Purple Flower

The Beach

We spent some time at the beach down the road from the property.  There was no one else there - it was about 80 degrees.  I take it the beach is rarely frequented since it's completely unmarked and we've only once seen someone there.  Tim decided to go in the water.  Let's remember, this is Lake Superior.   As suspected, it was COLD water.  The dogs enjoyed running in the water and of course came back to the blanket I was sitting on to come and shake off - after they rolled around in the sand.  Here are some pictures of the beach:

Paulie the Porcupine

We were up at the property this weekend.  It was a wonderful trip!  The weather was sunny and 68-75 degrees - beautiful!  When we got there, we were surprised to see all the apple (and other fruit trees?) in bloom. Lots of new ground cover and flowers were coming up too.  Drawf dogwood, ferns, starflowers, violets, and stagham moss in the wooded areas.  Hawkeye, raspberries, possibly a daisy of sorts (hadn't blossomed yet) in the sunny areas.   Marsh marigolds, iris (not in bloom yet), unique mushrooms, and more violets in the bog area.  Just amazing!   We find beauty everywhere on the property.  While we were sitting under one of the blossoming fruit trees, Tim spotted something in one of the aspen trees near by.  He came running back for the camera, and we took pictures throughout the evening.    It's a porcupine!  We watched him up in the tree top, sleeping, observing us, and eating.   I am amazed by porcupines!  I guess I never really seen one in the wild, and up in the tree it was a slow, docile creature.    Of course, I would never want a close encounter with one, but I'm happy to have at least one who lives on our property!  We named him Paulie the Porcupine :)

We have a doula!

Since we are going about the pregnancy and our life in general in a natural way, we figured that it would be helpful for us to look into hiring a doula.  Most people are familiar with midwives, but since we are seeing a medical doctor through a women's care practice, midwife wasn't much of an option.   Insurance doesn't cover midwives, and it would be very difficult to birth anywhere but home with a midwife.  We felt safest with a medical setting, but still want to be holistic.  We found out that a doula would be a great fit to what we were looking for.  For those that don't know, a doula is a labor-support professional who offers emotional, physical, and educational support during pregnancy and labor.  The support is for both mother and father.    A doula does NOT take the place of the father.  The doula will arm Tim with techniques that will be suitable for him to best comfort me, and have a greater understanding of what's taking place.   We just felt it would be wonderful to have someone in there that's aligned with our philosophies to help us, explain to us what's happening, and make us comfortable.  Years and years of studies show that women who have doula support are less likely to have c-section, have analgesia/pain meds, give birth with vacuum or forceps, and report negative feelings about the childbirth experience.  The doula we chose will give 3-4 prenatal visits for education purposes as well as be there for the entire labor/delivery, a few hours afterwards, and provide follow-up support.  We are looking forward to developing a relationship with our doula! I feel positive that this support will be one more way to make the labor and delivery an experience as pleasant as it can be. 

Update

Hello all!

It is I, Tim

Just a quick update on the potatoes and the worms.  I just added the next tire to my stack yesterday and it looks like everything is going really well.  The plants must be 16" or 18" tall now.  The taters are growing great and yet the tomatoes are growing poorly.  Hopefully we'll get some warmer weather here eventually and they will catch up a little bit.  We also have some strawberries that are just starting to ripen up.  It will be nice to get some fresh food to eat from our own backyard.

The worms also turned out pretty well.  A week or two ago I finally got around to separating the worms from the castings.  I ended up with a little less than half a 18 gallon bin full of castings.  If my estimation is correct, it is about 25 Lbs or so.  According to a website, that's about $30 worth of castings.  I didn't think I would end up with nearly that much after only 6 or 8 months.

Well, that's all for now.  I will write again shortly.

The World Without Us: 11 Fun Facts from a Book about Earth without Humans

An interesting, thought provoking article by Mother Earth News:

The World Without Us: 11 Fun Facts from a Book about Earth without Humans

Sloppy Joe - Yum!

This past weekend we made a 4 day trip to our land. What could I pack for food that would be easy and quick? I was craving sloppy joe, so that's what I made! (Well, among other things!) It worked out great. I precooked a double batch and then we took it in our cooler, heating up the serving size for the meal on the stovetop in our camper. It was delicious and easy!

Here is the recipe to give it a try. This yields probably 6-8 sandwiches. (I double batched it from this).

