or they suffer the same fate as well as getting poked and dumped by little hands.  My seedlings had to be elevated to have any hope of survival. So beside that garden were my stacks of pallets that acted as seed tables.  And things grew and we ate.  And we wanted more space so the very next year we did the same thing to an area more than double the size.  I kept both going and life was good.

Then this summer happened.  Appointments and busy-ness and a rogue goat wiped out that garden.  Nothing was growing in it but roselle and weeds.  The weeds were so thick I couldn't see the scrap tile pieces I used as my walkways.  I finally decided I needed to mow it.  By this time the pallet fence had fallen down and we had enough money to buy 2' fencing and enough step-in posts to keep the critters out.  So I took down the wire fencing, which was more like pulling it out with how entangled it was with weeds, and went at it with a lawnmower.  I then covered the entire thing with plastic, still planning to use this as a garden in the fall.

And about a year ago my seed tables were replaced by nice stainless steel tables a friend bought from a restaurant going out of business.  She had her husband were going to be slaughtering a few chickens at our house and were less than impressed by our set-up... which was an overturned Rubbermaid tote with a plastic bag taped to it... found these tables and bought them for permanent storage here.  I put my seed pots on them and when we slaughter something, the seed pots get set on the ground, the surface gets scrubbed and we have a beautiful processing area.  Those tables were kept in front of the little garden, right along the drive way.  And had a tendency to get just as weedy as the garden.

It got to be that when I'd drive up to the house and look at it objectively, as I sometimes do to see the biggest eye-sores, these tables with the weeds and the pots and buckets and, well, junk, they really were quite a pimple on the face of our property.  So we moved these tables to alongside the new shed which helped it blend in a little better too.

But this weekend, while looking at the little garden, and thinking about building raised beds around the perimeter as a weed-proof wall, and the 2 pecan trees, 1 citrus tree, 2 pomegranate trees a host of persimmon trees and a loquat tree we'd like to find places for, I simply pulled up the plastic, dug out the tiles and decided to let it go.  The established grapevines are here as well as the roselle which I'm not sure will be a perennial or what so its not like the land is carved from the face of the earth and left as an empty pit.  I'll decide what trees will occupy this site and how, along with pineapples, strawberries and that thorny dragon fruit,but it will no longer hold garden beds.

Don't get me wrong, I'm sure the neighbors will still have opportunities to groan and our necks will be as red as ever, but for us, for now, it feels like things have really changed.  Having extra income to buy supplies to be able to do something properly has made a huge difference.  I like the difference, don't get me wrong, but the memories are sweet.  So very sweet.  My life is so rich I could live it over and over and over and never grow tired of it.  Rich or poor, enough or in want, we have always had such precious memories.  May this be the case forever.

Littlest Beekeeper

Meet the littlest beekeeper.  She's great.  The last two inspections, farmer girl and her superhero daddy have worked together.  Is this a good idea?  Oh yes.  Here's why:

First of all, we wouldn't do this if we thought she was in any real danger of getting bad stings.  She's not.  When the bees are stressed, which they have been off and on over the year that we've had them, they get defensive and a bit more prone to stinging.  But she's equipped and ready.  And if they seem a bit testy, she simply steps back.  No one has suffered a sting since I took one to the face last fall handing equipment to Husbandman over the fence with no gear on.

Secondly, Husbandman can do the inspection alone, but he doesn't like to.  Its good to have another set of eyes, or even squishing fingers when we see wax moth larvae or hive beetles.  I don't feel comfortable being out with him by the hives with the boys napping and our 5 yr old watching a movie with instructions to run out and get us if she needs us.  It's incovenient to stop every few minutes to run in and check on them, battling the 4-leggeds at each gate coming and going, making sure my clothes and veil are free of bees before going into the house, etc.  So, with me passing off my veil to my "miny-me", I get to stay where I can keep instant tabs of potential emergencies and Husbandman gets his 2nd set of eyes and fingers.

And boy does she have eyes.  Sharp ones.  She's still learning bees, but once she knows what she's looking for, my guess is she'll spot the queen every time.  She's way better than me.  I quickly glance at the frame for problems and impatiently ask if I can take a break to check on the kids again.

And finally, there's something about bees and bonding.  There's a daddy who treasures his little girl.  And there's a little girl who adores her daddy.  And working the bees is their special activity that they get to do together.  Almost like the bees are working their propolis, fusing their hearts together.

Seeds of Doubt

There's been 2 distinct times (now 3) when I've seriously questioned if I had the ability to do what I've set out to do. The first is farmer boy #1 and the second is farmer boy #2. Both pregnancies brought with them a wave of fear- "how am I ever going to manage TWO young children?" I finally rested by the multitudes who had gone before. MANY mothers have children far closer together than 20 months. So when the third child was waiting his debut and I was again having those fears, I again remembered the multitudes through history.

Now I'm stuck. This round of fear (which is completely unrelated to pregnancy despite my ferocious case of baby envy) has none that I can find who has gone before. None. I'd be happy for someone to point one out. Please... just one... anyone?

I'm beginning to doubt my ability to school my children well and maintain the homestead. Farmer girl hasn't yet begun kindergarten and I'm floundering getting through 3 days of preschool lessons a week. And I understand that I'm abnormally busy right now, but it has just started me on the hunt for someone who's doing both. Instead I find:
1) Women who have great homesteads but "unschool" their children. Yes, its a valid movement but not at all an option for this family of proud, unswerving nerds.
2) Women who school their children superbly but manage very little real food production.
3) Women who seemingly do it all beautifully yet their husbands are home all or much of the time to "tend the fields".

We practice what we like to call "old fashioned home economics." My husband has a city job and I do what I can to produce as much food whilst caring for the young'uns. But we have a solid stance toward homeschooling. And homeschooling WELL. The multitudes who have gone before had far fewer skills to teach. Then it was arithmetic... I'll be teaching calculus. Then they taught English... I'll be teaching Chinese. I'm determined that our children will have a better education with us being their teachers than they would have in any school system. So, if something has to give to do that, what gives? The garden takes the most time, but also produces the most nutrition. If I can get everything on maintenance mode where I don't need to do all day weeding sessions once a month (which keeps the garden barely recognizable as a garden), and I can convince the bugs to not eat anything but those weeds, and I can always depend on adequate rainfall, oh and I'd also need automatic planting and transplanting... I could probably do it.

Maybe I'm just fretting over nothing. Maybe I'll learn to get up and get the chores done in the pre-dawn hours as they did way back when. Maybe I'll learn to function on 6 hours of sleep. Maybe the kids will learn to stay in bed beyond when they hear my bedroom door open. Maybe the kids will be able to really help in the garden in the near future. Maybe the farmer girl really will be able to milk when she's 5 as I've told her that's when she can help milk (so now she asks everyday when she's going to turn 5). Maybe I'll find ways of streamlining housework. Maybe I will find someone who's doing it all and be able to glean some wonderful tips.

Maybe I should call these "weeds of doubt" instead and just yank them from the root.