1 pound ground beef
1 pound ground turkey
1 onion, diced
1 green pepper, diced
1 celery stalk, diced
1 can condensed tomato soup (you will add water to make the consistency of the Joe right).
1 tsp. cumin
1/2 teaspoon worcestershire sauce
6 whole wheat hamburger buns

Instructions: Crumble beef and turkey in skillet over the stove and cook until brown. Drain off liquid. Add onion, pepper, celery and cook until soft. Stir in condensed tomato soup, cumin, worcestershire. Add water as needed to take the thick off. I filled the tomato soup can with water and used about 1/4 to 1/2 of the can. Taste test and add cumin and worcestershire as you desire. Serve hot on top of wheat bun. Get sloppy!

Potatos in tires!!??

It's Tim again...

In the last post I mentioned "projects" so here is the other one. This one is still a bit of a work in progress.

I read somewhere that potatoes will grow in used tires, and it caught my attention. I decided to try it this year. Fortunately, Lisa needed new tires on her car late last year, and I was able to keep the old ones.

I've not planted potatoes before, so the whole thing has a bit of a learning curve. We normally buy organically grown potatoes to eat, so I just used some of those as my seed potatoes. I let them sit on our kitchen table in the sun until they had started to grow some shoots from the eyes. I only cut about three or four of them up with each piece having about two or three shoots on it. I had so many pieces that I probably planted way too many in my tire.

I filled one tire with a black dirt and peat moss mixture and just stuck the potato chunks in. It's been a few weeks now since I started and for about the first two or three weeks there was nothing happening. I started to worry that something was wrong. But then, low and behold, I happened to be walking by the tire one day and noticed just the tiniest plant starting to grow. I had to look closer now. That day I discovered about three plants growing and within a week there were ten.

As I understand it, once the plant itself gets tall enough, another tire is stacked on top and filled with dirt as well. Apparently, potatoes will grow in each tire and as the tops get taller, you just repeat the process with a new dirt filled tire.

I'm happy that I finally have some plants growing and hope to have pounds and pounds of potatoes by the end of the season. I'll try to give you and update as the plants keep growing.

Stay tuned!

Worms

Hi everyone, Tim here.

Just wanted to do a quick update on a few of the "projects" I've been working on.  Some are turning out well, others are still a bit of a work in progress.

The first project began last year a little before Christmas.  We got interested in vermicomposting and decided to start a worm bin.  After a little bit of research on the net, we were set to make some bins and buy some worms.  I made the bins from some Rubbermaid bins I had down the basement.  The one on the bottom is intact and another modified bin nests on top of it.  The upper bin just has some holes in the bottom for drainage and some holes in the top for air flow.  We put some dirt, paper, and food scraps in the bin along with the worms.

At first, the worms didn't like the bin very much.  They liked crawling out all the time.  After picking them up off the floors (and sometimes the walls)

I finally called the worm farmer we got the worms from.  He suggested a night light so I rigged up an LED night

 light to fit in the top of the bin and a little bit of tape got the light to stay on all the time.  No more problems.

It's been a few months and after the bugs were worked out (including some fruit flies) we have a whole bin full of worm castings.  The castings are great compost for the garden and we'll mix some in with the garden soil when we plant in a few weeks.  Hopefully it will help us grow some nice fruitful plants!

Getting the Garden Ready

Getting the garden ready has been slow going. We were out the other Monday and I was working on some of the flower beds while Tim cultivated the garden beds with the composting leaves we put on over the winter. The garden beds look great, but we still have a lot do with our flower beds. We have about 2,000 tiny trees growing in everything. We don't even know what kind of tree it is. We thought it was probably maples from the two bigs trees we have in front that leave whirly-gig's all over the place, but sure enough, the leaves have opened on these tiny trees and they aren't maple! I guess we have something new on our hands to figure out. Tim took a bunch from the beds and planted them in a little growing tray. They are growing well, but what are they? Huh. We still have our started seeds insides. They are doing well, but nothing like they were last year when we transplanted them in. If the weather is nice this weekend, I might bring them outside to acclimate a little bit. Usually I plant right before Memorial Day weekend, but this year Memorial Day is sooner than usual it seems. I'm going to have to play it by ear.

Rhubarb Update: It's coming in, but not even close to ready. I can't wait to harvest it and try something new! Have a good recipe, please e-mail it over! I still have some frozen strawberries from last (unbelieveable!), so something strawberry/rhubarb would be great too!